Commons talk:Galleries/Archive 1

This page is an archive. Please do not edit the contents of this page. Direct any additional comments to this page.

Great!

Whoever wrote this has read my mind. Or are they a genius, too? Samulili 15:43, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Great minds think alike ;) Rocket000 16:55, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Captions and sections

There should be something about captions and sections too. These are somewhat problematic because each media file can't have a caption in every language, and each heading can only really be written in one language too. Richard001 04:43, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is something that needs to be addressed. I just don't know what a good solution would be. I have seen some galleries that use collapsible divs for the captions that have a lot of translations. It solved that problem of length, but was kinda annoying to have to click on each one to expand it. I have seen some headers that try to accommodate more than one language (e.g. == Header / En-tête / Коллектор ==). But that's not practical. I'm going to have a look around. I'm sure there's some good ideas already out there. Rocket000 16:55, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Categorizing galleries

I'm pretty sure about this, but I wanted to double check.

Let's say I have Category:A with subcategories: B, C, and D. I also have Galleries: B, C, and D (matching letters = same subject) Should these be place in their respective category (e.g. gallery B in category B) or in Category:A? Rocket000 19:36, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

That's an important question, though I'm not sure about the answer (maybe take it up on the 'pump?, you could also have a look around and try to work out what is more common). If we use the latter option, there are twice as many things to look for when browsing ("so there's no category... better check the galleries too"). Richard001 04:25, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

That depends. If it is a species of a living organism, there should not be a category B actually and the gallery should be categorized to A (the genus), see COM:TOL. If the gallery is of the type "the best of category B", the gallery b should be categorized to B. -- Slaunger (talk) 20:59, 14 June 2008 (UTC). Examples

The species gallery Saxifraga nivalis (B-gallery) is categorized to Category:Saxifraga (A-cat) in accordance with COM:TOL. And there is no (and should not be any) Category:Saxifraga nivalis. There also exists a genus gallery Saxifraga (A-gallery). If this one was done right, it would be a gallery showing one good example of each species, as this gives a nice idea to what species in this genus look like. In this case it is mostly a set of links, which is unfortunate - and redundant to the galleries, which are already categorized to the parent category.
The category Category:Pipe organs has quite a few images, a subset is shown in Pipe organ - in this case sub-divided in countries.

-- Slaunger (talk) 21:17, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok. That's what I meant. My hypothetical situation assumes all categories exist already. So it's:

Gallery B → Category B if exists, else → Category B's parent cat (Category A).

Add it's ok if Gallery A and Gallery B share the same Category? Rocket000 (talk) 21:21, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Almost yes, Common(s) sense should still be used. Like, someone has created Category:Saxifraga aizoides (against COM:TOL) while there is also a gallery Saxifraga aizoides (OK). Now, although the category with the same name exists (which it should not), Saxifraga aizoides should still be categorized to its parent category Category:Saxifraga. It is really confusing that there are the species categories, but there is such a large community pressure on requiring an image should be categorized, that it is a general turnoff to go and remove the redundant species categories (and also against the fuzzy mixed system gallery/category vote). As you have have guessed I disagree with quite a few formulations in the current policy proposal. An image should always be properly organized, but that does not necessarily means categorized. -- Slaunger (talk) 21:32, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Not being in a category can only hurt it. How is two ways of finding material worse then one? Galleries and categories should not affect each other. It's same for Wikipedia articles (or any other project's mainspace). Most people assume categories contain all and galleries contain the best or a least a good sample of the selection. It's unreasonable to go with the gallery only view. Why would you want to put 10 nearly identical images in a gallery? Or what if there's 100s of images of one species. You're saying all of those should be in a gallery? That would be a lot of work to maintain if galleries are the only way an image is "organized". On the flip side, not all images should be in galleries (unrelated to being in a category). For example, this doesn't make for a very interesting gallery. (Yes, those are all different :-) 22:19, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'd say if there are houndred images of a species it should all go into one gallery. you just organize the gallery in suitable subsections. You will be very happy about that the day some geneologist finds out it actually belong to another genera and thus needs renaming. now, instaed of changing the categorization of 100 images to the new genus name you just cut and paste the gallery to the new gallery page, modify descriptions in the gallery page, change the categorization to the new genera cat, and create a redirect from the old gallery to the new (as this will now be an official synonym). That saves a lot of work. Renaming of organisms happen frequently these days. Now, if the images are both in the gallery and in a cat you also have to go in on all the image pages to change the cats. That is not something the average maintaining user does. It is a myth that it is tedious to add an image to a gallery. I always start out my plant image pages with an interwiki link to the species gallery from the description. If the link is red I create the page and add the image, if it is blue I open it and add it, not that hard really. If you do the same with a category, you save a step if the category already exists, but if not, you have to open that and associate it with an appropriate parent cat. Quite often contributors just saves the image without checking that the category exists (I have fixed many redlinked species cats). If you add the image to a gallery instead you have to go edit that page and actually create it if it does not exist. (Of course some are too lazy to do that too). -- Slaunger (talk) 22:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

A related discussion on living organisms is here. -- Slaunger (talk) 21:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

HOWTO?

But how does one create a gallery? Shouldn't this be addressed here too?

SamJohnston (talk) 12:30, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess so. There isn't that much to say but I'm sure something could be added. Richard001 (talk) 08:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Plural or singular gallery names

Category names are normally supposed to use the plural version of a name. See Commons:Categories#Category_name.

I think that the same should be true for gallery names in order to avoid confusion in gallery naming.

Galleries are not the same as Wikipedia articles. Galleries are compilations of images. Therefore it makes more sense in my opinion to use the plural form of names most of the time for gallery names.

People may want to use inline links for both the singular and plural names. That can be made possible even if the plural name is used for the gallery name. For example:

graph redirects to graphs

Here is the wikicode for the redirect:

#REDIRECT [[Graphs]]

One can see and edit the wikicode by looking at the history of a redirected page:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Graph&action=history

The same method can be used for seeing the wikicode of redirected Wikipedia articles. It is easier to redirect Wikipedia articles, though, since they have the "move" link at the top of article pages. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:56, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

It depends on the subject quite a bit, but I guess it does make sense to use the plural with words like 'building' etc. (By the way, you might want to sign that comment). What is the current guideline/practice? Richard001 (talk) 23:41, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if there is a guideline currently. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:11, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I removed that line. Rocket000 (talk) 18:24, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Peculiar Overlay on Project Page

There is a peculiar overlay of text over The Call for Participation on the project page, on the right side. This is true in both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Am I right? Can anyone help? Davidt8 (talk) 11:36, 21 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

Yes, seems to be unique to this page. Richard001 (talk) 07:11, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

You mean the shortcuts? They're created by {{Shortcut}} and sometimes get in the way of other things. Rocket000 (talk) 07:33, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

The overlay is not unique to this page. Davidt8 (talk) 14:28, 23 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

proposed status

I removed some of the questionable things from this page (like the singular name thing). I also restructured it to make it more of a help page instead of a guideline/policy page (see reason). I'd like to label this as a guideline if we're going to be linking to it in the newarticletext system message. And start the translations up. Any objections? Any issues we need to address first? Rocket000 (talk) 18:45, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if "interwiki" in the introduction shouldn't be replaced by categories (or moved further down in the content). I think interwikis are more important on categories than on galleries. -- User:Docu at 18:53, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Categories definitely belong in the main list (not "other things"). I think I left that out because telling someone how to categorize properly takes quite a lot of instruction (a whole page actually), but I agree we should at least mention that galleries should be categorized. They might get it wrong but it's better than nothing. The main purpose of the extra emphasis on interwikis is due to the common trend of new users to treat Commons as an extension of Wikipedia, and usually the English one. They include links and "see also"s like it was a local page. Or worse, they duplicate all the links in a non-interwiki/side-bar format for some reason (this is slowly getting better, categories are worse, e.g. Category:Astronomy). Rocket000 (talk) 21:17, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I like linking the main subject back to Wikipedia, e.g. as Category:St. Moritz.

At Lake Burley Griffin, I'm not convinced that interwikis and descriptions are really needed (I expanded it some time ago as the lake article is featured at WP and needed illustrations). Category:Lake Burley Griffin has descriptions (in the commons sum-it up format, somewhat shortened though.).

