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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Lowercase sigmabot III (talk | contribs) at 05:41, 19 September 2021 (Archiving 1 discussion(s) from Wikipedia talk:File Upload Wizard) (bot). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Archive 5Archive 6Archive 7Archive 8Archive 9

Why does the upload tool add "n.a." automatically?

Today I was disappointed to see that User:The Rambling Man had removed the infobox image from Sister (2021 film) while it was on the main page, on the basis that two of the sections of Template:Non-free use rationale said "n.a.". Why does the upload wizard fill these sections with "n.a."? If users are going to remove images from articles when the NFUR says "n.a.", then I think the upload wizard should fill those sections of the template with something more meaningful, or prompt the user to indicate how they should be filled. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 16:19, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

The template needs to be read in conjunction with the licensing that is assigned during the upload to evaluate all 10 points of NFCC. NFCC does not require the use of the template or that the template include all fields, just that on the file: page, all 10 points are addressed to a degree (and they don't have to be spelled out, point-by-point). There also is common sense aspects at play as well. So to take the version of that poster prior to today [1], it was "missing" an NFCC#1 (replacability) and NFCC#2 (respect for commercial). Meeting NFCC#1 should be patently obvious that a movie poster for a 2021 is not going to have a free replacement, while the NFCC#2 is actually addressed by the license terms.
I agree that the Wizard should have these fields available to be filed in, and should put in some better default text than n.a., but they aren't required to be spelled out per NFCC. The only required ones that are to be spelled out (either because this is info only the uploader knows or to show the actual thought going into NFCC selection) would be NFCC#4 (source of original publication), NFCC#7/9 (article to be used in) and NFCC#8 (purpose of use). Everything else is information that can be gleaned by considering how the image is used or comparing the source to what else is available, though obviously if the uploader included details, that would help. --Masem (t) 16:33, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
I use a belt-and-braces approach to this kind of thing. Assuming that something is "patently obvious" is a very bad idea, and adding "no free replacement exists as this is a movie poster" is far preferable to "n.a." which literally means "not applicable", and that should be "patently obvious" that it is still applicable, just covered. The time it takes to complain about this kind of thing is probably an order of magnitude longer than it takes to properly and comprehensively address it. The Rambling Man (Stay alert! Control the virus! Save lives!!!!) 18:52, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
As we have learned from the past with BetaCommand/Delta, while NFCC is a hard policy like BLP that allowed heavy-handed enforcement to make sure it is followed, it still requires interpretation and appropriate considerations for the given case (like, patently obvious situations that extend from the various drop-downs from the uploader like a movie poster). I do agree that leaving "n.a." is probably not the right answer at the end of the day because every part of the 10 NFCC criteria is applicable, just that some answers to the rationale don't need to be spelled out. I don't know of a better way to default-answer those cases outside of standard boilerplate that I've seen (eg NFCC#1: "It is believed there is no free equivalent version of this copyrighted work nor could a free version be obtained."; NFCC#2 "It is believed the use of this work is within fair use and does not harm the commercial nature of the original work", etc.) which should be given and allowed to be overridden by the Wizard users as needed. --Masem (t) 21:00, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
Yes, the point is "n.a." is factually incorrect. I don't care what the "wizard" does, what I do care about is fair use images which claim that certain aspects of NFCC are "not applicable" which is blindingly obviously incorrect to anyone who reads NFCC. There is absolutely no excuse to not fill in n.a. to something more appropriate, none at all. "Economy" is directly equivalent to laziness or ignorance. The Rambling Man (Stay alert! Control the virus! Save lives!!!!) 21:07, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
(ec) This has been discussed before (as Masem probably remembers). If somebody removed the image from the article because he felt the rationale was lacking, that's an unfortunate misjudgment. These rationales are perfectly adequate, for the standard use scenarios they are meant for. Some sections in them say "n.a." because in these particular cases, the fulfillment of these particular aspects of the NFCC is blindingly obvious and trivial and therefore doesn't require explicit explanation. This is simply a question of economy: in order to help uploaders understand the need to fill in rationales, we must reduce the information load during the process as much as possible, getting people to focus on those parts of the rationales that are actually non-trivial and do require individual thought and individual explanations. And the wizard doesn't fill in some default boilerplate rationale instead because that's not its job: the wizard must only ever fill in those pieces of information the user has seen and understood during the upload process. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:56, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
Clearly "not applicable" is incorrect. But don't let that get in your way. The Rambling Man (Stay alert! Control the virus! Save lives!!!!) 18:58, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
@Masem, Future Perfect at Sunrise, and The Rambling Man: I suggest we modify the upload wizard so that it inserts something more specific and relevant than "n.a." in the disputed areas. Is this suggestion acceptable to everyone? If so, I'll make a protected edit request. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 07:41, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
