Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/03

Commons Gazette 2025-03

In February 2025, 1 sysop was elected; 1 sysop was removed. Currently, there are 182 sysops.

Election:

• User:Gnom was elected sysop (29/2/2) on 20 February.

Removal:

• User:Spiritia was removed on 12 February due to inactivity. She had served as sysop from 9 April 2008.

We thank her for her service.

---

Edited by RoyZuo.

---

Commons Gazette is a monthly newsletter of the latest important news about Wikimedia Commons, edited by volunteers. You can also help with editing!

--RoyZuo (talk) 01:55, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Webservice request timed out for glamorous tool on toolforge

Seems like there is not GitHub repo and the issues are also not tracked in phabricator. I don't understand why that is since that makes it unlikely for other to discover and help develop these useful tools.

Does somebody here know why the glamorous and glamorgan – which can be used to see file uses of files (example) – are getting the 504 Gateway Time-out – is there an issue somewhere?

--Prototyperspective (talk) 16:02, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Online again. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:56, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:57, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Unsourced Map Used on Many Pages

• 
  GIF uploaded 27 March 2010 by JWooldridge. 575 × 792.
• 
  GIF uploaded 23 March 2006 by en:User:Andrew c. Talk page reveals he has a vector version. 364 × 500.
• 
  Andrew c's source map. 4 March 2006. © Israel Central Bureau of Statistics.

I wasn't sure where the right place to discuss this is, but the image Galilee to Judea.gif is a map which was uploaded 15 years ago without comment and which is now used on something like twenty wikipedia articles across several different languages. It makes several claims about borders and political entities without any sources, and is placed very authoritatively at the top of some articles despite that. Is there a policy about this, or could someone familiar with the subject verify the contents of the map? I'm not very familiar with Commons so I'm sorry if this is confusing or if I'm making something straightforward into something very roundabout, but I'm very concerned about the idea of maps and other images which contain unverified claims being presented as authoritative. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Buglover100000 (talk • contribs) 19:15, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Looks to me like the source is Andrew c in 2006 with CC-BY 3.0. 364 ≈ 363.005. Aspect ratios are 0.726 and 0.728.

Andrew states:

This is a map of first century Iudaea Province that I created using Illustrator CS2. I traced this image for the general geographic features. I then manually input data from maps found in a couple of sources.

• Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar. The Acts of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco: 1998. p. xxiv.
• Michael Grant. Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels. Charles Scribner's Sons: 1977. p. 65-67.
• John P. Meier. A Marginal Jew. Doubleday: 1991. p. 1:434.

Glrx (talk) 19:45, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

thank you so much! this had been bothering me for a little i really appreciate you taking the time to answer!

Buglover100000 (talk) 06:26, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Another place would be the Help:Misinformation talk page but it may be rather unlikely to get an as good reply there as quickly. For other similar cases, also see Files (datagraphics) without data sources that are used on Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects can be found using the GLAMorgan tool here (alternative tool). on that page. In this case, if you found out what the source is, please add it to the file info. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:56, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:56, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

video2commons not working

Hello everyone,

I am writing an article about Katu Mirim and I found this CC BY video on youtube which would be a great illustration. When I try to pass it through https://video2commons.toolforge.org/ though, I get the error : Error: An exception occurred: DownloadError: b'ERROR: [youtube] RhbJjHhm6LU: Sign in to confirm you\xe2\x80\x99re not a bot.

Could anyone else try, see if you get the same error ? Thank you !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhbJjHhm6LU

have a good day Vache-crapaud (talk) 22:50, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello, if you check Commons:video2commons, you will see unfortunately it stopped working for YouTube videos for a while now. The problem came from YouTube itself so currently there are no fix for it. As a workaround, you just have to download the video manually then upload the file through videos2commons. Tvpuppy (talk) 23:53, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! Vache-crapaud (talk) 09:50, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Tracked in GitHub
toolforge/video2commons/issues/237

Created the issue. See Commons:YouTube files/Downloading for info how to download as webm without the tool. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:23, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

No to intimidation of volunteer contributors

Hello, just for your info, there is an open letter in the French Wikipedia fr:Wikipédia:Lettre ouverte : non à l'intimidation des contributeurs bénévoles in support to a user (also user here) who suffered pressure and threats from a newspaper journalist. Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 17:50, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Nazism vs National Socialism

Hello everyone,

I would appreciate it if other users could participate in this discussion to help reach a consensus. Your feedback and input would be valuable in resolving the matter.

Thanks in advance!

Nebula84912 (talk) 18:11, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

L'Illustration year

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 17:43, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Could someone edit this template so it appears in Category:Magazines of France, 1914, not in Category:1914? Rathfelder (talk) 11:03, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Done, I have edited it. Now it shouldn’t appear in the year category. Tvpuppy (talk) 12:05, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you Rathfelder (talk) 23:08, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Question to native English-speakers about correct category name

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:59, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Some time ago I created Category:Child victims of National Socialism, and since I'm not a native English-speaker, I used the already existing Category:Child casualties and Category:Child Holocaust victims for guidance on choosing a proper English name for my category - both categories use the singular form for the word "child". Recently, @Blackcat moved[1] the category to the plural form "children": Category:Children victims of National Socialism. I asked[2] Blackcat about the move, because the naming is not in line with the other categories and to me the singular form "child" sounds like the correct form. I might be wrong, of course, but Blackcat also doesn't seem to be a native English-speaker, so I'm hoping to get some input from native English-speakers on the category name. Should it be "child victims" or "children victims"?

(Side note: in the user talk page discussion, you'll see that "Japanese children" and "Children of Japan" were mentioned. This is in reference to some other category moves that Blackcat did (e.g. [3]) and which I absolutely support, because the original category naming in those cases was definitely non-standard and I only had chosen that non-standard naming because there was already a category with that naming pattern when I started to create similar categories for children of other nations; namely, it was this one: [4]. But the non-standard naming also created issues with country-navigation template usage, so I'm glad that Blackcat fixed those with the move.) Nakonana (talk) 17:06, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

I think that using the singular form "child" sounded more correct. Using the plural form, i.e. "children victims", doesn’t seem correct in the same way as using the plural form for “adult”, i.e. “adults victims”. Tvpuppy (talk) 17:35, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

"Child victims" is correct. "Children victims" doesn't make sense. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:44, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

"Child" is correct, and in this context it is an adjective, not a noun. English-language adjectives don't change forms in the plural. - Jmabel ! talk 21:51, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

"Child victims" is the correct plural. ReneeWrites (talk) 12:10, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

"Child victim" is a compound noun; plural is "child victims". See https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/nouns-compound-nouns Glrx (talk) 17:40, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

@Glrx: I know that "child" is used as adjective in that context (and as a matter of fact I know that English adjectives don't change in genre and number) but I thought it could be used "children" as noun ("Children [that are] victims of WWII". Anyway the consensus towards "Child victims" is clear, I'm going to revert my move. -- Blackcat 10:45, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it might have worked as a noun if there was a dash: "Children — victims of WWII". However, that would be a very unusual category name, and there might be a subtle difference in meaning, too.

Anyways, thanks for undoing the move, and thanks to everyone else for the input. Nakonana (talk) 17:40, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I proposed to change the GFDL cut-off date

Hi! Since this place is for discussing of policies I thought I would leave a notice that I made a proposal to change Commons:Licensing here: Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Proposal_(change_GFDL_cut-off_date). --MGA73 (talk) 19:34, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

"This file did not pass file verification."

Hi all

I've just tried to upload some svg files (individual pages of a booklet I've been working on for a Wikimedia chapter) and I'm getting a weird message with about 20% of the pages, it says "This file did not pass file verification". Two things:

1. There is no further information about what this means and no link to documentation that explains this. How do I requestion this gets fixed?
2. Does anyone know if there is documentation on what this error means and how to fix it?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 13:10, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@John Cummings: Since you don't say the date or file name it's hard to be sure. You say you "just" did this, but the most recent Filter Log entries I can find for you are almost a week back. Those were for trying to add a permission ticket when you aren't a VRT member. Actually, that's what I see for all Filter Log issued for you in the last month or so. - Jmabel ! talk 18:40, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Normally it would mean that the file is not an svg or has the wrong extension (this would not show up in the abuse log). It would help if you could upload the file somewhere else and link to it so we can see. Bawolff (talk) 20:11, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Looking at logs, it looks like you tried to upload a 12mb file named "12 Case study pages Sudan.svg". Are you sure that wasn't supposed to be a .pdf instead? Case studies aren't usually in SVG format, and the error you got would be the one you would get if you tried to upload a PDF file with a .svg extension. Bawolff (talk) 09:39, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi Bawolff thanks, its definately an .svg, Jmabel, I don't understand what ticket you mean, am I doing something wrong? If so I'd like to correct it. To be clear, it won't show up in my uploads because it won't accept it as an upload. Here are the files which don't work, you can see from my recent uploads other svg files in the same series I made at the same time work completely fine Category:WikiGap Brochure...

• p3
• p7
• p10
• p12

I've started a phab ticket here

Thanks for any suggestions.

John Cummings (talk) 11:11, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

• • @John Cummings: if my theory is right, it wouldn't be a problem with the file, it would be a problem with the accompanying wikitext. If you tried to upload with the {{PermissionTicket}} template, that would be rejected, because only VRT members are allowed to place that in uploads. - Jmabel ! talk 23:31, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi Jmabel, thanks but I'm completely confused, I didn't try uploading these images with a VRT template, I think I've only ever uploaded anything with the OTRS/VRT pending template.