In any case, I think we should link this from MediaWiki:Newarticletext for namespace 0. -- User:Docu at 23:13, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I'll let you know a secret. I personally can't stand descriptions on galleries. For most galleries, you don't need one. The name speaks for itself and any other text should be about the images not the subject in general. BUT I wrote this as a reflection of current practices, while trying to leave out my own biases. I have no problem if you change this. Rocket000 (talk) 06:36, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not too convinced about that, but it seems that I'm visiting mainly galleries with 1-4 images. We could phrase the list more like this one ("should contain the following information (in order of importance)"). -- User:Docu at 02:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Which part aren't you convinced of? That I hate descriptions, that most don't need them, or the current wording is it's a reflection of current practices? Rocket000 (talk) 16:25, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

(sorry for the delay in answering this). The part that it reflects current practices to write all these descriptions. It probably depends on the field though. Recently I worked with a series of images of Barcelona. There some galleries are longer than corresponding Wikipedia articles (e.g. Plaça Catalunya (1929 Barcelona Universal Exposition) compared to ca:Plaça_de_Catalunya#Hist.C3.B2ria or en:Plaça_de_Catalunya,_Barcelona#Sculpture). -- User:Docu at 17:52, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

You're right, it completely depends on the purpose of the gallery. I guess I was writing this with general subjects in mind where the descriptions are completely unnecessary in my opinion yet it's very common to see them with some intro text at the top. When I wrote that a "brief description" should be included I was writing with the assumption that people were going to include a description anyway. My point was to say that it should be as brief as possible, not that galleries must have a description at all. Here's an example of text ruining a category (same applies to galleries but I couldn't find a good example right now): Category:Aldous Huxley. Rocket000 (talk) 13:06, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. BTW Huxley might simply be a sample where {{Multilingual description}} could be of use. -- User:Docu at 13:28, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Naming conventions

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

The section of this page entitled Commons:Galleries#Naming conventions is incorrect and inconsistent.

Current:

Unlike naming categories, where English is almost always used, galleries should be named in language most associated with the subject. This applies to people, places, art, culture, etc. For general subjects and ones not tied to any specific language, the name most likely to be searched for (usually English) should be used. An exception to this rule is the naming of galleries of organisms and subjects where Latin names are considered universal. These follow the same guidelines as categories and should share the same name

Proposed:

Unlike naming categories, where English is the lingua franca, there is not consensus on the naming conventions for galleries. Current practice is for galleries to be in English with the redirects put in place for other languages. Exceptions to this rule is the naming of galleries of organisms and subjects where Latin names are considered universal; and popes and Roman emporers which both use Latin
For general subjects and ones not tied to any specific language, the name most likely to be searched for (usually English) should be used.

Thoughts? Evrik (talk) 20:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

There isn't really a current practice for galleries to be in English. We have galleries named 江泽民 and 胡锦涛. The current wording has been stable for quite some time so there isn't really a reason to step back.

If you edit Commons:Language policy (a proposed guideline) and then want to update this accordingly, this seems to go backwards. -- User:Docu at 20:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

No, Commons:Language policy is the controlling document, this one references it as the source. Point of fact, if you look at Commons:Policies and guidelines you will not see Commons :Galleries listed - you will see Commons:Language policy. When you say the "current wording has been stable for quite some time so there isn't really a reason to step back," which document are you referring to? Using Commons:Galleries to change Commons:Language policy is the tail wagging the dog. Evrik (talk) 20:21, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you know which one I mean, as you just insert a new section on galleries into the proposed Commons:Language policy and attempt to update this guideline accordingly. -- User:Docu at 20:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

No, really, what do you mean? Nature abhors a vacuum, and the language policy as it is currently written is an empty hole. I have spent the afternoon trying to clarily what was on Commons:Language policy, because it was confusing and incomplete. So ... since Commons:Language policy is listed on Commons:Policies and guidelines I see that as the controlling document. This one is not in accordance with that one. Evrik (talk) 20:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't twist the reality: there is no current practise to use English for galleries; you just try to obtain the right to rename all non-English galleries. --Foroa (talk) 20:26, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not trying to twist reality. Just trying to make things consistent. Evrik (talk) 20:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of that but Special:Log/move (User:Evrik) seems to confirm this. -- User:Docu at 20:31, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

That's how it becomes "standard practice". --Foroa (talk) 20:41, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Confirms what? That I thought Saint Bartholomew was better than Sanctus Bartholomaeus, or perhaps Aztec sun stone was more useful than Ollin Tonatiuh? How about Epiphany rather than Epiphany (browser)? Yes, I have made a number of changes. Really though, I think you're trying to cast sinister motives where none exist. Why don't we all work on a policy so we all have a common set of rules to work with. Evrik (talk) 20:35, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
- Overall I think you did a good job updating the other update page. It just that Rocket000 and others already put some thought into writing and re-writing this page. -- User:Docu at 21:18, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  - I have no problems with this page as it is written, and kudos go to the people who have worked on it. I have been monitoring Commons:Language policy for a while. There has been no discussion of the one paragraph talking about language on this page. Really, the discussion needs to be completed there. Had I known that a language policy was being discussed, I would have participated. The language here should reflect the fact that no consensus has been reached. Evrik (talk) 21:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Commons:Language policy is not the controlling document. It's still proposed (and probably will forever be). This was one part where everyone seemed to agree (it's been uncontested for over a year and was common practice way before that). Honestly, I try and avoid that policy page because it's trying to do to much at once. There's a lot of issues when it comes to naming conventions in a multilingual environment. I think we should just forget that page and let this page deal with galleries, COM:C deal with categories, and I think there's some upload help page that deals with file names. Rocket000 (talk) 22:47, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
- We could mark the language policy page as historical and add some of the missing bits to the other pages instead. -- User:Docu at 23:07, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  - I would be fine with that, however it is still commonly referenced (mainly because it does try to cover a lot and is one of the oldest policy-type pages). Maybe it would be better to keep it as a summary of all the language/naming-convention stuff in the other guideline/policy pages. At the top it says "At present, this page is a summary of existing practice rather than a formal policy." which is what it's been for 5 years, so it seems that's what it wants to be. Rocket000 (talk) 03:20, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
    - I disagree with making it historical. Since it pre-dates this one, some effort should have been made to integrate the one paragraph on this page dealing with language into that one. Oh, and Rocket ... since this page is on galleries and not languages that one is the controlling document ... but I digress. In fact ... I think we should end this discussion here and move the discussion there. I think it would do us all a lot of good to make an effort to complete that work. Evrik (talk) 04:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
      - I meant it's not controlling because it's not a policy (or even a proposed policy as it's just "a summary of existing practice"). I was mainly countering the point "this one references it as the source", which isn't true. I just included that link as a "see also". But yeah, if we work on that page, we could turn it into the controlling document. Rocket000 (talk) 18:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I went ahead and cleaned up the rest of the items on the Language page. I moved everything off of it that was unclear. I also listed those things that still needed to be agreed upon. Evrik (talk) 04:34, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

There isn't much information left in Commons:Language_policy#Descriptions_.28galleries.2C_categories.2C_file_description_pages.29. Thus we might as well include it here (there is only dates and Roman emperors that aren't here yet). -- User:Docu at 08:05, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

There is a lot of information in the archives. I'm going to archive this discussion. Can we please move the discussion of language to Commons talk:Language policy? Evrik (talk) 14:52, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Conclusion: the proposal to modify the section was withdrawn by Evrik. -- User:Docu at 15:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Singular/plural?

In the recent time, I noted some people who moved galleries from plural to singular. I was just wondering if that's covered by this guideline. In my opinion, Grey-green orthographic projections map instead of Grey-green orthographic projections maps would sound funky. --The Evil IP address (talk) 19:52, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It used to, until someone pointed out the problem with it. It originally said gallery names should match Wikipedia article names. Usually it's pretty clear if it should be plural or not (like in the case you pointed out), but I haven't worked enough with galleries to come up with some general rules yet (other than the unhelpful "just use common sense and go with what sounds the best"). Rocket000 (talk) 06:50, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Alphabets

« Galleries should be named in language most associated with the subject. This applies to people, places, art, culture, etc. »

