Release?

How do i submit a release for an uncopyrighted image that I own?

Send an e-mail to permissions-en wikimedia.org, being sure to mention:
  • the location you uploaded the image,
  • that you own the image,
  • and that you are agreeing to license it under an acceptable license.
I hope this helps. Cbrown1023 talk 22:44, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

How to use OTRS

Perhaps most people think that it is obvious how to use OTRS, that is how to submit an e-mail query to OTRS, shouldn't there be at least one sentence explaining this explicitly? (I looked at OTRS for the first time today and it took me a bit of time to understand what one is actually supposed to do to use it.)

E.g. add a sentence like:

"To submit a query to OTRS, send an e-mail to QueueName@wikimedia.org, where QueueName is the name of a queue or a sub-queue, such as wm-fr, info-de, Wm-donations and so on."

Regards, Nsk92 00:43, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

We don't expect people to "submit queries" to OTRS. The OTRS is really an internal system. Our email is, for the most part, handled by volunteers. If one needs to contact us about an article about themselves on English Wikipedia, for instance, they send an email to info-en-q (at sign) wikimedia (punto) org. If they need to email us with permisssion to use an image, it might be permissions-commons (at sign) wikimedia (punto) org.
OTRS is merely the program that our volunteers use to respond to these emails. The queue names do not always correspond with the email addresses, and therefore, such instruction, is difficult. For our OTRS Volunteers, we have the otrs wiki, which is probably a better place to put specific instructions on how to *use* our OTRS system. Cary Bass demandez 20:12, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

OTRS - covers all wikis?

The V&A Museum in the UK has an OTRS arrangement in place - see this link. The holder, if that's the right phrase, from V&A wonders if the OTRS arrangement is limited to en.wikipedia, or does it extend to other wikimedia sites, notably the commons. I'll relay a response here back to the user, or else a knowledgeable OTRS scribe could drop a line on w:en:User talk:VAwebteam. Thanks --Tagishsimon 00:40, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

OTRS covers all Wikimedia wikis. Cbrown1023 talk 01:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Use of OTRS system to verify e-mail correspondence between editors and other parties

At "en:Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Proper Citation of Emails", an editor asked if information in an article could be referenced to e-mail correspondence between the editor and another party. The consensus was no, because the correspondence would be unpublished and inaccessible to others, and thus unverifiable.

However, I wonder if it would be possible to make use of the OTRS in the same way that it is used at the Wikimedia Commons. At the Commons, when an editor has obtained e-mail confirmation from an external party for an image to be licensed freely, he or she forwards the e-mail correspondence to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org. The correspondence is verified by a volunteer working the OTRS e-mail queue, who then places an OTRS ticket on the image description page (see, for example, "commons:Image:RichardHakluyt-BristolCathedral-stainedglasswindow-whole.jpg"). Could a similar procedure be developed for an editor to forward e-mail correspondence with an external party to OTRS, and for the OTRS volunteer to add an OTRS ticket in the footnote containing the reference to the e-mail, like this:

Personal e-mail communication dated 11 November 2008 between Jacklee and Mr C. Thinker, Director of the Wikipedia Editors' Circle. (  The correspondence has been archived in the Wikimedia OTRS system; it is available here for users with an OTRS account. To confirm the permission, please contact someone with an OTRS account.)

Jacklee 15:13, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think so. Wikipedia's strict verifiability by its readers is a good thing - it already has a few "text on webpage under GFDL per email"s which is bad for the project. -- Jeandré, 2008-11-22t19:33z
A similar discussion has come up at en:talk:Cold fusion, a highly controversial article. Some editors there wish to link citations to an online library where the provenance of the library's copies is unclear. That library as a whole has been blacklisted, but individual papers in it could in fact be whitelisted. As a method of preventing links to what potentially could be copyvios we'd like to be able to email the original publisher a notification that we are planning to use links to their work in this online library. An OTRS ticket to verify that email was sent (without exposing the editor's confidential details) could enable this to work. Is this an acceptable use of OTRS? If so how would we get started?LeadSongDog 14:30, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

User template

See also {{User OTRS}}, which outputs to: Category:OTRS volunteers. Cirt (talk) 19:13, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Translation

Hello. I got permission to import external encyclopedia in Korean language. However, Nobody can read Korean. Must I translate it in English? Cheers.--Kwj2772 07:24, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

It would be useful to forward the message in Korean and then also provide an English translation. Cbrown1023 talk 21:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Return to "Volunteer Response Team/Archives/2008" page.