Commons:Village pump/Archive/2023/02

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Cat for photos that filter all but one or some colours？

File:Gold and red mask.jpg i guess there must be a phrase/word for this?--RZuo (talk) 19:40, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

@RZuo: just "color-filtered photos" or "color-masked photos"? - Jmabel ! talk 23:06, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
But in this case what they really did is to fully desaturate color in an area of the photo, while leaving other areas intact. - Jmabel ! talk 23:09, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
my nikon l820 calls this "Selective color" mode -- "Creates a black and white image in which only the specified color remains".--RZuo (talk) 00:52, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
@RZuo & Jmabel We keep those at Category:Colour isolated photographs (Category:Selective color redirects there) or the parent Category:Selective desaturation when large areas were desaturated but the remaining areas contain more than a single color. El Grafo (talk) 08:45, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
that's it.
i was trying to find it somewhere under Category:Colorful objects.--RZuo (talk) 12:25, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --RZuo (talk) 12:25, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2023-02

In January 2023, the total number of uploaded files exceeded 90 million.

Currently, there are 189 sysops.

Edited by RZuo (talk).

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

--RZuo (talk) 02:50, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Image search engine that can find images with similar style

https://same.energy/ can search for CC BY images that have similar "energy", which can prove useful for finding a freely-licensed alternative or similar type of image. It's not clear what kind of artificial intelligence or machine learning it's using, but it could be handy if you're trying to find a free piece of media with a vague search term. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:35, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

seems useful and quite fast.👍--RZuo (talk) 19:40, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
the website uses cache maybe? https://same.energy/i/cc.S9cp this photo has disappeared from flickr. RZuo (talk) 19:55, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Template {{C}} is in disorder

The template {{C}} is in disorder after the recent edit by User:Sarang. All the files using this template are in chaos. Should it be reverted? --トトト (talk) 01:06, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

 Info {{c|New York|Big Apple}} renders  {{#switch:+|New York|Big Apple||={{#switch:|i|n={{i18n/namespace|c|link={
as of now. --トトト (talk) 01:26, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 Info You were right. It was the sub-template {{C/display}} edited by an IP user which caused messes. I have reverted it, and now {{C}} works fine. --トトト (talk) 03:02, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 04:52, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Voting on the revised Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct is closed

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.
More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

The vote on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines is now closed. The results will now be counted and scrutinized to ensure that only eligible votes are included. Results will be published on Meta and other movement forums as soon as they become available, as well as information on future steps. Thank you to all who participated in the voting process, and who have contributed to the drafting of Guidelines.

On behalf of the UCoC Project Team,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 19:17, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Cultural template help

Could someone please help me create a template for the South Australian Heritage Register? Similar to the Template:Cultural Heritage Australia. I'm really not so technically minded. Many thanks! No Swan So Fine (talk) 04:46, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Dezoomify images from REALonline

Hi everyone, do you have advice to get the full resolution of images that are hidden behind a canvas element from REALonline, for example at https://realonline.imareal.sbg.ac.at/detail/nr-012066? I've tried some tools from Help:Zoomable images and couldn't succeed yet. (PS: For now I've uploaded a screenshot in low resolution at File:Vision of St. Anthony - Saint Anthony Altar - Church of St George, Spišská Sobota.png.) Thanks a lot in advance, --Marsupium (talk) 10:42, 1 February 2023 (UTC), 15:37, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

✓ Done - shame about the watermark, imareal don't actually own rights to a 700 year old image.. Stemoc 18:51, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
About the watermarks: The image is PNG (lossless) and the watermark is a mono-color text, repeated without variation and inserted by adding the color values of the original pixel and the watermark pixel. It should be possible to undo that by substracting the color value of the watermark. Probably there is a software that can semi-automate this? C.Suthorn (talk) 19:03, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
could do it myself if it was any other image using cloning method but this image is a historical art so might end up with little blotches so won't take the risk Stemoc 19:35, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Hi, thanks a lot and sorry for the late reply! How did you get the image? The website has photos of other parts of the same altarpiece as well that I'd like to upload and apart from that it would be useful for the future to know how to get images from that site and others. Thanks a lot in advance, --Marsupium (talk) 17:14, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

PDF cut and paste text

The Library of Congress newspaper archive stores scans as a pdf and has incorporated mapped text. I know I can get that when I store a word document as a pdf, how is done with a scan? I don't use Adobe software, so it is a function when you use Adobe software? Is there other software that will create a pdf and do OCR, and map the OCR to the text for free? See a typical page for the LOC here: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/wa_kingfisher_ver02/data/sn87093407/00340585446/1923122401/0757.pdf --RAN (talk) 23:29, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

PDF is by Adobe, but it is a free format. Free OCR software is often based on Tesseract. So any free OCR software that offers PDF output is likely to have (at least the option to) output of PDFs with an image of the OCRed text with the OCRed text mapped to it. C.Suthorn (talk) 09:10, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Category deletion request

I started a category with a misspelt name; can be deleted:

Category:Dominic Daly


There is a category which is correctly spelt and should not be deleted:

Category:Dominick Daly

Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 21:51, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

There is no Category:Dominic_Daly. Odd. I've marked it for deletion now. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:49, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Cat for intentional photos of half faces？

File:Half face portrait of a mysterious woman with a mask.jpg this composition is quite common in photos and paintings. is there a cat for these?--RZuo (talk) 19:40, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

"intentional" as being the photographer's intention, instead of commons users' cropping.--RZuo (talk) 00:52, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
then there's also combining two faces like the poster of The Ides of March (2011 film).--RZuo (talk) 12:25, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
@RZuo also related: File:Tingling_(4055018578).jpg and File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17537515404).jpg, both in Category:Fraction 1/2. El Grafo (talk) 10:16, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

ANN's images

Dear colleagues,

we in Wikimedia RU are currently starting to preliminary discuss an opportunity of a contest which, among other nominations, may contain images generated by artificial neural nets or other similar technologies.

Evidently the images should be within the COM:SCOPE. But what other precautions would you advise? Or could you share any other ideas related to the images of this kind? Thanks! Dr Bug (Vladimir V. Medeyko) 18:21, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

  1. There have been a lot of discussions lately about whether images created by AI are likely to accidentally infringe copyrights. After all, they only know what they've ingested from other works.
  2. There seems to be a consensus that when any sort of AI is used, the specific AI should be identified as clearly as possible, as should whatever prompts it was given. - Jmabel ! talk 20:03, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
A recent article on TechSpot about AI-generated images: Researchers discover AI models generate photos of real people and copyrighted images. --Túrelio (talk) 10:34, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
See also Commons:AI-generated media (still in development). It might be a good idea to at least leave a not on the associated discussion page. El Grafo (talk) 10:47, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Garbage in Metadata

File:Trainatschipholairportstation.jpg There seems to a lot of garbage in the metadata. I dont know wat went wrong in the extract script.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:05, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

It seems there are 7029 bytes in the EXIF tag UserComment. According to the EXIF this should be ASCII text, but it seems there is just random bytes there (at least I haven't been able to discern a pattern). Some other software apparently shortens this representation because of 00 bytes, but according to the specification, 00 bytes are not supposed to be string terminators in this specific field, so our implementation is technically more correct. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:36, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
✓ Done I removed the garbage with Gimp. Yann (talk) 13:09, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Feedback on technical design of Information-like templates

I recently made some changes to template information, with the promise to keep working on that project and get the sibling templates sorted out as well. In the proces of looking into this, I discovered several consistency problems that should be dealt with and I've made a proposal and listed some suggestions at Module talk:Information. Your feedback is welcome, as I want to make sure we arrive at a proper solution that will last for a while. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:48, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Image stored fragmented

See: http://polishjews.yivoarchives.org/archive/?p=digitallibrary/digitalcontent&id=3222 If I use save_as, I get a fragment. When I inspect the image, I can see it is stored as over 100 rectangles, each a portion of the image, plus one thumbnail of the entire image. Do archives store this way to prevent downloading, or to speed loading in your cache? Is there a way to download the entire image at full size and full resolution? RAN (talk) 17:58, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

ceratosaurs naricorns

I have a couple of Questions that may be answerable — Preceding unsigned comment was added by 47.151.11.54 (talk) 18:22, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Global ban for PlanespotterA320/RespectCE

Per the Global bans policy, I’m informing the project of this request for comment: m:Requests for comment/Global ban for PlanespotterA320 (2) --Lemonaka (talk) 19:57, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

What is this?

I suspect these are connectors for train heating, but I'm not sure. Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:55, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

There is a Category:Steam heated trains, but little else I coud find about the steam heating of trains.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:39, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
The image description at de:Dampfheizung (Eisenbahn) calls this a Dampfheizungskupplung, so a steam heating hitch / coupler / coupling / connector. --Rosenzweig τ 14:33, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
In use?
I created Category:Steam heating coupling and added wikidata:Q116726316 in Wikidata. Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:55, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Categorising gallery page for Mohandas K. Gandhi in Category:Gallery pages of criminals

Like many public historical figures, especially ones of protest, both good and bad, sympathetic and unsympathetic, Gandhi spent time in prison. Gandhi was imprisoned repeatedly in the context of his opposition to the unjust regime prevailing at the time. Historical hindsight justified Gandhi. However he was tried, convicted and imprisoned (and not later pardoned afaik). There is material here from the 1930s, here, here also from the 1930s and here from the 1920s. Online, a list is here and confirmed in sources in NYT, Time, The Guardian and National Geographic. Categorising the gallery page of Gandhi in gallery pages of criminals has been reverted on the grounds of Gandhian philosophy and I have received a block for reverting the revert. Can Gandhi be re-added or should criminals be defined differently than those convicted of a crime?--Darrelljon (talk) 06:07, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi, "Criminal" has a very negative connotation which is not needed here. A category "Gandhi in prison/jail" is factual and might be OK. Yann (talk) 08:23, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
In my opinion Yann is right: not everybody, who has been imprisoned, is a criminal.
Holy cow! That is some extraordinary bias and POV talking right there. Yes, it seems unfortunate that "criminal" is a term with a negative connotation, but since when did the Court of Wikimedia Opinion outrank sovereign states' ability to govern and discipline their citizens? A person convicted of crimes is known as a criminal. Nelson Mandela was a criminal. Jesus Christ was a criminal. Moses was a criminal. Bonnie and Clyde were criminals.
I ask, pray tell, where is our list of convicted non-criminals? What are our criteria for exempting properly-documented criminals from being listed as such? What is our policy on sourcing that excludes ones which are unfavorable to anyone who may be a personal hero of administrators? Elizium23 (talk) 12:41, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
So also Martin Luther King, John Brown, Charles I of England, Louis XVI of France (and Marie Antoinette), Lula da Silva, etc.? Oh, and Nathan Hale? Seems pretty silly to me. Conversely, not Hitler because he was dead so didn't have a trial for his obvious crimes? Technically true if "criminal" just means everyone who has been convicted, but terribly misleading. - Jmabel ! talk 16:27, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
It seems we need to use more neutral language, avoiding "criminal", "terrorist" and the like as such. Perhaps convoluted category names such as "people convicted for claimed crimes" must be used, but I hope there is some more elegant solution. Just removing certain "good" individuals can never be consistent and would lead to edit wars on persons like Lula da Silva. –LPfi (talk) 18:28, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Wanted: server kitty - deletion-process partly broken

Could a „server kitty“ reboot or take a look at WMF’s Commons-servers? Since Saturday approximately every 10th file-deletion, which I try to execute, is not performed, instead I get error-messages in red writing:

  • Fehler bei Datei-Löschung: In der Datenbank „local-swift-codfw“ ist ein unbekannter Fehler aufgetreten. (most frequently)

But also:

  • Fehler bei Datei-Löschung: Die Datei „mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-public/d/d4/Juruks_Macedonia_7.jpg“ befindet sich, innerhalb des internen Datenbanksystems, in einem inkonsistenten Zustand.
  • Fehler bei Datei-Löschung: Das Verzeichnis „mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-deleted/p/3/0“ konnte nicht angelegt werden.
  • Fehler bei Datei-Löschung: Das Verzeichnis „mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-deleted/8/f/8“ konnte nicht angelegt werden.

Also, when using our default-script to delete file-duplicates, I get the following error-message:

  • API request failed (backend-fail-internal): An unknown error occurred in storage backend "local-swift-codfw". at Tue, 07 Feb 2023 10:31:16 GMT served by mw1425

When I repeat the deletion after such an error-halt, it is always executed properly. So, the cause of this phenomenon is obviously not with the file itself. ‒Túrelio (talk) 10:52, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I also get a lot of errors. I reported some. See phab:T328872 and phab:T328914. Yann (talk) 12:42, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
Don’t know if this is related, but I’ve been having backend issues storing text that goes along with images I’m uploading. Same error! Super frustrating, especially when I upload 20-40 images at once. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 13:26, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

again

File:Rana Kazkaz.jpg - since November 2020 undetected on Commons, despite a fat "Getty Images"-watermark in the center. :-( --Túrelio (talk) 13:45, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

File:Milu.jpeg - another Getty-Images-image[2] undetected on Commons since 12 years! --Túrelio (talk) 08:21, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Can portrait images in articles use AI generated avatars from a series of photographic references?

AI Avatar generators can create images using a collection of real photographs. If they look nothing like the real one, but manage to illustrate well the person portrayed, can these be used to illustrate articles, having the person who gave AI command to generate the image as the author? Guilherme Altmayer (talk) 17:26, 6 February 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guilherme Altmayer (talk • contribs) 17:18, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

  • Seems to me that the only way they would do that is by being derivative work, deriving from multiple photos. The fact that we can't trace the exact chain doesn't make them any less derivative. - Jmabel ! talk 18:42, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
    If a human artist views photographs or videos of a subject/model, and then sits in his studio and paints/draws a representation of that subject, that would be perfectly permissible to use the artist's work to illustrate the subject's article. Is this still a derivative work of the photographs and videos which were viewed by that artist? Now let's do music. Elizium23 (talk) 18:50, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
    Actually, no, not in general. They are likely to get away with it, because it's hard to prove, but for just this reason we don't usually allow someone to hand-draw a picture of a living person based on photographs/videos and then upload their drawing to Commons to illustrate an article about that person. For example, this drawing I did of S.J. Perelman probably would not be acceptable on Commons. I considered it OK for my site because, like most people on the Internet, my personal standards for that are lower than Commons'. But I can't see why we would treat AI more leniently than human artists. - Jmabel ! talk 22:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
    If you can't trace the chain, there is no actionable incident of copyright infringement (whether you're dealing with humans or AIs). Nosferattus (talk) 00:59, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
    Actually, in the human case, we do allow and have allowed the practice; Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2021/07#Illustrating known people? has some examples. COM:TOO is essentially about information theory: is there enough entropy generated through original human creativity to cross the threshold? As an extreme example, if I extracted one word from each of 100 novels and assembled it into a 100-word sentence, I would be the sole copyright holder of that sentence. (And if I did so randomly or algorithmically, then no one would be the copyright holder of that sentence.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:29, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

New details about the Private Incident Reporting System

Please help translate to your language

Hello

We have an update about the Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) development.

We have created an FAQ on the project page to help answer your questions. Please check it, and give feedback, or ask additional questions if you have more.

Best regards, Trust & Safety Tools team.

STei (WMF) 20:51, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

@Quiddity (WMF): Please sign your posts. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 08:47, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
My apologies. Added. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:11, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Not all of us contribute to commons

This board is very busy, so I am just wondering if there is a better board for those of us who only visit here as consumers, not contributors?

Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 17:11, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: The discussion areas are divided by topic rather than status of the user. What sort of topics are you wanting to raise? That will dictate the best place for you to comment. From Hill To Shore (talk) 17:44, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
@Ottawahitech: I for one would be very interested in hearing more about more about how consumers use and view Commons. The ultimate goal of contributors and curators I think is (or should be) to have quality media accessible and reused for educational, creative, and/or novel purposes. You may be interested in Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia, or the Commons:Help desk. Cheers, --Animalparty (talk) 08:17, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
I would not say "quality media", but notable, important and valued media. In the end "quality" of a media is a subjective impression by the consumer, who should have the maximal choice. C.Suthorn (talk) 09:38, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Can you upload a file to Commons after the author has changed the license?

All of the images in this album on Flickr used to be licensed under CC BY 2.0, which is apparent by clicking on a photo, going to the bottom, and clicking "License History". Since, these images' licenses have been changed to CC BY-NC 2.0. Since CC licenses are irrevocable, is it okay to upload these files to Commons? (please ping) – Pbrks (t • c) 06:21, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Nope, once a licence has been changed to a non-free one, it can't be added to commons..cc is only irrevocable if it gets uploaded here when it was cc.. Stemoc 07:27, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
Actually I think the license is still valid: "Subject to the above terms and conditions, the license granted here is perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright in the Work). Notwithstanding the above, Licensor reserves the right to release the Work under different license terms or to stop distributing the Work at any time; provided, however that any such election will not serve to withdraw this License (or any other license that has been, or is required to be, granted under the terms of this License), and this License will continue in full force and effect unless terminated as stated above." -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:36, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
I understand that but i was talking about principle here, we don't want another 'snail guy' incident but this time, we'd be the bad guys lol..as Marchjuly noted, if you really want to use those images, message the user and he may just release it again under the CC-By licence instead of doing something as cynical as this lol.. as someone who got threatened once by a photographer because i added images which was released under a free license when i uploaded it to commons, things could get worse, this licence history thing is a new feature on flickr, it helps us License Reviewers to do a check on images that may have been added to commons back when they were free but it really should not be used in a negative way..If a DR is ever submitted for such images, i'd definitely vote for deletion.. Stemoc 08:20, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
I think this might be technically OK to do so, but most likely copyright holder changed their licensing for a reason. Maybe it would be wise to try and reach out to them first and see why. Perhaps they would be willing to revert back to the original licensing for one or two photos of their choosing. Uploading the whole bunch, even if the old original licenses are still valid, might not be considered a copyright violation per se, but it might create some bad will between the copyright holder and Commons. Why burn a bridge that doesn't really need to be burned? If the uploader's experience with Commons is positive, they might be willing to contribute more high quality images over the years. Try and imagine what might happen if the uploader figures out their photos were uploaded to Commons under their original license after the license change. They might try and get them deleted. Are these photos that great that uploading them would be worth whatever drama a DR might create? Things might be different if the licensing was changed after the files had been uploaded, and they had been used for years by various WMF projects. Some members of the Commons community might, however, be more sympathetic to the uploader if the licensing was changed prior to the files being uploaded and started being used anywhere. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:43, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
Sure, if it's an image we could do without, then no need to spend the effort to import it. However, it is technically a free image, and would disqualify a subject from being eligible for fair-use images on English Wikipedia IMO. So if a uniquely useful image has been on Flickr with a free license for months or years, then importing a file that the copyright holder once offered under a free license is better than importing a file that the copyright holder never offered under a free license, if we're going to be illustrating that article either way. If it's only been on Flickr with a free license for a few days, then we chalk it up to a mistake (which I consider to be distinct from changing one's mind) and do not consider the license valid. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:27, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
I don't necessarily disagree with any of that. My only point is that would it be worth the hassle and any possible bad press even if it was a super good image that could legally be hosted if the copyright holder really didn't want their work to be licensed as such. If one of the points of the project is to try and encourage content creators to provide high quality images for others to more freely use, it could be counterproductive to make it seem that Commons cares little about the wishes of these providers. It would seem better to project the image of being friendly than adversarial when it comes to copyright holders. -- Marchjuly (talk) 10:48, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
if the copyright holder really didn't want their work to be licensed as such
If there's anything we learned from Snail Guy and similar cases, it's that sometimes it's difficult to actually discern intent when there are automated processes at work, such as slapping a free license on every upload, every time.
If I recall Flickr correctly, there was a preference which amounts to your account's "default license" and so every subsequent upload is stamped with those terms, whether ARR or CC. So it's easy to forget a default and upload a whole batch that shouldn't be freely-licensed, like if you photographed someone's wedding instead of rare New Zealand snails, and then you'd have to yank the rug out from under the batch you wrongly licensed before anyone notices.
So if a license is indeed irrevocable, then it makes for a difficult judgement call when an author expresses contrary wishes, because the electronic audit trails are incontrovertible.
In the F/OSS world, I've seen the authors of repositories become upset that someone used their code that they didn't like, politically or socially, or they thought of a use that is permitted by license, but the author didn't like. Authors of computer source code can often do frightening passive-aggressive things that verge on malicious damage. Let's be thankful we're passively hosting visual/audible media here, and not source code! Elizium23 (talk) 11:09, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
@Marchjuly, this is a very charitable and gentle approach, and I think it's the best. Establishing and maintaining good, trustful relationships with content creators should be top priority of Commons editors. The "snail guy" incident has already been mentioned, and it's unlikely for a good-faith photographer to go ballistic and trollish in that manner, but yes, I can see feelings being hurt if the author had indeed noticed an erroneous license, and in good faith attempted to revoke and revise it to something less free that we can't use.
If I were a content creator freely licensing my work on a third-party website, I'd be flattered if Commons reached out to me kindly and inquired about license terms. I may even be convinced to adapt the license to their needs. In fact, 15 years ago I was approached by an app developer who wanted to use a photo I'd taken and uploaded to Flickr under a CC license. I was delighted and flattered and I approved the usage.
If the author is contacted and insists that the Non-Commercial clause must apply, then no harm, no foul, we don't need to incorporate those works into Commons. But if we do contact them and they accept, then we've just earned a relationshp of trust.
It's a very true saying that It's better to ask permission, than forgiveness. Elizium23 (talk) 10:44, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
One of the images in question has been takenn in july 2011. I do not know, if it is possible to know the uplaod date at flickr. The license has been changed in october 2011. This image was available under a free license no more than 3 month, but maybe only for a minute. Since then it has been available under NC for 12 years. If it was the other way around, I would suspect, that the NC was in error. But as it is I assume, it was never meant to be free, but should be seen as NC from the start. --C.Suthorn (talk) 09:31, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
  • You can upload it, but it'll then be deleted. Although the licence remains irrevocable, you're going to have to prove that to COM:DR. It would also be very wise to do that pre-emptively at the time of upload, because DR loves to revisit old uploads, long after the uploader has ceased to be active and to then delete them without needing any of that bothersome discussion.
If it's published on a website with a free licence and there's a reliable archive site which has kept a copy (such as http://archive.org) then a link to the dated copy of that should be enough.
I would also ask, why are you wanting to upload it? Why are you convinced that it has ever been freely licensed? If you have evidence of that yourself, then is that sufficient for Commons' purposes? Andy Dingley (talk) 15:01, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

This is one of those things that falls under the heading of "probably legal, but certainly discourteous," and I would strongly recommend against doing it. Unless there is a lot involved that I don't see here, as an admin I'd rule in favor of deletion of an image uploaded here on that basis. - Jmabel ! talk 15:54, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Pdfs for deletion

Is there a way to just search for the pdfs that are up for deletion? RAN (talk) 19:43, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): You can search for PDFs that currently have a {{Delete}} template on their file page with a search like this. TilmannR (talk) 20:25, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
to solve that problem you can search " hastemplate:delete " or " insource:/\{\{[Dd]elete/ ".--RZuo (talk) 21:11, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
@RZuo: Apparently that second one should be "insource:"{{delete" insource:/\{\{[Dd]elete/" for performance reasons. hastemplate certainly seems like the intended way to search for templates. TilmannR (talk) 21:54, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

DR – any eyeballs free to look over one? (buildings in Saudi Arabia)

Commons:Deletion requests/File:PANO 20160923 165000.jpg

This started as an uploader request (and we all know how those can turn sour!) but it looks like it's an FoP issue anyway. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:01, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Two Saudi users in jail

According to these reports:

User:OsamaK (image reviewer and rollbacker) and User:Ziad (OTRS-member) were jailed by Saudi Arabia. Butcher2021 (talk) 14:34, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Categorization of media representing country names

Media representing country names are trivially categorized, directly or indirectly, under the relevant country categry, usually under Category:Symbols of Country. This is now being questioned at Category talk:Rendered name of Albania, and a consensus is sought. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:17, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Well there's {{Vertical header}}, so as far as I can tell, much of "Rendered name of [country]" can be replaced and deleted.
More on-topic: I agree that "Rendered name of [country]" is consistently in "Symbols of [country]" for most countries, and that seems fine to me.
I don't see any "[...] of Albania" category that would be a better parent. TilmannR (talk) 22:58, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
Aside note: I totally agree with you concerning {{Vertical header}}, too, and I think that rendered texts as a way to equip Wikipedia with legible text to make up for technical defficiencies in representing specific typesetting issues (script coverage, complex rendering, etc.) should be a thing of the past. These images were created and uploaded to Commons to fulfil a need (either actual or due to someone’s lack of tech skills), and some have been meanwhile replaced with {{Vertical header}}, I suspect. Should the ones that are unused be deleted? Maybe, but that would be a matter for a separate discussion.
Maeanwhile, however, these images are hosted in Commons and we should have a scheme to categorize them. And of course this is about Category:Rendered name of Country, where, for some values of "Country", we have an interesting palette of typographic and calligraphic variety, not just about Category:Vertically rendered name of Country, which doesn’t exist and is unnecessary.
(I would also like to point out that there is a general Category:Symbols of countries, and among its subcats we can find Category:National symbols — which may be the kind of “official” stuff this user apparently cannot think outside of.)
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 08:44, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
Tangentially related, but since you acted super defensive about it, what exactly is the point in or meaning of the word "rendered" in categories like Category:Rendered name of Albania? --Adamant1 (talk) 06:32, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
You can go up the chain and see it is under Category:Rendered texts. Either way, everyone on the talk page is poorly discussing the issue when the clear answer is Category:Rendered name of Albania is under Category:Symbols of Albania because Category:Rendered names of countries and every country underneath that is under Category:Symbols of countries and each respective subcategory. If this is something you want changed, do it with a discussion for all categories at the parent rather than getting into a heated argument about Albania in particular. Again, I suggest a CFD at the parent. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:47, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
I'm not the one getting heated about it, Tuvalkin is. So if you have an issue with the tone of the conversation I'm not the one to take it up with. In the meantime, I'm aware that "rendered" goes up the chain. I specifically asked Tuvalkin's opinion about it since he's the one who took issue me saying it was obtuse. I'm obviously not going to do a CFD just so I can get an answer from Tuvalkin about what HIS issue with what I said is. Thanks though. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:47, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
I had to look up the meaning of "obtuse" in case I was not being fair in my inner monologue concerning your appriasal of the situation. Unless you mean geometry of strive to revive an archaism, we’re talking about «Intellectually dull or dim-witted.» Okay, then. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 13:07, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
Exactly my point. And that’s also why I added this user to a thread in AN/U as, for him, the rest of the whole issue seems to be meaningless and all he cares is to remove from the one cat he’s been curating (Symbols of Albania) elements whose presence he doesn’t agree with.
Now this VP thread should be enough to ascertain wherther a separate CfD is warranted, and I opened this here presuming it’s not. The matter is trivial and if this kind of country “symbols” may unsettle people who expect to find in cats labelled as such only the officially approved, legally official symbols of any given country (*), then we should replicate for each country something akin to the subcat Category:National symbols under Category:Symbols of countries. I would be okay with that, or any other categorization solution that preserves the logical connection between any media file depicting text and the meaning of that text.
*(Some of those official national symbols include, in some countries, unexpected items — such as its capital city, or the person of head of state as such.)
Having a separate CfD page with its relatively tiny exposition, as opposed to a VP thread, would risk to become (as many CfDs have) a years long fruitless discussion while all the warnings about it plastered across dozens of subcategories would hinder their unfettered use by categorizing editors.
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 21:12, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
It's not trivial. There are a number of large categorization discussions that will take years to resolve but that's how it works. There is no 'logical' reason for the current system but if you simply said "Albania fits the larger structure used for every country so it's dumb to remove it here when you should be having a larger discussion", fine the talk page will have been resolved quickly. That or people would have said "Albanian rendered text is unique and should be treated differently than any other nation' which is absurd but whatever, it's an argument. Either way, once the talk page did not go anywhere useful, that is what CFDs are for. I have started some insanely broad discussions that I don't expect will be resolved until maybe 2030 but whatever, it's a wiki. Ricky81682 (talk) 21:58, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
I see your point and I agree. Was hoping this VP thread would bring over a few voices saying that there’s nothing to see here, just carry on categorizing as before. But nope: Looks like we’re going to debate this for decades, and files showing rendered names of countries will never get added to (cats under) Category:Rendered names of countries. Huzzah. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 13:11, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
Well if you don't want to explain it it's going to be debated. As I said before, I don't understand why you have so much hostility when the actual response of "this is the way every other country is done" is an actual answer for now. We may end up moving these around but I never saw that we have had an discussion on the issue so let's start this at Commons:Categories for discussion/2023/02/Category:Rendered names of countries. If it's so obvious and correct we'll have this resolved quickly enough. It's not like people are going to be removing and removing various countries for now. Ricky81682 (talk) 19:42, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
Knowing how CfDs work, it’s obvious and correct and we'll not have this resolved quickly. But let’s go!: Already did my explaining there (too), and the hitherto presented misconceptions are already on show there too. It does bode. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:13, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
the hitherto presented misconceptions are already on show You ever think maybe it's not faulty logic, but that people just disagree with you? --Adamant1 (talk) 02:23, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
Yes, all the time. Some times, though, other people are actually wrong. Or right. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 03:02, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

File names use underscores as spacers when you download

Can that be turned off in my settings? I use the file name as the caption when I migrate an image to Findagrave, and I have to manually remove the underscores, or go back to the original and cut and paste the no-underscore version. --RAN (talk) 16:42, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): I'm not aware of such an option in the settings. It would be possible to write a script, which iterates through all the files in a directory on your hard drive and replaces the underscores in their names with spaces. TilmannR (talk) 13:28, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): : couple of ideas. On the lines of what TilmannR suggests, you could use a script on your OS. For instance if you are on Linux/MacOS, you could use a bash script like this in the folder with the images after you download them:
for fn in *"_"*;
do
    mv "$fn" "${fn//_/ }"
done
On Windows, you could use a PowerShell script to do the same:
Dir | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -Replace "_"," " }
You could also use a GUI software that does bulk renaming. On Windows, Microsoft themselves offers PowerRename.
Unfortunately, I can't think of another workaround, though maybe others are more creative then me. Snowolf How can I help? 02:14, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Possibly misidentified

I believe we had a template to use when there was a possibility of someone being misidentified in an image, when there is not enough evidence to change the name, but we still want people to be aware of the controversy. Any ideas? --RAN (talk) 23:50, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): Besides {{Fact disputed}}? Or is that what you are referring to? - Jmabel ! talk 01:05, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Request for duplication and rotation

Would it be possible to produce a duplicate of File:Antalya Museum Mosaic P9281528.jpg that is rotated by 180 degrees?

