This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Please help verify the authorization license of the video files uploaded from the bilibili.com website.
Unlike YouTube and Flickr, bilibili.com does not have a Creative Commons license setting, so users need to manually mark similar licenses. A bilibili.com user contacted me and asked me to help him upload some video files to WikiCommons under CC-BY-4.0 license. The files are listed below, and I hope someone can check the license.
I want to start using AWB since I upload large amounts of files and want to make mass edits to them. How can I use it? I know it has a permission requirement, so how hard is it to get it? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me)10:44, 2 September 2024 (UTC)
Let me also endorse VFC. I use it pretty heavily; I've used AWB now and then, but have found VFC generally easier for most purposes. - Jmabel ! talk22:27, 2 September 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. I changed the category of the specimen, its common name and the scientific name was added to the image. I don't know how to change the Wikidata numbering. Mário NET (talk) 13:01, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:44, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Announcing the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee
I am pleased to announce the following individual as regional members of the U4C, who will fulfill a term until 15 June 2026:
North America (USA and Canada)
Ajraddatz
The following seats were not filled during this special election:
Latin America and Caribbean
Central and East Europe (CEE)
Sub-Saharan Africa
South Asia
The four remaining Community-At-Large seats
Thank you again to everyone who participated in this process and much appreciation to the candidates for your leadership and dedication to the Wikimedia movement and community.
Over the next few weeks, the U4C will begin meeting and planning the 2024-25 year in supporting the implementation and review of the UCoC and Enforcement Guidelines. You can follow their work on Meta-Wiki.
The Campaigns team at the Wikimedia Foundation is exploring how to expand it's work on campaigns, to support other kinds of collaboration. We are interested in learning from diverse editors that have experience joining and working on WikiProjects, Campaigns, and other kinds of on-wiki collaboration. We need your help:
Take a survey about your experience with collaborations: on Google Docs
@Mário NET: it looks like that file page is a mess in terms of what it states, but if the image is from Adalbert Seitz (died 1938, which means PD in Germany) and was published in 1927 (which means PD in the U.S.) it should just be a matter of cleaning up the claims on the file page. And if it does come originally from the 1845 work mentioned there, then the case is even clearer. What has you concerned? - Jmabel ! talk02:52, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
I thought it would say "free copyright" in "Show Info" and it said "Copyright & Usage, Due Diligence"; so I couldn't interpret what it was. 03:18, 1 September 2024 (UTC) Mário NET (talk) 03:18, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
@Mário NET: "free copyright" makes no sense at all. Perhaps you are thinking "copyright-free" (meaning that there is no copyright)?
I'll try to fix the page myself, because I'm pretty sure your recent edit (which I reverted) only made this worse. - Jmabel ! talk16:23, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
Please correct me if I am wrong, but, it's not the case for public domain works such as the one here, but, for CC-licensed works, I believe that there is copyright in place, and there is a free license one (the requirement to cite the original author, or to redistribute the work under the same license, in the case of CC-BY-SA, is due to copyright law: the work's author has copyright ownership, and licenses the work to others under a CC license). So in some cases, not for public domain works such as this, but "free copyright" could make sense as a phrase. MGeog2022 (talk) 09:15, 2 September 2024 (UTC)
@MGeog2022: I couldn't fully follow some of your English, but if I follow you correctly you are describing "copyrighted free-licensed work", and I stand by my original statement. If I've misunderstood you, feel free to write in Spanish, which I read without difficulty. - Jmabel ! talk22:25, 2 September 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel, it's probably because how I chained one sentence after another, perhaps I did it in a too Spanish-like way. Yes, I'm talking about copyrighted free-licensed works, and, so, you're completely right, "free copyright" perhaps may never make sense, since there is this another way to say it. Sorry, but, some time away, I saw a misunderstanding in a Wikipedia talk page, where someone seemed to say that the mere presence of a copyright tag implied that a work could not be freely licensed, and I think it's a dangerous error, since it may lead to the removal of legitimate content, so I wanted to draw attention to it (not so much because you thought so, which seemed very unlikely, but because of others who might read it). MGeog2022 (talk) 09:23, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Wait, I'm confused, too. Where did the mention of an 1845 work come from? What is the source for that information? - Jmabel ! talk16:35, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
This work is not from 1845, what happens is that I used a text from another image to construct this one and I didn't realize that the "1845" from the previous text had remained, I will correct that. Mário NET (talk) 01:55, 2 September 2024 (UTC)
Commons Gazette 2024-09
Volunteer staff changes
In August 2024, 1 sysop was removed. Currently, there are 183 sysops.
I suggest that the Commons community should take action in the event that Cat-a-lot is slowed down (effectively to the rate of 1 edit per second). I don't want to disagree with SRE-team's conclusions, but this unilateral change to the "coolest tool" has affected many users' workflows (including mine). — Draceanetalkcontrib.20:11, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Maybe you can propose a better implementation ? Or sprinkle some pixie dust ? As long as it doesn't cause all of Wikimedia to got down multiple times a week, any of it is welcome. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:21, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Could you use the Wikipedia embassy for this as well? That's what I would do, even if it's not 100% the right avenue. There are two editors listed for the Japanese language there, and BorgQueen is highly active. ReneeWrites (talk) 21:19, 2 September 2024 (UTC)
Hi. I got in a little tiff with a another user earlier because I nominated some categories they created for nonexistent WikiProjects for speedy deletion. I don't really feel like relitigating it here. Except to draw people's attention to Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/09/Category:WikiProject Iran by city. Personally, I feel like it clearly violates the guidelines and consensus to create categories as part of a personal pet project for things that clearly don't exist. Apparently the user who created the categories thinks it's totally fine though. So I started a CfD to see what other people think about it. The categories seem totally pointless and unhelpful to me, but who knows. Maybe I'm missing something or there's a valid reason to keep them that I'm just not aware of. Adamant1 (talk) 08:43, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
To repeat it for fourth (!) time: these categories are not intended for existing WikiProjects, but for separating huge WikiProject Iran by particular city, although there are some individual projects like WikiProject Tehran on Persian Wiki. They serve as maintenance categories and exist for years. The issue here is Adamant1 yesterday planned to delete everything, without any proposal or discussion, making an utter mess with hundreds of related categories, so I reverted him. --Orijentolog (talk) 09:04, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
The CfD is a better place to discuss the particulars. I will point out though that Commons:Categories states "we should not classify items which are related to different subjects in the same category. There should be one category per topic; multi-subject categories should be avoided. The category name should be unambiguous and not homonymous." Maybe it's just me, but I really don't see how it isn't ambagious to have a category called "WikiProject Jahrom" when there's WikiProject Jahrom and it's just a maintenance category. I certainly thought it was a category for a real WikiProject at first. I certainly didn't know it was maintenance category for WikiProject Iran until you told me. So there's clearly some ambiguity here about the purpose of the categories and why exactly they exist. Just because it's clear to you as the person who created them that doesn't mean other people will understand it and they should. Otherwise the categories should be deleted. Period. There's absolutely zero justification what-so-ever to have categories that only make sense to the person who created them. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:13, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
WikiProject Jahrom serves as a part of the WikiProject Iran and contains things related to the city of Jahrom. If it doesn't make sense to you, that's not my problem. --Orijentolog (talk) 09:27, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Then the category should be called something like "Category:WikiProject Iran in Jahrom" or "Category:WikiProject Iran (Jahrom)"; if you make categories that do not conform to our naming standards, that will very quickly become "your problem"". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits16:14, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: don't think I'm scared Andy, making 1,000 or 10,000 edits to correct something ain't an issue for me, and I'm a collaborative person. Only the messiness and lack of unification scares me. As I said to Adamant1 today, if there's a consensus to rename everything, I'll do it personally. I prefer keeping the status quo (yes, it's laziness!), but I would accept your proposal if others agree. Generally it's fine and I have only minor issues with it. Another thing, I don't see that strict naming standards apply to maintenance categories, there are a lot of uneven, non-English and even illiterate ones around. --Orijentolog (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
There are a lot of uneven, non-English and even illiterate ones around. The guideline for naming categories was improved last year (after an extremely long CfD that had more then enough support at the time BTW). So there's naturally going to be some uneven, illiterate categories at this point. It takes time to cleanup this stuff up once a guideline is changed and that's not helped or made quicker by the needless edit waring and discussion over it on your end.
More to the point, something like "Category:WikiProject Iran in Jahrom" or "Category:WikiProject Iran (Jahrom)" would be better. Although I still think the categories would be mostly pointless and not make sense. As a category like "Category:WikiProject Iran in Jahrom" still insinuates that there's a WikiProject in Jahrom or that Wikiproject Iran has a satellite group when neither one is true. If someone creates a category called "X business in Y location" then that business should have some dealings in that location or the category is fundamentally wrong. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:16, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Speedy because "File has no source" but what they are saying is "I want to see a url" instead of what is listed
@Winmyint998: See: Special:Contributions/Winmyint998 where they are sending images to speedy because the "File has no source" but what they are saying is "the source listed is inadequate". Should these images be going to speedy? A few years ago there was a problem with another editor using Speedy with: "File has no license" but what they were really saying was "I don't think this image has the correct license". Should these be going to speedy for auto-deletion and no further research, or through the regular process where the community does more research if needed? Should the normal deletion nomination process be so easy to circumvent? Should the "Speedy" be removed? RAN (talk) 07:39, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
Yes, this is an inappropriate use of the speedy deletion tag and they should be converted to regular deletion requests. Speedy deletions should only be used for clear and unamibiguous copyright violations. Checking a few files that they tagged, despite lacking in sourcing the files appear to be old enough for their copyright to have lapsed in Myanmar. ReneeWrites (talk) 07:57, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
Agree with RAN and ReneeWrites, but things are certainly not helped when (for example) [[User:History of the Burmese}} says source is {{Own work}}, date is three days before the upload, and the license is {{PD-Myanmar}}. Presumably it's the source and date that are wrong here rather than the license, but the source and date are not even plausible. - Jmabel ! talk16:57, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
If we deleted every noobie upload that used the upload date as the creation date for an historical image, we would not have many images. The new upload form is supposed to reduce those kind of errors. One of the risks of a nominator using speedy, I believe, is that you can just challenge "speedy" by just removing the tag and not forcing it to a standard deletion nomination. --RAN (talk) 00:38, 2 September 2024 (UTC)
In Commons:Editor's index to Commons (a.k.a. COM:Glossary), there is some weirdness I don't quickly see how to fix. The display where the wikitext says Bots: <span id="Catbot"></span>{{Shortcut2|COM:EIC#Catbot}} surely cannot be what we want, and also can be really confusing about the alphabetical order when trying to look up anything else (looks like you are already to "COM", but actually is part of "Categories" and comes before "Censorship". Currently, I'm really tired and not at my sharpest after some travel SNAFUs. Could someone else please take a look at this? Thanks. - Jmabel ! talk12:39, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
The authorization information of two images is corrupted
The licensing information of these two images of the Moldovan Parliament Hall are damaged, but free licensing information can be found based on the image sources. Please help manually repair the licensing information, thank you!
Hi there!
A colleague of mine has been working for many years on the topic of image searching. His focus is not just on finding images that are tagged with keywords, but also finding similar images for various definitions of similar. He managed to obtain 6 million images from Commons to demonstrate his technology, it is freely available at WikiView. He has tried to find someone at Commons who knows if an API for Commons exists and if it does, if it is possible to just pull new pictures and not have to pull a dump at regular intervals. It would be cool to offer this visual search (quite a different way of searching, try it!) from the home page and also to have it stay up-to-date. If you are such a person, please contact me in-wiki and I'll put you in touch with my colleague. Thanks! --WiseWoman (talk) 18:43, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
I was thinking about doing a similar thing to train an AI image generator but who knows how it work with all the different kinds of licenses on here. At least in that case the generated images would be different from the originals. It still seems questionable though to just take millions of images with different licenses and use them in a single product in mass though. I don't there's any way to follows the licensing terms for every image. Especially an in instance like this one. Let alone with an AI image generator. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:07, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
I wasn't part of the project, but they did speak to someone. The problem is, that the people change and this is so difficult for people not in the Wikiworld to sort out who they have to speak with. But there is a link back to Commons when an image is found the license is clearly given in Wikiview. I believe they only used images that were usable according to the license, and that was the problem, being able to obtain new pictures but only those ones with a fitting license. The WikiWorld seems so difficult to people not active here, often because the tone is a bit rough. --WiseWoman (talk) 11:42, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Template:WiseWoman After I commented I noticed that they have a way to sort the images by license and that there's links back to the images on Commons. Both of which helps. I can understand why this would be difficult for people who aren't active in the project already. It can be a little rough and the sheer amount of different licenses with multiple variations per license based on the personal preferences of uploaders really doesn't help. I'd love to see them at least get rid personalized licensing terms. If not just the different defaults down to 1 or 2. There's like what, 7 different versions of the Creative Commons license on here at this point though? The whole things totally ridiculous. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:41, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Sounds amazing! Have a look at m:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Search Wikipedia with image or sketch search and maybe also comment on the talk page there. It didn't work so well with search terms but one can use WMC search for that anyway and it seems like the focus there is searching by image. I would suggest the asap it also shows the WMC categories by number of images in the results they contain, this way one can find relevant categories that contain more images. Also see my proposal about data dumps (and the link at the top there) which may make it possible to just pull new pictures which would also be great to improve WMC performance and reduce server load. I don't think it will be linked on the main page if it's not searching across all WMC images and is an external site but probably it could be linked at some other page not far from it – I don't know of use-cases where one would want to search by image and not via search terms or by browsing. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:21, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
They also have a tool that kind of sort of works with sketching (but used a different image collection for this one). It would be so important for the researchers in this area to speak with people at Wikimedia to sort out how to move forward on this. --WiseWoman (talk) 11:42, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
In the United States, all laws, proclamations, statutes, court decisions and opinions, etc. are all in the public domain. And in principle, any of them would be acceptable here at Commons. We need works to be appropriately licensed or in the public domain in both the United States and wherever it was originally created (if these are different). I assume that court decisions are in the public domain in India and our page on copyright rules states that the government can own a copyright (unlike in the United States, where all federal government publications are public domain), so it's not obvious to me that this is necessarily public domain in India. As a non-lawyer and non-India expert, I would guess that it's legit to uplaod here, but not for sure. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯17:55, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
That's actually not correct. Court orders and the like are matters of public record in the United States. That's different from them being in the public domain or not though. They are usually PD on the federal level, but every state has their own individual copyright terms for works created by the state government. So it really depends on if the court order was created by the federal government or which state it comes from. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:38, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Actually, incorporation is not "obviously" not public domain and that's exactly what Carl Malamud has spent many years fighting in court, etc. The first comment there was about Harry Potter being used as evidence and thereby attached, which is different from (e.g.) incorporating ISO standards into a law. Either way, that's not germane in this case: court orders, laws, edicts, etc. cannot be copyrighted in the United States. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯22:42, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Please re-read what I wrote: in the United States, all laws, edicts, court orders, etc. are in the public domain, even ones from India and works that are hosted on Commons must be properly licensed or in the public domain in the United States, so the fact that it's public domain in the United States is 100% relevant. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯22:42, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Are such docs in scope for us here in Commons? That's really going to depend on the nature of the order. Some court orders will have historical significance, or may be useful as generic examples of court proceedings. However, most cases are not notable, and most court orders even within notable cases are routine procedural motions of no lasting significance.
Is there a way to click things in my or someone elses contributions and undo them?
I have recently started using the visual file editor. A few times I found myself accidentally making erroneous edits. Is there a plugin that could allow me to just click from a list of my contributions and undoing them? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me)12:06, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
@Immanuelle: I don't think anyone but admins can do a mass revert, and unlike Cat-a-Lot, VFC doesn't have a built-in reversion feature. Do preview at least one example before having VFC act on an enormous number of files! - Jmabel ! talk14:21, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel that's unfortunate. Is there some kind of reason for a rule against it or just no tools available? I feel it would be helpful at lease for people reversing their own edits.
