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Commons Gazette 2025-05

Volunteer staff changes

In April 2025, 1 sysop was elected. Currently, there are 178 sysops.

User:Kaganer was elected (34/4/2) on 26 April.

Other news

Template:Wikidata Infobox will be updated to show language of work or name (P407) of video and audio files that have this qualifier set in Wikidata. See the request "Adding which language info for videos in infobox".

Edited by User:Prototyperspective and User:RoyZuo.

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

--RoyZuo (talk) 05:57, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Category-related POV-pushing

I have deleted the category and removed the files from it. As multiple users have pointed out, blood libel is a highly specific form of antisemitism that was not the subject of those files. Others are welcome to create neutrally-named categories as needed to sort files.

Chenspec, I would recommend you stay away from the subject of the war entirely. Consensus in this discussion is that your editing so far on the subject has not complied with the neutral point of view policy. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 07:32, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I recently happened to notice the account Chenspec adding the category Blood libels during the Swords of Iron War. Intrigued, I decided to access the category, as I was unfamiliar with the term "blood libel". I ended up learning, through Wikipedia, that it refers to a false antisemitic accusation alleging that Jews use the blood of Christians in religious rituals. Such a notion is, of course, reprehensible.

However, in the category in question, which also includes "Antisemitism during the Israel–Hamas war", I find only ordinary individuals holding signs with messages such as "Stop killing children" [1], "Stop genocide" [2], "Stop war crimes" [3], and "Stop the slaughter of innocent children, women, elderly men, and babies" [4]. I see no one holding placards accusing Jews of using Christian blood in obscure rituals, nor anything that could reasonably be considered antisemitic, except through dishonest fallacies that completely distort the meaning of the term.

Furthermore, the categories Israeli apartheid and South Africa v. Israel (Genocide Convention) are listed as subcategories. I fail to understand how the concept of Israeli apartheid—treated as a matter of fact on Wikipedia—could bear any relation to "blood libel", nor how the South African government's accusation that Israel is committing genocide could be deemed antisemitic or interpreted as an allegation of using the blood of innocent children in macabre rituals.

Thus, I propose that the category be deleted and that the account Chenspec be monitored for possible attempts of POV-pushing. I open this thread here to give the matter greater visibility, as I believe I could simply empty the category myself, but then it would be just as easy for them to revert my edit. Thank you, RodRabelo7 (talk) 02:13, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

@GPSLeo, JWilz12345, Queen of Hearts, and Ratekreel: Would you like to give your opinion on the matter? RodRabelo7 (talk) 02:18, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

@A1Cafel and Kingofthedead: As the ones who uploaded the mentioned photos, would you also like to comment?

RodRabelo7 (talk) 02:24, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

@RodRabelo7: I strongly disagree with this categorization and in my opinion (all political biases aside) it's a clear violation of NPOV. The photos have messages like "Stop Israeli War Crimes," "Free Palestine," "Stop Genocide," "Stop Killing Children," etc. all things which reliable sources have documented. The phrasing "Swords of Iron War" too shows clear bias towards the Israeli perspective. Kingofthedead (talk) 03:17, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

@RodRabelo7 no comment on this matter, since this is not of my forte/sphere of wiki-interest. My apologies. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 05:06, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

What you wrote is not accurate - a blood libel is a false anti-Semitic accusation against Jews. The problem with them is that throughout history, blood libels have led to various pogroms, murders, and harassment against Jews. Although the libel about Jews murdering Christian babies and using their blood is a common blood libel, it is not the only one. In fact, this is one example of a particular case that belongs to a broader pattern. In today's context, false accusations of the Jewish state of genocide and apartheid are relevant examples that reflect the same pattern. Chenspec (talk) 05:53, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

"I see no one holding placards accusing Jews of using Christian blood in obscure rituals" - so you are clearly not accustomed or knowledgeable in this issue, since a blood libel is also referred throuout history as any false accusation against Jews including in Russia. W:Blood libel includes also other allegations, such as "versions of the blood libel accused Jews of ritually re-enacting the crucifixion" and more. So the narrow verbal interpretation of blood libel only as "Jews use Christians' blood" is mistaken. Ehud Amir (talk) 08:16, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Even so, see the comments below, especially the one by Josve05a. By the way, an average of 70 edits per year on Commons and just happened to stumble upon this topic? Curious. RodRabelo7 (talk) 14:38, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

The idea that anyone who has an even slightly critical opinion of the war in Gaza is antisemitic or committing blood libel is laughable at best. If anything, that kind of attitude about the war just increases antisemitism. More to the point, in this case it's just an attempt to use Commons to push a nationalistic political agenda with the category system, which we don't allow for. So the category should be deleted for the Category-related POV-pushing that it clearly is. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:11, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

A false accusation of genocide is not a "slightly critical opinion" Chenspec (talk) 06:20, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Good thing I didn't say it was. The important thing is that it's still not blood libel or antisemitic. That's even assuming it's not a genocide to begin with but even if it's not, the category is still nationalistic, political POV-pushing regardless. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:27, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

This shows this topic is to complex to fit into a category system. Therefore we should not try to fit it into the category system. Just delete all categories they label something in a political way unless there is no serious doubt about that label. Describing the topic and the discussions about is the task of Wikipedia not of Categories on Commons. GPSLeo (talk) 06:43, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

This sounds reasonable to me as long as this policy is included in all relevant cases, including the category Israeli apartheid. Chenspec (talk) 07:22, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

It doesn't seem fair to me. This topic was opened because you are associating people protesting and a sovereign country accusing another of genocide with blood libel, which according to the Wikipedia page refers to Jews using Christian blood in rituals. There's a false equivalence here, especially since the Israeli apartheid is controversial precisely mostly, if not only because its existence is denied by those who perpetrate it. See the article on the English Wikipedia, which as I mentioned treats it as a fact. RodRabelo7 (talk) 07:38, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm not a huge fan of any political categories myself but at least images like this one show an accusation of Israeli apartheid, which is the point in the category. Whereas, this image is just of someone wearing a shirt with the word "Palestine" on it. A shirt with the name of a geographical location on it obviously isn't antisemitic or blood libel. Unless your going to argue the actual State of Palestine is antisemitic and it's mere existence is slander against Jews. Let alone that someone wearing a shirt in support of it is. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:43, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Maybe we should rename the category Category:Israeli apartheid to Category:Media related to Israeli apartheid discourse. The Category:Blood libels during the Swords of Iron War should be renamed to Category:References to Blood libel at Israel–Hamas war related protests and all files with no direct reference should be removed from the category. GPSLeo (talk) 08:24, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

I was thinking about something like that, but I'd still argue that someone wearing a Palestine shirt isn't a reference to blood libel or has anything to do with it. If we extend the definition of "blood libel" to any accusation towards Jews or the Jewish state then it's essentially meaningless at that point. Category:Blood libel is pretty clearly about the historical trope of falsely accusing Jews of kidnaping and murdered the children of Christians in order to use their blood as part of religious rituals. That's what the description for the category says, it's what the Wikidata item says, that's the definition of blood libel on Wikipedia and Google search. Blood libel has nothing to do with the state of Isreal either. Know one outside of extreme Jewish or Israeli nationalists would say it's blood libel to simply criticize a Jew or the Jewish state regardless of the accusation being made. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:39, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes there are no photos directly referencing blood libel in that category and only maybe 5-10 with possible indirect reference. GPSLeo (talk) 09:41, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Adamant1 - The photo you mentioned was not cataloged because of the caption on the shirt but because of the caption on the sign "Stop Genocide" Chenspec (talk) 10:09, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree with the importance of distinguishing between legitimate criticism of a state and blood libels. Things that I think go beyond legitimate criticism and fall under the definition of blood libels are false accusations of genocide, war crimes or apartheid. As well as false comparisons to the Nazi regime - which are actually more implicit accusations of genocide. To the best of my memory, all the images that are categorized there are associated with one or more of these options. If there is an image that is not clear why it is there or another type of blood libel that I have not mentioned here - you are welcome to ask and I will be happy to answer.

I also emphasize that blood libels include false accusations only. If the accusation is about an event that occurred in reality - that is a different issue. However, it is important to remember that Wikipedia is not a place for primary research, so the determination of the very existence of various events, or the way in which they should be interpreted, should come from official and reliable external sources that are relevant to the subject.

Regarding changing the names of the categories to some wording that would clarify that this is a discussion around a specific issue and not a determination of the nature of the case itself, I am also okay with it as long as it is applied to all relevant categories equally. Chenspec (talk) 10:25, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Commons is not a place for advancing political narratives (neither implicitly nor explicitly) through categorization. Per my reading of Commons:Categories, categories should reflect verifiable facts (my emphasis, not a direct quote), not interpretations or arguments. Terms like blood libel are deeply historically loaded and, per both w:Blood libel and d:Q498273, refer specifically to false allegations that Jews murder non-Jews (typically Christians) to use their blood in religious rituals. This is not a flexible metaphor; it's a precise concept. Broadening it to mean “any false accusation against a Jewish person or Israel” dilutes its meaning and injects WP:POV into Commons, which violates both COM:NPOV and COM:SCOPE. None of the images currently in Category:Blood libels during the Swords of Iron War include references to blood rituals, nor do they invoke Jewish identity in any direct way. Most of them are images of protests making general political or humanitarian statements like “Stop genocide.” That may be seen as unfair, hyperbolic, or offensive by some, but it is not blood libel. To include such media in this category is at best a misunderstanding, and at worst a clear case of POV-pushing. Commons categories are not the place for editors to make judgment calls on which political claims are true or false. That belongs to reliable sources and (where needed) Wikipedia articles that can weigh them with context and citations, not to Commons file categories. I therefore support deletion of these kind of categories in their current form, as it violates policy on neutrality and factual categorization. If there's a valid need to track visual documentation of such accusations (e.g., actual protest signs referring to blood libel tropes), a much narrower and carefully scoped category may be considered, but that is not what this is. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 11:36, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

I would suggest to just create categories like "Protest posters accusing Israel government committing war crimes", "Protest posters accusing Israel government committing genocide" or "Protest posters comparing Israel government with national socialism". Then the category makes a simple and verifiable statement what is visible. The photos can also be categorized in Categories like "Protests in support of Palestine" or "Protests in support of Hamas". But trying to guess the cultural background of a protest poster is nothing that should be done in Commons categories. GPSLeo (talk) 11:43, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

I also support deletion per Josve05a and others above. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:03, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm also in favor of deleting the category and moving its contents to Category:Demonstrations and protests related to 2023 Israel–Hamas war in support of Palestine.

As much as I'm in favor of letting the conversation run its course before action is taken, I removed the "Blood Libel" categories from Category:Israeli apartheid and Category:South Africa v. Israel (Genocide Convention). I've also removed the category Category:Antisemitism during the Israel–Hamas war from Category:Demonstrations and protests related to 2023 Israel–Hamas war in support of Palestine, all of which were put there by Chenspec. Pro-Palestine protests are not inherently anti-semitic. Any images found to be anti-semitic in nature can be moved to the appropriate subcategories. This is a wholly inappropriate use of the category system. ReneeWrites (talk) 15:12, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

There has been an obvious hijacking of the category system to defend a specific POV, which is totally out of Commons scope. I second all others that defended deleting that category. The categories suggested @GPSLeo would allow people to find that specific content without falling into terms loaded with POV. Darwin ^Ahoy! 15:29, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Fully agreed that this is not "Blood libel" (medieval/modern accusations against Jews kidnapping and murdering children for secret rituals). The Gaza genocide is committed by the government of Israel, not "shadowy Jews" and not even by the general populace in Israel. It's also committed in the open, not in secret; and people aren't killed for dark rituals either. Just because 19th/20th-century antisemitic sentiment was entirely unfounded and racist, does that dark past not delegimitate todays Anti-War protests. (This would be different with stereotyped antisemitic posters.) Regarding this category, Delete. (Edit: Someone in the discussion above also mentioned Category:Israeli apartheid. That is a long-standing BDS idea and seems POV too.) --Enyavar (talk) 15:32, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
Support deletion. This exploits and dilutes the term "blood libel" to the point of making it meaningless. - Jmabel ! talk 17:57, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
I also support deletion. Blood libel has a specific meaning and this is not within the meaning of that. Abzeronow (talk) 18:58, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

I am thinking that the category is important, as mentioned above, a blood libel is a false anti-Semitic accusation against Jews, as it stated at the photos.Ovedc (talk) 05:29, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

As numerous other users have stated above, this is incorrect (or at least confusingly stated). "Blood libel" is a specific type of antisemitic accusation. It is not a blanket term for all forms of antisemitism, or for any negative statement about Israel. Omphalographer (talk) 06:26, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Arrival 1946 in Israël picture

I have a picture of a bus arriving at jewish settlement, with on the backside the text:

Arrivé d'immigrants en Israël, le 19 mai 1946. It is likely to be zionist propaganda (very enthousiastic welcome)

There is the copyrigth notice of Tallandier. I havent been able tp find anything on this Tallandier. I dont know when the phofografer may have died.Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:02, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Hm. Are you sure that Tallandier is the photographer? This might be the French publishing company fr:Éditions Tallandier (est. 1901). If they own that picture, you'll have to wait just a few short years: it will already become public domain in 2042. --Enyavar (talk) 15:16, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Its fr:Éditions Tallandier. There is no mention of a photografer, only the copyrigth letter C and the name Tallandier. This is pre-Israël Palestine, so I suppose its a British license, or is the nationality of the organisation/photografer more important? In the EU, it is PD 70 years after publication for pseudo-anonymous photographs such as postcards, without a photografer or writer attribution. See newspaper articles without a writer attribution. The original Tallendier family members no longer had a role in the publishing house after 1933, so a Tallendier photographer can be excluded, certainly in a turbulent Palestine far from French soil. So this is work bough by the publishing house. Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:18, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

It is this picture is also on the Delcampe (postcard website): arrivee-d-immigrants-en-israel-le-19-mai-1946.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:19, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

May 02

Old Commons:Media by time?

Hello, should be Commons:Media by time updated to year 2025? I don't know how to do that at first glance :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:40, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Done - Jmabel ! talk 16:35, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 16:35, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

May 11

Category:2 men with other organisms; 1 boy with 4 women; 5 women with other people; etc

Please see Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/10/Category:2 men with other organisms regarding such categories.
Prototyperspective (talk) 11:28, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: There are a lot of these categories. Check out Category:Adult humans in groups of 5 -> Category:Adult humans in 5 people -> Category:Clothed adult humans in 5 people -> Category:Clothed adult humans in 5 clothed people -> Category:Clothed men in 5 clothed people -> Category:2 clothed men in 5 clothed people -> Category:2 clothed men in 5 clothed adult humans -> Category:2 clothed men with 3 clothed women. Notice that none of them actually have any files except for the last one. Nosferattus (talk) 15:43, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

These are absurd. What next, "2 cats and a toaster"? - Jmabel ! talk 17:08, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Guess what, they have potential for expansion. Why should I take anything I read on this page seriously when in previous discussions, I read complaints about cats which are underpopulated and have little or no chance of expansion, all the while they continue to proliferate on the site and there's no evidence of the regulars here doing anything about it? I certainly don't have time to hang around here and constantly comment simply for the sake of commenting. It might help to look up "paper tiger". RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 18:15, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

no evidence of the regulars here doing anything about it? Not sure what you mean. a) This seems not relevant to the categories this particular thread is about and b) There's at least two ways people do things about underpopulated categories: there's many people categorizing files when they find them into such and there is Commons:Categorization requests where people can list such underpopulated cat if adding the note "This category is missing many files" (see examples) is not enough.

Guess what, they have potential for expansion The possibility of getting files added doesn't mean a category is useful / good to have. We also don't have Category:English-language PDF files containing the word example for example. (However, I don't really fully understand your comment.) Prototyperspective (talk) 19:52, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

One of the things that sucks about the category system is that it's impossible to keep people from creating categories and there's a lot of bureaucratic hurdles in the way of dealing with ones that end up being an issue. Some can create thousands of clearly problematic categories in a matter of minutes but then it takes months of back and forth in a CfD for them to be deleted. It's not a great system by any means. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:17, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Some can create thousands of clearly problematic categories in a matter of minutes I haven't seen any such cases. but then it takes months of back and forth in a CfD for them to be deleted if it's actually problematic it usually just takes a small number such as 1 user to support deletion and if there are no objections it will simply be deleted without much of back and forth. Relative to the total number of categories there is quite little bureaucratic cost for deletion. One way to get rid of lots of misleading and/or useless categories would be deleting all categories that have stayed empty for months and aren't maintenance categories but that didn't gain traction and other than that I haven't seen many cases of problematic categories and it doesn't seem to be a problem. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:23, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

I haven't seen any such cases. I was being slightly hyperbolic but it's certainly a lot easier and quicker to create categories a lot of the time then it is to get rid of them.

It doesn't seem to be a problem. It really depends on the situation and who created the category. It's usually not a problem to delete a single category that was created by someone who isn't a contributor anymore. That's not what this discussion is about though. It certainly takes a lot more time and effort to clean up category systems like this one then it does to create them. Anything beyond a couple of a categories that were created by a dead account is going to take some time, effort, and jumping through multiple bureaucratic hoops to deal with. Even then people just recreate previously deleted categories. Then it turns into edit wars, ignored talk page messages, baseless ANU complaints about harassment or some nonsense Etc. Etc. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:23, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

It is definitely my experience that the "splitters" have a great advantage over the "lumpers". Anyone can unilaterally create an overly narrow or utterly useless category in seconds, and populate it with Cat-a-Lot or similar tools in minutes; undoing that normally takes (1) noticing it, (2) writing up a CfD, (3) building up something of a consensus, and (4) even if that consensus is relatively easily built, doing at least as much work after that as it took to create and populate the category in the first place. Plus, in many cases, splitters have the advantage of always having on their side the argument, "you are removing information from the category portion" which unless the category is a strict intersection of preexisting categories will always be at least technically true, even if the category is (as I remarked above) "2 cats and a toaster" or "Angele Merkel on Tuesdays in the 1990s". - Jmabel ! talk 02:15, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

We do seem to have these sort of discussions quite often. Maybe it's time that we create a policy against useless over-specific categories. The only problem is how to define such a policy. How do we prohibit "2 cats and a toaster" in a way that everyone can agree on? Nosferattus (talk) 02:47, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

If I had my way the standard would be not having intersectional categories for more then two subjects. Otherwise it obtuse pretty quickly after that. So "2 cats and a toaster" would be out. As would all of these categories. I doubt there's any chance of something like that being approved though. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:42, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't see any way to get away from this being a judgement call every time. It's just frustrating when some long-term users don't seem to be able to gauge consensus over time and/or willing to conform to it. - Jmabel ! talk 04:02, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

E.g. Category:Red fire hydrants in New Hampshire, presumably a perfectly good category, intersects an object type, a color, and a geographic location. - Jmabel ! talk 04:05, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

On the other hand, I've had to reluctantly accept the consensus in favor of Category:Female bass guitarists, which I find a pointless intersection: what does a female bass guitarist do any differently from a male bass guitarist? I get breaking the U.S. down to its states, breaking something down 50 ways can make for more tractable categories in many areas, but breaking it in two seems useless to me. And what about a non-binary bass guitarist? But clearly I am in the minority with this view. - Jmabel ! talk 04:10, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I'd probably axe most of the gender based categories myself since it's not like we know how people identify in a good percentage of cases anyway. I much rather the categories not exist to begin with then having instances of people being misgendered. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:17, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

That cat is partly to include the files/categories in the Category:Female musicians branch. I think the cat is reasonable, maybe useful for some but not very useful. I think the problem rather is that due to COM:OVERCAT it can result in people moving files into by gender subcategories which are then missing at the top level and aren't categorized into far more useful categories such as about the setting or the instrument. Another example is Category:People exercising and its subcategories (esp. this) where people partly categorized by gender and age where it would be far more useful and reasonable to categorize by exercise / type of exercise. Secondly, improved ways to see files across many subcategories are also needed due to how subcategorization works. For example to see a well-sorted scrollable filterable wall of images of any kind of fire hydrants regardless of color and location.