Reason: the current orientation is the best way to view the preserved border, so it should be kept, but the (very!) fragmentary central scene is currently upside-down, so it would be good to have an image flipped by 180 degrees, as well. The central scene originally depicted Homer seated with personifications of the Iliad and Odyssey and despite its fragmentary state, it is useful for reconstructing other examples of the same motif.

I know how to request rotation but not how to request duplication+rotation. Thanks!Furius (talk) 15:42, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

  • I'll take this on. Pinging @Furius, in the future: you can do this pretty easily with CropBot/CropTool. Or you can download, rotate, and re-upload. No special privileges needed to do either. - Jmabel ! talk 16:35, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 16:43, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Nominating hundreds of files for deletion

As discussed previously (2009, 2022), most of the images in Category:Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Category:National Ignition Facility need to be deleted as copyright violations. However, this entails hundreds of images. How does one go about nominating such huge sets of images for deletion? Does anyone have experience with this or would be willing to help? Nosferattus (talk) 00:00, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

  • VFC is a pretty good tool for starting a mass deletion request. If you have a number of images that clearly will sink or swim togther -- where there is almost no chance that some will be deleted but others are OK -- then a mass deletion request is a good way to go. On the other hand, if there may be different issues for different images, then please try to separate them up front, because it gets really tricky to get into those image-by-image discussions in the context of a mass DR. - Jmabel ! talk 00:59, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
  • E.g. in this case, if we got some images uploaded by someone claiming to represent the copyright holder, others off a Flickr account, etc., we'd want to group those separately. - Jmabel ! talk 01:03, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
  • https://flickr.com/photos/37916456@N02/with/10139095874/ looks like a quite legit Flickr stream. Surely you're not thinking about nominating these? Multichill (talk) 18:45, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
    • Good question. I guess the ones sourced to that Flickr stream are OK since the government is claiming they are public domain (even if they don't provide any author or source information). The ones from the NIF and LLNL websites need to be deleted though. Nosferattus (talk) 00:18, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Eligible for copyright?

I created this simplified and vectorized version of this original video game logo to be able to upload it as pd-textlogo. I'd appreciate the assessment by users with more experience regarding the threshold of copyrightability. Was it worth the effort or could I have uploaded the original without worries? The textures and bullet holes is what made me decide against. Or is my version possibly still to original? I'd like to have more opinions before spending time on similar designs. Best regards. Emberwit (talk) 00:01, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Two comments. First I think the little stars probably push it over the threshold of originality. You should remove those. Second, what is the purpose of this file? Since it isn't the actual logo, it should not be used on any Wikipedia articles about the game. If a Wikipedia needs a logo for this game, they need to allow fair use files. This pattern of using pseudo-logos on non-fair-use wikis is a terrible idea and shouldn't be allowed. We could probably be sued for diluting their trademarks. Nosferattus (talk) 00:26, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your reply. My intention was that if we cannot display a logo as a significant and recognizable characteristic of a product of its time to still try to convey it’s idea as originally as possible. The logo, a product of its time itself, is an essential part of the outline of a cultural work. Honestly I did not think about your point that a non-original logo should maybe not be used at all before. It’s a good point and I will consider it. In that relation, what do you think about vectorized, digitized or any other reproduced versions of original (non-eligible) logos? Aren’t those just approximations as well? Is it about the conscious omission of details? Regards, Emberwit (talk) 02:10, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Hi Emberwit. You might want to ask about this at en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games before uploading anything. Commons is primarily concerned with the copyright status and the COM:SCOPE of the content it hosts. It's not really too concerned with how this content is being used on other Wikimedia Foundation Projects like English Wikipedia. Often many local projects have their own community-wide policies and guidelines that apply to all images and then sometimes additional supplementary policies and guidelines established by local WikiProjects related to certain genre of articles. I would imagine that in most cases a logo being used for primary identification purposes in a stand-alone article about a video game would be expected to be the actual logo being used by the game's creator, but you'd probably should ask those more familiar with video game articles about that. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:24, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

A discussion is stalled. Who can close it?

A discussion concerning renaming of a category has been stopped for 14 months. Clearly there is no consensus reached. I voted against it. The user who wanted to rename was an administrator. He has been silent for more than 70 months. And there are no other admins in commons who can read Japanese. Who can close it? --トトト (talk) 13:15, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

  • Technically you don't have to be an admin to close a CfD. I'd welcome action by any experienced user who is an uninvolved party and who reads Japanese. - Jmabel ! talk 17:14, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
I have closed it as a non-admin. From Hill To Shore (talk) 19:27, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --From Hill To Shore (talk) 19:27, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete

i uploaded this image by mistake. can some of admins delete this? РудиЧајевац (talk) 12:27, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@РудиЧајевац: I am not an admin but if you add {{SD|G7}} to a file or page you created within 7 days, it will be deleted by an admin. From Hill To Shore (talk) 12:32, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
Deleted. - Jmabel ! talk 17:17, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 01:45, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

An easier to use HELP section on Wikimedia Commons would be useful.

Forgive me, as new user here, but I do think that there could be an easier way of asking questions on the Commons set up. It seems to me, from what I am seeing as new user at least, a bit difficult to find where you can ask questions or receive responses. May I suggest a simple 'box' or even Speech bubble icon that you can enter questions, which will then hyperlink or whatever, for all admin to be able to respond to? And they can answer if they wish to. This would avoid having to encode in a complex format, and encourage I believe more responsiveness in community interaction. This is not a criticism just a thought. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alwayswonder (talk • contribs) 12:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

@Alwayswonder when you signed up to Commons today, you got an message on your talk page (and a notification that you got a message on your talk pages with a link to the message on your talk page). The message consists of four friendly colored boxes, one of them comes with the icon of a question mark and contains a link to the help desk where you can ask anything and users (admins among them) will answer. You can also ask here and will get an answer from users (admins among them). There are millions of things that could become better here, but I seems difficult, to make it even easier to ask for help, as it already is. C.Suthorn (talk) 13:17, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Seems like @Alwayswonder is struggling with the wiki markup - which is understandable. Back in the days, it was simple and modern compared to the alternatives, but today it is ancient technology. Trying to start a new discussion at the village pump using the button you'll find at the top of the page will lead you here, which is the old-fashioned way of doing things (including manually signing your post, and you're not even told to do so). We're used to it, but that's a pretty crappy user experience for anyone new. It would probably be a good idea to figure out how to use the full suite of new talk page technology on non-talk page pages. El Grafo (talk) 13:33, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Wait, there is one of those new "Add topic" tabs at the top of the page. Why on earth do we still have the old "start a new discussion" button doing it the old-fashioned way? El Grafo (talk) 13:41, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

File:-2020-11-20 Brass, Lady Ann Heydon (died 1561), Saint Mary’s, Baconsthorpe, Norfolk.JPG

Can I get a check on whether this over-quotes its documentation? It has a pretty massive quote in its description. Adam Cuerden (talk) 19:09, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

File:Articulo Meson.png

Hi, I am unsure what action to take regarding the image file File:Articulo Meson.png. I believe it should be deleted, but I am new to Commons' deletion process and I couldn't figure out if any reason for deletion at COM:D applies here (I have never had to do this before on this wiki). If it helps, I'll explain why I believe it should be deleted.

I first came across it while recategorising images in Category:Unidentified Coleoptera about a month ago, and was puzzled as it didn't appear to belong here. Translating the Spanish-language text in Google Translate confirms that it has nothing to do with Coleoptera (scientific name for beetles) whatsoever, but instead is about a village in Colombia. Digging into the history and usage of the file, it appears it was first uploaded by user Lorenapuentesca (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log) in January 2016, and the image is used only by their user page on Spanish Wikipedia. This user also was the original one who erroneously added the file to Category:Coleoptera (in 2019 it was moved to Category:Unidentified Coleoptera and Category:Valued images of Coleoptera (what, why???!!) instead). According to the es.wiki user page's logs, this same userpage was deleted by admins twice before its current version: deletion reason messages seem show that it had the same text content as the image as far as I can tell.

So, it appears this image may purely exist for the purposes of this user's es.wiki user page, and this user hasn't made any edits on any Wikimedia wiki since uploading the image and creating the user page 7 years ago. Back to reasons to delete, would this fall under COM:NOTHOST, or COM:ADVERT? Or something else? Or is the image fine to have on Commons in the end and I should leave it be? Monster Iestyn (talk) 05:01, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

@Monster Iestyn: I have nominated the file for deletion as being outside Commons:Project scope: "Files that contain nothing educational other than raw text". MKFI (talk) 07:44, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
  • Does that mean we have to delete all the uploaded scanned newspapers published before 1929? And delete the non-renewed ones prior to 1965? They consist of just text. Do we have to delete the more than 10,000 pdf books of text? --RAN (talk) 19:41, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
    @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): The bottom paragraph of Commons:Project_scope#Excluded_educational_content answers that. Scanned texts that serve as a source and "files which embody something of value over and above raw text" are kept. TilmannR (talk) 19:45, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
  • "Value" is subjective, the rule should be rewritten so that it is objective, and can be followed by a bot. People will argue endlessly over which books and newspapers provide value. People weaponize poorly worded rules against other uploaders . --RAN (talk) 19:53, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
    • @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): no action is being taken against the uploader. We're not talking here about sanctions of any sort. This is an issue about a file, not the person who uploaded it.
    • Trying to write rules so precise that a bot could take over all things that are now judgment calls is, frankly, a terrible proposal. A lot of this comes down to something along the lines of editorial judgement, which is exactly the thing of which a bot or AI is least capable. - Jmabel ! talk 22:09, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
I am not suggesting this particular case is about weaponization, just that the rules, as written, are vague. At one time I had an obituary nominated for deletion based on the "no text" rule. I just think we can reword it a little better, perhaps by listing some good-text and bad-text examples, to make the distinction clearer. I think we are trying to discard images of text that are unpublished original-research. We want primary documents about notable people like death certificates, and published material from notable people, if in the public domain. Excluded educational content is very poorly written, it says we don't want images of text that can be hosted at Wikisource, yet Wikisource demands that an image of the text must be stored at Commons so that they can be compared to the ASCII text for errors. --RAN (talk) 23:00, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
If it helps this discussion at all, this raw text image file is clearly not from a newspaper or book or anything like those, instead the uploader possibly wrote the text in the image themselves. According to es.wiki's logs, it looks like the text itself broke their policy on user pages when it was placed in the user page directly, and it looks like this image was created to try and circumvent that. Though it's odd how nobody there picked up on the user page being created for the third time with the same text, except this time as an image. Monster Iestyn (talk) 15:51, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
Pinging @Ontzak, UA31 as deleting Admins. See also Commons:Deletion requests/File:Articulo Meson.png.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 04:03, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Photo challenge December results

Under the hood: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title carburetor Solex 31PIC7 Motore di un pullman non
funzionante, fermo nel
traffico di Roma		 Honda Heritage Museum
(Marysville,Ohio)
- Accord 3.5L
SOHC i-VTEC V6
EarthDreams engine
and transmission
Author KaiBorgeest Albarubescens Nheyob
Score 10 8 8
Breaking the rules: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Angular brick in a wall
at Uelzen main station, Germany		 An upside down room at
Museum of Illusions, Hamburg		 Breaking the prohibition
against diving into the water.
Author Mozzihh Lusi Lindwurm Tabrus
Score 16 11 9

Congratulations to Mozzihh, Lusi Lindwurm, Tabrus, KaiBorgeest, Albarubescens and Nheyob. -- Jarekt (talk) 04:17, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Calidore and Pastorella

Hi. Would anyone here be able to find an original scan of this picture (the original source is a book published in 1909) and upload it to Commons? Thanks. ~ DanielTom (talk) 09:20, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

That could be quite a challenge, but not impossible. The artist in question died in 1952 and so, as a UK citizen, her works entered the public domain only this year. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:35, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
TinEye finds six versions. One is b&w, the others are with Bridgeman, and watermarked. Google finds none. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:11, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Category:1

Hi, This category contains several misplaced subcategories, which should be in Category:1 (number), but I can't find where the issue comes from. Thanks, Yann (talk) 11:16, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

They all seem to be categorized automatically through Template:Groups. Category:2 seems to have the same problem. Pinging @Joshbaumgartner ... El Grafo (talk) 12:34, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
I did a null edit on each of the contents in 1 and 2 and that was all it took to clear them out. Josh (talk) 15:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Video game trailers

Maybe it's just me but i find it hard to believe that whoever's behind the YouTube channel actually managed to get permission from the publishers to release their titles (trailers) under a license that explicitly allows for commercial use by anyone for anything.

Anyone got a clue what happened? Are they really that charitable or is there some bug that causes channel operators to change to the "Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)" by mistake?--Trade (talk) 20:19, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

  • It certainly does seem to be an official YouTube channel. - Jmabel ! talk 00:00, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
    The question is more whether or not their social media manager are actually authorized to licence their Warner Brother's property out Trade (talk) 01:24, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
    • You would think that if Warner Brothers' large legal department had a problem with this, they would have long since sought a "cease and desist" order on something so visible. It would seem to me that this YouTube account has apparent authority. They may have been foolishly sloppy with their rights, but they've issued an irrevocable license. - Jmabel ! talk 16:33, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Reminder: Join the Conversation about Improving Toolhub Integration with Commons

Hello everyone!

This is a reminder about the conversation started a while back about improving Toolhub integration with Commons. Recently, more clarity around who can make edits to Toolhub was provided, so hopefully that helps if that was the reason you hadn't engaged in the conversation yet.

The Technical Engagement team are interested in having more tools that are helpful for workflows on Commons listed in Toolhub and for those tools to be more discoverable to folks who are contributing to Commons.

If you're interested in discussing the proposal, or if you have your own ideas to propose improving Toolhub integration with Commons, please join the conversation at Commons talk:Tools discussion page.

looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas! Udehb-WMF (talk) 13:25, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct revised enforcement guidelines vote results

The recent community-wide vote on the Universal Code of Conduct revised Enforcement Guidelines has been tallied and scrutinized. Thank you to everyone who participated.

After 3097 voters from 146 Wikimedia communities voted, the results are 76% in support of the Enforcement Guidelines, and 24% in opposition. Statistics for the vote are available. A more detailed summary of comments submitted during the vote will be published soon.

From here, the results and comments collected during this vote will be submitted to the Board of Trustees for their review. The current expectation is that the Board of Trustees review process will complete in March 2023. We will update you when their review process is completed.

On behalf of the UCoC Project Team,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Drawing of Mary Louisa Molesworth

Need help in uploading this portrait to illustrate Wikidata item and three corresponding wikis. Somehow their "use this image" button is not working for me. Thank you. Henry Merrivale (talk) 11:33, 16 February 2023 (UTC).