@John Cummings It looks like those files have very large embedded JPEGs in them. Commons does not allow raster images embedded in SVGs to be larger than 10mb (after base64 conversion). I think this is the issue you are having. Bawolff (talk) 03:53, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi Bawolff, thank you very much for explaining, is this documented anywhere? John Cummings (talk) 09:07, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I added it to https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:SVG&diff=prev&oldid=912120003 last time this came up. As far as i can tell, its not an intentional change but a change because one of the programs mediawiki uses (libxml) changed its default. So all that would need to be done is for mediawiki to set the LIBXML_PARSEHUGE option to restore the old behaviour. Perhaps @Sannita (WMF) could convince the multimedia team to look into it. Bawolff (talk) 09:21, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Brunei Darussalam Newsletter

Hello! I came across the Brunei Darussalam Newsletter, where some of the older issues contain a sidebar on the left side of page 2 that states: "Brunei Darussalam Newsletter is published fortnightly by the Department of Information. It reports on government, social and business events in the country. All money values are expressed in Brunei dollars $, unless otherwise stated. Any information in this newsletter may be reproduced; a clipping of the publication would be appreciated. For free subscription (Excluding postage) write to Information Department, Jalan Stoney, Bandar Seri Begawan 2041, Brunei Darussalam." An example would be here. So my question is whether the term "information" in that specific issue could also apply to images.

This has been previously used in "Category:Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Brunei) News Digest issues". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pangalau (talk • contribs) 13:52, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

@Pangalau my opinions:

1. "information" probably only refers to facts, like if there is an article talking about economic projects, it's free to "reproduce the information" (by writing your own article with the same facts), but merely copypasting the entire article would still probably be violation of copyright.
2. users should be careful and should not construe any vague permission as compatible with com:l.

RoyZuo (talk) 09:52, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Noted, and I appreciate your opinionǃ Pangalau (talk) 12:43, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Is there a reason Commons doesnt allow us to convert MP4 files to WEBM when uploading?

Having to search out external software and websites just to even being allowed to upload videos in the first place is a huge annoyance which only helps discouraging users from uploading content here. --Trade (talk) 23:49, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

@Trade: Yes, "Commons does not support the more commonly used patent-encumbered video formats such as H.264 and H.265 that are used in MP4 and MOV files, since their use could require royalty payments" per COM:Video#Video formats.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 01:55, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

That's the whole point of converting the videos Trade (talk) 03:25, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

@Trade, this was a feature request in 2023: Commons:Requests for comment/Technical needs survey/Video conversion support. That discussion mentions video2commons which may help somewhat. See Help:Converting video. Commander Keane (talk) 03:21, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

The reason is here: Commons:Requests for comment/MP4 Video. Pyb en résidence (talk) 18:52, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

That RFC was over ten years ago, though. Consensus can change - as can the facts on the ground; did Wikimedia even support video transcoding at the time? Omphalographer (talk) 19:56, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

• The conversation on this is scattered and needs to be centralized. The relevant mp4 patents will expire in maybe 2027 or 2028. Commons_talk:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video#6_years_later_-_patents_expiring_-_when_is_MP4_free_enough? I started some other discussion somewhere where WMF staff asked what community wanted for Commons, and the thought there was that whenever mp4 is off patent, it will be trivial for WMF to plan that year to permit mp4 uploads on the day it becomes open technology. Bluerasberry (talk) 21:36, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

  One problem with converting video in high quality is that it requires huge processing power. The other problem is that if we make it possible for everyone to upload their phone video snapshot we will have a huge reviewing problem as we need someone to watch the hole video and check it for copyright violations. GPSLeo (talk) 22:12, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

  We could make mp4 uploads as autopatroller only if necessary when we get to that. But we definitely should have some option in place to upload mp4 once its off-patent. That would certainly make it easier for me to upload videos I've captured off my tablet (as I would need to run them through Video2Commons to convert them to webm) Abzeronow (talk) 23:22, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

  For what it's worth, we already have a pretty serious "reviewing problem" for YouTube imports. It's not helped by the fact that we don't have well-established scope standards for video content. Omphalographer (talk) 23:52, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

  Didnt YouTube broke imports some weeks ago anyways? Trade (talk) 19:29, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

  For the moment, yes. But it's still a problem. Omphalographer (talk) 19:37, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Non-confirmed users still allowed to use Upload Wizard?

I previously discussed how to implement the consensus disallowing any more local cross-wiki uploading into Commons. Somehow, I hadn't seen one reply, so the discussion was then archived without such.

Maybe I should've specified further as I'm doing now. Does Commons still allow non-confirmed users to use Upload Wizard, especially to upload files as "free"? (A previous proposal to restrict non-confirmed users from uploading videos and audio clips didn't go well. I'm starting this discussion cautiously before making any more proposals.) George Ho (talk) 22:06, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

@George Ho, thanks for continuing to work on what I perceive is the terrible mess of cross-wiki uploads.

I can't work out the answer to your question:

Does Commons still allow non-confirmed users to use Upload Wizard, especially to upload files as "free"?.

Well, as far as I can see (and I am auto-confirmed so maybe non-confirmed can't even open the Wizard) the only way to progress past the release rights stage in the Commons Upload Wizard is to select either:

• This work was created by me and anyone is free to use it.
• This work was created by someone else and it is free to share.

Both "free". So your question is can users with an account less than 4 days old (non-confirmed) upload at all? As far as I can tell (if mediawiki:Manual:User_rights "user" corresponds to "Users" in Wikimedia world) this would be the "Users" group in Special:ListGroupRights and it says this group has "Upload" permissions. I have no idea if an edit-filter is being used to override GroupRights, but I think that would be very strange.

After writing all this I have confused myself. But I will post it in hopes that someone knowledgeable can participate. Commander Keane (talk) 21:53, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct annual review: proposed changes are available for comment

Please help translate to your language.

I am writing to you to let you know that proposed changes to the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement Guidelines and Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter are open for review. You can provide feedback on suggested changes through the end of day on Tuesday, 18 March 2025. This is the second step in the annual review process, the final step will be community voting on the proposed changes. Read more information and find relevant links about the process on the UCoC annual review page on Meta.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this information with other members in your community wherever else might be appropriate.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) 18:50, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Decade by category navbox

This needs editting so things like Category:Cross-country skiing in the 1900s go into a subcategory, not into Category:1900s Rathfelder (talk) 13:35, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

I changed the template so it is now in the “Sports in the XXXXs” category instead. Tvpuppy (talk) 13:47, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. There are a lot of similar issues. Is this the place to ask them to be fixed? Rathfelder (talk) 09:56, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, usually for most you can do it here. If the page is using a template, you can go to the template discussion page instead. Tvpuppy (talk) 13:07, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Please can someone look at the templates for Category:1910s political cartoons of the United States, Category:Microphones in the 1910s, Category:Science fiction in the 1910s, and Category:Home kitchens in the 1910s and take them out of Category:1910s? Rathfelder (talk) 10:01, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Overcategorization like that is a pretty common issue for these types of templates unfortunately. At least IMO categories should just be added manually without the pointless navbox or there should at least be an approval process. By date templates are more trouble then they are worth at this point though. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:05, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

I’m looking into it. Will try to fix each of them. Tvpuppy (talk) 13:07, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

@Rathfelder Now they should be all fixed. Let me know if I have missed anything. Tvpuppy (talk) 15:54, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

I think that's it - for now, at least. Thank you very much.

One other question: English wikipedia has a very useful template {{Navseasoncats}}, but it doesnt work here. Is there an equivalent, or could one be made? Rathfelder (talk) 16:04, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

It would be very useful here, but to my knowledge, there isn’t an equivalent. One could be made, but that’s outside of my technical abilities. Tvpuppy (talk) 19:13, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Larger version is 180° rotated

When I click on File:Exterior del Museo.png to see the enlarged version the image has been rotated by 180°. How to solve that? Wouter (talk) 12:37, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

@Wouterhagens: Rotate it again locally. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Exterior_del_Museo.png looks fine to me on the latest Chrome and Windows 10.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:12, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

@User:Jeff G.: Thanks. I experienced the problem with Firefox and to my surprise not in Safari. Wouter (talk) 18:54, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

This general happens when there is conflicting rotational information in the metadata of the files. One type of metadata says one thing, and the other metadata says the other thing. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:51, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Wishlist for new features on Commons

Hi!

I invite you to join the wishlist of proposals for new functions on Commons. The focus lays on the support of colored meshes, which is highly requested and elemental for future media, and the support for DNG files to be archived. Several additions have also positive influence on sister projects like Wikipedia. We're happy to see you there :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:26, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Theatre by year

Could anyone make some new templates for other countries like the one for Spain? Category:Theatre of Spain by year? Rathfelder (talk) 13:46, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

I will try to see if I can make one. Do you mean a template for “Category:Theatre of X by year” itself or its subcats i.e. “Category:YYYY in theatre of X”? Tvpuppy (talk) 15:27, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

I created a template for “Category:YYYY in theatre of X”, see {{Theatre of country by year}}. In theory, it should work for any country and any year, without adding any parameters. See Category:1936 in theatre of Spain for example. Tvpuppy (talk) 16:59, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

That's great! Thank you. Rathfelder (talk) 19:17, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

@Rathfelder I also finished making {{Theatre of country by decade}} for the decade categories “Category:Theatre of X in YYYYs”. It should also work without parameters, see example at Category:Theatre of the United States in 1910s. Tvpuppy (talk) 17:59, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Just what I need! Rathfelder (talk) 18:01, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

@Rathfelder I have just finished {{Theatre of country by century}} for the century-categories. It works the same as well. Tvpuppy (talk) 19:22, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

That is really helpful. Speeds things up no end - and I dont have to worry about miss clicking! Thank you very much. Rathfelder (talk) 20:25, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

File:Odawaa.jpg AI upscaled?