Yes, but what should it insert? It mustn't insert anything that the uploader hasn't read and agreed to during the upload process (because the rationale must ultimately be the uploader's responsibility, not the bot's). And our uploaders don't have the attention span to read and think about statements like that if you were to replace a logo with something else, "any substitute that is not a derivative work would fail to convey the meaning intended, would tarnish or misrepresent its image, or would fail its purpose of identification or commentary". Forcing uploaders to read through that kind of trivial boilerplate doesn't help the process; it will only lead to information overload and reinforce the misunderstanding that the entire FUR issue is just about this kind of boilerplate, diverting uploaders' attention away from those parts of the form where their individual input really matters. So how are you going to break down that information into something that an average uploader can read and understand in less than ten seconds? Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:57, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
In the cases of the standard types of uploads, something boilerplate is better than nothing, but it is better to present the user that boilerplate and say "you can use this language below and continue with the uploader, but if your image is a special case, please consider modifying it as necessary to meet your needs." And no, complaining that it takes longer for 10 seconds to read is the wrong thing to be worried about with NFCC, as this is a serious matter for WP, editors need to be aware of the implications of NFC use and thus need spend time to at least read through the first few times they upload images. Experienced users will have no issues. --Masem (t) 13:30, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
If uploaders don't understand NFCC enough to fill in the fields themselves, they shouldn't be uploading fair use images. The Rambling Man (Stay alert! Control the virus! Save lives!!!!) 15:09, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
I mean, I think Fut Perf did what he had to do probably. It wasn't URGENTTTTT so maybe some kind of tagging... can you PROD images? Leave it in the article and do that, and if contested you have a hassle (images for deletion maybe) but then uploader learns. But what he did was OK too.
So I mean the totality, you have to look at the totality... rationale was "to serve as the primary means of visual identification at the top of the article dedicated to the work in question" which I think is generated by a checkbox... that's part of the totality, it is one date point to help answer the question "should this exception be allowed". It's not the same as "The map concealed in the protagonist's shirt lace (seen here) cannot be seen by people with green-black colorblindness, a rare condition which the villain unknowingly had, this being the driver of the plot" or something. Those're different things. The " visual identification" thing is really allowed because it's decorative (it does make these articles look much better, and that's good), it isn't really something that the owner is likely to mind in real life (it's publicity), and the community decided to carve out this exception. It's not mission-critical to these articles.
And we don't know for a stone fact that the answer to "Not replaceable with free media because:" is "actually it is, the studio has released a somewhat similar version to the public domain, I just think this one works better", or that the answer to "Respect for commercial opportunities" is "actually, turns out a guy downloaded this image from here and published it in a book (with other images, granted) which sold 100,000 copies, and he's being sued by the copyright holder, but enh."
I personally don't much care about being super-strict about copyright, but the Foundation realllllly cares, and that matters. We're not toadies to the Foundation but neither would being loose on copyright be a good hill to die on. So I enforce the copyright rules pretty strictly (reduce quotes from a paragraph to a sentence when I see them, that sort of thing), and admins are basically sworn to do so.
So, I always fill in the blank, and now OP has learned to, so win-win. Herostratus (talk) 15:17, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
Maybe change the "wizard" to say "FILL THIS IN YOURSELF" instead of "n.a." which is patently untrue. The Rambling Man (Stay alert! Control the virus! Save lives!!!!) 15:34, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't know how all the use cases break down, but I do know the ones I commonly use, the two fields of "respect for commercial opportunity" (NFCC#2) and "nonreplacable" (NFCC#1) are given in the uploader as I work through it but are left empty and can be left empty but allowed to proceed to uploading (which results in the n.a.). As I mentioned, it would be far better to add placeholders for the more standard types of images like movie posters, logos, etc., which while may be boilerplate, does satisfy the NFCC requirements. For other images that do not have standard approaches, such as historical images, these fields should be required and non-empty.
Key is that "n.a." is the problem. There is some rational that applies and the choice to use "n.a." makes it look like this field was purposely ignored. I know FP has stated their intense dislike for boilerplate but there are times that boilerplate is just fine for common uses of NFC. --Masem (t) 15:56, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure if everyone in this discussion understands that the upload wizard does not give the user an option to input something other than "n.a.". The "n.a." is filled in automatically, and if the user wants to change it they have to somehow know that the upload wizard leaves them at risk of having the image removed by The Rambling Man and edit the description page to change the "n.a." to something else. For instance, @Herostratus: even though you always fill in the blank, a number of description pages for images you uploaded say "n.a." [2] [3] [4]. Indeed, the same is true of The Rambling Man's uploads! [5] [6] In any case, here is a concrete proposal below. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 18:30, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Oops. Well boy howdy, butter my buns and call me a biscuit. OK, well, mostly I do I think. Another random thought, I'll bet a number of ESL users, and maybe even some native English speakers from, I don't know, South Africa, are not familiar with "n.a." (BTW FWIW I often see it as "N/A".) Most are, but we want to be global when when it's easy. It's an easy change for the programmers I suppose. "This field intentionally left blank" or whatever. Herostratus (talk) 19:45, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
You also can't fill in the "Author or copyright owner" after uploading (it looks like to me) so that's a bug I guess. Herostratus (talk)

