Community Wishlist Survey 2017/Multimedia and Commons/Write license data into meta data of image files

Random proposal ►◄ Multimedia and Commons

Write license data into meta data of image files

• Problem: Images files can store license data as meta data inside the file. As of today image files do not provide this data. For nearly all files on Wikimedia Commons license data are available on commons. But they are stored separately on the description page.

• Who would benefit: Users of Wikimedia Commons files who want to use the file and need the license information but cannot find the corresponding Wikimedia Commons file page.

• Proposed solution: Write license data from description page into meta data of the image file.

• More comments:

• Phabricator tickets:

• Proposer: Sebastian Wallroth (talk) 06:54, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

• Translations: none yet

Discussion

I'm surprised nobody has requested this before. It sounds like a great idea. Is there some reason this has not been done yet? Downtowngal (talk) 00:09, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

This is not the first time I've heard this proposal. I would like to limit the scope to only the thumbnails. Original files shouldn't be touched. That would have all sorts of nasty side effects (duplicate detection broken to name one). Multichill (talk) 17:10, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

See also phab:T5361 and phab:T20871. Jean-Fred (talk) 20:14, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

The common concern about this is file size overhead for small thumbnails. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 01:05, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Voting

•  Support Jcornelius (talk) 09:55, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support HHill (talk) 11:16, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:18, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support TMg 16:19, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support This may need to add the project name and even an ID for verification. YFdyh000 (talk) 17:07, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 17:44, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Yiyi (talk) 18:58, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Greg (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Gripweed (talk) 21:37, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Thomas Obermair 4 (talk) 22:58, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Shizhao (talk) 03:19, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Sebastian Wallroth (talk) 07:39, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Donald Trung (Talk 🤳🏻) (My global lock 🔒) (My global unlock 🔓) 11:06, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Venca24 (talk) 20:40, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Patar knight^chat/_{contributions} 20:54, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support – Meiræ 22:05, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support --g (talk) 00:28, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Daylen (talk) 04:29, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Dromedar61 (talk) 21:33, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Sahaquiel9102 (talk) 21:46, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose I see a lot of problems for bot maintainers and mass uploaders. By writing the license into the image, the file content would be changed which causes a different SHA-1 checksum of the file. This checksum is needed in lots of automatic upload processes to check if this file already exists on commons. If the file was altered this check would not be possible anymore. As a consequence this would cause a lot of redundant uploads. -- Freddy2001 ^talk 21:52, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Ckoerner (talk) 21:36, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Talmoryair (talk) 17:03, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Emw (talk) 22:08, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support HugoHelp (talk) 15:24, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Oppose as proposed. I'm concerned that new editors who don't understand our licensing requirements will unintentionally be embedding wrong license information into the image. This could dramatically undermine our abilities to determine the true source and license of the image. Also, one of the classic ways to begin to see a problem with an upload is whether there is metadata or not. If there isn't, chances are it hasn't come from the editor's camera, and thus any self release licenses are likely invalid. I also share Freddy2001's concerns. This should not be implemented. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:24, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Oppose I think, the license info should be added before the image is uploaded to Commons. Snek01 (talk) 21:16, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Acamicamacaraca (talk) 12:13, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support --Nicor (talk) 14:11, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Psychoslave (talk) 08:31, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support TitiNicola (talk) 13:41, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Martin Kraft (talk) 17:59, 11 December 2017 (UTC)