Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/02

Madonna and Child

Is there a particular term for this representation of the Madonna and Child, with the representation of Jesus superimposed on Mary's chest? - Jmabel ! talk 04:17, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel: en:Our Lady of the Sign. --HyperGaruda (talk) 05:29, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

@HyperGaruda: thank you, that term is totally new to me. - Jmabel ! talk

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 19:23, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/11/Category:Censored by lack of FOP

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:23, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

We seem to have consensus here, and a user who would really like to move forward. Can we please have an uninvolved admin close this? - Jmabel ! talk 01:20, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Is there a tool for checking if your image was used on a Wikimedia project?

This is surely vanity, but I find it encouraging to see my uploads being used on Wikipedia and the like. I can go through Special:ListFiles and just check the description pages of each of my uploads, but it’s tedious! And it also shows me images that I added to Wikipedia myself, which is not as encouraging. Does anyone know of a tool that would aggregate this data? If not, is the “File usage on other wikis” list available by some API? I think I could hack together a tool, probably. Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything (talk) 11:52, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

@Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything: GLAMorous lets you track usage statistics by category and by user. ReneeWrites (talk) 12:07, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

For apis you have prop=globalusage (keep in mind you can use that with generators) for example: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&generator=allimages&gaiuser=Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything&gaisort=timestamp&formatversion=2&prop=globalusage&gailimit=max&gulimit=max another option is toolforge wikireplicas contain an sql database with a globalimagelinks table, which you can query at https://quarry.wmcloud.org/ Bawolff (talk) 15:41, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:55, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Balancing Uploader Requests vs. Descriptive Filenames?

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:00, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

What's your take on this file naming dilemma? When an original uploader requests to change a descriptive filename to a less meaningful one, should we prioritize COM:FR#FR1 (respect original uploader's request) or COM:FR#FR2 (avoiding meaningless names)? How do you balance respecting the uploader's wishes with maintaining clear, descriptive filenames? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the best approach in this situation. SimmeD (talk) 11:57, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

@SimmeD: I think File:Ardea cinerea A7R04867 (51957702865).jpg is a good example of how a compromise was reached. The original uploader wishes the files to retain their original code, but Commons policy is pretty clear that the original file name File:A7R04867 (51957702865).jpg is in violation of our naming policies, regardless of how the uploader feels about them. The code can be appended to a name that complies with the naming policy, but it can't be the filename in its entirety. ReneeWrites (talk) 12:27, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

@SimmeD: My usual approach as a filemover is that I will honour most criterion-1 requests, but will decline them if the new name would immediately be eligible for renaming under some other criterion. So in the example above, I decided that the inclusion of the species name was enough to mean that criterion 2 didn't apply and so I renamed the file as requested by the uploader. On the other hand, when the uploader asked for File:Hochhaus Wintergartenstrasse, Leipzig, 12-06-30 by ralfr 11.jpg to be renamed back to File:12-06-30-leipzig-by-ralfr-11.jpg I declined the request because the proposed name was so ambiguous that it could immediately be renamed again under criterion 2. --bjh21 (talk) 17:22, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I am too a filemover. And I even happened to decline COM:FR#FR1 requests when the uploader wanted to change the filename from one in Latin script to IIRC Kanji / Kana, as the latter can be read only by a minority of Wikimedians and potential re-users. So: "FR1" is, for me, never higher than other criteria (FR2 or FR3), and I often deliberately changed a FR1 requested name to something else, often adding a shot date, location or motif (scientific) name. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 04:25, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for everyone's comments. I'll take them to heart and think about them if a situation arises. SimmeD (talk) 20:12, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Renaming multiple files

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:01, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

65 file names contain the typo Trafala, which should be Tarfala. This includes all currently existing file names containing "Trafala," most of which begin "Valley between Trafala," with a few exceptions. The captions and descriptions have already been corrected. (Example 1, example 2.)

Do I simply request that they all be renamed one by one, or is there a way that's more convenient for file movers? I don't wanna clog the backlog with a bunch of individual requests unless it's necessary.

Sinigh (talk) 15:36, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

I have a script for this and will correct the names the next days. GPSLeo (talk) 16:48, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

That is indeed a more convenient way. :) Thanks! Sinigh (talk) 17:09, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

 Done all corrected now. GPSLeo (talk) 19:02, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2025-02

In January 2025, 1 sysop was elected. Currently, there are 182 sysops.

