[Bug 71719] New: Ignore author EXIF data when it's invalid?

[b***@wikimedia.org]

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71719

Bug ID: 71719
Summary: Ignore author EXIF data when it's invalid?
Product: MediaWiki extensions
Version: master
Hardware: All
OS: All
Status: NEW
Severity: normal
Priority: Unprioritized
Component: CommonsMetadata
Assignee: wikibugs-***@lists.wikimedia.org
Reporter: ***@wikimedia.org
CC: ***@gmail.com, ***@wikimedia.org,
***@wikimedia.org, ***@member.fsf.org
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---

Some files edited with Picasa apparently have "Picasa" as their author in the
EXIF metadata.

Example: Loading Image...

Obviously, the author isn't Picasa, so I'm wondering if we should have some
sort of blacklist in CommonsMetadata to ignore the author field if it matches
things that we know not to be authors. It's probably better not to show
anything rather than showing something we know to be untrue.

(This is similar to bug 58195 except in this case there isn't any other
authorship information in the wikitext.)

[b***@wikimedia.org]

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71719

Guillaume Paumier <***@wikimedia.org> changed:

What |Removed |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary|Ignore author EXIF data |Ignore EXIF data when it's
|when it's invalid? |invalid?

--- Comment #1 from Guillaume Paumier <***@wikimedia.org> ---
Other examples:

Loading Image... "Picasa 2.7"
as author

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File%3AExtreme-testing-language-engineering.svg
"Created with Raphaël 2.1.0" as title

Loading Image... "Picasa 2.6"
as author

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File%3AMediaWiki_Homepage_Proposal.svg
Short title Untitled
Image title Generated with SwordSoft Layout

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File%3ARegular_expression_complexity_exploit.svg
Short title Qt Svg Document
Image title Generated with Qt

[b***@wikimedia.org]

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71719

--- Comment #2 from Guillaume Paumier <***@wikimedia.org> ---
And more:

Loading Image...
has "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA" as image title

[b***@wikimedia.org]

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71719

--- Comment #3 from Tisza Gergő <***@wikimedia.org> ---
I wonder if EXIF shouldn't be ignored completely. Mostly it seems to be
autogenerated and less than helpful. E.g. some cameras apparently put something
like IMG1234 to the title.

[b***@wikimedia.org]

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71719

--- Comment #4 from Guillaume Paumier <***@wikimedia.org> ---
I personally don't have enough data to decide if it makes sense to ignore
completely, but I trust your judgment on that. It does seem like we have a lot
of false positives.

[b***@wikimedia.org]

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71719

Guillaume Paumier <***@wikimedia.org> changed:

What |Removed |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary|Ignore EXIF data when it's |Ignore EXIF data in
|invalid? |CommonsMetadata

--- Comment #5 from Guillaume Paumier <***@wikimedia.org> ---
After encountering more and more of these, like
Loading Image... , I'm starting to
agree with you.

I still believe a handful of users (including me) curate their EXIF metadata,
for example by adding information using a digital collection management
software, and we should support that, but this is already done (or should be)
at the time of upload by extracting that data and prefilling the fields. Using
them afterwards through CommonsMetadata seems to be more trouble that it's
worth.

Adjusting the title of this request accordingly.