@Immanuelle: It's built into Cat-a-Lot, so it's not a general principle. Yes, some sort of mass self-revert might be a good thing; I don't know the technical details. You wouldn't want people to be able to use it after more than an hour or so, though, because we occasionally get someone doing nasty stuff in a fit of pique, and imagine the chaos they could create with a year of self-reverts. - Jmabel ! talk14:44, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Everyone makes mistakes and if you do so on a large scale and do your best to fix it and ask for help, that's not a problem. Rollback allows you to undo your or someone else's edits with a single click. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯15:34, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Use of NoFoP-category template on broad categories
I'm in a bit of a disagreement with someone on this issue, so I thought I'd ask for clarification here: should Template:NoFoP-category be applied to broad categories in a NoFoP country (e.g., "Statues in X city" or slightly more specific ones like "Statues of animals in Y city")? My understanding is that it should be reserved for categories dedicated to specific structures or monuments, as some in those cities may be old enough to no longer be under copyright protection. What are your thoughts? — Goldentalk21:31, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
The (English) text of the template suggests to me that it's meant for specific works, not classes. Not entirely sure if we should have such a template. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 21:47, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
I agree with Enhancing999 and Jmabel. This belongs as a category header for specific works in NoFoP countries, for the reason you stated. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:23, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
Totally agree with everyone else. It doesn't make sense to use the template on a general topic because works in the category (or that will be uploaded to it) will inevitable be PD due to age or other factors. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:30, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
Disagree I now accept that the template should not be used in broad categories. All such templates that I erroneously added to categories have been helpfully deleted by the nominator and his friends. Thanks for that guys. Moving to non-broad category usage, the example cited - "Statues of animals in Y city" - does not fit the broad criterion in my view. As I mentioned to @Golden: on my talk page, "In the case of the "Statues_of_animals_in Qəbələ" category, I see two pics of wooden eagles and one pic of dinosaurs. I conclude that it is not general, it is not broad, the statues are new, it is quite specific (a triple intersection of art (statue), subject(animals) and location (Qəbələ)). So as far as I'm concerned, it meets all of the criteria". Certainly where all the pics in a category contain nothing but images which, of themselves, would all be legitimate candidates for marking with the template "NoFoP-Azerbaijan", then I think that a categorical marking is merited and a more efficient use of editors' time. Laurel Lodged (talk) 13:23, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
@Laurel Lodged or better, leave the generalized categories with no such templates? I was the one who proposed this template and its original purpose was for specific works. Leaving the generalized categories without such templates removes the unsightly clutter in the said categories. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)13:45, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
TBH, I can see the merit of using this template in certain broad categories where virtually any photo will be a FoP violation. For instance, Qatar has strict FoP, and essentially no buildings or public artwork old enough to be in the public domain, so placing FoP warning templates on related categories might be warranted. Omphalographer (talk) 21:02, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
@Omphalographer: I'd be interested to know what exactly you think the merrits of doing it that way are. People are going to add images of copyrighted works to the categories regardless. The same could be said for the main categories for the subjects in the image, but at least users expect to see the template there. Plus at least in my experience broad categories tend to not be persistent anyway. So it's just encouraging people to add the template to the main subject level category instead of the one for the particular work and in an instance where the template will likely be removed or deleted at some point anyway. Categories for specific works at least have less chance of being deleted, and again, users expect the template to be there. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:12, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
The sort of situation I have in mind is where more specific subcategories might not exist on Commons because any image of the subjects would be non-free. It'd be analogous to {{NoUploads}}, which we use on categories for many well-known artists whose works are mostly non-free. Omphalographer (talk) 20:04, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
When working on Commons:Report Special:UncategorizedCategories, I noticed that many categories are there, merely because users don't know how to have categories deleted with typos or other minor problems.
I usually just use C2 unless it's clearly a bad name. I actually didn't know C1 was an option until just now. So things could clearly be explained better. Heck if I have any idea how though. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:31, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Whatever we do: keep the template short. If this is going to turn into a wall of text, it should be in a page linked from the template, not the template itself. - Jmabel ! talk06:55, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
A button that shows the 3D models was added on the main page, next to images and videos. It is a good point in time to highlight textured meshes that could be presented :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:41, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
Munich metro type
I would normaly put these metrotrains into the Category:MVG C (U-Bahn München), However the windows are different to the other images in that category. They ont have the pull open part. Is this an early C type, where later the windows where replaced or is it a totaly different type? Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:20, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
That's a Type C with the wooden seats near the door. The skylight windows are only on one side of the vehicle (most likely to avoid "Zugluft"). -- Herbert Ortner (talk) 20:58, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Robotic cameras have no human creator and are not copyrightable, unless a human operator takes over to point the camera. --RAN (talk) 12:48, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Selection of deprecated categories in category entry fields
Hi, when entering categories, category names that have been deprecated and redirected, such as, let's say, Category:SS Shieldhall, pop up in the list of suggestions in the same way as any other category, without any warning or labelling, so it is easy to choose them and never notice that you shouldn't have. I wonder whether this could be handled better somehow. ITookSomePhotos (talk) 20:10, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
@ITookSomePhotos: Can you say which category entry fields have this problem? Because when I enter that category in the one on Special:Upload, it gets automatically converted into the correct category when I click "OK". Similarly if I try to add it to a file using HotCat or enter it into Cat-a-lot. --bjh21 (talk) 21:22, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
I used the Upload Wizard. I uploaded some pictures of the ship "SS Shieldhall", typed "SS Shie..." in the category field, and then selected Category:SS Shieldhall from the list. Later, when for interest I went to look at what other images there were in that category, I found only mine, plus the redirection notice. The I manually changed my images to Category:Shieldhall (ship, 1955). This has happened to me before, with other categories too, though I can't remember specific examples now, but most probably these were also entered via the Upload Wizard. ITookSomePhotos (talk) 23:29, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
Things like that are exactly why I usually just nominate obsolete categories for deletion instead of redirecting them. 99% the redirect isn't useful anyway and it just cause more problems or work in the long run. There's absolutely no reason the few redirects that are worth having should show up in search results though. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:09, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
I mean sure they are helpful in some cases. I didn't say they are absolutely worthless, but I've seen plenty of instances where the category should have just been deleted instead of redirected. The fact is that they are way over used. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:10, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
HotCat automatically converts the redirect cat and it's only a problem if the two category titles start of the same way because then one may wonder which of the two autocompletes are the one to pick.
For categories in the Upload Wizard, people already called for this in the Upload Wizard improvements talk page, e.g. here but maybe there should be a new thread about this since it probably should be fixed and HotCat already does this. I think files are automatically moved out of redirect categories and usually also out of disambiguation cats. If somebody knows whether this is done automatically please add info about this (like how long it takes).
As mentioned in that thread about Upload Wizard improvements, files are moved out of redirected categories by RussBot. Based on its recent contributions it runs daily, so you should allow at least a day for a new upload to be moved out of redirected categories. --bjh21 (talk) 12:18, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
are all pages in main and category namespaces supposed to be categorised? if so then perhaps an abusefilter can be created to prevent creation of such pages without any "Category" or "{{" in source? (pages are categorised either directly or by transcluding a template.) RZuo (talk) 11:12, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
My experience is that especially some bulk bot uploads from external sources (like flickr) are not properly categorized or not categorized at all. While inexperienced users fail to categorize quite often, they do not upload such huge numbers of media to commons. So coping with lacking categories by inexperienced users is manageable. But bulk uploaders can work around such an abusefilter by adding some not helpful category like Category:Files from xxxx stream on flickr needing categories and not taking care for proper categorization. Even if bulk uploaders do proper categorization, they will do this in a second step after uploading - an abusefilter will just disable their usual procedures.
Category:Uncategorized categories is "mostly empty" at the moment, but only because it was recently winnowed down from over 1500 categories. A year ago, it had ballooned to about 8000, and those past 5000 in alphabetical order couldn't even be seen in the list. - Jmabel ! talk06:27, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
Mandatory settings must be made regarding image classification before uploading them. Otherwise, the site will be flooded with images and it will be difficult to find images when searching. Mohmad Abdul sahib02:05, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
There is an uncategorized tag, but what about a categories need to be improved tag? Like something I would add in the event that I see a random photo on a farm somewhere in Japan but all it is categorized as is just "Japan" Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me)04:37, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
Hi everyone, we recently had an alert about the CfD on the issue of “Georgia” here in the village pump, and now I realized that “Historical images” is eerily similar. The result of this second CfD was essentially: "delete and upmerge to Category:History". There is sound reasoning to do so, but we're talking about the previous parent category to numberless sub categories (I cannot even give estimations on a probable number... tens of thousands?), which are currently all in a waiting list for getting deleted and upmerged, one by one. This campaign is lasting for months already, I have no clue what the percentage of completion is on that front. Various angry protests of various kinds against this action have not been organized well, and the prevailing counter-argument is: "the CfD lasted many years, we reached consensus, there were no counter-proposals".
My concerns on this issue were close to nil previously (again: there was sound reasoning), but now I've checked Commons:CFD for guidelines on CfDs that process multiple categories. The guidelines imply that the concerned categories should be mentioned in the CfD, but that was not done in either of these two cases. Only the top-most parent category was put up for debate, and I'm fairly certain now: The reason it took five years to gather a meager ten votes was not because there was no interest. Rather, there were only ten votes because close to nobody was aware that this debate was ongoing. Not until the bulldozers arrived at the front doors.
Sound reasoning and good intentions or not: Not notifying those who are going feel the impact of your decision, is the behavior of the Vogons from "Hitchhiker to the Galaxis".
The particular CfDs I linked initially should not be debated here. I'd rather like to focus on our CfD procedures. In fundamental cases like these two mentioned above - can we agree that all concerned child categories (i.e. the ones that are going to be affected by the CfD, because of similar naming conventions) should have the same CfD notification in their header? --Enyavar (talk) 23:31, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't say Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/09/Category:Towers in Iran is the same as the one for "historical images" because there's a pretty clear guideline I was following. The CfD was only started because someone decided to edit war me and a couple of admins over it. Otherwise the CfD wouldn't have been necessary. I don't really think it was necessary to notify everyone who came within 100 miles of a "towers" category in the last 20 years in that case though. Since again, 99% of the issue that led the CfD was caused by a single user.
Really, the same goes for the "historical images" CfD. Although I do think it should have at least been announced on the Village Pump after it was closed. It clearly wouldn't have been workable for the closing admin to notifying everyone who was going to be impacted by it though. Same goes for the nominator putting a CfD notification in the header of every category involved. It's ridiculous to suggest people should notify hundreds of people or put a notification in the header of potentially thousands of categories just for the outcome of a CfD to be valid. Neither one is really a fair, workable way to do things. There should have at least been a notification about the outcome of the CfD for "historical images" on the Village Pump once it was closed though, but that's more then enough IMO. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:11, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
I think it would be better if a large-scale CfD was announced at the village pump right after it was opened rather than closed, so more people can read the discussion and participate. Once a discussion is closed you're not supposed to start it up again. ReneeWrites (talk) 14:20, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
Either way. The main issue for me is that I just don't think it's fair to expect whomever opens the CfD to add the notification template to hundreds or thousands of sub-categories. Although it's debatable what makes something a "super-CfD" to begin with and the expectation should be that people normally find them through Commons:Categories for discussion. To the degree that it's not a good way to find important CfDs is more about the backlog then anything. It wouldn't be as much of an issue if there wasn't such a huge backlog though. ---Adamant1 (talk) 06:53, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
Of course, we have so many CfDs, and what I called here "Super-CfDs" are exceptionally rare. Just because a CfD is about a top-most super-category (like here) does not mean that all sub-categories need to be notified. In case of Category:Past, only the super-category itself will be affected, no cascading effects. So no need to notify, of course.
But: Once it becomes clear that a CfD will have impact on its structured subcategories (like deletion or renaming), all these subcategories should get a notification. These rare and special discussions are long-lasting anyway, so if there are hundreds or more of impacted subcategories that all have the same naming structure (like "Historical images of" or "in/of Georgia"), a bot-job should be tasked with inserting the CfD-note on all these subcategories. This should not be the job of the original CfD-opener (for example, in case that the CfD is uncontroversially rejected or doesn't change anything in the sub-categories). But once it becomes clear that a large impact will happen as a result, then a wide-spread notification is necessary, before continuing the CfD for another appropriately long time. And I would hope that our guidelines can be amended, to include this as a future rule. --Enyavar (talk) 12:52, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
I guess you could do it with a bot. But it seems like derailing to put the notifications on the pages once it becomes clear that a CfD will have impact on its structured subcategories. There's already going to be clear consensus to delete or rename the categories at that point. So the only reason to find more people to participate in the CfD would be to change the outcome. Especially since people who created the categories to begin with, which realistically are the being notified about the CfD at that point, are going to vote to a certain way. How is that any different then canvasing? --Adamant1 (talk) 22:36, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
Familytree
@Enhancing999: See: Category:Byington Ford A change was just made to collapse the family tree function in categories as the default. Now it isn't obvious that the navigation device is there. What are people's preferences? Which is the most useful? RAN (talk) 13:14, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't recall ever seeing this before and don't see the purpose of it here. If I want to know genealogical information, Wikidata and Wikipedia are appropriate for that. I guess that it's useful for navigating within the same family, but that is pretty niche and probably not something I would ever use. That said, I generally don't like auto-collapsing any actual content and the default should be for these to be uncollapsed. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯13:16, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't see how that responds to what I wrote, but it does seem to respond to the original comment. How is what you wrote relevant to what I wrote? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯13:47, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
You write that you prefer it in an uncollapsed form. If you read my comment and its link to additional discussion then you discover that your preference leads to category pages being replaced by family trees. I think this response both to the original comment and yours. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:50, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
I think it should be collapsed if it is to be included in category pages. That's not really what category pages are for, not how or where people look for such data and it hides category contents (mainly subcats and files) as well as cause UI issues. Another example. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:44, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
The new template has been around since 2019, replacing the hand built trees that been around for a decade or more. You only see them where the person is a member of a large family such as in royal/noble lines. It isn't decorative, it is a navigation device. It sometimes is the only way to see that there is a disconnection in the family, caused by incorrect merges or the deletion of someone in the family when someone doesn't realize it has a structural need. The problem is that in the current collapsed state it is not obvious that a tree is present. --RAN (talk) 16:59, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
The problem is that in the current collapsed state it is not obvious that a tree is present. Because the way it's wrapped into a collapsed box is having it show only the text "Byington Ford (Q5004096) [Expand]" (in this example) instead of e.g. "Show family tree [Expand]". The name is already in the cat so redundant and the Q number is not useful to the reader and also already on the page via the infobox. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:07, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
I think "autocollapse" is the old version for collapsed state. It must have been designed to be collapsed.
The header of the template should be improved. Merely using the name of a person and a quid doesn't really explain what it's meant to be. This isn't really better when it's expanded and covers the entire screen. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 17:08, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
One thing I like about the wrapper on Category:Thomas Jefferson is that it actually says "Family Tree". If that text got added in the template header it would already tell people a lot more on what the information is about before/without having to expand it. ReneeWrites (talk) 18:20, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
Looking at the Thomas Jefferson example: do I understand correctly that the tree reads right-to-left, and that for the central figure there is no indication who is the other parent of their various children, nor is there any indication of legitimate vs. illegitimate offspring? - Jmabel ! talk19:03, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
Oh my goodness, this is heinous: now there are two collapsed boxes and you have to vertically scroll within a div?!?!? This is inaccessible and poor web design, folks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯19:11, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
About the label issue, it's seems that the default text is "Family Tree (tree of ancestors and descendants)", but somehow this is overwritten sometimes by the QID. It seems that the template is just not used as designed: Sample at Category:Ulrica Christina Wellingk, the default is overwritten with |title={{Q|Q104549892}}. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 19:15, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
For translation purposes, it would be better if that label came directly from the template. In the sample, |entityId=Q104549892|title={{Q|Q104549892}} could be limited to |entityId=Q104549892, if the QID isn't determined directly from the category.