• User:Ratekreel was elected (27/2/2) on 27 January.

---

Edited by RoyZuo.

---

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

--RoyZuo (talk) 23:35, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Invicta (Airline) - not a straightforward rename problem?

Ok, so this will probably appear lame compared to the deep technical stuff normally discussed here, but it has all but done my head in, although I now feel I am winning the battle. I'll explain.

Is this Invicta Airways or Invicta International Airlines? You can have two guesses.

There are approximately 30 media items (photos) related to a lesser-known defunct UK airline that operated as Invicta. And around 20 categories and sub-categories more or less related to them and not much else. The problem arises because for half its life this airline operated as Invicta Airways Ltd, and for the other half it adopted a new legal identity as Invicta International Airlines Ltd. Both the main article on en:wikipedia, and here at Commons, have ended up in a muddle, with everything being labelled as International. I am attempting to put this right, but it is not a straightforward rename situation, because approximately half of the images are in the correct categories, whilst the other half need renaming, and new categories creating for them. I cannot imagine there is a bot for that, so I am slogging through the process on a one-by-one basis. Mostly it seems as if there are more categories than images.

An additional complication is that the front-end image selection requires a trained eye, most probably from an aviation geek such as myself, because the differences are subtle, to the extent that they have been overlooked for the past 12 years. For a start, the aircraft colour-schemes are all but identical. The aircraft owned by Invicta Airways are not marked Airways, and the ones that belong to the later airline are not marked Airline - that would just be too helpful LOL. And sometimes the same aircraft appear on both sides of the divide at different times. Nevertheless I have a crystal ball that takes me to the right place. What I do not possess is the skill-set to be 100% sure I am getting the re-categorisation process correct. In fact I am sure I am making a complete xyz$ of it, but I also feel I am making progress, slowly.

I believe it is only correct that I set the record straight somewhere (here, for instance), as to what I am trying to achieve, and invite comments. Meanwhile, I will observe that in this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words. WendlingCrusader (talk) 10:20, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

@WendlingCrusader:

1. Yes it's a slog.
2. Normally, we make the older company a subcat of the newer company, and parallel that for subcats. Anything where we are in doubt stays in the category for the newer company.

Jmabel ! talk 19:26, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel

Thankyou - that is most useful confirmation, as it is something I have been working towards already. WendlingCrusader (talk) 11:45, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Commons:GLAM

It looks to me like Commons:GLAM and its subpages have barely been touched in years (unless we count vandalism and its reversion), and that much of the advice there falls short of being clear, comprehensive, and current. Anyone with experience in this area care to make a good pass through this and see what you can improve? - Jmabel ! talk 03:21, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Global ban proposal for Shāntián Tàiláng

Hello. This is to notify the community that there is an ongoing global ban proposal for User:Shāntián Tàiláng who has been active on this wiki. You are invited to participate at m:Requests for comment/Global ban for Shāntián Tàiláng. Wüstenspringmaus _talk 12:07, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Reminder: first part of the annual UCoC review closes soon

Please help translate to your language.

This is a reminder that the first phase of the annual review period for the Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines will be closing soon. You can make suggestions for changes through the end of day, 3 February 2025. This is the first step of several to be taken for the annual review. Read more information and find a conversation to join on the UCoC page on Meta. After review of the feedback, proposals for updated text will be published on Meta in March for another round of community review.

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

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Deletion request categorization

Hello,

I came into a talk with a fellow Wikimedian about the subject of categorization of FOP-related deletion requests. Sometimes, the outcome is that an offending version gets revision-deleted, but the file itself stays after cropping, here's an example. As far as I understood it, differentiating between "kept" and "deleted" categories has the purpose to keep track of files that could eventually return and get restored should any local legislation change. So, by this logic, it would make more sense to affix "deleted" categories to DR like the example, instead of using the "kept" denominator. JWilz12345, which whom I talked, said to best carry this over here to get more input. So, here we go! Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 09:34, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