With all due respect this does seems to be something generated using AIGC, see the uniform which distorted the person's name stripe. I'm fairly new here so not sure if this is RD-able as it is used on a wikipedia article, while it also seems that alternatives are available, at Category:Odowaa Yusuf Rageh. These aren't that good but also not necessarily worse than an AI generated image? Again I'm not sure what I can do so I just want to report my findings.

Best regards, HanayoPlus LP (talk) 15:39, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

File:Odowaa Yusuf Rageh - 2021 (cropped).jpg looks better to me in any case so I replaced the image on English Wikipedia with that one  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   16:50, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that's obviously been through some sort of crappy AI scaling. Worse, it doesn't seem to be the uploader's own work either; similar images appeared on Twitter and Facebook in 2020-21, e.g. [5], [6], etc. I've tagged it for deletion. Omphalographer (talk) 20:10, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

It has been deleted now. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:48, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:48, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Clothing by date

Category:Clothing in 1957 - and later dates are this way round. Category:1899 clothing and earlier dates are the other way round. Wouldnt it be nice if they were all the same way round? Rathfelder (talk) 22:39, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

The proper name should be “Clothing in XXXX”, so I have renamed the categories for 1899 and before. Tvpuppy (talk) 23:44, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

• It seems that we already have Category:Fashion in 1957, do we really need two categories for the same concept? --RAN (talk) 01:53, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

  I also find it confusing figuring out the difference between the two. Furthermore, Category:Clothing in 1899 is a subcat of Category:Fashion in 1899, but Category:Fashion in 2025 is a subcat of Category:Clothing in 2025. Tvpuppy (talk) 02:10, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

  Clothing should be a subcategory of fashion. Clothing refers to the clothes themselves, whereas fashion also encompasses the industry, styles/trends, culture, and so on. ReneeWrites (talk) 19:29, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

  • @ReneeWrites: I'd look at it very differently: "clothing" can be purely functional. "Fashion" indicates some deliberate sense of current style. A beggar may be clothed, but their clothes are generally not an example of "fashion." Traditional dress of various countries and cultures is generally not "fashion", although it's not a firm line (e.g. the introduction of buttons into traditional Alaskan dress in the 19th century). - Jmabel ! talk 02:44, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

    I don't think of fashion as just being about trends. I absolutely think historical/cultural dress is a kind of fashion as well. ReneeWrites (talk) 07:43, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

    • @ReneeWrites: Certainly yes to "historical", but at least since the 17th Century it has had a connotation of conformity to some particular standard of taste. - Jmabel ! talk 04:57, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

      Yeah, an argument can be made for this to be the other way around as well, or them existing in parallel, but intersecting at various points. But the two terms are related, and I feel like if it doesn't get discussed/figured out now the whole "is X a subcategory of Y" will keep cropping up in the future, so maybe we should start a proper topic about this at CfD. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:28, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

      • Probably a good idea. Either way around is fine (probably with appropriate hat notes to explain the relation) but a mix is bad. - Jmabel ! talk 16:23, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Categories under Category:FoP-Switzerland

The categorizations of many categories here are problematic. Supposedly, {{FoP-Switzerland}} should not be used in categories of specific artworks and buildings, as country-specific templates are meant for file namespace only. Moreover, the categories of several artists were slapped with this template, making the categories ending up categorized under this category. It isn't correct to tag the artists' categories with this template, as the artists may have made artworks located in countries with no liberal panorama exceptions. I suggest using {{FoP-category}} for categories of Swiss works themselves, and removing the FoP tag from the categories of artists ({{NoUploads}} suffices). Since there are 700+ categories under Category:FoP-Switzerland, manual fixing of the categories is impractical. I hope there's "VisualCategoryChange" that can custom replace some content of multiple categories at once. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 12:33, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

•  Support I've never really been a huge fan of people adding licensing templates to categories myself. They should really only be used on files. Feel free to ping me when (or if) this is approved and maybe I can help clean some of it up. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:55, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

  I'm actually doing it now to some of the categories, replacing FoP-Switzerland with FoP-category. But I can't finish them all due to manual editing and that there's too many categories (less than 600 now but more than 500). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 13:09, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

  I think it should be possible to modify such templates in a way that it gives a different output depending on the namespace it is used in, so that it for example shows a big red warning "Please only use this template on file pages!!!" in category space. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:47, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

  • But it looks like Commons does not have Template:Namespace detect, which is what I'd use for this on en-wiki. It looks like we formerly had it and it was deleted. @Fastily and Denniss: you both deleted this at different times. Is there a different way this should be done on Commons, or did Commons for some reason decide not to support this? - Jmabel ! talk 02:07, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Mainspace dab pages

Although mainspace dab pages are usually not formatted as gallery pages, COM:GAL does not mention anything regarding such pages. So, I think all mainspace pages should be considered "gallery pages", and they should be formatted like gallery pages. Windows is an example of a mainspace dab page that is also a legit gallery page by itself. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 17:53, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Movie dubbing map of Europe

Hello! I have some complaints about the video dubbing map in Europe. For example, should Russia be classified as a red zone? According to a March 2022 survey by Morning Consult, 86% of Russian respondents watch foreign films in their native language. At the same time, back in the 1990s, due to the strong spread of video piracy and cost reduction, video studios and television companies preferred voice-over translation of films.

Also regarding Ukraine - since 2006, films have only been shown in Ukrainian in cinemas with full dubbing. In Poland, many films and TV series are also released in professional dubbing. Therefore, I have a question primarily for participants from Eastern European countries. MasterRus21thCentury (talk) 07:46, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Category:Tan (newspaper)

All but half a dozen of the 1448 files in this category are miscategorised. They should be in Category:Milliyet. Do we have any device for mass-processing? Rathfelder (talk) 16:42, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot is really good at this. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Rathfelder (talk) 21:22, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by:  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   18:53, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

"Winners of [Award]" vs "[Award] winners" categories

Which formatting should be used for these categories? I noticed that Blackcat has moved many of these categories from "[Award] winners" to "Winners of [Award]" over the years. Category:BAFTA Award winners to Category:Winners of the BAFTA Award, for example. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Οἶδα (talk • contribs)

Should these categories exist at all? Having won an award is not typically a defining property of a person. Omphalographer (talk) 01:20, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Certainly some should. A Nobel or Pritzker or for that matter a BAFTA or Oscar are sufficiently prominent that you routinely hear someone referred to as a "Nobel Laureate", a "Pritker prize-winning architect" or a BAFTA- or Oscar-winning actress. - Jmabel ! talk 02:11, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Sounds like a separate discussion, one which has certainly been had many times on Wikipedia. A category like Category:Best Picture Academy Award winners exists on 64 different Wikipedia editions. Categories for lesser awards have been deleted before, but there hasn't been consensus to delete career-defining awards such as those mentioned by Jmabel above. Οἶδα (talk) 04:48, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

There's certainly a point where it gets needlessly obtuse. Like the categories for Recipients of Russian awards on here. Most of which are extremely minor, if not totally meaningless. The categories for the various recipients Jubilee medals of the Soviet Union are particularly bad. Category:Recipients of the Jubilee Medal "50 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" contains like 1000 subcategories for recipients and most (or all) of them have recived all the other Jubilee Medals. So you end up with nonsense like the absolute mess at the top of Category:Vladimir Chernavin. It's not great to say the least. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:41, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

It's a different matter on Commons than on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia; its subject matter is topics (like people, awards, and films), and categories which describe those topics (like what awards a person has received, or what films an actor has performed in) can certainly be within its scope. However, Commons is not an encyclopedia; it's a media library. We use categories to organize media and to describe its attributes. That organization frequently revolves around topics (again, like people) - but we don't need to replicate the work done by Wikipedia to fully describe those topics. A simple categorization, like describing a person as an actor or a science fiction author, can be sufficient. Omphalographer (talk) 17:57, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough. But that is still a larger discussion about awards recipients rather than the simple formatting inquiry I posted. I myself am not very familiar with Commons' process of category inclusion (i.e. overcategorization), which is why I invoked the analogue of Wikipedia, although I was not boldly claiming we replicate their standard of categorization. I have created many categories on Commons, but nothing like these awards categories. I've always been focused on the direct what? / where? / when? / who? / how? of files. Though I would be curious how Category:Recipients of the Legion of Honour or Category:Nobel laureates and its subcategories fit into your statement. Οἶδα (talk) 04:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Magazine template

This template {{:Magazine by year|L'Illustrazione Italiana|187|4|logo=Illustrazione Italiana - Testata.jpg|prev=L'Illustrazione Universale}} puts the results into Category:Magazines by year. They should be in Category:Magazines by year by country. Please could someone fix it? and maybe others like it? Rathfelder (talk) 19:27, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Rathfelder, the template {{Magazine by year}} is not country-specific, so it is correct to categorise into Category:Magazines by year. Do you mean you want a template similar to {{Theatre of country by year}}, but for magazines? Tvpuppy (talk) 19:57, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes please! Rathfelder (talk) 20:12, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@Rathfelder It took a while since I had to make sure the template works with the existing categories for each country, but here’s the templates for magazines, it should work the same as the theatre templates before.

• {{Magazines of country by year}}
• {{Magazines of country by decade}}
• {{Magazines of country by century}}

Tvpuppy (talk) 06:43, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Magazines are a mess and this will be a big help! Rathfelder (talk) 10:05, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

@Rathfelder I can’t see your reply here, but it wasn’t working for Azerbaijan because the format of the category name is different. I have renamed them, so now it works. See Category:Magazines of Azerbaijan, 1924 for example. Tvpuppy (talk) 15:03, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. Rathfelder (talk) 16:48, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Your wiki will be in read-only soon

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation will switch the traffic between its data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster.