To sum it up: the following maintenance seems to be needed:
2 have collapsed be default but allow that to be changed manually to open. We have Categories called X family or X noble family, here you expect to see the tree by default. --RAN (talk) 15:58, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
3 if using the year function, take out the line space between the two so it is more compact and put the years in parentheses to match our style guide. --RAN (talk) 15:58, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
I would say always collapsed. This is a media repository; family trees are metadata that we may keep here for convenience, but they should not dominate the page. It's easy enough to open it if that is what you want. - Jmabel ! talk23:03, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't see how to make any individual tree not-collapsed for the display when a category is opened. When I am working on a noble family, it would nice to have the tree open while I am working on it. RAN (talk) 02:09, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
There seems to be {{Book}} (most likely) with {{{publication date}}} set to the date. Assuming it is correctly done, or corrected beforehand, a bot can easily categorize that info -- DaxServer (talk) 17:22, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Hi, whatever "en SD" is, it seems to not help at all with search results. When I search for "1799-12-17", the Journal de Bruxelles does not appear in the search results (with quote marks not at all, without quote marks not before literally tens of thousands of other manuscripts from different dates, some of them decades/centuries earlier/later than 1799. Furthermore, the Category:1799-12-17 is so empty that it appears as if Commons does not have any media regarding that specific date. Only your link proves the contrary. So I think that WD-en-SD could also benefit from some categorization.
What good are the vast newspaper archives of Commons if they are buried and inaccessible unless you know the title of an accessible newspaper? Please tell me what was in the news around the world, on 1844-02-20 or another random date. --Enyavar (talk) 05:38, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
It is in the category 1799 newspapers. I have my doubts that a specific publishing date is of any use in researching a specific event. At that time there was no instant communication, and all news travelled slowly. So in practice the newspaper got dispatches from different places and times. In the issue of 76 (12 december 1799), there are many dates and places: al in the year 1799:
Ratisbonne 28-11 (latest incoming news in the morning)
If you looking for a specific event, you must look at all issues, months after. News across the Atlantic could even take more than a month. Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:13, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
That's true, but who expects pre-telegraph newspapers to print news from the other side of the globe? That is why I strongly suspect that the issue of long news-travel times stops being this noteworthy after the 1870s. And even the weird French Revolutionary Calendar dates you give above, are not that problematic.
The thing is that Wikidata is not working either: Yes, Q46834135 = [Journal de Bruxelles (1790-1800)/83-1799] exists and has a publishing date. Now what? There are no links to any other media of the same publishing date, nor are there links to previous or later issues of the JdB itself. The publishing date (P577) is apparently not even meant to be a searchable item on wikidata: "P577 = 17 December 1799" --> No match found. "P577 = 1799-12-17" --> No match found either.
The search function here on Commons actually works: My search for "date = 1897-03-16" immediately spits out a few newspapers as a search result - thankfully - but that still does not mean that the search results would match my request (1897-03-04 and 1897-07-16 are among the results), and newspapers without proper description attributes ("date = 1897" and March 16 only in the file title) are again lost to the search filter. The search function can only help that much, after all.
Furthermore when relying on search, it remains impossible to browse between different newspapers that were released on the same date. Nor is it easily possible to go a few days forward or backward. Take for example The Halletsville Herald, The Abilene Reporter and The Daily Hesperian (I found all of them with the query above): Neither of them is meaningfully categorized at all; while the Galveston Tribune is at least categorized by year. And the categories are certainly not sorted by date either. --Enyavar (talk) 14:23, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
The Journal de Bruxelles is a nice and precious project of nine preserved issues. Categorizing less than 100 categories/files is a task that a dedicated editor can quickly tackle. Sorting all available newspapers on Commons by publication date is a different thing, and I would not suggest doing so if we only had a few isolated copies of each paper.
Many big and small newspapers have their own categories, and files with the newspaper issues often follow standardized patterns with regards to descriptions/filenames, like the ones I linked above. Some of them have hundreds and thousands of digitized issues.
Many thousands of files already have the attribute of "date = YYYY-MM-DD", right here either in the description on Commons, or in the filename like those I pointed out in the initial question.
It is these that I'd like to be more accessible. Category:Newspapers published 1900-01-01 and basically thousands of days before and after this date, have a huge potential. If a bot can be tasked, one newspaper-archive-category after the other, I believe no day between 1850 and 1950 will not have at least a few files, and that is before Commons editors manually categorize the many "very incomplete" archives (like Category:Le Gaulois du dimanche with merely 27 files).
And sure, I am aware that his is casually asking to create 36'525 categories and more.
And sure, I have more concurrent projects and to-dos than I will ever have time.
And sure, I don't know the first thing about bots.
Lets start with creating the missing YYYY-MM-DD categories. I just created Category:1799-12-21 and Category:1799-12-31 for the Journal de Bruxelles issues. (And 1800-01-31, 1800-02-05, 1800-02-11, 1800-03-08) If the date gets crowded, we can always add the more specific Newspapers published xxxx categories.Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:09, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
Agree this could be useful. IMO YYYY-MM-DD should have been the preferred date format for Commons from the beginning, and we should eventually transition to using it (and get rid of categorizing by English language month names). -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 15:07, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
Just close it guys asap, any way to do so is good, as per the comment there: "To avoid further edit warring and loss of brain cells... " . It is utterly inconsequential how these categories are called, see the arbitrariness categorization theory here: Fuzzy_set. These (potentially mis-)categorized pics are searched for in (and by) multidimensional vector spaces anyway: LLMs; via image recognition engines: Computer_vision, and that is for the starters... Zezen (talk) 05:54, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
Just an FYI, but the CfD doesn't have anything to do with what the categories are called. It revolves around if main categories for towers should be child categories of ones for buildings by shape. Since at least IMO, "tower" isn't a shape. Regardless, it's not about the names of the categories. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:38, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
Re: 'if main categories for towers should be child categories of ones for buildings by shape' - same problem (or lack of it): the debate over whether “towers” should be categorized under “Buildings by shape” could be seen as a matter of degree rather than a strict yes-or-no decision. This approach (see again fuzzy sets, recursive ontology entities...) acknowledges that categories can overlap and that elements can belong to multiple categories to varying extents. In practice, see: Thomas Aquinas who discussed smth similar in Summa Theologiae, Part II (On Angels) Chapter LII § 3: "Whether Many Angels Can Be in the Same Place at the Same Time [e.g. at the needle's pin]"...
Fate of image that is broken, wrong, unused and duplicated simultaneously
The image in question was brought to the Graphic Lab when User:Swiãtopôłk discovered it displays as a white rectangle. After looking at it, I found that:
The image uses some exotic SVG features, but is easy to fix
The file had a classic Inkscape bug, so it should display properly with Inkscape. It would have displayed properly on Commons until April 2024.
The file has been around for a year, so I would not just delete it; there should be a redirect.
For me, I would not bother deleting the file. It represents the OceanGate logo, so any errors are minor. If you believe the file does not represent the flag, then add {{Fact disputed}} with the reason.
Created a derivative work, unsure how to tag it when uploading
Good evening. I've created a derivative of the work File:Balanced_justice_scale_silhouette,_small.svg, featuring the same image, but overlaid with a red X. The use of this work will be to create a "No legal threats" template, for use on the English Vikidia website. Could you please tell me, while uploading, how I should tag a derivative file, or whether that comes as part of the upload process? Thanks! DaneGeld (talk) 20:05, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
@Nosferattus: Now that's odd. I see the chains when I look at the file on my PC, and when I view the file on commons. I presume what I have is a cached version which I should have purged. My guess is that I've not grouped the chains with the rest of the image before saving the file, and then exporting it. I'm not too well at the moment, but I'll correct the error tomorrow, and re-upload the file. Thanks for pointing it out! DaneGeld (talk) 19:13, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
@Nosferattus: - This is getting weird now. I repaired the svg that I produced this from, grouped all the files correctly, and exported it as a png file. The new version is now available - but I have a problem with it, that I can't solve. The preview in the file history, now shows the chains in place, and if you click to view the file, they show up too. BUT - They don't show up when you just go to view the file, and I'm mystified as to what the hell I've done. I've never had this much trouble getting an svg to png export to work. Any thoughts? Thanks. DaneGeld (talk) 21:13, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Hi. Schulenburg is mentioned very briefly in Bjørn Ochsner's book of Danish photographers before 1920 (in Danish). The book knows his first names and a probable year of birth. Wikidata has been updated with those data. Cheers Rsteen (talk) 04:19, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Requesting some simple category renaming
I believe his should be easy for someone who uses AWB.
Hi. I like to delete older version of a file but I can't manage to find the correct way to do it. Should I go to deletion request, contact administrator or there are a another dedicated page for it ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicolas22g (talk • contribs)
You can add a speedy deletion template to the file with the request to delete the respective file version. You can highlight the file version, because I had a case where the file in total was accidentally deleted :D -- PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 06:10, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Thanks ! Total deletion is indeed my fear. I'm putting a G7 on these and crossing my fingers that my comment will be taken into account successfully. Nicolas22g (talk) 12:16, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Hi. As a user of Commons:Upload (with the basic upload form) I have observed problems in the upload process. These problems have ocurred within the last week, and they are intermittent, not continuous. First problem is that there is sometimes no "preview" button. So you can not see the result of your upload and catch errors. You just have to upload. Second problem is, that after the upload you can sometimes not add or edit categories. They are locked, so you have to edit the file information manually. As written, these problems are rather new and do not occur all the time. Have anybody else noticed this? Cheers Rsteen (talk) 04:38, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Similar situation to many other countries. It is better there than somewhere in Category:Media needing categories requiring human attention. Sometimes I give an image without category from, say, Indonesia the Category:Unidentified subjects in Indonesia when it is not clear from the filename, the image itself or the (often poetic) description what the essence is. Bad pictures I just leave without a category. For example, someone who speaks Indonesian can tackle a subcategory to put 10% of the best photos in the right category. Wouter (talk) 09:06, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
I tried to nominate Category:Unidentified logos for deletion a few years ago but it got shot down. At the end of the day most of the categories are just used as dumps because people don't want to spend the effort better categorizing the images. 99% of the time the images aren't even unidentified to begin with though. So at least IMO the categories are essentially worthless. Their just an extremely low effort way to empty main categories. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:14, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Issue with Wikidata Item
Hello. I recently created Category:Cage of Agony and matched it to Wikidata item Q129951709. However, the commons category is not pulling data from the Wikipedia page, but rather is reading "Wikidata item Q129951709 has no claims. Please add some." I am not sure how to resolve this and would be grateful for any assistance. McPhail (talk) 15:36, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
@McPhail: It won't pull from the Wikipedia page, it pulls from the Wikidata page, which indeed has no claims.
Repeated file renaming requests, how to react to their occurence
Hello,
I am a filemover and came across this request. The requested move seems to be for that the new name is similarly styled to the other 2 in Category:DC candidates TSE portraits, but it does not really convince me as it would only be "a bit better looking" (maybe! capital lettering is not nice to read), per COM:FRNOT. Hence, I declined the request. Now, it was back again in the queue (denied again by me). Is there any procedure on how to deal with repeated renaming requests after a denial, or any established way of appeals? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 19:11, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
@Grand-Duc: As far as I know there's no formal review process for file moving. In my experience what usually happens when I decline a request and someone disagrees is that they request it again and either I change my mind or I leave it for another filemover to deal with. I don't think I've seen anyone try to get a fourth opinion after two declines from different filemovers. In this case, while criterion 4 obviously doesn't apply I did wonder if Erick Soares3 and KakuLogia+ might be connected in a way that would allow criterion 1 to apply, since they've been making very similar requests. And anyway the overwriting of that file was bad under COM:OVERWRITE and maybe it needs its history splitting. At which point I decided it was all too complicated and I should do something less confusing instead. --bjh21 (talk) 21:31, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
@Bjh21: and the specific dataset is for Category:TSE electoral portraits of 2024 (the general category for this year) or even Category:Files from Portal de Dados Abertos do TSE (about 200 styled the same way in the first page) with almost everything from 2004-2024, while the DC is only for members of this specific party. Criterion 1 is if we were the same uploader, and no, this isn't the case: we are only from the same country, and we are working with this dataset (specially because we are less than a month before the elections and those images are useful in the Wikipédia/Wikidata). Erick Soares3 (talk) 21:38, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
I DON'T THINK FILENAMES SHOULD BE IN ALL CAPS AND ONE SHOULD NOT RENAME CORRECTLY CAPITALIZED FILENAMES TO ALL CAPS. RENAMES ARE NOT HERE FOR SORTING FILES IN CATEGORIES NOR FOR ACHIEVING SOME COSMETIC GOAL.
I would retain the number in brackets (which might or might not originat in the Flickr feed and enables or facilates identification of photographs) but no ALL CAPS. Matthiasb (talk) 07:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Community Wishlist: Let’s discuss how to improve template discovery and reuse
Wish #4: Easy access templates – help users configure the Template dialog to show common and favorite templates.
We have shared on the focus area page how we are seeing this problem, and approaching it. We also have some design mockups to show you.
We are inviting you all to discuss, hopefully support (or let us know what to improve) about the focus area. You can leave your feedback on the talkpage of the focus area.
@STei (WMF): : Just check the thread aboutabove this one. Here’s one for the Community Wishlist: the WMF should drop their nonsensical makework, for it breaks tools maintained by the community. -- Tuválkin✉✇18:10, 13 September 2024 (UTC) Sorry, I noticed the typo only now: I meant to refer to the thread above this one, the one about the (still broken) CropTool. -- Tuválkin✉✇20:36, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
@Tuvalkin, these wishes ranked 5th and 11th in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023, #74 in 2021, and #85 in 2022, respectively, and have been mentioned in different discussions off the Wishlist. This is not a nonsensical choice in my opinion. Is it that you'd rather see a focus area for Commons?
This is also not make-work. Community Tech needs to actually implement a focus area and learn as soon as possible the merits and demerits of this focus area concept, as well as take community feedback, before the next annual planning season which plans to take in more focus areas. Templates is a classic example of a focus area to use for our learning.
Please find below a much more formal background on what Community Tech is trying to do around the Community Wishlist and giving the community a clear path to influencing Product and Tech annual planning:
To enhance the effectiveness of Product and Technology work, the overall goal for the Community Wishlist in the 2024-2025 Annual Plan is to better align movement requests and the Wikimedia Foundation’s future plans. Beginning the end of Q1 2024/25, the new Wishlist wants to do as follows:
The Moderator Tools team, which serves editors with extended rights should identify at least two focus areas from the Community Wishlist in Q1.
3-5 related wishes regarding templates should be bundled, addressed and deployed as improved template features starting Q1 as a proof of concept, guiding the Foundation to incorporate more focus areas into the 2025-26 Annual Plan.
By 2025-26 annual planning cycle, Community Tech must present three focus areas for inclusion in the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2025-26 Annual Plan.
Please note that item #3 hasn't began yet. We are still with #1 and #2.