What about the alphabet used ? This came up on the french village pump regarding Иван Семёнович Куликов, a gallery about a russian painter. Jean-Fred (talk) 19:10, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Seems perfectly reasonable. Compare, e.g. 胡锦涛. What is odd, is that there is no description in the language of the title. -- User:Docu at 19:16, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I think we should use the alphabet most affiliated to the subject. If we would say "only Latin characters" then this would be unfair for those who don't have them on the keyboard. If someone can't type in the title, then one should create a redirect in English or their preferred language. If they want to link the gallery, they can simply copy paste the gallery title. --The Evil IP address (talk) 19:26, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, sorry The Evil, I do not agree. If I understand well (sorry for my bad english) an english redirect should go to the russian version? For what reason not from the russian to the english? I do not see any unfairness to the russian speakers on that. Most of the contributers do worldwide their best to contribute in english, willing to make and keep this project coherent for both - contributers and users. I am shure the russian contributers do as well and I think there is no need to make things more complicated that they are. This russian UFO-gallery was lost in space without any category before I created one. I guess that happend because the largest part of the community was unable to read the gallery name. What happens when the maintenance helpers have to handle galleries in at least 3000 different languages spoken in the world? --Bohème (talk) 03:20, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this: "For what reason not from the russian to the english?" --Timeshifter (talk) 21:32, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Question Do you know how many people are not contributing to Commons because it's too English for them (see for example this discussion where it's part of a complaint about Commons that it would only be something for people who can speak English; one of the reasons why de.wikipedia doesn't yet have an upload form in the en.wikipedia style) or how often people of the German village pump have difficulties with categorizing because they can't come up with a good English category name. Besides these problems for people who aren't a native speaker of English, there are other problems with English names as well: Many things which don't exist in English language countries don't have an English name, which then leads to self-translated names. The other problem of using English as main language is that as a consequence, fewer redirects will be created from the native title, as the English title suffices. Then the galleries are much more difficult to find. All in all, I believe that making all gallery titles English would lead Commons to much more problems than the current way. The policy to name all categories in English already leads to too many problems and should be deleted. Considering other languages: You can always use Google translations (yeah, it's not perfectly accurate, but enough for a rough translation of what's meant) or the gadget Wiktionary Hover. --The Evil IP address (talk) 00:35, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) So we help the people of one language, and hinder people speaking hundreds of other languages. People can not browse the Commons if it is in hundreds of languages. English is the most universal language, and it gives the best chance of helping the most people. It certainly isn't going to make everybody happy, but it makes the most people happy. And you did not really directly answer the question: "For what reason not from the russian to the english?" For example: Search for Иван Семёнович Куликов from Special:Search

You wrote: "The other problem of using English as main language is that as a consequence, fewer redirects will be created from the native title, as the English title suffices." At some point the English title has to be used for the category. Otherwise the gallery is not categorized. So it sounds like the problem is about teaching people how to create gallery redirects from the gallery page with the native name. Here is the wikitext:

#REDIRECT [[ENGLISH NAME]]

This is not that difficult since the category name is usually known. Mainly it is about teaching people the word "REDIRECT". I understand how difficult it is to read outside one's native language. I have lived outside my native land of the USA. But using hundreds of languages on the Commons only makes the Commons more difficult, not less.

Redirects are the solution. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:50, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I do not think having gallery names in multiple languages causes any substantial problems. It would if we were talking about categories due to the technical differences (category redirects suck and just imagine what our category tree would look like if we mixed all languages together..) Yes, we could easily redirect all other language names to the English one, but I don't see how that makes things any better. As long as the redirects are in place (one way or another), why not try to be a little more multilingual? Rocket000 (talk) 12:29, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is browsing. Do you know what these are about?: Россия, Ελλάδα, ประเทศไทย, 日本 and 中国. I can try to be as multilingual as possible, but how will that help in the case of browsing hundreds of languages? --Timeshifter (talk) 08:49, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess I don't see any problem because I don't browse galleries. Either I see them within a (English) category or via a search. Rocket000 (talk) 09:53, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

When one browses categories one sees the galleries listed too. Sometimes one can correctly guess what the gallery is about by the category it is listed in. Sometimes not. Some categories have more than one gallery listed in them, too. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:26, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Country galleries

Why aren't these country galleries (and others) using English names?: Deutschland, België - Belgique, Sverige, Brasil, Italia, España, Россия, Ελλάδα, ประเทศไทย, 日本 and 中国

Only a few people will figure out what these galleries are about: Россия, Ελλάδα, ประเทศไทย, 日本 and 中国. Redirects from other languages to galleries with English names are a better solution in my opinion.

#REDIRECT [[ENGLISH NAME]]

Many more people will be able to browse the Commons directories and subdirectories and figure out what the galleries are about. Because English is the more universal language. People can use the sidebar search and Special:Search to look for Россия, Ελλάδα, ประเทศไทย, 日本 and 中国. They will see those names in the search results if there are redirect pages.

The Commons is about browsing, and not just searching. English significantly helps browsing. More people will find things when English is used most of the time for titles. I mean, do you want to browse when the gallery names are in many languages?

I think this has become unfortunately a political/nationalist issue. Nationalism causes all kinds of problems on Wikipedia. We don't need this kind of problem on the Commons.

What we really need is to improve the software. Maybe the Mediawiki developers can be encouraged to work more on language options. So that people can easily toggle between languages on the Commons for categories and galleries. In the meantime we should be using English titles for gallery names most of the time.

More Mediawiki developers need to be hired too for many other needed changes too. They are overworked now. I think the Wikimedia Foundation needs to be encouraged to spend more money to hire more Mediawiki developers instead of wasting money on stuff of less importance. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:57, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps part of the problem is that we're operating a picture archive, using software intended for an encyclopedia. Technical improvements that only indirectly benefit the encyclopedias will surely attract less effort than they would in the kind of software other online picture archives use. Jim.henderson (talk) 05:47, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess people from the non-English wikipedias need to explain to the Mediawiki developers the importance of these suggested changes to all the Wikipedias. Most of the Mediawiki developers are native English speakers, I believe. So they may not see how important it is to make the Commons more accessible to non-native English speakers. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:18, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

To make the pages easier to read, you might want to convert them to use {{Multilingual description}}. This generally improves the layout of galleries and category descriptions. -- User:Docu at 04:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Good tool. Here is the "what links here" link that lists the pages it is used on:

Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Multilingual description --Timeshifter (talk) 09:01, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

@Timeshifter: Keep in mind this page is simply a guideline. The naming convention part is mainly to let new gallery-creators know that languages besides English are fine and "this is how things are". It's not a policy and it's not trying to become one (we would need a lot more input/discussion from the community at large to make this anywhere close to absolute). I like to think that nationalism and/or politics have not played a role. I despise nationalism and tend to prefer usability over accessibility (or in this case liberalism, i.e. "all languages are equal"). I wrote it to reflect common practice as much as I could. There hasn't been a ton of discussion (at least not in the last couple years) over this, so don't go into it like there's all these strong opinions to argue against. We're just trying to figure out what we're doing here. :) Rocket000 (talk) 12:50, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I am not saying you have strong opinions, but after my years of experience on Wikipedia, I believe there are strong opinions about such things.

Is Mediawiki capable of recognizing the language of non-registered users, or what country they reside in? That ability might be used someday by the software to automatically put up category and gallery titles in the majority language of that country.

Commons:Galleries says it is a policy. And the naming section is vague: "Unlike naming categories, where English is almost always used, galleries should be named in language most associated with the subject. This applies to people, places, art, culture, etc. For general subjects and ones not tied to any specific language, the name most likely to be searched for (usually English) should be used. An exception to this rule is the naming of galleries of organisms and subjects where Latin names are considered universal. These follow the same guidelines as categories and should share the same name."

Currently, due to the software limitations, if people want country galleries to be read by the most people, English is the way to go for the gallery title in my opinion. I tried to change a country gallery title to English, and was soon reverted. The reason given was the policy. I read the policy differently than this person did. It could be read both ways. --Timeshifter (talk) 08:51, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's the other purpose for this guideline (it says guideline at the top, not policy). It's to prevent edit-warring over names. If people can't decide what to call a category, just take the advice on this page. I guess this role pushes it towards a policy-like status, but if it's better to have centralized discussion over these things instead every time there's some naming dispute.

Is Mediawiki capable of recognizing the language of non-registered users, or what country they reside in? No, unregistered users always get the English interface (unless they came from a link on a Wikimedia project in a different language). Rocket000 (talk) 10:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I must have been sleepy when I wrote my last comment. It does say guideline, not policy. I really wish Mediawiki developers could develop the software so that it recognizes the country and adapts the language of the category and gallery titles accordingly. I think it could possibly be done. I see web pages now and then that tell one what IP number one is using. That tells the country. I have a free stats addon (addfreestats.com) on a website of mine that tells the IP number, hostname, country, and sometimes the city of the last 500 visitors. I just checked it again to make sure I remembered it correctly, and wasn't sleepy. :) --Timeshifter (talk) 16:22, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I have been told back in September that we sure could do it (mw:Extension:LanguageSelector is for that), but that it is not possible because of cache issues... Jean-Fred (talk) 18:23, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that info. I wonder if mw:Extension:LanguageSelector could be fixed and developed further to work only on the titles of categories/galleries and not the text on the pages. Maybe it could work if simplified for that task only. --Timeshifter (talk) 06:48, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

HOW TO create a gallery page

For those poor newcomers like me, a few words should be included like: Go to Search, put in "(the name of your future gallery page)", then click on the red gallery name, edit the page (marked as gallery page on the very top) by putting in the gallery tag and the pictures. Then add the category:[[Category:xyz]]. A gallery can have any name, but it is usual to follow the category name. Finally click on the button "Show preview", make final changes, and if you like your work, click on "Save page". --AHert (talk) 20:37, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Agree with this - I was trying to figure out this basic first step, and was happy these instructions were included on the "Discussion" page! Jwild (talk) 20:49, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Most of use come to Commons from Wikipedia, hence are already familiar with the procedures outlined in en:Wikipedia:Your_first_article#How_to_create_a_page. Yes, a sentence or two should be added in this gallery guide, for those who come direct to Commons. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:28, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

So, with minor changes and additions, I pasted your recommended text into the page. Perhaps others will find ways to improve it. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:57, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

A single image on a page is not a gallery.