@Henry Merrivale: The en:National Portrait Gallery, London has also marked the image with a copyright notice and is only offering it on a NC CC license per this, which seems a bit odd given that it's apparently from May 1895. You might be better off, if possible, trying to find the image somewhere else given en:National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute since the NPG apparently has its own ideas on how copyright law works. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:11, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. Will try to find it somewhere else. Henry Merrivale (talk) 12:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
@Henry Merrivale: Just to clarify, I tend to agree with what's been posted below in that the drawing is PD and most likely would have no problem being hosted by Commons. The point I was trying to make is that the NPG seems to believe that its digilization of the drawing generated a new copyright that it owns. Under US copyright law, this wouldn't appear to be the case, but NPG feels (or at least felt) British copyright does allow them to do this (at least that's what they seem to have argued in the past). Given that it seems to have had no problem getting lawyers involved before and that it seemed to prefer to go after a particular individual user than the WMF as a whole, there's no way to say it won't try and do so again. Perhaps the situation has changed and an agreement has been worked out between the NPG and WMF to allow Commons to host NPG images. Maybe, though, it would be best to try and use the lowest resolution you can find on the NPG website just to play it safe since it seems to have agreed that those are OK. However, the problem is that it's still licensing the low-res images as CC-NC, which means it's still asserting a copyright claim over them and still trying to restrict commercial usage of them. I don't think the file would be deleted from Commons if you uploaded it under a PD licesne, but I can't say how the NPG would respond. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
en:National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute is absolutely not a reason to not use an image. Our decisions are based on whether copyright still (or might plausibly) still exist in the work; not copyfraud by institutions that should know better. That said, artworks will be OOC if the artist died in or before 1952; and Walker Hodgson (born 1864) could plausibly have lived into the 1970s. We need to find the actual date of his death. [that said, we have several of his works in Category:Walker Hodgson, claimed to be PD based on 70 years post-mortem.] Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:55, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
The dispute with NPG is not one of copyfraud but rather the more complex issue of the institution covering its costs of digitisation (in order to fund future digitisation) and a Wikimedia editor who used their programming skills to obtain a higher quality version of the image that the gallery was intending to keep behind a pay wall (the pay wall was badly implemented, which allowed the editor's actions to succeed). While the editor's actions were technically correct, they pushed Wikimedia into a morally grey area and damaged our relationship with an institution that could have provided us with easier access to more images than those obtained in the editor's initial haul.
I don't think NPG has ever said that they dispute our access to their lower resolution versions that are freely accessible on their website. So long as we can justify an appropriate licence, we can copy across those lower quality images. From Hill To Shore (talk) 14:31, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
It is precisely one of copyfraud; since the NPG claims rights in digital reproductions of works by people dead far longer than the 70 years necessary for copyright to have expired, at any and every resolution. A desire for "covering its costs of digitisation" is not one of the criteria in either UK or US copyright law. I believe the WMF legal team and/or EFF pointed this out to NPG at the time. You'll notice, for example, that the Wikipedia article on the case is called "National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute" and not "National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation recovering cost of digitisation dispute". It says, in part "The NPG letter stated the claim that... the high-quality photographic reproductions are recent works, and qualify as copyrighted works due to the amount of work it took to digitize and restore them", which sounds very much like "a false copyright claim by an [...] institution with respect to content that is in the public domain" (i.e. copyfraud) to me. But if you do believe the NPG's claims of copyright to be correct, do feel free to start deletion discussions for the high res images concerned. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:15, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
UK copyright law follows the en:Sweat of the brow doctrine. It is a rather grey area of copyright law but dismissing it as "copyfraud" is rather unwise. "Copyfraud" presents NPG as entirely in the wrong and gives the impression that reusers are perfectly safe from any repercussions. 1 court case and some official UK guidance since the NPG incident have sided against such a loose interpretation of UK law, but no one has updated the law to remove the problem at source. A court may choose to agree with you or it may not.
Your suggestion that I start deletion discussions is rather disingenuous. As I said in my initial comment, there are more complex issues involved in this case than your choice of labelling it as "copyfraud" would indicate. Describing a situation as complex and "morally grey" doesn't mean the solution is to delete everything. From Hill To Shore (talk) 18:26, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
@Henry Merrivale: Per [3] Hodgson died on 11 June 1946; his works are in the public domain and you may upload the image here using {{UK-PD-anon}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:24, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: {{UK-PD-anon}} is for anonymous works only and can't be used where we know the creator(s) and the death date(s). If we can establish that the image was published prior to 1928, the licence to use here is {{PD-old-auto-expired|deathyear=1946}}. If we can't establish the publication date then we get into more ambiguous territory related to the URAA. From Hill To Shore (talk) 18:46, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
A mispaste; and all Hodgson's known works (at least those online, depicting the famous; some of family embers are reported;y in the ownership of his family) were apparently published before 1924. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:32, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Categories for embassadors

Would anyone mind if i created categories for embassadors? Like "Embassadors by country}}" or similar. Maybe "Embassadors in Sweden" and "Swedish Embassadors". (One for Swedish embassadors in different countries, and one for other countries embassadors working in Sweden). /abbedabbtalk 18:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

@Abbedabb I think you may mean Ambassadors? —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 18:46, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
@Mdaniels5757 Wow! *facepalm*. Yes. Nevermind. I'll go hide in a corner somewhere. This never happened! -abbedabbtalk 10:21, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 13:24, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Video not generating a thumbnail

Hi, this video i uploaded is not generating a thumbnail. Can anyone help?

just white, no thumbnail! please help!

Victorgrigas (talk) 03:33, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --RZuo (talk) 07:00, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Transcoding large MPEG videos

I am thinking of transcoding large MPEG videos like File:My_wish.mpg and File:TRAPS-Brao_people.mpg to a better format like VP8 or VP9. What do you think? - Yuhong (talk) 20:05, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@Yuhong: You don't need to do anything, it is already done. See the bottom of each of these pages. Yann (talk) 20:24, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
Not what I meant. Just storing the video on WMF servers has its costs, not to mention the bandwidth costs. I am only talking about large videos here. - Yuhong (talk) 20:50, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
Everytime a video is re-encoded it loses quality. We should store the videos in whatever format they were originally encoded. Nosferattus (talk) 20:57, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
I am thinking of only doing this against large videos. - Yuhong (talk) 20:59, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
The videos in question are already on WMF's servers, and reencoding them will not remove them. We pretty much never remove files from the servers. It is, of course, technically possible, and I guess it happens for things like if someone uploads child porn, but when you "delete" a file or version here, it just becomes invisible to non-admins. - Jmabel ! talk 01:12, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
There is a CPU cost to transcoding the videos, right? Though the file size difference don't seem to be large. -- Yuhong (talk) 01:25, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
@Yuhong WRT Wikimedia: All videos uploaded to Commons are transcoded to VP9 automatically after upload. It doesn't matter, what format is uploaded. People will ever only see the VP9 transcoded version. This transcoding is done only once, then the transcoded versions are saved for every later use. Only if a new version is uploaded, new transcodes will be generated. But every time a new version is uploaded, new transcodes are made. Even if you upload a VP9 video, it will be transcoded. In your example of a MPG video (actually mpeg2, but extension mpg is used) it would only make any sense to upload a new version of the video, if this is not the orginal format of the video AND you have access to the original format version AND the original version of the video or a better transcode to either VP9 or AV1 can be uploaded. Today most videos are uploaded as VP9. Other formats (ogv, mpeg2 and pretty much nothing else) are only preferrable, if this is the most original version of a video available for upload. C.Suthorn (talk) 07:05, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Garbage in remarks section of the Metadata

Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:45, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

As in other photos taken with the same camera. Wouter (talk) 18:49, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
This is a problem of that camera i think. As far as I know, they are not supposed to use that field for private camera specific purposes. But a lot of broken technology has been made over the years, so theres gonna ve sone garbage and then that will show in MediaWiki. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:15, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Africa Environment Day / Wangari Maathai Day Office Hour

📢 (In) formation Vous souhaitez en savoir plus sur Environnement Day / Journée Wangari Maathai Souhaitez-vous avoir des idées sur la façon dont vous pouvez vous impliquer? Ou peut-être avez-vous des idées que vous aimeriez partager ? Si la réponse est "oui!" alors cette Office Hour est pour VOUS ! Date: Jeudi, 23 Février 2023 Heure: 15:00 UTC (Ici, est liée votre heure locale) Lieu: Google Meet Langue de discussion: Français Vous êtes invité.e.s à assister à la première Heure de bureau d’Africa Environment Day présentée par Manouka[Kakou]. Au cours de cette session, vous serez initié au projet et aurez l'opportunité de poser des questions et d'obtenir des réponses. Partagez ce message avec les membres de votre communauté ! Abiba Pauline (talk) 12:35, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Automotive generation categories

A category discussion is underway regarding the naming of generation categories in the automotive world:

Commons:Categories for discussion/2023/02/Category:Peugeot Expert

Broader community engagement is encouraged as this discussion could affect several categories within the automotive tree. Please review and comment there if you are interested. Thanks, Josh (talk) 01:38, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Topic in country template

The template Template:Topic by country is producing some nonsensical categorisation. For example, Category:Civil engineering in the United Kingdom turns up in the parent categories in North America, South America, Africa and Oceania; likewise France. While I realise that these countries may have territories in these regions, categorising them in those parent categories just defeats the purpose of the region categories. I don't know where it is pulling these categories from - presumably a subtemplate. Simon Burchell (talk) 10:17, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

@Joshbaumgartner: You have been working on the category (and the single template it is using) recently. Is this a problem you are aware of? From Hill To Shore (talk) 11:27, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
@From Hill To Shore: Thank you for pinging me on this. I am aware of this categorization behavior, and it is intentional (not that it can't be changed). There is a data template that lists what continents a country is present in, and uses that to categorize a "topic in country" under each of the continents it is present on. This is not an issue for most countries, which are present in only one continent, but there are several multi-continent countries. The United Kingdom is an egregious outlier in this category as it covers just about every continent, even today, and thus just about every continent has a United Kingdom presence that needs to be accounted for. While naturally the lion's share of any topic about the United Kingdom is going to center on Europe, it is not exclusively so. There are some ways this could be refined. If, say, Civil engineering in the United Kingdom were to be sub-categorized into civil engineering in the United Kingdom in Europe, civil engineering in the United Kingdom in North America, etc., the continent categories could be removed from the parent and instead moved to these single-continent sub-cats. However, that's not something I think anyone is eager to embark on. Alternatively, we could remove all multi-continent countries from single-continent "topic in continent" categories, and instead add them to something like "topic in multi-continent countries". I don't particularly care for this a whole lot, but it could work. In the end, I do not think it is as bad as it might seem on the surface. The reality is that the United Kingdom has a factual presence in Oceania, and thus if one has a category covering civil engineering in Oceania, part of that topic includes the United Kingdom, even if Oceania is only a tiny fraction of the United Kingdom. This is why the template works the way it does, but if we want to go a different way with it, I stand ready to make the needed changes to it. Josh (talk) 17:12, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
If this is a reference to the British Overseas Territories - I note from the Wikipedia article "The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former British Empire and do not form part of the United Kingdom itself." (my italics) - as such the United Kingdom should not be categorised within those regions - it may have a role in governance, but does not actually have territory there. Simon Burchell (talk) 10:21, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Temperature indication

Sometimes the there are things not visible in the picture. A temperature of 38 degrees Celcius. The only thing visible is that alle windows are fully open. Is it usefull to mention the temperature in extreme cases? Certainly when records are broken. It can be supported by weather sources.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:06, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

In structured Data I have added the temperature, but I get warnings.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:12, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
@Smiley.toerist: Adding a temperature property to the structured data of an images implies that it's the temperature of the file, but the file itself doesn't really have a temperature. I would suggest adding the temperature as a qualifier for the entities in the "depicts" property (aka "Items portrayed in this file"). TilmannR (talk) 14:19, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
I was thinking along the same lines and tried it here, but I also got an error/warning/complaint. El Grafo (talk) 14:24, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
@El Grafo: Which warning was it? allowed-entity-types constraint? TilmannR (talk) 14:48, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
I got two:
  • allowed-qualifiers-constraint for using temperature (P2076) as a qualifier for depicts (P180)
  • allowed-entity-types constraint "The property temperature should not be used on this type of entity, the only valid entity type is Wikibase item."
(see current version of File:赤バック 体温計 (6048895685).jpg). El Grafo (talk) 15:31, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
@El Grafo, @Smiley.toerist: I asked the Wikidata:Project chat. They probably know more about these constraints than Commons users and are qualified to change the property definitions, if necessary. TilmannR (talk) 17:36, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
i dont think it's useful to add a statement of atmospheric temperature based on weather data. it should only be added if it's measured like 赤バック 体温計 (6048895685).jpg . RZuo (talk) 16:22, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
on top of that, atmospheric temperature <> temperature of the depicted subjects <> temperature measured. it's not so helpful if these are not distinguished. imagine a photo of a furnace in the north of sweden in winter. atmospheric temperature outside might be -10 celcius, temperature of the furnace might be 1000 celcius, temperature of a handheld thermometer in the vicinity of the furnace might be 39 celcius...--RZuo (talk) 11:26, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. "This image was taken at 36°C" is not something we should routinely add to our metadata. "This image shows its subject at 36°C" is a different thing and may be useful for some things (like hot steel, which glows in different colors at different temperatures). This is probably something that should simply be mentioned in the file description.
"This image shows a thermometer that has measured 36°C" and the related "... shows a display that displays 36°C" are yet another thing. We do have Categories for this, som we may want to model this in SDC too. So this edit in a way was nonsense: That's a medical thermometer that at some point in the past has measured a temperature of 38°C, probably while having its tip somewhere inside someones body. It is now showing that temperature, but the thermometer itself probably has room temperature. El Grafo (talk) 11:51, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Category:Flags of counties of Wales

Category:Flags of counties of Wales seems to contain various fictitious flags. someone should sort out which are real and which are not, and change descriptions and filenames accordingly.--RZuo (talk) 11:26, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Purpose of "Other versions" section in Summaries

I've noticed a couple of times that the "Other versions" sections in the summaries of some files are being used for random images that are only tangentially related to the original image, if at all. For instance File:Stamp 1943 DRBM MiNr0113 mt B002.jpg lists File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-C08786, Zeesen, Jungfliegerheim übergeben.jpg as another version of it, but there isn't really a clear connection between the two images. Let alone is the later a "version" of the former. Same goes for File:Stamp 1943 DRBM MiNr0125 mt B0012.jpg, which lists File:Benda Jaroslav (1882-1970), malíř.jpg when it's not a "version" of the original. It seems like people are trying to use the "Other versions" sections of file summaries as rudimentary categories or something. So I'd like to know what the consensus is when it comes to using the "other version" sections of files in this way and if it would be OK to delete links to files that aren't actually versions of the original. Thanks. Adamant1 (talk) 16:50, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Removing "other versions" that are only tangentially related is appropriate. Broad collections (e.g., images of doves with olive branches) are the purpose of categories. However, there may be information that belongs elsewhere. It looks like Benda Jaroslav belongs in the artist/author field. Postal administration of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia may be a corporate author or a publisher. The point is that the "other versions" field implies an important claim that should not be deleted even if the image of Benda Jaroslav is removed. Glrx (talk) 17:51, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Things like this should be in the description, not in "other versions". It's perfectly OK to have a gallery element in the description. - Jmabel ! talk 18:00, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Global ban for Livioandronico2013

On Meta, there is an RfC on Global ban for Livioandronico2013 -- one of our most persistent sockpuppeteers and LTA here on Commons. Anyone who wish, please participate. --A.Savin 15:27, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  • For those poor souls unfamiliar with abreviations:
    RfC = Request for Comments (solicitud de comentarios)
    LTA = ?? ?? Account (Cuenta de ¿¿?? y ¿¿??) B25es (talk) 07:20, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
lta=long term abuse.
i also dislike using wiki-specific abbreviations. it's like they cant speak coherently.--RZuo (talk) 09:53, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Photograf family Gay-Couttet

I have scanned an old black-White postcard 'La Mer de Glace'. There is the mention '(48) Photo Mont-Blanc Gay-Couttet'. The problem for licensing is by wich generation the picture is taken? see Un siècle de photographies à Chamonix, la famille Gay-Couttet. If it is R.Gay-Couttet(1925-2002) [4] it is to recent. The date posted is unclear, but it is with a 5 french franc poststamp. Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:01, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I can scan the backside, with date stamp information (I cant deduce a date from it, but someone may have more experience of it). But if the picture is later found to be not PD, it is a bit out of scope to keep the backside image.Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
I'm pretty knowledgeable about postcards so I can look into it if you want. Uploading the back would probably help to. It's always preferred to have images of the back of postcards if we can anyway. BTW, if your interested there's Commons:WikiProject Postcards. We are always looking for new members. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
It could very well be R. Gay-Couttet(1925-2002) for a picture taken in 1948. Les photos de Michel Couttet et de Auguste Couttet (1868-1933), son fils, peuvent être acceptées sur Commons. Yann (talk) 16:27, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
The postcard was posted in 1949. Unfortunatly it could not be the older generation.Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:33, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Subcategory of Category:Images with borders for SVG images?