If majority of users agree that in those cases of files that were eventually suppressed/redacted, then I'll also agree: xyz FOP cases/kept → xyz FOP cases/deleted. Anyway, it's more logical. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 09:43, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I'll ping Podzemnik (who changed from /kept to /deleted here). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 10:17, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree that the purpose of the "deleted" category is to bring some FoP photos back one day, so it makes sense to me to categorise those pictures with their deleted versions in the deleted category. Regards, Podzemnik (talk) 18:04, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

If the file is kept, but revisions are deleted for copyright reasons with known expiration, the solution is not to categorize the deletion discussion. The solution is to categorize the file page, e.g. Category:Commons:Files with deleted versions to be restored in 2040, where I categorized a bunch of images that had works by Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck in the background. - Jmabel ! talk 20:33, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Major restructuring of database tables might require updating some tools

I just wanted to share this here, for all developers who do not subscribe to any of the announce mailing lists. In the coming months MediaWiki will see some major changes to the database structure for tables related to file management. Essentially, if something depends on the image or oldimage tables of the toolforge replicas, or any other sort of database dump, it is likely to require updates to the tool in order to keep working.

With these changes, the information around files will be stored much more similarly to how the page and revisions table keep track of revisions for a page. This is something that has been on the MediaWiki todo list for a long time. The ticket was created in 2011, but really, it was already supposed to happen in 2006. Due to the technical complexity and the fast growth of wikimedia in the 2006-2008 timeframe the change quickly became almost unachievable and increasingly complex afterwards. But now the foundation seems to have acquired the knowledge and experience to execute this long time need. Fixing this should simplify the management of file revisions, making them less susceptible to bugs and inconsistencies, as well as overall making it much easier to work with old and new versions of files from within MediaWiki.

It is advisable that tool maintainers start working on rewriting their tools now, to be able to read from both the new and the old tables, so that you can easily switch your tool when the old tables disappear. If you know of any such tools or tooling, you might want to double check with their maintainer if they are ready for this change. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:16, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Original description by photographer/author

What's the community's opinion on "original description" given by the author? Some descriptions (as well as file captions) I write include my thoughts that form an integral part together with the visual files. The same goes for non-commons photographers whose works are imported here. When they are deleted or altered sometimes the context of the creation is lost.

Is there / can there be an sdc property for original description?--RoyZuo (talk) 20:34, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, so far Commons' policy has generally been to keep original descriptions from GLAMs intact (though of course more information can be added). File:Elliott Bay sunset, probably before 1889 - DPLA - cd9cd454e8804395a00fe402fc987c12 (page 1).jpg is a good example of an image where the original description and title were quite wrong, and I added more accurate information.

We do not currently give such deference to other uploads. I certainly would not want to guarantee to everyone that their original description would be kept: I have seen some wildly misleading, highly opinionated, and even slanderous original descriptions. We have also taken imported from Flickr where the description on Flickr was wildly out of bounds for what would be acceptable on Commons. File:Free Palestine, London.jpg is a good example of that.

My suggestion to anyone who wants to keep their own description intact and available is to first upload to a site such as Flickr where you have complete control of your descriptions, then use that as a source for your upload to Commons, with a link back to that as source.

I'm neutral on adding an SDC value for "original description". I suspect we could use an existing property with a qualifier.

Jmabel ! talk 20:54, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

SDC would not be the right place for this. For certain historical documents (such as uploads from the Bundesarchiv) the original description is kept with a disclaimer for its biases or inaccuracies, but generally speaking if a file's description should be amended in some way, the original version's just somewhere in the file history. ReneeWrites (talk) 14:38, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

That becomes de facto inaccessible to most users. RoyZuo (talk) 23:07, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I recently started wrapping the original description in {{Original caption}} and preceding it with an improved description, like here. It's not SDC, but could be enough? --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:24, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Thx a lot! that's good enough for me. i think it's enough to prevent other users from deleting the "original description".--RoyZuo (talk) 18:26, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by:   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 11:01, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

SDC property on the nature of audio track？

I made videos of something like Category:Automata. I put a piece of music in place of the environmental sound captured. I will explicitly say in description that the music is added in postproduction and not the sound from or around the mechanical device.