Resolved

I have a problem with this statement. Say that an image is promoted as Commons:Valued images in a scope corresponding to a category for which there is no gallery. Now, I would like to highlight that photo for image repository users. The simplest thing would be to make a gallery in the category and tag that with {{VI-tiny}} ( ). But that is not accepted practise (albeit I do not understand why). The alternative is then to create a gallery page to highlight this content. And the highlighted content is only this image (and it is the most relevant to see). But that is not allowed according to this guideline. Now, all this redundant gallery category stuff is really a symptom of a broken system. (In my opinion the Mediawiki SW should be capable of higlighting content in the categories or make options available for sorting a category according to different criteria (usage, size, featured, view, upload date) but we don't have that). Considering that we have a broken system which we need to implement the best compromise solution on, I really think one-file galleries should be allowed. How else, should we show highlighted content for repository users in cases where only one image is highlighted in a given category? --Slaunger (talk) 22:54, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Intention

I feel like an explanation is in order regarding my addition of "A single image on a page is not a gallery." First, let me state that I created this page as my proposal for some kind of guidance concerning galleries. It was meant to fall more on the help-page end of the guideline spectrum, not the policy end. At all. As much as I would support a policy banning single image pages (outside of the file namespace), that was not my intent with that single sentence.

I can understand how the language I used was misinterpreted. I wasn't thinking Wikimedia Commons "Gallery" at the time, but "gallery" as in the common sense. Galleries, by definition, contain multiple works (or are expected to eventually). We call our mainspace pages galleries because that's what they're normally used for. That doesn't mean they must never contain 1 (or even 0) images. Just have a reason for doing it. If the community feels that VI designation is a good reason, that's fine. Rocket000 (talk) 03:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Gallery linkage

Piggybacking on the above comments, i think we need to set guidelines for how galleries are linked, both from other projects, and within the commons. we have some very high quality galleries, such as London and New York City, which one can only find if you type the search term, or happen to be in the category tree for that specific category. I think large galleries can, and should, be placed in as many categories as people may be likely to want to see them, so that London might be in Category:Cities, Category:Europe, even Category:Tourism. I know this goes against overcategorization rules established here, but those rules NEVER mention galleries, only files. we can modify those rules for galleries. I also like Category:Gallery pages, which never got off the ground. that category tree could work well if used more. I would also like to suggest that there be a review process for rating galleries, similar to Featured Article and Featured Image status. Since this talk page is not seen much, i will mirror these comments elsewhere, when i can figure out the best places.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 17:48, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia links to galleries

In my experience, galleries rarely contain all the best images for a subject, and often times not anything good at all. So I'm puzzled by the fact that the links to Commons from Wikipedia always direct one to the Commons galleries, instead of the categories. I have no problem with galleries, though I personally find no use for them, but is there any good reason why Wikipedia should link to galleries rather than categories? FunkMonk (talk) 14:52, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I had the same concern, that many galleries linked to from WP are horrible, whereas the category tree may be well organized (though some are not, of course). I finally figured out, as you may have, how to solve this:

{{Commons}} links to the gallery of the same name

{{Commons|actual gallery name}} links to the gallery name indicated, which may be different from the article name

{{Commons Category}} links to the CATEGORY of the exact same name as the article

{{Commons Category|actual category name}} links to the category which most closely corresponds to the article, but which has a different name.

hope that helps. I would say that unless the gallery is really comprehensive, change the coding on the WP page to target the category insteadMercurywoodrose (talk) 17:42, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

{{commonscat}} is enough (it's shorter than 'Commons Category') - but please only change commons-links from galleries to categories when necessary (if you worked on a gallery, it's really frustrating to see the link changed - even if it's often only a general change and has nothing to do with your work... ;->). Anna reg (talk) 12:39, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Botanical galleries

Hello,
I wanted to notify some people interested in galleries of the discussion I just started at Commons:Village pump about plant galleries (if they should be strict species galleries or provide an overview of the material about the plant that's available on commons). I'd appreciate comments!
Best wishes, --Anna reg (talk) 23:43, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Category:Categories with a gallery for a better choice of sub-categories

Hi,

People upload their images into categories. But often, it should be better if they uploaded into sub-categories. To avoid crowded categories. But users dont know what sub-categories exist or what sub-category to use.
To help, I add sometimes a gallery in some crowded categories. With an image for each sub-category to use.
I added this type of galleries inside a category into the present article, but it has been reverted.
I have added this in the examples of galleries :
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A gallery for a better choice of sub-categories. Example : Category:Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

The categories with such a gallery are gathered here : Category:Categories with a gallery for a better choice of sub-categories

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other wikipedians added this type of galleries inside a category in the categories they update.
I think that the category with the largest gallery is Category:Eiffel tower (21 sub-categories).
Is the revert appropriate ?--Tangopaso (talk) 11:15, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I confess that I did not understand what you are trying to illustrate with the additions that I reverted. Now I do, thank you.

While I think that the system you show might be a good idea, I see two problems. First, policy on categories says nothing about adding a gallery to a category, see COM:C. It calls for only a "short description". Second, if this is to be allowed, I think the captions in the gallery must exactly match the categories that they are intended to illustrate and that they should be in the same sort order. In all of the half dozen that I have looked at, one or both of these was not true. This very much limits the usefulness and makes the added gallery just clutter.

I also see that there are 59 examples of this system in all of Commons. We have over three million categories and over a hundred thousand galleries (see Commons:Database_reports/Page_count_by_namespace). Even if the system were approved, I don't think something that has only 59 uses deserves any mention on a page that illustrates common practice on Commons.

I suggest that you organize approval of this system before you do anything else. Without that, you run the risk that one of our colleagues will simply remove the galleries for being confusing clutter and outside of policy. . Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 14:39, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Incidentally, I think that Category:Eiffel Tower is a very poor example of this scheme. There is almost no correspondence between the images in the gallery and the categories available, so that the gallery offers no help at all in picking a subcat for an image. Unless it is promptly cleaned up and made actually useful for the purpose you describe, I will probably remove it. . Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 14:51, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for answer.

1. Obviously, only the main sub-categories are present in those galleries. For example in Category:Eiffel tower. But it is very useful, because before that, there were dozens (or even hundreds) of images in the main category Eiffel tower. Its stupid, but every month, users upload more and more photos of the Eiffel tower. From all the point of views. Now the gallery help to put the photos in the right sub-category.

2. The order of the categories in the gallery is not the same than in the main category to put in head the most important ones..

3. The names of the sub-categories in the gallery are often shorter than the plain name of the sub-category for a purpose of place below the image. And with the "blue link", you can reach directly the right sub-category..

4. I created this system for categories that I am following, but other wikipedians do the same in their categories. It is "piranha effect", I suppose..

5. These galleries are only useful for crowded categories. Here are examples of crowded categories :.

Category:White House : 906 images
Category:Kew Gardens : 696 images
Category:Golden Gate Bridge : 558 images
Category:Manhattan, New York City : 409 images
Category:Consolidated B-24 Liberator : 308 images. In Category:Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress (with gallery), there are only 31.

I think that with a gallery in these categories, these images should be transferred to sub-categories..

6. What do you mean by I suggest that you organize approval of this system. What is the procedure to follow ? As you read, my English is not very fluent..

Best regards. --Tangopaso (talk) 22:24, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Obviously, the gallery is very useful for non-speaking english users. But I don't think we need the category:Categories with a gallery for a better choice of sub-categories.--Paris 16 (talk) 23:23, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Paris 16 in regards to the galleries for non-English speakers. As for the categories grouping the galleries... I'm not sure what is the best choice for them. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:40, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I have put it up for deletion. See Commons:Categories for discussion/2015/01/Category:Categories with a gallery for a better choice of sub-categories. It is probably best to use that as a place for discussion at this stage. Alan Liefting (talk) 04:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

нужно редактировать этот текст

Я удивлён - почему никто не отредактировал правила на русском Викискладе? Разве это не важно для нашей работы? Хотя бы стилистически обработать текст! --Rumata10 (talk) 08:39, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Proposed addition

Since this is a guideline, I figured I should come to the talk page rather than just start editing.

I think Commons:Galleries#The benefits of galleries currently omits one of the most important benefits. I'd like to add something to the following effect: "Galleries can include relevant images from subcategories. Commons' rule against over-categorization means that images in a given category should not be in any of its ancestor categories. However, it can be very useful to have them in a gallery corresponding to an ancestor category. For example, a gallery page about a city can show images of the most famous places in the city, even though those famous places each has a category of its own. Similarly, a gallery page can gather together examples of different species of a particular plant genus, to make them easy to compare and contrast."