All traffic will switch on 19 March. The switch will start at 14:00 UTC.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. This banner will remain visible until the end of the operation.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Wednesday 19 March 2025.
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.
• GitLab will be unavailable for about 90 minutes.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule.

Please share this information with your community.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:14, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

In case users didn't realise the "14:00 UTC" link above takes you to a nifty local time converter so you see the impact time without straining too many brain cells. Commander Keane (talk) 23:33, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

JFK Assassination Records - 2025 Documents Release

Hi, Has anyone uploaded these documents, or intent to do so? [7]. There is this category, but it doesn't seem to include everything (the source mentions more than 2,000 files). Yann (talk) 19:56, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm willing to get started on it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:32, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I have about 80% of the files downloaded, so now I'm onto uploading soon. I'll write here if I need more help, but assume that I'll have it done today. Thanks for escalating, Yann. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:01, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

About half are uploaded. I'm tired but will do the rest after rest. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:29, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

While it is very much appreciated, it is a little frustrating that several hundred of these were uploaded while I was asleep. Had I known someone else was going to do this, I wouldn't have spent several hours downloading, renaming, uploading, etc. Additionally, the uploads seem to have been done semi-automatically or automatically, as just a handful of documents were not uploaded: some documents were previously released with some redactions and new versions have been released in this data dump (e.g. see File:JFK Assassination File 104-10302-10000.pdf and File:JFK Assassination File 104-10302-10000 (2025 release).pdf). The bot or user with a semi-automated process just skipped those files with filename clashes, so this still required human discretion. I'm uploading the last few now, but the most efficient way to do that is to upload hundreds of files that are redundant and then remove them from the upload form. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:50, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

• Do the files come with OCR, or do we have to run it ourselves? --RAN (talk) 22:05, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

  Choosing the random file that I recently uploaded, File:JFK Assassination File 104-10071-10239.pdf, looking at the raw file itself and pressing Ctrl+F, I cannot find any text. Nor can I hi-lite text using my mouse cursor. These are typically accurate ways of telling if you have a text layer or just a photographic scan of a document. My suspicion is that these 2,148+ files are all photographic scans. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:19, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:35, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Broken PDF display

Can anyone explain why the PDF display breaks after I upload it? I didn't have this issue last night, but now it isn't showing properly. --SDudley (talk) 14:37, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

It just needed to be purged a couple of times. This routinely happens with PDFs. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:09, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

thank you! That is super helpful :) SDudley (talk) 15:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

No problem, friend. Also, if you are going to make an index for this at Wikisource to transcribe, you may need to purge it there once or twice as well. i.e. go to s:en:File:The_Ring_on_the_Hand_of_Death_-_William_Rollins_Jr._(April_1924).pdf and purge on that page, not just here at Commons. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:20, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:37, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

"AutoCats" script for automatic categories

Please check out the new user script AutoCats - it attempts to provide a solution for what I think has long been a sticking point in Commons: the lack of translation for category names. Any feedback is welcome! Yaron Koren (talk) 16:32, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't fully understand: except for very rare occasions, only SD misses things that are in the categories but categories not things in the SD. Moreover, in the 1 in a 10-200 k case that SD has something that the categories don't, wouldn't the categories it displays be less specific? If this is about translation for categories, rel: Add machine translated category titles on WMC. Prototyperspective (talk) 01:02, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. It's true that there's generally less information in SD than in categories, but I wouldn't say it's that rare to find pages where SD holds information that categories don't. An obvious example is all the "quality image" assessments, which are stored in SD but generally not in categories. And there are other reasons to prefer SD to manually-generated categories, besides translation - a big one is that it's a lot less physical and mental work to deal with SD than categories. (If you upload a photo of the Eiffel Tower in fog at night, do you then need to tag it with six different categories?) I agree, though, that machine translation of category names would be a big improvement. Yaron Koren (talk) 18:15, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I suspect that because SDC isn't well populated this is currently of limited use, but it has a lot of potential. Tools like this are part of what it will take to make SDC actually useful. Obviously, performance could be greatly increased in the future by some sort of caching, rather than having to come up with results on the fly each time you access a file. - Jmabel ! talk 07:24, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Upload of twenty-four files with wrong license tag

I have just uploaded 26 localized variants of the European Committee of the Regions (Q205203) logo (viewable here). They are not copyrighted but I don't have a plausible option in UploadWizard. Can it be fixed? My uploads are almost entirely below TOO (so copyright-free) and have to (!) select one of the five option (first published in US before 1930, author has been deceased for more than 70 years, original work from the US Federal Government, original work from NASA, I am not sure if it out of copyright in USA) is bizarre and awkward. Also I have to write always in the box below ({{PD-textlogo}}{{Trademarked}} or {{PD-simple}}). Why not simply add an option like "The work is surely below TOO in US". Also the date parameter: the date is always requested but with this type of files is rarely found and almost always unknown in logos (however sometimes I was able to recover it in the source file URL o in trademark offices registers), so I must write Unknown date for it to turns a blind eye. If I understood well the policies the date (of original publication) is used to check when the copyright expires, so it is also useless to add and search in files not copyrighted. ZandDev (talk) 17:21, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello @ZandDev, it might be helpful to see the discussion over at Commons:Village pump/Proposals#RfC: Changes to the public domain license options in the Upload Wizard menu, which discussed specifically about adding {{PD-textlogo}} option in UploadWizard. Tvpuppy (talk) 17:42, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

@Tvpuppy Sure! I replied here (and also on phab ticket). -- ZandDev (talk) 19:37, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I think however that the date parameter question aforementioned should be treated here. -- ZandDev (talk) 19:40, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Prompt for AI

Wikidata has implemented AI-generation prompt (P13381) (poorly named, if you ask me), intended for SDC to be able to track the prompt used to generate a particular AI work. I assume we should do whatever it takes to make that usable on SDC. - Jmabel ! talk 07:31, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I wonder how it would work with longer prompts. I could see it for simpler ones like "1960's art of cow getting abducted by UFO in midwest" but SDC doesn't seem to work well with long, multi-sentence blocks of text. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:39, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Seeing as this is used on media files alone, wouldn't this information be more suitable for the description field on Commons? We could even make a field for the prompt itself to put in the information template, if people feel the description isn't the best place to put it. But from my understanding SDC is not very well-suited to storing strings of text, and is more suitable to other nodes of structured data (e.g. where and when a picture was taken, who made it, what it depicts). ReneeWrites (talk) 10:20, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Note that it could also be in both places and that there already is some template for these.

General note regarding prompts: one should keep in mind that many use many prompts in succession for one image....I would even say that may be the normal case for higher-quality files. A singular prompt is still useful and should probably be the first prompt used for the image. Often, the prompt is altered by inserting a few words and removing some others and applied to the image (using img2img) created with a prior prompt to adjust the image to morph it closer to what the person has in mind or to fix issues in the initial version. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:11, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Does SDC not support the wikidata property series ordinal (P1545) to be used as a qualifier? - Jmabel ! talk 01:04, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

"language policy on Commons to use English" for categories named in proper nouns, true claim or false?

I contributed court judgements (originals but redacting privacy parts) from China from time to time. Six mostly-used titles of final (in one proceeding) judgement texts (a.k.a. adjudications) are:

1. Civil judgement; (民事判决书)
2. Civil ruling; (民事裁定书)
3. Penal judgement; (刑事判决书)
4. Penal ruling; (刑事裁定书)
5. Administrative judgement; (行政判决书)
6. Administrative ruling; (行政裁定书)

Where ruling means a adjudication decided purely by examing procedures. None of which have a perfect English equivalent as far as I can see.

For recent uploads, I categorize each ducument using its title (first two lines) as category names, which I think appropriate to preserve the Chinese form of terms (proper nouns). One example is File:（2024）鄂0102行初375号.pdf titled as "湖北省武汉市江岸区人民法院 / 行政裁定书" (Jiang'an Dist Court, Wuhan, Hubei / Administrative ruling). I added it to Category:湖北省武汉市江岸区人民法院行政裁定书, then add this category to Category:湖北省武汉市江岸区人民法院 (Court name, non-controversial) and Category:行政裁定书 (Adjudication type).

Some stalkers attempted to remove my contributions in mass, claiming that I don't respect "language policy on Commons to use English". (Actually, because I uploaded one real evidence that the Xi'an Government boycotted anti-Fascism making them uncomfortable.) One succeed today:

2025-03-14T18:44:00 Ameisenigel Deleted Q129843186 （Does not meet the policy: RfD]: Commons only category that does not follow language policy on Commons to use English）

The category isn't Commons-only: s:zh:Category:中华人民共和国行政裁定书 (prefixed with P.R.C.) & s:zh:Category:行政裁定书 (short). So the problem lies here on Commons: does the name "Category:行政裁定书" (lit. Administrative ruling) violates COM:CAT#Category_names? --XsLiDian (talk) 16:15, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, it does violate policy. You can add {{zh|行政裁定书}} as hat text for the category, but the category name should be in English if there is common English for it. This is especially true for languages that do not use some form of the Latin alphabet. - Jmabel ! talk 16:55, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I read from Commons:Language policy (· Category names should generally be in English, excepting some of proper names, biological taxa and terms which don't have an exact English equivalent. See Commons:Categories for the exact policy.) and followed it, as I don't know an exact English equivalent for Administrative ruling.

