User talk:Zippy

Images

Glad to see you're able to edit now. I wanted to make you aware that you added File:Humansprev.png to the v0.34:Human page, which is from an older DF version. You'll usually want to make sure to edit the newest one (currently "DF2014"), but feel free to edit older ones too, of course.

Also - are these images you created? The "some website" that was selected for the license in File:Humansprev.png, File:Dragonprev.png, and File:Elf_preview.jpg concerns me a bit. If you made these images yourself, that's fine, but otherwise, providing attribution helps avoid issues.

If you want to use images that are on WikiMedia Commons, then you actually don't have to upload them to this wiki to use them (in fact, please don't, because there's no point in us rehosting them). I'm not seeing your recent images on there, though, so that's more of a note for future reference. —Lethosor (talk) 20:46, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Do I have your permission to spice up some of the templates of tables? I could make some look better and "cleaner" than they do now. - Zippy (talk) 15:28, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Which tables are you thinking of? IMO consistency is good, but some are likely using an older style. As for changing the default look of the wiki, I haven't put much thought into that. The upcoming upgrade does look slightly different, and you can see an example here, but that's mostly just some font changes in the newer Mediawiki version. If you know CSS, you can test out your own changes at Special:Mypage/common.css if you like. —Lethosor (talk) 01:45, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Sorry but I'm not seeing much of a difference of that cat page. - Zippy (talk) 10:18, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Reuploading images

You mentioned an issue with reuploading images here. I finally got around to testing this, and uploading something different on File:Strangechasm.PNG worked for me. How big was the image you were trying to upload? Does it work now? —Lethosor (talk) 00:46, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, file re-uploading works now. So far. I also finally fixed the creature list by making the "Courier New" font the "priority font". Does the list look okay to you? If I broke something, I'll gladly change it all back. You can also revert whatever change *you* made, if you want. -- Zippy (talk) 03:35, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Weird, I'm pretty sure we didn't change anything, but glad it works now. The creature table looks fine to me too - thanks for handling that. —Lethosor (talk) 22:47, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Are you comfortable changing the main CSS so the links appear as different colors? I changed my personal CSS page to make them look brown, and they look waaaayy better that way. -- Zippy (talk) 05:27, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

I'd say no, because that's a personal preference (they could also be confused for redlinks, and Mediawiki displays stub links as a brownish color when configured in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering). That's why Mediawiki lets you have user-specific styles, though. —Lethosor (talk) 14:50, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

The idea isn't just about me. I bring this up because right now, the wiki looks super generic. At least color wise. -- Zippy (talk) 08:01, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

That's not a bad thing, though. Blue links are a convention, not just specific to Mediawiki, and we don't want to confuse or distract people from the content too much. I do like what you did with the navboxes like {{DF2014 materials}} and {{DF2014 world}}, by the way. —Lethosor (talk) 00:10, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Are you comfortable changing the links to a different type of blue for originality? Also, this wiki keeps signing me in and out at random times, is that going on for you too? -- Zippy (talk) 06:49, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

No, although I used to have issues when I was switching between HTTP and HTTPS versions of pages, since logging in on https://dwarffortresswiki.org doesn't log you in on http://dwarffortresswiki.org and vice versa. Can you check both of those links, or take note of the protocol when you see the issue again and see if it has changed? —Lethosor (talk) 01:29, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

The "s" link logs me in just fine and the non-s one logs me out. The site seems to be fine with the "s" link. I know you might care about this but... can you give me CSS style a try? The default wiki looks so horribly boring, and this wiki is for one of the greatest games of all time, so even slightly changing link colors would be a plus. This wiki doesn't deserve mega-boring default colors. -- Zippy (talk) 12:26, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Templates

Regarding the check marks you added to some pages like DF2014:Wetland - those are cool, but that's really something that should use a template, so I've moved it over to {{check}}. Templates are preferable for consistency and maintainability - if we ever have to change the color or the symbol for some reason, making sure the change gets made in thousands of places is way more effort than changing it in one place. It is possible to get carried away with templates (Wikipedia's tick template has at least 10 alternatives - let's stick with one here), but for something like this, please don't hesitate to make a template. —Lethosor (talk) 00:10, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't know if you noticed, but I fixed up some of the license templates for the images. I want to do the same for the first four license selections but they come up as "👍 Uploaded with permission from the creator to use only for non-commercial and/or educational purposes."... I don't know how to edit that, could you help me out there? -- Zippy (talk) 04:21, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay - something separate like this is fine to post on my talk page. Anyway, since it's been a while, can you link me to one of those images so I can see what's going on? —Lethosor (talk) 04:24, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