Any objections? - Jmabel ! talk 05:06, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to improve navigation from gallery pages to parent categories

An editor had requested comment from other editors for this discussion.
The discussion is now closed, please do not modify it.

Background

I'd like to raise a particular issue with gallery pages which I think gets overlooked: galleries are landing pages. When a user comes to Commons in search of images (usually through a Wikipedia link) they often land on a gallery page instead of the subject category. The same is also true of searching within commons. If I search for "London" I end up on the London gallery page rather than Category:London. While gallery pages offer various advantages, they have the distinct disadvantage that it is not usually obvious that the user can browse deeper into the range of images – the user must scroll down to the bottom of the page to locate the link to the subject category, or open an image and then find the image category hidden at the bottom. This is very poor usability as it requires the user to have a working knowledge of Commons functionality. It is very likely that a first-time user will assume that the images shown in a gallery page are all that is on offer, and fail to explore the category. An example of this is the page for the National Gallery of Art in Washington; it is not at all clear that there are over 1700 images of artworks hidden below this selection, unless the user knows that they must find the category link hidden at the bottom of the page.

A possible solution is demonstrated in the London page – near the top of the page, the {{Maincat}} template is used to point the user up to the parent category thus:

This provides an instant signpost to more content. Additionally, under some headings, the {{see}} or {{Maincat}} templates can provide relevant links to sub-categories to assist the user with wayfinding. Another good example of this is the page devoted to Star Wars.

I would like to propose that these wayfinding templates be recommended, possibly mandated, as a matter of policy for gallery pages. Perhaps a new template could be developed as a gallery page header and automatically applied across the board - its aim would be to make clear to the user that the gallery page is just a selection of highlights, and for a wider selection of images, they should delve into the category taxonomy.

Does this seem like a fair idea? Cnbrb (talk) 16:37, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

In my opinion - you are absolutely right! I'm also interested of creating of Gallery Pages - so good as possible and encourage users to browse more, all what is available in all concerning categories. Probably I found the best and easy configurable solution: {{for2}} and use it on Raspberry Pi gallery. Many great examples and inspirations can be found e.g. at User:Nilfanion/Galleries, also at Commons:Galleries of course. --Jasc PL (talk) 19:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Jasc PL! Very interesting comparisons. Cnbrb (talk) 10:06, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Proposal

So I propose a couple of changes. First, a new template, provisionally called {{gallery page}} ~~(not created yet)~~. It could look something like this:

Secondly, an addition to this policy page: Under Starting a gallery, after the Categories section, I suggest we add the following wording:

Category Linking

A gallery page is often the first place a user arrives at a subject, for example when they search on Commons. Therefore it is important to make it clear to the user that the gallery only contains a small selection of images, and that more images are available. It is recommended to add the template {{gallery page}} at the top of a gallery page to make it easy for the user to understand this difference, and to provide a link up to the parent category.

Additionally, if your gallery page is split up under subheadings, users may benefit from links to relevant subcategories. If an appropriate subcategory exists, add the template {{maincat}} under a subheading to provide a relevant link.

For example, If you have a gallery page about London, and a subsection about Big Ben, add {{gallery page|London}} to the top of the page and {{maincat|Big Ben}} under the subheading.

Not all subheadings have corresponding categories, so you do not have to use this template if an appropriate subcategory does not exist.

Comments

Strong Support I personally prefer for any page that is not filled with a gallery to link to a category e.g. "XXX" redirects to "Category:XXX" and where galeries exist they should immediately link to the relevant categories, not force us to scroll to the bottom of the page to find the category. This proposed template would immediately solve this issue. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 13:06, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
- Gallery pages are not allowed to redirect to categories. Such a cross namespace redirect is an official reason for speedy deletion. A link to a gallery page should be red if the gallery does not exist. Jcb (talk) 23:14, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
User:Cnbrb You have also my Support of course - I'm fitting in with above arguments. I see, you are doing a very good work! --Jasc PL (talk) 13:43, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
Support: Ideally, the namespace would be deleted after the contents of the the very few sensible galleries is moved to categories; this seems to be a step in that direction, and it’s eitherway a good idea. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:53, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
Support Seems good. I had created some galleries which follows most of this proposal, including links to categories in all sub-heads. And those galleries are only to display the best photos to describe the subject in each sections. J e e 05:51, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Beautiful gallery and many of your hard work @Jkadavoor, but isn't it to big / so long; near 1000 images on the one page? Maybe better idea would be to keep main gallery and 6 subgalleries? --Jasc PL (talk) 14:04, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Off course; they can be split if difficult to load. The Birds of Kerala gallery is a bit difficult to load; but all other fauna galleries I created so far works well. BTW, I have no problem if some one make changes on them. The goal is to give people an easier way to identify their photos without browsing through so many pages. J e e 14:13, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Ooppsss... Jkadavoor. "Butterflies of Kerala" was any problem - for me. "Birds of Kerala" is beautiful too, probably, i don't know :) - I must close its tab due to some "Page is not responding" errors. In my opinion, there are some serious problems we all must resolve by creating a big gallery pages:

Technical: there are billions of people, not only from poorest countries, they use older computers with weaker CPU, small amount of RAM and older browsers - they should't be excluded from using Wikimedia resources due to their equipment.
(so called) Usability: in this example - how to fast end easy find something on the page that have a TOC that's many screens scrolling long? Also navigation on pages like that is significantly straitened. However, you excellent linked the page content to other resources.

It's not simply my criticism of your work - only some insights based on my "technical" point of view and experiences by web pages design.
Greetings, --Jasc PL (talk) 15:26, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I understand. But we've many heavily loaded galleries. We can't avoid them for the sake of some users. I too avoid visiting them when in a weak resource. Other times, I enjoy them! :) J e e 15:40, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

This example has any problems with loading, displaying or editing (having an appropriate amount of code the browser must render to display content). Some issues with page design, but who care about it if a page have so beautiful content! :) --Jasc PL (talk) 16:21, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

@Tuválkin: Am I missing something? Is there a proposal here to get rid of galleries entirely? If so, I oppose that strongly. While galleries have been underused, the best of them are very worth having, and categories are no substitute. A couple of examples, from among my own work: Romanian Orthodox churches in Bucharest, Seattle and the Orient. There is absolutely no way that categories can serve an equivalent purpose. - Jmabel ! talk 16:10, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Strong

Support - for:

consciously created galleries having the best examples of category content - and/or
galleries including all (with the reasonable amount) content of category/s - with valuable descriptions, helpful links etc.
--Jasc PL (talk) 16:35, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Support. This exact issue is why I so rarely create galleries—I'm always worried that I'm making things harder to find rather than easier if the gallery is anything less than perfect. –IagoQnsi (talk) 15:35, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Support excellent idea, imho. --El Grafo (talk) 12:48, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the input everyone. The template {{gallery page}} is now available to add to your commons pages.

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

User galleries

Just curious but are galleries from categories of Wikimedia photographers considered to be "regular galeries" or "user galeries"? ---Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:14, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

In general, if you have a gallery of your own work, it belongs in "user space" (e.g. User:Jmabel/People). - Jmabel ! talk 22:45, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

For some reason this didn't get automatically archived

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Wide support for proposal to update the Commons:Galleries policy as proposed. The template {{gallery page}} is now available to add to commons pages, and proposed text will be added to the policy page. Cnbrb (talk) 16:04, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Quite a few things here I'd like to change

There are quite a few things I'd like to change here, and I wondered if there would be objection to my having a serious go at this. The following list is not comprehensive, it's just what struck me offhand.

There seems to be an implication here that a gallery page will have a single pair of <gallery></gallery> tags; for the good ones that is almost never the case.
There is no mention of <gallery></gallery> tags being adjustable with things like mode="packed", which are generally better for this sort of thing, nor for the use of {{Wide image}}.
There is no discussion of the value of using a gallery on a moderately high-level category to embrace images from a variety of lower-level categories: e.g. different species within a genus or varieties within a species, different churches within a city, different people who have held the same office.
Almost nothing that is stated here is fleshed out with examples.
There is no discussion here of using galleries as an internal tool, to aid visual identification of future images (species within a genus or varieties within a species are a good example here).

I could just "be bold," but I don't want to put serious time into this just to be reverted, and I know that guidelines should not be edited casually. Jmabel ! talk 16:10, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Makes sense to me, I have no objections. Jcb (talk) 19:40, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Interwiki links?