Both of that I think means not the categorization itself is the problem that needs and can be well addressed, but such/potential issues relating to subcategorization. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:18, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Maybe a solution would be to make it so gender based categories can only be added to ones specifically for the people. Instead of there being a situation were images just get dumped in "by gender" categories and not put in better ones like it happens now. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:04, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

There is an unfortunately common tendency among some editors to split up large categories using criteria which often feel arbitrary, and which act as a barrier to more effective subcategorization - e.g. gender or nationality for categories of people, "by year" categories for photos of locations, etc. Which isn't to say that these properties should never be used for subcategories, but rather that they should be a last resort. Omphalographer (talk) 22:10, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Category:Listed medical buildings in France

Category:Monuments historiques in France (hospitals) should be renamed in Category:Listed medical buildings in France

What do you think ?

Category:Listed buildings in France should be created Io Herodotus (talk) 17:23, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Comment why "Listed buildings" rather than Monuments historiques? Are there no other designations of listed buildings anywhere in France, so that the terms are equivalent? - Jmabel ! talk 01:05, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

There are other designations, for example Commons has Category:Monuments à l’inventaire, which are monuments of the Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel and are not labeled and protected as Monuments historiques of Category:Monuments historiques in France. Monument historique is a particular legal status and a label. See also on en.wikipedia en:Monument historique and en:Category:Monuments historiques of France. On Commons, both subcategories are grouped in Category:Cultural heritage monuments in France. There are also other labels, such as fr:Catégorie:Édifice labellisé « Patrimoine du XXe siècle » or en:Category:Maisons des Illustres. -- Asclepias (talk) 11:09, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Then "listed" can't be used in this context as a synonym for Monument historique. - Jmabel ! talk 00:00, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Comment The proposal is an approximate translation of the label, does not correspond to any international use of the terms, nor to criteria for moving the category. "Monument historique" is the official designation and the most common used expression and the same used on enwiki. So the renaming suggestion is against the Commons policy:

Category names should generally be in English [...], however, there are exceptions such as:
some proper names
[...]

names for which the non-English name is most commonly used in the English language (or there is no evidence of usage of an English-language version)

(from Commons:Categories#Category_names)

--Una tantum (talk) 06:59, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

While it may be tempting to translate this term to improve clarity and ensure content consistency, the suggested equivalent clearly falls short, as it refers to a concept that is legally defined. If an English translation is truly necessary, a more accurate option might be "Buildings legally designated as historical monuments". For the sake of consistency, the article's title "Monument historique" on English Wikipedia, should also be reconsidered. — Baidax ^💬 09:27, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I would guess that to the average American, monument historique is actually clearer than "listed building", a British term not widely used in the U.S. - Jmabel ! talk

Hierarchies of categories

Could someone help me with my confusion about how a hierarchy of categories should be created? I have read a number of articles on the subject but can't work out the final step(s).

Today I created a Commons category, "South Australian Railways wooden end-loading passenger car".

A hierarchy could be:

1: South Australian Railways
2: South Australian Railways passenger cars
3: South Australian Railways wooden end-loading passenger car.

I'm finding it difficult to know whether, or where, to add the categories above "South Australian Railways wooden end-loading passenger car".

My ignorance is evident in another new category, Category:South Australian Railways Brill railcar. Clearly I have the two levels of "South Australian Railways Brill railcar" wrong. I'd appreciate advice on that too.

Any help would be enormously appreciated. SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 09:36, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Start from the top - with Category:South Australian Railways and work down! Rathfelder (talk) 20:36, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

@Rathfelder: It's the process of doing that, not the concept, that I don't understand. Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 00:20, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

If you put [[Category:South Australian Railways Brill railcar]] on the page [[:Category:South Australian Railways Brill railcar]], then you are saying it is its own parent. (I've fixed that.) - Jmabel ! talk 00:02, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

@Rathfelder: Thank you! Now I get that bit! :-) Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 00:20, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

@SCHolar44: Is Category:South Australian Railways Brill railcar about one particular railcar or a type of railcar? - Jmabel ! talk 00:06, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel: It is a type of railcar. SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 00:20, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

@SCHolar44: then the category name should be plural, I'll fix it. - Jmabel ! talk 04:48, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Bahnhof Bergen auf Rügen?

I am not certain this is Bahnhof Bergen auf Rügen. I was taken on route from the File:Rasender Roland 2003 4.jpg to Rostock. I dont know on wich routes the Connex trains ran.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:30, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

If it is take at a station where the Rasender Roland stops it could only be Category:Bahnhof Putbus but I think tracks and roof do not match. It could be Bergen if there was once a longer roof at the platform that is now removed. GPSLeo (talk) 12:09, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Back when I was a student at the University of Rostock, there was an InterConnex train line from Rostock-Warnemünde to Leipzig (see InterConnex). After Rostock, it IIRC followed more or less the tracks of the RE5 (Schwaan, Güstrow, Neustrelitz, Waren, Berlin); not getting near Rügen (at least, not with this rolling stock). Your image may have been shot in Rostock Hbf. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 04:54, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article says there was a line to Binz from 2002 to 2006 so the 2003 photo would fall into that time de:InterConnex. GPSLeo (talk) 07:08, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, but the Connex to Binz was not serviced with a Bombardier TRAXX (DB BR146) nor with classical coaches, as seen in the picture. Instead, the line used Diesel multiple units from Siemens (Siemens Desiro); that's why I wrote "not getting near Rügen (at least, not with this rolling stock)". Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 15:59, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

The roof matchtes the one in Rostock. It was late evening (long days june), so it could be a return to Rostock Connex train.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:40, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Flag of the Council of Europe

As far as I know, the Council of Europe use the normal flag of Europe as its official flag. These flags

Logo of the Council of Europe (green, no lettering).png
Flag of the Council of Europe.svg

are not a rendition of a real flag but a version of the official logo without lettering:

and thus their names should be changed. Besides, the one with the green letter has a dubious license. -- Carnby (talk) 18:20, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I doubt anyone would support it but I don't think we should allow for "variations" of flags to begin with. Since with how it currently is there's just to much room for people to upload made up flags that purely exist to spread nationalist propaganda. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:24, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I think really existing "variations" of flags are OK. For example: Category:Heart-flags of Eurovision. Nakonana (talk) 19:30, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't have problem with those kinds of flags per se, which is why I put "variations" in quotes. It's mainly the ones that are clearly created by the uploader or come from other websites that don't have any standards. If I were to guess there's probably an extremely small amount of flags on here that are legitimate, official variations. Most of them are fake. It's not like we couldn't clearly seperate the two and make an exception for legitimate variations of flags if there was ever a policy about it though. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:43, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I would rename them "logo flag" or "logo of the Council of Europe (no lettering)" since they're not actual flags of the Council of Europe.-- Carnby (talk) 20:39, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

"Logo of the Council of Europe (no lettering)" is perfect. It's not used by the Council as a flag - just as part of their logo - so we shouldn't call it a flag. Omphalographer (talk) 20:59, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Done-- Carnby (talk) 11:40, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

We will be enabling the new Charts extension on your wiki soon!

(Apologies for posting in English)

Hi all! We have good news to share regarding the ongoing problem with graphs and charts affecting all wikis that use them.

As you probably know, the old Graph extension was disabled in 2023 due to security reasons. We’ve worked in these two years to find a solution that could replace the old extension, and provide a safer and better solution to users who wanted to showcase graphs and charts in their articles. We therefore developed the Charts extension, which will be replacing the old Graph extension and potentially also the EasyTimeline extension.

After successfully deploying the extension on Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew Wikipedia, as well as on MediaWiki.org, as part of a pilot phase, we are now happy to announce that we are moving forward with the next phase of deployment, which will also include your wiki.

The deployment will happen in batches, and will start from May 6. Please, consult our page on MediaWiki.org to discover when the new Charts extension will be deployed on your wiki. You can also consult the documentation about the extension on MediaWiki.org.

If you have questions, need clarifications, or just want to express your opinion about it, please refer to the project’s talk page on Mediawiki.org, or ping me directly under this thread. If you encounter issues using Charts once it gets enabled on your wiki, please report it on the talk page or at Phabricator.

Thank you in advance! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

@Sannita (WMF) I think this message was mistakenly added here as Charts are already enabled on Commons since they could not work anywhere without Commons. GPSLeo (talk) 17:41, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Argh, I overlooked the presence of Commons in the list. Apologies for that! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Unsure how Canadian and USA copyright law interact here regarding AI fan art

I have used AI to create an image of the character Jirel of Joiry, and would like to upload it here. However, I'm not sure how Commons treats the interaction of the copyright laws of Canada (where I live) and the USA (where Commons' servers are located).

The description that I intend to use is:

AI-generated fan art of the character Jirel of Joiry as she appeared at the beginning of the story "The Black God's Kiss" by C. L. Moore.
"The Black God's Kiss" was published in the October 1934 issue of Weird Tales, which is stated by the Internet Archive to be in the Public Domain. This, there is no copyright issue with making a derivative work based on a story published in that magazine issue.
The image was created by User:Robkelk using Google's ImageFX tool, with the seed 999660 and the description "A realistic image of a tall woman in her mid-30s, with an athletic build and a face that is more handsome than beautiful with an expression of barely-contained anger. She has short red hair and hazel eyes. She wears a sleeveless chain-link tunic over a long-sleeved doeskin leather shirt, doeskin leather leggings with Roman-style greaves, and leather boots. Her belt has a sheathed dagger, and she carries an old but sharp shortsword. She stands in front of a simple wooden throne that is sized for her to use." That prompt is the sixth iteration of the prompt used to create earlier versions of the image, so the creator assumes that this counts as human-guided creation rather than sole AI creation.
Canadian law is silent on the copyright status of human-guided AI-generated images. Assuming that the AI tool is just that – a tool – Rob Kelk claims copyright of this image and licences it under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.

I would tag the upload with the template "Fan art" and the categories "AI-generated fan art" and "Jirel of Joiry".

Is it permitted to upload the image here? If "yes", is there anything else that I need to add to the description and licence texts?

--Robkelk (talk) 14:25, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

@Robkelk: The character itself would be in the public domain, so any copyright of fanart would transfer over to the creator of the image without it being shared by other copyright holders. Whether Canadian law says this author is you, or considers it to have no author due to the image being AI-generated, Commons should be able to host the image either way. ReneeWrites (talk) 14:58, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Don't be surprised if it gets nominated for deletion. Uploading AI generated fan art of something that's already PD is super pointless and goes against the guideline that Commons isn't a personal file host. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:34, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Given that, I think that perhaps I should wait until there's a decision as to the status of AI works under Canadian copyright law. (If somebody's going to think this is using Commons as a personal file host instead of being me sharing a work, that would be two possible strikes against Commons keeping the file.) Thanks for the help anyway. --Robkelk (talk) 21:50, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

There is no "decision" to be made. If it's not covered already then it's not protected by copyright Trade (talk) 13:20, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

That is not how the copyright law works in Canada. --Robkelk (talk) 13:58, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

There's no evidence of any court ruling that AI pictures are inherently copyrighted by someone other than the prompter. I wouldn't let Canadian legalities stop you from uploading it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:42, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I live in Canada. I must take into account Canadian legalities, just as you appear (from the content of your User page) to need to take into account legalities of the USA. --Robkelk (talk) 14:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Making a picture of a PD character that we have no visual representation of is useful in many contexts; it is certainly not super pointless. I'd certainly use it over the cover of the magazine that does not depict her on w:Jirel of Joiry.--Prosfilaes (talk)

The question is if there's a cover of the magazine that depicts her. If so, then its pointless to upload a generated image of her to Commons. I don't see why there wouldn't be a normal one but the burden should be on whomever wants to upload an AI generated version of an exiting character to at least look first and upload a non-AI generated verison instead if one exists. Otherwise there's no point in doing this. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:50, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Or, you know, we can be less stressed about it and not demand one true solution. If someone wants to upload a picture of a PD character with limited available art, we could let them and not slap them down or demand they do in depth searching first. Build up instead of tear down.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:03, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I think there's two solutions there 1. Look for an image 2. Upload an AI generated one if that's all there is. I'm just saying people shouldn't skip the first step because its easier to push the "AI go burr" button then it is to look through search results. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:24, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

There is a cover image that has fallen into the Public Domain in the USA (File:Weird Tales October 1934.jpg), but it's what I would call a "cheesecake" image of the character that does not match the character's personality as described in the story itself. --Robkelk (talk) 14:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

File:Mouth and gums of a lead-mill worker Wellcome L0062322.jpg

Is it fine the artwork is cropped? --Quick1984 (talk) 06:01, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

@Quick1984: Yes, CC BY 4.0 allows that. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:40, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

I think the question was about commons guidelines and there the overwrite was definitely not okay. I reverted it to the original version. GPSLeo (talk) 17:34, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Exactly. Thank you. Quick1984 (talk) 21:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:07, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Fuzhou Metro logos

Some people claim that the proposed ones do not meet the requirements of "TOO China", but why are there no problems with other ones such as: File:Guangzhou Metro logo.svg, File:Guangzhou Metro icon.svg, and File:Amoy Metro logo.svg? However, the person who proposed the deletion could not produce any evidence at all（Image Links:File:Fuzhou Metro logo.svg, File:Fuzhou Metro icon.svg）. --御坂雪奈 (talk) 17:27, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

@People who have participated in similar discussions:@User:TimWu007 @User:Ankry @User:Liuxinyu970226 @User:Sam_Sailor --御坂雪奈 (talk) 17:27, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

@御坂雪奈 You might have more success in asking in COM:VPC. Greetings :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:20, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

thank you!But the discussion has already begun. If you are able, could you please make an evaluation and judgment there?[5] and [6].thank you very much! 御坂雪奈 (talk) 16:14, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:07, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Suggestion of merge (Potd)

Hello, because of the Picture of the day of today, I was searching for the wikidata item of the Ormož Basins nature reserve, Slovenia (Ormož basins nature reserve (Q108138093)), and its commons category, but we have both Category:Naravni rezervat Ormoške lagune and Category:Ormož Basins. It seems the same subject, am I right? In your opinion can we merge categories? I notify also the creators of categories @Sporti and @Yerpo. Una tantum (talk) 07:17, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

This is the wrong place to discuss this, please start a category discussion. Prototyperspective (talk) 08:51, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Prototyperspective: I am writing here because of the high visibility of POTD, to make the discussion faster than if I posted on the category discussion page. But yes, I will add the discussion in the talks of categories too.--Una tantum (talk) 09:24, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

@Una tantum: for now, you can add {{See also cat}} to both. - Jmabel ! talk 23:47, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:07, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Óscar E. Duplán Maldonado (1890-1942) in 1915.jpg

Can someone add his image to his Wikidata entry RAN (talk) 15:02, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ):

Done, see d:special:diff/2347472489. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:24, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:06, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

YouTubeReviewBot

why was this bot banned, again?--Trade (talk) 08:27, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Special:CentralAuth/YouTubeReviewBot Log/block Special:Diff/575750163 User%3AYouTubeReviewBot This was 4 years ago. Taylor 49 (talk) 09:13, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

LicenseReviewerBot, the bot that replaced YouTubeReviewBot have been dead for 3 years. Something must have happened--Trade (talk) 16:41, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Comment well ...

Special:CentralAuth/YouTubeReviewBot killed 2021 operated by Special:CentralAuth/Eatcha stopped editing 2021-11-18 but NOT banned
Special:CentralAuth/LicenseReviewerBot dead since 2022, deflagged 2024, operated by Special:CentralAuth/Bd9a119b5d05019d7c923207398ef3c3 reportedly sockpuppet of "Eatcha" and essentially inactive

no operator -> no bot. Taylor 49 (talk) 17:25, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Taylor 49 (talk) 17:25, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Speedy deletion criterion

This arose at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Gatley-WikiBio-P.pdf. We have speedy-deletion criterion Commons:Criteria for speedy deletion#GA2 if someone basically writes an article and puts it in gallery space. Is there any reason we don't have a comparable speedy-deletion criterion if they do the same and upload it as a PDF? Deletion in such a case is pretty much certain, as far as I can tell. Why should we have to leave discussion open for a week (or at least until COM:SNOW)? - Jmabel ! talk 04:20, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

No objection from my side to introduce such a criterion. In fact, I looked into COM:CSD at first and was mildly surprised to see that there was no fitting rationale, making me settle for this standard DR. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 05:06, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, a CSD criterion for that would be helpful. It shouldn't be specific to PDF, though; I've occasionally seen people write encyclopedia articles and upload them as images.

It'd also be nice if this could encompass web browser "print to PDF"s of wiki pages. I don't know why people upload these, but they do sometimes, and they're never useful. (Wikibooks shouldn't be affected; I believe they use LaTeX to render their PDF books.) Omphalographer (talk) 17:17, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

So does this need to go to Commons:Village pump/Proposals? We're talking about changing a policy page. - Jmabel ! talk 19:35, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Can you figure out the word?

File:Complimentary Banquet in The Brooklyn Union of Brooklyn, New York on January 13, 1883.jpg Yard Honoring a Good Citizen and Selfless? Mechanic. --RAN (talk) 03:26, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Looks like "skillful" to me, with the final "l" floating up a bit (much like the "f" did a few lines below). Omphalographer (talk) 03:56, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

I think threads here could not get much more trivial. The text currently says "Selfless" but that word shouldn't be there since it seems fairly clearly not the one in the image. Agree that it seems to be skillful but and l seems to be missing (skilful). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:12, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! --RAN (talk) 15:17, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
- Definitely "skilful mechanic". - Jmabel ! talk 03:11, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 03:11, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Proposal: New set of categories for UK and IoM

I've been advised that this is the best venue to raise this. The United Kingdom is mapped by the Ordnance Survey. There is a National Grid Reference system to locate places.

So, my proposal is that we creat a new set of categories to cover the UK by Grid Reference. Heirarchy would be National Grid Reference system > 100 km square (e.g. TQ) > 10 km square (e.g. TQ35 > 1 km square (e.g. TQ 3574). Individual locations are generally expressed in 100m coordinates (TQ 351 749) or 10m coordinates (T3517 7492), but we don't need to go that far. As can be seen, the new categories would cover the whole of England, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man. I would suggest that the NR and NW squares only be categorised outside of Northern Ireland, as there is a different system which covers the whole of the island of Ireland and could possibly be a future project. I realise that this would be a big project, which is why I'm bringing it up to see whether there is interest, rather than boldly creating the categories. Mjroots (talk) 06:09, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I'd worry that this was a case of doing something just because we can. What would be the usefulness of categorizing this way? What would be in the categories? Populated places, structures, geographic features, other? How would this add to what we get by including latitude and longitude? -- Auntof6 (talk) 06:35, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

What would be in the categories would be pretty much every image in the area covered. I've recently been doing work on category:Oasts in Kent and its subcategories. Where an individual oast has a category, I've added a description with the grid reference (preferably to 10m squares). This will assist future imports of images from the Geograph website to be correctly identified. Many house converted oasts are given fanciful names which are totally unrelated to their historic farm connections. Mjroots (talk) 06:58, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

This seems like pointless duplication. Either that or you'd be categorizing images in ones for the areas of Oasts when their actually outside of them. I don't think most people know or care about the grids anyway. There's plenty of different ways that geographical locations are delineated and it's not worth having specific category systems for all, or most, of them. Otherwise things would just get to convoluted. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:29, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I think it would be better to have the geocoordinates of images added in some way that is searchable and filterable. There's for example this wikimap thing where one can see files in a category on a map Category:Drone videos from unidentified countries. Don't think it's a good use-case of categories at first glance but if it is, I think it would need to be set by some bot based on the set coordinates and other categories of the file (like the city) – a flat category system could actually be quite useful because then one could use these category together with deepcategory to filter photos by location which often is not possible with other location-categories because they're so large. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:18, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

The reason some files are in unidentified country categories is that they don't have any information that identifies where the subject is. I don't think having the new categories would help that -- if we don't know where the subject is, we can't identify the location, the latitude and longitude, or the grid. -- Auntof6 (talk) 11:32, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Makes sense but I don't know how it relates to my comment – that category is just there for an example of a wikimap (see top right of the category). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:41, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I meant to say that we can't categorize by grid if we don't know the location.