I think that focus area is far less important than other focus areas that would save contributors much time and also less relevant to WMC than other focus areas or proposals. Maybe sharing a link for all proposals that are WMC-related would be useful (such as the one about WMC media dumps or a WMC copyvio-detecting bot). These template wishes all just seem like nice-to-haves without much benefit and which aren't solving a real problem but can and are implemented quite well by editors and bots sooner or later. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:52, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
Prototyperspective, this is good advise that focus areas relevant to WMC will be more useful. I will do that. Nonetheless the shared/intersecting Wikimedian ways of life made me consider notifying people here too. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 15:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
This stuff is probably pretty far down on the priority list, but their relatively easy things to implement in the grand of scheme things and help the dev team get use to working with Commons. At least they are doing something. It seems like you guys expect them to tackle the hardest things on here first. That's not how it works. And seriously, how many people actually wanted data dumps when you suggested it and what problem does it actually solve? Like someone can't create a python script to scrape the site and re-upload the files to archive.org or something. At least IMO the teams shouldn't be wasting their time on things that can be done extremely easily by normal users through scripts. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:28, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
That was just one example and just one of several. Among the problems it solves is server-load from people scraping the site. These things can't be done extremely easily if at all and this is more about a complete than some random small subset. So far, I don't see any reasons for why it would be relatively easy to implement. I also don't see that reasoning anywhere in the focus area or in the post above. I also don't see any reason why some other suggestions wouldn't also be easy to implement but more useful, such as showing categories on mobile. In any case, dumps, which are also backups, aren't wasted time and can't be done easily so your comment doesn't make sense anyway. Not even considering that this isn't about Commons at all so not even get use[d] to working with Commons makes sense. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:41, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
I'm sure they have some kind of metric to decide what can or can't be implemented and how easily they do something. Although I agree that their reasons for working on these specific things aren't clear, but so what? Their clearly at the beginning of the planning phase here. So things will probably become clearer as they work on it. It seems like your just bike shedding though. And I'm not sure what your talking about in regards to it being hard to do data dumps of files. There's plenty of software out there that consumes images from Commons and there's plenty web scrapers that support other websites. A good portion of both of which are open source. So I'm sure it would be easy to create one.
I'm actually kind of tempted to do it myself but there's to many things working on already. You might look into what's already out there and ask the developers to add support for Commons though. Like Gallery-dl supports a ton of websites. Not Commons, but it also allows for adding costume URLs through text files. You might give that a try and let me know if it works. Then I'll give it a try myself if you can't figure it out when I have the time. Or conversely you could just continue complaining about it for no reason. Whichever. Personally, I prefer the proactive DIY approach since at the end of the day we probably don't want the WMF or their developers having control over most of this. That could just be me though. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:26, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Nowhere do I see them talk about this being easier than the other. You just imagined some random reason in your head. You're talking offtopic. I recently listed available data-scrapers for WMC and there's few and many of them probably don't work or are very impartial. I'm not complaining, you're making offtopic points, I'll look into that software. Dumps was just one random example that is like 5% of my comment but 100% what you're talking about. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:32, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
You're talking offtopic. No, I think your the one doing that by making this data dumps when it has nothing to do with the original topic. All I'm doing is responding to your off-topic complaining. Otherwise be my guest and point out where STei (WMF) said anything about data dumps in their original message. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:40, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Here I was only mentioning it as an example with 2 words, here you were making this all about this particular example. Case closed. I won't continue this wall of mostly offtopic text. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:45, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
I asked where STei (WMF) brought up data dumps in their original message. Not where you did when this had nothing to do with that. I'm sure you get the difference. Anyway, I made one simple comment about it in response to you bringing it up. To the degree it's off-topic or a wall of text is totally on you for making this about that and getting defense. Maybe keep the conversation on topic, put your ego in check, and try not turn it into a debate next time huh? Personally, I'm just happy they are finally giving the project some attention and working on things. Maybe that's just me though. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:53, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
It transcribes the text in the article to the left, but I cannot fault that. It could be fixed by rotating the image and then selecting the transcription area.
@Glrx: That is awesome, I will fix up the few errors by hand. I wasn't even aware of this tool. I just added it to my Chrome toolbar. Thank you. I like that it can operate on the url so I don't have to download anymore. Take a peek at the transcription and do a search on the word "Stillman" and see if you can decipher the intention. I want to migrate the transcription to Wikisource if we can decipher that word--RAN (talk) 23:43, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
New round of proposed changes to UploadWizard: we are looking for your feedback!
Hi all! The Structured Content team will continue, in the following months, to improve the current user experience with UploadWizard. For this reason, we published on our project page the mockups of our proposed changes to the "Release rights" step.
In short, starting from your feedback received with our first round of improvements carried on in Fiscal Year 2023-2024, we suggest making some more changes to the step in which users select if their media is an “own work” or “not own work”. This includes also changes requested by you regarding adding custom public domain tags or license options, as well as a space to clarify AI prompts for AI-generated media.
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Una tantum (talk) 06:36, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
As the first generation after the Intel Core i 14th gen is approaching, I would like to hear some opinions on how we bring structure in the irritating Intel Core nomenclature. We have the Intel Core Duo, the Intel Core 2, the Intel Core i series (represented by Intel Core 3; 5; 7 and 9), and the Intel Core Ultra series (a possible name may be "Intel Core Ultra 9 285K"), including Arrow Lake CPUs (maybe another group will be revealed in the near future?). As the naming scheme itself already causes much irritation, I would like to see how we can prevent this with proper categorizing. Thanks!
My suggestion would not to categorize the images down to that granular of a level to begin with. Otherwise your bound to run into issues. Regardless though there's only superficial differences between CPU models to begin with. Let alone when your talking about images of them. So it seems kind of pointless to categorize the images this granularly. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:45, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't see this as pointless, as the CPUs differ in core numbers and other specifications that can be structurized. And what about the upcoming Core Ultra series? --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 09:43, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
is this use good? (as better than just using the plain timestamp like uploadwizard does?)
imo there're two problems: #1 only the date without the time is used in the template, #2 uses an extra template. RZuo (talk) 18:58, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
It's better than just the plain timestamp because it adds a time related category like "Photographs taken on 2024-09-16" while the plain timestamp does not add any categories. Though, personally, I'd prefer if the default template would be the Template:Taken on as this further allows for categorization by location and then result in more specific categories like "United States photographs taken on 2024-09-16". Time related categories are helpful for historians. Nakonana (talk) 22:07, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
I agree, {{Taken on}} is better. Also, I've always felt that {{According to Exif data}} implies that there's some uncertainty about the date, like we're saying "we don't know the date, but Exif says this" — otherwise, why don't we add it to existing |date= values? Maybe that's just me though! SamWilson06:20, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Missing time is a bit odd even though this may be generally less reliable (#1).
I find the challenge on bread interesting. However, I think it would make sense if the photo challenge focused more on areas where photos are missing rather than making this some Art photography contest.
I thought this site was not mainly for amateur art but for useful/educational images (for example images that can illustrate things on Wikipedia) with there being separate Art-sharing sites for the former. Few people participate in selecting the themes, maybe more people could and also consider where the gaps in media on WMC actually are. See Commons talk:Photo challenge/themes. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:01, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I'm an admin of the Wikimedia Commons Group on Flickr, a group that has, up until now, had no moderation for numerous years. Given my uptick in activity on Flickr (resulting from my uptick on Commons) I'm hoping to change that.
Photographs in the group out to be able to be readily able to be ported to Commons, thereby having a free license. People who sign up for the group agree to that rule. However, currently numerous people are just sharing photographs that they share on numerous other groups for exposure.
I'm a pretty regular user of Flickr and am pretty active on Commons as well. So I'd probably be willing to help out. What exactly does it entail doing though? --Adamant1 (talk) 00:25, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Basically scan the incoming pictures to see if they're using a legitimate license. Remove them if not. Not sure if I want to include a message on their image suggesting they change the license to a free one, many of these people are just submitting everything to groups. Bastique☎ appelez-moi!00:35, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Cool. I could totally do that. I'm pretty knowledgeable about the different licenses out there and what's acceptable or not. You want me to email you my screen name on Flickr or something? --Adamant1 (talk) 00:48, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Is there some policy about how book scans are to be handled? I think it would be best if books and similar literature were uploaded as one PDF document rather than as many scattered separate image files.
This way one can easily download or read them / go through pages and they don't clutter search results or require subcategories for just one literature item. For scans already uploaded, a bot could convert them into PDF files. One can also embed single PDF pages like an image on Wikipedia so there's not really any disadvantage to converting them to document files. Exampleexample. --Prototyperspective (talk) 17:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
How about we leave them as the projects that are using them are uploading them? One may be able to embed single PDF pages, but I don't know how, and it's hard to find the appropriate illustration pages. Not to mention that PDFs use compression, and if the originals were PNGs, converted to JPEG2000 for the PDF, and then converted to JPG for Commons, that makes worse final images than directly working with the original scans.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:19, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
I described several reasons why not to keep them as people and projects upload them. Moreover, they could change how they upload them. Scans of one page of a book are nearly never used on a Wikimedia project and when they are used often having the full book available at the page would be much better and useful. How to embed a specific page of a PDF is described here: Help:PDF#Page. As for quality they could be converted without loss of quality and it doesn't have to be PDF files if there is something better. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:24, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
With a command that converts losslessly. Maybe ImageMagick's convert ./page*.png ./output.pdf already converts losslessly and somebody should check if that is the case. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:20, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
I am not against merging into a pdf or djvu file, but as pointed out previously book illustrations can be used by other projects as well as the title page to illustrate the Wikidata entry. --RAN (talk) 20:51, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Can one not specify the page of a PDF document on Wikidata for the image/cover property? Maybe that functionality can be added. Then people could also upload the cover or a particular image separately rather than uploading a whopping 300 files for one book. That is also useful because the title can be more descriptive and here is an example of an image from a PDF file that is used on Wikidata...it's much better than having the image just as some whole-page generically titled document scan image. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:04, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
As far as I'm aware, the default thumbnail for PDF/DjVu documents is always a thumbnail of the first page. Which is a shame; there are a lot of books where that page is a Google Books notice, or an image of a badly damaged cover. Being able to override that with a thumbnail of the title page would be a huge improvement. Omphalographer (talk) 21:33, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
@Prototyperspective: I feel like the benefits of something like this would depend on the subject of the book. Like if its mainly or only text, cool. Convert it into a PDF and get rid of the JPEGs. There's of books with photographs or illustrations of historical subjects and places where it makes sense to have individual images. And not just for other projects but in general. Its kind of redundant to have individual images for books that are purelu text though but I think they are easier to transcribe for other projects that way. But I'd still argue its pointless (if not against the guidelines and /or goals of the project) to have jpegs of individual pages that are purely text on our end. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
I tend to agree with the idea that it should just one file, but PDF support hasn't really gotten better. It's actually somewhat broken and even the WMF person in charge of Commons has no idea if or when it's going to be fixed. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 21:49, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Weak oppose Maybe for type-written works it makes sense to only have a PDF, but for hand-written it's often really useful to have higher-resolution files and if they were combined into PDFs the PDFs could be quite large. A small example could be something like this where it's often useful to be able to zoom right in on a letter to better see the pen strokes etc. It's also more likely that people preparing PDFs will end up with trusting whatever their scanner software gives them and by doing so be throwing away information that we'd rather keep (e.g. postmarks on letters). I wonder if more could be done with the search system and structured data to make it easier to exclude individual scans? SamWilson04:47, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
Maybe a Wikidata property for scan quality or something that could be used to push bad quality PDFs and images down in the search results? I've been wanting something like that for awhile now to suppress crappy scans of postcards from the search results. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:02, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
Good call. I didn't know that existed. Although the "for original size" thing seems a little needless, but whatever. I don't see why it wouldn't work. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:26, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
If you have poorly printed pages, where OCR does not work, pdf is not an usefull format. For the Category:Journal de Bruxelles, I scan most pages, two at a time folded open. I have a standard naming principle for the files. In Wikisource the pages have to be manualy typed over as the OCR does not work. A lot of work, but a usefull result.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:16, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
Comment I've been working on Category:Helix (newspaper). If these had been PDFs, I'd have had to extract files for almost every page to document them decently. Yes, there are probably times whe PDFs are best, but it's not a universal. - Jmabel ! talk12:15, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
Comment something I find suboptimal with individual pages is that {{Book}} doesn't really seem to be adapted for it. Also, when actually using elements from a page, one generally needs to do another crop just for that part. In the end, that part and the original page might end up categorized for that content. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:23, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
Remember nothing actually gets deleted, so we are not saving any space. We also have had the case where a page was missing, a page was out of order, or a page was upside down in the pdf, and we had to recompile the file. Perhaps if all the individual pages were in a folder there would be less clutter once the pdf was created. --RAN (talk) 18:01, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
It's not about space but about clutter. It also causes misleading upload stats and clutter the UploadedFiles page. The main issue is the clutter in the search results and from views that e.g. combine categories. The many subcategories are also clutter. Then it's also hard to download the file and a main problem is that it's hard to read a document if it's in dispersed pages instead of in one document. And I think this also applies to old 1800s drawings of organisms which are not really useful anymore, not what people look for, and for which there are now high-quality photos & illustrations. If an image is needed one can specify the page of the PDF or extract an image (that is different from a whole page) from it. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:21, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
This also applies to old 1800s drawings of organisms which are not really useful anymore, not what people look for, and for which there are now high-quality photos & illustrations. I strongly disagree with this. You have made the common mistake of assuming that what you find useful or interesting is what other people also find useful or interesting, and what you find irrelevant or annoying is what other people also find irrelevant or annoying. For some users of the Commons, "old 1800s drawings of organisms" are in fact more useful than modern photographs, and individual page scans are more useful than PDFs, especially if PDFs of the same public domain documents are already widely available from Google Books, Internet Archive, Hathi Trust, and other repositories. We all use the resources here differently, and the specific resources you like to use and the way you like to use them are not universally shared. There may be good reasons to consider changing the way that multipage documents are handled, but generalizations about "what people look for" based solely on your own preferences are not among them. Crawdad Blues (talk) 20:00, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
No, I did not make this mistake – maybe I have made this mistake of not clarifying which of my statements are a statement of opinion/argumentation. It's not surprising that there are users who think so since there are users who upload such images particularly as separate pages and with that sentence I was addressing an earlier comment arguing it would be good to do so for images that contain images. These users are very few and I have yet to see any actual usefulness case / application of such images. It's great that we have them on WMC, but I don't see why having them in separate scans would be reasonable. Please make a survey or look at pageviews or explain specific use-cases with examples if you think what I said is wrong. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:17, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
(With such images I was referring to separate pages as scanned page image files, not whether or not these files are on WMC.) This proposal is mainly about documents with text that include images, not documents which contain only drawings as a page. I think an example of a WMC search that shows mostly scans of a few books and burying what most users are looking for is needed to illustrate what I mean. Here's a bad but maybe still useful example: if you search for "animal" there is an undue number of scans from Category:The animal kingdom, arranged after its organization, forming a natural history of animals, and an introduction to comparative anatomy (1834) at the top instead of higher-quality drawings/artworks and photos (like the collages at the very top). They can be useful but often inaccurate unreliable 1834 drawings are usually not what the user can use for any of the purpose such as adding them to a WP article or illustrating the species. These images (the book) are still useful and it's worse for other searches. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:35, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
I agree with Crawdad Blues: images of images from books (and other documents), like drawings, prints and photographs, should stay and be images: one in a file. Then they are easy to reuse and then end users do not have to go through the upload process, but can directly use the file. For a type-written, printed book that primarely is about text: yes, then a PDF file is easier, for searching within the text and to leafing through it. JopkeB (talk) 05:17, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
It depends a lot on each specific case, but, if uploading a new book, I think PDF is the best option. If the book contains images that are interesting in their own right, they should be uploaded as separate files (or even be left for another user who is specially interested to upload them, if you don't have time for it). For already uploaded books, I think that existing images should not be deleted, but creating a new PDF book can be a good idea.