If you pick certain licenses for uploaded images, selecting some lead to broken things like "{{subst:something license}}" instead of properly showing something. --Zippy (talk) 06:41, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Understood, but can you link to one that's broken? I would prefer not to upload images to test out every license. —Lethosor (talk) 22:32, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Ok, I think I understand what the issue was now. "subst:" is a special prefix for templates that causes their contents to be pasted in when the page that includes them is saved (which means that template updates won't affect past inclusions of the template). We don't really use it much on this wiki - {{unsigned}} is about the only example I can think of. Wikipedia uses subst for these because they want the date when the template was first included to be pasted into the page (which is also what {{unsigned}} does), but I don't think we care about that for these license templates. Anyway, I removed subst, so new images should use the templates corresponding to whatever is before the first | character (e.g. Template:No license from license selector). Unfortunately, there may not be a way to force pages that already used subst, like File:Grasshopper Man with Scroll.jpg, to update. —Lethosor (talk) 22:42, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

How to put this...

...not really looking for it per se, but nevertheless... *thumbsup* nice edit? Silverwing235 (talk) 18:16, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

IMHO, this is finally workable after a year or so lying fallow....good work, anyway. Silverwing235 (talk) 17:43, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Creepy Crawler pic

I would assume from the description it's more like a starfish made of fingers than a spider. Sorry for leaving this here but it wouldn't let me edit the article's talk page. --35.191.8.96 07:56, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that an hour after I posted it. Meh, I'll just redraw it. Zippy (talk) 19:56, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Copyright issues with images

Hi,

there is an ongoing discussion about images and copyright infringement at Dwarf_Fortress_Wiki_talk:Copyrights#Images_and_copyright_infringement. You have uploaded many files with copyright issues, so could you please take a look at the discussion and explain your point of view? It would be very helpful if you could tell where you have got the images from. Tanamoril (talk) 08:16, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I know I already posted this in the other talk page, but a lot of the images I got were either posted on Reddit (where I asked the creators directly if I could use their stuff, and they said yes, as long as I credit them) or from DeviantArt, Pinterest or Instragram, which had the Creative License right there on the page. -- Zippy (talk) 01:23, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Copyright issues, again

Hi,

the photo you recently uploaded, File:Seeds preview.jpg, seems to be a copyright violation. You say that it "is public domain from gardentech.com". You took the image from this article, right? I am genuinely curious: how did you arrive to the conclusion that the image is public domain? On that article, there is no mention of public domain, or any image license for that matter, as far as I can tell. The Terms and Conditions (specifically sections 1, 2, 3 and 6) of the site explicitly say that all images are protected by copyright and may not be used without a specific permission.

In fact, the image of seeds is not public domain, but SunnyFlowerStudio's photo sold on Alamy.

Gardentech has a good terms and conditions page in terms of copyright: it is very clear in that it doesn't allow the reuse of its images. However, I want to make something clear: by default, all art, including photos, is protected by copyright. That means that if you find an image on a website, and the site in questions does not in any way tell you whether you can use its images in DFwiki, you are not allowed to use the images. Only a clear permission to use the image in public, non-commercial projects or DFwiki specifically mean that you are allowed to upload the image to this wiki. For a good example of a site that actually features public domain images, look at National Cancer Institute Visuals Online. The "Reuse restrictions" at the bottom of the image info plainly tells that the image is public domain.

I know you have put a lot of effort into adding images to this wiki, but I gently recommend you to cease uploading photos until you have internalised how image copyrights work on the Internet.

Some seeds are edible, either raw or cooked.

If you want to continue illustrating DFwiki with photos, I suggest you try using images from Wikimedia Commons. Files on Wikimedia Commons are always licensed so that they can be used on this wiki as well. When using commons images, you don't need to upload the images on this wiki: simply typing [[File:India - Varanasi green peas - 2714.jpg|thumb|274px|Some seeds are edible, either raw or cooked.]] shows the image on right, even though the image has never been uploaded to DFwiki, the file being in Commons. Tanamoril (talk) 17:04, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I removed the seeds image. I will now use a specialized search for images that do not have a copyright on them. I'm probably gonna have to draw everything myself. -- Zippy (talk) 05:25, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Comment: Finding a perfect image can be hard, finding one with a permission to use is nigh impossible ;) though you did great job with your recent find on DF2014:Night_creature.