So the latest consensus is to prefer machine-translated messy text over proper nouns in their native form? It's a pity that this exact rule didn't appear in the guidelines yet! XsLiDian (talk) 17:20, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Administrative ruling is fine. I think Jmabel's suggestion to add a hatnote for these categories is a good compromise. ReneeWrites (talk) 19:24, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

The hatnote practise is what I'm already exercising. The problem lies with proper nouns that can't be translated well and sound. In this example, judgement and ruling are two main types of judgements in China. I don't know if native English speakers would find they're different things with legal powers of the same level. Should I think this much for future readers? XsLiDian (talk) 23:42, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Native English speakers will certainly understand that better than they will understand Chinese ideographs.

Again, if there are subtleties to be explained about the distinctions between two categories, that can go in hat notes. Also, you might want to create corresponding Wikidata items, which are more truly multilingual. - Jmabel ! talk 07:15, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Possible case of copyleft trolling

See Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Possible case of Copyleft Trolling.

The accusations seem quite serious to me, and both the evidence and the reasoning are solid. Since this is a user with nearly 300,000 edits, I believe this matter may require broader attention, which I assume the copyright Village pump might not fully provide (unlike this, the main one). Therefore, I am notifying you here as well.

Best regards, RodRabelo7 (talk) 01:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Can I run a pywikibot script with my regular account ?

I would like to use a pywikibot script to upload images with my regular account. The main reason is avoid all the clicking involved in uploads, not to actually run some kind of bot. I'm talking about a maximum (!) of one or two dozen files per day. Can I do this with my regular account and without a botflag? (Sorry for asking, but it has been >15 years that I ran a bot on a Wikimedia platform). Regards, --Polarlys (talk) 23:10, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think you need a dedicated tool for this. The upload wizard can accept uploads of up to 50 files at a time. Omphalographer (talk) 23:31, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I use Pattypan for uploading more then a couple of files at a time myself. It makes things a lot easier because everything can just be copied and pasted in a spreadsheet. You might look into it. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:11, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

If the files are your own, I think using your main account is encouraged. Going by the discussion at my withdrawn bot request in 2018 the amount or bot flag is not a concern (I was using pywikibot to upload hundreds per day). pywikibot is very nice for uploading :-). Commander Keane (talk) 01:09, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

@Polarlys: Commons is fairly relaxed about using automated tools on non-bot accounts as long as you're supervising them. So I wouldn't expect using pywikibot to upload a few tens of files per day would be a problem at all. Bot accounts (and approval) are really needed if the bot is running automatically or making its own decisions about which edits to make. --bjh21 (talk) 11:27, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for all your responses. I already create most of my information templates using a python script, so adding a pywikibot script is the next step. Regards, --Polarlys (talk) 17:04, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Polarlys (talk) 19:38, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Possible mass upload of Trump-sensitive photos

Hi! In Denmark there are news reporting that Trump is trying to eliminate lots of photos that contain "sensitive" words. So Gay, Trans and Equity for example.

The story in Denmark is that it also affect Category:Enola Gay because of the word "Gay". And story also tells that people try to avoid words that include "trans" so for example "transaction" and "Equity" even if the meaning is w:Equity (finance).

I do not know if it is actually true but if it is true then I wonder if someone can do some magic and mass upload files to prevent them from being deleted. MGA73 (talk) 11:00, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Presumably you refer to works of the US Federal government. Such works are commonly bulk-uploaded here anyway; have you found any sets that are not? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:00, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Correct works of US Federal government. No, I have not found any good sets. I just thougt it would be good if "everyone" helped out. --MGA73 (talk) 18:03, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Commons have un million files from Department of Defense (DoD): 300 000 from Fæ, 300 000 from OptimusPrimeBot (which is still uploading new files) and 400 000 from different uploaders. DVIDS, the wikicommons of DoD contains 5 millions pictures.

I've created a cat to identify files deleted by DoD: Category:Images removed from DVIDS. Pyb en résidence (talk) 19:08, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Pyb en résidence's new category also includes a list of deleted files from the AP's recently published database of deleted DVIDS files -- is anybody working on bulk uploading those links from that database that do work? Is there anything other Wikipedians can do to help? -- Gaurav (talk) 23:38, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm using Openrefine to categorize uploads by Fæ based on the AP database. Don-vip is categorizing OptimusPrimeBot uploads with a deadlink to DVIDS. It's not perfect because some files might be delete for another reasons than anti-DEI. Pyb en résidence (talk) 08:25, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Is it actually assured that all the photos will continue to be archived on Commons? That would be important :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

IMHO that is assured as long as Commons and Wikipedia exist. But I fear the Trump and Musk will soon close Wikipedia or make it actually unusable. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 18:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

DVIDS videos

Since videos aren't covered by the AP database, we have a limited window to use Google's snippets cache to locate the links until it refreshes. I've been manually combing through and added a few of these. Category here: Category:Videos_removed_from_DVIDS

I've basically run out of steam for manual uploads (it's very time consuming) but I'll continue to put links to archived videos in the category. Once we have a list of links it would be possible to write a script to upload them. Unfortunately, archive.org does not have an archive of every video DVIDs link. However, some of these videos are available from other links (i.e. to the division of the military that published them), and a few are on YouTube, so I've been able to source a few videos that way instead.

A perhaps useful note is that in recent years DVIDS switched from native hosting of videos to cloudfront, and these links are still live (and have a faster download speed compared to the archive.org one). So if you view source and pull out the mp4 link (just ctrl+f for mp4) that's the better link to use right now. Also if you know the DVIDS id number, you might be able to find the cloudfront link with trial and error. However at some point they might figure out cloudfront backups are still operational, so that could go away.

I'm also thinking we can run a script to just iterate through every single possible DOD file name (they follow a pattern) and just download everything, but this would quickly exceed the capacity of my hard drive, so would need to run on toolforge or something. It would also lack metadata which is also problematic. Mvolz (talk) 09:28, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Does anyone know of a bot that can operate on videos that might be a good jumping off point to automate this? Mvolz (talk) 09:38, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Getty fotos are faked

The newspaper "NZZ am Sonntag"/"Neue Zürcher Zeitung international" reports today that images in the Getty stockphoto library that are marked as "foto", "for use in news media" - as authentic fotographs - are in fact computer generated images, with no way provided by Getty to find out. NZZ has found the creator of a "fiber cable in the occean" computer visualization that was used in news articles about the North Stream II explosion and sold to the newspaper by Getty as real fotograph. --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 07:08, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

That's standard practice with these picture agencies, isn't it? They are quick to charge for public domain photos and historical images. No scruples --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:58, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Images from NASA, for example, often say “Source: dpa” or some such nonsense --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:59, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

At least that are real photos, not complete fabrication. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 17:46, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

The thing is that agencies are primarily concerned with profit and not necessarily with the veracity of the content. This must be taken into account when working with (news or press) media --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:15, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think any getty stock photos are uploaded here. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:13, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@C.Suthorn can you plz give a link? would be interesting to read. RoyZuo (talk) 19:44, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Link: https://no-pony.farm/@Life_is/114170586739846604 C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 07:01, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't see how this is relevant to Commons. Getty photos are, as a rule, not freely licensed and can't be posted to Commons regardless of how they were created. Omphalographer (talk) 23:02, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

If they are AI-generated, with no further human contribution, then they are not copyrightable in the U.S., and we could choose to host them if they are within scope. Getty can't enforce a license fee on PD materials. - Jmabel ! talk 01:06, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

"Computer generated" doesn't imply "AI-generated", though. In any case, this seems kind of pointless to discuss in the absence of specifics. Omphalographer (talk) 04:40, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

"Computer generated" is common parlance for AI generated images. Otherwise is there another computers can "generate" images besides with AI? --Adamant1 (talk) 06:50, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Certainly. Graphics created by computer programs, like 3D rendered images, have been commonly referred to as CGI ("computer-generated imagery") since at least the 1980s. Omphalographer (talk) 07:06, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I thought the relevance to Commons was that it is increasingly important to distinguish between traditional and AI images to avoid disgrace and losing credibility. Archiving RAW files for photos would be a step towards that. Commons:AI-generated media is the relevant page. Commander Keane (talk) 07:04, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Gadget to find category redirects

As a categorist, I often want a dedicated gadget to find category redirects of a given category. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 15:28, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: Try Special:WhatLinksHere or the "What links here" link.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:46, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: It gives me only hard redirects. I want the soft redirects to a given category using {{Category redirect}}. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 15:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: Such cats should be near the top of each given cat.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:05, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: The top results for Kolkata are not cat redirects, despite having cat redirects like Category:Calcutta. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 16:17, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: So what (partial) results are you looking for, when given a certain cat you are familiar with?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 19:32, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

1 way you can do that is https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=hastemplate:%22Category+redirect%22+insource:/\%7CKolkata/ . RoyZuo (talk) 19:48, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@RoyZuo: Thanks for this. I'll make a script out of it. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 02:40, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413 for more search tricks: mw:Help:CirrusSearch mw:Help:Extension:WikibaseCirrusSearch. :) RoyZuo (talk) 07:16, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

What do you mean? Redirect pages using that template are also showing in "What links here". Prototyperspective (talk) 19:16, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: I meant that I should only get a list of soft redirects to a category using the template {{Category redirect}}. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 02:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

That would indeed be useful. One can "Hide redirects" but not vice versa see only redirects. If many pages link to a page, one has to scroll for long to manually find all the redirects. This also impedes redirect maintenance. It doesn't only affect Commons but all Wikimedia sites. A way to sparql query which pages redirects to a page would also be useful. I think it's not unlikely there already is a phab code issue about it, so I'd look for one and if it doesn't exist recommend to create the phab issue and linking it here. Thanks. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:48, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Help with uploading an image

Hi, can someone help me upload an image found at [8] as a new version of File:Acrobasis_normella.jpg? If you click on the image on the website it shows a clearer version, but it's a png, which doesn't match the original version. What can I do? Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 00:16, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Myrealnamm: there are tons of ways to turn a PNG into a JPEG. My usual way is to download to my PC, open it in GIMP, and save it as a JPEG with quality=98. - Jmabel ! talk 01:14, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Myrealnamm: I was able to do this for you with the help of Image downloader - Imageye.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 01:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your help. Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 20:09, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Does anyone want to look at a template issue?