Since SVG images cannot be edited using the CropTool, it would be convenient to have them together in a subcategory of Category:Images with borders for SVG images. Any views on this proposal? Leyo 09:35, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

only 6 exist https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=incategory%3A%22Images_with_borders%22+filemime%3Asvg . why a category?
and if an svg has borders, that must be the maker's intention?--RZuo (talk) 09:53, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
This is independent of the current number of SVG images. The more relevant number is the total number of files in that category (currently > 1000).
Only SVG images with unintentional borders are usually in this category. --Leyo 15:04, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Please, revert this overwritten image to original version. I will crop a new file and replace it.

Here: [[5]]. I will crop this person into a separate file and replace it on all pages currently in use. I have not notified the User about not overwriting files. History shows another User did the same overwrite, but was reverted. This is the second overwrite. Thanks, --Ooligan (talk) 18:12, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

@Ooligan ✓ Done. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 18:35, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
@Ooligan: are you unable for some reason to revert file versions yourself? - Jmabel ! talk 18:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
@Jmabel, @Mdaniels5757 - I tried to "undo," but it said it was already undone. Is that because it was previously reverted? What should I have done to revert that image? -- Ooligan (talk) 19:04, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
@Ooligan: You should have clicked "revert" next to the version of the image that you wanted to restore (in the file history). If you did that and it didn't look like it worked, typically that would mean just a caching problem. - Jmabel ! talk 19:08, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Jo Pugh RIP

I'm sorry to report that my friend, and an incredible Wikimedian, Jo Pugh, User:Mr impossible, has died ([6]). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:38, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Category:Transgender women of the United States

Should detransitioners such as Kristin Beck still be in this category? --Trade (talk) 22:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Convenience links: Category:Transgender women of the United States, en:Chris Beck (Navy SEAL). - Jmabel ! talk 22:41, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
I think it should, as he was once a transgender woman. RodRabelo7 (talk) 09:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
I think not; Beck is not currently a transgender woman, and that should be all that is used for the category. I'd support creating a category for people who have detransitioned if there are enough of them. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 18:37, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
"Currently is" doesn't matter as much as "was at the time the picture was taken". Donald Trump hasn't been president for quite a while now, but he's still at Category:Presidents of the United States by name. Sometimes people seem to forget that the point of our Categories is to categorize media files, not build a hierarchical model of the world. That's what Wikidata is for (where you can specify that someone was president from day X to day Z). One option in this case might be to have the main category under what seems to be the current name Chris Beck (that could go into the proposed "detransitioned" category). Then use the current Category:Kristin Beck for the pictures of them during their trans woman years and have only that be part of the trans subtree. El Grafo (talk) 09:12, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Reporting indiscriminate deletion

My attention was drawn by user:Didym to a series of file i uploaded as having incomplete licenses which they went on to tag for deletion. I immediately responded by adding all the missing relevant licensing information. However, i have realised the files were still deleted despite carrying the appropriate, now complete licenses. The files include 1, 2, 3, 4. I would like to request the files be restored. Thanks Wilson (talk) 23:48, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

@OtuNwachinemere I have moved your request to COM:UDEL, please keep an eye on this section in case there are any questions from the admins. El Grafo (talk) 08:50, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Nicourt company

The Category:Nicourt contains a series of postcard photographs published by Nikolaos Kourtidis from 1936 to 1940. However, it is not clear whether it is common property because we do not know the date of Kourtidis' death, nor even who has the copyright (if anyone has them) — Preceding unsigned comment added by ΔώραΣτρουμπούκη (talk • contribs) 19:18, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Bad licenses on OK files

In following up on a user question on Help desk I noticed that a lot of images that are just signatures have totally bogus CC licenses. I'm guessing that all (or nearly all) of these would be OK as {{PD-signature}}. Should there be an effort to go through and fix these systematically? Or is it really not that important that these PD files are marked with bogus CC licenses? - Jmabel ! talk 21:56, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Bogus licences should not be accepted. It is understandable that new users add bogus licences in PD cases, but the licences should be corrected. So yes, there should be such an effort, but I don't know how to do it efficiently. –LPfi (talk) 08:38, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Category:Historic Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Photos

I can't work out the scope of this category, and its creator is blocked so I can't ask him about intent.

No, not useful at all. That sockpuppeteer created a lot of poorly named categories to dump mass uploads in (rather than putting in the effort to properly categorize the images.) Feel free to recategorize the files to the parent, then delete. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 07:48, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
Man. I'm going through Category:Historic Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Photos. What a mess. I've been through 75 of these. Many of these images had no categories dealing with anything other than provenance, and half of the topical categories were just plain wrong. Some of these were in no sense in the Columbia River Gorge, either. Plus the dates were just digitization dates of photos mostly 75+ years old.
Just FYI:

Suggestions for naming convention

User @Tm has uploaded thousands of photos from the Web Summit flickrstream which is great. The problem is that the filenames are mostly meaningless. For instance there are files that start with 2022 - Crypto PO1 eg File:2022 - Crypto PO1 7505 (52475273803).jpg and this classic one File:HM1 9267 (45779386761).jpg. I renamed this to a more meaningful name viz File:Florian Simmendinger, HM1 9267 (45779386761).jpg. This tells you immediately who is in the photo and still retains the meaningless HM1 9267 sequencing. Adding the name of the person to the filename should make it easier to find in a Google search too.

TM disagrees with my renaming these files and has reverted them. So before an edit war starts I would appreciate some feedback and ideas for a better way of naming these files as there are thousands like this Gbawden (talk) 06:42, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  • @Gbawden and Tm: Perhaps the two of you can come up with some consensus on this? Certainly File:2022 - Crypto PO1 7505 (52475273803).jpg and File:HM1 9267 (45779386761).jpg are not good file names as they stand. They may be meaningful to someone, but the rest of us lack the relevant decoder ring. - Jmabel ! talk 07:14, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
    Zuindest derzeit ist es noch so, dass flickr2commons nur dann keine Duplikate hochlädt, wenn der Flickr-Dateiname auf commons nicht verändert wird (siehe techn. Wunschliste 23). Und ist es wirklich so, dass der Rang bei einer Google-Suche (oder auch einer Suche auf Commons) vom Dateinamen wesentlich beeinflusst wird? Ist es nicht viel mehr so, dass Dateiname, Description im Info-Template, SDC-depcicts und Kategorien hier gleichrangig berücksichtigt werden? C.Suthorn (talk) 07:21, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
@Tm: I notice that you have said the following on User talk:Gbawden, "Would be much to ask, that if you must move the filenames, to do it in a way that does not break the sequence of files that are of the same subevents and that are next to one anothers?"[7]
Could you please explain how the sequencing is meant to work? To someone with no knowledge of this event, I am struggling to see the pattern you are trying to preserve. If the files were renamed but kept the "HM1 9267" part of the reference at the start of the new name, would that resolve your objection? From Hill To Shore (talk) 08:30, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
Categorizing them is much easier if the pictures remain listed in the order they were taken, so images of the same person or podium stay together in category view. If you feel you must change the name regardless, please add the the additions at the end of the original file name and not at its beginning, retaining the original sorting order. Generally I don´t see much advantage in "meaningful" file names and see them just as a technical identifier and would put the effort rather in meaningful categorization than in renaming. Rudolph Buch (talk) 08:49, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
As stated by Rudolph Buch. If the files, like File:2022 - Crypto PO1 7505 (52475273803).jpg must be renamed (despite metadata, filedescription, categories, file info and structured data) it would be better to be renamed to something like File:2022 - Crypto - Mike Butcher - PO1 7505 (52475273803).jpg, so this way preservees files of the same event together and the id of the photo given by the Web Summit. Tm (talk) 12:15, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
Also, why did Gbawden moved a file and then locked it? Tm (talk) 12:38, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
@Rudolph Buch I am trying to do both. I am moving into categories (having to create many first) but my preference is to have an indicator of who is in the photo, to make it easier to identify at a glance. For example if we stuck 10 photos starting with 2022 - Crypto in Businessmen from the United States, you would have to open each file to see who is in the photo. Putting their name in the photo makes it a little easier IMO Gbawden (talk) 10:16, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
I agree that it´s nice when a file name contains the information you are looking for. So if I´m looking for a certain person, file names should include people´s names. If I´m looking for a certain time, file names should include dates. If I´m looking for a pose, names should include poses. If I´m looking for chairs, chair types should be included as well. To honor everyones perspective of "meaningful" (i.e. "what it means to me") File:2022 - Crypto PO1 7505 (52475273803).jpg might be File:IMG52475273803 Mike Butcher with a tablet and glasses and gray hair sitting on a white leather chair in front of black vertical pillars looking left wearing boots while speaking at Crypto Form at Crunch conference at Web Summit in Lisbon in 2022.jpg" after a fair number of renames until everyone has added his personal "first glance" requirements. Files names will never be perfect and renames have disadvantages, so file information should be on the file pages and not in the file names. Rudolph Buch (talk) 11:14, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
@Rudolph Buch: This is a straw man argument. Few people are ever likely to be looking for a picture of black vertical pillars, etc., but if no one is ever likely to be looking for a picture of Mike Butcher, then there is little point to having this photo. Pictures of people giving talks are rarely labeled with such trivia, and presumably you know that. Please discuss this in good faith. - Jmabel ! talk 16:59, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
There are categories for all those elements, so for some people they seem to be important. Does "straw man" mean that you want me to discuss only based on my own interests? Ok: Currently I try to recategorize all files from to top level category "Category:Politicians" into subcats of "Category:Politicians by country". This means looking at 2500 files, 1500 now still to go. People´s names in the file name don´t help with this task, country name at first glance would be great. Next step will be that someone sorts the files in Category:Politicians of Brazil (another 1100 files) to state level. Again, people names in the file name do not help, only state names would. Last step is to move them into individual object categories. Even at this stage, file names do not matter, as you´ve got to check the match of the file description anyway. But what matters in the whole process is that file names which show them as being part of a set and make them stay together in the file lists are not broken. If someone uploads 70 images of Brazilian Politicians and numbers them in a unique way, it´s just a few clicks to shift them all. If the cohesion is broken by renaming them, each of the 70 has to be checked an processed on its own. So if you rename please respect that other users may have different needs or workflows and that you might not even be aware of those. (Sorry for the long text, hard to be short in a foreign language) Rudolph Buch (talk) 17:57, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
  • I really feel like there is more heat than light here. Most of this seems like people arguing for getting exactly their own way rather than trying to reach a consensus. So let me jump back in.
  • @Gbawden: am I correct that what you propose doing would still keep the old file name as a redirect? And am I correct that you would also still embed that within the now file name? If so, would you have any objection to putting the stuff you want to add after the existing file name? (I personally don't consider this last preferable, but it seems like some other users are rather invested in keeping these in their current order.)
  • @Rudolph Buch: I'm still not sure of the relevance of some of your remarks to the matter at hand. How are these filenames specifically more useful in the categorization you want to do? And is there anything in adding more information as a suffix that would interfere with what you want? - Jmabel ! talk 20:22, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
    Mit durchgängiger Nummerierung benannte Dateisets eines Uploaders deuten auf Gemeinsamkeiten der Bilder hin. Kategorien für ein Bild treffen dann häufig auch auf die weiteren Bilder zu. Suffixe zu diesen Ziffernfolgen sind unschädlich, Prefixe oder ein Löschen sind es nicht. Rudolph Buch (talk) 00:55, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
    • Unless I'm very mistaken that last sentence amounts to "Suffixes to these digit sequences are harmless, prefixes or deletions are not." @Gbawden: is that workable for you? - Jmabel ! talk
meaningless filenames like File:HM1 9267 (45779386761).jpg should be renamed.
there's not much merit in preserving any camera formatted names like "HM1 9267". when i rename such files i'd only retain the flickr number.
the argument for retaining these arbitrary strings is built on an assumption, that the category is static, i.e. no new images would be added. as soon as someone else uploads other files from a different source and doesnt follow your "naming method", the contents would still be messed up.
for a mass event like this, it's not uncommon to have coverage from multiple sources.
moving a file back to a nonsensical filename is abuse of filemover that should be removed.--RZuo (talk) 07:00, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Curation of bulk uploads (lack of.)

Category:Scans from the Internet Archive Category:Books_uploaded_by_Fæ

Okay , Simple question, Whose reviewing these to remove copyvios?

These were uploaded by Fæ in good faith, in response to the possiblity of IA being disrupted by an ongoing row with publishers, but in the 2 years since the bulk upload, there has not been anything like the visble, active curation to remove works incompatible with Commons as would be desirable.

As there seems to be a lack of visible active curation, the simplest brutally pragmatic approach to ensure commons is not inadvertently hosting material which is not license compatiable or constitutes copyvio, is to assume anything post 1927 (for US works) and 1900 1903 (for Non-US) works, is going to still be in copyright, and start bulk deletions on that basis, if there isn't compelling evidence of other licenses (such as no-notice, US Gov works etc.)

As it would be a shame to loose over 1 million files, Commons has a choice. Start active curation, or mass delete ENTIRE categories of material.

I'd like to see an implementable strategy within a week so. Thanks. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:19, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: wouldn't that be 1903 for Non-US works (120 years)? That's our usual standard. - Jmabel ! talk 20:25, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
It is thanks... I'm not entirly happy with {{PD-old-assumed}} , but it is Commons consensus.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:36, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
A case in point:=- https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=23943907 is 430 or so mis-licensed files... Most are likely non-notice, but it's time consuming to run every single one against the PG transcriptions of renewals/registrations. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:40, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Need help with images that might need to be removed

See the text on the page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Potential_deletes_from_Flickr_import_by_me_(Thibaultmol) Basically: I uploaded lots of Flickr images last year but hadn't checked each image for potential guideline violations (copyright and such). Please if you're someone that fully understands the guidelines, go over the images I found in my uploads that might be violating it. DON'T JUST FLAG ALL OF THEM. Actually check if the image should be nominated for deletion or not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thibaultmol (talk • contribs) 08:20, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

You might want to do some work on them yourself, such as grouping them by issue and spelling out the issue. The first of them seem to be photographs with artwork as a main subject, and probably the licence is for the photograph only. Some of these may be de minimis but hardly all. The Flickr user should perhaps be blacklisted. File:Metáfora de una despedida (3267073099).jpg should be OK if it is from a real car (the title suggests otherwise), but please provide a description and categories. Then there is the street art, some of which may be graffiti. –LPfi (talk) 09:53, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Template:AthenaNikeDecade

Can someone fix that template ?