In my experience, if we can use an image its explicitly stated so, and there are few sources that host a large variety of those that suit our purpose. As for specialized searches, I had poor experience with google image search engine with user rights setting, I find it better to limit search to specific dedicated sites for example:

Commons	google image search: "search term site:https://commons.wikimedia.org"
DeviantArt	google article search: "search term creative-commons site:deviantart.com/"

Probably many others like openclipart. As for drawing, not sure what your art style is, but deanspencer has a huge collection of filler art that might inspire you. I hope this helps. --Jan (talk) 11:18, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Again

Copyright issues, again: File:Infected_blue_ghoul.jpg, original. Google search can only point the way but you still need the license to be stated explicitly. For licensing purpose, it doesn't matter if the image was posted many times on facebook or if someone tagged it as creative common (we too had a lot of content tagged like that by mistake) its the same as googling tv shows on youtube, you can find some that hasn't been removed yet, but everyone knows its pirating. --Jan (talk) 10:55, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

This is starting to piss me off. Didn't one of us already ask this exact dude if we could use some of his stuff? This is confusing the hell out of me. I don't know if you knew this, but DeviantArt not only changed their layout recently, but MANY settings on license options. There were a few images on here that *I* helped airbrush years ago. Not that I'm using this as an excuse, but some of these images are absolutely plastered eeeeeverywheeeere on the net. I don't understand how we get slammed and no one else does. I'm gonna find my drawpad, my copies of Photoshop and Illustrator and doing this crap myself. I'd hope others here would do the same. -- Zippy (talk) 11:33, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

If you created the image, have permission from the creator, have source where they released it under a suitable license etc then state that. But there is no license for found it on google and everyone else does it.

Otherwise, I whole heartedly agree that this can be frustrating, but we don't make the rules. I did suggest couple of ways above that might help you in your searches. I also hope more people will create DF art that we can use, unfortunately most aren't aware of your plight here, maybe you can take it further and create some sort of community art thread (akin to this) where people are asked to state if they give permission to use it on the wiki. -Jan (talk) 13:04, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

No, we haven't contacted ScottPurdy. When looking for art to use on this wiki, you need to put a little bit of effort into figuring out if the art is licensed under Creative Commons or something similar, unfortunately Google's filter isn't foolproof:

• Does it seem like the image was uploaded by the artist? If the image is on DeviantArt, Artstation, an artist's blog or website, it most likely was uploaded by the original artist. If the image appears on Pinterest, a wiki, an article, or a blog which features lots of different art, it probably wasn't uploaded by the original artist. You need to find where the art was originally uploaded to see which license applies to the art.
• Read the image description: the artist might state there how they feel about reusing the art. The description can also tell if the art is taken from somewhere else, or if the copyright holder is someone other than the artist.
• Does the page directly state that the image has a Creative Commons license or similar? If not, don't use the art on this wiki. On DeviantArt, this is mentioned at the bottom of the image description, above the comments.
• If you find an artwork you'd like to use on this wiki, but the license doesn't allow it, ask the artist first. Only if they give you permission, upload the art here. Tanamoril (talk) 14:31, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

New image

What File:Armok map render.png adds to world generation entry? We already have a lot of in-game screenshots illustrations. Showing medium/large world, animating the process and otherwise showing parts of menus relevant to what is talked about. While this render mostly shows the Arthurs skill with Inkscape. Pretty as it is, I am not sure it should stay, or at the least its description should emphasis that it isn't in-game anything (not a fancy tileset) but done manually with Inkscape (btw we have a couple of Utilities that does that automatically) and maybe a link to 'Osmlo Ospaz' succession game if it is indeed that. --Jan (talk) 14:16, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

shabazik

Concerning this File:Champ_dwarf.jpg. The artist, shabazik, on his page confirmed that he gave you permission to use his works. Recalling that he "[..]given permission for some non-commercial use of my works, if credited as the creator of said works". Currently the image is labelled with {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}} is that license that he gave you, or was there some mixup with upload options\templates and {{Permission from license selector}} is more suitable or another? --Jan (talk) 13:10, 15 February 2022 (UTC)