I think Commons, for some cases, can be a good book deposit/library, in addition to Wikisource (with OCR or some freely licensed or public domain original PDF books, you can even have machine-readable PDF books in Commons with relatively little effort, while migrating their content to Wikisource can be a really big work in many cases). MGeog2022 (talk) 10:51, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
You cannot migrate PDFs to Wikisource for the reason that you can't upload any files at Wikisource. (As in: there is not an upload page at all). Wikisource does not host any files. It's Commons what is intended to be used. Matthiasb (talk) 07:12, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
while migrating their content to Wikisource can be a really big work in many cases: by this, I'm talking about converting them to wiki format. In those cases that converting them to wiki at Wikisource is too much work, the full book could be hosted at Commons as a single PDF file, even if it (its content, not the PDF file as such) is never migrated to Wikisource. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:15, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Oh, I understand. For this case the different language versions perhaps have different policies. I don't know about other than the German WS. In the German WS we differ between texts which are digitized available. Some users collect any link to GB, IA, (university) libraries, Haithi Trust where a scanned work by a German language author is available wether it's a PDF or some other file format. When a user wants to transcribe a text a copy of the original at commons is requested so that other can verify and correct the transcription. A reader-only would not use commons but the original link to Google Books, Internet Archive and the like, of if the transcription is complete, rather to the transcprited version at WS since it might be better to read than a possibly bad scan. See for ex. s:de:Justinus Kerner showing both cases. Matthiasb (talk) 22:44, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Well, I was talking about the case that the user wants to upload the public domain or freely licensed book to Wikimedia, but without converting its full content to wiki format. Maybe we aren't a host for PDF books if they aren't to be converted to wiki format at Wikisource, and Internet Archive is the right place for uploading and viewing PDF books. I don't know the exact Commons policy on this. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:58, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Oppose Strongly opposing. If such PDFs would be converted one (the person converting it) would have to make sure that each and every Wikisource page would work as before. If we have 300 pages in the PDF that makes 300 pages on WS to be changed. I am not sure about wether they are needed to be modified only on one place; this Wikisource techniques/syntaxes are quiet obscure to my though I am taking part in the project. So what would be achieved? Editing tenthousands of Wikisource pages to reduce the number of PDF files for several ten thousands whereas we are hosting 120 million files on Commons? Produces lot of server load for nothing. --Matthiasb (talk) 07:02, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Not this proposal. I don't think you're voting on what is proposed here – at least it seems like that from your rationale. This is about people uploading at times hundreds of images instead of one PDF file to WMC. It doesn't have to do with Wikisource. Those images are not used in Wikisource if that's what you mean. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:52, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
I think so. If one finds a PDF file on GB or in internet archive or a haithi trust he will keep this PDF together. We not need to diskuss that. There is a difference if the user does the scan himself. Fox example my scanner is capable to scan several pages in a row but never ever I would scan 300 pages in a row. The phone might ring or another interruption would occur. There is no chance to get more than 20 pages or so in a row in one PDF with my Canon. And after the scanning, I don't have the software to combine it and if I had my hardware won't make it due to hardware restrictions. My machine is about ten years old, you understand. Or I even have another image file format, jpg or tiff. Matthiasb (talk) 22:01, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Nonsensical. Really absurd at this point. Just use some software to combine images into a PDF file which also works on very old PCs. Takes a minute maybe and you don't necessarily have to do it yourself. That's better than cluttering the search results here for example. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:38, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Weak support If a complete book scan of x-dozen up to some x-hundred single text pages gets uploaded, and is not in use for Wikisource (!), then I think that all the pages can be collated into a single PDF, which can then replace the single-page scans. Note that my opinion states "can", not "should". It depends on the intended use case and the interest that gets placed on a book. If all single-page-scans remain contained in their intended scan-category, I have no problem with them being loose, not bound. Also, I checked the first example in the OP again: yes, these are single-page scans, but only of the 37 illustrated pages from a 200-page book. For a PDF, we need to have all pages; while the ones in the category should have the text clipped away, to make the images usable as illustrations (Edit, upon rereading, this point was also made by Adamant1, so I support that opinion). On another hand, if PDF-conversion means OCR treatment is simpler, then I'll strongly support this. --Enyavar (talk) 13:45, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Proposal for a path forward for bringing together folks with a stake in Commons’ future
While at Wikimania, I was able to spend time with folks who participate in and contribute to Commons. I attended the Photowalk community session, where we had a lovely and rainy meander along a brick lined city walkway, where we saw lots of iconic buildings and neighborhoods in Katowice, as well as a lovely park and views of trains and city life. I also was able to sit down with 10 people attending Wikimania who I’d previously met and talked with me about Commons, or who had discussed my recent comments on-wiki about the future of Commons and some of the big challenges and questions we face and need to tackle together.
In that meeting, I spent a lot of time listening to perspectives and the challenges that technical contributors, photographers, organizers, GLAM advocates and individuals just representing themselves each see as we try to determine what next steps to take.
I asked the group to help me think about what comes next, and how to work together to bring the many parts of Commons together in a meaningful way, so that we can start to make some important decisions together. Any choice we make will involve tradeoffs – of attention, time and resources. And I’d like us to all be able to do that with as much information as we can bring together and put on a shared table as possible.
Some of the perspectives I heard included:
The Wikimedia Commons Query Service doesn’t work very well and needs focus.
Wiki Loves contests attract a lot of attention, but haven’t been optimized for getting new contributors. Things like licenses, templates and other complexities might be significant barriers to new contributors. Other sites don’t have such complex workflows and maybe attract new folks much more easily.
Each time a project starts and ends, we lose important knowledge because we don’t have continuity across projects or anyone really working to ensure that we have continuity over time.
Some projects focus on small batch uploads, and other projects focus on doing very large batch uploads. The disconnect in approach and goals may be problematic when trying to prioritize where we focus attention and effort, particularly from the WMF.
We don’t have clarity about which tools should be used for producing, reusing, finding and reporting photos, and some tools that have been made don’t have enough functionality to be truly useful and to replace older tools.
There's a tension between admins and patrollers asking for more things to prevent vandalism, but also campaign creators who want lower barriers to entry. We also have the tech communities with needs for APIs, Commons embedders who would like different features on other projects, and yet more needs from photographers user groups, GLAM professionals, and external reusers. We asked: how could we go about helping these folks see each other, and help everyone understand some of the tradeoffs involved in supporting such a complex project?
In listening to each other, people remarked that they could see how different people’s perspectives were, and also that there were perspectives not represented in the room. We spent some time trying to name them, and discussed what a good next step might be to try and help one another come to some conclusions about how to best prioritize the limited resources of the Foundation, and how best to ask for help from the whole of our movement.
As a result of this discussion, several people suggested that regular meetings that helped to surface and then explore the challenges we now face among Commons contributors and users would be really helpful, with the intention that this will lead us to identify key strategic trade offs.
We have a wide variety of tools ranging from very specific to very general, and we have many sub-communities with different needs and agendas. The Foundation and contributors all need to understand this landscape in order to plot a way forward together.
So my proposal for the next year or so is to start having monthly forums, where we pose some of the big questions around Commons, and come together as a community. I think this will involve a live discussion as well as on-wiki discussions to get to the heart of some of the big tradeoffs and questions that we all need to face together.
I am committed to finding a better way of supporting Commons, and I see the need to get to a shared goal and a timeframe for achieving a clear set of things. And I will need help from all of you to identify the most important problems to solve, which ones not to solve right now, and then the right kinds of solutions for supporting a vibrant Commons into the future.
@SDeckelmann-WMF, maybe some things I said in my comment here are of interest to you when requesting resources for Commons at WMF. Maybe some improvements to Commons can be seen as secondary, but Commons as a whole in no way is so. Unlike other WMF projects (all of them important as they are), Commons content is continuously shown in Wikipedia articles themselves, so Commons is, in some way, truly part of Wikipedia, without question. MGeog2022 (talk) 11:18, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
I'm definitely interested in participating in monthly forums. I would suggest that rather than have them at the same time of day each time, we might want have them at different times of day from one month to another and post the schedule very publicly, because Commons is such a globe-spanning project, and any time of day we picked is going to be very inconvenient for a significant number of people who might like to participate. - Jmabel ! talk15:56, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Hi, My main general worry is that Commons workload is increasing, and there are new legal, technical, and social challenges, but there is no increase in the number of people to maintain this all. Specially the number of administrators is decreasing. The challenges include AI-generated images, new kinds of media (Commons:Project scope/Allowable file types: 3D rendering, video was marginal, but is now mainstream, etc.), the huge complexity to understand, document and maintain the legal information, etc. Commons is in a way victim of its success. People confuse Commons with social media. It was a small project nobody really cared, and it seems to have become the place to advertise companies and people. We now delete as many out-of-scope content and selfies as copyright violations. The formers were just a small percentage of deletions a few years back. I have suggested several times a recruitment campaign for admins and patrollers. The WMF could help organize crash courses on copyright. Moreover I think more people would volunteer if they feel supported by the WMF in one way or another (better tools, less bugs, fast answer to technical issues, etc.). Yann (talk) 17:41, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Thank you, @SDeckelmann-WMF for putting forward this proposal. The Wikimedia communities, and not the least the Wikimedia Commons community, have plenty of different workflows, priorities and purposes. Putting all our brains together we'll probably find common ground, identify recurring needs and come up with well-informed proposals for improvements. In my mind, a clarity on the different positions of the different stakeholders is already a useful first step. – Susanna Ånäs (Susannaanas) (talk) 19:00, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
I was in the Wikimania meeting and just wanted to add one of my takeaways. Part of the challenge for the WMF are, as alluded to above, the diverse stakeholders who rely on Commons and often have different or even conflicting priorities. Selena said that, once we can identify stakeholder groups, if those groups come together to produce a list of priorities (features, fixes, etc.), someone at the WMF will go through the lists and respond to each item -- what can be done, what needs more information, and what won't be done for reasons xyz. To me, that commitment was the most noteworthy action item for the community. So we have to figure out these stakeholders and then those stakeholders need to self-organize and produce a list. Maybe a good use of the first monthly meeting is to brainstorm stakeholder groups. — Rhododendritestalk | 21:46, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
I think this is a little bit short-sighted. "Stakeholders" or even hypothetical organized groups thereof often don't have much insights into and experience with Wikimedia software. They don't have an inside view of what could be possible, what may be very useful and so on. I'm not saying that this wouldn't be valuable, just that this would only be half of the equation if at all. Be aware that with "stakeholders" that's random people somewhere in the world using Wikimedia Commons to find media for their educational YouTube video, some teacher looking for materials, a Wikimedia contributor looking for some image to use in some poster, a Wikipedian looking for media to include in a new article, and some journalist looking for an image to use in low-budget news article. Nearly none of these are organized and most would probably not provide well thought through proposals.
Furthermore, there actually already is a list of priority features and fixes – there could be more and some are included in the current Community Wishlist but I don't see any justification for it not getting considered deeply by the WMF: Commons:Requests for comment/Technical needs survey. I don't think the key problem or bottleneck is 'unclear wishes', 'conflicting priorities' or any of that sort. The problem is a lack of will in increasing capacity for implementing any of widely requested features such as via more funding for development and/or a banner campaign to get more volunteer developers engaged. Monthly talks may be useful but I suspect it would likely overall be a waste of time with little productive things coming out of it – in the end more time spent on things other than actually implementing things. Once there is some ongoing work on implementing things and some capacity, one could still have monthly talks for the time when well-known issues have been solved. @ Yann to reduce workload one could start by implementing bots that automatically identify likely copyvios or likely vandalism and similar things (like auto-addition of inferrable categories) which is another thing that requires some will for technical development. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:54, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
I was in many of those meeting at Wikimania,at @Ymblanter: yes video was discussed and identified as a choke point that we WMF support to work on. Firstly was the need to make reviewing, identifiing, and address issues within recordings much easier with support tools. The secondpart of that was once there were working tools was to look at formats and ease of putting videos under a free license. We are also challenge in who has what rights, audio tracks, interpretations of content, this really is complex area that needs its own skill set our saving grace is that video isnt as popular as it could be within other sister projects so the demand isnt there but its on the horizon as more people are becoming familiar with creating videos. @Prototyperspective: Commons and other sister projects attract people who dont have technical skills those people have skills that are equally important in creating Commons. So yes you are right we of the nontechnical incling dont know the capabilities of the software, or any limitation but we do know what we'd like to see possible in the future across many other areas excluding stakeholders for any reason isnt the solution either. Selena is engaging in meaningful way and useful way to ensure tated he WMF knows what commons is, where commonalities of people who are building differents part exist, where there are gaps in capacity. Commons has for sometime lacked a large cohort of software developers who were attracted away to other more recently created sister project. I agree Bots that flag potential copyright vios would help and speed the processes up especially as some of them quack when given the standard duck test, and image search tools like Tinyeye & Google already exist, my question would be whats stoppping someone creating such a bot now? Commons was created as a space saver for the servers ensuring that we didnt need 300 copies of the same file and that as better media file come along everyone can benefit from them. Withit every new idea was just tacked on, anything "media" was put here now we have lots of little pockets that are known only to different stakeholders it not until we get hit with a major issue like WikiZero created that these start to cross over. I think a monthly meeting at differing times or multiple times as Selena is proposing is a good starting to point to find every one of those little pockets, and bringing potential solutions like a copyright duck bot dont get lost but rather brought to a more public sphere where they can be created and in such away that the WMF can flag them as a critical tool which regardless of the creator is maintained long after the developer has moved on to other projects. Gnangarra00:48, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
I'd love to join a meeting (particularly if one is held at WCNA next month)! My perspective is primarily one of a Wikipedian who uses Commons images, and my top priority currently is collaborating with the WMF on the Upload Wizard improvements. Sdkbtalk01:39, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Here are some thoughts from my side, I was also at the meeting at Wikimedia. I like the idea to have a meeting on a regular basis. But such a meeting has one problem: At such a meeting there are often some interest groups over represented and some groups are not represented. And such a meeting can never be the place to make final decisions. That is the main problem that we do not have good process as community to make decisions. Proposals on Commons:Village pump/Proposals often to not have enough participation to be a good legitimization. If voting on proposals does not work to make decisions we should think about delegating certain decisions to a certain group of users they are elected and with quotas of certain interest groups. For the meeting maybe a solution could be the make an agenda for the meeting that focuses on the topics of a certain group. I also want to say something on one specific point: "There's a tension between admins and patrollers asking for more things to prevent vandalism, but also campaign creators who want lower barriers to entry." I think this is not really a problem. Most campaigns are organized by a group of active users giving guidance to new users and check the content uploaded in the campaign. Therefore the patrolling is done by the campaign organizers and no patrolling by admins or other patrollers is needed. And if people read the word "photo contest" they are aware that they are only allowed to upload their own works. In the last years of Wiki Loves Earth in Germany we did not have a single copyright violation uploaded by participants. There are problems with campaigns using the Commons:ISA Tool as not all organizers made a quality check. GPSLeo (talk) 06:10, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't want to point fingers but there's certainly been a lot of copyright violations coming from certain Wiki Loves Monuments events over the last couple of years. Although I agree your general point that more active users can give guidance to the less active ones in those situations, but it seems like they just don't care or aren't willing to in a lot of cases. I've certainly seen people who run Wiki Loves Monuments events from certain countries act rather ambivalent about it before. So it seems like there's a general sentiment that it's not on them to moderate people who participate in their events, which I guess I can understand. As they are mainly concerned with getting people to participate and it's easy to turn people off from doing that. But it does create a lot of needless hassle on our end. At this point I just see it at the cost of doing business, but it would be good if there was a more long-term solution then expecting users to sift through other people's uploads for copyright violations every time there's an event. Maybe things like better training or a guideline saying that they have to review files for copyright violations before uploading them would help though. Who knows. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:00, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
But these copyright violations are related to lack of freedom of panorama and not false own work claims they are very common by users uploading photos while editing a Wikipedia article. GPSLeo (talk) 15:27, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
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 25 September. The switch will start at 15:00 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 25 September 2024.
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.
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 12:18, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
The problem is that most of these AI-generated images don't depict Javan rhinoceroses but white rhinoceroses, a different species entirely. (White rhinos have 2 or 3 long, sharp, curved horns, while Javan rhinos have only 1 short, blunt horn.) With there being an estimated 76 Javan rhinos left, there is limited media available for this critically endangered species compared to their more common and famous cousins. (These AI-generated images are stylized/anthropomorphized, so I'm not too worried about people mistaking them for the real deal. However, even as stylized representations they remain inaccurate because they don't capture the defining characteristics of the species.)