Template:Italyeventyear isn't setting sort keys consistently -- at least not in a consistent way I can identify. If you go to Category:Events in Italy by year, the first page has some miscellaneous stuff at the beginning, then it starts with the "<year> events in Italy" categories. If you then go to the next page, you will see that some years, starting with the year 1647, are sorting after all the other years instead of in numerical order.

When I look at Category:1716 events in Italy and Category:2016 events in Italy, the only difference I see in the setup is the first two digits of the year, which you'd expect. However, the 1716 category is one of the ones sorting at the end, whereas the 2016 category is not. If anyone wants to investigate a mystery, here's one for you.

Bonus points if you figure out how to get Category:492 events in Italy to sort correctly, although I can understand why that one is where it is.

Thanks in advance! -- Auntof6 (talk) 07:52, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

For "Category:492 events in Italy" the sort key must be " 492" (i.e. "[space][space]492" — two spaces in front of the year). For four digit years it must be " 1716" (i.e. "[space]1716" — one space in front of the year). Nakonana (talk) 08:48, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Nakonana: OK, so a 5-character sort key. But why is the template treating 1716 and 2016 differently? -- Auntof6 (talk) 08:49, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't know what in the template is causing it but "1716" is seemingly using a 4-character sort key. It's using "1" as the first digit instead of ".". Nakonana (talk) 08:56, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

This code bit appears to be responsible for the sort key:

[[Category:Events in Italy by year|.{{#ifexpr:{{{1}}} < 100 |0}}{{#ifexpr:{{{1}}} < 10 |0}}{{{1}}}{{{2}}}]]

Pinging @Orijentolog who added this code bit. Nakonana (talk) 10:14, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Nakonana: Yes, I saw that but I couldn't figure out why it didn't seem to be doing the same thing with similar categories. -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:18, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I checked some other countries and one that I've found that does not seem to have any hick-ups is {{Japaneventyear}} (see Category:Events in Japan by year). It uses "Japan" as default sort key, and the following code bit for the year:

[[Category:Events in Japan by year| {{padleft:{{{1}}}{{{2}}}|4}}]]. Nakonana (talk) 10:29, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

No wait, "Category:Events in Italy by year" isn't using spaces for the year but peeiids/dots (.). So, it's ". 492" or "..492" and ".1716". Nakonana (talk) 08:50, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Auntof6: @Nakonana: Fixed --Orijentolog (talk) 10:43, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Orijentolog: Thank you! -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:54, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Auntof6: You're welcome. To explain a little bit: when sortkey is changed in some template, sometimes all subcategories are automatically refreshed (purged) in few seconds and everything is under a (new) order. However, sometimes it's not automatically purged so everything before editing template stays under an old order, while only later edits are under a new order. In that case, the solution is null edit one-by-one. I changed sortkey because I believe that ordering under point is meaningless since years are numerals, and numerical ordering on Commons works fine. --Orijentolog (talk) 11:09, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Stats about user tenure

Does anyone know the median and the average of the number of years a user remains a sysop? or know of data or ways to calculate this? i only know Commons:List of former administrators an almost complete list of former sysops and their removal date, but no duration. RoyZuo (talk) 09:33, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Charts in Category:Deaths from diseases and disorders

• Should charts in there be somehow separated more since these cats mostly contain people died from diseases?

• Could somebody categorize the charts in there or in Category:Epidemiology of diseases and related health problems that show deaths by age/age-group into Category:Deaths from diseases by age – that cat currently misses most items.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 11:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Video2commons still broken

Tracked in GitHub
toolforge/video2commons/issues/237

It's been around a month now and video2commons is still broken and can't upload any videos.

It still shows:

Error: An exception occurred: DownloadError: b'ERROR: [youtube] [video id]: Sign in to confirm you\xe2\x80\x99re not a bot. This helps protect our community. Learn more'

when trying to upload any video.

Since this is the most-accessible most-used way to upload videos to Commons, could somebody please fix this problem or at least identify what the problem is? It's one if not the most critical tool for Commons and WMF has millions of dollars so I think a tool like this shouldn't be dysfunctional for over a month.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 12:28, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

+1, need to download and upload them by hand --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:21, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Might be a YouTube issue too given that error. Abzeronow (talk) 01:10, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

It's solved now, V2C is functional again! Prototyperspective (talk) 11:39, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:40, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Why is the Pixabay license not accepted

Hello. I came upon File:Palacio de gobierno de coahuila.jpg which is from Pixabay (which was not mentioned in the file description page) and I read from Template:Pixabay that Pixabay content uploaded after 9 January 2019 uses its own license that cannot be used on Commons. I read their terms and they state that content under their "Content License" license can be used for free for commercial purposes. Is it because they state "If your use of the Content is for commercial purposes (e.g. in conjunction with the sale or promotion of a product or service) then it is likely that you will need consent or a license." that Commons cannot accept files from Pixabay after 9 January 2019? Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 21:18, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Like many stock photo sites, Pixabay places conditions on the use of their content which directly or indirectly prohibit it from being uploaded to Commons. The most directly applicable one is "You cannot sell or distribute the Content (either in digital or physical form) on a Standalone basis" - since the purpose of Commons is to distribute files, this prohibits us from using that content. Other terms like "You cannot use Content in any immoral or illegal way" are also incompatible with Commons licensing. Omphalographer (talk) 21:26, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the swift response. I understand. Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 21:47, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

@Myrealnamm: That is right. As such, I tagged it as a copyvio. I also reported the uploader and their copyvios - see Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Edujab7.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 21:36, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:13, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Undeletion

I just noticed that there exists com:deletion policy but no undeletion policy. The entire page Commons:Undeletion requests misses out the most common kind of undeletion: copyright expiry undeletion, which doesnt happen because of "appeal". RoyZuo (talk) 11:13, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

It's kind of tangential, but back when I was doing DRs more there was at least a couple of people who didn't know images on are undeleted after the copyrights on them expires. I suspect that's one of the reasons DRs can be so contentious sometimes. So it would be good if there was an undeletion policy and people were made more aware that deletion usually isn't permanent. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:29, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

If undeletion of an image is 60 years from now, I suspect that many people aren't much comforted by that. But, yes, it's something that needs to be present, in order to take into account the usefulness of Commons as a tool for long term preservation of files. I've even thought about the possibility to offer the option to intentionally upload non-free files, deleted from the very moment of upload, to be undeleted when they enter the public domain in the future, as a means to contribute content for future preservation (without it being considered a copyvio, and without penalizing the user as if something wrong had been done: the user clearly states that the file is not to be publicly viewable until many years in the future, when it enters public domain). Maybe this idea is a bit out of scope, since, without forgetting about the future, Commons is made for the present in the first place. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:09, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

If ever implemented, it should be restricted to specially important content (very relevant and/or in high risk of total loss). Of course it's not a good idea that 90% of storage size used by Commons eventually becomes used for non-viewable media. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:15, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@MGeog2022: I've actually done quite a bit of that, especially with works of major artists who died 50-70 years ago, or with endangered buildings that are still in copyright in countries with no FoP. As an admin, I've also arranged for others to do it on request.

I don't think that there is any likelihood that this becomes even 10% of content, given that most people want the gratification that their work is immediately available. - Jmabel ! talk 16:28, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@MGeog2022: Some users already do this, compare Commons:Deletion requests/File:Akte im Freien (Max Pechstein)-WUS07217.jpg. I'm doing it myself as well, immediately deleting the uploaded files and adding them to the respective undeletion categories (like Category:Undelete in 2030). --Rosenzweig τ 17:13, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel and @Rosenzweig, thanks for the information. It's good to know that the option is available, even if the help of an administrator is needed. If people become aware of that, this option could be more widely used, and many copyrighted songs or even movies could be uploaded for posterity (especially, those that aren't among the most widely known). MGeog2022 (talk) 20:35, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

This is really a great idea. An idea that needs wider use. At a minimum, this would help me and other volunteers preload files for all future "Public Domain Days."

• What would be the best process, to formally adopt a policy or to document the best method of upload, delete, future undelete this "Future Media?"
• And then what is the best way the communicate this to the wider Commons community, Wikipedians in Residence and GLAMs?

Ooligan (talk) 20:55, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

There're potential technical problems for the process yall mentioned above. (I'd name that process Commons:Upload, delete and undelete, which was why I started this thread in the first place.)

That is, it depends on successful undeletion of files.