I wonder if Wikidata would be a better place for this data. -- Auntof6 (talk) 12:54, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes but then I don't know why you replied to me and not OP. Even then: these categories would be for files for which we know the location. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:53, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I wonder whether anyone outside of the Ordnance Survey uses this system. Wikivoyage has a good rule of thumb that I recommend using here: ignore what governments do when classifying locations, and use the systems that actual people actually use. If we do this, we don't need to teach every new user how we do things, because we do things the same way that people in real life do things. (For example, is a hypothetical location in SC or NX? Who cares, it's on the Isle of Man.) --Robkelk (talk) 15:18, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Many people in the UK use Ordnance Survey maps. Grid references are used in many articles about UK locations, as a search for {{gbmappingsmall| will show. My proposal is not intended to replace any other method of categorisation, but to be an additional method of categorisation. Mjroots (talk) 08:03, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Unusual process

This discussion about a category was speedy closed, then all the categories manually removed by the user Sbb1413. Some of the files not re-categorized. Finally the main category tagged for speedy deletion. Ping Andy Dingley. Could we please have more opinions? -- Basile Morin (talk) 22:41, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Seems to me to be inappropriate in process terms. Generally, if a category is under discussion, it is OK to work on fixing problems with it in order to keep, but not in destroying it because you think it should go away. - Jmabel ! talk 04:09, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

The discussion had 4 participants, 3 of whom argued for deletion (or at the very least questioned the merits of the category existing) and one to keep (not counting the person who closed the discussion, which would make it 4 versus 1). It's hardly unusual to see a discussion be closed under those circumstances, especially if no new comments have been added for more than half a year. ReneeWrites (talk) 21:19, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I count Pigsonthewing (as nominator) and JopkeB and (less clearly) Omphalographer voting to remove, apparently joined by non-admin closer Sbb1413; Dronebogus as saying "keep, but examine contents"; oddly, nothing there from Basile Morin, who came here to object. So, I take back what I said earlier—this wasn't particularly out of process—but I'm still not convinced it was a good decision, and it was definitely not followed through well: there were a lot of subcats that were not ever linked to this discussion, that did not necessarily have the same issues, and that were also implicitly included in the follow-up without much apparent thought being given to what really should happen to their contents. - Jmabel ! talk 19:47, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, over-categorizing hundreds of files by deleting important information in each was out-of-process. Thank you. -- Basile Morin (talk) 03:55, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Copyrighted material deliberately being uploaded and deleted

I was recently made aware that it is standard practice for Commons admins to upload copyrighted works, delete it and then restore the material once copyright has expired. This seems highly problematic under copyright law, under title 17 only copyright holders have the specific right to distribute or reproduce their work. By copying the works to our servers, we are distributing the work for later use. It's not important whether we are holding onto the work until copyright expires - until this occurs, we may not reproduce or redistribute the material.

Has this practice been vetted by the WMF's legal team? This seems incredibly dangerous from a legal point of view! When did this become Commons policy? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 01:22, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

@Chris.sherlock2: It is also universal practice that except for CSAM, we never hard-delete anything, and it remains available to admins. Are you also suggesting that Legal is unaware of that? - Jmabel ! talk 04:11, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't know what legal are or are not aware of. But if we are intentionally uploading images knowing that we are storing them for good and just to restore them when copyright has expired, this appears to violate title 17 of the U.S. Code. Specifically, 17 U.S. Code § 106 which grants copyright owners the exclusive right to "distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending". We are technically distributing the works - notice that it doesn't say anything about publishing a copy of the works.

The bit that will absolutely get us, however, it that we are reproducing the material. Under section (1) we cannot reproduce their work without their permission. We are 100% storing their work on our servers for the purpose of later restoring the material. We have not asked them for their permission to do this.

So, no, on the face of it, we are not allowed to do this. I would be interested in hearing WMF legal counsel's opinion on this. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 06:34, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

This procedure is absolutely legal this is what every library does. We could even make some of the material available under certain conditions but we do not do so because of our own rules not because of legal reasons. GPSLeo (talk) 05:42, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Except we are not a library. You are referring to 17 U.S. Code § 108(d), which specifically allows for digital distribution and reproduction where a user makes a specific request for the item in the collection. We don't have such a mechanism in Commons. In fact, the archive is not being loaned at all, it is being kept in storage and no user has the right to access it till copyright expires. So no, this is not the same situation that covers libraries as we are categorically not a library.

Furthermore, do you think libraries don't have costs? A library relies of first sale doctrine to loan out the item. This means they have purchased the material. Archive.org got into trouble on this matter in Hatchett v Internet Archive. Hatchett got an injunction against IA that required them to remove any commercially produced books. We have not paid for any of the material we have been deleting. We don't have first sale doctrine to fall back on.

If the WMF wants to start a library, then let them start a library. I'm sure they might want to speak to archive.org who are already doing this work. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 06:40, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

@Chris.sherlock2: I don't think the analogy to archive.org works because they weren't privately storing files. They were lending books to people. Know one is being loaned files that get deleted until the copyright expires on here. The files can be accessed by administrators in specific instances, but that's not lending to the public. People are illegally allowed to show copyrighted works to a small group of their friends, family, or coworkers in private. It's not a copyright violation to do so. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:35, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

You are correct in that this is quite a different situation. You are also wrong because actually, this makes it worse, we are reproducing copyrighted material without the permission of the original copyright holder. It very much is against the law to copy material without the permission of the owner of the copyrighted work. That's the clear reading of 17 U.S. Code § 106 and to do otherwise is, in fact, a violation of the copyright statute. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 05:15, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes we do not have a procedure to make some media available on request that is why viewing them is entirety limited to admins. The admins could be compared to employees of a library they are also able to view any media they have any time. Like employees signed in their contract admins are bound to the terms of use forbidding them the usage of hidden content. We are not a regular library but as it does not require a permission to run a library there are no special rules (unless for public libraries) they would not apply to us. GPSLeo (talk) 07:05, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I was actually going to ask about or comment on that. I assume admins can't just mass download hidden files or otherwise access them outside of their official duties. Like I have to believe the WMF would take action if an adminstrator downloaded hidden files and uploaded them to another website or something. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:12, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I think we're talking past each other a bit. The key issue isn't whether admins can access deleted content (we all know they can), but whether uploading material we know is copyrighted, with the intent to restore it once copyright expires—constitutes a violation of copyright law under U.S. Title 17.

The crucial word here is intent. This isn't a case of uncertainty about copyright status or acting in good faith with incomplete information. This is about knowingly uploading non-free content, knowing it is not permitted under Commons' licensing requirements, and relying on the ability to delete it immediately and retrieve it in the future. That is fundamentally different from cases where material is removed after copyright concerns are discovered. Here, the reproduction is deliberate from the outset.

The "we're like a library" argument doesn't hold up. Libraries operate under very specific exceptions, such as 17 U.S. Code §108, and the first sale doctrine. Commons doesn't purchase the works, doesn't restrict access under lending rules, and doesn't require individual requests. Admins are not staff in any legal sense, and they aren't bound by contracts that legally restrict their access or redistribution of such content.

This raises serious legal questions: Are we okay with deliberately creating a repository of copyrighted works that are, technically, only a deletion away from being public again? How is that different in principle from uploading the full Avengers movie, deleting it, and then saying it's okay because it'll be public domain in 95 years? --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 07:15, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't really see how intent matters here. Libraries obtain inventory through donations all the time. So I don't buy the idea that the first sale doctrine actually matters that much. Look at this way, if I buy a book, I put it my bedroom closet, then take it out to share with my family members once in a while is that a violation of copyright? If not, then does it suddenly become one if someone gives me the book instead of me buying it? --Adamant1 (talk) 07:35, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Because the scenario you give is what is known as an “unpublished” distribution. But this is largely irrelevant because under this scenario, you are not making a copy. The first sake doctrine allows you lend the book to a friend to read it. However, if this was an ebook, the law gets a little more murky but in general it is seen as a problem as you would be making a copy and this violating copyright.

The courts will not consider our intent when it comes to determining whether we violated copyright law or not - except if we argue wheat we are doing is allowable under Fair Use, but even here we will almost certainly hit an uphill battle convincing a bunch of impartial judges that we satisfy this part of the law (see my response to GPSLeo below for why). Intent will not be taken into consideration. Yes, this sucks, but that is the law of the United States. I’m not a U.S. citizen so I cannot change it no matter what I do, but even a U.S. citizen - or a group of citizens - will not change the law around this. We should not tempt the fates, as did archive.org, who partially lost a reasonably similar court case only some time ago. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:02, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't think making extremely limited copies of something that aren't being shared publicly violates copyright. Otherwise, essentially everything on the internet in general would be illegal. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:43, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Well, what you think and what is actually allowed are very different things. I can only urge people at the WMF and Commons to look at what the law says and hope they act accordingly. I don’t want to be in a position where things are ignored and we have a serious legal issue. - 20:34, 7 May 2025 (UTC) Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:34, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I do not know the exact definition of libraries and archives in US law. If there is no clear limitation to public archives I would consider Commons an archive. Additionally storing the files only visible to a very limited group of people until the copyright expires should be covered by fair use requirements. And there is no huge difference in accepting terms of use and signing a contract. GPSLeo (talk) 07:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I’m sorry, but to satisfy fair use doctrine you must pass a four prong test. Firstly, you must satisfy the court as to the purpose and character of the use of the copyrighted work. That we are a not for profit would help, but the purpose would likely not: we are in this case specifically storing a copy of copyrighted works for the specific purpose of waiting out copyright. I doubt a court would look too kindly on this as a reason. We would certainly have no argument we could provide to the court to convince them we are using the material in a transformative manner - it would be literally sitting on our servers and we would have mo arguments the court that we are fairly using the material in a transformative manner.

The court would also look at the nature of the material we are storing, and given the wide variety of material we may choose to store I think we would be on very shaky ground on a fair amount of images. I for one wouldn’t want to have to justify to the court why we are storing an image or video of a fictional character we are storing till copyright is expired.

The third prong is the amount and substantiality of the material being used. In our case, it would be the entire work, and so the court would not in any way look upon this favourably.

The fourth prong is likely the least concerning issue - we could show we did not impinge on the commerciality of the works as nobody had easy access to it.

What you need to understand about Fair Use doctrine is you must satisfy all four prongs. And we could not do so.

of course, the irony here is that you are saying Commons is now explicitly relying on Fair Use to store images, which we are absolutely virulently against, and rightly so. So it’s a nonsense to even try to use this legal doctrine to justify what we are doing here.

I also say, with the greatest of respect, that you do not appear to understand the U.S. copyright laws you are relying upon. It might be unwise to reference and rely on your understanding of these laws without checking what they actually say. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:17, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Sure, you might be able to make this argument if not for the fact that we have not legally purchased the copyrighted material. Libraries are actually dealing with some very interesting licensing challenges around loaning out electronic books. With a physical book, CD, DVD or video cassette then first sale doctrine applies - they have purchased the item and they can loan it out to others without any issues. For electoric works, however, you are literally making a copy when you loan it out. Libraries don’t delete the electronic version from their servers when they loan it out. Instead they sign up to licensing arrangements with publishers where they can loan out items under certain terms and conditions. I’m not entirely privy to how they do this - I am not a librarian, but the likelihood of any publisher letting us do this for every item we have deleted is 100% never going to happen.

Of course, this point is moot. We haven’t purchased any of this material. We haven’t been given permission to store it on our servers. If a publisher so wanted, they could easily get a court order through discovery to find out all the work we have in our servers, public facing or otherwise. I doubt this will ever be an issue, but if it became known that we are intentionally storing an electronic copy of their copyrighted material to immediately serve out to anyone once the copyright term has expired, then all they have to do is get a court order to find out when we made the copy of their copyrighted material material and I’d not want to be the WMF lawyer who must convince the court that we don’t owe them damages for the period of time we stored their copyrighted work on our servers whilst copyright had not expired.

And yes, there are a few publishers out there I can think of who might decide this is a valid way of making money. Do you want risk

this with Springer or Elsevier? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:45, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm going to take a specific example here. Last year in Bucharest I had the opportunity to photograph quite a few works of major Romanian artists who lived past 1954, and whose works are therefore still copyrighted in Romania. I did this at various museums, in all cases with the knowledge and permission of the museum, and in at least one case while walking around with a museum docent. (If we were to take Chris.sherlock2's argument at face value, the moment I took those photos I was harboring an illegal copy of the photo on the SD disk in my camera, and when I copied that to my computer I made another illegal copy, but neither of those involves Commons.)

I am 70 years old. Most of these works will not come out of copyright in the next decade, some of them not until the 2080s. Even for the ones that will emerge as soon as, say, 2040 (picking that year because it is when the works of Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck come out of copyright), it is frankly less than 50% probable that I will be alive at that date and in good enough health to upload them at that time. Plus, I would need to write down the documentation now, and store both photos and documentation in a manner that would make them still available to upload in 2040, possibly finding a successor who could upload them on behalf of my estate, fill out {{Artwork}} templates (or whatever may be their equivalent in 15 years) properly, etc.

So, I uploaded these with full documentation and immediately deleted them so that only admins can see them. The Cuțescu-Storck files are listed at Category:Undelete in 2040, the others in the various analogous locations depending on the date when they become "free".

I am quite confident that almost every archive in the world would consider this "best practice". I am unaware of any case law in any country that has ever deemed this practice to be illegal, and if there is I would like to see it cited here.

This is probably the last I have to say on this topic, unless specific questions are addressed to me. - Jmabel ! talk 17:02, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I can only urge Commons to look at U.S. copyright law and clearly established precedents such as Hachette et al. v. Internet Archive . What one would like and what is actually allowed are often at odds. Under U.S. law, your photographs could only be allowed to be uploaded to the Commons servers (located in a U.S. jurisdiction) if you argued you are using them under Fair Use. What happens before the actual upload is unknown, I don’t know Romanian law. But as you are aware, we don’t allow fair use on Commons, and yet that is what you are currently relying upon. Personally, if it were up to me, I would love to be able to give you my personal blessing to continue - if it were allowed it would be a worthy project, but under title 17 of the U.S. Code what os being done in this case is fairly clearly violating the law.

im not going to do anything more than publicly urge the community to see sense, but if I am to be ignore then so be it. I’ve tried and I’m satisfied that I have given appropriate notice and warning to the community that there is a real issue. Time will tell if my warnings are heeded.- Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:48, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

When researching something else, I came across a page at the Library of Congress website:

https://guides.loc.gov/fire-insurance-maps/copyright

That page states, "The Geography and Map Division will not scan or reproduce any material that may still be under copyright restriction without either the permission of the copyright holder or proof that the item is no longer protected."

Other details on the page confirm that the division does not scan a map, wait for the copyright to expire, and then publish the map on its website. Glrx (talk) 06:44, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

I think that "pre-uploads" don't violate copyright because deleted files are exist only as a digital code and nobody to see them! Without pre-uploads it is a risk that some unfree files will be lost forever! Юрий Д.К 15:33, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Under title 17 of the U.S. Code, you may not make copies without the express authority of the copyright holder. I’m afraid this is a violation of U.S. copyright law, and the only arguments that might give an exception to this are all made assuming the doctrine of Fair Use would allow this, however such arguments misunderstand the law around Fair Use and are invalid. A court would not find any such argument persuasive and would likely find against us. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:40, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
I apologize for returning to this when I said I wouldn't, but I think there is a confusion here of Commons' policy and law. U.S. law allows fair use. It is Commons' policy not to publish files on a "fair use" basis. It is not Commons' policy not to store files on a "fair use" basis. I think there is a pretty clear "fair use" argument for storing a file with the intention of publishing when it falls out of copyright. I'm not even saying that argument would necessarily win the day, or that we could store absolutely anything on that basis, but it is ridiculous to dismiss it out of hand, and I elieve that what we have, in fact, stored on this basis falls well within "fair use." - Jmabel ! talk 20:01, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
And yet, you seem to have completely ignored my explanation as to why Fair Use is not satisfied. I don’t think you understand the law around fair use, and given that Commons never really has to rule on whether something is valid under fair use law I’m not at all surprised your understanding is lacking.
If you can explain how my reasoning above is incorrect, it would be appreciated. You said you would not be engaging further, but now you are incorrectly saying this is all allowed under fair use. It is not, as I have already explained. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:34, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Sorry, but with this argument every cloud storage service would be illegal in the US. GPSLeo (talk) 21:03, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Indeed, if you are storing copyrighted material on a cloud service without permission, then this is indeed copyright infringement. There is no need to be sorry, I don’t like it either, but that’s U.S. copyright law for you. They prosecuted MEGA for it.

Remember: just because you don’t like a law does not mean you can ignore it. That’s life in society. Don’t rag on me for it, I didn’t draft or vote for the laws, they’ve been around for a long time. Why do you think we need Commons? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 23:42, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
@Chris.sherlock2: was there anything in Hachette v. Internet Archive that prevented the Internet Archive from retaining copies of these works internally? As far as I can see, the issue was entirely about making them available to the general public. - Jmabel ! talk 01:16, 9 May 2025 (UTC)
Given that Commons administrators are volunteers from the general public, not Wikimedia employees, the boundaries of what exactly we can consider "internal" are a little fuzzy here. Omphalographer (talk) 02:49, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:
Judge John G. Koeltl ruled on March 24, 2023, granting the publishers' request. He held that the Internet Archive's scanning and lending of complete copies constituted copyright infringement and that the Internet Archive's fair use defense failed all four factors of the "fair use test". He rejected the Archive's argument that their use was "transformative" in the sense of copyright law. He further stated that "Even full enforcement of a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio, however, would not excuse IA's reproduction of the Works in Suit".

I'm not clear if they ordered them to delete the works from their servers. You can, however, see that the court looked at all four factors of a fair use defense and, as you can see from above, a judge looking at our defense of fair use would likely have a similar view. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 04:32, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Systemic flickerization of hrefs and anti-Latin OCR-ization, a case from 2014

When removing ancient bad OCR nonsense ("En ut Simia pafpulos catellosPufert omnibus, omniumque formasDeridet, nequefe videt mifellaNudam podice, dunibufque caham:Nos akerius <videmus omnesLynceis oculis jfuofque talpaGjwfquepr&tcrit) & videre non ^vuk-Quid m tergore Mantiae geratur.") from one image, I have also noted that:

A. Most of the unneeded hrefs there lead to Flickr, e.g. Authors: Schoonhoven, Florens, 1594-1648 Passe, Crispijn van de, d. 1670 -> https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/tags/bookauthorPasse__Crispijn_van_de__d__1670 (of course 404 by now)

Subjects: Emblems -> https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/tags/booksubjectEmblems

We are on Wikimedia Commons, not on a Flicker link farm.

B. Even the presumed author, "Internet Archive Book Images" (which is nonsense in itself), leads to ... Flickr and not to "https://archive.org/details/schoonhoviigouda00scho/page/180/mode/2up" or Wikipedia article about the same author.