I wonder, is there / should there be an sdc property about the nature of audio track of a video? in order to specify: live sound, or mix of sound recorded live and sound recorded elsewhere / at a different time, or purely sound recorded elsewhere / at a different time? RoyZuo (talk) 22:52, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Not sure, but at least one other relevant question is whether the sound, if not recorded on the spot, is intended as wikt:diegetic or not. - Jmabel ! talk 00:39, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Photo challenge December results

Footprints: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Hund im Herzen	Pawprints of hares in freshly fallen snow	Track on sand
Author	Ilka Franz	Slottsviken51	Saral Shots
Score	18	13	11

Pastels: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	A piece of pastel colors rainbow mille crepe cake and a piece of strawberry cream mille crepe cake	Red Arrows flying the "Tornado" manoeuvre in evening light	Foggy morning
Author	Junyu-K	Julian Herzog	BogTar201213
Score	23	10	9

Congratulations to Ilka Franz, Slottsviken51, Saral Shots, Junyu-K, Julian Herzog and BogTar201213. -- Jarekt (talk) 02:40, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Fake SVGs

A user has uploaded hundreds of SVGs which are fake SVGs. They've also overwritten a number of proper SVG files with fake ones.

1. Is there a Commons policy which details why uploading such images should be avoided?
2. Is there a way to apply Template:Fake SVG to all such files simultaneously?

Thanks in advance. EthanL13 | talk 17:07, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

I would think #1 is not so much policy as common sense. Obviously locking in artifacts is a terrible idea.

#2: VFC can do this pretty easily. It's a powerful too, though, so use the preview feature and if you haven't used it much try something small before you use it to edit hundreds of files at once. - Jmabel ! talk 19:47, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel Thanks, I will give it a try. Another question – I may or may not need to do this in this case, but is there also a way to mass revert overwrites? EthanL13 | talk 20:04, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

@EthanL13: I'm not aware of one. - Jmabel ! talk 20:44, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

This discussion has continued (in Spanish) at User talk:Autopistero20502020. - Jmabel ! talk 18:36, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 18:36, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Unidentified yellow flowers in salt marches

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Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:36, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: Bermuda buttercup, Oxalis pes-caprae. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:29, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 18:36, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Why vectorize pixel art?

Is there any advantage for images like file:Confused-tpvgames.svg to exist? Aaron Liu (talk) 13:59, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I guess it's because to avoid blurred images due to antialiasing, if the image would have 32×32 pixels. So it can be scaled freely --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:17, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

But that is only a problem with the software interpreting the file. With software displaying and scaling the file correctly such a SVG is useless. GPSLeo (talk) 18:55, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I'd say both sides have valid complaints in this discussion. While SVG files of e.g. pixel art do circumvent some problems, the SVG files shouldn't categorically supersede PNG files (which they currently don't). Sinigh (talk) 11:08, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I do not believe there is. There were some QR codes that were converted to SVG. For such images, a bitmap is the compact form. Glrx (talk) 17:15, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Some may argue that you can take advantage of SVG with animation possibilities, layers, modifying the viewbox and different editing possibilities (adding true color gradients or shadows, etc.) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 20:10, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, you can make PNG pixel art scale without the blurring on pages, but you need to use a special template. e.g.

Bawolff (talk) 21:28, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

The PNG is even blurred in the thumbnail view in the "file history" section of its own description page. And as its size is 20x20 MW software does not even offer scaled thumbnails on the description page.

When looking at QR codes in ePapers I see more blurred QR codes than good ones. A problem that would not exist if SVG was the standard for QR codes. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 21:42, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Just make an upscale PNG for the QR code. PNG has compression for neighboring tiles. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:27, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Commons could add .filehistory img {image-rendering:pixelated} to MediaWiki:Common.css to fix that (You can put it in your Special:MyPage/common.css to test). There is an issue though in that for many image the other behaviour is better. Arguably though, image types that benefit from the other algorithm are likely to be bigger than the size of the file history preview, so maybe pixelated is a better default choice. Bawolff (talk) 22:42, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Looking at pages that use File:Confused-tpvgames.svg, it's used in the signature of user TBC (for instance here). The downscaled svg version looks very pixellated, whereas the png version at this size would look more smooth.