- Io Herodotus (talk) 22:48, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

  • @Io Herodotus: Well, I made it one step less broken, but with Commons lack of some of what I used to in en-wiki I'm not sure how to make it really good (e.g. degrade gracefully on missing inputs). - Jmabel ! talk 01:38, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
    Thank you. It gives 20000s instead of 2000s, I don't understand why; it's a copy of the template of the Parthenon which works fine. Io Herodotus (talk) 08:10, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
    That was a problem with using the right values when transcluding on the category page itself. I've taken the liberty to fix both that and transform the template into a prettier version based on what is used for the Acropolis. --HyperGaruda (talk) 09:52, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Eye icon in title name not visualized

Although the name of File:Eye.jpg (File:Eye.jpg) is different from that of File:️Eye.jpg (File:%EF%B8%8FEye.jpg) they show the same file title inside. Also in inline linking as far as I see. ZandDev (talk) 15:53, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Courtesy warning to other editors, the second link includes human female nudity. From Hill To Shore (talk) 16:18, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
The latter filename should begins with Eye emoji (on Emojipedia).
I've seen that the original file name begins with the following non-visible character: [https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/fe0f/index.htm U+FE0F VARIATION SELECTOR-16 (UTF-8: 0xEF 0xB8 0x8F)
I want to change the file name to File:️👁️Eye (Exey Panteleev).jpg for criterion 6 but it seems to be blacklisted. ZandDev (talk) 15:58, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Moved to File:️Eye (Exey Panteleev).jpg. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:59, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Deleted photos without notices and records

Reviving this discussion: [8]. I'm missing too File:Igreja São Bernardo em Fortaleza.JPG or File:Igreja de São Bernardo em Fortaleza.JPG. Is there any chance where files are deleted without any record? Maybe a bug. Has anyone else made similar complaints? Or am I just going crazy? lol.--Porto Neto (talk) 20:20, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

It is unlikely to be a bug. There are 5 possibilities that I can see:
  1. The files were uploaded to Commons under different names and have been deleted. These should be visible to administrators. I would expect a deletion notification to be placed on your talk page.
  2. The files were uploaded to Commons but included content so extreme that an oversight action was needed and the files were deleted. Oversight hides the files from administrators. Depending on the nature of the oversight action, there may not have been a notification on your talk page.
  3. You uploaded the files under a different account, so they don't show up in your upload list or your list of deleted uploads. The files may be somewhere on Commons under a name you haven't considered yet or they may have been deleted. Any notification about the deletion would be on the talk page of your other account.
  4. You uploaded the files on a different Wikimedia project and they were stored locally at that site. They may still be there or have subsequently been deleted. You would first have to locate which project you may have uploaded to and then ask a local administrator to check if you have any deleted uploads on that project.
  5. You never uploaded the files to Commons or any other Wikimedia project.
An administrator may be willing to check your deleted uploads on Commons but it was noted in the previous discussion in January 2022 that you had no deleted uploads between 2015 and that date. From Hill To Shore (talk) 00:22, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Can somebody help with the category structure of Checkpoints in Poland?

Can please somebody who speaks Polish help at Commons:Categories for discussion/2023/02/Category:Border Control Posts? User:Wlodek k1 made a change, see Category:Border Control Posts, but I have the impression it is not a good one because now there still is no connection with Category:Checkpoints in Poland‎, and the main parent category is only about an organization, not about checkpoints. And I do not speak Polish and Wlodek k1 only speaks Polish (and apparently Google Translate is not helping enough). --JopkeB (talk) 05:06, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

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Trizek (WMF) (Discussion) 21:20, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Notice of global ban

User:PlanespotterA320 has been globally banned per m:Requests for comment/Global ban for PlanespotterA320 (2). AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 21:24, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Why ban someone from Wiki Commons if their behavior has nothing to do with Commons? That doesn't make sense. --RAN (talk) 00:27, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
  • @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): What do you actually mean by "anti-Russian behavior"? Honestly I don't understand this expression. Anti-Putin? Pro-Ukraine? Pro-Putin? There is a lot of possible meanings... Regards --A.Savin 17:36, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
    A lot of the recent deletion requests are based on an argument about very old Russian photographs and whether the publication date is accurately described/even required to be described. A number are very sloppy in terms of nominations. Earlier ones were demands that their uploads be deleted because they were going to be banned for their antics. Before that seems more benign. Ricky81682 (talk) 19:09, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 Comment I am closing all these DRs. It seems like revenge DRs or something like that. If there is any issue, please renominate. Yann (talk) 06:19, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Category pages that look like quasi-Wikipedia articles

I'm not very familiar with how category pages work on Commons. One of the bullet points in COM:CAT#Creating a new category states A short description text that explains what should be in the category, if the title is not clear or unambiguous enough on its own. is acceptable, but I'm wondering about a category like Category:Midway Theater, Allentown, Pennsylvania which seems to be an attempt to create a quasi-Wikipedia article on Commons. The content on that category page seems, in my opinion, to go beyond what would be considered a "short-description" and basically seems to be someone's own original research. I don't know about the licensing of all of files populating the category, but most if not all of them seem to be licensed as {{PD-US-no notice}}. The files include newspaper advertisements and newspaper articles about the theater, these all appear to be cut-outs or clippings and there's no way of knowing whether they were covered under the copyright of the entire paper. None of the files seems to be used in any Wikipedia articles, which is another reason why I think the category page was created to be a de-facto article so to speak. My understanding is that print advertisements were required to have separate visible copyright notifications on a per ad basis, but newspaper articles (text and photos) were not required to do so and instead were covered by the copyright notice for the entire newspaper as whole. If my understanding is incorrect, then perhaps the files are OK as licensed; however, I'm not sure about the stub-like article content at the top of the page and hoping others can clarify whether it's OK for Commons. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:50, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Putting aside the whole copyright question and whatnot, I'll usually either shorten long descriptions to a few sentences or just delete it whole cloth depending on if it's clearly OR or not since this isn't Wikipedia. Especially if the information is only tangentially related to the category. That said, I don't think it necessarily hurts to have a basic description if it helps people understand better what the images are about. Even in cases where it's not referenced (at least if it's uncontroversial). Like if it's a category for a historic building that burned down and was rebuilt several times, cool. Have a short description about it since the information provides context for the images. Three huge paragraphs going into mostly pointless historical minutia is clearly overkill though. There's no reason that stuff can't just be added to Wikidata or the descriptions for the individual files. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:04, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
The description is a bit much; if it were sourced, I'd suggest turning it into a Wikipedia article, but without that, we can't. @Atwngirl: this is basically your work. I assume you had sources. Could you consider adding appropriate citation and moving the bulk of this to en-wiki? I assume some of this can be cited from exactly the newspaper stories that are among the uploaded clippings.
Also, Atwngirl: the uploads are at least mostly yours (I didn't go through them all). U.S. newspaper content from 1936 can very well still be copyrighted until 2031 (etc. for later dates). The ads are probably good, lacking copyright notices of their own, but of course clippings of individual articles don't have "copyright markings". There is usually a single copyright notice for an entire daily newspaper. Certainly the newspaper would have been copyrighted. We'd need a specific reason to believe that copyright was not renewed. Do you have a basis for that? You appear to know what newspaper they were from. If you need some assistance if figuring that out (I'd like to keep these if we can), you can probably get that at Commons:Village pump/Copyright, but please in the future sort out that sort of thing before uploading. You presumably don't want to go through this amount of effort just to have your work deleted as copyright violations. - Jmabel ! talk 04:39, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
  • The paper is The Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania, which did not renew any copyrights. I think the history is good, since we do not have an article. It provides search terms for someone looking for images. If it was on Wikipedia, we would just need the lede, the first few sentences, from a Wikipedia article. --RAN (talk) 06:04, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
Personally I'd be all for it if the length was chopped down to one reasonably sized paragraph like in Jmabel's example. It's way to long as it is though. People shouldn't have to scroll through almost half a page before they get to the actual images. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:53, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
@Atwngirl has been around a long time and more or less single-mindedly has been contributing memorabilia related to Allentown, PA. She is either an enthusiastic private historian of the town, or more likely has some official connection to a historical society, library, or museum in that town with privileged access to many of these items. I have not seen any declaration to that effect, but it would be nice to know the background here, because considering the extensive history of that one building in question, there may be much more where that came from. Elizium23 (talk) 08:01, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
This is interesting to me because many of the photos of the South West Sydney that I’m taking are significant for their area, but may not be significant enough to entail an article in Wikipedia. However, I have found quite a lot of information on the subject of the photo. I would like to add detailed information, but I’m wondering if I might need to create a seperate resource off-wiki using a CC license as this sort of data won’t be allowed here?
I’d love some clarification in this. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:40, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
@Chris.sherlock2: I wonder if Wikispore could be useful for this sort of project? I certainly think that more small wikis would be a good thing! :-) (I've got an idea for a local wiki at https://freo.wiki ). — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 09:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
I wonder if a local history spore might be worthwhile? Lots of local history just cannot get onto en.wiki, but is still very important. It would still need to ensure that NOR and citations are used, but it would be pretty interesting! I know many local historians would likely love it. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 13:29, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Just as an example of what I think is entirely within reason for a category about a building: Category:1012 First Avenue, Seattle. A lot of what is here is name changes, when stories were added, what was in the building, when the facade changed, all of which are likely to be useful in categorizing photos, including whether they refer to this building. guess we could have a proper en-wiki for this building, because it has Seattle Landmark status (so we'd have the notability), but what is here would still be pretty stubby for Wikipedia, and it doesn't seem likely that a non-stub about this will be written, at least in the foreseeable future. - Jmabel ! talk 04:48, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate all of the responses my OP has received so far. Category:Melody Circle, Allentown, Pennsylvania is a similar page to the one about the Midway Theater that was also created by the same user. Again, a few sentences or even a short paragraph would seem to be OK as an introduction to the images found on the page, but these two category pages (there might be more) do, at least in my opinion, go beyond that and seem to be more of an attempt to create an English Wikipedia article about these buildings on Commons, without necessarily having to deal with all of the policies and guidelines of English Wikipedia. If the content can be reliably sourced per en:WP:NOR or if the buildings are English Wikipedia notable in their own right per en:WP:NBUILDING, then there's probably a way to incorporate all or some of this content into a newly created or already existing English Wikipedia articles. I'm not sure, however, it's such a great idea to allow it on Commons just because no such articles about these buildings may currently exist. I don't think Commons was ever intended to be a en:WP:ALTERNATIVEOUTLET for English Wikipedia as a place for others to what might be considered their own "original research". If these category pages are the result of efforts on behalf of a local historical society or similar group, then perhaps the content would be best hosted on said group's own website or own wiki-site than Commons if it's not appropriate for English Wikipedia. — Marchjuly (talk) 15:42, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
I mean, at the very least it's not in a discoverable place. Who among us, seeking encyclopedic information on an item, visits its category page on Commons? Furthermore, the polyglot nature of Commons militates against it becoming an alternate enwiki repository of this stuff. Elizium23 (talk) 15:53, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, but at the same time this does seem to be sort of related to COM:PS#Excluded educational content, at least it seems that way to me. Would similar text content be allowed, for example, on a Commons user page per COM:PSP? I get that Commons isn't English Wikipedia and thus the latter's policies and guidelines don't apply per COM:NOTWP; however, it doesn't seem as if Commons should be the place for posting or hosting an individual's or group's original research per COM:NOT#Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, guide, or book. — Marchjuly (talk) 17:42, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
I'd put the information in Category:Cinemas in Allentown, Pennsylvania in the same category. It's useful and interesting sure, but still better served by cited somewhere else. For instance Wikidata. I'm not sure most of those cinemas would qualify for individual Wikipedia articles, but that's the kicks sometimes. That said, I'm pretty sure the bar for inclusion is a lot lower for articles about geographical locations then other subjects. So I don't see why it couldn't be included in [9]. It looks like there's already a lot of overly detailed, unreferenced material in the article already. So really what's the difference at this point? There's no reason Atwngirl can't cut the article back and include whatever she wants to there instead of putting it on Commons where no one is going to see it. BTW, it looks like she hasn't even edited the article before and it's been edited thousands of times by a single user in the meantime, which is interesting. Either way, the article could definitely use more people editing it and a more diverse range of information about Allentown. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:48, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
Category:Betzs Restaurant, Category:Allentown Trust Company and Category:Cigar Manufacturing and Marketing in Allentown, Pennsylvania are yet some other examples of this. This user has created more than a thousand new category pages since 2016. Many seem like a typical Commons category page that has mainly files and very little if any textual content. Others start out that way but then textual content is subsequently added to them through "minor" edits until they start looking like articles with image galleries. Whatever the reason for creating them, a pattern has been established and more of these category pages will probably be created in the future. — Marchjuly (talk) 19:13, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
I believe we've indicated enough of a consensus that this stuff is (1) OR and (2) out of scope for Commons, so shall we officially discourage this user from continuing? It's been 3 days since her last edit, so I assume she's on a bit of a break and hasn't had opportunity to notice, or participate in, our discussion here. Elizium23 (talk) 19:16, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
They could just be busy and haven't logged in recently. I've added a {{Please see}} to their user talk page (I should've done that sooner and my apologies for not doing so) to let them know about this discussion. — Marchjuly (talk) 19:30, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

It's been more than a week since Atwngirl was pinged/notified of this discussion, but they still haven't responded. Their last Commons edit was on February 4. It's quite possible they just are busy with other things, but Commons still marches on; so, perhaps it's time to figure out what if anything needs to be done here. Should these category pages just be blanked of text completely? Should only a short paragraph remain? Is only an infobox really needed for those pages that have them? -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:30, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

