Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/archives/2010/October

Utilizing images from wikipedia to wikinews

I wish to utilize images hosted in wikipedia to wikinews. like [1] [[படிமம்:Thanjavur_Tower.jpg]]where படிமம்=File, but this is displayed only if Thanjavur_Tower.jpg is available in commons. this is for tamil WN. ta.wikinews

Any idea? pls help -- Mahir78 (talk) 12:44, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Download it from Wikipedia to your computer / phone / laptop. Then upload it to Wikimedia Commons, tagging it as GFDL. I can't read Tamil, so I don't know the source and author information to do it myself. Good luck! --InfantGorilla (talk) 13:10, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. But I want the file be loaded with special tags like [[w:File:FileName.jpg]], for articles we use [[w:Article name]]. Thanks -- Mahir78 (talk) 18:14, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

That simply isn't possible. The software can't do that. It could be made to do that, but I'd warn that where fair-use is concerned you'd have a tough time convincing the devs you'd be able to keep track of wether local use complied with policy or not. Much easier to upload a local copy. Plus, if Wikipedia decide to delete the image your article will be left without warning with redtext instead. Therefore, annoying though it is, I think you really are better just uploading the images directly to ta.wikinews. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:29, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Or upload to commons, as then everyone can use it :). (although just to clarify, the reasons this doesn't work is entirely social/political, from a technical perspective mediawiki can handle multiple shared repositories very easily). Bawolff ☺☻

Tamil Wikinews has local uploads disabled. --Diego Grez ^{return fire} 19:00, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Blood Red, your points are practical. I agree with that. Diego, thanks for reminding this. -- Mahir78 (talk) 19:07, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

• I didn't know Tamil Wikinews had disabled local uploads. Maybe you could look at adopting a good fair use policy, and getting consensus to turn local uploads on? Then you couldput non-free images on local and free ones on Commons. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 19:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Its actually surprising how few wikinews have local uploads on - {{statistics}}. Only 3 projects have more than 50 local uploads. Most have only 1 upload, which is presumably the wikinews logo translated into that language. Bawolff ☺☻ 19:35, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Wow. That really does surprise me. They could at least make good use of logos. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 19:54, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Each Wikinews must create the necessary fair use and image policies and receive specific approval from the Board, an onerous process which has effectively prevented any Wikinews language from having uploads turned on since 2006. - Amgine | ^t 17:11, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Some stats

A while ago somebody asked for stats about who published most articles (editcountist for reviewers). I made a little stats page on the toolserver - http://toolserver.org/~bawolff/en-wn-editor-stats.php (I also plan to include a most active this week section, but I want to double check thats allowed under the rules first). Bawolff ☺☻ 01:46, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Awesome Bawolff! Great work:). I can't believe that I've published less than 40 articles since the review template was implemented 0_0. Gopher65_talk 03:48, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

btw, If anyone does not want their name to appear on the list, please add yourself to User:Bawolff/edit-stat-opt-out. Bawolff ☺☻ 17:09, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

DocumentCloud

How can we, to advantage, use DocumentCloud.org? - Amgine | ^t 05:06, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

If it doesn't have options to restrict who sees the documents, we probably can't; we should host anything of any import that is to go public locally (at least, somewhere WMF). If it does have this ability, however, it might be more interesting. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 11:30, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

eww clouds. We shouldn't host confidential data on servers we don't own. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)