-> We need a bot to clear up this mess methinks. Zezen (talk) 11:51, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

See Commons:Bots/Work requests (maybe move this thread there). Prototyperspective (talk) 13:17, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Video Player

Hello, could active contributors in MediaWiki please request an update to the current media player on the wishlist? It feels like we are in 2010, the player is outdated. Regards Riad Salih (talk) 21:00, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Agree. However, for videos it's almost fine. I don't like that when clicking on play it disables you from continuing to scroll and read the page such as the file description and categories, but I think this could be changed with the current player. Is there something specific you don't like when playing videos with it? I think there are two main issues with the media player and created a Wishlist request for each:

No support for video chapters (clickable timestamps) – see W:Video & audio chapters (jump to timestamp)
Totally outdated audio player with e.g. way to small width, 2000s design, and no button to jump back x seconds which is needed for listening to Spoken Wikipedia article podcast audios – see W:A proper audio player

Prototyperspective (talk) 13:23, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Can you please describe what kind of features and behaviors you want, from audio player to thumbnail size, to fullscreen ? That's a lot more actionable. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:16, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Most basic stuff: left right keys to jump, up down keys for volume, remember volume setting. RoyZuo (talk) 19:05, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

btw, if the webm file is directly loaded in the browser, i think these four arrow key functions work for most browsers.

so mediawiki is worse than any browser built-in functions. that is very outdated. RoyZuo (talk) 19:51, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

The overall design is outdated and does not meet the expectations for a 2025 user experience. Even when having a strong internet connection, the player suffers from noticeable lag. Navigation between different parts of the video is sluggish, with prolonged loading times. The transition between video quality settings is far from smooth.. and the buttons as mentionned by RoyZuo. Riad Salih (talk) 19:08, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

also dont pop up out of the page. why do that? which website does that?

very often, people play the video and simultaneously scroll down the page to read descriptions, comments (on other video websites) or whatever other stuff there may be. RoyZuo (talk) 19:47, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — The Queen presents the 1966 World Cup to England Captain, Bobby Moore

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the Wikimedia Foundation office which should not be undone.

In this specific case, the DMCA was granted because the owner of the picture sent the Wikimedia Foundation’s legal department messages under penalty of perjury claiming that they had never licensed it to the original Flickr upload from where the image was originally taken from. The usage of this image may still be fair use in specific contexts, and the legal department encourages editors to do local uploads to that end with an appropriate non-free content justification under local policy, but it is currently too broadly used for that to be the justification the legal department provided in this case. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

File:The Queen presents the 1966 World Cup to England Captain, Bobby Moore. (7936243534).jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#The Queen presents the 1966 World Cup to England Captain, Bobby Moore. (7936243534). Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Blessed Virgin Mary

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the Wikimedia Foundation office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

File:Blessed Virgin Mary.jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Blessed Virgin Mary. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 20:14, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Thousands separators

Started a rather technical request here - the person who made this template retired in 2013, so if you can help by adding a function to a template, please stop by. The issue is that the thousands separator added to the output of a template wrecks my attempt to do math with the resulting numbers. Best, mr.choppers (talk)^-en- 19:19, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 23:14, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Enabling Dark mode for logged-out users

Hello Wikimedians,

Apologies, as this message is not written in your native language. Please help translate to your language.

The Wikimedia Foundation Web team will be enabling dark mode in this Wiki by 15th May 2025 now that pages have passed our checks for accessibility and other quality checks. Congratulations!

The plan to enable is made possible by the diligent work of editors and other technical contributors in your community who ensured that templates, gadgets, and other parts of pages can be accessible in dark mode. Thank you all for making dark mode available for everybody!

For context, the Web team has concluded work on dark mode. If, on some wikis, the option is not yet available for logged-out users, this is likely because many pages do not yet display well in dark mode. As communities make progress on this work, we enable this feature on additional wikis once per month.

If you notice any issues after enabling dark mode, please create a page: Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Reporting/xx.wikipedia.org in MediaWiki (like these pages), and report the issue in the created page.

Thank you!

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team.

UOzurumba (WMF) 00:08, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, that's great news! However, the dark mode is just black – that may be suitable on mobile but on desktop that's I think not good. Most dark modes are some dark grey for a reason. It's not good to the eyes, not convenient to use basically and many won't use it. Could you please add a dark-grey dark mode like the one that is available in the Wikipedia app (the third of the four in the color schemes settings)? Again, see how the dark mode looks like for most other large websites and desktop apps, most of these are tones of grey. If there already is an issue about this, please link it, thanks. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:06, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Hi there!

If I understand correctly you are requesting additional modes be added similar to the native apps. While my team discussed expanding the available options on web during the construction of this feature to include additional themes such as sepia, at the current time we have no plans to add additional modes so that we can focus focus on the roll out of dark mode.

Dark mode requires various on-wiki changes across wikis (that no doubt you'll somewhat aware of as thankfully Commons have adhered to!) but other projects still need to make the recommended changes. When all projects are supporting dark mode, we can consider adding additional modes, which hopefully will not be as difficult thanks to the roll out of dark mode (since we can use CSS variables to theme now!).

As always I encourage experimentation with additional modes via gadgets (dark mode itself started off this way!) and am happy to support developers as needed. Let me know if I can help with that! Jon Robson, WMF 19:41, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata links beginning with M

When I edit File:Newspaper_headings.djvu, it says at the bottom of the page:

Wikidata entities used in this page

M163430529: Title

But Wikidata complains that the ID is invalid. What's going on? Marnanel (talk) 13:44, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

@Marnanel: I do not see any Wikidata usages on the file description page. MKFI (talk) 07:25, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @Tpt as maintainer of https://ia-upload.wmcloud.org/ — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 08:25, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

When I edit the page, not on the page itself when you're viewing it. Marnanel (talk) 14:13, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

This is the page ID of the file [7]. That the Commons page ID is listed as usage of a Wikidata item is definitely a bug. Every file page seems to have this. GPSLeo (talk) 14:53, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

It doesn't show up on all file pages, e.g. File:Pespot na Bellevue - panoramio.jpg (chosen at random) doesn't have it. I think it's being triggered by a template on that page. Omphalographer (talk) 00:09, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

That's probably just that page needing a linksupdate to record the usage. I agree though that this almost certainly comes from a template. I would assume {{Information}} or something has some fallback code to pull the description from SDC if its not directly specified, or something like that. Bawolff (talk) 09:45, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Just for completeness, the link should be Special:EntityPage/M163430529 so likely a module that tries to get local structured data, but incorrectly looks at Wikidata. I looked at the recent uploads of my bots. File:Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (5.3.1696 - 27.3.1770) - Das Martyrium der Heiligen Agathe - 459B - Gemäldegalerie.jpg has the issue, but File:Bales and manure near Green Lane - geograph.org.uk - 7669865.jpg doesn't. Both use a lot of structured data, difference is the template used ({{Artwork}} vs {{Information}}). I think the bug is likely to be in Module:Artwork or one of the underlying modules. @Jarekt: any idea? Multichill (talk) 19:06, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

@Multichill, Marnanel, and Bawolff: , I am searching for any files with "Wikidata entities used in this page" linking to M-id and I can not find any examples. For example I looked at the files mentioned in this discussion, new uploads by BotMultichillT and all new uploads. Are there some examples or did the issue fixed itself somehow? Most infoboxes, like Information, Artwork, Book, Photograph, etc. access SDC as Bawolff described, but that code has not changed in years and I never run into the issue described. --Jarekt (talk) 02:56, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

I see it at https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Giovanni_Battista_Tiepolo_(5.3.1696_-_27.3.1770)_-_Das_Martyrium_der_Heiligen_Agathe_-_459B_-_Gem%C3%A4ldegalerie.jpg&action=info . Tbh though i dont see how this is an issue. Bawolff (talk) 06:39, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

It still shows for me (e.g. on [8], which Omphalographer mentioned earlier). Marnanel (talk) 07:37, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T393997

I tested it using Module:Sandbox: Ever page that uses this module to get the caption gets these incorrect Wikidata links on the page information page. This is not a problem in the modules. The problem is withing MediaWiki. I created a bug report for this. GPSLeo (talk) 08:02, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Wrong infobox picture

Category:Catherine Wolfe Bruce[9] has the wrong infobox picture (it should be no picture at all, not some random Australian). I nuked it everywhere I could but its the thing that wouldn't die. Where did they hide that value? Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 22:01, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

@Fountains of Bryn Mawr. I don’t see the image anymore, so I think it got sorted out. Sometimes you have to purge the page or make a null edit (submit edit without editing anything) to update the page. Tvpuppy (talk) 22:34, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, saw it disappear as well. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 22:38, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Concerns Regarding Cross-Wiki Conduct and Tone by Administrator Bedivere

Hello community, this is to notify that there is a request for comment on Meta that some users might be affected. You can join the discussion here.

Please do not reply to this message. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 02:00, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Help with preparing a page for translation

I would like to translate the documentation page Template:Information/doc into German but I'm not sure how to prepare that page for translation. It seems it's not available in any other language than English as yet? The "language select" at the top of the page has only translated one sentence into Japanese and seems to be the wrong method for this page anyway ("should be used only when there are very few translations, and for translating a few sentences.[...] only intended for pages (like generated activity reports, or user pages) that will be rarely translated"). The only part that is translated into German and other languages is the box {{Documentation subpage}} at the top. I'd like to translate the full documentation into German (note, not {{Information}} itself which is translated at Translatewiki, I gather - where I don't have an account; apparently it's not part of Wikimedia's global account system). Gestumblindi (talk) 08:51, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Any help? ;-) Maybe {{Autotranslate}} should be used? But how, exactly? I'm not quite sure how this would be connected to the template itself which is translated at Translatewiki (apparently, I have a hard time even finding the template there)... Gestumblindi (talk) 08:19, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

I suggest to ask for help at Commons:Translators' noticeboard. Raymond (talk) 07:37, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, I copied my question over there. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:56, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Pronunciation files in topic cats or even worse in disambig cats

Cat:Envelopes (currently 24 files) -- Where are the pronunciation files supposed to be? Is there a categorization of pronunciation files by topic or a policy about such? Taylor 49 (talk) 08:26, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Is there a categorization of pronunciation files by topic See e.g. Category:Pronunciation by subject. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:14, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Classifying words into arbitrary "subjects" seems like a poor way of categorizing pronunciation files, particularly given that words are often polysemic (having multiple meanings). The way I would expect these files to be categorized is primarily by language, to optimize for the use case of "I need to find a recording of someone reading this specific word"; more granular categorization is only going to get in the way of this use case. Omphalographer (talk) 18:38, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Both are potentially important (and I agree with Omphalographer that "by language" is close to mandatory). Yes, there is also Category:Audio files of pronunciations by language and its many subcats.

Since the category originally alluded to in the question has now been emptied, I have no idea what files this was about, so I have nothing further to add. - Jmabel ! talk 03:16, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Category:Pronunciation by subject (very little content two days ago) turned out to be a dupe of Category:Pronunciation of words (more content two days ago, but less optimal name). Agree that lemmas should be categorized primarily by language, the cat Category:Audio files of pronunciations by language already exists and is heavily used. Taylor 49 (talk) 09:35, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Category:Images from dead websites

I noticed we didn't had a category for this purpose so i created one. If anyone see an image where the source is deprecated feel free to help populate it--Trade (talk) 21:52, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Images seem to be mostly AS (Artificial stupidity), dubious whether in scope. Taylor 49 (talk) 22:12, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

w:Italian brainrot

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 22:13, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

I wonder why you announce a new cat when there aren't yet good-quality contents in it. This just makes the cat seem dubious and useless and maybe even lead to it being deleted despite it potentially or in principle being useful. I think there are many useful files on Commons from dead websites, for example in scientific journals which have shut down and things like that. Also a 404 source doesn't mean it's deprecated. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:54, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Someone on Wikidata decided to link Category:HTTP 404 to link rot (Q1193907). Hence why Trade (talk) 23:50, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Poland bans photography of military and critical sites, including bridges, tunnels, viaducts, port facilities and the National Bank

Apparently Poland now (since April 17, 2025) “prohibits photographing or filming Polish military facilities and critical infrastructure without authorization”. About 25,000 sites nationwide are concerned, including bridges, tunnels, viaducts, port facilities and the National Bank. Sources: [10], [11], [12]. I'm not sure how that affects already existing photographs taken before April 17, 2025. --Rosenzweig τ 12:47, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Not a copyright issue, not our problem Trade (talk) 13:18, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

It's only "not our problem" if we're okay with Commons being banned in Poland. Robkelk (talk) 15:24, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Also understandable, as the Ukrainian war nears. I should always be carefull in photographing militairy transports or anything related. I would not want to inadvertently inform the Russians, as they certainly scan all Commons files.Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:21, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Even the BBC is barely aware the site exists seperately from ENWP. I would not be too worried Trade (talk) 19:01, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm aware it's not a copyright issue, that's why I posted it here and not at COM:VPC. “not our problem” is a rather shortsighted view however IMO. The ban might very well be or become a problem for anyone taking photographs in Poland, including our users. I think we do have some users living in Poland or visiting there. The German foreign office specifically issued a travel advisory because of this issue. --Rosenzweig τ 15:09, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

As someone who photographed and filmed a few bridges last year in Poland when I went there for Wikimania 2024, that might have been a problem if those rules were in effect. I don't know if a footbridge in Katowice or bridges over the Odra river in Wroclaw are part of that list but it certainly could make future trips to Poland an issue since I would want to film landmarks that catch my attention (I would not purposely film military facilities though for the reasons Smiley.toerist gave.) Abzeronow (talk) 18:42, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I wonder if these rules will take effect as desired. I assume there will be many tourists who don't know or don't care. Might be hard to control --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:39, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

It'll probably be like many other laws which are on the books but only enforced when the authorities wish to do so. --Rosenzweig τ 20:29, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

It might at least be worth having a warning template for images like there is for ones containing Nazi symbols. Otherwise it kind of puts re-users at risk. Let alone photographers. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:36, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

At what point were it suggexted that re-users were at risk? Trade (talk) 20:50, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Just speculation on my part. Realistically I don't think there's anything that can be done about it on our end outside of that. People obviously can't be stopped from uploading images of Poland to Commons. So it seems like the only options are having a warning or just ignoring it. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:25, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

@Rosenzweig, you wrote, "The German foreign office specifically issued a travel advisory because of this issue." Can you please provide a link? Thanks, -- Ooligan (talk) 01:51, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm jumping in: https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/service/laender/polen-node/polensicherheit-199124 . Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 06:53, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

In the Cold War, Russian maps of England were more accurate than English maps, because English maps left out details that might help the Russians. It's the 21st century; everyone has access to satellite data, certainly including the Russians, and tiny video cameras in glasses that would have made 20th century spies drool are available to everyday Joe to film YouTube videos in Goodwill. Why do governments continue to make these rules?--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:37, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Security theater. - Jmabel ! talk 04:04, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. Satelite views cannot always replace detailed ground level views. The militairy value of most images, is very time limited. Its no use to to know where your enemy (personel or equipement) was a month ago.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:44, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

If I understand it correctly, Rosenzweig, the plan is to indicate affected objects with clear signs (Tagesschau says at the end of the article "Zu Missverständnissen dürfte es kaum kommen, schließlich sind die Schilder groß, rot und eindeutig", that is: "There should be little chance of misunderstandings, after all the signs are large, red and clear.") So, personally, I would avoid photographing objects marked with such a sign, but otherwise, we should be fine. I can't imagine that typical tourist sights (like a historical bridge in a city) would be affected, but of course, we are interested in more than that. Haven't seen anything about retroactivity. Gestumblindi (talk) 08:52, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

The German foreign office says „die Kennzeichnung kann jedoch unter Umständen schlecht sichtbar oder nicht eindeutig erkennbar sein“ (“However, the marking may be poorly visible or not clearly recognizable under certain circumstances”). So ... take your pick :-) --Rosenzweig τ 08:58, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

There’s precedent in an incident with a military radio station in France. The article was briefly deleted after the authorities harassed a local sysop but it was almost immediately restored and not followed up. The Polish authorities are most likely not going to notice nor care about any images on Commons; for now a legal notice and common sense (don’t photograph anything with a big red “no photography” sign) is probably all we need; hopefully the authorities will just ask us to delete any photos they find concerning and not immediately resort to legal threats. Dronebogus (talk) 19:29, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

At least images used on Wikipedia are often amongst the first Google search results, and unlike Commons Wikipedia is widely known. That said, I wouldn't be as certain to believe that "they'll probably never take notice of, and even if they do, they'll probably not care, and even if they care, they'll politely ask to delete first". --A.Savin 19:52, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

What happened in the French case was the authorities did seem to request the page be taken down, Wikimedia basically just asked “why?”, and then they went ballistic and started threatening some random volunteer with legal consequences. This created a big media storm that made the French authorities look bad and the whole thing seems to have fizzled out. The takeaway here seems to be “they hopefully, and likely, will just ask, and if they don’t and are dicks about it Wikimedia will probably win and they’ll look stupid”. Dronebogus (talk) 20:05, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

WebP file format and copyright violations

Hello,

I busied myself again with looking at the latest file uploads. A few of them were in WebP format, but all of these images were also copyright violations. Blatantly so, being simple grabs from internet sites (example: File:Hanzade dabbag.webp from https://www.worldaquatics.com/athletes/1845366/hanzade-dabbag ). I do not actually recall cases where WebP files were genuinely licensed and "good" for us. What are the experiences of other editors, did they already developed a reflex "WebP = probable copyvio", as I did? If the ratio between good uploads and copyvios using WebP is too bad, I wonder if a filter could be set up to track WebP uploads made by users with a low edit count or recent accounts... I do not suggest to forbid WebP (that's certainly going too far and would only entice moving to another format where copyvios cannot be spotted as easily), but a tracking tool could be welcome. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 13:13, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree that most WebP uploads are copyright violations. I would suggest to introduce the same restriction as we currently have for MP3: Commons currently only accepts MP3 uploads by users with Autopatrol or higher rights, due to concerns about the capacity of the community to monitor for copyright violations. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:45, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

We've discussed this previously at Commons:Village_pump/Proposals/Archive/2023/11#Restrict webp upload？. There was general support for the proposal, but it wasn't acted upon. Omphalographer (talk) 20:52, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Indeed, and I supported the proposal, thanks for the pointer! Well, why wasn't it acted upon? There were some opponents, but I'd say that the support was broad enough. Gestumblindi (talk) 21:02, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

On the proposal, there was a search link - I clicked on it out of curiosity (to check if I can see a legitimate file...), and the very first image at the top, File:WEBP LANDSCAPE 1620.webp was again a copyvio (evident by Google Image search).

The ideal in my eyes would be: track or maybe even forbid cross-wiki WebP uploads (if that's available as filtering criterion) and track direct WebP uploads. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 21:23, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Does cross-wiki uploads bring anything good? Sometimes it feels like it doesnt Trade (talk) 21:57, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Here is one author/site that releases photos under CC BY 4.0 only in WEBP Category:Photographs by Zahra Ostadzadeh for avash.ir

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 21:24, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Strong support to disallow upload of WeBP for users not having at least "Autopatrol". Since there is already a consensus, the restriction can be applied immediately, can't it? I apparently do have the privilege to upload toxic fileformats like MP5 and soon also WeBP, but I have never used it so far, and very likely never will. :-D Taylor 49 (talk) 22:21, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

The main counter-argument in the previous discussion was that a restriction of WebP uploads to Autopatrol users (dramatically and wrongly called "outlawing" the file format in one comment) would lead to users converting WebP copyvios to other formats, making them harder to detect. I think that this risk is rather small; most people uploading WebP copyvios don't seem that well versed and wouldn't bother to convert the files (or often don't even know how to do it). We haven't seen a mass influx of MP3 copyright violations converted to Ogg or WebM audio either... - Otherwise, I would say that there was a broad consensus for this approach; of course, support for such a proposal will never be unanimous. Gestumblindi (talk) 08:41, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

there's another "speed bump" in case they convert them to jpg: abusefilters that prevent new users uploading low resolution/small jpg. such hurdles are sufficient to deter i'd say 95% or more of such bad uploads.
there's consensus for that proposal, but it's still not implemented by any sysop, and i'm not sysop either. i still have my proposal on my watchlist.