Specific proposal for changing MediaWiki:FileUploadWizard.js

Extended content

In lines 1236–1240, change 

        // I hate FURs filled with trivial/predictable/redundant verbiage,
        // so we'll just cut it short. And don't anybody dare complain that
        // that's not a valid FUR.
        descFields.Replaceability = "n.a.";
        descFields.Commercial     = "n.a.";

to 

        descFields.Replaceability = "This file is not replaceable because it is the subject of the article.";
        descFields.Commercial     = "It is believed that this file does not replace the original market role of the original copyrighted material.";

In lines 1266–1267, change 

        descFields.Replaceability = "n.a.";
        descFields.Commercial    = "n.a.";

to 

        descFields.Replaceability = "The file is not replaceable with free media because the photographed work is copyrighted.";
        descFields.Commercial    = "It is believed that this file does not replace the original market role of the original copyrighted material.";

In lines 1279–1285, change 

        // FURs for screenshots etc. don't normally need to bother
        // about replaceability (with free images) and with commercial role,
        // but do need to bother about purpose and about replaceability with text.
        descFields.Purpose        = opts.NFPurpose;
        descFields.Replaceability_text = opts.NFReplaceableText;
        descFields.Replaceability = "n.a.";
        descFields.Commercial     = "n.a.";

to 

        descFields.Purpose        = opts.NFPurpose;
        descFields.Replaceability_text = opts.NFReplaceableText;
        descFields.Replaceability = "The file is not replaceable with free media because the underlying work is copyrighted.";
        descFields.Commercial     = "It is believed that this screenshot does not replace the original market role of the original copyrighted material.";

In lines 1293–1294, change 

        descFields.Replaceability = "n.a.";
        descFields.Commercial     = "n.a.";

to 

        descFields.Replaceability = "The file is not replaceable because it is the official cover art of the work.";
        descFields.Commercial     = "It is believed that this file does not replace the original market role of the original copyrighted material.";

In lines 1302–1303, change 

        descFields.Replaceability = "n.a.";
        descFields.Commercial     = "n.a.";

to 

        descFields.Replaceability = "The file is not replaceable because it is the official logo.";
        descFields.Commercial     = "It is believed that this file does not replace the original market role of the original copyrighted material.";

