How does one attach a copyright notice to an *existing* photo?

[Hayford Peirce]

Okay, I give up! I've spent an hour now trying dozens of different strategies to get C Photo:Hayford Peirce to show up on the image I downloaded months ago of Image:Colin Wilcox.jpg for the article Collin Wilcox (note the two different spellings of Collin -- one "l" for the image, two for the article, my bad). No matter *what* I do, I can't make it show up. I *know* that there should be a template somewhere that merely has {{CC-photo|Hayford Peirce}} as the text in it, and I have created an article called Template/Colin Wilcox.jpg but that doesn't work. As a test, I uploaded a new picture called Lobsters using the wonderful Wizard. At some point I'm directed to a place where I change the boilerplate to read {{CC-photo|Hayford Peirce}} et voila! it's done.

So I *know* that it's easy to do with a newly uploaded image -- I've done it *dozens* of times.

But why, oh why, is it so impenetrable a process for even an experienced user like me to attach this simple statement to an existing file?

A.) Surely I can't be the only person to have experienced this difficulty.

B.) Surely there ought to be an *easily accessible* means of doing it. One that even those of the meanest intellect can:

1.) Find

2.) And then use....

Please!

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

I would just upload it again!

[J. Noel Chiappa]

Okay, I give up! I've spent an hour now trying dozens of different strategies to get C Photo:Hayford Peirce to show up on the image I downloaded months ago of Image:Colin Wilcox.jpg for the article Collin Wilcox (note the two different spellings of Collin -- one "l" for the image, two for the article, my bad). No matter *what* I do, I can't make it show up.

Well, I know nothing (yet :-) of how photos work, but why don't I help you (and in the process inform myself as to how this works).

I *know* that there should be a template somewhere that merely has {{CC-photo|Hayford Peirce}} as the text in it, and I have created an article called Template/Colin Wilcox.jpg but that doesn't work. As a test, I uploaded a new picture called Lobsters using the wonderful Wizard. At some point I'm directed to a place where I change the boilerplate to read {{CC-photo|Hayford Peirce}} et voila! it's done.

Well, [[Template/Colin Wilcox.jpg]] doesn't create a template, but rather a subpage ("Colin Wilcox.jpg") of the page "Template" in the main article 'namespace' (think of namespaces as being roughly equivalent to a bookcase, with individual 'pages' being equivalent to individual books in the bookcase - again, sorry if you already understood that). Templates are (basically) all in the "Template" namespace, i.e. have page-names of the form "[[Template:<mumble>]]" - note the ":" to indicate that the word before it is a namespace identifier.

Looking in your edit history, that template for "Lobster"'s copyright notice was created at "[[Template:Lobsters.jpg/credit‎]]", so I would assume that the copyright notice template for [[Image:Colin Wilcox.jpg]] is at [[Template:Colin Wilcox.jpg/credit]]. The thing is that that page already exists, and appears to have been filled in correctly.

What exactly is the problem you're seeing that you're trying to fix? Because when I go to the Colin Wilcox image I do see your copyright notice. Is there some place that's using it where the notice doesn't show up?

But why, oh why, is it so impenetrable a process for even an experienced user like me to attach this simple statement to an existing file?
A.) Surely I can't be the only person to have experienced this difficulty.
B.) Surely there ought to be an *easily accessible* means of doing it. One that even those of the meanest intellect can:

Well, there's still a lot of jury-rigged stuff, because the project is just getting started; and that also means that the documentation/etc probably isn't what it could be. (I've been fixing mistakes in the documentation about how metadata works for the last two days...)

But hopefully over time things will improve. In the meantime, rather than banging your head on the wall for ever in cases like this (and your multiple-subpage-move), drop a quick line, and see if one of the computer geeks here can help you! That's what we're here for! :-)

[J. Noel Chiappa]

What exactly is the problem you're seeing that you're trying to fix?

Not sure exactly what the problem you're seeing is, but I note that the Colin Wilcox image is using the template "Image_notes_ownwork" to hold all the data about who took it, etc (click on the edit tab to see that), whereas the Lobsters image is using the (presumably newer) "Image_notes_ownwork2" template.

Whatever problem you're seeing, that might be behind it. (Without looking into exactly what "Image_notes_ownwork" and "Image_notes_ownwork2" do, I don't know what the difference between them is.)

Hope that's useful.