RoyZuo (talk) 10:12, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

w:Natalya Arinbasarova or not?

A person who signed "Natalya Arinbasarova" wrote to the Error Reporting section of the Russian Wikipedia asking to remove a photograph (File:Natalya Arinbasarova 1966.jpg) described as the image of her, but which in fact depicts another woman. For sure, such a request does not allow us to establish the identity of the person who wrote, but we can discuss at least the facts available to us. Yes, the description of the photo in the source is completely unambiguous, this is not an error on the part of the Commons users. But I will share my doubts: a. It seems unlikely to me that the woman in the picture is 19 years old. b. There are a number of undisputed images from that very w:27th Venice International Film Festival in which Natalya looks different: [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]. What should be done to minimize the possible adverse consequences? --Romano1981 (talk) 18:31, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree that the woman in the other pictures you provide looks different. But if the licensing status of the photograph is fine, it shouldn't be deleted but renamed, with changed description - like "Unidentified woman walking arm in arm with an unidentified man" (maybe they can be identified someday). This affects also the crop File:Natalya Arinbasarova 1966 (cropped).jpg and both files should be removed from the numerous Wikipedia language versions where they're currently in use as a depiction of Natalya Arinbasarova. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:52, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

I nominated them for renaming as you suggested. Romano1981 (talk) 07:27, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Image processing question for licence

On https://apnews.com/article/thailand-illegal-import-electronic-waste-bangkok-port-994ef5e8c3776e9b77580d9954eebaeb click the right arrow for the image at the top of the page, til you get to image 3 of 4.

I made a similar image, which is posted https://ibb.co/xSPH92cC containing only simple geometric shapes.

Is this allowed to be uploaded here as my own work with a free licence?

Thanks Gryllida (talk) 20:43, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

No. The image you created is a derivative work of the AP photo. Omphalographer (talk) 20:58, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Please see below. Gryllida (talk) 14:06, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Omphalographer and Gryllida: I'm actually not sure of that, because it is so abstracted. Certainly with a few relatively small changes it would be OK. Remember, the appearance of the circuit board at the center can't be copyrighted, so it's OK to abstract from that, so it at worst it should just be a matter of getting a bit farther from the composition of that particular photo. - Jmabel ! talk 04:06, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Regardless, I don't see it being in scope. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 04:28, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

It is in scope for another wiki. I just need the licensing cleared as it is a sister wiki using a creative commons licence. The intent is to show a board among pieces of metal junk. I am hoping for some slightly more definite answer as, if acceptable, I could use the same approach to generate basic illustrations with simple geonetric shapes and barebones colors for other pages there. Gryllida (talk) 14:05, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Gryllida: What sister wiki? — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:27, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

news Gryllida (talk) 14:38, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

How about just compositing any of a bunch of PD or free-licensed pictures of a circuit board onto something like File:Propane tanks.jpg or File:Transfer Station Recyclables, Gainesville, FL 7054.JPG? - Jmabel ! talk 18:24, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Or a photo of actual electronic recycling, e.g. File:Electronic junk separation in view of recycling 3.jpg (a little blurry, unfortunately) or File:Computer that's had its chips - geograph.org.uk - 735712.jpg? Mimicking the composition of the AP photo seems altogether the wrong way of going about it; the meaning of that photo is in its content, not the abstract shapes. Omphalographer (talk) 18:40, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Metadata section size?

Is it just me, or is the Metadata text at the bottom of the page larger than it used to be? It used to be small I think, now it's normal size. - The Bushranger (talk) 02:01, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

...although looking at this, maybe it always has been "normal" size, and I'm just losing my mind. - The Bushranger (talk) 06:03, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Someone's definitely been playing with font sizes. Warning messages at the top of pages got a lot bigger recently, e.g. the no-such-user and page deletion messages on User:Nobody. Omphalographer (talk) 06:59, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

The "User account "Nobody" is not registered on this wiki. Please check if you want to create/edit this page." looks the same as always to me, but the stuff in the pink box atop this page now looks bigger! - The Bushranger (talk) 19:07, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Weird - maybe it's browser and/or skin dependent? I'm using Vector Legacy on Firefox, and the "account is not registered" message is rendered at 16px, substantially larger than the 14px text following it. Omphalographer (talk) 20:06, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Here's a screenshot of what I'm seeing on Monobook in Firefox. Also found a screenshot of the original thing with metadata - and yes, it is larger now (screenshot at top!) - The Bushranger (talk) 21:05, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

It looks like there may actually have been a change. Since I noticed it on Wednesday... - The Bushranger (talk) 22:50, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Category:Cape Verde

Browsing Cape Verde category I can see plenty of images not connected in any way with this West African country. The search engine shows automobiles, vessels, aircraft etc. which happen to have the letters "CV" in their descriptions. Is there a way to remove these from the search results? It is annoying. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kotoviski (talk • contribs) 12:38, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Kotoviski: Hi, and welcome. You need to check with each file's categorist as to why they categorized that way. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 12:52, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

This may be due to flawed categorization. To check, you'd need to provide some examples. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:05, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: There are currently 56 files in Category:Cape Verde, just look there and you should find some examples. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:11, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Couldn't find any examples there and therefor didn't think that's what the user referred to instead of files in some of its subcats or has it been solved by now? Prototyperspective (talk) 13:14, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

I found one that was not exactly wrong but misleading (a Cape Verdean flag in Boston) and recategorized it accordingly. There is nothing else wrong in the category. @Kotoviski: I take it this was a search result, not a Commons category. What search engine, and what exactly were your search terms? - Jmabel ! talk 18:39, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Right. I was searching for media with "Cape Verde" in description, not in Category. Many images shown have letters "CV" (which is ISO 3166 code and Internet Top Domain for the country). A few examples: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Citro%C3%ABn_2_CV_Charleston_(2015-08-29_3174_b).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simple_CV_Joint_animated.gif https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:E-2C_VAW-115_CV-63_2007.JPEG

and so on... Photograph by Henryk Kotowski (talk) 19:43, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Good to have this clarified, thanks. However, can't see these files in the search results when searching for "Cape Verde" (like so). Don't know if you just scrolled far down or searched differently like with another term or some filter & sorting.

If this is due to categorization (e.g. via Category:CV letter combinations) then a tool is needed to see how a file is part of a category (category path) – see here
If this is an issue of the search results broadly, then the search engine / MediaSearch would greatly benefit from improvements in general and e.g. could recognize when the user searches for something that is or redirects to or very similar to a category title (see e.g. #10 here).

When searching for "our world in data" (Category:Our World in Data) there's sth similar happening: it shows e.g. this and this despite that these don't even have the word "world" or "our" in the description or SD. Don't know why that is. For practical purposes, changing the search term to "our world in data" (quotes) solves it. The same may also help here. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:14, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Call for Candidates for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C)

The results of voting on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter is available on Meta-wiki.

You may now submit your candidacy to serve on the U4C through 29 May 2025 at 12:00 UTC. Information about eligibility, process, and the timeline are on Meta-wiki. Voting on candidates will open on 1 June 2025 and run for two weeks, closing on 15 June 2025 at 12:00 UTC.

If you have any questions, you can ask on the discussion page for the election. -- in cooperation with the U4C,

Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Dating postcard

I think I see on several stamps '04', for maybe 1904. But is this the correct interpretation?Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:36, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

It definitely isn't 1804, if that's what you're asking. The other side of the postcard is a photograph, but the first successful photograph wasn't taken until 1826. Omphalographer (talk) 19:51, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Also, there were no such postcards nor stamps in 1804. As 2004 is implausible as well, you can safely interpret the year as 1904. Gestumblindi (talk) 20:29, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

The 10c stamp looks very similar to the 1906 stamp.Smiley.toerist (talk) 20:58, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

It's still the sower and by the same artists, but the 1906 stamp is different from the 1903 stamp. On the 1903 stamp: lined background, no ground, sun. On the 1906 stamp: united background, ground, no sun. -- Asclepias (talk) 22:34, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

@Asclepias: Perhaps the postcard was purchased in 1904 (or a little earlier), the stamp purchased in 1903 (or a little later), and the postmark affixed in 1904? — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:09, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

I suppose that the 1903 design was used to print stamps from 1903 to 1906, until the 1906 design. -- Asclepias (talk) 23:28, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Do we do anything when the source is no longer available?

File:Navajo woman.jpg - Flicker source no longer availablr. Doug Weller (talk) 10:36, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: Alleged source is https://www.flickr.com/photos/95329455@N02/10490432575. All media from https://www.flickr.com/photos/95329455@N02 (simpleinsomnia) appear to be gone ("simpleinsomnia hasn’t made any photos public yet.") The file itself appeared initially to be broken, but it now looks ok. Snowsector211: How long ago did you retrieve it? Was that directly from Flickr? P.S. Circuit breaker is in effect; please save your work early and often. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 11:47, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

I usually add (404) next to the source link if it's a dead or a 404 link. This could be used somehow by some bot and/or users that check(s) for a new live site location or an archived version in the Wayback Machine etc to add it there. Examples: 1, 2 3 4 5. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:04, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

The upload log indicates that the uploader found it through Openverse. -- Asclepias (talk) 12:12, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Asclepias: Do we trust the licensing presented there? Surely, simpleinsomnia didn't snap this photo in 1907 (118 years ago), and the licensing on the file here (CC0) doesn't match the licensing on Openverse. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 12:16, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

The CC0 on Commons was wrong anyway because the author is stated as unknown. Also, it is suspect when an uploader states a precise date while unable to identify the subject nor the author. The CC BY 2.0 on flickr does not seem reliable either. There is no information on the origin of the photo. The flickr user may have just placed any tag, as it happens. -- Asclepias (talk) 12:42, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Asclepias: So, is there enough doubt to recommend deletion based on PRP? — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:01, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

It could be in the public domain, depending if and when it was published, or the license by the flickr user could be good if they are the heir of the photographer. But there is no information. (Does Commons apply AGF to flickr users?) You decide. -- Asclepias (talk) 14:45, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Well, it's not "user decided not to pay Flickr one thin dime". — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:00, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Date does seem about right (if overprecise) based on the image itself. Certainly well before 1930. The question would be whether it was published in a timely fashion. Of course, if it never had authorized publication before 2003, we are getting pretty close to the 120-year mark. - Jmabel ! talk 18:29, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Generally speaking, in some cases it's still possible to verify the original source via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Gestumblindi (talk) 21:01, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Is there fear the image may be fraudulent? I can find no trace of it other than copies made after Flickr such as openverse. --RAN (talk) 19:46, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
- If fraudulent it is particularly plausible fraud. Any particular reason to suspect it? - Jmabel ! talk 21:19, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Exey Panteleev photography and COM:SCOPE

They have been a lot of discussions about this guy’s work and its scope (or lack thereof) on Commons, but Commons:Deletion requests/File:ChatGPT by Exey Panteleev.jpg was closed against a broad majority (5:1 counting actual !votes) with the rationale “The series of photos has been discussed and kept repeatedly. Substantial precedent.” This seems to say that: a) individual image scope does not matter in a series, and b) precedent from other files’ discussions overrides consensus at an individual discussion. This is not simply an admin rejecting shitty arguments or no-argument votes; it’s an admin overriding valid arguments because of arguments made for other files. That, to me, seems like a novel and radical interpretation of policy that would not fly anywhere else but this one specific case because it’s become unthinkable that any respected user would ever vote against precedent here, let alone a majority. In fact, it actually seems to contradict policy in several key areas: 1) “Artwork without obvious educational value” is not in scope; 90% of these images have no obvious educational value whatsoever and are simply considered to have sufficient artistic value to be kept. 2) “Files that add nothing educationally distinct to the collection of images we already hold covering the same subject” is not in scope; some of these images are being used to illustrate the project or very occasionally other topics; 90% are not, making them essentially redundant. 3) Many users have defended the project as a whole as notable; however notability and scope are two completely different things— notability is irrelevant to Commons, and this is one of those very rare cases where something notable can be out of scope for the above reasons. So is Exey Panteleev’s photography so special that it gets a de facto policy carveout (and if so should that be made official by the community)? Is User:Infrogmation just in the wrong here and should have closed it as delete (my opinion)? Or is there just something I’m missing here? Dronebogus (talk) 19:56, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

I would say Infrogmation was in the wrong to close that discussion as keep. The consensus was clearly for deletion. In fact no one in the discussion even suggested keeping it. Even if you only consider policy arguments and ignore voting, SCOPE is a policy, precendent is not. According to Commons:Deletion_requests, the proper recourse is to ask Infrogmation to reconsider their closing, and if that doesn't work, renominating it for deletion. Nosferattus (talk) 22:26, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

I admire your bravery for wading into the slow-burning garbage fire of discussions about these files. ;) Previous discussions regarding these files have generally been closed as "keep" on one or more of the following grounds:

That the nomination was made on an invalid basis, such as that the file was pornographic, demeaning to women, etc.
That the file nominated was part of a larger set of images by Panteleev, and that those photographs have artistic value.
That previous related deletion discussions were closed as "keep".

If you intend to reopen this discussion, or a larger discussion about the set of files, you should be prepared to address these objections, even if they aren't directly applicable to your nomination. These discussions have come up frequently enough that there are a lot of knee-jerk responses. Omphalographer (talk) 23:21, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Comment In my personal opinion, I often find the work of Exey Panteleev annoying. IMO his "Geekography" concept might have been somewhat clever had it been limited to a few or a dozen images, but as a series of hundreds became beyond tiresome. That said, personal opinions if an artist is annoying or tiresome or something one doesn't care for for whatever reason is not relevant to if it is within project scope. As there have been not merely a couple but rather a considerable number of previous discussions of Panteleev's works which resulted in "kept" decisions, I was merely applying what I understood as precedent. See for example the discussion and links at Category talk:Project "Geekography" by Exey Panteleev (portrayals of computer technology), Category talk:Project "Geekography" by Exey Panteleev (nude portrayals of computer technology). So my decision included those factors in addition to the much narrower discussion at Commons:Deletion requests/File:ChatGPT by Exey Panteleev.jpg. So you've asked me to reconsider the closing; I have done so and decline to reopen as it was based on my understanding of precedent. I have no objection to renominating the file, but suggest that you make clear in the listing that you are not only calling for a particular file to be deleted but also that considerable precedent should be overturned. I have no objection to arguing that precedent should be overturned, merely that any such argument should be made with awareness that it is an issue far broader than a single file or single deletion listing and involves much previous discussion over a period of years. Best wishes to all. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 23:22, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

The thing is, there was near-unanimous consensus to delete, and you closed as keep. I'm not as read-up on Wikimedia Commons policies as I am on en.wiki's (being an administrator there, and just an contributor here), but over there that's what we call a supervote, and that's bad. Precedent might well exist, but consensus can change - and it apparently has. As Nosferattus points out above, scope is policy, precedent is not, and overturning a near-unanimous consensus based on policy in favor of precedent is an extremely bad look. - The Bushranger (talk) 23:54, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@The Bushranger: The original nominator was trying to censor Commons, and now effectively so are you and Dronebogus. COM:CENSOR is policy. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 00:02, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: I am simply pointing out that an administrator has taken an action against the consensus of the community as an apparent supervote. I haven't even looked at the image and have no idea what it is. I'm not "trying to censor Commons" and would greatly appreciate it if you would strike that aspersion. - The Bushranger (talk) 00:08, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

COM:CENSOR simply says, in short, that we do not delete files because they contain nudity, or are offensive, or what-have-you. It does not say that we never delete files which have these characteristics. Files which are deemed out of scope can still be deleted. Omphalographer (talk) 00:40, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Omphalographer, the problem here is that the scope definition is being deliberately distorted solely to eliminate images that do not please the delicate sensibilities of a handful of idle puritans – who ironically are probably the ones searching for porn the most on Commons. When Peter talks about Paul, I learn more about Peter than about Paul... The other day I came across an editor who apparently was on the hunt for the perfect vulva with more determination than a 16th-century Spanish colonist hacking through forests, rivers, and cannibalistic natives in search of the mythical El Dorado.

There are hundreds of practically identical images of Michelangelo's Pietà, yet I do not see anyone nominating them for deletion (thank God). There are also many nearly identical images of random streets that are only here because (fortunately) some editor thought it worthwhile to document a place they feel attached to. As the saying goes, the more, the better – and if we set moralism aside that principle should apply equally to images that feature a boob, a shaved vagina (as long as it does not reference the infamous Führer mustache), or any other pudenda.

Exey Panteleev's photographs are professional – that alone should be a reason to keep them. Even more so because they do not just depict nudity for nudity's sake, but touch on other aspects of contemporary life. For instance, who would have thought that one of his Flickr images could illustrate the article about the implosion of the Titan submersible? And yet, it can (though it might require a bit of blurring, for obvious reasons). RodRabelo7 (talk) 01:02, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

But like, why? We have a much better non-pornographic image of the controller and Wikipedia bas the principle of w:wp:Gratuitous that I think should just be common sense judgment across all Wikimedia wikis, with the specific example of “images of automobiles with naked women posing near them” as something inappropriate. Literally all of Panteleev's photographs, if used to illustrate their supposed subject, would blatantly fall into this category of “needlessly using explicit content to illustrate a SFW subject”. Dronebogus (talk) 10:41, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Why not? I repeat: unless you are going to be bold and nominate for deletion dozens of nearly identical images of the Pietà, there is absolutely no reason to take issue with a handful of breasts, vaginas, and anuses that Panteleev captured as nothing more than a cluster of colored pixels.