Isn't this largely supplanted by Wikidata items as a means of linking to Wikipedia articles? - Jmabel ! talk 03:08, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Changes to this page

See this discussion. Synthwave.94 (talk) 13:19, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Add always a "Gallery" category

I would like to add to point 4. (about categories) that a gallery page should have at least two categories:

A "normal" category: one with the same name or another relevant category, as it already says.
A "Gallery" category, one from Category:Gallery pages or it's subcategories. Too often I miss this one at gallery pages. Mention it on this Help page might prevent it.

JopkeB (talk) 03:15, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Issue with headers in gallery TOC

Seems like this gallery uses some way of showing translated versions of the headers depending on which ?uselang= is set: Deutschland

The headers display fine in the gallery itself but are bugged in the TOC. Why is that / how can this be fixed – is there some issue about this? (I don't think galleries are very useful, e.g. even large ones are barely viewed or well-populated, but as long as they are used and displayed in search results, they should work properly.)
(Archived before solution & 0 replies) Prototyperspective (talk) 23:00, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

This discussion of one or several categories is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive.

Proposal to add always a Gallery category to a gallery page

Proposal: change 4. Categories

Current text: "Every gallery should be categorized. Add the gallery to the category with the same name, or if there is none, to relevant categories (see Commons:Categories)."

Change to: "Every gallery should be categorized. Add the gallery to at least two categories:

1. with the same name, or if there is none, to relevant categories (see Commons:Categories)

2. at least one subcategory of Category:Gallery pages."

Reason/problem: There are a lot of gallery pages without such a gallery category, it would not surprise me when there are more than a thousand. That makes it hard to find them if you do not know the exact name or when you just want to browse gallery pages. JopkeB (talk) 15:24, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Support — I also face problems finding gallery pages related to India due to the lack of dedicated gallery categories. I always try to categorize existing gallery pages to dedicated categories. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 16:48, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Support - Jmabel ! talk 18:10, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Support as a general guideline of a desirable target,

Oppose if that means that all gallery pages must be reviewed by someone, or that some galleries could be deleted because of lacking a subcategory of "Gallery pages". MGeog2022 (talk) 18:11, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Clearly the remedy for lacking an appropriate parent category is not deletion, it is adding the parent category. - Jmabel ! talk 19:07, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

OK, this makes sense. As it is only a guideline (should),

Support. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:16, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Support This is a guideline. There usually aren't consequences for not following guidelines. Except that someone will hopefully fix the issue based on the guidance in it. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:57, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Oppose Many gallery pages are low-quality. They should not be added to the corresponding category. It is good that many galleries do not have the corresponding category set. They often have just a handful of images, are outdated by decades, are unmaintained, usually created and edited by just one editor, and feature often arbitrary images while hiding the media that is in the category page. However,

Support for the requirement of all galleries to be in a Gallery pages category. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:58, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

"gallery pages [of] low-quality ... should not be added to the corresponding category." But that is a rule that have been established many years ago, ever since the version of 28 jul 2009 21:04 (under Other things to include). So that is not the question here. If you want that to be changed, then please start a separate discussion. JopkeB (talk) 02:12, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense anyway. How are people suppose to improve galleries if they can't find them to begin with because they aren't categorized? A better solution would be to come up with some kind of way to evaluate galleries based on their quality and ability to be improved and then create maintenance categories or something based on that. Excluding them from main categories for galleries doesn't make sense though. It's not like we do that with anything else. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:17, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

When it comes to anything else, those things are usually put into subcategories, not very prominently as the only page in a category as large as Animals or Health care etc. Moreover, people can find them in the search where they always show up but I wouldn't have a problem with them being in a subcategory of a large cat...however if that subcat only contains one page some category for galleries shouldn't be sorted to be at the top of the cat. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:21, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

People can find them in the search It really depends since you have to know what to look for and galleries don't always have the same name as the category. So it's not that sure of a thing that someone will be able to find one that way. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:40, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I meant they can find them enough for the gallery to get improved up to state where it becomes relevant for the page. I could make a hundred gallery pages each with one random image about the subject for all of the largest categories. If they are about the same subject or contain text about it they show up way too far up and near/at the top of "Categories and Pages" so if you search for animals and then click on that, a gallery named like it would should show up even if it contains just one image added by one editor one decade ago. The main point however was that those things are usually put into subcategories, not very prominently. Instead of doing things about galleries, I think category page need to be improved so that e.g. people can use them to browse most relevant most high-quality files about the subject rather than going to a gallery page and the file-titles should describe the contents at least as well as any captions on a gallery page. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:48, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Instead of doing things about galleries, I think category page need to be improved. I have complaints about how categories work myself but they aren't mutually exclusive and I assume fixing them would be on the dev team anyway. Whereas improving the quality and findability of galleries is something we can do ourselves. Plus like this a talk page for discussing galleries. Its a little wierd to come up in here and be like "I know this has to do with galleries, but lets talk about the issues with categories instead." --Adamant1 (talk) 10:03, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

those things are usually put into subcategories, not very prominently Prototyperspective (talk) 10:10, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this is according to the Commons category policies. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 10:12, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

What is according to the Commons category policies and which part of that policy? Does it address my main point which Adamant1 ignored and which I requoted above? The policy says gallery pages according to topic which would be accomplished with a cat like "Gallery pages about history". Prototyperspective (talk) 10:20, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to repeat what JopkeB said above: the issue at hand here is whether to add a requirement that all galleries be categorized directly or indirectly under Category:Gallery pages. If you want to discuss something else, start a new section. - Jmabel ! talk 21:27, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

This category discussion has been closed.
Consensus	Resolved by consensus
Actions	Make the proposed addition in 4. Categories Done by Sbb1413 before I could do it JopkeB (talk) 06:45, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Participants	Sbb1413 (talk · contribs) Jmabel (talk · contribs) MGeog2022 (talk · contribs) Adamant1 (talk · contribs) Prototyperspective (talk · contribs)
Notes	Whoever wants to help categorizing galleries without a gallery category: use query to see which ones lack such a category (and add more search terms to your own interests)
Closed by	JopkeB (talk) 06:25, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to add always a Gallery category to a gallery page

Proposal: change 4. Categories

Current text: "Every gallery should be categorized. Add the gallery to the category with the same name, or if there is none, to relevant categories (see Commons:Categories)."

Change to: "Every gallery should be categorized. Add the gallery to at least two categories:

1. with the same name, or if there is none, to relevant categories (see Commons:Categories)

2. at least one subcategory of Category:Gallery pages."

Reason/problem: There are a lot of gallery pages without such a gallery category, it would not surprise me when there are more than a thousand. That makes it hard to find them if you do not know the exact name or when you just want to browse gallery pages. JopkeB (talk) 15:24, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Support — I also face problems finding gallery pages related to India due to the lack of dedicated gallery categories. I always try to categorize existing gallery pages to dedicated categories. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 16:48, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Support - Jmabel ! talk 18:10, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Support as a general guideline of a desirable target,

Oppose if that means that all gallery pages must be reviewed by someone, or that some galleries could be deleted because of lacking a subcategory of "Gallery pages". MGeog2022 (talk) 18:11, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Clearly the remedy for lacking an appropriate parent category is not deletion, it is adding the parent category. - Jmabel ! talk 19:07, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

OK, this makes sense. As it is only a guideline (should),

Support. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:16, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Support This is a guideline. There usually aren't consequences for not following guidelines. Except that someone will hopefully fix the issue based on the guidance in it. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:57, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Oppose Many gallery pages are low-quality. They should not be added to the corresponding category. It is good that many galleries do not have the corresponding category set. They often have just a handful of images, are outdated by decades, are unmaintained, usually created and edited by just one editor, and feature often arbitrary images while hiding the media that is in the category page. However,

Support for the requirement of all galleries to be in a Gallery pages category. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:58, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

"gallery pages [of] low-quality ... should not be added to the corresponding category." But that is a rule that have been established many years ago, ever since the version of 28 jul 2009 21:04 (under Other things to include). So that is not the question here. If you want that to be changed, then please start a separate discussion. JopkeB (talk) 02:12, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense anyway. How are people suppose to improve galleries if they can't find them to begin with because they aren't categorized? A better solution would be to come up with some kind of way to evaluate galleries based on their quality and ability to be improved and then create maintenance categories or something based on that. Excluding them from main categories for galleries doesn't make sense though. It's not like we do that with anything else. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:17, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

When it comes to anything else, those things are usually put into subcategories, not very prominently as the only page in a category as large as Animals or Health care etc. Moreover, people can find them in the search where they always show up but I wouldn't have a problem with them being in a subcategory of a large cat...however if that subcat only contains one page some category for galleries shouldn't be sorted to be at the top of the cat. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:21, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