A potential solution could be to re-generate these images with a more general "Rhino" prompt rather than mentioning a specific species. This would be a significant undertaking however, as it would affect over 100 images, and the Wikibooks project is currently managed by one person. Given this, are there other suggestions from the community? ReneeWrites (talk) 12:53, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
The prompts for these was "Javan rhinoceros", so it would still be somewhere in the file (file name, description, or metadata). If the person who uploaded them is okay with the Javan part being scrubbed from the images that would probably be the easiest solution though. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:12, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't think it's in the metadata. At least from what I've seen it's mostly in the file names and/or descriptions. Mainly the file names though. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:15, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, the problem we found above is that to find "Javan rhinoceroses" on Commons, one should search for "Rhinoceros sondaicus", not "Javan rhinoceroses".
The second problem was that some AI pictures are prominently searchable as "Javan rhinoceroses" (contrary to files for animals which are under "Rhinoceros sondaicus") or indirectly as "Rhinoceros sondaicus" and that these don't represent either. Special:Search/"Rhinoceros sondaicus" gives good results.
I think a way to improve this is:
categorize AI generated images appropriately, whatever the prompt was used. If they are "rhinos in art" (or by AI), they shouldn't be in "Javan rhinoceroses in art" (or by AI).
We really should mention this on the homepage and we should have had birthday-related media spotlighted. This reminds me of when we hit 100 million files and no one really seemed to care. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯15:35, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Is it too late to temporarily change the logo and maybe have it link to somewhere? Is there any press reporting about this like they do for Wikipedia anniversaries? Prototyperspective (talk) 21:41, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
It would be nice to celebrate a few anniversary days or weeks, even if starting after the actual anniversary day.
not as widely popular or loved as Wikipedia or Wikidata: I think it's because most people don't realize that the vast majority of images in Wikipedia actually belong to Commons. Wikipedia wouldn't be what it is without its media. If all projects were viewed as a single whole (almost all media in Commons, even if not used in any article, can be viewed as an extension of some Wikipedia article, and the same for any citation in Wikiquote, any book in Wikisource, any contributor-made book in Wikibooks, any travel guide in Wikivoyage, etc), Commons and other projects would probably be much more noticed. I am not against each project's own personality, but I am against any kind of rivalry between them. If it was better for the Wikimedia ecosystem and the dissemination of knowledge, I'd have no problem if Commons was renamed to "Wikipedia Media Repository" and Wikisource to "Wikipedia Library", for example. MGeog2022 (talk) 11:06, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
Don't think there's any kind of rivalry between them. Zblace I think WM Commons is far more popular and used way more than Wikidata. I'm interested in real usecases of Wikidata beyond linking Wikipedia articles and the infoboxes but for WMC there's lots of use-cases such as people coming here to find images for their videos (often starting on Google Images due to which addressing it not properly indexing most media here is a key problem and I wonder why noone is addressing it except for a user writing this proposal). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:47, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I was surprised when reading that Wikidata was more popular than Commons. I doubt Wikidata has many direct human readers, but maybe it's popular to get machine-readable information with automatic systems. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:22, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
(and, if we consider images in Wikipedia articles, I think Commons is as popular and loved as Wikipedia, even if unconsciously) MGeog2022 (talk) 12:25, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
If you or somebody else knows of any applications (not for demo purposes but actually used), please let me know. It can't be used to get data about studies (far more incomplete than OpenAlex & ScienceOpen) or books (Anna's Archive) or foods (see this and OpenFoodFacts or propriety MyFitnessPal) or films (eg IMDB) or music (MusicBrainz etc) or chemical ingredients (CodeCheck) or anything else where data repositories are currently used in society. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:27, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
@Zblace: What a wonderful citation. I'll complete it:
«Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of Wikimedia Commons. Its twenty-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new files and new contents, to boldly go where no media server has gone before.»
«Spazio, ultima frontiera. Eccovi i viaggi di Wikimedia Commons durante la sua missione ventennale, diretta all'esplorazione di strani, nuovi mondi, alla ricerca di altre forme di file e di contenuti, fino ad arrivare là dove nessun media server è mai giunto prima.»
COM:MYWORK says: Usually, stating that it is a selfie will suffice if that is really the case, though in some cases you may be asked for additional evidence.
I have stated that there is no reason to ask for additional evidence because (1) it very much is really the case that the photograph is a selfie, (2) there is no reason to ask for additional evidence relative to any given case of a user uploading a selfie from a pseudonymous account, which is the default and expected scenario, (3) there is mild circumstantial evidence (yes, mild evidence, but there is no evidence to the contrary as far as I can tell) that the uploader specifically is the subject and the author (explained on the linked talk page).
So there is no reason that this should be the case when additional evidence is requested.
Under these circumstances, as the tag is controversial, I believe that it is time for a COM:DR discussion to finally determine if additional evidence is genuinely needed or not. When one user considers the permission to be missing and another the permission to be present (present insofar as the uploader who is the author added the CC BY-SA 4.0 license at the time of the upload), surely the way to resolve the disagreement is a deletion discussion. However, instead of substantively discussing, one file mover threatens that they will delete the file, which they technically can accomplish using a combination of actions that they are technically privileged to as a file mover, but in terms of the deletion policy, it would be improper for them to so.
I admit that I could be wrong about how this should be handled, and I could be missing some fact or circumstance, in which case I apologize. I tried talking on that talk page, and one contributor supported the view that this is a legitimate own work selfie, but there is no dialogue and the file is simply heading for deletion as if the talk page had never existed. Therefore, I ask for a community review of this situation, and my suggested resolution is to remove the tag and start a deletion discussion.—Alalch E. (talk) 01:27, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
It looks like a selfie. The question for me would be if she is the same person who uploaded it. Probably not. That can easily be dealt with though by having her or them send permission to the Volunteer Response Team. Although even at that point there would still scope/PROMO issues. But they probably don't matter since she's a politician. The more important thing is verifying that her and uploader are the same person or that they have permission to upload the image if they aren't her. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:03, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
There are no scope issues because the pic is perfectly functional as illustration for her Wikipedia articles, and is being used so in various languages without issue. About the same person question: I really don't see why "probably not". What's the reason for suspicion? Alalch E. (talk) 02:12, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
I meant as far as it being uploaded purely for promotional purposes. Which I don't think images get a pass on if they are being used on other projects. Especially if the image is of the person who uploaded and their the one's who added it to their own Wikipedia article. As to why I don't think the uploader is the same person, different names and the fact that the selfies are available on other websites. It's immaterial though. They should still be required to send VRT permission for the image anyway. Especially since again, the image is already out there on other places. What's your evidence that it was just uploaded from another website by a random PR person for Sanija Ameti or something? --Adamant1 (talk) 05:14, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
We don't really need to get into who has what degree of suspicion. Given that some suspicion exists, COM:VRT would be the right way to sort this out. - Jmabel ! talk15:54, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
If possible, as that would solve the issue. However, to delete a file that is in scope (which I assume this clearly is, be it uploaded for promotional reasons or not), there needs to be serious doubt about the copyright. There may be, but "some suspicion" is not enough for deletion, and thus not for requiring VRT. Was the image on the internet before it was uploaded? –LPfi (talk) 09:16, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
The Supreme Court of India has demanded that the WMF remove references to the victim of the recent rape and murder in Kolkata. [3] There seems to be an emerging consensus on Wikipedia to remove the name, not necessarily because of the court case, but just for general sensitivity reasons. There are a bunch of files in "Category:2024 Kolkata rape and murder" that either state the name explicitly in the file name ([4]), or the name is visible in the image [5]. Not really sure what should be done about this. On English Wikipedia, the WMF asked the community to make its own decision on the matter. [6] Is there a consensus on file deletion/redaction as a response to non-copyright related court requests? Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:06, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
@Hemiauchenia: If a court wants the WMF to do something, they can use the proper channels, and WMF Legal can act. This is very similar to how the WMF responds to a DMCA takedown request. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:28, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
It's kind of an odd thing so I might be wrong, but it seems like there's really only two options here. Either we redact the name or delete the images. I do wonder what stops people from just re-adding the name or uploading new files that contain it in the future though. Since the amount of media related to her is probably essentially endless, or will be once this is all said and done. Compare that to Wikipedia where there's only one or two articles that can easily be edited and locked.
So I guess my point is that realistically nothing can ultimately be done about it on Commons. Otherwise it's just going to be an endless game of Whac-A-Mole. Which I don't think is a good use of anyone's time. Especially considering her name is already out there to begin with. Are we seriously going to waste the time and energy enforcing something like that when anyone can get her just by doing a basic Google Search? Screw that. I don't think we should allow the WMF to do it either. Since it isn't a copyright issue. They can't just censor things on Commons because of an ill conceived, unenforceable court order. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:29, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
Yes. In addition, yielding to the Indian Supreme Court opens a Pandora box about pressure from from external organizations and people, for reasons other than copyright. Yann (talk) 19:10, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
In general, I think we should delete the names of rape victims from Commons. In this particular case, it's unclear if this can be done here if dozens of images include the name on signs. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 09:38, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
I support renaming files and removing the name from descriptions as general courtesy/sensitivity; it isn't harmful or difficult to rename files. Commenters above have pointed out that it isn't a perfect solution, but it's a step in the right direction. I agree with Jeff G. that the WMF is best suited to handle a legal-based deletion decision, as they do DMCA. Consigned (talk) 09:51, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
Categorization of old maps, by year (another round)
I was again asked about what the prevailing consensus is, when categorizing old maps. I asked before in 2021/12 and 2024/03 but maybe I misunderstood the outcomes, so let me rephrase it in a much shorter way:
The general attitude I took home beforewas that old maps should be categorized (=grouped) by the depicted location. A bunch of old maps gets grouped into "Old maps of X", and only if there are enough old maps of X, the "Old" category gets split up. Depending on the contents, either by (sub-)location again, or by century/decade. In short: Old maps get categorized by the displayed location first and foremost, the creation date is less important.
Now here is the argument. - Tl;dr: Is ":Cat:1892 maps of <country>" really obligatory?
As far as I know, there is no reason why for example this Old map of Exeter should also be assigned the "Category:1884 maps of the United Kingdom", just so that it's 'properly' categorized by year also. In my opinion, that practice leads to overcat, especially since a map of Exeter is not really the same as a map of the UK.
The other day, I re-evaluated the contents of the category "1892 maps of Boston", which contained a mixture of maps that showed various locations located in the greater area of Boston: Maps of Larger Boston and surroundings, tram maps, aerial maps, detail crops, building plans, suburb maps and so on. I sorted this eclectic collection into different, more meaningful groups and locations: "1890s bird's eye maps of Boston", "Details of 1890s maps...", "1890s maps of Boston and environs" and so on. Five maps from 1892 did not fit into these groupings, and these I upmerged into Category:1890s maps of Boston. Preferably in my opinion, the maps of Boston should eventually get sorted further by suburbs and quarters: The location has priority when grouping files together. User:Pi.1415926535 has a different opinion and states that all maps (of Boston, but also in general) should get assigned a Creation-year-category, as in Category:1892 maps of Boston. His reasoning is that this would be "probably justifiable", and that these categories have all been created some years ago already.
I have multiple reasons to not favor by-year-categorization of maps: Unlike photographs, the creation of maps is a more fuzzy process, which is another reason why I don't think most maps should even be categorized by year. Another thing is that there are only 3 "1892 maps of Massachusetts", compared to 38 "Category:1890s maps of Massachusetts: By-year-categorization is atomizing the content.
So, I'm interested in reading a fuller argument by Pi in favor of these by-year map categories; and/or learn about the community consensus: Are "Maps-by-year" an integral/obligatory part of the category tree, or are they ultimately expendable? --Enyavar (talk) 00:20, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
Support Getting rid of "by year" categories for images of maps. I have some experience with maps and cartography more broadly. Generally it's nearly impossible to tell the specific year a map was created in. Most of the time what people mean is the publication date, but even then it's purely based on that specific publication of the map. Maps can, and often are, republished multiple times over decades though. Especially older ones. So a "by year" category will usually be wrong, if not also totally pointless because no one looks for maps that way. Usually they find maps based on the subject. Like "maps of the Southern Pacific Railroad." Not "1953 maps of whatever." I don't there's enough images in most cases to justify "by year" categories in most cases anyway and at least from what I've seen the community seems to be going in a different direction with things then categorizing every single image in a "by year" category for it's own sake. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:31, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
Seconding this. Maps aren't photographs; they aren't created at a specific instant in time, nor do they represent the world as it existed (or was perceived) at a single time either. The general historical period in which a map was created is, of course, still important, but the exact year is not. Omphalographer (talk) 20:49, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
It is rare when we need to need map categories for a place down to a single year; mostly useful when we have a large set of maps from a particular year, and even then the particular map set may be a more useful category than something about the year as such. - 06:46, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
I agree that year categories for maps are often not extremely useful, but decade and century are. Without a point in time, even if approximate, a map is mostly useless. OTOH, what means "old"? A 2005 map is old? I support getting rid of vague terms such as "old maps" and "historical images" (thankfully gone, now, at last!!) which have very subjective limits, and replacing them with the century & decade categories. Only in rare occasions one doesn't know which century is a map from, and those very rare cases can happily stay in the main category. DarwinAhoy!10:31, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
@DarwIn: I don't have time to look for something to cite, but the meaning of "old" for maps has come up before: more than 50 years old, with the proviso that there are a few places that have changed so much so fast that we need to special-case them. - Jmabel ! talk19:58, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
Hi Darwin, Jmabel, Category:Old maps defines Old maps, check out {{Old maps meaning}} Thanks to this definition, if you have 15 old maps of a town, from 5 different centuries, you do not need to establish 5 different century-categories that each only hold 2-4 files. And even better: undated maps or those which were created "between 1650 and 1750" can actually get categorized. (That is not the topic here, but needed to be explained apparently) --Enyavar (talk) 18:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I objected to Enyavar removing files from the subcategories of Category:Maps of Massachusetts by year, and similar by-year categories for Boston, without any discussion to establish consensus. These categories were long-established and well-populated (typically 5-20 maps per year). Most of the maps being moved have their dates well-established either by a date on the map itself or by the contents. More significantly, Enyavar has not been properly upmerging categories, so basic information is being removed. For example, File:Boston Street Map, 1871.jpg (which has the date printed on the map itself) is currently not in any subcategories of Category:1871 in Boston nor Category:1871 maps - even though it is a map of Boston clearly dated 1871! @Adamant1: If someone is specifically looking for a map from that year (which is a very common use case for historical research), they would not be able to find that map through the most obvious category trees. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:02, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
@Pi.1415926535: I'm not going to claim it applies to every file of a map on here but from what I've seen most of them have the year in the file name. So I don't really see how people can't find them by year if their in decade categories instead. Its tangential, but tend to act like categories are the only, or most important, way to find images when there's others that work perfectly fine depending on the situation. There's nothing wrong with people having to read files names to find information about a file sometimes. That's what they exist for. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:40, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
Disagreeing with User:Adamant1 here. Navigating the category hierarchy should be one way to find things. It should be usable independent of search. Relevant categories should be used, even if the information is in the title or description. Similarly, the fact that something is in the title is not normally a reason to leave it out of the description. - Jmabel ! talk05:15, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
The fact that something is in the title is not normally a reason to leave it out of the description. Where did say that? I have zero issue with repeating facts in the description that are already in the file name. Since their inherently suppose to be descriptions. There's no reason to turn category names into a complete listing of everything related to a file though and I don't think it's necessarily important or useful to repeat facts that already in the file names. Otherwise it just gets to obtuse.