And of course Wikipedia policies are irrelevant here. As if the world revolved around what English speakers think. This is a multicultural project where there should be no room for Western puritanism. RodRabelo7 (talk) 12:19, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Basically any non-western contemporary culture (besides a handful of modern hunter-gatherers who may not know what the internet even is) is more conservative— not that it matters. Even the most liberal western culture isn’t going to use a picture with a background of boobs to illustrate a controller— not because your average, let’s just say Dutch person is a prude or a puritan, but because it’s distracting and confusing if nothing else. Dronebogus (talk) 15:44, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

I have uploaded up actual pornography to Commons, and will continue to uploads works that show the flowering of the liberation of sexuality in the 1950s and 1960s. In a world where nobody cared about nudity, I would move to delete these. They're simply not in scope, anymore than painting the logo on a lamp or spoon is. In this world, they're not in scope, and they're actively hostile to any educational purpose. Exey Panteleev doesn't have a Wikipedia page, and the top three hits for his name in Google are Commons, Flikr and Commons again. There's no reason to keep his works just because they are his works.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:07, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Omphalographer: COM:CENSOR is policy because a consensus was reached in putting it there as a part of the COM:SCOPE policy. That Infrogmation chose not to include that as one of the reasons to keep may have been an oversight, but not an egregious error. The attempt at censorship was a policy violation, whether or not it was cited as such. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 01:24, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm just going to note that the apparent mindset of some users, which seems to be "any deletion request for Panteleev photographs is an attempt at censorship", is just as concerning as the apparent supervote was. Again: I don't think the image should be deleted. I don't think it shouldn't be deleted. Regardless of the image's merits or lack thereof I don't think a deletion request that established a consensus for deletion should be closed as keep, especially in a way that makes no comment whatsoever of the discussion and, instead, reads as "this is being kept and it was always going to be kept no matter what the community discussion established". With all due respect to Infrogmation (and I do appreciate the photographs they've contributed, too!) that makes me wonder why we even have deletion requests, when they can be (and, apparently, are) closed in such a manner. - The Bushranger (talk) 17:53, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Interesting double standards where actually useful AI images are being deleted after being in use for quite a while, showing how they can be realistically useful while uneducational porn is kept. No, this is not censorship any more than DRs in general are censorship. What you say is one thing: absurd. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:48, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: I am offended, take it back. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 10:05, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Again, I do not oppose relisting. However it is simply not true that "there was unanimous consensus to delete". Please look at the listing again. You will see that Ikan Kekek voted "keep". Rhododendrites did not vote, but noted precedents which at least leaned keepish. Please try to be accurate in summaries, thank you. Cheers, -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 00:06, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Good catch, altered my comments above, and apologies for that. - The Bushranger (talk) 00:08, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

I have just started a new deletion discussion. Dronebogus (talk) 19:20, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

@Tm: pinging. RodRabelo7 (talk) 00:11, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Question Do we have to make a rule against nominating Exey Panteleev photography for deletion or we just gonna have to accept the fact that this DR have become an quarterly Wikimedia Commons tradition? I suspect at least some of the DRs might have been made by users who logged out of their accounts beforehand to avoid pushback--Trade (talk) 16:28, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
- Do we have to No, we neither have to nor is there a need for it.
- against nominating Exey Panteleev photography for deletion
  - On what basis?
  - Which other images are exempted like that?
  - How are hundreds of unused uneducational redundant porn images cluttering sexuality-unrelated categories and search results anyhow compatible with COM:SCOPE, in particular with part "Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose." They are not. Does that policy apply or does it not apply or only selectively apply? Does Commons:Deletion policy apply or does it only selectively apply? Non-arbitrariness and policy-adherence & -consistency are cornerstones of a functioning community, here made up of volunteers who spend their time and lots of effort on this platform and have some good right to expect some assumption of good faith.
- I suspect at least some of the DRs might have been made by users who logged out of their accounts it doesn't seem like it but the potential pushback clearly is or would be a problem. Most of the DRs had a pretty bad deletion rationale if any so if anything these contributed to these files being kept in prior DRs.
Prototyperspective (talk) 17:38, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
The use in other projects has nothing to do with the scope of Commons. Avoid these unnecessary fallacies. RodRabelo7 (talk) 19:24, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
I have no idea what point you’re making with that statement; this section is about banning DRs for these images. But in any case Commons literally exists to serve all the other projects, so your argument wouldn’t make sense anyway. Dronebogus (talk) 19:27, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
But in any case Commons literally exists to serve all the other projects

Except it doesn't!!! You're certainly en:WP:NOT HERE. RodRabelo7 (talk) 19:33, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
You just complained about me referring to Enwiki standards and now you are doing the exact same thing. Also the “about” page for commons says [Commons] acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. This is its primary purpose. Dronebogus (talk) 19:37, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
The essay I cited is just common sense – if you don't even know our aim, you're not here to help us build the project.

Anyway, the page regarding the scope of Commons – the one you mention so often (you?) – states loud and clear that "the aim of Wikimedia Commons is to provide a media file repository (...) that makes available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content to all". Serving Wikipedia and other projects is merely a consequence of Commons's core purpose. We would do just fine, thank you, without Wikipedia and company. RodRabelo7 (talk) 19:41, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
I think the essay I cited was common sense as well, but you said it was invalid because it was on Wikipedia. Make up your mind. And I am fully aware that Commons is meant to be a repository of freely usable materials for everyone, but the other primary purpose is serving Wikimedia. I never denied the first one existed, but you seem to be acting like the second one doesn’t exist or is unimportant. Dronebogus (talk) 19:48, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

? Eduardo Gottert (talk) 19:36, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

The use in other projects has nothing to do with the scope of Commons. I don't know if this was addressed to me and if so why but I totally agree neither actual nor potential use in other existing Wikimedia projects is or should be a requirement for the scope of Commons. I disagree with Commons literally exists to serve all the other projects – that is just one of its uses.
Btw, if this was indeed addressed to me / relating to my comment, I think you should better check when you accuse somebody of fallacies and also address what somebody actually said. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:34, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

I asked that question in my opening statement, not so much because I support it but because if the powers that be have decided that they cannot be deleted, then it should at least be open and official. Obviously I actually think Infrogmation was just wrong here period but I also know their position isn’t exactly a fringe one. Dronebogus (talk) 19:07, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
My understanding is that the files are typically kept because the combination of project and photographer are notable (i.e. it's a notable series -- one which has, for better or worse, received a surprising amount of press). The challenge is that individual photos from the series are frequently nominated individually, leading to random DR participants. I would think that if there's consensus that a series is notable, that precedent does matter for subsequent DRs, otherwise, we just nominate individual files enough times to find the time when delete !votes outweigh keeps. Perhaps it would be useful to have a single RfC here at VP with a straightforward question: "Are photographs in the Exey Panteleev 'Geekography' series in COM:SCOPE? [Yes/No/Case-By-Case]. If Case-By-Case, what should we consider in each case if not the notability of the series?" — Rhododendrites ^talk | 19:47, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
That’s kind of what I was looking for, but not the way you framed it. Obviously some of them are COM:INUSE and are in scope, so that just leaves a question of “are they all automatically in scope”? I’d say “no” just because I can’t think of another case where “scope is inherited”. You can’t tether an individual file’s notability to being part of a loose set; a tightly connected series maybe, but not just a thematic collection. Dronebogus (talk) 19:56, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
But then we would start discussing that one of similar files is in scope and one is not, because there are now to many similar files? That are discussions we should definitely not start. GPSLeo (talk) 20:05, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
If we were to hold such an RFC (which I would be in favor of), it might also be helpful to pose the question "how should these files be categorized". Users have frequently been surprised to find the Geekography photos in categories where nudity was completely unexpected (e.g. body paintings containing logos of products being placed in the category for that product), and I believe there's been some back-and-forth on whether that's appropriate. Omphalographer (talk) 20:17, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
- I agree with Omphalographer. Personally, I don't care one way or the other about these images being on our site. I do care about violating the "law of least surprise" by turning up images of nudity when someone is searching on innocuous technical terms, company names, etc. - Jmabel ! talk 06:05, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Fair question to ask, but a separate/subsequent one IMO. Multi-question discussions tend to get messy. There are also broader considerations with regard to categorization -- it seems like it's largely about explicit images in categories where explicit images aren't expected, and this is just a good case of that, rather than it being about this case (like the scope question is). — Rhododendrites ^talk | 14:39, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

1921/22 motorcycle type?

Are there specialists in early motorcycles? As far as I can read it is Auroleá sports. If I read the notice of my grandfather on the backside correctly.

Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:31, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Problem in Template:By color

There has been a known problem in Template:By color — a link error occurs in the navigation box when the second parameter contains the word Japan or Taiwan (example 1 and 2). No other country faces the same problem. And I've found this is being caused by the following inconsistency:

{{Translated meta category name|buildings in Japan|nolink=y}} renders Buildings in Japan with the hyperlink to en.wiki, while {{Translated meta category name|buildings in France|nolink=y}} renders Buildings in France, just the plain text.

Why is this? {{By color}} uses {{Translated meta category name}}, which uses {{Double MetaCat/complex translate sort criterion}}, which sets the link to {{I18n/Japan}} or {{I18n/Taiwan}}. For countries where the templates {{I18n/France}}, {{I18n/Poland}}, {{I18n/China}} do not exist, only the plain text France, Poland or China is to be genereted, while for Japan and Taiwan, the output will be {{i18n/Japan}} ( = Japan) and {{i18n/Taiwan}} ( = Taiwan). So the presence of the template redirects {{I18n/Japan}} and {{I18n/Taiwan}} is the reason of this mulfunction. What should I do? Is it OK to request deletion of {{I18n/Japan}} and {{I18n/Taiwan}}? Both are used by many pages. If there is a template which can nullify a hyperlink in a text string, the problem will be solved instantly. Is there not such a thing? -- ~~トトト (talk) 07:34, 20 May 2025 (UTC)~~ --トトト (talk) 09:41, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Both {{I18n/Japan}} and {{I18n/Taiwan}} has a parameter that can be set so the hyperlink is removed: nolink=1 (see documentation). I think if this parameter is added to the second #ifexist statement in {{Double MetaCat/complex translate sort criterion}}, then the problem should be fixed. Do you think this will work? Tvpuppy (talk) 11:10, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. I understand what you say. I am nervous if editing the template like {{Double MetaCat/complex translate sort criterion}} is allowed or no. --トトト (talk) 11:18, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

How about we will ask @OmegaFallon, the creator of the template, who seems to be still active here. Do you think the edit to the template will be fine or not? Tvpuppy (talk) 11:34, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

I think it is fine, because France, Poland, China etc are OK from the beginning. If @OmegaFallon doesn't react, I may dare to edit it following your advice. --トトト (talk) 12:31, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you for pinging me on this issue. I have implemented your suggestion and it appears that things are now working correctly. Let me know if there are any other problems. :) OmegaFallon (talk) 22:02, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

A note: the issue was actually in Template:i18n/x in place. OmegaFallon (talk) 22:09, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

I can see it’s working fine now. Thank you for fixing it! Tvpuppy (talk) 22:24, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you both for appropriate advice and quick action. --トトト (talk) 01:13, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks to all three of you from me, too. Bahnfrend (talk) 03:10, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:36, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Historic Baltic ferry shedules

I took a ferry on the 27th may 2003 from Rostock to Tallinn. I cant find any ferry sheduled in 2025, from Rostock to Tallinn. See also: File:Ostseefährlinien.jpg. There does seem to be no ferry from Germany to Tallinn but lots of other Baltic destinations.

What is the ship and compagny (white and blue stripes)? Is there any websites for historic Ferry shedules?Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:51, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

According to this ship spotter site, this ferry was active on the route Rostock - Tallinn - Helsinki from 1999 to 2005 (when it was retired), the images also fit, so I'd say this is it (99% confidence). --rimshot^talk 21:03, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

The corresponding Wikilink would be GTS Finnjet. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 21:42, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I assumed the departing port was Rostock as I had an hotel for two days (from there a made a daytrip to visit the narrow gauge railways on Rügen island), but File:Finnjet IMO 7359632 F Travemünde 1987.jpg, lets me think it may be Travemünde. On the other hand File:Rostock Tallinn ferry 2003 1.jpg looks as a temporary terminal to me.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:46, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

The Finnjet was sailing from and to Rostock in the early 2000's (cf. GTS Finnjet#1987–2005, between Rostock and Helsinki). The gantry crane in the background of File:Rostock Tallinn ferry 2003 1.jpg looks a lot like the one on the background of File:Neptun Werft new hall III.jpg, the Y-legs are characteristic. You have a vantage point (back towards the sea, looking up the Unterwarnow) towards the the shipyard (Neptun Werft) from the ferry terminal at Rostock-Überseehafen. So, it's safe to say that you were indeed in Rostock. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 11:59, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: I agree that it's the Finnjet. Congratulations for having the chance to travel on such a special, historic and, sadly, now scrapped ship! I see that there are extensive articles e.g. in English Wikipedia or in German Wikipedia, but not in Dutch, maybe that's something you could rectify? ;-) Gestumblindi (talk) 09:02, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

I will ask around, but the Dutch wikipedia has some gaps in non-lokal subjects. As a maritime nation we have a lot of maritime subjects, but the Baltic sea is underserved. We have only the ferry compagny artikel nl:Scandlines operating in the Baltic sea. As ever it depends on writers have an interest in writing on certain subjects.Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:18, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Advice for uploading others' photos

I have been speaking to local groups interested in the history of my hometown and have convinced several people to contribute their old photos of the area to Wikimedia Commons. Most have said they will upload their photos themselves but a few are elderly and not IT literate and I have offered to upload their photos on their behalf. Would it be acceptable for me to create a Wikimedia account to upload their photos, or should I upload them from my own account and properly attribute them? Adam Black ^{talk • contribs} 21:29, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Old photos can be photos taken by themselves, but also photos taken by deceased family members, or other people. If it is not in the PD, {{Cc-by-sa-4.0-heirs}} can sometimes be used. You can also use a hidden category, to keep the pictures together. I recently created Category:Smiley Toerist family archives. Most are PD, but me on a donkey is an heirs case.Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:15, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

One of the people I plan on uploading photos for is my grandmother. My late grandfather and her had hundreds of inherited photos of Lanark from the early 1900's through to WWII which were all donated to the local museum in the 90's and unfortunately lost in a fire, so we can be fairly certain the ones that remain were taken either by my grandmother or grandfather. The problem I would have though is that for those taken by my grandfather with the copyright inherited by my grandmother, in many cases we have no way of knowing which photographs were taken by which grandparent - my grandfather was the more prolific photographer so would it be best to tag them all with the heirs license? This isn't so much an issue with the others as the photographs were taken by those offering them. Adam Black ^{talk • contribs} 08:46, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

I dont think you need to be specific using the heirs licence. For example in File:Modelspoorbaan bij oom van smiley toerist 1959.jpg I specified taken bij family of, as this could be only my grandmother or grandfather who would take this picture. You only need to be one of the remaining heirs. My mother and father are also deceased so the heirs rigths are passed on to me. If there are other heirs, I think in practice, a family agreement to publish is sufficient. In most cases only one family member possesses and manages the collection.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:38, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Add them to a Flickr account too, never rely on one place to store them. I would also see if the local library wants to keep digital copies and I would see if your hometown has an Arcadia Publishing book yet, if not you should write it. You can also create a Facebook group for the town. They are just books of old postcards and photos with minimal annotation. Scanning the photos is the time consuming part. Also make videos of the old timers memories and upload them to Facebook. If they are photos of people that are long dead add those to Familysearch and Findagrave. --RAN (talk) 02:56, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for your suggestions. I had planned to create a website to host many of the old photos I have been offered. Some have educational value and can be contributed to Commons but many are out of scope (e.g. family portraits, events, gatherings, etc.). I had considered Flickr but it's been a long time since I last used it and when I recently went to the website was rather off-put by the fact they now operate a subscription model. I have taken a look at Arcadia Publishing's website and unfortunately it appears they don't operate in the United Kingdom (Lanark, Scotland is my hometown) which is a shame as it seems like a great idea to me. Adam Black ^{talk • contribs} 09:00, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
@Adam Black: Are family portraits etc out of scope? I've been uploading random photos of e.g. these blokes in the 1930s (in Australia). Depending on the time frames of your photos, I'd say they're acceptable (we don't seem to have an overly large number of photos of normal life in Scotland in the early 20th century!). You could create yourself a subcat of Category:Family archives perhaps. Sam Wilson 11:16, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
I would say a reasonable number of family portraits and photos of normal family life would be within COM:SCOPE, as I understand it anyway, but for example my grandmother has hundreds if not thousands of photographs of my mum and uncle throughout their childhoods and uploading all of them to Commons would not provide much educational value. Adam Black ^{talk • contribs} 11:30, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
@Adam Black: Fair enough, that makes sense. I handle that by having a family wiki (or rather multiple, some closed-access), and putting the bulk of material there. That way, Commons files can be loaded seamlessly alongside those uploaded there. Sam Wilson 01:06, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

I also agree that family portraits are in scope, they capture interior design and fashion, and we need more historic images that do this. Outdoor images capture architecture and landscape design. Researchers need dated images and location specific images so that people can use them to date and identify unlabeled images. Creating your own website is great, but the problem is when you stop paying the monthly fee, the website is deleted. We have so many links to now dead websites, you have to think of your collection outlasting your life. Our local library used a third party website for scanned images and those images disappeared when the company went out of business. Flickr gives you room for 1,000 free images, and you can always create a new account for another 1,000 and you can pick any of multiple licenses. --RAN (talk) 19:39, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
I didn't mean to suggest all such photos weren't in scope, just that if I uploaded all of the family photos I have been offered, that would be out of scope. Thousands of similar photos of the same family wouldn't add much value. A selection of them, however, would. I plan to create a website where eventually all of the photographs that don't make the cut can be scanned and archived. Adam Black ^{talk • contribs} 19:48, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed the second half of your comment. I own an e-commerce business and plan on using my company's existing web hosting so hopefully it will last a long while assuming my business doesn't suddenly collapse. I'll also make copies of the archive to give to the local museum and library who will I am sure be able to preserve them for many future generations, and whichever other groups interested in local history want them. Adam Black ^{talk • contribs} 19:58, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): I'd recommend against trying to get around Flickr's free limits, they seem to be cracking down on that sort of thing. But it sounds like @Adam Black has a hosting option in mind. The other place I'd suggest is the Internet Archive (if you upload a pile of TIFFs into an item there, thumbnails and a gallery etc. are created; that doesn't seem to be true of JPGs or PNGs). Sam Wilson 01:11, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
@Adam Black: Commons:Uploading works by a third party may answer a lot of the questions you will be facing. - Jmabel ! talk 06:07, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, that's quite helpful. I've taken a quick look at the page and will read it more thoroughly before I upload anything. Adam Black ^{talk • contribs} 09:01, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Might there be a problem with the US licence in the case of unpublished work? Many pictures in family archives have never been published. see {{PD-US-unpublished}}. If the author is deceased in 1955 or later, or if is anonymous or not known when deceased. In these cases it has to be works before 1905!. An heirs licence gives protection from this. It defies Common Sense, that a anonymous published picture has less restrictive PD conditions, while there are more commercial interest in protecting published work. Most unpublished work is amateur work or professional work, not worthy of publishing. A picture wich has been in the family possession for many generations (and local family content) would not be allowed to be published in the US?Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:28, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: Some of this gets quite off-topic, so Adam Black can choose to ignore much of my response to you. Taking up your points:
- If the uploader is the inheritor of the copyright, then there is no problem: they grant a license, just as good in the U.S. as anywhere. But, yes, for third-party work this can be a problem. It can also be a problem sorting out just what qualified as "published." A group portrait (more than a handful of people) where all (or most) of the people in the photo got a copy was thereby "published."
- The reason previously unpublished work is given more protection is that the law was primarily driven by the idea of protecting commercial rights, not of facilitating free use. Someone who has already published commercially has already had the opportunity to gain value from the exploitation of their work. The intent with longer protection for certain unpublished work was to give people a motivation to publish it commercially. This law predates the wide dissemination of free content on the Internet, so that was barely a consideration.
- On your last question: it's all up to the heir(s) of the photographer. They can publish, they can give someone else permission to publish, they can refuse to publish. - Jmabel ! talk 19:36, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Another thing is wat are the copyrigths of commissioned works. For an example by a marriage there is often a professional photografer wich takes pictures This work is bougth by the family and the family is free to use distribute the pictures freely. It is unclear if there are publication restrictions (it could be different by country). Can these works be published in the Commons, as these works (and copyrigths) are bought? In commerce once the photografer has sold the rigths the buyer can do what its wants with it. For the family archives it is necessary to go back in time and see what the legal rules where at that time. Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:50, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