People can find them in the search It really depends since you have to know what to look for and galleries don't always have the same name as the category. So it's not that sure of a thing that someone will be able to find one that way. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:40, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I meant they can find them enough for the gallery to get improved up to state where it becomes relevant for the page. I could make a hundred gallery pages each with one random image about the subject for all of the largest categories. If they are about the same subject or contain text about it they show up way too far up and near/at the top of "Categories and Pages" so if you search for animals and then click on that, a gallery named like it would should show up even if it contains just one image added by one editor one decade ago. The main point however was that those things are usually put into subcategories, not very prominently. Instead of doing things about galleries, I think category page need to be improved so that e.g. people can use them to browse most relevant most high-quality files about the subject rather than going to a gallery page and the file-titles should describe the contents at least as well as any captions on a gallery page. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:48, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Instead of doing things about galleries, I think category page need to be improved. I have complaints about how categories work myself but they aren't mutually exclusive and I assume fixing them would be on the dev team anyway. Whereas improving the quality and findability of galleries is something we can do ourselves. Plus like this a talk page for discussing galleries. Its a little wierd to come up in here and be like "I know this has to do with galleries, but lets talk about the issues with categories instead." --Adamant1 (talk) 10:03, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

those things are usually put into subcategories, not very prominently Prototyperspective (talk) 10:10, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this is according to the Commons category policies. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 10:12, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

What is according to the Commons category policies and which part of that policy? Does it address my main point which Adamant1 ignored and which I requoted above? The policy says gallery pages according to topic which would be accomplished with a cat like "Gallery pages about history". Prototyperspective (talk) 10:20, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to repeat what JopkeB said above: the issue at hand here is whether to add a requirement that all galleries be categorized directly or indirectly under Category:Gallery pages. If you want to discuss something else, start a new section. - Jmabel ! talk 21:27, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

This category discussion has been closed.
Consensus	Resolved by consensus
Actions	Make the proposed addition in 4. Categories Done by Sbb1413 before I could do it JopkeB (talk) 06:45, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Participants	Sbb1413 (talk · contribs) Jmabel (talk · contribs) MGeog2022 (talk · contribs) Adamant1 (talk · contribs) Prototyperspective (talk · contribs)
Notes	Whoever wants to help categorizing galleries without a gallery category: use query to see which ones lack such a category (and add more search terms to your own interests)
Closed by	JopkeB (talk) 06:25, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Discussion about galleries on Village pump (Aug-Sept 2024)

Just for the record (to be able to find it more easily again): There was a discussion on Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/08#Further dissemination of Wikimedia Commons Atlas of the World needed that in fact was about several aspects of galleries (their importance, lack of quality in too many of them and some other problems). Three follow-up actions were:

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --JopkeB (talk) 07:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

JopkeB (talk) 07:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Galleries with only one image

I think galleries with one image are not useful and instead hide the other media & subcats on Commons or make it require an extra click. This is especially the case for galleries with just one image that is set on the Wikidata item of the category.

It's plausible one could argue having galleries with just one image can be useful to make it quick and easy to find the best-quality / most useful / only useful image of the subject. There are many galleries of that type. With this query linked by JopkeB above the first gallery I looked at was already of that type. It shows there are over 51,000 galleries with a gallery hatnote that includes the category link at the top and it may be difficult to correct and likely to a large extent due to galleries created by bots.

However, when that one image in the gallery is set on the Wikidata item of the category, it's already easily findable in the category as it's shown in the infobox (which is added by a bot if no user adds it). This means there is really no use in having these types of galleries but only problems since these are often what is linked from the corresponding Wikipedia article.

The question is could somebody create a query that shows 'galleries with just one image that is set on the Wikidata item' and can these then be deleted? It would also bring that 51 k number down a lot. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:09, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I'd support deleting them however their ultimately found. There really isn't any point in a single image gallery and their just extra work to maintain. Plus I think they go against the guideline anyway. Per Commons:Galleries "Galleries (gallery pages) exist to present readers with a structured and meaningful collection of the media found here on Wikimedia Commons." One image isn't really a "collection." --Adamant1 (talk) 11:20, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Agree. I forgot to link the example I found which has the one image also set in the Wikidata Infobox anyway (galleries with one image that is not set in the Wikidata item are probably exceptions and could be used to add images to the Wikidata item): Pieter Burmann the Younger. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:37, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Even multi-language descriptions are not an excuse here, since the image itself can have its description in multiple languages. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:11, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Comment Not sure on this. Consider (just for example) a famous painting, painted in France by a French painter, but whose category name is in English. Would it really be out of line to have a gallery page named with the French name and showing only our best image of the painting? - Jmabel ! talk 19:37, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes because there can be an English category-description, and an English-language redirect as well as machine translated category titles as proposed and likely overdue. Your example is to some extent absurd as in never or extremely rarely occurring. In any case, the Wikidata item of the category would well-visibly show the English name of the category along with other metadata. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:57, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Agree: Galleries with only one image are not useful and should be either deleted or get more media (but I think it is the responsibility of the creator to ensure that a gallery page meets the criteria, so I usually ask for deletion). And indeed: it is just annoying and disappointing when the link from Wikidata (and thus from Wikipedias and other projects) is to such a gallery instead of to the corresponding category with more files.

In case of "a famous painting, painted in France by a French painter, but whose category name is in English": the best image can be shown in the Wikidata item (famous paintings nearly always have a Wikidata item) and the Wikidata item can have translations in all the languages of the world, also in French. When there is no Wikidata item, the category can have a description in French and the best image can be put in the upper right corner of the category. And so you can find the painting with a simple search, also when you search with the French name.

By the way, the link to the query shows any gallery page without at least one gallery category, no other searching criteria are involved, like having hatnotes or category links at the top. JopkeB (talk) 03:56, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

@JopkeB: I'd be interested to know why exactly you think a gallery with two images is any more useful then one with a single image since your making an issue out of it. At least IMO it doesn't really make a difference in a lot of cases. It certainly doesn't seem to with the ones your making an issue out of. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:54, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: If the two images were a "before" and "after" some major change (such as re-cladding a building, or an institution moving from one headquarters to another), it could be quite useful. - Jmabel ! talk 19:45, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Sure. I don't disagree. There's plenty of instances where its useful to have a gallery with two images. Your example being one. What I'm refering to though is cases where there's a gallery for roses with 2 images and one of those images is just a superficial crop or slightly diiferent angle of the same rose. I don't think its useful in that case and it doesn't seem like anyone else except for JopkeB thinks it is. I assume you wouldn't either since its clearly not on the same level as your example. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:34, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

The point is that Adamant1 nominated a lot of gallery pages about roses with two to even six images with a speedy deletion template (GA1, for only zero or one image), while I think that should have been a proper deletion request. And then we could have judged ourselves whether in that cases the gallery page with two (ore even six) images is useful or not. JopkeB (talk) 04:38, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

I left a message about it on Yann's talk page. I have zero problem discussing it with other people in an undeletion request. I don't think your way of handling this has been appropriate though. Nor do I think there's anything from the guidelines or any discussion about it that I've seen saying galleries containing more then one image can't be nominated for speedy deletion. At least from Jmabel's comment it sounds like he thinks there's instances where it's totally justified. No one took your side on the ANU board either. So I think this is more just a case of IDONTLIKEIT and personally I rather see you drop it since it's just a time suck that clearly isn't going on your end at this point. Be my guest and open undeletion request if there's specific galleries that you think shouldn't have been deleted though. Again, I'm more then willing to discuss the merits of specific deletion requests. But I don't think there should be (or is) a hard and fast rule about it in the meantime. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:49, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: please don't "speedy" these unless they clearly, unambiguously meet deletion criteria. And please don't nominate too many at once before you even see what sort of consensus might develop in the DRs. There is no emergency here if you don't create one. - Jmabel ! talk 14:35, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: As far as I know most, if not all, of the galleries that I've nominated for deletion recently only had a single image or were written like pseudo Wikipedia articles. Which I assume would qualify for GA2. As far as I know there's only one DR though and I have no plans to nominate similar galleries for deletion until it's resolved. But then I don't really feel like acquiescing to JopkeB's dishonest derailing in the meantime either. So I'm still going to nominate galleries that I think are glorified articles for GA2 along with ones that only have a single image. There's no hurry to delete the other ones though. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:41, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: again, while there seems to be some doubt about consensus, please use DR instead of speedy, and please let's have a reasonable number of discussions to see what the consensus really is before you bring this to a mass level. The change (or refinement) of criteria was recent; it might turn out not to be a reflection of what people want; "be bold" is not a Commons principle. - Jmabel ! talk 14:54, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: JopkeB went off for multiple days about how galleries with only one image qualify for speedy deletion and then changed the guideline to say as much. So I think she's the one you should be talking about this with. It's not my thing though and I don't see anything wrong with nominating single image galleries for deletion since the guideline has been changed. I'm more then happy to stop doing it if either one of you want to revert her edit though. Personally, I think it make sense at least in the case of gallery pages for roses, if not others. But I'm more then willing to hold off on it for now until there's more of a consensus if, or when, her edit to the guideline is reverted. Otherwise it's a done deal as far as I'm concerned. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:06, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at proposals related to Taxon Galleries

Realized I didn't advertise this discussion here: Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Redirect_undermaintained_Species_Galleries_to_Category_pages, Sadads (talk) 01:05, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Add "criteria for creation of galleries" section to guideline

Per the Village Pump discussion it's pretty clear that a lot of galleries either shouldn't have been created in the first place or are otherwise lacking in quality. Although it's not really clear what makes a good quality gallery, but there are some things that I think clearly make bad ones. So there should be some kind of guidance in the guideline about when it's worth creating a gallery or not and what makes a gallery "good." These are just a few of the things I can think of off the top of my head. People are free to modify, add to, and or change the criteria as the discussion about it evolves.

