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-- Wikinews Welcome (talk) 16:08, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Your 'demands'/'ranting' in IRC

I was, slightly tempted, to leave a rather curt remark here. But, Amgine informs me that was simply a case of a 'frayed temper' — which happens to all of us.

I've had "write a Wikinews-specific alternative to CommonsDeLinker" on my to-do list for a very long time. One of your Commons colleagues contacted my privately after the little spat over OTRS processing; that was, I felt, a quite positive discussion. Wikinews is always going to be an edge-case for any automated processing across the WMF's wiki farm, what's right for Wikipedia (with constantly evolving articles) is, almost-always, going to be inappropriate here.

For the article where there was concern to get permissions processed speedily, it is now up as the main lead on our front page. I've forwarded the contact details for our interviewees to the WM-UK office and asked them to get someone to explain the nuances of getting images up on Commons. Fingers crossed that might lead to a few of those people ending up with Wikipedia entries; in the meantime, we'll rely on Wikinews:Fair use and {{Deprecated image}}. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:59, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello Brian McNeil, The problem seems to be resolved. The problem was the blocking reason ;-). Have a nice evening! --Steinsplitter (talk) 19:35, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

@Brian McNeil, apart from the very broad understanding of Fair Use at this project, I see another structural misunderstanding. In many cases you seem to ask permission for a picture from the depicted person, but the actual copyright holder is the photographer. This misunderstanding from your side leads to a lot of unnecessary work at OTRS. Jcb (talk) 17:12, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

If I may butt in. We definitely need stronger/better ties with Commons. On our end, workloads are increased when Commons deletes images without notifying us. CommonsDelinker is of little use to us in our present form; a human-readable reboot of CommonsTicker might be more useful, giving ready warning to deal with potential issues there. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:45, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

The impudent behaviour of Computron and Brian last week at the Commons IRC channel was not helpful to get a better relation between the projects. Computron was presurizing us to accept his bogus permissions immediately, giving him priority over all other projects, while Brian was threatening that he would file an formal complaint to the WMF about me. The two of them were very impolite at us and all of us were pissed in the end. It also cost me a lot of time to clean up the mess of bogus permissions Computron created. I am willing to have a possitive attitude in working together, but we, as hard working volunteers, don't want to be treated like they did. I just read my IRC log file of last week and it made me pissed again. Jcb (talk) 21:05, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

That doesn't entirely tally with what I was appraised of the situation in the #wikinews channel; or, more accurately, it represents only a selective version. Wikinews is a time-based project. Computron therefore asked for (how many images? no more than three) to be looked at for just this reason: finding out if there were any problems on the permissions side of things. Good call, says I, given that there were sizable issues. Computron advised us in #wikinews that somebody (based on the above, I take that somebody to be you; I've been trying to keep my head out of this dispute) was going to do it until Wikinews was mentioned, then backed off. Pissed? I'll say we're pretty pissed. OTRS handling is a service role; bias against projects is not acceptable.

Further, to describe Computron's mistakes as "bogus" rather than "incorrect" or somesuch seems needlessly antagonistic. I also note, again according to Computron, somebody actually threatened to block them based on removing a tag when in fact that tag conflicted directly with another tag on the article.

I can't, unfortunately, go any further than these fairly broad observations. Was that block threat made? I cant say. Was Computron accurate when relating what went on? I can't say. Was the tag removed out of confusion from the conflicting templates, or more deliberately? Once again, I can't say. I wasn't there. What I can say is it takes two to tango. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 21:27, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

"was going to do it until Wikinews was mentioned" - that's obviously not true. We clearly told him the contrary several times. Also it wasn't a dispute just with me, several Commons administrators were responding. Brian backed off a bit after several OTRS agents expressed their irritation about his behaviour. But one thing is true, I did warn him not to do this. And yes, we were ready to block him if he would have done it again, but he didn't. Jcb (talk) 21:42, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the riposte; while I can't pretend what actually went on is much clearer, it's certainly useful to have some Commons perspective on the whole situation. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 21:48, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I spotted a note on IRC with regard to way declarations for portraits are working on wikinews. Obviously wikinews is not Commons and Fair Use gives excellent leeway for use of portraits in news articles. I find Brian's approach sensible (hi Brian), and applying Fair Use where there is doubt avoids problems downstream, especially when these are done in a rush quickly, which may put an OTRS volunteer under a bit of pressure to avoid getting into an "are you sure?" correspondence with a donor who is also the subject of the photograph. Where there are great high quality donations, of course we want these available to all projects, and I see no harm in thinking of a verification cycle where wikinews gets on with it, and if a 30 days correspondence then happens before a photo is released on Commons, well it's not the end of the world. As an OTRS volunteer and with a lot of Commons experience, if anyone wants me to help in the future with a particular case, just drop me a note. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 03:35, 30 September 2013 (UTC)