In the U.S., you cannot transfer copyright orally. If the contract didn't transfer the copyright, it's still held by the photographer or their heirs. Inconvenient, to say the least. - Jmabel ! talk 19:38, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
- If the copyrigth transfer happened in the US. I dont think US law, overrules the other countries rules about the transfer of copyrigths. So if in the other country rules the buyer of the photos automaticaly acquires the copyrigths, the owner should have the copyrigths to under US law. (certainly unter the foreign laws). I suspect that the Lanark photos are taken in Australia, so for the commissioned works, the Australian law applies. (I take it as Australian Adam Black's Commons CV has a lot of Australian connections). Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:00, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
  I am interested in Australian history (my brother-in-law is Australian) so some of my contributions are of Australian things but it's the Lanark in Scotland that I'm from. I'll have to look into this aspect of UK copyright law. I am hoping the local museum might be willing to allow me to scan and upload some of the photographs in their archives - they have a lot of portraits of prominent Lanarkians and their families from one of the original photo studios in town (c. 1870s to the early 20th century) and I presume most of them will be in the public domain now but I'll need to make sure. There's also the issue that there are two sets of laws here - Scots law and British law. Some laws apply only to Scotland and others apply across the entire UK. I'm not sure whether Scotland had its own copyright law before the Copyright Act 1956 and its successor, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the current UK-wide law, and if so whether it would still apply. Copyright protections can be quite long in the UK too - the original Winnie the Pooh book for example was published in 1926 but copyright of the text doesn't expire until 2027, and the copyright on the illustrations doesn't expire until 2047 (70 years after the author's and illustrator's deaths, respectively). Adam Black ^{talk • contribs} 11:32, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Just when will we get a better system than categories

(Two recent actions triggered me to finally write down this long rant, but let me be clear, I'm not discussing them specifically and I actually dont care about them:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Marienkirche_(Berlin-Mitte)&diff=prev&oldid=1032641035 (it is called St. Marienkirche on their own website https://marienkirche-berlin.de/ .)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Bahnhof_K%C3%B6nigslutter&diff=prev&oldid=1031064219

then i found other older stuff as i was ranting:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&logid=362756161 )

mediawiki's category system is not good for a file hosting website. look at https://www.gettyimages.com/ https://unsplash.com/ https://www.shutterstock.com/ https://www.flickr.com/ ... they all use a "tag" system. it works in multiple languages, i.e. a tag has different names in different languages, no matter which you speak you can find it.

mediawiki categories can only have one fixed name. hence users are just throwing away time doing these ridiculous category moves, discussions... and when someone doesnt notice, they make certain names red instead of redirects, then the next person cannot find them when they use uploadwizard/hotcat/cat-a-lot. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i have created a ton of category redirects coz i cant find them, and i put them on my watchlist for a year in case busybodies delete them. but i can only do so much and shit like this https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&logid=362756161 still happens every single day.

and a file can take on lots of tags, generic or specific https://unsplash.com/photos/a-store-front-with-asian-writing-on-it-CtCNCufztXw.

just when will we have a system that can associate a concept with multiple alternative names in multiple languages? instead of a single PAGENAME? RoyZuo (talk) 20:13, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

There is no good reason to delete, or to fail to make, simple redirects like those in your examples. It breaks in bound links, and confuses and disadvanatages colleagues and users who only know the old name. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:45, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Our alternative to the "tag" system is COM:SDC, which is more precise, because the values for "wood" (for example) are different for timber and and an area of trees, whereas in English tags they would be the same. SDC is also multilingual (as, incidentally the labels on Wikidata for our categories). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:01, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Categories are good as they are. Create redirects. See Wish:Add machine translated category titles on WMC. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:48, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

All this was often discussed and with the structured data we also have a solution path defined. The only problem is that the WMF suddenly dropped the funding of the development of structured data. GPSLeo (talk) 21:18, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

I think its very regrettable that WMF stopped SDC half way through. The UI for the existing SDC system is terrible in my opinion. Sure you can add metadata, but you can't get listings (ignoring external applications) of files by metadata. What use is making a catalog if nobody can read it? Its like the proverb about a tree falling in the woods. On the subject of categories though, half the problem is self-inflicted. The category tree structure system that commons uses is bizarre and difficult to navigate. Nothing in the technology says categories have to be used that way. They can be used like tags instead (i.e. Instead of Category:Pictures_of_Barack_Obama_eating_a_sandwich_in_central_park you could just have Category:Barak_Obama, Category:Eating_a_sandwich, category:Central_park. A large flat namespace that can be intersected isntead of having oddly specific small categories). Bawolff (talk) 22:17, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Categories also are used like tags. They're just not displayed like them. However, they could be displayed like them and maybe that would be better, e.g. directly beneath the image. I don't think SD would help with anything described here. There is no category page, SD largely comes from categories and depicts SD are about what the image shows not e.g. its topics with other SD even less rarely set than the depicts. There aren't so many overly long category titles but these are not a problem either, some grouping of categories and sorting would be helpful regarding that though. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:31, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

@Bawolff: which is mostly an argument against making over-specific intersection categories. But even when the "splitters" win out, categories can be very useful in that once you have a picture that is sort of what you want, you can usually navigate the category hierarchy to get to something more precisely like what you want. - Jmabel ! talk 03:59, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Bawolff is right that the SD-interface on Commons is bad. As a categorizer, I cannot use it to (timely) tag for example books by their publishing date or location. In principle SD is possible, but it takes minutes to find the correct SD-tag-name, and then fill it with the correct SD value. We have millions of books scans on Commons, and given how structured even the file descriptions are, bots could easily do the filling-in of simple tags, or maybe a trained AI. (I am not talking about advanced image recognition, I am talking about basic text processing.) As end result, we'd have structured data for most books on Commons, featuring the publication info.

Once that stage gets reached, Category:1897 books from Iowa would be largely redundant, but I don't see a reason why we would then completely abandon the category approach. We could keep both SD and categories.

Categories created by "splitters", as Jmabel puts it, are indeed very useful. Take Category:Books about education in Iowa. Lots of material if you're specifically interested in that subject, 56 books are nothing to sneeze at. However, there are two problems: the category needs to get defined in the first place (I did it on a whim when I realized how many 19th-century books from Iowa were about this topic) and the category needs to be filled (how many books on the subject are already uploaded on Commons - does the category even include 25% of the actual number?). The SD approach would allow any adept user to combine three tags (books, education, Iowa) and effectively search, without any pre-defined category. --Enyavar (talk) 10:43, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

that solves the intersection cat problem, but it doesnt solve the problem of "category having one single fixed name". "St. Marienkirche" "Marienkirche" "Marien church" "Mary church" "Sankt Marienkirche" "St Marienkirche"... could well be the name with which users try to find it. Switzerland or Singapore having 4 offcial langs has many things having 4 offcial names, but the mediawiki category system makes it such that there is only 1 name for 1 thing. Neither multiple alternative names in 1 language, nor names in multiple languages, are possible.

creating cat redirects is not a good solution:

it takes my fast fingers still at least 10 seconds to create 1 redirect (even though i have 2 scripts in place to speed up the "copy pagename paste into wikitext" process).
there're constantly people deleting that shit (this time trigerring my rant).

RoyZuo (talk) 13:35, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

I like categories, but it would be nice to see them improved. E.g. the ability to search for/filter all files within a category tree (not just the top level), and the ability to filter based on other categories files within a tree might be tagged with. FastCCI seems to be doing all these things, but the tool hasn't worked for years. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:14, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

There is a problem that once you recursively look in subcategories, the semantic concepts drift surprisingly fast. Five levels down it might be still related or it can be something completely different. That said, it is again an interface problem. We have the incategory: and deepcat. If you really want to do something complicated, we have the category sparql endpoint. We have the backends, it is just not discoverable to users due to UI. However the reason there are UI issues is because when people experiment with this they usually quickly realize querying the current category tree is not what they really want, so nobody bothers putting effort into a really smooth ui. Bawolff (talk) 12:24, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

This depends on the category. There are a lot of categories where this is no issue. Theoretically offtopic images displaying deepcat results can be solved but it needs a lot of categorization work so the broader the cat, currently the less likely it is it will not show offtopic files. A better way to address this though and which would also address the drift issue is by improving how files are sorted, for example by showing files closer to the top-level category or in quality images subcats or that are used often in WM projects further up than other ones etc. In addition, a way to easily filter out various common subcats such as 'xyz in art' subcats in the results or any of a list of subcategories sorted by number of files they contribute to the results seems needed / very useful, as outlined roughly at phab:T376440#10354943. Regarding UI, maybe FastCCI could be improved or a new tool with a button (if possible also having more easily understandable text) forked from it. It does work sometimes but it loads too long and loads to unreliably (phab:T367652) – clicking the dropdown->"All files" didn't work on this cat where deepcategory works but it does not display all files (click on "Switch to Special:Search" to see the error). Prototyperspective (talk) 14:20, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

As an example, say I want pictures of Dogs. So I use a tool that takes images in Category:Dogs and subcategories. This includes files like File:Parson-John-Russel.jpg File:Dog knows when human coming home-Fig1.svg, File:Bridge over River Ems with dog splash zone at Brook Meadow Local Nature Reserve Emsworth (P1020266).jpg, File:Army Reserve Races in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Emory Healthcare 500-First 100 Laps 315878.jpg, File:Buffon le loup et le renard Histoire naturelle de Buffon œuvres complètes tome 4 Mammifères II Furne Libraire éditeur.jpg, File:The cat (Page 178) BHL17970688.jpg, File:De-Bello.ogg, File:Stripping knive 5.jpg. Probably not what you want if you want to find cute pictures of dogs. But they also aren't wrong to be in the category. The category system just doesn't record relations in a specific enough way to make generic querying actually get you what you want. Bawolff (talk) 17:01, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Now if considering what I wrote above, this would be dealt with via 1. improved sorting (various techniques and methods) and 2. improving the categorization so e.g. this should be in this subcat (and this can be done via the view we're talking about) and 3. by category "Dog equipment" displaying in the list of top subcats files are from to filter out with just one click as I outlined at the link. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:22, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Difference between "architecture" and "structure"?

I've come across Category:Architecture by color by country and Category:Structures by color by country and am now wondering what the difference is. Should buildings, bridges, etc. go into "architecture" or "structure"? Nakonana (talk) 11:33, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Architecture (literal "covering the tip") means the style of buildings and the art to build, structure the constellation of single element to a whole object. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 12:24, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Architecture is clearly the superordinate term. Note that for example gardens and parks belong to architecture too, but are not structures as a whole. --A.Savin 12:44, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

That last answer seems to me to be quite a stretch. Yes, we refer to a "landscape architect" but the fact remains that they are not, strictly speaking, an architect, any more than a "software architect" is an architect. However, architecture includes architectural education, architectural libraries, studies of the history of architecture, etc., none of which are structures. - Jmabel ! talk 16:27, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Comparison of flickr upload tools

Commons_talk:Flickr_files#c-RoyZuo-20250518141800-Comparison_of_flickr_upload_tools. feel free to improve. RoyZuo (talk) 14:47, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Species identification

This is something I noticed because of recent addition of structured data to File:Kalanchoe thyrsiflora c-3218 01.jpg and File:Kalanchoe thyrsiflora c-3218 02.jpg saying they depict Kalanchoe luciae (Q1598303).

I am not a botanist, but it seems to me that in general we should trust labels in a plant conservatory over a random Commons user. In this case, my original species identification as Kalanchoe thyrsiflora c-3218, "Desert cabbage", Crassulaceae came from just that sort of label. Neux-Neux (of whom I otherwise know nothing) edited these in July 2023 to say Category:Kalanchoe luciae instead of Category:Kalanchoe thyrsiflora. The category page for Category:Kalanchoe luciae says, "It is very difficult to distinguish between the two species when only leaves are present" and goes on to discuss the differences, such as they are.

Although of course a conservatory can make a mistake, when should we (or shouldn't we) presume that a given Commons user, providing no references or explanation, knows more than the conservatory about the conservatory's plants? - Jmabel ! talk 16:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Misidentification is not uncommon in botanical gardens. Even some of the pictures on Kew's POWO are obviously misidentified, e.g. https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:274478-1/images: the plants in the four photos are all Kalanchoe × houghtonii but unfortunately misidentified as K. serrata. As for the case of K. luciae / K. thyrsiflora, it is indeed difficult to identify a plant with no flowers and I must admit that I changed the identification simply because K. thyrsiflora is extremely rare in cultivation and K. luciae is too often mislabelled "K. thyrsiflora". Of course, that does not mean K. thyrsiflora has never been cultivated; for example, the plants labelled "K. thyrsiflora" in the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena, CA were the true ones (https://www.agaveville.org/viewtopic.php?t=5365). You can certainly change the identification back, but the best solution I think is to put them under Category:Kalanchoe. Neux-Neux (talk) 20:17, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Minor note: I use apps on my phone which accurately tell me the species of insect or plant but nothing of that sort is used for Commons categorization. Maybe at some point some bot could scan taxonomic categories to identify files that appear to be miscategorized so people can check them. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:23, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

List of files on wikis that are also on Commons

Hi! I made a list of files on wikis that are also on Commons. The list can be seen at User:MGA73/CommonsDupes. If someone think such a list could be usefull feel free to go have a look. MGA73 (talk) 21:26, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Are we nearly there yet? 5000 media of 2018 needing categories, please

We need your help, please, to categorise 5,000 files from "M" to "W", or by adding categories to more obvious candidates in between. We started on 6 November 2024 at 43,242 files, but now it is getting more and more difficult. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 04:09, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Keeping up the momentum. We need your help, please, to categorise 4,000 files from "O" to "W", or by adding categories to more obvious candidates in between. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 10:25, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Now, we need your help, please, to categorise 3,000 files from "R" to "W", or by adding categories to more obvious candidates in between. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 09:23, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Now it's less than 2000 files --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:46, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

There are around 500 files left. We’re very close to the finish line. Keep it up! Tvpuppy (talk) 18:36, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

For the other cats which are substantially larger I think it would be good to categorize the used files. It's not necessarily very useful if a category is filled with lots of largely useless files (which btw then somewhat require subcategorization there) but files that are in use would definitely be useful in the cat about the subject. See this scan for files in use in another cat, where the file is used also indicates which categories the file belongs to. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:26, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Looks like we are finished. For 2018, that is. - Jmabel ! talk 19:29, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Well done to everyone who had helped categorising them! Tvpuppy (talk) 19:37, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Equally stupid filenames

Essentially the same problem, just in file namespace instead of category.

a filename is too short / generic, people dont like it; too long, also dont like it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

then some people insist on "harmonising" or nitpicking other users' uploads, and some fight back to insist on their own naming schemes. what for? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

after all the hassle, filename is often just an ill fated attempt at summarising what actually goes into the description (and sdc caption is a whole other debate). a picture is worth a thousand words! there can be a million ways to name a file. how to cram 1000 words into 256 bytes? why waste each other's time in pursuit of your personal stringent standard?--RoyZuo (talk) 20:42, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Files have titles for reasons, to make it easy to find them with searches or evaluate search results or on category pages. There is no problem except lots of files are named badly (example File:Fphar-11-00937-g001-ru.jpg) and people often don't care sufficiently about making them accurate and descriptive. You did not make any suggestion for improvement. There is no time of others wasted, very rarely do I ever see people move files and it's happening far too rarely and if it does, it doesn't waste anybody's time except when the uploader for no reason rejects an actually useful descriptive title which I've seen happening for just one user. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:52, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

nobody cares about what a specific file's filename is on flickr/getty/any other image hosting site. it's just a string of ascii letters and numbers.

commons has this stupid system coz it uses mediawiki, which fixes PAGENAME, and changing it requires a "page move". it could well just be a string of text freely editable for any number of times. but it cannot because mediawiki has to identify the file by PAGENAME instead of an internal file number. RoyZuo (talk) 21:02, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

just look at loc or any library/archive in the world https://www.loc.gov/item/91795009/ . every item has a catalog / control number. no matter how the information gets edited, the number stays stable, so the info (including title) can be edited as many times as you want and there can exist multiple versions as long as you like.

no image hosting site or library/archive uses stupid systems like this that changing a name requires moves and breaks file usage (if redirects are kept, it's not broken within wmf projects, but it still breaks outside wmf projects coz the raw url used for embedding the file changes!)

mediawiki is 2000s tech designed for a text website that decided to use "pagename" as the only means to locate a page. if it started with an alphanumeric identifier for every page, or if it recognised the need for some pages to change titles frequently, we would not waste all this time on these trivial things.

i mean, why should it have a fixed page name? look at blogspot, every blog article has a fixed url that may or may not be related to the title of the blog article. you can also edit the article after you have fixed the url. the url is just a link for convenience, why tie the title to the url? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ RoyZuo (talk) 21:27, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

the same is also true for usernames. most websites let you change your username however you want coz most often the system doesnt rely on that name to identify the user but rather uses a number.

mediawiki? needs approval, and a special kind of user to carry that out, and it still sometimes breaks things along the way.

all because it uses the PAGENAME to identify a user. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

which also makes it such that one name can only be used by one person. no identical names. not even similar names (coz that causes confusion they say)! RoyZuo (talk) 21:41, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Nothing is stopping anyone from naming files File:02e5c4e8-489c-4de2-9382-1efcc2a9fb81.jpg if they so desire. Ultimately though files are going to need human readable names at some point, and people are going to look for those names, and are going to be confused when they change, regardless of if they are the primary identifier or not. Even if instead of using urls like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duisburg,_Landschaftspark_Duisburg-Nord,_Erzbunker_--_2024_--_4214.jpg, we used a url like https://commons.wikimedia.org/entity/M148107007 or a url like https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=148107007 (I think both of these numeric urls stay the same after a file move and possibly even after delete/undelete) people still think in terms of file titles not file numbers. If the primary concern is that old links will break, it seems like that problem is easily solved by leaving a redirect behind. I honestly don't see what the practical difference is. Bawolff (talk) 22:09, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

@Bawolff: Nothing is forcibly stopping them (unless they get blocked for it), but it is a violation of a guideline. - Jmabel ! talk 04:01, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

@Bawolff the human readable name needs not be the single thing the file is identified throughout wmf projects. why cant it be like "description" that's editable without a "page move"?

leaving a redirect will still break the embedded usage outside wmf projects (still true as of 2022 Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 89#User:Ymblanter's photo). has this problem been fixed yet?

page id (aka curid) does stay the same, but PAGENAME is still how the system handles files.

i kinda remember that there's talk (phab task) about making it possible to directly use a specific version of a file (i.e. referencing a specific file revision directly, most likely through an alphanumeric identifier), but when will that eventually happen? RoyZuo (talk) 13:25, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

well i fixed it for thumbnails (but not original files) in 2013. No idea if it still works though. High liklihood the move to thumbor broke it again, and it never worked for original files. Regardless i would agree that there are a wide variety of reasons why it would be better to use hash based urls for the actual file asset. However that is entirely separate from what mediawiki calls the file. In fact i believe mediawiki already has support for this for a while (the storageLayout parameter to $wgLocalFileRepo), its just difficult to convert all the pre-existing files. Bawolff (talk) 14:53, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what other sites do for that matter but most of them including in your example do have proper titles. In your example, it is "Declaration of Independence: July 4th 1776". I don't understand why some people have such difficulties in understanding of proper descriptive well-readable file titles. It harms the platform as well as the usefulness and visibility of your files. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:27, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

That title can be easily edited, for as many times as possible. Can be multilingual. Can be arbitrarily long.