Like realistically how many times does there need to be a specific word on a page before it just becomes needless duplication? There's file names, category names, descriptions, section headers, infoboxes, Etc. Etc. Seriously does anyone think that Category:Tom Cruise isn't a category for images of Tom Cruise? You (and by that I mean the developers) are just treating users like their stupid children who can't read and need their hands held at every turn. It's just garbage UX design regardless. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:25, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: I think you might have misinterpreted my comment. The main problem isn't finding maps in categories that they are in - it's that the maps aren't in the category trees whatsoever. For the example I gave - which is just one of hundreds of maps recently recategorized by Enyavar - it has been completely removed from two of the three most obvious category trees. A user looking through those category trees would not be able to find that map. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 17:33, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Any users who use the category system at all, should know enough about the workings of time and space, to check the surrounding categories and not give up immediately. There is no 1819 map of Luxembourg? Well, have you checked "19th-century maps of Luxembourg", or "1810s maps of Belgium"? If you search for anything, you usually don't have much to choose from anyway: there was never a "1762 maps of Boston"-category, but the "1760s maps of Boston" has a map of just a few years later. --Enyavar (talk) 18:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Oppose I'm not sure if users misunderstood or will misunderstand this to be about year categories for maps which are e.g. useful to find uses of outdated datagraphic maps (like a world map of number of automobiles per capita per country where it matters whether it's year 2000 or 2020). Second reason and specifically re old maps: not sure if I understood the proposal correctly but the years are very useful there as well such as for context. People in the past didn't know or have maps of the whole Earth in the past and accuracies also vary by date. It's key contextual information and I don't see any reason to remove it which seems like an unprecedented removal of useful information. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:56, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Hi, this is only about old maps, not maps from the 21st century. Nor are we talking about any information getting removed from file descriptions, that would be horrible. This is about keeping decade-categories like "1890s-produced maps" and not picking apart the content artificially by single years. And anyway, maps should get categorized by location first, rather than by the production year. This one here is much better categorized as a "19th-century maps of Jefferson County, NY|1835 maps" (with the year in the sorting key, there), instead of "1835 map of the United States". --Enyavar (talk) 18:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
So your proposal is that old maps should only be organized by decade and not by year? Maybe that makes sense and maybe something like see also links could be used to address the issue raised by Pi.1415926535 where the files are missing in category trees where people may look for them. In any case I think the proposal should be clearer. Also files should be in all main category trees where they belong into, not just one and then removed from the parent due to OVERCAT and missing in the other. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:47, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
This was less of a proposal for some new rule, more the wish for clarification that this general categorization principle still applies (I provided links to the previous discussions). And also, this is not a hard rule either, there are several cases of categorizing maps where the year is indeed critical. But I think that Pi's concerns can be adressed if I add the respective "<year> in <location>" category to the respective files. Best, --Enyavar (talk) 04:41, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Strong oppose Maps by year is useful as I have uploaded some historical maps that clearly show the situation as it was in a particular year. By Decade just fills up categories where By Year is more manageable. Abzeronow (talk) 17:12, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Hi, which historical maps are you referring to here? Please check your own upload File:Iowa, Primary Road System, 1928.jpg, which you sorted into "Category:1920s maps of Iowa" instead of creating a new "1928 maps of Iowa" for the single file to rattle around in. Furthermore, if you take the whole current content from that decade in Iowa, you find a total of two 1920s maps of Iowa, and a bunch of 1920s detail maps of singular counties and building plans, which actually should be categorized into "... maps of Winnebago County, Iowa" etc., instead of cluttering the 1920s maps of Iowa. --Enyavar (talk) 18:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I disagree somewhat. A map with a specific year, is usually made for a specific incident, usu, a battle. Therefore it's already filed in the battle category, which comes with a year. Most developed countries old maps, were decades in the making, and names don't change often. Filing by decade is almost superfluous for Europe. Hoewver countries mapped for the first time by explorers and invaders, are the exception to that. India for example is a nightmare of name changing, still going on today.
It's against the rules to file in multiple cats, but perhaps maps should be an exception. They were expensive, and would have been used over decades by individuals (authors) in India, where names and spelling were in perpetual flux. Filing by any date is an arbitrary process here, if I want to research South Carolina in 1838, I would look at an 1866 map first, and then go backwards. Filing by year is by publication date. I'd be happy by decade as a compromise. Broichmore (talk) 12:04, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Comment Just for the 1880s: Maps were published in advance, like in 1882 for 1883. Maps were reprinted in 1912 with amendments for 1883. Maps from 1910 were drawn upon in 1916 to show the tram situation in 1888. Maps were printed in 1886 to show the situation in 1880. Simplified maps were printed 1881 in Paris, London, New York and Leipzig into reknowned world atlases, and who knows which originals were used from which dates. We have maps created in 1882 showing Boston in 1814. There are 1884 maps of West Roxbury, a town that was annexed by Boston just eight years prior, and that qualifies as a different location than "Boston" when it comes to "Maps of...". The construction plans for Pleasure Bay from 1884 is signed "December 1883". A lot of maps were published year after year in the same layout with just minimal changes (and thus, should probably get categorized by the publisher+layout, not the year). Those are just some examples why the exact year doesn't matter for the map category while an indication of century or decade still makes sense. Cases where the exact year of a map matters, are rare (but, like with Category:1775 maps of Boston) they exist. @Jmabel: , thanks for the clarification above, "Navigating the category hierarchy should be one way to find things". I've started to add the relevant years to the Boston maps where the year apparently matters - but with the "<year> in Boston" scheme, and not "<year> maps of Boston". --Enyavar (talk) 15:42, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
@Enyavar: maps should generally be categorized, if possible, by the date they ostend to show; obviously, information is not gathered in an instant, so it is common for ostensibly "current" maps to show the prior year. They can also be categorized as "works" from the year in which they were made. - Jmabel ! talk15:58, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
I still maintain that maps should rather generally be categorized by the location they ostend to show, and subcategorized by dates only if really necessary. Otherwise, we get stuff like this magnificent 1848 map of Asia (precise year, location as imprecise as possible) and atomized categories like Category:1856 maps of Toronto. But I don't object to categories as "works from year" or "year in". --Enyavar (talk) 17:31, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
I somehow doubt that the Taliban asked Commons user Falerístico to design their coat of arms for them. Any idea if there is a more suitable license we can use?--Trade (talk) 22:13, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
@Trade: The uploader was indeffed later that year to "prevent project disruption". However, nothing I found with Google Lens or Tineye predates our 2011 upload. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:43, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
There is an example in
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zoo_Heidelberg,_Sumatra-Tiger.jpg
where the "Created" tag in the page says it was created on 7 December 2024
(that means: in the future) and clicking on the "More details" we find that the
Exif data are interpreted as 12 July 2024 (which is nice/ok) and that the Date
is 12.07.2024 (which is the most common European way of writing DD.MM.YYYY)
So there is some sort of ambiguity or bug that toggles days and months
in between these formats.
--13:42, 19 September 2024 R. J. Mathar
while it's definitely a bug of the mediaviewer, pattypan should also be modified so that users dont input dates in strange formats instead of iso yyyy-mm-dd.--RZuo (talk) 13:53, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Meanwhile the uploader has changed his 1000+files affected to the ISO YYYY-MM-DD format, so the example of the Sumatra tiger I gave above is now showing a correct/coherent date in the preview and in the EXIF/"More details". - R. J. Mathar (talk) 18:48, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
This is a new page to request categorizations of files. Some people have some time but may not know many or more things to do while some are drowning in potential tasks or aren't using sophisticated/time-efficient ways (like cat-a-lot + SpecialSearch) to implement them or would implement them in suboptimal ways (like not creating subcategories when these would be due). It could be quite constructive to bring these together there so people looking for things to do can (also) go there and find a task they're interested in by which they can contribute to WMC.
I added several of my categorization-todos as examples. The page also includes a section for categories missing many items. A user going to such a category may think this is all there is on WMC for that subject when only the category has not yet been populated properly or is missing many files.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 16:40, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I've split the page into 3 levels of difficulty – this allows this to be a resource for both new and experienced contributors and enables new users to not waste time trying to implement difficult tasks without knowing e.g. tools (like cat-a-lot and SpecialSearch with search operators) needed to implement them. In addition, there is a section for categories missing many files. Registering requests there also enables people to follow up on how a request was solved so it can be implemented again in the future / the category be maintained using the method used to populate it. I have far more categorization tasks in my notes so I didn't put everything there and of course rather try to categorize things myself instead of just noting which categorizations are very incomplete there. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:27, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
Normally we use {{Other versions}} rather than delete/redirect if they are not exactly the same, but in this case the former file is such low quality that I literally cannot imagine anyone preferring it. Yes, it should be deleted and replaced with a hard redirect. - Jmabel ! talk21:45, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
@Strakhov It's very common to create a redirect to a replacement after a file is deleted. I think this is mostly automatic when {{Duplicate}} is used, but I often find myself creating redirects by hand when I've asked for files to be deleted by other means. As Help:File redirect explains, creating a redirect when the first file still exists won't work properly: uses of the first file name will still return the first file. If you really wanted to keep the first file around, I suppose you could rename it and then update the resulting redirect, though I don't think that's really covered by any criterion of Commons:File renaming. --bjh21 (talk) 21:19, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
Why categories "London by topic" and "Porto by topic" act differently
OK, thanks , i think about the same, but i am not very expert in templates (not at all) . Maybe the creator of them can give some help, thanks JotaCartas (talk) 21:54, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
advocate for nudism - not true: It is a protest in support of human rights as expressed in the UN declaration of human rights, the Istanbul convention, German constitution and German AGG law. And there is no nudity.
disturbing or offending - yes, there are people offended by the thought of equal rights for man and women
not educational - what? of course it is educational
So: when did Commons change it rules to allow only public domain content on the main page. Why are depictions of protests in support of human rights not allowed? and in what way is such a depiction not educational?
you could at least film with a tripod or a gimbal, and cut out the irrelevant parts like the first 1 min of this video, then it's something more worthy. RZuo (talk) 18:02, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
Seconding this. While MOTD, unlike POTD, doesn't require that content be featured (in large part because Commons:Featured media is not a particularly active process!), it should go without saying that files selected for MOTD should be of exceptional quality and should have self-evident educational value. This file isn't up to that standard. Omphalographer (talk) 23:41, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
I meant that apparently it's also not CCBY (public domain in the broader sense)
It does advocate for nudism, in this case for women to show their bare breast. I did not say there is nudity.
disturbing or offending was not the reason in itself. For very controversial files things should be in a neutral and reasonable manner when put onto the Main page. This is not a place to advocate your 'free the tits' opinions or however one calls it and this applies to other subjects but especially when things are quite controversial which results in people being repelled from WMC. Moreover, it is not about equal rights – seeing bare breast has generally different effects depending on sex, that is a neurological fact and of course varies with sexuality and there probably are also women turned on a lot by bare men's breast etc.
This is not a protest about in support of human rights even if you think or claim so. Nothing about is explanatory or truly educational. It does document an event and is slightly educational but it does not belong on the Main page. It's also not featured media. In which way is that educational? Compare this to videos explaining notable problems such as challenges facing the world's oceans or how something works or high-quality video of ecosystems/nature etc.
It's licensed CC-BY-SA-4.0, which is an acceptable license for both Commons generally and the front page specifically. It's not in the public domain, but files don't have to be in the public domain for them to be eligible for MOTD. It just so happens that a lot of media files that end up front-paged are PD. Everything else is a matter of opinion. The Free the nipple campaign is a legitimate campaign within the broader modern feminist movement, regardless of how you feel about the points it tries to get across or the methods they employ in doing so.
That being said, I do agree with RZuo's arguments that the media file itself is not of very high quality (footage is not stabilized, and the video was not edited to cut out the footage where nothing is really happening). ReneeWrites (talk) 18:16, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
I strongly disagreee with "footage where nothing is really happening". Of course there is. And no it does not "advocate for nudism". About "frequent obstrution of cars": It would falsify the situation to remove the cars. The file has a problem: audio and video are out of sync, but I am fixing that, i will upload a fixed revision by 18th. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 19:15, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
I was referring to the template that says This image is not public domain. Please respect the copyright protection. It may only be used according to the rules mentioned here (or with an individual permission by the creator). This specifically excludes use in social media, if applicable terms of the licenses listed here not appropriate. so it seems like there are some additional restrictions, this may be wrong so maybe strike point 1 of 4.
The Free the nipple campaign is a legitimate campaign within the broader modern feminist movement, regardless of how you feel about the points it tries to get across or the methods they employ in doing so And? Are we now including activist videos of any type on the Main page so editors can advocate any bizarre fringe ideas they have on the very frontpage with little to no educational value etc? It doesn't belong there for many reasons and I elaborated on why while trying to keep it short. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:21, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: Not to speak for Prototyperspective but by fringe I assume they meant that the whole "free the nipple" thing is on the border or outer edges of the feminist movement. Which for all intents and purposes is the case. "Freeing the nipple" as it were isn't a part of regular, every day feminist discourse. Breast feeding in public maybe, but then it's not really inherently about "freeing the nipple" anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:50, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
I suspect there's a misunderstanding around "This specifically excludes use in social media". Rather than adding additional restrictions for social media, I believe they're providing less restrictive attribution requirements for social media; on the linked page it says "At Social Media Sites only it is sufficient to use only the QR code inserted in the media file or near the associated media file". @C.Suthorn: can you confirm? Consigned (talk) 10:55, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
Indeed, on Social Media I offer this option for an easier attribution, that I am OK with. The template on the page on the other hand is only a clarification, because there are people who think, that everything on the internet is in the public domain. The same text (template) is also used by other users. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 08:12, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
I'm not going to weigh into the whole thing about if a nipple campaign is a fringe idea or not since I think it's just bait for concern trolling on C.Suthorn's end and doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things anyway, but I totally agree with RZuo and ReneeWrites about the low quality of the video. At the end of the day the frontpage should only have media that fits a certain standard and the video clearly doesn't meet it. I suggest this just be left there instead of needlessly turning it into an off-topic debate about what makes something "fringe" or not. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:18, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
Low-quality shaky cam video like this would only qualify for MOTD if it showed something momentous. This doesn't. I'm pretty comfortable in saying that at least 90% of what I've uploaded at Category:Videos by Joe Mabel is higher quality than that, maybe 100%, and I'm honestly not sure whether any of what I've uploaded would be good enough for me to advocated it for MOTD. - Jmabel ! talk21:40, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
@Prototyperspective: no, free licensed content is not "public domain in the broader sense". It is precisely "free-licensed". In particular, in countries where there is no requirement to attribute public-domain content, you can still be sued for using a CC-BY file without attribution. - Jmabel ! talk21:40, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
1. I don't think men with gynecomastia have the same or similar psychological-neurological effects on men as women's bare breasts on men. 2. I think they already do but this is somewhat offtopic: 3. This is not about whether the file is on WMC or whether that activism and its methodology make sense but whether such a file belongs on the Main page. 4. Jmabel, you're right...public domain is not the right term for what I meant with "public domain" there even when broadly speaking. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:13, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
Having a CC-BY-SA license is not a justifiable reason for removing content on the Main Page. It's a free license. Just wanted to address the original statement so that people who read this will see an answer without the hullaballoo about of the content of the video. Bastique☎ appelez-moi!21:37, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
(random headline)
Demonstrations and protests often take place on a regular basis, and this probably also applies to the Free The Nipple demonstration in Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate. So it is only a matter of time before there is a video that meets the technical requirements expressed here. I consider the issue to be an important one (I have already pointed out that the UN, EU and Germany are clearly in favour of equal rights) and reject the arguments ofdisturbing, offensive, nudism and fringe. So if there is a video with the desired technical requirements, I will post it on MOTD. If there is a formalised procedure at the time that applies to all MOTD (for example, a vote in which there are more approvals than rejections), I will of course adhere to it (and I am already curious whether there will still be audio files in OGG format with national anthems of micronations played listlessly by a US military band on the main page, where the lyrics are not sung, nor included as subtitles, on the file description page, or in the article about the national anthem, and the article also does not explain the history and meaning of the anthem (I.E. there are no double standards applied.)). --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 08:39, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
These audio files were added by a user who is not blocked. They could be removed whenever they are replaced by something else. Yann (talk) 09:15, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
i dont think these low quality videos of unimportant events are comparable to music played by a professional military band. RZuo (talk) 14:17, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't think recordings of scripted material that are inherently repeatable and uploaded from elsewhere are nearly as important as user-made videos of modern events.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:50, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Photovoltaic categories inconsistency
The description of Category:Photovoltaic power stations (on roofs) says "Photovoltaic solar panels (photovoltaic power stations) on roofs." -> Even if there is the mentioning of "power stations" in the description I think this category is meant to contain typical installations on residential buildings as well ("Solar cell panels on roofs" is a sub-category of it, for example). BUT Category:Photovoltaic power stations (on roofs) is a sub-category of Category:Photovoltaic power stations which is described as a large-scale photovoltaic system (which means big ground-mounted systems in most cases). So something has to change. P170 (talk) 12:27, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't consider roof solar panels to be Photovoltaic power stations. Most of the time whatever power they generate is passed down to a power station in the garage or something. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:31, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
To make a concrete suggestion: I am in favor of renaming Category:Photovoltaic power stations (on roofs) to Category:Rooftop photovoltaic systems and placing it in a new Category:Photovoltaic systems. The latter category should also include Category:Photovoltaic power stations. I have already consulted with the creator of Category:Photovoltaic power stations (on roofs), and he confirmed that he meant ordinary rooftop systems and supports my proposal. Similarly, the same approach should be taken with categories for facade PV, balcony PV, etc. --P170 (talk) 19:13, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
Correct. Per w:Power station, a power station is "an industrial facility for the generation of electric power". A "photovoltaic power station" is a large-scale facility whose primary purpose is generating solar power, not a set of solar panels which are incidentally installed on a building. Omphalographer (talk) 21:00, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
I'm aware of that and that's what the topic is about. Again my suggestion: 1 Photovoltaic systems 1.1 Photovoltaic power stations 1.2 Rooftop photovoltaic systems 1.2.1 Solar cell panels on roofs. If you omit 1.2 it would be inconsistent because 1.1 is about a whole system und your 1.2 (my 1.2.1) is not. P170 (talk) 15:59, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
How would the use of 1.2 and 1.2.1 differ? For instance, what would be an example of a photo which belongs in "rooftop photovoltaic system" but not "solar cell panels on roofs"? Omphalographer (talk) 19:16, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
How to make my file be selected as the media of the day on the main page?