1. Gallery pages should not be created for a topic where there are either to little images to justify it due to copyright or similar issues.

2. Gallery pages should not be created in cases where they merely serve to duplicate the main category for the topic, unless some additional information, such as translations or showing a large number of images in a structured way, is provided.

3. Any galleries that contain only a few images without realistically being expendable and/or ones that merely serve to recreate the main category for the topic can be nominated speedy deletion.

Obviously that's not much, but it's just a start and I expect other people to contribute their ideas to the list. Adamant1 (talk) 03:07, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

That last one is actually trickier than you might think. The fact that (unlike a category) a gallery allows for description of each image, a rather small gallery could, at least in principle, be pretty useful. I don't have a great example, but I'm thinking of things just a little more complicated than the matter we handle with a description at the top of Category:International Fountain, Seattle Center, where we show two subtly different fountains that have existed at the same location. - Jmabel ! talk 03:40, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Uhhhh, maybe? It's tangential, but I've never been totally sure where the line is between an informational gallery and something that's starting to slow creep into being a glorified Wikipedia article with images. Not to say the later is a bad thing or shouldn't exist. But I do think it's something worth considering and maybe noting down purely for documentational purposes if nothing else. I'd be interested to check out an example of what your talking about if you can find one though. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:46, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I would add to point 2: Gallery pages should not be created in cases where they merely serve to duplicate the main category for the topic, unless some additional information, such as translations or showing a large number of images in a structured way, is provided. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:19, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Already added by Adamant1 now. MGeog2022 (talk) 19:11, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah. Sorry, I should have mentioned I added it. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:44, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

My criteria for good galleries:

They have a good, clear name, that covers the content, as short as possible.
They have a Wikidata infobox or a short description about the subject. A gallery about a location preferably shows a map indicating the location, for example via the Wikidata infobox.
They have a clear purpose, direction and theme, for example:
- a guide to the subcategories of a large main category, with links to the subcategories (and grandchildren), showing with images what the subcategory names mean, for laymen and non native English speakers;
- an overview of a complex subject, a help by categorizing files, like the works of an artist by theme or year (with links to subcategories); another example: Overview of the Ajanta Caves
- an impression of for example a populated place, the collection of a museum or an art movement; extra criterium: showing different aspects of the subject
- showing beautiful things, sharing with the world what a location possesses/has to offer/is about, like art, culture, landscapes, vistas
- the best pictures about a subject (rewarded photographs)
- presentations (with slides; example: Register Varend Erfgoed Nederland was initially created for a presentation at a congress/symposium, see discussion (in Dutch))
- otherwise educational, for example: showing processes or developments, or explaning technical stuff
- offer translations, showing the names/descriptions of files in a category in more than 1 language (via Wikidata items or otherwise).

And of coarse a gallery page can have a mixe of purposes.

They have a clear structure, with subheadings and a logical order of the media, like alphabetically or chronological.
They show a decent amount of media, also depending on the theme and availability, but at least two, preferably a lot more.
Each of the media is captioned in the gallery (or has a link to a subcategory or a Wikidata item in lieu of such a caption).
They are in at least two categories: one for the topic and a subcategory of Category:Gallery pages.
They have {{Gallery page}}, not only for the useful message, but also to be able to search more easily for certain galleries in Petscan (and probably other search tools).

If a gallery page does not meet all of the criteria: it does not mean that it should be deleted. A gallery may be adjusted or the creator can be encouraged to improve it. Reasons to delete: see above.

For excellent galleries there might be more criteria, but that is out of scope of this discussion. JopkeB (talk) 12:51, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1, Jmabel, JopkeB, and MGeog2022: This discussion was being archived, and I've brought it back here. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 08:19, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Where should this guideline be implemented?

@Adamant1, Jmabel, and MGeog2022: We should still discuss where we will implement this proposal: here or on Commons:Guide to layout/Gallery pages (just discovered), or perhaps you know another page. If it is not here: there should be a link to the other page (I cannot find such a link here).
I think that our text fits better on Commons:Guide to layout/Gallery pages, also because earlier we spoke about a "guideline". What do you think?--JopkeB (talk) 14:22, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@JopkeB, Commons:Galleries page itself includes things such as: Obviously: Media! (images, sounds, video). Galleries without media are not galleries at all. They are considered out of the project scope and meet the criteria for speedy deletion.

If stricter criteria are wanted (even if only as a recommendation), it's probably the place to include it. I think Commons:Guide to layout/Gallery pages is a bit redundant with Commons:Galleries, it is not clear to me what the purpose of that separate page is. MGeog2022 (talk) 18:22, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I would recommend merging Commons:Guide to layout/Gallery pages into this page (and of course the new content belongs on this page).

My only compunction is that some of this may need to be carefully framed as a statement of best practices, not a set of requirements. For example, I certainly wouldn't want to see a proposal to delete a gallery because some images lack captions, or because someone considers its name unclear. Jmabel ! talk 20:09, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

+1. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:00, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I have created Commons:Deletion requests/Commons:Guide to layout/Gallery pages to discuss merging Commons:Guide to layout/Gallery pages into this page. Please join that discussion. JopkeB (talk) 05:01, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

So some editing still needs to be done. There are two sections that we would like to integrate in the current Commons:Galleries:

The current paragraph When to create a gallery should be extended with three reasons when not to create a gallery:
1. The first two points Adamant1 mentioned (I leave out the third one because there is is no consensus about that one).
  1. Request: Can a native English speaker edit the first one better? I think the word "either" should be removed or there should be an addition that justifies this word, and I guess "to little images" should be "too few images or other media". Am I right?
2. My line "[Gallery pages] show a decent amount of media, also depending on the theme and availability, but at least two, preferably a lot more." should be moved to this section.
  1. This might conflict with the current line "Galleries with only a single image are permitted if they highlight an image which has been elected by the community as a featured picture, quality image, or valued image." I think when there is only one photo to be highlighted, then you can also put it in the Wikidata item/infobox or in the upper right corner of the category, you do not need a gallery page for that reason. So I would like to change the current text accordingly.
3. This paragraph should also have a line like: Gallery pages that do not meet these criteria can be nominated for deletion. Exceptions: they have been vandalized (then revert the removal of the media) and/or had media that have not been deleted since (then start a discussion).
A paragraph should be added with criteria for good galleries. This part should be carefully framed as a statement of best practices, not as hard requirements. Request: Can someone make a proposal for that frame?

JopkeB (talk) 06:13, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

+1 MGeog2022 (talk) 10:04, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Obviously: Media! (images, sounds, video). Galleries without media are not galleries at all. They are considered out of the project scope and meet the criteria for speedy deletion. Unless they have been vandalized, of course (they meet the criteria for speedy deletion only if they have never had any media, or all the media they once had has been deleted since). It would probably be good to include this too. MGeog2022 (talk) 10:11, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Good point! I have extended point 3. with your remarks. JopkeB (talk) 04:37, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Commons talk:Galleries/Archive 1

Great!

Captions and sections

Categorizing galleries

HOWTO?

Plural or singular gallery names

Peculiar Overlay on Project Page

proposed status

Naming conventions

Singular/plural?

Alphabets

Country galleries

HOW TO create a gallery page

A single image on a page is not a gallery.

Intention

Gallery linkage

Wikipedia links to galleries

Botanical galleries

Category:Categories with a gallery for a better choice of sub-categories

нужно редактировать этот текст

Proposed addition

Proposal to improve navigation from gallery pages to parent categories

Background

Proposal

Comments

User galleries

For some reason this didn't get automatically archived

Quite a few things here I'd like to change

Interwiki links?

Changes to this page

Add always a "Gallery" category

Issue with headers in gallery TOC

Proposal to add always a Gallery category to a gallery page

Proposal to add always a Gallery category to a gallery page

Discussion about galleries on Village pump (Aug-Sept 2024)

Galleries with only one image

Discussion at proposals related to Taxon Galleries

Add "criteria for creation of galleries" section to guideline

Where should this guideline be implemented?

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