Commons "filename" aka "title" has none of those qualities. RoyZuo (talk) 13:15, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

I'd support making it easier to change file-titles. They can already be moved but not so many users have permissions to do that directly and even then it seems only to be used when there really is a big issue. For example Incidence and prevalence of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, World, OWID chart (the title within the image) would be much more readable and clearer than File:Extensively-drug-resistant-tuberculosis.png but the latter still has some descriptive info that makes it not as much of a problem as the title of say File:Fmicb-02-00157-g001.jpg. Regarding multilingual I've linked something in a comment further up and regarding length, limiting it is needed because otherwise it's too long to be useful and not cause display issues – it needs to be concise with any further info going into the Commons caption and/or file description. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:45, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

i have an idea.

we can introduce {{DISPLAYTITLE:...}} to every file page. so no more file moves to tweak the title readers see. this would eliminate Commons:File renaming#Which files should be renamed? #1 #2, and potentially #6. (set $wgRestrictDisplayTitle to false.) RoyZuo (talk) 15:46, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

implemented by creating a new parameter "title" for {{Information}}. default value is PAGENAME, but users can of course manually give a different value overriding PAGENAME. and the template will call {{DISPLAYTITLE:...}} to display the manual value.

this works just like the "title" parameter in Template:Artwork Template:Book, except the DISPLAYTITLE effect. RoyZuo (talk) 15:52, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

File:Ur4442.jpg generic filename, but users can see the image is titled "Die alte Dom-Brücke in Dorpat" in german. RoyZuo (talk) 15:57, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Would that change the title also on the category page and the search results or just the title directly within the page? Prototyperspective (talk) 17:18, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Comment I have complained about renames many times. For example harmonizing a set is for when files are used in a template. Not for making sure similar files have similar names. Personally I think we should not rename files unless they break something or reveal secret information etc. we have descriptions categories structured data etc where people can explain what is in the photo. No need to move files around and risk breaking everything. As said many websites use a random ID as file name and it works fine. --MGA73 (talk) 04:34, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Very much disagree and I see the point you're making. Few websites use random IDs as file title that is displayed and those that do are not intended to be actually used in the sense of users browsing around or at least they have very few users and those generic titles are more of an artifact from having limited resources. People use file titles when they go through search results and especially when they glance over a category page. A descriptive title can include some ID(s). Prototyperspective (talk) 10:55, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Outreachy intern working on Cat-a-lot – feedback and suggestions welcome!

Hello everyone,

I'm Adiba Anjum, the Outreachy intern selected to work on the Cat-a-lot gadget during the May-August 2025 round. My mentor for this project is Zache.

Over the next few months, I’ll be focusing on improving Cat-a-lot by fixing bugs, enhancing its features, and incorporating user feedback. If you’ve used Cat-a-lot and have ideas, feature requests, or bug reports, I’d love to hear them! Your input will help guide the work I do during this internship.

Feel free to leave your thoughts here or on the Cat-a-lot talk page. Looking forward to learning from the community and making the tool more useful for everyone!

Thank you! — Adiba Anjum (talk) 06:41, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Sounds great! I wonder if all the still-open valid issues reported on the talk page and the bugs subpage have yet been filed in phabricator, it does look like that's the case. Probably how well it works with MediaSearch could be substantially improved and maybe it could be extended to do things like displaying categories that are overcategorized (not always a problem) for which there may be separate tools. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:33, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Freedom of U.S. panorama, seaching for the WMF letter

Unless I'm mistaken I read a letter on Commons recently from a WMF rep who said it was okay to ignore U.S. freedom of panorama. Does anyone recall or have a link to that letter and/or discussion? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:37, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: There is nothing of the sort. You're probably thinking of a recent discussion where a user claimed hearsay of a vague comment by unnamed WMF people apparently about something else and reinterpreted it to more or less imply that the absence of FoP in the U.S. for some works might be ignored. Someone already gave you a link to that discussion in the recent deletion request where you asked the question. -- Asclepias (talk) 14:37, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Are you thinking about following the more lenient law when another country has a more permissive freedom of panorama than the US?

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 14:51, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

(which, of course, applies only to pictures taken in that other country.) - Jmabel ! talk 20:03, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

In short, for pictures taken in the U.S., we apply U.S. law. - Jmabel ! talk 20:03, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. Was hoping I was right. I missed the follow-up at the other discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 22:52, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Here’s what’s in it for you:

If your account defaults to one of the six Creative Commons 2.0 licenses, we’ll automatically upgrade it to 4.0 for all your future uploads. Easy peasy—no clicks required.
Your existing photos with CC 2.0 licenses? They’ll stay just as they are unless you decide to update them.
Prefer other license types or dedication tools? Not to worry—those won’t be affected by this change.

Creative Commons 4.0 brings clearer terms, better international usability, and more flexibility for creators like you. We’re excited to support a stronger, smarter future for open sharing on Flickr.

Got questions? Our Support Heroes are here to help.

Keep creating.

- The Flickr Team

—Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:36, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Just in time for Flickr to enshittify itself into obscurity. Better late than never! Nosferattus (talk) 23:48, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

How does your comment relate to the thread? Prototyperspective (talk) 09:15, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Not to mention that the link simply goes to "enshittification," not to whatever action of Flickr's Nosferattus may be referring to. - Jmabel ! talk 17:28, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Most searching features are now behind the paywall. See the section above #Flickr searching closed again. GPSLeo (talk) 19:23, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Wow! That was quick... Herbert Ortner (talk) 16:53, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Category:Science education in Australia

Hi all, to harmonize with the global category structure, it should be in Category:Education in Australia by subject. How does one fix this with the template? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 18:51, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

It should be fixed now. I added parent2index=subject in the “science education” entry in {{Topic by country/data/S}}. Tvpuppy (talk) 20:07, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:32, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Here’s what’s in it for you:

If your account defaults to one of the six Creative Commons 2.0 licenses, we’ll automatically upgrade it to 4.0 for all your future uploads. Easy peasy—no clicks required.

Your existing photos with CC 2.0 licenses? They’ll stay just as they are unless you decide to update them.

Prefer other license types or dedication tools? Not to worry—those won’t be affected by this change.

Creative Commons 4.0 brings clearer terms, better international usability, and more flexibility for creators like you. We’re excited to support a stronger, smarter future for open sharing on Flickr.

Got questions? Our Support Heroes are here to help.

Keep creating.

- The Flickr Team

—Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:36, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Just in time for Flickr to enshittify itself into obscurity. Better late than never! Nosferattus (talk) 23:48, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

How does your comment relate to the thread? Prototyperspective (talk) 09:15, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Not to mention that the link simply goes to "enshittification," not to whatever action of Flickr's Nosferattus may be referring to. - Jmabel ! talk 17:28, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Most searching features are now behind the paywall. See the section above #Flickr searching closed again. GPSLeo (talk) 19:23, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Wow! That was quick... Herbert Ortner (talk) 16:53, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

cctv licensing

Hi, can I get cctv published at a random site like bbc.com and upload it at commons? Is any cctv always in public domain? I mean video footage from a security camera. Does it matter if it was in a public street or on a personal property or property of government such as a school or a prison?

I thought I saw that mentioned in a discussion, but I cannot find it. Gryllida (talk) 11:24, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

@Gryllida: the consensus (but not without controversy) seems to be that if the camera is "fixed" (cannot be pointed different directions by an operator) it should be PD. - Jmabel ! talk 18:54, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Earlier iscussion at Commons:Village_pump/Copyright/Archive/2025/04#CCTV_in_the_United_States_Ineligible_for_Copyright_-_A_Complete_Legal_Fiction

There is no legal precedent saying CCTV footage does not have a copyright.

The Copyright Office has registered CCTV footage that was presumably fixed position.

The location being captured does not matter.

CCTV by a government agency may be PD based on jurisdiction.

The UK has a low Threshold of Originality.

So I would not upload CCTV footage.

Glrx (talk) 19:22, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Flickr searching closed again

Flickr have again (as they did back in March) closed searches behind a paywall. Last time (see Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/03#Flickr - possible change of licensing?), @Omphalographer: discovered that you could bypass the paywall then by using the 'Esc' key. Unfortunately this no longer works with the new paywall. Does anyone know if there is a new way round it? Thanks! - MPF (talk) 11:28, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Maybe we could use this to make a campaign to get users currently publishing their files on Flickr moving to Commons. Something like "Disappointed from Flickr? Learn how to publish your photos on Wikimedia Commons". GPSLeo (talk) 12:04, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

I think it should be "Disappointed by flickr" in English, but otherwise... yes, that could be a chance. Though our rustic to rusty interface will probably deter some users accustomed to flickr... - And also, of course, we have stricter policies, as you can't upload just any file to Commons (COM:EDUSE)... Gestumblindi (talk) 08:54, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Maybe it's just a test. I don't see any paywall when I try to search on Flickr. Nosferattus (talk) 14:13, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

@Nosferattus @Gestumblindi @GPSLeo - I still get a paywall when I visit Flickr's search page. It means it is no longer possible to search for Commons-compatible cc-licensed images on Flickr. - MPF (talk) 19:50, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@MPF: Interesting, just tested: I don't get a paywall, don't even need to be registered, I can use the search feature (including filtering by license) just fine. The only thing it seems to require to be signed in for is if you want to disable the "family filter". Maybe it's country-specific? I'm using it from Switzerland. Gestumblindi (talk) 19:57, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Gestumblindi - thanks! I'm in Britain; I get a non-removable flashscreen paywall that requires I must sign up for Flickr before I can search for anything there; I can't use the search feature (including filtering by license) at all, it's blocked by the paywall. - MPF (talk) 20:09, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Did you try to scroll further down beyond the first results? I can make a search and get results but I can only click on the first ones. If you scroll further down I run into the paywall and also do not get back to the first results. GPSLeo (talk) 20:13, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@MPF and GPSLeo: That's it! Yes, if I try to scroll further down, I get the paywall as well, unfortunately. Gestumblindi (talk) 20:45, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Just tried it – no paywall for me (accessing from Germany, logged in), even when scrolling to the very end of the search results. With another browser (not logged in) I got a pop-up (saying I should register to continue) after scrolling down. --Rosenzweig τ 21:08, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Rosenzweig @GPSLeo - now we need a workaround (like the earlier use of the Esc key) that'll get access to the search without having to sell my soul to them - MPF (talk) 21:32, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@MPF-- https://temp-mail.org/ is your friend. JayCubby (talk) 21:55, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/531568-flickr-no-sign-in-nag/code this script works fine

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 22:07, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

@999real how does one use that, please? - MPF (talk) 20:13, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

It is a user style you can use it with https://github.com/openstyles/stylus or userscript manager https://violentmonkey.github.io

You could also just run it whenever you do search on Flickr in browser console or save as bookmark and just click the bookmark

javascript:(function() {(document.head || document.documentElement).appendChild(document.createElement('style')).textContent = `#stacking-overlay-container:has(.fluid-modal-overlay.blur-overlay) {   display: none  !important;} .fluid.html-search-photos-unified-page-view.scrolling-layout:has(.fluid-modal-overlay.blur-overlay) { overflow: auto !important;}`;})();

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 20:32, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

@999real - thanks, but that's as clear as mud to me! I don't have the faintest clue what that all means 😖 - MPF (talk) 17:55, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

@MPF: copy the JavaScript code to clipboard, add a bookmark as though the code is a URL, then click the bookmark when you want to activate the code. JayCubby (talk) 17:58, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Stylus and Violentmonkey are browser extensions. The links above will have the instructions how to install them

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 18:00, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

@JayCubby @999real I still don't understand any of those! I couldn't even find out how to make that "javascript .... ();" stuff into a bookmark. Can you describe what to do in non-technical language please! I'm not a computing expert, I just want to be able to search for suitable cc-licensed pics in Flickr to add to Commons like in the past. - MPF (talk) 23:05, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

You just copy the code, go to add a bookmark and paste the code in the URL field here is a video I tried File:Run javascript bookmark LibreWolf remove Flickr sign in nag.webm

Here is a tutorial how to install Violentmonkey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSuzB8v43a8

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 23:42, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

@MPF, it is fairly straightforward to create an account with a throwaway account using something like https://temp-mail.org/ JayCubby (talk) 23:45, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

I started a discussion about this earlier at Commons_talk:Flickr_files#Flickr_search_without_signup. As already mentioned above, the script works. Οἶδα (talk) 20:45, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Please vote for new checkuser

Hello community, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to vote for a new checkuser, Lymantria, at Commons:Checkusers/Requests/Lymantria. Your vote is critical to make Commons work better in the future. The poll ends in four days so please take your time when available to cast your precious vote.

Please do not reply to this message. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 11:22, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your participation in the poll, the results are as follows:

Support 41 votes
Oppose 2 votes

The result is successful, and Lymantria will gain their checkuser right.

I would like to congratulate Lymantria for becoming a checkuser and hope they will make Commons more better over time. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 06:12, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

FYI: Creative Commons 4.0 arriving soon to Flickr.

E-mail from three minutes ago:

Hi koavf,

This June, Flickr is rolling out support for version 4.0 of the Creative Commons license suite – the most global, legally robust licenses produced by CC yet.

Here’s what’s in it for you:
	
* If your account defaults to one of the six Creative Commons 2.0 licenses, we’ll automatically upgrade it to 4.0 for all your future uploads. Easy peasy—no clicks required.
* Your existing photos with CC 2.0 licenses? They’ll stay just as they are unless you decide to update them.
* Prefer other license types or dedication tools? Not to worry—those won’t be affected by this change.

Creative Commons 4.0 brings clearer terms, better international usability, and more flexibility for creators like you. We’re excited to support a stronger, smarter future for open sharing on Flickr.

Got questions? Our Support Heroes are here to help.
	
Keep creating.
	
'''- The Flickr Team'''

—Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:36, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Just in time for Flickr to enshittify itself into obscurity. Better late than never! Nosferattus (talk) 23:48, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

How does your comment relate to the thread? Prototyperspective (talk) 09:15, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Not to mention that the link simply goes to "enshittification," not to whatever action of Flickr's Nosferattus may be referring to. - Jmabel ! talk 17:28, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Most searching features are now behind the paywall. See the section above #Flickr searching closed again. GPSLeo (talk) 19:23, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Wow! That was quick... Herbert Ortner (talk) 16:53, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

EVR sleeping cars?

Al other sleeping cars in the Category:Trains at the Balti jaam, seem to be Russian.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:34, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

What is the question here? What is EVR? What is wrong with Russian? Do you need a translation? Is there something wrong with the file(s)? Gryllida (talk) 11:45, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

I assuming they are asking if the train carriages shown in the photos are sleeper cars from the EVR Ekspress (now known as en:GoRail), and perhaps they are also asking if the sleeper cars are from/made in Russia. Tvpuppy (talk) 11:56, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Oh. Gosh, maybe ask in w:Wikipedia:Reference desk ? Gryllida (talk) 12:25, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

All other sleeper cars where Russsian and Russian compagny. These are also the only one in blue. When the Estonian EVR compagny ran the trains, the question is did they loan the sleeping cars from Russia, or did they have their own? I suspect the sleeping car trains to Moskou only ran a short under the EVR logo.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:08, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

These are Russian-produced cars if this is the question. Whether EVR owned then or leased them, I do not know, and I am not sure there is any way to know. Ymblanter (talk) 09:15, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

How can I suggest a picture to the POTD-competition?

Hey! I think I have a few good enough pics of my own that could qualify! For example this one. How can I suggest it or other pictures to be picutres of the day? Thanks! --Osmo Lundell hey 08:56, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

See Commons:Picture of the day/Instructions (also see the FP page linked there). This page can be found this way: frontpage -> Previous Pictures of the day -> For instructions on how to add a Picture of the Day, see Commons:Picture of the day/Instructions. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:58, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! --Osmo Lundell hey 10:16, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:58, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

License review by non-Image-reviewers

Can the filter Special:AbuseFilter/70 be enabled to block so that non-Image-reviewers cannot review (like this)? -- DaxServer (talk) 08:04, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

i vaguely remember that croptool a pic with reviewed licences would also trigger that filter. not sure if my memory's right. RoyZuo (talk) 16:56, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Separating sound files from video files

Does anyone know if there’s a way to take a video file and download the audio alone from it? Thanks, Shadestar474 (talk) 15:17, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

https://audio-extractor.net/ ReneeWrites (talk) 16:15, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

A good tool (offline) is also MKVToolnixGUI, which offers more options for audio/video tracks --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:56, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Photo challenge March results

**Hiking: Entries • Votes • Scores**
Rank	1	1	3
image
Title	Silhouette of a female hiker in front of the Massif du Mont-Blanc	A hiker on the last meters before reaching the summit of the Schneespitze in the Stubai Alps	A picture of three people hiking the path called "Dragon's Back" in Brecon, Wales. Taken by Lauren Moon in June of 2024.
Author	Stephan Sprinz	Milseburg	Lighting-design-lila
Score	15	15	11

**Newspapers: Entries • Votes • Scores**
Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Newspapers are living history	Newspaper reader in Naples, Italy	Rolled up newspaper delivered to a home in Redan, Victoria.
Author	Sindugab	Mozzihh	Peterdownunder
Score	14	12	10

Congratulations to Stephan Sprinz, Milseburg, Lighting-design-lila, Sindugab, Mozzihh and Peterdownunder. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:51, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Images of Cameron Rowland - public event, freely licensed, subject claims permission needed

Hoping to get some extra opinions or insights on a situation involving a public figure who is represented in images on Commons. In October 2022, @GSAPPstudent uploaded several photographs of the artist Cameron Rowland, made at a free event open to the public at Columbia University's architecture/planning school (GSAPP). The images were uploaded as own work, which seems legit as the account has uploaded a range of photographs from lectures at GSAPP.

After one of the images was used in the article for Rowland (full disclosure, by me), GSAPPstudent nominated the images for deletion because Rowland had not "consented" to their release; consensus was keep as the works were freely licensed and Rowland was speaking in a public setting in the U.S. with no photography restrictions. GSAPPstudent then re-listed for speedy deletion a while later, consensus was again keep. After that, several new accounts began re-listing the images for deletion and removed the image from the article. This time, the rationale was that Columbia had not received permission to make or publish images from this event and had explicitly promised Rowland none would be released, and Rowland requested Columbia delete these images. But again, that didn't really make sense; GSAPPstudent doesn't represent Columbia AFAIK, they are not bound by any agreement Rowland and Columbia made, and the event clearly had no photography restrictions (event listing). Once again, consensus was keep.

As someone who follows Rowland's work, I believe they are asking Columbia to have these photographs removed - and probably did request that Columbia not release photos from this event - because part of their artistic practice involves minimal documentation of themselves. They seem to be following in the footsteps of other notable artists who generally refuse(d) to document themselves or allow others to document them (Cady Noland, stanley brouwn, etc.). But their aversion to being photographed does not change what seemed to have happened here, where an independent photographer (not Columbia) made a photograph at a public event with no known photo restrictions and published it with an irrevocable free license on Commons. Someone else added a personality rights tag to all photos, so the restrictions on reuse are clear.

Two of the photos have now been nominated again for deletion by an IP user who previously requested deletion. I voted keep as nothing seems to have changed.

But am I just being a stick in the mud here? Does my analysis have gaps/is there a reason we would just cede to Rowland's request? I don't want to be overly deferential to the "keep" perspective. Just wanted to flag this for a broader group of editors to get some extra eyes. Thanks! 19h00s (talk) 12:57, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

(I'd just add that I did one extra search and actually found an example of Columbia's GSAPP themselves releasing video of Rowland under a CC license on YouTube the same year this separate lecture happened. They appear at 53:12 and give a full presentation.) 19h00s (talk) 13:15, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks @Yann for keeping the files (although I think you forgot to close the DR for the second image). If anyone has any insights into this kind of situation or ideas on how to limit the recurring deletion requests (if that's even a thing or appropriate), would love to hear. Thanks again. 19h00s (talk) 14:38, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Ah right. I also closed this DR. I also blocked the IP 66.108.48.178 for 6 months. Yann (talk) 14:40, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks again Yann! And for those wondering why I brought this up here, I'd just say that I value consensus and I know I'm not always right. 19h00s (talk) 15:18, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Maybe he doesn't like the photos? They show him in motion etc., so it might be worth suggesting to them that they upload one good selfie of themselves for their article so that the other photos will be considered obsolete. Nakonana (talk) 16:24, 23 May 2025 (UTC)