[Hayford Peirce]

I think the problem lies in the fact that the Colin Wilcox image was uploaded a long time ago, when different subpages existed and the uploading process was different. Now I'm trying to make the old photo identical to what it would be if it were new.  I know there's a way of doing it -- Steve Ewen did it once a couple of months ago for an old photo of mine.

Okay, here's what I'm saying: if you go the Collin Wilcox *article*, NOT the photo, you see a picture of Collin with a caption under it. If you then go to, say, the User:Hayford Peirce page, you will see two photos of me, one of them the new Lobsters photo. Both of them have captions.  IN ADDITION, at the top of each caption, is the phrase: C (for Copyright) Image: Hayford Peirce.

THAT'S what I want to insert into all of my *old* photos that DON'T have it so far.

I think Steve or someone may have created a bot to do this -- I vaguely recall that several weeks or so ago a bunch of photos were edited this way....

Thanks for any further help you can give!

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I think the problem lies in the fact that the Colin Wilcox image was uploaded a long time ago, when different subpages existed and the uploading process was different.

That's exactly the problem; things are still in a state of flux! Alas, this will continue...:-(

I know there's a way of doing it -- Steve Ewen did it once a couple of months ago for an old photo of mine.Okay, here's what I'm saying
...
I think Steve or someone may have created a bot to do this -- I vaguely recall that several weeks or so ago a bunch of photos were edited this way....

Alas, bots are beyond my level of technical skill at the moment. However, this particular problem I can fix for you (and have already done so on the Colin Willcox page). I don't know how many images you're talking about, but if it's a lot, probably we should try and find some bot-master to do them all for you. However, if it's just a few, and you don't mind doing it by hand, here's how.

On any page which has photo(s) where you want to add that notice, click on the "Edit" tab for the page, go into the invocation of the image (the thing that says "[[Image:<mumble>]]", and add the following chunk of gobbledegook in just before the caption text (i.e. just before the text at the end of the "[[Image:<mumble>]]"):

{{#ifexist:Template:IMAGE_NAME.jpg/credit|{{IMAGE_NAME.jpg/credit}}<br/>|}}

Replace the "IMAGE_NAME" above with the name of the image (make sure to do both instances of "IMAGE_NAME" :-). Save the modified page. Done!

Thanks for any further help you can give!

Sure, glad to help out.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

Oh, two things I forgot to mention. First, for that gobbledegook (above) to do the right thing, for uses of the image [[Image:foo.format]], the template page [[Template:foo.format/credit]] must exist, and contain the proper magic spell copyright template invocation.

Second, for any image, if you want to know what pages are using it, simply go to the image page for that image (i.e. [[Image:foo.format]]), and scroll down to the bottom of the page: under the header "Links" you'll see the line "The following pages link to this file", and list of (clickable) article names which use that image.

[Hayford Peirce]

Many thanks! I had already seen that you had fixed the Collin image....

Thankfully, I only have a few photos to take care of -- I'll do them by hand....

And thanks for telling me how to fix them.  I *think* that once, several months ago, I figured out this system myself, by sheer brute force, trying one thing after another for several hours, until I finally succeeded.

But then, of course, I promptly forgot how it was done.  It may or may not be intuitive, but it sure ain't easy!

Best,

Hayford

[Hayford Peirce]

Well, I've changed a couple of pix now and I think I have the hang of it. But lemme say this:

What a @#$%^&* kludge!  Hard to believe that the human mind could have come up with such a system.  Or perhaps it's Satanic....

When I've done a couple more of them, and feel comfortable with the process, I'll try to write a somewhat more complete script/instructions for the neophyte that maybe you can insert somewhere useful in the general run of CZ how-to-do articles and instructions....

[J. Noel Chiappa]

What a @#$%^&* kludge!  Hard to believe that the human mind could have come up with such a system.

I reckon it's because we're just getting this thing running, so there's a lot of baling wire holding it all together, and a lot of stuff which is done manually which will eventually wind up being written into code so it's done automatically. But while we're a) short on programmers, and b) still playing aroung with things, as we try to home in on the structure we want, it's Procrustean and/or not feasible to automate it, so we wind up doing it all by hand.

You want to see a real nightmare, try looking at the process a Constable has to go through to put up an Approved version of an article...

When I've done a couple more of them, and feel comfortable with the process, I'll try to write a somewhat more complete script/instructions for the neophyte that maybe you can insert somewhere useful in the general run of CZ how-to-do articles and instructions....

Sounds very useful. As to putting it up once written, "Be Bold"! Write up a page, and link to it from a couple of "usual suspect" locations...