Generally speaking when it comes to "which version is better" I just look at a few things: Which one looks better, which one can be more widely applied, and which one has the smaller file size. In many cases, simple bitmap graphics get superseded by their svg counterparts, but in this instance I don't think that is the case. ReneeWrites (talk) 12:01, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

it's pixel art Aaron Liu (talk) 12:36, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

And? ReneeWrites (talk) 14:31, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

It's supposed to "look very pixelated". Aaron Liu (talk) 14:32, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Maybe I should've used "jagged" or "aliased". The png version is anti-aliased. Here's a visual comparison, svg at the top, png at the bottom. ReneeWrites (talk) 14:43, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

That's interesting. I would have expected the opposite result, if anything, or no difference. Sinigh (talk) 15:45, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Naming of Nvidia GPU categories

(Note: GeForce is the name of the brand itself, not the actual graphic cards model itself)

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
• GeForce RTX 2060
• RTX 2060

Which naming scheme will be the correct one to go with? Trade (talk) 21:49, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

@Trade: I'd go with "Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060". This seems to be the most common naming schema in Category:Nvidia, though not with 100% consistency (especially not in Category:NVIDIA products). ReneeWrites (talk) 22:30, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I am currently starting a discussion on Wikidata on the naming scheme as well. My hope is that both projects can agree to use the same consistent naming scheme Trade (talk) 22:36, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Good luck, and feel free to ping me if you start a CfD about it here as well. I'm personally fine with either, but not both at the same time. Whichever one is chosen should be the one consistently used. ReneeWrites (talk) 22:50, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

My personal taste would be the original company name writing (NVIDIA) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:17, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Category:Media from YouTube

Could anyone with a bot help me diffuse this category? I know the categories are placed by the template but surely there must be a workaround because this is an absolutely mess Trade (talk) 22:33, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I think we need a template like Template:YouTube_CC-BY_screenshot  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   16:07, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

SDC inception added by wizard precise to only date

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=993670434

"Timestamp +2025-02-04T00:00:00Z Precision 1 day"

even though actually "Date and time of data generation 18:37, 4 February 2025".

is this what the community prefers? RoyZuo (talk) 20:49, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

this uploadwizard feature was introduced sometime between 4 and 14 November 2024. RoyZuo (talk) 20:55, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata (and so, I presume, SDC) does not attempt to e more accurate than just the day. This is partly because things are so often not tagged with timezone, or at least not accurately. I'm certainly guilty of that last: I don't reset my camera's clock every time I change timezone, so I could take a picture in Bucharest with a West Coast U.S. timestamp. - Jmabel ! talk 20:57, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree. Camera time settings are very often inaccurate. Probably best to just set the precision to 1 day and the uploader can override if needed. Nosferattus (talk) 14:11, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, here is the documentation about the current situation: d:Help:Dates#Hours,_minutes_and_seconds --Zache (talk) 14:37, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Thx Zache! nvm then. i had the false impression that other bots were adding more precise sdc. turns out all were just precise to date.

cameras that make use of gps record quite reliable time. i dont have data but my wild guess is for new uploads 90+% of phone photos and 50+% camera photos have accurate time settings calibrated by gps or internet. RoyZuo (talk) 15:19, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

A new group for data preservation is emerging

Hi!

You might be interested in a new group that focuses on saving huge loads of data that are at risk to be lost. As its goal is to provide (and) free endangered information, it is similar to the scope of projects like Commons. Take a look here: https://fedihum.org/@SafeguardingResearch. Commons has a similar issue to save CC Sketchfab files before they will be removed soon

Greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:25, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Incorrect wikilink in metadata

Some photos (for example, File:Housefromfield.jpg) are taken using a phone manufactured by Sonim Technologies, Inc. (No enwiki article; web site at [1]). The metadata for these photos looks like this:

Camera manufacturer

Sonim

Which would be okay, except that the text "Sonim" is linked to the enwiki article on Sonim, a Korean singer, not to any article having to do with the company Sonim Technologies. Surprisingly to me, there is no enwiki article for the company. The metadata for some Commons pages (such as File:A 1938 Jerrycan (in original state and restored).jpg) use "Sonimtech"instead of "Sonim", but no such article exists.

As far as I know, the singer Sonim has no relationship with the company Sonim Technologies.

Q1: How can this be corrected? I see nothing in the source for File:Housefromfield.jpg, for example, that shows that linkage.