  • Should these category pages just be blanked of text completely? Certainly not, though it may make sense to edit them down considerably. I think the example I gave above shows about what is appropriate. Also: where there is no equivalent en-wiki content, it would be good to save any content (beyond what is effectively covered by the remaining text or infobox) on the respective talk pages (on Common or, if there is a relevant article, on en-wiki) as potential material to flesh out for en-wiki in the future. - Jmabel ! talk 16:06, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
    I'm not so sure that we should take it upon ourselves to preserve much of this at all; if it is unsourced and original research, no Wikipedia project would accept it anyway, certainly not enwiki. If it can't be sourced and doesn't meet WP:V, then it must be removed outright. The WP:ONUS, burden of proof, is on the person adding material, so if Atwngirl is unable to do so within a short time frame here, we should absolutely, completely, remove unsourced material. Elizium23 (talk) 17:15, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
    Those are all Wikipedia policies, aren’t they? Do we have commons policies that she is violating? I’m not a fan of citing Wikipedia shortcuts on commons. Commons is not Wikipedia (thank god). - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:35, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
    Since the text which Atwngirl has contributed would only be appropriate for inclusion on enwiki, that's the only wiki whose policies should be considered when deciding whether to retain or delete this text, right? Commons policies would dictate that we remove it all, completely, immediately; we have no use whatsoever for it here. Elizium23 (talk) 21:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
    @Elizium23: I disagree, and in fact here is an edit that you recently made along these lines (unrelated to User:Atwngirl) that I think is dead wrong. The person whose material you removed, User:Publichall, has consistently shown themself to be very knowledgable on Seattle architectural history, and while I wish they had provided a citation, the material you removed could be very useful to date specific photos of the building (or simply to identify them as this building) and/or to help someone find this building in a search for any of several businesses that were based there. Removing information about architects seems particularly odd: Commons routinely indicates information about architects of buildings, and almost no one her provides a citation when (for example) adding an architect category as a parent category for a building category. - Jmabel ! talk 23:57, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    I think sourcing and verifiability here on Commons is more than a little bit bonkers, considering what people can get away with in terms of depicting things in images that they would never, never in a million years be able to write in prose on any Wikipedia project without a reliable source. But, you do you, I guess. Elizium23 (talk) 00:05, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
    I think having at least one paragraph helps cover subjects that might never meet the main wiki's notability requirements but I'll admit to getting a bit long winded for some, since the coverage of these subjects on the wiki is so severely lacking, I'm trying to link as many of these photographs together as possible for future researchers to benefit from. In most cases here it seems that linking to a Wikipedia article is the only form of citation, so it gets messy when there is nothing in the Wiki to even reference, especially when trying to justify parent categories. I'm currently putting together a full article for the building in Jmabel's linked category, and when I get around to publishing it and making a wikidata entry for it, the description can be be chopped down as needed. In the meantime It's more or less a memo for further research. Publichall (talk) 06:10, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
    I'd suggest that when removing material that is uncited but plausible, it's best to move it to the talk page. Very few people will ever find it in the history. Similarly, the talk page may often be a better place to put "a memo for further research" in the first place. (Statements about living or recently dead people are, of course, a different matter: anything the least bit controversial should be well-sourced.) - Jmabel ! talk 16:30, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
@Atwngirl She can start a Fandom wiki called Allentown, Pennsylvania and link to it from Wikidata, even if she starts an English Wikipedia article on a topic, it can be backed up at Fandom, in which she would have admin rights. We can also enclose the category text in a box and have it closed by default, so it doesn't push down the images, but it would still have the text available to provide keywords. --RAN (talk) 00:08, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
That may make sense. Having dealt with Atwngirl before, I doubt we will get much of a response and a lot of the edits will be steathily reverted a few months from now under the excuse that it wasn't perfectly done. I spent months and months breaking Category:Newspaper advertising in Allentown, Pennsylvania all from crazy decade categories into Category:The Morning Call (Allentown, PA) by year but they all got reverted back without any discussion and are stored in the decades structure which has thousands of images at a time. It is clear someone wants to create their own universe of articles and stories and categories but very few of these things are going to be used because they are organized in overly broad categories and someone will fight to keep them that way. If someone does clean up the category descriptions, have the pages kept on your watchlist. You will go nuts. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:20, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
If Atwngirl is too busy with real world stuff at the moment to respond, then I don't believe there's any need to wait any longer to try and resolve this. If at some later date, Atwngirl disagrees with whatever turns out to be the consensus here, they can ask for clarification at that time. Whatever text content is removed from the category pages will still be in the page history if Atwgirl wants to retrieve it at some later date to use somewhere else. I'm not sure that storing the content on the category talk pages is really a good thing; however, if that's the consensus, then so be it. Finally, Atwngirl has been a pretty prolific uploader over the years, but many of their uploads have ended up deleted via DR or some other reason. Going through all those that remain and assessing their licensing is probably going to take a fair amount of time as well. Perhaps in the process of doing that, the category pages can be cleaned up a bit too. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:21, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Have we come to any firm conclusions as to what to do though? The material doesn’t appear to be causing any harm. Why would we remove it? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 09:05, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
There's probably lots of things uploaded to Commons that don't appear to be causing any harm depending upon how one defines the word "harm". Will the continued hosting of this content be the straw that breaks the back of Commons? Almost certainly not. The question is whether this content fits within the purpose of a Commons category page, isn't it? COM:NOTWP states that Commons isn't a local Wikipedia in the sense that local Wikipedia policies and guidelines need not be applied; however, implied in that "Commons is not Wikipedia" thinking is that Commons is also not a free web host where one should be able to post whatever they please per COM:SCOPE#Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, guide, or book and COM:HOST. A pattern seems to have been established by Atwngirl to create extensively detailed category pages that appear to be pseudo-articles. Perhaps, they have a reason for doing this, but they should explain how they believe these pages comply with SCOPE. If nothing is done and the categories are simply left as is, then similar category pages probably will be created at some point in the future, which means potentially more things to clean up. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:56, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
I don’t necessarily disagree with your concerns, but it doesn’t seem like similar categories are being created. I do think your concern is valid, but in this situation perhaps it might be better to actually wait to see if problems occur. One thing that might be helpful is if we drafted an actual guidance page for category descriptions - unless I’m very much mistaken we don’t have any real documentation that goes into real depth in this. I know that for heritage-listed properties of New South Wales I include a copy of the CC-BY-4.0 descriptions provided by the NSW State Heritage office and these are quite detailed.
I would love to see a guidance page and I’d be happy to discuss it, start one (or update an existing one!) as a draft and we nut this out formally. It would give a lot more certainty to everyone and reduce argument and division. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 01:06, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
I think this is already a problem. There are a number of category pages like this one which have already been created by this user. Many were created years ago and the gradually expanded over time; for example, Category:Hippodrome Theater, Allentown, Pennsylvania. There’s seems to be no need to wait see what they might do next because it's already quite clear what they've been doing; in other words, a pattern has already been established. It's not only creating category pages, but also file uploads that this user has been quite prolific at doing. Many of the files uploaded aren't being used by any projects. Some of these may potentially have educational value, but many seem as if they were uploaded for personal storage purposes more than anything else. Many have also been already deleted or are currently nominated for deletion due to questionable licensing. In addition, this user doesn't seem to be very active on English Wikipedia. If they were uploading files and immediately adding them to articles, then that would one thing. That, however, doesn't seem to be why they are uploading most of these files or creating most of these category pages. — Marchjuly (talk) 02:14, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Copyright issues are, of course, a problem and need to be dealt with, but if someone is uploading content that would be useful for a local historian, that's fine. It doesn't have to be useful to a WMF project. I've uploaded (or in some cases just curated) a ton of images about Seattle that are probably of limited interest to anyone not from here, but have already proved really useful to local historians, especially architectural historians. I was actually given an award by the local chapter of Docomomo mainly because of how many of my photos were showing up in landmark applications, especially when they were looking for images of comparable buildings. I hadn't even been aware of it until they approached me. I'm sure that very few of those images ever made it into Wikipedia. - Jmabel ! talk 06:40, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
I understand this and have no problem with this when it comes to files. I guess the point I was trying to make is that if Atwngirl was incorporating their uploads into Wikipedia articles or creating Wikipedia articles, then perhaps the very detailed content added to the category pages would also be something eventually intended for Wikipedia. That doesn't seem to be the case though, at least not to me. It probably doesn't matter for files as long as their licensing is OK, but it seems wrong and outside SCOPE (at least in my opinion) for extensive text content that's pretty much unsourced and written in Commons' voice. Since September 2016, it looks like Atwngirl has created somewhere between 1000 and 1500 category pages. Some like Category:Wert's Cafe, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Category:937 Hamilton Building, Allentown, Pennsylvania and Category:Pennsylvania Power and Light Building seem OK, but others like Category:Crocodile Rock, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Category:YMCA of Allentown, Pennsylvania, Category:Ralston's Flowers, Allentown, Pennsylvania and Category:Fountain Park Pool, Allentown, Pennsylvania seem like pseudo-Wikipedia articles based on someone's original research. If the consensus is that types are category pages are OK for Commons, then that's good enough for me and nothing further needs to be done. On the other hand, if they're not really OK, then that's a lot of category pages to go through and check; so, it would probably be a good idea to at least advise Atwngirl not to create any more such pages until those already created can be assessed. -- Marchjuly (talk) 09:02, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
That's awesome Jmabel! Well done, a reward well deserved :-) Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 10:55, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Whether the files are or are not used by Wikipedia should not have any baring at all on whether they are valid. I am personally unable to use my CC images on Wikipedia, but I don't see why I shouldn't upload them. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 10:54, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
I've already clarified my first post about files not being used by any local Wikipedias, but once again I have no problem with files being hosted by Commons as long as they satisfy COM:HOST and COM:PCP; so, if you upload your work to Commons and it meets HOST, then fine; if not, maybe it should be deleted since Commons isn't intended to be someone's personal photo album per se. The issue with the category pages is the extensively detailed text that some of them contain. Files with questionable licensing or SCOPE issues can be dealt with as such files are usually dealt with. -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:38, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, just wanted to clarify :-) - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 11:59, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
  • if the pseudo-articles have a lede paragraph, keep the lede, and hide the rest using the hide html code, that way they can be search, but not displayed. --RAN (talk) 02:49, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
  •  Comment I still don't see why a lot of this couldn't be transferred over to Wikidata. A lot of these categories don't have Wikidata entries associated with them anyway and it would be great if they had infoboxes. Plus, Wikidata is perfect for storing local historical facts that probably lack enough references to qualify for Wikipedia articles. Dumping it all on Commons is completely backwards though, and there's zero indication that Atwngirl even tried other options before adding the information to the categories. From what I can tell she isn't even active on Wikidata. That's not on us and it isn't our responsibility to deal with just because she doesn't want to do it.
    Although, I'm more then willing to transfer some of it over to Wikidata myself if we can all agree about how to deal with it. There should also be some kind of acknowledgment on Atwngirl's side that she just use Wikidata in the future. I'm not going to take the time to make sure the information is preserved and stored in a more appropriate way if she's just going to continue doing it though. Also, I like @Chris.sherlock2: 's idea of "nutting" this out more formally. It should really be in the guidelines somewhere not to use categories as pseudo Wikipedia articles or Wikidata entries. That said though, I think we can separate the (likely) need for a broader discussion about it from this specific incident and deal with it regardless of if there's nothing formally in the guidelines. Most things on here are informal and we still deal with them.
    As a side to that, I don't think moving the information to talk pages is the best way forward either because the information is still available in the edit history and it just passes the problem up one more level in the chain without actually resolving it. There's fundamentally zero difference between a category and a talk page when it comes to what the purpose of the project is, which isn't to be an alternative to Wikipedia. So Category talk pages shouldn't be used as pseudo Wikipedia articles anymore then the categories themselves should be. Which means there's only two options here. Transfer it to Wikidata or delete it. Period. Let's also "nut" it out in the long-term though. But again that doesn't mean we can't deal with this now on it's own merits. The information in the categories is clearly excessive and needs to be cleaned up. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:03, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
    I think the commenting out is the best of the ideas I've seen: preserves what is potentially useful (albeit unsourced and in the wrong place), keeps it out of users' collective face. Wikidata might be a good idea, but someone should first check there (wikidata:Wikidata:Project chat) about whether they'd want this given the lack of citeable sources.
    @Atwngirl: it would be very helpful if you would participate in this conversation. I'd hate to do something this large to your work without your participation, but by ignoring us you are leaving us very little choice. - Jmabel ! talk 17:34, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
    If the consensus is to "hide" content on the category pages, then that's fine as long doing so doesn't create some "new" problem that's going to be sorted out at some point down the road. It should be explained to Atwngirl as to why this was done so as to possibly avoid any wholesale reverting on their part which puts everything back where it was. Some editorial judgement might be needed in some case if the "first paragraph" is insufficient on its own to provide an acceptable description of a particular category. I tend to agree with Adamant1 about moving stuff to the talk page since that seems not too different from hosting on the category page itself. I don't know very much about Wikidata. If the consensus is that Wikidata is a more suitable place to host the content, then that's fine.
    I added a {{Please see}} template to Atwngirl's user talk page on February 6 and you (=Jmabel) have just added another one. Atwngirl posted the following in September 2022, I do not post much to commons right now, as I have a newborn to take care of here. The real world affects us all and perhaps they're just too busy to currently devote any of their time or energy to this matter. If the consensus is to wait a bit longer, then so be it; however, this should be resolved in some way at some point.
    Maybe while waiting a bit longer to hear from Atwngirl, it would be better to split off into a new discussion to discuss either enhancing what already exists or developing something new to address category pages or pages in general that seem to be pushing the boundary of COM:SCOPE#Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, guide, or book. If the place to do that is here or at COM:VPP, then cool. If it's better to do so at Commons talk:Project scope, then cool too. Since it seems like a big change that could affect lots of existing pages, maybe a COM:RFC would be the best way to discuss such a thing like this. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:00, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
    Wikidata might be a good idea, but someone should first check there (wikidata:Wikidata:Project chat) about whether they'd want this given the lack of citeable sources. I can guarantee that most of this can be sourced and fairly easily. Maybe not up the standards of Wikipedia, but Wikidata has a much lower notability bar. Just to pick a random example, Category:Lehigh Valley Trust Company (there's a totally ridiculous and unnecessary amount of detail in the category BTW), it took me literally two seconds to find this source that has their funding date. So there's really no excuse for the information not to be in Wikidata. Let alone for it to be in Commons completely unreferenced. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:59, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
    Do you know if we can use the <ref> tags at Commons? I have a number of categories for stuff that wouldn't fit into Wikipedia but is notable enough for Commons. I'd like to be able to reference it like I used to with Wikipedia. I was, even if I do say it myself, a very good article writer :-) I'd like to hold myself to the same standards on Commons. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 03:47, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Category:Categories by city vs. Category:Categories by municipality

"City" has various colloquial meanings ranging from "very large town" to "local administrative unit of any size". In consequence and looking at our categories there is no clear understanding whether the subcats in Category:Categories by city are catch-all for stettlements of any status or if there should be differentiation into "by city", "by municipality" (which in some subtrees is understood as a general term including cities, sometimes as excluding them) and in some coutries "by town" and "by village" for further differentiation. Cats with "by city" as catch-all are still dominating, but the other subtrees are growing. This leads to e.g. "Category:Churches in Foo" being in different trees depending on the administrative status or size of foo. In practice it even leads to the objects being in "by-city" trees as well as in "by-municipality" trees as some topics differentiate between the two and others don´t.

