Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 December 8

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December 8

Picture of Alex Mains used on the wiki site.

My name is Phil Main and my Great Uncle, Miles Main was a professional baseball player. We have located some photos from his playing days, but when I visited the Wiki site, I noticed a picture of him in his Seattle uniform......maybe in the form of a baseball card ?? My question is, do you know where I can obtain the picture used on the site ? It would be a nice addition for Miles' family to own. We have searched high and low for a baseball card type photo and have had no luck. This picture of him in his Minor league Seattle uniform would truly be appreciated. Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

Sincerely, The family of Miles Main — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.25.168.15 (talk) 16:38, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Information about using the image is linked in the file's description page: File:1919 Zeenut Alex Main.jpg (click on any image for file information). The source is via: [1]. The image is indeed copied from a baseball card (issued with Zeenut candy, for the Collins-McCarthy Candy Company) — 2603:6081:1C00:1187:4D00:61FD:C4AB:CCB5 (talk) 16:57, 8 December 2020 (UTC) .

That image is in the public domain, so feel free to take a copy. Mjroots (talk) 18:25, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Any picture on Wikipedia can be downloaded, whether it's public domain or not. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:49, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

@Baseball Bugs: I assume you mean "downloaded and used for just about any reason." I assume you mean any picture on the Wikimedia Commons. Many pictures on the English Wikipedia, such as book covers, movie posters, etc., are NOT "free" but are used on Wikipedia under "fair use" rules. That said, a baseball card published in the USA in 1919 is in the public domain. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:24, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

No, I mean downloaded, period. Using it elsewhere, if at all, would require adherence to the copyright laws. But downloading for your own private use only, can't be touched. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:06, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Note that this question was also asked (and answered) at the Teahouse. CodeTalker (talk) 16:30, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

donations

I donated £10 in the latest round of requests but for the last week you are still asking me to donate. I assume it's because you use cookies to decide to re-request me, I clear these after every use of browser. Can you think of a better way of harrissing me. This has happened over the last couple of years — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.7.184.77 (talk) 18:28, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

If you create an account, you can disable the fundraising banners. RudolfRed (talk) 19:00, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

The software does not use cookies or any other method to track donors. There is nothing anywhere in Wikipedia that knows who has donated and who has not: if there were, that would potentially put its neutrality in jeopardy. As RudolfRed says, if you have an account you can turn off the banners, but it still doesn't know whether you've donated or not. --ColinFine (talk) 19:10, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Cookies are used by the software to allow users to remain logged in. It would likewise be possible to use cookies to avoid re-requesting donors (if they do not clear cookies). While potentially affecting neutrality, this is IMO merely a theoretical possibility; it is much easier to simply record donors stealthily.  --Lambiam 10:12, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Link: HTTP cookie. The problem is, any Web server has no way of knowing you from Adam unless you send it cookies to identify yourself. You can use an adblocker to hide things on websites that annoy you. --47.152.93.24 (talk) 03:39, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Two points to clarify the above answers. First, cookies are and have been used by the WMF to disable the fundraising ads for a while. See e.g. the current FAQ [2] and this from 2013 Meta:Fundraising 2013#First two weeks of the new fiscal year: July 15, 2013 Update. The cookie is set after you donate but also after you've see the banner ?enough or have hidden it. (Although the hiding only lasts a week, I'm not sure if it's a different cookie or just has a short expiry.) I think, but I'm not sure, it's impossible for the WMF to tell if you donated from this cookie, it's only whether you should be shown the ad. (Well you can set it by visiting the thank you page anyway so it's trivial to "fool", but my point is that I think the cookie itself probably just has some value which tells the WMF 'don't show ads' rather than a value which reveals 'don't show ads, this person claims to have donated'.)

As others have mentioned without some method of tracking you such as using cookies, there is no way for the WMF to know if you've seen the ad nor donated, so they will assume you haven't. At least in 2013, evidently if you actually disabled cookies instead of just deleting them after every session, you shouldn't see the ad but I have no idea if this still applies. Note that this is separate from the use of cookies to track login sessions. As others have mentioned, the donation banners aren't generally shown to logged in editors and there are generally gadgets to suppress them anyway.

Note that according to the Meta:Donor privacy policy#Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies, the WMF may actually track donors, not individually but to analyse their behaviour. I'm not sure if this definitely happens, but it's my understanding the fundraising team does actually make quite a bit use of data analysis to improve their success e.g. AB testing. So I suspect they probably do.

The fundraising team work mostly separately from Wikipedians or the projects their banners appear on, or indeed I believe most of the WMF. (They solicit feedback from participants, but a with many things of this sort, there's only generally limited participation and a lot of controversy over whether they actually listen/care about what people say.)

Nil Einne (talk) 12:34, 10 December 2020 (UTC)