That might be a big question. No one is actually certain, that WMF doesnt mess up the deleted (or say, hidden) files. Senior users will remember certain bugs in the past that prevented deletion or undeletion, or corrupted file revisions. On top of that, iirc, there're only 2 copies of commons. Incidents like Gitlab Dev Deletes Entire Production Database How GitHub's Database Self-Destructed in 43 Seconds could well happen given the lengthy future ahead. RoyZuo (talk) 18:04, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@RoyZuo, Can you ask WMF the current and future likelyhood of a "Gitlab" type database deletion or destruction. It would be helpful for this discussion as well as general interest. Thanks, -- Ooligan (talk) 20:24, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I just tried looking for ways to contact WMF. After skimming through

1. https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Home
2. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/contact/

I dont seem to find any on-wiki feedback methods. I'm unwilling to email, because what happens in wiki stays in wiki; wiki things should be dealt with on wiki. RoyZuo (talk) 20:35, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Reading about media backups, I remember that it was said that deleted files were considered in the same way that regular files. That is, even if lost from production copies, there would still be backups. 2 production copies and 2 backups, of all files (visible or deleted), all of them stored in RAID disk setups. With this in mind, it would seem unlikely that most deleted files are lost. Let's hope that they can recovered, and undeletion dates work as expected.

Senior users will remember certain bugs in the past that prevented deletion or undeletion, or corrupted file revisions: this was more likely to happen before 2021 or so, when there were no proper backups in place for Commons media files. MGeog2022 (talk) 20:42, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Hopefully, I think that a GitLab-type incident is very unlikely in Commons. Even if files could get mass deleted by error from both production copies, there are still 2 backups at different places. Both backups use different credentials, that are also different from the ones in production servers. So a mass loss from all copies seems highly unlikely. That said, I myself proposed media dumps or, alternatively, additional backups, to adress this with even bigger security. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:32, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi, I have also uploaded, and then deleted, a number of files not yet in the public domain, setting a future date of undeletion. These were mostly movies. Also because video2commons only works for Commons, and I copied the files to the English Wikipedia, as they are already in the public domain in USA, but not in their country of origin.

I think there are probably quite a number of deleted files for which no future undeletion date was added. It is difficult to find them, as they are by definition, not publicly available. Yann (talk) 23:24, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@Yann, would a proposal to require "Undelete by YEAR" on Deletion Request/deleted files that have clear year for undeletion? It seems that currently "Undelete by YEAR" it is often not added to the deleted file- even where it is obvious. I agree the 1,000's of potential files that would qualify for future undeletion have been missed. So, can we stop lost opportunities to restore files in the future that were uploaded mostly by volunteers in good faith? Thanks, -- Ooligan (talk) 06:59, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

At least, it should be mentioned on COM:DR. But requiring that is a bit too strong. Yann (talk) 10:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

For many files we don't know when they could be undeleted: for example, work of living third party photographers in countries with copyright for 70 years p.m.a. - Jmabel ! talk 16:19, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I would strongly recommend that if we do this more systematically:

1. If at all possible, we should set up a special way to upload these so that they do not pass through the state of being temporarily visible to everyone. If we cannot avoid that, we come up with some particular tag which will give a very visible warning on the file page during their temporary visibility.
2. We should limit this to users at a certain level of rights.
3. We should probably have a place to post where anyone who is doing more than, say 20 of these in a given week is expected to post what they are up to, and there is a chance to judge the advisability of larger projects like that.

Also, I'm very wary of uploading content that has no known date when it will become available (e.g. in most countries, work of living authors, including buildings in countries with no FoP for architecture). It's hard to keep track of when they would be undeleted and in most cases that is 70 or more years in the future, a really pointless amount of time over which to make plans. Possibly some exception to that for content of likely importance that is unlikely still to be available when it would become legal to publish. - Jmabel ! talk 02:27, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I would limit this to files they become public domain within the next 20 years with exceptions possible. GPSLeo (talk) 05:58, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Most buildings, especially in rapidly developing cities; or even most things, would not survive for 70 years+the remaining lifespan of their authors.

So their pictures people now take are the only records of them once existing.

Some users be like: upload them to other image hosting sites like flickr... well, that means preservation of those images also hinges on the survival of flickr into the far future. If commons is the ultimate repository of history and knowledge, they should be here and commons should not depend on another website to then import them in far future. RoyZuo (talk) 07:15, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

+1 MGeog2022 (talk) 12:26, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

By the way, if Internet Archive had the financial resources and infrastructure (including backups) that WMF has, I wouldn't be worried about this at all. The place for that ultimate repository of history and knowledge would be Internet Archive, not WMF. The problem is that it hasn't. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:35, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed with you 100%.

I've long criticised this. WMF has so much money but the impression left on me has always been that they waste all that money on dont know what. In comparison internet archive handles so much more with far less money.

https://archive.org/about/ : A single copy of the Internet Archive library collection occupies 145+ Petabytes of server space

Special:MediaStatistics: Total file size for all 116,084,240 files: 662,292,980,500,181 bytes (602.35 TB).

Commons is <1% of IA, but WMF funding is probably 10 times IA funding. RoyZuo (talk) 12:49, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Not to say the WMF couldn't allocate their funds better, but it's not fair comparison because the sites are different. The internet archive is super janky and always one lawsuit away from oblivion anyway. For all the WMFs faults at least this project is usable and it won't closed down because of a RIAA lawsuit. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:12, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes. With the money it has, WMF could have several offline backups in different places for even greater redundancy. But things are not so bad. WMF could remain operating and having several full backups of everything, even with a much smaller budget than it has, and if at the same time the total size of Commons increases greatly, that's the good part (WMF problem seems to be that there is so much money that it's hard to decide what to spend it on, there are far worse things than that).

I don't think a lawsuit will close Internet Archive. But Archive's content isn't well protected against cyberattacks or physical disasters. Of all content in Archive or its Wayback Machine, I only consider guaranteed the parts that come from third-party projects, such as Common Crawl, and perhaps also the content that uses Archive-it paid service. I remember how frustrated many people were last October when Archive went down. People seem to be unaware of the real risk of something much, much worse at any moment. MGeog2022 (talk) 20:12, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Anyway, i just wrote down a summary of this method Commons:Upload, delete and undelete. Feel free to edit, or suggest if you have a better title.

Commons:Undelete needs to be edited to include undeletion of free files, which is not contentious and doesnt need "appeal".--RoyZuo (talk) 07:43, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@RoyZuo: I made some significant edits there. - Jmabel ! talk 15:30, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

If we want files not to be visible, we could use something similar to Nsfw. However, these files should only be publicly accessible for a few hours, so I am not sure it is necessary. Yann (talk) 12:47, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel and everybody:

fyi, i wrote Commons:Upload, delete and undelete as a summary of current practice, not as a proposal of any possible future implementation of this mechanism. as mentioned above by many users, it's an informal method ppl have been using, and i felt it's necessary to write it down.

the info page could be a first step towards formalisation of this method, but i'm satisfied to bring this matter to wider attention and leave any development to the others.

and my key concern for my original post is, Commons:Undelete is seriously lacking info about many uncontroversial circumstances of undeletion of files. RoyZuo (talk) 16:29, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it would be good to add a timestamp to uploads where you can set when the uploaded files are published. Copyright reasons may be the most obvious one, but sometimes I was requested not to upload specific content. In 20–30 years, it wouldn't be a problem anymore. And documentation of works that vanished or will vanish are a crucial argument, no matter as it is in form of photographs etc. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:11, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

(And copyright legislation can change in the future) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:12, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531: we can do the same thing with "Undelete in YEAR" when the concern is something other than copyright. Has nothing systematic to do with the upload date. - Jmabel ! talk 16:10, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:32, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Category:L'Illustrazione Italiana by year

Could someone please fix these templates so they end up in Italian categories? Rathfelder (talk) 10:48, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Rathfelder: Could you what you think should be done? I don't understand your request, as there are no templates here except {{Magazine by year}}. Which Italian categories? -- ZandDev (talk) 11:14, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

They have a template Magazine by year- also for decades and centuries, which puts them in, for example Category:1911 magazines, not in Category:Magazines of Italy, 1911. Rathfelder (talk) 11:30, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Rathfelder, I didn’t edit the template too much, to avoid maybe accidentally breaking the template. So, I just added a |country= parameter. If you specify a country (e.g. Italy), it will categorise the page into the country-of-year category (e.g. Magazines of Italy, 1911), instead of the year category (e.g. 1911 magazines). See Category:1874 L'Illustrazione Italiana for example. Tvpuppy (talk) 16:39, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! Rathfelder (talk) 16:43, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

By the way, I also changed {{Magazine by decade}} and {{Magazine by century}} the same way as mentioned above. Tvpuppy (talk) 16:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Very helpful! Rathfelder (talk) 19:26, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

One more - could you do a similar job on Category:La Ilustración Española y Americana? Rathfelder (talk) 19:47, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

The template for the year categories and century categories already categorizes into the magazine-of-Spain categories. So, I only changed the template for the decade categories (e.g. the one in Category:1860s La Ilustración Española y Americana) since it didn’t categorize into the “YYYYs magazines of Spain” category. Is this what you were referring to? Tvpuppy (talk) 03:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes thank you very much. I hope that is the last one like that. Rathfelder (talk) 18:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Search for categories that have corresponding Wikidata items but no infoboxes

Anyone know if there's a way to do it? --Adamant1 (talk) 14:14, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Depends on what you mean with "corresponding". I think a bot adds the infobox automatically if it is linked. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:21, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

It's fairly difficult to identify what a "corresponding item" is outside of the most trivial cases, like entities which are already linked to Commons categories and lack only the infobox. Omphalographer (talk) 20:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Adamant1 and Prototyperspective: like this? Multichill (talk) 21:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

You might want to ask at Wikidata, too, whether there's a way. Or go through Category:Wikidata related maintenance to see whether there's anything that would fit the bill, e.g. something like "Creator templates with Wikidata link: item missing link back". Nakonana (talk) 07:22, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Category:Photographic silhouettes of people against sunsets

