Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2023 July 15

= July 15 =

About the city flag of Calgary
This flag was eventually deleted from commonwiki due to copyright laws related to Canada. But for the integrity of the article (Calgary and Flag of Calgary), do you want to upload an svg version of the Calgary city flag and mark the fair use information, thank you! Fumikas Sagisavas (talk) 09:20, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Fair use including the mention of criticism it can be considered a problem considering the ongoing debates with the 1983 Calgary city flag https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/whats-in-a-flag-the-history-and-future-of-six-of-albertas-municipal-ensigns. Maybe not if it preexisted but after that it has been purposedly deleted, that's it. In such circumstances it could very easily get challenged under the fourth criterion for example.--Askedonty (talk) 12:21, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Note that WP:NFCC goes significantly beyond the requirements of fair use. Notably, it's IMO only an SVG would be accepted in an NFCC case. That said, there are some comments in the deletion discussion about the differences between Canadian and US law. en.wikipedia unlike commons, only requires that images are in the public domain in the US so it is possible that the flags will be okay here even if they weren't on commons. (Although it sounds like the bigger problem is no one knows how likely certain elements are to allow protection and I don't think it's even known in the US.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:55, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * "Fair use" does not imply the material is in the public domain. It is rather the opposite; this legal term is only applied to uses of copyrighted material. The Wikimedia Commons does not accept any copyrighted material; there is no fair-use exemption. Wikipedia is more permissive. Calgary's copyright is based on the design, not on the format in which it is represented. If an SVG version can be considered acceptable, than so can a PNG version (and probably even more so, since you cannot blow it up like you can an SVG). IMO a good case can be made that hosting an image on en.wiktionary.org en.wikipedia.org to serve as illustration in the article in which it is discussed satisfies the WP:NFCC. However, the Reference desk is not the right venue for this discussion. --Lambiam 22:09, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I made a typo in my above comment which caused confusion for which I apologise. I intended to say, "it's IMO unlikely an SVG would be accepted in an NFCC case". I said this because from my experience, SVGs are often rejected since they aren't considered to meet the "Minimal extent of use" requirement although it can get complicated see e.g. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Archive 80. However you also seem to have misunderstood the rest of my comment. My point was that our NFCC requirements are strict, so there's no guarantee they would be met even if we can legally use the image under fair use especially in the Calgary article (which from what I can tell, doesn't even mention a flag at the moment which would IMO definitely be a bare minimum before any NFCC claim could be made). But it's possible this could be irrelevant. Since en.wikipedia does not require the image to be public domain in the country of origin but only in the US, than if the image is public domain in the US there would be absolutely no reason to consider fair use or NFCC. From the deletion discussion, there was explicit mention of Canadian law and how it may differ from US law. If it's felt that the flag is simple enough to lack copyright protection in the US then even if it has copyright protection in Canada and so the deletion there is justified, the protection in Canadian would be irrelevant to en.wikipedia. The image could be added as a free image without NFCC coming in to it. Note I'm explicitly not saying it is public domain in the US, but rather that IMO going by the discussion at commons this is likely something you'll want to consider before you start down the NFCC route. Also for clarity, I make absolutely no comment on stuff on en.wiktionary since I have zero experience with how they handle images there. I'm not even sure why it came up since it doesn't seem to be what the OP is interested in. (Was it also a typo?) Nil Einne (talk) 09:29, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, "wiktionary" was not what I intended to type. Flag of Calgary does discuss the design. --Lambiam 05:44, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Data about the climate of New Zealand
Where can I look up New Zealand's climate database? I want to update the meteorological data of places such as Napier, Dunedin and Whangārei to the 1991-2020 scale. You can refer to the data of Christchurch. In addition, how can I check the extreme temperature values of cities or weather stations, thanks! Fumikas Sagisavas (talk) 09:27, 15 July 2023 (UTC)


 * The National Climate Database is CliFlo. (We list this in the article New Zealand Nationally Significant Collections and Databases.) It requires, unusually, that you subscribe online by entering a postal address as well as an email address. So far as I can tell this address is not restricted geographically, or used for anything. I just went through five of the six steps of subscribing using a fake address in Zaire and had no complaints from the webform. I think data for weather stations going back to 1991 will be available: they provide a pdf guide "CliFlo for Dummies" which has an example of exporting data for the weather station in Rangiora going back to 1982.
 * This site is in fact given as the source under the chart of climate data in the Christchurch article. Card Zero  (talk) 09:58, 15 July 2023 (UTC)