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Clarification about copy attribution and Commons
Hi, GreenLipstickLesbian, and thanks for your efforts helping other users understand our complex rules about attribution of copied and translated material from other projects. I noticed you helping out a user with copy issues at their talk page back in May, in particular, this explanation about whether and why images from Commons are/aren't exempt from copy attribution requirements at Wikipedia when we include images from Commons. You had the right idea, but not quite the right explanation. At Wikipedia, any creative content copied (or translated) from another Wikipedia, sister project, or other compatibly licensed project may be copied in whole or in part and pasted into a Wikipedia article without any problem, as long as the attribution rules, which you are familiar with and help other users with, are followed. So far, so good.
Seaweed farm in Uroa, Zanzibar No part of this image was copied to this page, it exists only at Commons, therefore no copy attribution is required per WP:CWW.
The deal with images at Commons, is that we do not copy them into a Wikipedia article, we just link them (as you pointed out in your reply). Same thing when we linking to a foreign Wikipedia article; that doesn't require attribution, either, because the content was not copied over—it remains in the original location, only the link is present at the Wikipedia article, and no attribution required for a link.As an example, when we use template {{interlanguage links}}, as in these 190,000 links, no attribution is required; it's just a link to someplace else. Same ting for an image: the actual picture bits are not copied over from Commons to Wikipedia, they remain at Commons, and nothing is copied, so no attribution is required.
Maybe a better example, is template {{Excerpt}}. As an example of it, go to the Algae article, section Algae § Cultivation and browse that section: scroll down a bit, note the two subsections on Seaweed farming, and Bioreactors; note the five images, and 12 paragraphs of text. None of that material is actually in the wikicode of the page, it is all excerpted (i.e., transcluded) from three different articles, starting with the Algaculture article for the top part. That whole, long section with the two subsections and the five images, is only 164 bytes—edit it, and see. The editors of that section could have chosen to copy all of that content from the three articles, and had they done that, then the requirements of copy attribution would have come into play, and would have been required. But if you transclude or otherwise display text (as with an excerpt) or display an image (as with [{File:Seaweed farm uroa zanzibar.jpg|thumb|Seaweed farm]]) then you haven't copied anything, the text bits and the image bits do not reside here, they reside on the Algaculture page, or at Commons, nothing ws copied, and no attribution is required.
When you go to Commons and upload an image, then the image bits *are* stored there, and you'll notice how they require an attribution statement (e.g., 'This is my own work') or they won't even let you upload it. Once the image is stored at Commons with the proper license, there is no further requirement to attribute it at Wikipedia (or at any other sister project) because you aren't copying the image bits to Wikipedia, you are just displaying the image (stored at Commons) on the Wikipedia page via the filename, not copying the image somehow into the wikicode of the page. (There is no way to even do that; if one could copy image bits into the wikicode, then articles would blow up in size from a few tens of kilobytes to many dozens of megabytes.) And that is why Commons images do not require attribution. (But note in the hypothetical case that someone at Commons wrote quite a long, detailed description of their image, say, several hundred words, including sources where they got it from, then if you wanted to copy their long description from the Commons file page and paste it into a new section of your Seaweed farming article, then you *would* have to attribute it.) Hope this helps! Mathglot (talk) 02:46, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for the late response, it's a busy time of the year! @Mathglot, this is the most meticulous, amazingly detailed response to something I think anybody's ever written me on Wikipedia. Thank you so much - it's wonderfully clear. So the way we handle images is somewhat analogous to transclusions? I can wrap my head around that, I think. Seriously, thank you. This is a wonderful explanation. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 00:13, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm so glad you liked it, truly. I enjoy trying to clarify things—I just haven't figured out how to do it in a brief account. Now when someone asks you the same question, you're going to have to figure out how to say in in just a couple of sentences, because 99% of editors will fall asleep before they get to the end of my explanation! But I'm glad you didn't, and when you figure out a pithy, brief way to say it to some questioner, please ping me to it.