Is this change acceptable? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 18:30, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Well, most of these statements aren't really rationales. They are simply restatements of the corresponding NFCC clauses. You're merely asserting that the criterion is met, but you aren't really explaining why. Well, sure, it shouldn't be necessary to explain why, because in these cases it's so damned obvious. That's what I've been saying all along. But still, if you think you need an actual rationale, then provide one. Say why it's not replacing the original market role. If you don't do that, I don't really see how this change makes any difference. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:56, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
And not only that, now it's just click to fill it, doesn't mean you've considered it for one second or that's it's true, you just want to use the image. It's like "own work", you see that when it's highly doubtful. So, you could mabye do one of these three:
1) replace the text with something else, such as "This field left blank, which will cause deletion of this file", or
2) make them type something, and refuse to upload the file if you don't. If they just type a letter or "n.a." that's obvious cause for immediate deletion, or
3) some kind of tag like PROD is generated if the field is left blank. Herostratus (talk) 20:39, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
Sigh. The whole point about having the File Upload Wizard is to relieve uploaders from the need to fill in their own text for these particular entries, in these specific cases, because it's not worth forcing them to consider them – because they won't do it anyway. Just accept the fact, we do not have the luxury of choosing which users can or cannot upload pictures, and the huge majority of them just won't understand and won't want to think about the technicalities of the NFCC. Forcing people to enter their own text in these fields will only lead to even more nonsense and even more deficient rationales. The whole point of this page is to guide uploaders away from these boilerplate fields and instead concentrate on those where they really have something meaningful and individual to say and where this individual input really matters. "Replaceability" and "Commercial opportunity" for logos or cover art isn't among those. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:22, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
I have to agree with Future Perfect at Sunrise here. Making people type something to these questions they don't understand just results in self-defeating "rationales" that are worse than the boilerplate "n.a". The specific pitfalls of NFCC varies by media type, and as Fut.Perf. says above, for logos and cover art it's not NFCC#1 or NFCC#2. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 08:46, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
Repeat: If people can't justify every aspect of NFCC they shouldn't be uploading fair use images. It's very simple. "n.a." is patently incorrect for any aspect of a fair use image. Simple: lack the competence to fill in the justification for every criteria? Don't upload. The Rambling Man (Stay alert! Control the virus! Save lives!!!!) 09:22, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
@The Rambling Man: Then please help us build consensus to change the upload wizard. Currently there's no way for the uploader to stop it from filling in "n.a.".
I think it's unlikely we'll be able to come up with text that everyone thinks is ideal. My thinking with this proposal is that the text is at least more accurate and no worse than "n.a.". Can we agree that the proposed text is better (or at least no worse) than the current text, even if it's not ideal? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 17:47, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
Alright, reasonable, let's do it. I suppose it's worth giving it a try. Herostratus (talk) 02:39, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm not sure if we quite have consensus here, so pinging the other users who have commented in this subsection. @Future Perfect at Sunrise and Finnusertop: Can you live with this proposal as a way to address the concerns about "n.a." without requiring uploaders to fill in their own text for these entries? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 12:58, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
Are you going to present these contents to the user during the uploading process? I'm still quite opposed to having things filled in silently without the user's prior knowledge. But if the user should see them, more changes to the code will be required than the ones you proposed above. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:31, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
@Future Perfect at Sunrise: The current version of the upload wizard silently fills in "n.a." without the user's prior knowledge – is that not equally objectionable? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 08:57, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
Also, while there might be objections to some of the messages that might be used as fill-in in without the user's knowledge -- I don't see a problem there, within reason, but whatever -- surely some are OK: I think that "[this field left blank by uploader]" or whatever ("[uploader did not provide data]" etc etc) -- these are simple descriptions of what happened. Whenever you do something, a simple neutral description or record of what happened seems OK. Not every new user knows that they are leaving diffs I suppose, but we still do and its fine. Herostratus (talk) 21:37, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
"This field left blank by uploader" would be misleading, because the upload wizard doesn't allow the uploader to fill in the field. "This field left blank" would be okay with me. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 18:12, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
I'm late to the party but this is continuingly relevant. The suggestions above are of the right form, but don't actually explain the reason the NFCC conditions are met. For instance, in the case of a screenshot, replaceability should be something like "The network, studio, distributor and/or production company [could use the already-asked "Author" field to fill in the specific organisation] own intellectual property rights and as such all depictions of the work in question are necessarily non-free". For commerciality, say something about a single frame from a much larger work not replacing the entertainment or educational value of the product. If Fut.Perf. insists then fill this in as a default in a textbox that the uploader can change. I also think we should be using a default for minimality—do I really need to say every time that it's one image, low resolution and I'm just using it once in one article? — Bilorv (talk) 23:57, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
This issue has been raised again below: #Ensuring compliance with wp:FUR. It would be great if we can get consensus for a solution. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 16:32, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Mobile web

Why this File Upload Wizard in Wikipedia not working in mobile web? Nghiemtrongdai VN (talk) 06:02, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Special:Upload

Is there an easy way or JavaScript that can change the "Upload file" link? I want it to send me directly to Special:Upload instead of Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard as I don't feel like clicking 'upload file' and then 'plain form for local uploads' every time I need to upload an image Some Dude From North Carolina (talk) 01:04, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

You're talking about the left sidebar link? We could change that, yeah, but I don't think we'd want to. It's very important that we help out beginners, and the wizard does that (somewhat) better than the plain form. Overall, the whole thing needs a top-to-bottom refresh to make it more like the Commons wizard. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 01:34, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, I was referring to the sidebar link, but I'm not suggesting changing it for everyone. I was asking if there an optional way for experienced users to be sent directly to Special:Upload, like creating a downloadable code that I could add in Special:Mypage/common.js. Some Dude From North Carolina (talk) 11:38, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
@Some Dude From North Carolina, oh, I see; thanks for clarifying. That should be fairly straightforward for someone who knows how to code scripts; you could ask at WP:Script requests. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:15, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip. I have entered a request. Some Dude From North Carolina (talk) 13:47, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
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