My questions: (a) Should subtrees be formed along the status of the relating local administrative unit or not? (b) If not, is there a word that is universally understood to cover all kinds of towns and villages, making it clear both fit in the category? --Rudolph Buch (talk) 14:59, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

i think for many countries "municipality" isnt a relevant concept. like usa it's all counties or cities. china is all cities or "prefecture-level administrative divisions".
but for some countries where municipality is a distinct concept from city, that distinction should be explicitly written down on the cat page.--RZuo (talk) 09:53, 23 February 2023 (UTC)--RZuo (talk) 07:00, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
@RZuo and Rudolph Buch: RZuo is wrong here about the U.S. "Municipalities" in the U.S. is broader than cities: it includes incorporated "towns" or "townships", "villages", and (in some states) "hamlets", and probably several other entities I'm not thinking of. In some states (e.g. New York) there is nothing unusual about having a "village" or "city" within a township.
"Counties" (or in Louisiana "parishes") are distinct from municipalities, but the relationship between the two is a bit weird, and varies from state to state. Typically counties are larger (though I believe some large cities are coincident with a county, and New York City has five counties—also known as boroughs—within the city), and there is nothing unusual about a city crossing county lines (Bothell, Washington is a good example of that).
So, at least for the U.S. (1) it's not neatly a tree (2) "municipalities" is clear, but doesn't deal with the municipality vs. county issue. I know that Spain has some similar issues: autonomous region -> province -> comarca (in some provinces, and I believe the Basques have a different name for this) -> municipality (plus a special case for Madrid, where the city is at the level of an autonomous region; and at least Rioja has the autonomous region be identical to province). - Jmabel ! talk 16:17, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
There should be some discussion on the issue on these category pages, and ideally a country-specific discussion on each country subcategory page. –LPfi (talk) 08:32, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
Regarding question (b): I often find categories based on the term "populated places". --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:33, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
In the case of the Philippines, "municipality" is not a term for all incorporated places, the opposite of "municipality" in the United States. Municipalities here are essentially towns, having lower local administrative powers than cities. "Town" is also used here but informally; in official and administrative contexts smaller types of incorporated settlements are called municipalities. Both cities and municipalities are divided into wards called barangays. To simplify, if U.S. calls their smaller incorporated places as towns, then the Philippines calls the same places as municipalities.
We do not have a general term for all municipalities and cities (whether independent [Highly-urbanized cities] or not [Component cities]). But a loose term, "local government unit" (LGU) is typically used to refer to the universal term for all Philippine cities and municipalities. The problem is that the provinces are also LGUs, as well as barangays (or wards of Philippine cities and municipalities). This was recently discussed on English Wikipedia here. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 08:14, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Santiago in Chile is a city with 34 municipalities. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 09:18, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Community feedback-cycle about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use starts

Hi everyone,

This February 2023 the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Department is planning to host a feedback cycle about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use (ToU) from February, 21 to April 2023. Full information has been published here.

The Terms of Use are the legal terms that govern the use of websites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. We will be gathering your feedback on a draft proposal from February through April. The draft has been translated into several languages, with feedback accepted in any language.

This update comes in response to several things:

  1. Implementing the Universal Code of Conduct
  2. Updating project text to the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (CC 4.0)
  3. A proposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing
  4. Bringing our terms in line with current and recently passed laws affecting the Foundation including the European Digital Services Act

Regarding the Universal Code of Conduct and its enforcement guidelines, we are instructed to ensure that the ToU include it in some form.

Regarding CC 4.0, the communities had determined as the result of a 2016 consultation that the projects should upgrade the main license for hosted text from the current CC BY-SA 3.0 to CC BY-SA 4.0. We’re excited to be able to put that into effect, which will open up the projects to receiving a great deal of already existing CC BY-SA 4.0 text and improve reuse and remixing of project content going forward.

Regarding the proposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing, the Foundation intends to strengthen its tools to support existing community policies against marketing companies engaged in systematic, undisclosed paid editing campaigns.

Finally, regarding new laws, the last ToU update was in 2015, and that update was a single item regarding paid editing. The last thorough revision was in 2012. While the law affecting hosting providers has held steady for some time, with the recent passage of the EU’s Digital Services Act, we are seeing more significant changes in the legal obligations for companies like the Foundation that host large websites. So with a decade behind us and the laws affecting website hosts soon changing, we think it’s a good time to revisit the ToU and update them to bring them up to current legal precedents and standards.

See the page on Meta to get all the information.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Team,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 12:41, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

@Zuz (WMF) Your second link is broken (superfluous "wiki"), should be updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use. El Grafo (talk) 13:17, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
Of special relevance to Commons, these proposals remove the ability for projects to opt out of the blanket policy on disclosure of paid contributions, so Commons:Paid contribution disclosure policy, which permits paid editing without disclosure, wouldn't be allowed. --bjh21 (talk) 20:09, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
Actually, the change there is quite unclear as to whether it does that or not. I have started a discussion at meta:Talk:Terms of use#Commons and paid editing. - Jmabel ! talk 20:42, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
@Bjh21: See meta:Talk:Terms of use#Commons and paid editing. It sounds like you are wrong about this. If you think the proposed wording is unclear about this, you might want to engage with a follow-up question there. - Jmabel ! talk 07:28, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I think I was just not paying adequate attention and failed to notice that only one of the two sentences about alternative disclosure policies had been deleted. Sorry about that! --bjh21 (talk) 11:28, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
@El Grafo Oops! sorry about that. Thank you for pointing this out.The link is fixed now. . Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 15:03, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Annoying problem during FileExporter use

I have been undergoing occasional but annoying message during FileExporter use, in transfering User:Patrickroque01's local enwiki files to here. The message reads "Failed to discover API location from: <URL link of enwiki image>. HTTP status code 0. Error fetching URL: Received HTTP code 403 from proxy after CONNECT." While it can be resolved by repeating the exporting process, it gets annoying as there are too many images by Patrick Roque that I need to transfer here (of course after undergoing review of Philippine architectural artworks' licensing statuses). This issue only appeared just recently, in late December 2022. Can users engaged in programming or technical matter fix this so that the annoying error message no longer appears at any condition? JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 05:01, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: This is almost certainly a problem that can only be fixed by the Wikimedia sysadmins. I think you can follow the instructions at mw:How to report a bug to report the problem to them through Phabricator. --bjh21 (talk) 10:19, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
@Bjh21: I will leave that reporting to other users. There are too many photos of Patrickroque01 that still need to be reviewed and transferred here (apparently has treated English Wikipedia as his alternative to Commons despite not so). Adding to that are real-life things and college works of mine. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 11:32, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Cropping images

How much should an image be cropped by to remove a damage / border / sticker artifact, before it ought to be re-uploaded as a separate file?

This is a crop to 70% of the previous image size. See others too: Vysotsky (talk · contributions · Move log · block log · uploads · Abuse filter log)  My concern is that for some of these, like the motor-racing ones, we're starting to change the original composition of the image. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:12, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for asking this question. (1) I upload higher resolution images of files, e.g. Images from the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (a set of 485,000 photos, of which 25,000 are used in several language versions of Wikipedia). I always look carefully for any improvements or crops that have already taken place since the original upload date and only use images from the same source. (2) I also crop pictures (from other databases, like the Anefo examples you mention here) if there are irregularities in the image. I take care to keep the original composition by cropping only damaged parts. If I think the composition would be changed by cropping, I ask specialists at the Photography workshop to remove the watermark without cropping. Vysotsky (talk) 16:35, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
@Andy Dingley and Vysotsky: There is zero question that 70% crop should have used a different filename. Any crop of an image from an organized archive should use a different filename; the only exception is to remove excessive white borders, and even that is a judgement call. - Jmabel ! talk 16:38, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, one other exception: removing a watermark that is in a margin. E.g. the overwrite here. - Jmabel ! talk 16:41, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Three examples: different filenames when removing watermarks? Vysotsky (talk) 16:54, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
I would certainly prefer a different filename on those. It is not obvious that the white area there is better than having a watermark. - Jmabel ! talk 17:55, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Really? My proposal would be to crop away the lower part of the grass (photo 1), the right 5% of the wall (photo 2) and the lower part of the sand (photo 3) and upload these crops as new versions of the original images. The composition of these press photographs will roughly stay the same, the original can still be found and no essential part of the photos will be missing. The alternative (filling the white areas with resp. grass, sand or wall) is not very attractive and much more time-consuming. Uploading as a separate image is a waste of time, if you ask me. Vysotsky (talk) 20:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
@Vysotsky: I see: I thought that white area was the result of some Commoner's removal of a watermark, but I take it those were clipped at the Dutch National Archive (a weird decision on their part, if you ask me). I really don't have an opinion what best to do when the archival source has already screwed up the image by clumsily removing a watermark. I would not oppose cropping in these cases, but I'd also have no problem with using a new name and keeping these as an indication of precisely what is in the archive, rather than that being semi-hidden in the history.- Jmabel ! talk 00:05, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
@Vysotsky: Uploading a separate image does not have to be such a waste of time; have you looked into using dFX?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 00:13, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
  • These negatives are large glass plates. The white rectangles are paper catalogue stickers. In most cases they're off the image area, but it some cases they're over it. That's no problem to remove if the negatives were wanted commercially, but it wasn't done before the bulk scanning.
If anyone ever wants to crop these images in the future, that's up to them (we massively crop a lot of the group portraits to extract notable individuals). But those go back as new filenames. We should preserve the original images (even at the cost of a visible sticker), there's not much push to crop these pre-emptively. I'm not going to argue over small crops, but if we're taking more than maybe 10% (this is open to discussion) I think this should be a new file. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:31, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
I think we're nearing consensus. I would only like to address the time aspect once more. Anefo photographs are used heavily (total image use of this collection >170,000, distinct image use >22,000). If a photo is used in dozens of Wiki language versions (the record Anefo image is being used 352 times on Wiki) I would have to replace the watermarked image by a cropped image manually in several language versions if I would upload the last one as a separate file. This seems a bit of an overkill, if I only remove a piece of grass, wall or sand. So I think the proposal by Andy Dingley (small cropping up to 10% is OK) would be beneficial, if these crops replace the original. There should be no change of the composition. Vysotsky (talk) 09:32, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
@Vysotsky: You do not need to do this manually in all Wikipedias. That is what User:CommonsDelinker is for. - Jmabel ! talk 15:55, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
What if instead of cropping, the images get retouched/restored, with the restorations uploaded as new files and used in articles? This photo would be rather easy to restore, at least the white strip on the right (I use GIMP, and the Fix and Clone tools work wonders on removing scratches, blemishes, and text). It would be a bit trickier to retouch the sticker areas in the others two, but the more savvy volunteers at Commons:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop could probably clone and fill-in the grass and dirt. Heck, maybe I'll try restoring one tomorrow. --Animalparty (talk) 07:50, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
why is it necessary to crop out the white part? it doesnt affect the subject of the image. it's part of history now -- the original full photo has lost a part to whatever caused the white part.
have you not seen surviving fragments of old publications? they are what they are.
it's even worse to "restore" the missing part, which is fake. RZuo (talk) 07:12, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
There are two aspects: to make the photo a good illustration of the subject on one hand, and to keep a historic photo on the other. For the first, a crop or faking some grass is probably the best route, for the second, you want to keep the composition exactly as in the original and don't want to manipulate the photo (except to correct for distortions during the scan). If the second aspect is compromised, you want a new filename. We might not want to document what is in the archive, but rather the original; unless we want, cropping away things outside the photo proper is a "minor" change. –LPfi (talk) 08:16, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
a small part missing doesnt make them bad illustration.--RZuo (talk) 08:38, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Schopenhauer images don’t add up

Something fishy:

Compare the 1859 photograph of Arthur Schopenhauer by J Schäfer (File:Arthur_Schopenhauer_by_J_Schäfer,_1859b.jpg)

with the 1855 Jules Lunteschütz painting in Schopenhauer.jpg (File:Schopenhauer.jpg)

They are almost identical. It’s possible the artist painted from the photograph, but the dates are incorrect for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Humphrey Tribble (talk • contribs) 06:03, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

He might have had a characteristic pose. Remember that at the time a photograph would have involved staying truly still even more than is required for being sketched. - Jmabel ! talk 16:09, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
There's also a good chance the dates of one or both images are flat wrong. --Animalparty (talk) 19:08, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
  • They are probably both estimates, if you can't find a reliable source, I see no reason not harmonize them both to a circa and use the same year. --RAN (talk) 22:31, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Trying to identify a photographer signature

From 1916. There is a photographer's signature on the photo, at lower left. Below the signature I can make out "NY" and (uselessly) "R05". Given the context, it is probably a major New York theatrical photographer. Does anyone recognize the signature? - Jmabel ! talk 04:23, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

It looks to be White Studio. White did a ton of theatrical photography from the 1900s to the 1930s. Compare to stamps here and here. Note: sometimes the cursive White logo may be mistaken for the Elite Studio logo (and vice versa), e.g. here. --Animalparty (talk) 19:00, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
@Animalparty: how confident would you say you are of that? I thought of them, but it didn't seem to me to say "White". Were they often this sloppy with their marks? If you are confident, I'll go with that. - Jmabel ! talk 20:26, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
I'm about 95% confident it's White Studio. It looks like there's an extra squiggle above "White" that might be an L. (perhaps for Luther S. White who apparently owned the studio but did little if any photographing), or maybe just a stylized flourish. That squiggle is also seen in File:Belle Mitchell, stage actress (SAYRE 6530).jpg. The White logo seems to vary a bit (maybe some were hand written), and sometimes the W gets extra squirrely and starts resembling a capital E, e.g. in File:A scene from "Gypsy Love" (SAYRE 12720).jpg. --Animalparty (talk) 20:55, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
@Animalparty: Thanks! You've obviously had occasion to look closely at more of their work than I have. - Jmabel ! talk 07:30, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Too many subcategories in Category:Category navigational templates for photographs

There are currently 344.673 subcateogries in Category:Category navigational templates for photographs. All the dates of every country are in it now. Why is this? Does this edit have anything to do with this? --トトト (talk) 13:23, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

@トトト: Specifically this edit has put all categories with {{Country photographs taken on}} into Category:Category navigational templates for photographs. TilmannR (talk) 13:27, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
This is tangentially related, but it's completely ridiculous to have some 200,000 individual "photographs taken on" categories that only contain a single image in the first place. It's super obtuse and doesn't help anyone find what they are looking for. Especially once it gets down to the country or municipal level. Really the images in all of the categories should be up-merged and they should be deleted. Otherwise where does it end? 2 million single file categories for every country, municipal division, and date out there? That would be completely unmanageable. It's also not the point in the categories. Regardless though, the issue that instigated this discussion wouldn't have happened if there were reasonable limits. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:50, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
Normally, single day should not go lower than country level. [originally I miswrote that sentence, sorry!] Given that you can navigate through these day-by-day, I think country-level ones with a single photo are actually less of a problem than typical single-photo categories. - Jmabel ! talk 20:28, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
Given that you can navigate through these day-by-day You can't though. For instance go to Category:Afghanistan photographs taken on 1939-11-11. There's no way to navigate through it or really most (if not all) of the any of the "Afghanistan photographs taken on" categories day to day because the template is nothing but dead links. The only way that wouldn't be the case or we could navigate them day-by-day is if we created a bunch of empty "Afghanistan photographs taken" categories. It's impossible to do with how things are though. That's a large part of the problem. Either someone creates a bunch of pointless single file categories purely for the sake of making date templates navigable and there's a bunch of dead links in the interim, or there's just a bunch of dead links anyway. Either way it's a ridiculously obtuse and un-helpful way to do things. Best case scenario like 5 of the 15 links in the navigation templates work and even then it usually means creating a bunch of completely random, single file categories. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:57, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
@Adamant1: Yeah, I probably wouldn't do this for Afghanistan, or for any other country where we don't have a lot of photos, but I think it is often useful for (for example) the U.S. or the Netherlands. - Jmabel ! talk 07:35, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
I think we have had discussions about moving those images upward to months and years but they generally get rejected. We seem to have settled on by individual date and by country (NYC and Germany are exceptions that gets broken down much further) as a semi-resolution but one can dispute older photographs like the sole June 1973 from Wyoming image that is still an open CFD. We may eventually chuck the whole "photographs taken on" and move everything to "[date] in country" because events get doubled categorized and videos are a complete mess around this system. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:27, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
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