To your question: yes, it is something like transclusion, although it happens at a different point in the processing. It all starts when a user clicks Seaweed farming at Wikipedia, causing their browser to issue an Http GET request to our server at en.wikipedia.org. If our articles were written in pure Html, then the web server would just send the article page Html back to the user's browser, which would start building the page, grabbing pieces that are stored elsewhere, like images specified in the Html <img> tag from some other server and inserting it into the right spot on the page.
But the pages are written in wikicode, not Html, so when the user asks for an article, our server gets the wikicode for the page, and starts translating it into Html. I don't know the internals, but probably it does a preliminary pass first, going through the whole wikicode, stopping every time it hits a template, and replacing ("transcluding") the template with whatever wikicode the template resolves to: bold text, converted units, whatever. So far, the images are still just [[File:FOO.jpg|Caption here]] code. After all the templates have been replaced, it starts over at the top, translating the whole thing into Html that a browser can understand: wikilinks become <a> tags, [[File:FOO.jpg|...]] becomes <img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/FOO.jpg"> and so on, and then it sends the Html page to the browser—still no image bits, just that <img> tag with a 'src' link where to find it. It is the user's browser's business to go get the image from the Commons server.
So, yes, displaying images is kind of like transclusion, with the difference in who does it, and when: the Wikipedia server transcludes all the templates into wikicode when a browser asks for an article, and then translates all the wikicode into Html and sends it to the browser; all the images are just img tags with links at that point. The browser interprets the Html, and asks other servers, i.e. the one at Commons, for images every time it sees an <img> tag with a src attribute saying where the image is stored. (Caveat: I don't know wikimedia server internals; conceptually, this is correct, but there are other ways to do it, such as depth-first, meaning, translate and transclude all in one step, but that doesn't really affect the explanation.) And if you are still not asleep by now, you deserve a medal! Mathglot (talk) 02:00, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sandbox edit
I often get around to formatting the source names after I finish writing the content, but feel free to make any edits that you like! I don't mind letting others edit my sandbox Fathoms Below(talk)16:00, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was a little bit worried Id overstepped, so thank you! <3 Generic citation names in the author parameter are my personal pet peeve. On a slightly different note, I'm actually interested by the number of times Polytopia shows up mentioned in regular academic publishing. Nothing SIGCOV, of course, just passing mentions- it seems a non-zero number of people like using it as an example of some mechanism. Who'd have guessed that? GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 00:06, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking of this, is there any easy way to see a list of all these? It seems like a pretty chill task to deal with individual revisions instead of trying to make sense of how CCI works. Clovermoss🍀(talk)06:50, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Clovermoss All current redaction requests get listed in Category:Requested RD1 redactions. You have to double check, of course - sometimes people request rd1 redactions for material that's public domain (such as US government works), and some scientific papers and governments publish under a creative commons license but it's not always obvious. But you can also skip the ones that look difficult, and somebody else will get to them.
On 13 December 2024, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Anchorage White Raven, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that a raven in Anchorage, Alaska(pictured), ate tater tots and toast, fought over ice cream, and disassembled a streetlamp? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Anchorage White Raven. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Anchorage White Raven), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
The first time I've ever seen you around was like 5 minutes ago when I saw your Teahouse comments. Your uplifting comments intrigued me, so I was looking at your user page, edits, talk page and such and felt my heart grow a smile reading the way you communicate with others, specifically to new editors who need our kindness the most. Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia! TheWikiToby (talk) 05:05, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@TheWikiToby: Oh gosh, opening up my talk page and seeing this message absolutely made my day! Your kind words are much appreciated, thank you. I've seen you around as well- and you've always left me with a positive feeling towards you. So really, I should be thanking you for all you do! GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 12:14, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Di (they-them) No, thank you so much for starting it off! I loved reading about Kamala so much- growing up, we had an elephant at my local zoo. Her name was Maggie, but she used to have a roommate, Annie, who also painted. The zoo framed her paintings, so looking at the ones Kamala did brought me back. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 01:45, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Editor of the Week
Editor of the Week
Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week in recognition of your great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project)
Oh wow... I really don't know what to say here! Holy cow, thanks guys! I love you all so much right now, and all five (‽‽‽‽‽) of you are people who make me proud to be an editor on Wikipedia.