I have been populating/adding photos to the Category:Photographic silhouettes of people against sunsets, which already existed but was practically empty. I believe I can only add a few hundred more photos. Questions: 1. The category name seems too complicated. Perhaps it could be changed to "Silhouettes of people with sunsets," since on Commons we are always dealing with photographs. 2. The category is becoming very crowded (with around 2,300 items) and perhaps it should be subdivided. One possibility would be to divide it by the number of people in the image, as dividing by color is not very useful (most photos have red backgrounds) and dividing by country also doesn't seem practical, since in most cases the country is not indicated and it is not very relevant to know where a photo of a black silhouette with a usually red and poorly defined background was taken. I would appreciate advice and suggestions from more experienced users. Thank you! --JotaCartas (talk) 09:59, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for populating that cat. I don't think there is any need to subdivide it further. It can be ideal and is refreshing to see a category containing its contents directly and I see no need for any particular subcategories like the number of people in the image or whether it's children vs adults. One could use the deepcategory search operator to combine it with other categories (example) and/or some search string to find results. However, if you are to subcategorize what likely would be most useful is distinguishing between images that show one person vs multiple/many. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:20, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer, and for the tip (example), I didn't know it, but it's very useful to avoid creating very complex Category trees, again thanks JotaCartas (talk) 17:48, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Photo challenge January results

Ovals: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Horseshoe Bend (Arizona)	Underpass of Michelinstraße in Hallstadt	Fontana in un giardino storico in Roccalvecce (Viterbo)
Author	Gzzz	Ermell	Albarubescens
Score	15	12	11

Leatherwork: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	2
image
Title	Tanners at work in one of the old tanneries of Fez, Morocco	Pilot with Leather Aviator Helmet	Handmade shoes
Author	Lusi Lindwurm	Roy Egloff	AK-Bino
Score	24	11	11

Congratulations to Gzzz, Ermell, Albarubescens, Lusi Lindwurm, Roy Egloff and AK-Bino. -- Jarekt (talk) 02:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Statistics of uploads vs deletions

Hi, I updated this page. Curiously, I got slightly higher numbers for uploads. Also why did the uploads drop in 2022 and 2024? Any idea? Yann (talk) 19:11, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Just a guess, but how do this numbers relate to the active user base? Grunpfnul (talk) 19:41, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Fæ's departure alone would have made a statistically noticeable difference. - Jmabel ! talk 01:09, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Would make sense. Fæ dropped out in 2021 --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:21, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Around September 2022 was a sudden increase of uploads, but the increase was deleted later. Maybe this lays heavy --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:24, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Syrian Flag, the third time around

Once again, the question of what to do with File:Flag of Syria.svg has come up in File talk:Flag of the Syrian revolution.svg#Move. I have changed the redirect target since the Revolution flag is now the official flag of Syria. As previously discussed it seemed as if the consensus was that we should try to future proof changes to flags in making "Flag of Example" a redirect. For some reason, templates love using Flag of... in them so adjustments tend to have to be made anyway. But the question that came up is that now Syria is treated differently from other countries in that their "Flag of..." is a redirect as opposed to a file page and so what would be our best practices in handling changes to flags of nations. As Jmabel points out, the flag of the United States had been changed twice in his lifetime, and it is possible that within our lifetime, that flag could change again.

So the reason for this thread is to ask what would be our best practices in future proofing flags and what steps should be taken in the future when flags do need to be changed. Since this is a question that would affect a lot of communities in Wikimedia, I felt the Village Pump is the best place to ask, and I would be willing to post about this thread in various Wikipedias if needed. Abzeronow (talk) 19:50, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Files should be identified and reused with a unique number like [[File:M56856129|thumb|example]]. This would eliminate 1 of 3 things doing roughly the same thing: filename, caption, description; and all the rules and maintenance tasks about filename like Category:Media requiring renaming. RoyZuo (talk) 17:07, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I'll also mention in the interest of transparency that there is a proposal by User:Freedoxm to move the revolution flag to File:Independence flag of Syria.svg. Now that the revolution flag is the official flag of Syria, we probably should figure out what the permanent name for this flag should be where its usage would depend on a permanent name that doesn't change (unlike template that only care about what the current flag of Syria is). Abzeronow (talk) 17:25, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

how to undelete all my files which was deleted?

i'm new on commons i mistakenly claimed old pics as own work. those pics are free from copyright — Preceding unsigned comment added by RyanRai11 (talk • contribs) 07:00, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

• Hi! You can add a request at COM:Undeletion request and why the files should be undeleted. You need to say how the names of the files were. And don't forget to sign your posts ;) (type --~~~~) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:42, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Display bug with the Help icons on upload page

Hmm...

Just noticed this. I don't think these icons were like this previously, but instead fit the "display" box with perfectly round icons? (Firefox 136.0.2 here, have NoScript with nothing blocked on Commons and uBlock Origin). - The Bushranger (talk) 22:36, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

DESI releases the DR1 dataset

Hi!

DESI announced that they released a free dataset recently. It may have useful data to be uploaded here.

Greetings --11:52, 20 March 2025 (UTC) PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:52, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

software generated information

Screenshots are generaly treated as copyvio. However, there are cases the content, grafics, departure times, weather patterns, tracking information, etc, are automaticaly generated, with no human creative input. If company logo's and advertisements are avoided, I see no copyvio case. Excluded are maps extracts like Google maps, where the information and layout is protected. (database issue)

Example: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Schermafdruk treinpad test ECD naar Brussel.jpg Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:19, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I cannot tell for this case, but we have to assume that more and more digital content will be generated by non-human actors (graphics and pictures, but also schemes and graphs or concepts) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:07, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

What you see on your screen is only partially a computer-generated database query output. Someone had to program the thing, design how all the software elements had to be constructed, decide on the positioning, what color scheme to use, etc. As you can see at COM:SCREENSHOTS, unless the software is freely licensed (which it is not according section 7) or as simple as en:Command-line interfaces, this is rightly considered a copyvio. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:06, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Not sure I agree with HyperGaruda. Test case: someone working for another railway created a screen that looked just like that except for the (obviously not copyrightable) information about what particular train was going where when. Could NS possibly sue them for a copyright violation? - Jmabel ! talk 02:15, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

The software license is irrelevant. If I use Photoshop to edit or create images, the user (me) has the copyrigths, except of course if I use any copyrigthed material as input. This dynamic timetable information is publicaly available information. The train companies and infrastructure providers are legaly obliged to make this information available to all travel planners. There are no database rigths (such as by Google Maps). (Database rigths are different from the creative rigths)Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:24, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

The proper comparison with your Photoshop case would be: a screenshot of the Photoshop window with your image opened in there. That screenshot would be copyvio, as it includes the Photoshop interface around your image. Cropped to just your image without elements of the Photoshop interface would be fine. To extend this analogy to File:Schermafdruk treinpad test ECD naar Brussel.jpg, you would have to get rid of all the interface's creative visual elements like icons and color schemes, meaning you would be left with barebones {{PD-Text}} material. --HyperGaruda (talk) 11:15, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@HyperGaruda: which icons here do you believe to be above TOO? - Jmabel ! talk 17:09, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Individually, none. Together in this arrangement and coloring, however, is a different story. --HyperGaruda (talk) 04:38, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Coloring certainly won't take them above TOO, and the arrangement is just putting them evenly spaced in a line.

Again, as I asked above: if someone working for another railway created a screen that looked just like that except for the (obviously not copyrightable) information about what particular train was going where when, could NS possibly sue them for a copyright violation? If not, then nothing here is copyrightable. - Jmabel ! talk 16:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I would say yes, if someone (another rail company itself or just a freelancer programmer) creates an app with the same UI look-and-feel, the owner of the original app may sue for Copyright infringement. Design and layout matter. With just a different color scheme and different icons the infringement would be less obvious, but still noticeable to experts. I am using two different public transit apps than the one depicted here, and while the basic functionality is pretty much the same, there are also distinct design differences. --Enyavar (talk) 09:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

PD license template maintenance task

I discovered a strange pattern as I'm working through PD-Art license maintenance: files that don't have any PD templates, but are placed in categories that PD templates would place them in. These need to be reviewed and have the correct PD templates applied to them, and the manual categories removed. If you have some time and that sounds up your alley, I put them all into Category:Files placed manually in PD-Art categories. – BMacZero (🗩)

Good catch. A category alone isn't a substitute for a license statement, even if it's PD. At a glance I think most of these will be {{PD-old-assumed}} at a minimum. Omphalographer (talk) 04:20, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

@BMacZero, to Category:PD Art i added Template:Image template notice which now also provides an extra search link to find such files (which was just added). RoyZuo (talk) 11:30, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Rotating video

I have a video I'd like to upload to Commons. Unfortunately, my camera messed up the orientation. Right now I have two versions of it: https://vimeo.com/1069462147 would need to be rotated 90 degrees clockwise; https://vimeo.com/1069466797 is correctly oriented but is watermarked by the tool I used to rotate it.

Does someone have a way to do a rotation like this without getting a watermark slapped on the video? Obviously, correct orientation is more important than the lack of watermark, but I'd really rather have both. - Jmabel ! talk 06:08, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Best is to use ffmpeg for this https://stackoverflow.com/a/9570992 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:45, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@TheDJ: is there a particular build of ffmpeg for Windows that you would recommend? I don't recognize the names of anything offering one, and am hesitant to trust a random build on my machine. - Jmabel ! talk 16:36, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

https://stackoverflow.com/a/27768317

com:videocuttool (not sure if still working). RoyZuo (talk) 09:57, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Ffmpeg worked (though not easily). File is now on Commons at File:Pfeiffer Falls.webm. - Jmabel ! talk 04:04, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 04:04, 27 March 2025 (UTC)