Hello! I am one of those new users on Wikimedia Commons. I want that my file be selected as the media of the day on the main page. How do I do that? Please, help me. I'm pretty sure that the file I posted it is in the public domain and for the proof, there is it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Heitor Gois (talk • contribs) 15:06, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
There's no French Wikipedia article. The few photos I've seen were not in use anywhere. He has a very limited number of hits on Google, mostly his own publications, videos. I found one interview--in a French regional newspaper. I'm willing to bet the majority have been uploaded to Commons to use as an image hosting site for whatever reason...wouldn't be my first choice! Bastique☎ appelez-moi!21:25, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Yes, right. I deleted most book and album covers, for a start. Really too many portraits, and as these are not selfies, we need the photographer's permission. I also deleted the user page, and blocked him for a week. Yann (talk) 21:44, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Mr. Boucheix does appear to be a singer with some published works - not that that's necessarily a difficult bar to meet nowadays - but notability by Wikipedia's standards seems unlikely to be met.
Certainly not. Images of text are rarely in scope on Commons, and these are no exception. If these were notable quotes, they'd belong on Wikiquote as text - but I seriously doubt that they are. The number of portraits seems entirely excessive as well.
Yes, there's definite copyright concerns here. The portrait photos like File:Bernard BOUCHEIX de REYVIALLES - Auvergne - mai 2024.jpg (of which there are a bunch) were clearly not taken by Mr. Boucheix himself, and the photographers aren't credited. The book covers and theater programs (which it looks like Yann just deleted) were clearly uncredited, potentially unlicensed derivative works as well.
I want to upload this image of Soviet chemist Tserevitinov, who died before 1947 and is clearly younger in the photo. I do not know anything about the author, but that is also the case with say Sergey Vavilov or Lenin, the former picture shot around the same time Tserevitinov died, and the author is unknown. What condition of the Russian public domain are they satisfying? Also can I use it to upload the image I proposed? Thanks, ExclusiveEditor (talk) 14:07, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
Thank you very much for asking here! At least the Vavilov image does give an original source. If the uploader had access to that source and could confirm that the image was published there anonymously, that would go a long way to establish its public domain status.
I think the issue with the image of Tserevitinov that you are proposing to upload is that we know absolutely nothing about its original publication.Felix QW (talk) 19:59, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
Just noticed that you mentioned you could rename the files as well. It's possible to rename the redirect without leaving a redirect behind, which functions almost the same as deleting it. ReneeWrites (talk) 16:35, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
Hi, having seen some DRs recently related to copyright violations coming from Fandom, which has a CC-BY-SA disclaimer that only applies to text, I created a guide to re-using Fandom content here: Commons:Fandom files.
Please take a look, and go ahead and make any improvements. The primary goal is to try to clear up the misconception that images from Fandom are automatically CC-BY-SA.
This might be better as a subheading on Commons:Problematic sources; I don't think it needs to be a policy, since it's largely a summary of facts. Some details that I'd focus on are:
Some Fandom wikis use CC-BY-NC or -ND licenses for textual content, which are incompatible with Wikimedia licensing. (And don't ask me how a -ND license is supposed to work on a wiki.) Comments posted on Fandom wiki pages are not freely licensed at all.
Fandom does not take any steps to verify licenses on uploaded images. Even if a specific image on a Fandom wiki is specifically claimed to be freely licensed (which should appear under "more info" when viewing that image), users importing that content to Commons should take appropriate steps to ensure that license is accurate. Images which don't specifically show a license in the file view should be assumed to be non-free.
Are AI system capabilities of "Reading comprehension" higher than humans?
I very much doubt / disagree with that. I think this is another case of AI hype which doesn't seem to be a first for OWID.
The chart only says "Reading comprehension", and not for example "Measures of reading comprehension according to organization X" / test Y or anything of that sort. This is why I added {{Factual accuracy}} with the optional short explanation (there's lots of more sources for that) Testing for "Language understanding" and "Reading comprehension" is flawed and AI as of 2024 is not on or above human level for at least these. Many sources like this support that it's flawed. However Alenoach (talk·contribs) removed it arguing on the talk page GLUE and SQuAD are widely accepted as benchmarks for evaluating language understanding and reading comprehension. Even if that was the case, that chart does not say something like "according to GLUE and SQuAD measures" but is absolute so I think template would be warranted even if the user was right. Also see the other measures where "AI" is allegedly above human performance or approach it. Moreover, there's many tests that would suggest otherwise and these are not included or considered here so the accuracy is still disputed.
Moreover, I'd be interested if there is a place better suited to discuss accuracy issues like this or some project here otherwise engaged with accuracy issues with media on WMC such as working on identifying more of these. I don't know of a better place to ask and this could be closed and archived if solved or if a better place is found. --Prototyperspective (talk) 00:02, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
For information, here was my comment on the talk page:
I removed the "factual accuracy" because GLUE and SQuAD are widely accepted as benchmarks for evaluating language understanding and reading comprehension. These benchmarks are not perfect and have limitations, but they offer objective metrics to assess AI models in these areas. The linked article is quite opinionated, rejecting the idea that LLMs aim for truth and arguing that they merely "bullshit" (despite truthfulness being one of the goals of RLHF). And the article does not challenge the validity of GLUE or SQuAD as benchmarks for these specific tasks.
My impression is that the linked article is more of a philosophical essay that contends that LLMs really don't care about truth. This is a controversial claim, but even assuming this were true, are there major language understanding or reading comprehension benchmarks on which the latest frontier models have poor results compared to humans? On the other hand, I agree with you that it's a problem that the name of the tests isn't directly in the graph. Perhaps I could try to make a derived version based on the SVG, which would present it in a format like "SQuAD 1.1 (reading comprehension)" rather than "Reading comprehension", that would be more precise. Alenoach (talk) 00:57, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
The 2024 AI Index actually has a very similar graph, and doesn't mention Kiela et al.Similar image from the 2024 AI index It contains less information, but can be a good replacement to the image from Our World in Data if needed. Alenoach (talk) 18:05, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Note that this is not about the particular source, there's many sources that support this (some examples: 1234567).
Even if some points of Alenoach were good and the recently added file description mitigated the problem a bit, the file accuracy template at least would still be due to how the chart is titled and subtitled. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:09, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
What the heck is "Reading comprehension with unanswerable questions"?? Is that like "Read Dostoevsky and tell me whether or not there is a purpose to human suffering?" Nosferattus (talk) 04:44, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
@Gryllida I would definitely crop out the elements outside of the monitor. I don't know the relation between the main video and the CCTV video--but I'm not sure if cropping out the audio is necessary. Bastique☎ appelez-moi!00:00, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
Panorama of Manhattan's West Side from Across the Hudson
Panorama of Manhattan's West Side from Across the Hudson
Hi, Could someone please fix or improve the categories? Or even find the location where it was taken from? Thanks, Yann (talk) 10:54, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
I was looking through Category:PD textlogo recently and there seems to be a lot of things that are licensed as "PD textlogo" that either cantain graphs at best or aren't logos to begin with at worst. To give an example, there's the various OneNote logos, which clearly contain graphics. there's also book covers, which clearly aren't logos even if made up of simple text. CD covers, which again aren't logos despite having simple text. despite having text. There's also weirdly some charts using the template. I think people get the point. It seems like the usage of "PD textlogo" is all over the place to the point of being essentially meaningless. So I'm wondering there should be more specific templates for simple works of art or things that contain text that aren't logos. Like a "PD-textlabel" for CD labels or a "PD-textchart" for simple charts that are mainly text. Maybe there's a better solution though. Anyone have any thoughts or ideas about how to deal with it? Adamant1 (talk) 13:18, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
I found an user continue to create personal and useless categories even after warnings on the talk page. How should I deal with this? Should I report as vandalism? Bart Buchtfluß (talk) 03:06, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: The problem is what Enhancing999 stated. Thanks for the comment.
@ReneeWrites: He certainly has a useful uploads, but he doesn't understand my advice on the talk page. If he continues this, I will report him to COM:AN/U. Thanks.
@Enhancing999: Certainly. Thanks. I warned once that "Category:Cross & Feather Architecture"(speedy deleted) is a personal and subjective theme and is not appropriate as category of Commons, though he created almost the same category, Category:Cross & Architecture again. He and I are both Japanese speakers, actually, but I couldn't understand what talking about. Perhaps he created Category:Cross & Architecture as a personal collection. All media in this category are attributed to him. Bart Buchtfluß (talk) 13:15, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
My guess looking at the category is that they were trying to create a category for images of crosses on buildings. As opposed to say ones at a gravesite or something. I could see where a category like that might be useful depending on the circumstances, but Category:Cross & Architecture clearly doesn't make sense and it seems like there's a broader consensus against similar "X subject and Y subject" type categories. So I don't know. Maybe it could be workable with the right name though. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:23, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
HELP! One user only throws out poetic description ideas of the category in this discussion and doesn't try to understand what categories are in Commons, nor does he listen to the advice of other users. He seems to think of categories on Commons as communal forums or SNS like Pinterest. I'm so sorry, but I cannot handle it anymore! Bart Buchtfluß (talk) 23:33, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
Commons doesn't have one. The English-language Wikipedia does (en:MOS:ERA), which calls for consistency within articles but doesn't say one is preferred over the other, whichever one you choose depends on the context. ReneeWrites (talk) 14:59, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
Upcoming Wiki Loves Folklore in Bangladesh
We are excited to announce that, just like the previous edition, we are planning to organize Wiki Loves Folklore Bangladesh in 2025. As we prepare for this event, we welcome any recommendations or suggestions you may have. We’re eager to hear from photographers, organizers, and Wikimedians across Bangladesh to ensure the success of Wiki Loves Folklore 2025. The previous version of Wiki Loves Folklore Bangladesh was a booming success. We are hoping to continue the success in 2025 too. Your input will help us shape a better event!
Icarus005 (talk) 13:07, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
Hi all! I've been working on a page that lists all current photo/media contests that impact Wikimedia Commons. What I'm trying to do is create a quick easy and attractive navigation box that can be transcluded onto any page (and possibly the Main Pages) that lists all of these contests. I could use some help designing that navbox, seeing as template magic is not my forté.
Also, while I intend to keep that page current, I could probably use other people's support if they are interested. I get information primarily from announcements, such as the telegram groups for Wikimedia announcements and Wikimedia commons.
Done. Jmabel ! talk 04:07, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:44, 7 September 2024 (UTC) .svg/15px-Pictogram_voting_comment_(orange).svg.png)
Comment Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/09/Category:Towers in Iran --Adamant1 (talk) 19:56, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Support towards converting multi-page documents into multi-page document formats - PDF. (I also posted some thoughts about this once) ~TheImaCow (talk) 21:28, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Weak oppose Maybe for type-written works it makes sense to only have a PDF, but for hand-written it's often really useful to have higher-resolution files and if they were combined into PDFs the PDFs could be quite large. A small example could be something like this where it's often useful to be able to zoom right in on a letter to better see the pen strokes etc. It's also more likely that people preparing PDFs will end up with trusting whatever their scanner software gives them and by doing so be throwing away information that we'd rather keep (e.g. postmarks on letters). I wonder if more could be done with the search system and structured data to make it easier to exclude individual scans? Sam Wilson 04:47, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
Oppose Strongly opposing. If such PDFs would be converted one (the person converting it) would have to make sure that each and every Wikisource page would work as before. If we have 300 pages in the PDF that makes 300 pages on WS to be changed. I am not sure about wether they are needed to be modified only on one place; this Wikisource techniques/syntaxes are quiet obscure to my though I am taking part in the project. So what would be achieved? Editing tenthousands of Wikisource pages to reduce the number of PDF files for several ten thousands whereas we are hosting 120 million files on Commons? Produces lot of server load for nothing. --Matthiasb (talk) 07:02, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Weak support If a complete book scan of x-dozen up to some x-hundred single text pages gets uploaded, and is not in use for Wikisource (!), then I think that all the pages can be collated into a single PDF, which can then replace the single-page scans. Note that my opinion states "can", not "should". It depends on the intended use case and the interest that gets placed on a book. If all single-page-scans remain contained in their intended scan-category, I have no problem with them being loose, not bound. Also, I checked the first example in the OP again: yes, these are single-page scans, but only of the 37 illustrated pages from a 200-page book. For a PDF, we need to have all pages; while the ones in the category should have the text clipped away, to make the images usable as illustrations (Edit, upon rereading, this point was also made by Adamant1, so I support that opinion). On another hand, if PDF-conversion means OCR treatment is simpler, then I'll strongly support this. --Enyavar (talk) 13:45, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Info: Now at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Sanija selfie.jpg—Alalch E. (talk) 14:34, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
Strong oppose Maps by year is useful as I have uploaded some historical maps that clearly show the situation as it was in a particular year. By Decade just fills up categories where By Year is more manageable. Abzeronow (talk) 17:12, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
,_Vol._17,_No._100,_Ed._1_Tuesday,_March_16,_1897_-_DPLA_-_348420d019c76e888fe7cfbbf39f5783_(page_3).jpg){kind=link}
![[2]](https://i.servimg.com/u/f58/15/53/53/54/tm/missio10.jpg){kind=link}
,_small.png){kind=link}
_by_W._A._Schulenburg.png){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
_obituary_in_the_New_York_Herald_on_October_12,_1890.png){kind=link}
![[4]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moumita_Debnath%27s_in_graffiti_at_Dhaka_University.jpg){kind=link}
![[5]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Protest_against_Kolkata_rape-murder.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.png){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
%27_(15968009014).jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
_Country_Grammar_by_Nelly_(CD_single)_(UK-2000).jpg){kind=link}
_showing_Israel%27s_1948_and_1967_borders.svg)
.svg)