@The4lines I've said this before, but you're so dedicated and hard working in copyright, and you've been so helpful and encouraging, there are times where I feel like I don't deserve to think of you as a friend. You make me proud to know you, and to be a copyright editor. :) And sorry for being a terribly communicator recently - but just know that you're an amazing person and editor.
@MPGuy2824 You're somebody I look up to in NPP - I admire your dedication and expertise, and especially your Herculean efforts to conquer the redirect backlog! With 14,000 reviews, you're a literal legend. And I admire your content work as well, during the DCWC, I learned so much from your lists! And I also admired and remembered how you had twice as many reviews as submissions during that contest. Do you know how great that is?
@Queen of Hearts When you went for ALECT, I actually said "Finally!" out loud! (much to the confusion of my cat, lol). And I was so happy when you passed - and proved that you were the queen of at least 389 Wikipedian hearts.💕 You're such a warm positive force on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia discord. And you're doing wonderfully as an administrator.
@HouseBlaster Category royalty! I make lots of jokes about categories and how I barely understand them- but they're so important, and I'm grateful we have an admin like you in charge of them. You're a wonderful editor, and I admire how thoughtful and meticulous you are, and you treat newbies and other editors.
@TechnoSquirrel69 Thank you so much for writing this - my little heart doesn't quite know how to respond so I guess I'll say: I've got 4 DYKS now. 😛 But, more seriously, you'll note that they were all from recently. When I signed up for the DCWC, I said I wanted to try and push myself into the content processes. Before that, I'd never done a DYK by myself before. I barely knew how the process worked, and I was so scared to get involved! I know I only submitted one entry for the contest, but without it, and without feeling encouraged and supported by my fellow "competitors" and you guys, the co-ordinators, I think I'd probably still have no DYKS to my name. Seriously. You're indirectly responsible for a decent amount of the content I've written now. Including this amazing raven that I now have so many pictures of on my talk. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 22:37, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much, GLL! It's always lovely to see the impact my work has on other people, and I'm glad I played a part in the nudge that led you towards more content and DYK explorations. Here's to many more! (Also, "queen of at least 389 Wikipedian hearts 💕" is a quote for the ages.) —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 22:56, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Aww, thanks! Your work at CCI is truly commendable. It is deeply appreciated by this editor who will not touch that area with a ten foot pole. Happy holidays :) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 02:09, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Congrats GLL! You're well deserving of this award. Thanks for all the work you do at CCI and copypatrol, you're a valuable editor to have around. If you ever want to chat, you know where to find me :) The4lines |||| (Talk) (Contributions)21:24, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I mainly edit and communicate within Wikimedia Commons I am not quite sure whether this is the proper method to establish a connection to you concerning a subject you just edited meantime while I was still adding to the article Crosshall_cross. Just noticed a few minutes ago that some text had been removed and/or altered.
I am aware that images from external sources that are not in the public domain may not be used within the Wiki realm.
And I am also aware that I should reformulate in my own words any text I have found elsewhere.
But I wasn't aware that I must not even cite text that supports one's understanding of the subject, even if it is more than 70 years old, and which is explicitly declared as being a citation.
What about links? Any hindrances that must be observed?
FACT: it's now well over midnight here in Germany, so I'll immediately remove all the text I published after your interception at 21:24 hrs and will attempt to find a suitable text form in the coming days.
I'll inform you when I have completed a corrected version. OK with that?
By the way, it was really fun contributing to Wikipedia by exploring all these sources that refer to the Crosshall cross. I certainly hadn't expected to discover that many. I won't give up ;-) .
Hello GreenLipstickLesbian, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2025. Happy editing, Abishe (talk) 22:36, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your contributions to Carolingian Coinage and the Vikings. Unfortunately, I do not think it is ready for publishing at this time because it has no sources and it needs more sources to establish notability.
I have converted your article to a draft which you can improve, undisturbed for a while.