Q2: I see many such examples in Category:Taken with Sonim mobile phones and its subcategories. I don't know if that's exhaustive. Is there a way of finding all the images that erroneously link to Sonim (i.e., the equivalent to "what links here", but cross-wiki)? TJRC (talk) 02:02, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

You may be interested in taking a look at the {{Exif-make-value}} and {{Exif-model-value}} templates, which are used to form these links. It looks like they have a couple of special cases for certain manufacturers already. Omphalographer (talk) 04:24, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

It's wild, there are French, Arabic, German and Swedish articles on Sonim Technologies but none in English. Someone should translate one of the others.

facepalm w:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sonim Technologies Bastique ^{☎ let's talk!} 05:04, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

I note that is is also possible to have an exception to make it NOT a link of course. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:12, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I wonder if those should be linked to Wikidata items instead of Wikipedia articles in general. whym (talk) 12:22, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

That'd certainly be better than the current state of affairs, which links directly to the English Wikipedia (regardless of the user's selected language) - but, to do that, we'd need some way to map from the name in the EXIF tags to a Wikidata entity. I'm not sure that exists - there may not be entities at all for individual camera models, in fact. Omphalographer (talk) 18:41, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

It looks like this has been resolved, thanks to the edits discussed here. Thank you, all! TJRC (talk) 16:48, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. TJRC (talk) 16:48, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Word, category for fruit defect？

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 20:52, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

is there a professional jargon for this kind of marks on an orange? The dent is not at the top or bottom that each orange has, but in the middle of the fruit. It's not deep enough to reach the pulp. Doesnt seem to fit under existing subcats of Category:Imperfect fruit? RoyZuo (talk) 20:10, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

@RoyZuo: That looks like a scab. That image can be categorized under Category:Fruit hole scabs and Category:Orange scabs ReneeWrites (talk) 11:03, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Getting rid of unnecessary categories.

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 20:43, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Hey, I'd like you to configure the template {{topic in country|teaching}}, so that I can get rid of unnecessary categories: Teaching by country of location and Teaching of [any country] in the "Teaching in _____" categories. Thank you. ★♚★♛★ 🅾🅿🅴🆁🅰🆃🅸🅾🅽𝒮𝒶𝓀𝓊𝓇𝒶⁶¹⁴⁴ ★♛★♚★ 《♦ talk • ♥ contributions • ♠ global • ♣ rights》 04:35, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

To clarify: this is about the Topic in country template, used in the subcats of Category:Teaching by country. For example Category:Teaching in Slovakia has two redcats that can't be removed due to the template. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:59, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

I added teaching to the list of topics for the template. This should also automatically add "Education in ...", so there's no need to have that in the category page. --rimshot^talk 13:31, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

@Rimshot: Thank you very much :) ReneeWrites (talk) 20:42, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

What kind of vehicle is this?

Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:53, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

It's a Ligier Quadéo. --rimshot^talk 13:23, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:40, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Two guidelines contradicting each other

Bjh21 has pointed out that Commons:Ownership of pages and files contradicts COM:OVERWRITE. It tells people to "be bold" in improving images. Unsurprisingly, that advice dates from 2007 and has never been changed to reflect the later COM:OVERWRITE. Also related Commons:Be bold was completely rejected and removed as policy in 2022, replaced by Commons:Don't be bold. I would presume Commons:Ownership of pages and files should be brought in line with COM:OVERWRITE, but (in the spirit of "don't be bold") wanted to check here to see if anyone thinks this needs any discussion.

Also, Commons:Ownership of pages and files gives {{GFDL-self}} as an example of a good license to use. Surely that should be updated. - Jmabel ! talk 22:14, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

 Agree on all points. ReneeWrites (talk) 23:00, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Given that it's been about 24 hours with no objections, I'm going to risk being bold about this. Jmabel ! talk 22:04, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

This proved to be a rather major edit. I hadn't realized how deep the conflict ran until I started editing. Updating what licenses we refer to should be completely uncontroversial. [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Ownership_of_pages_and_files&diff=next&oldid=995284158 Bringing this in line with COM:OVERWRITE proved to be major—it almost reversed the sense of the section—but I think what I wrote is in line with our current thinking. I won't be surprised if it needs further moderate editing, though. - Jmabel ! talk 23:06, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Wrong category and title

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 15:51, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

The category and content here are incorrect, as I've explained on this WP talk page. The error arose years ago because of sloppy work by the NSW Government's planning department, and they still appear to be unaware of their mistake. The category should be renamed (as per the WP article) to "Model factory and dwelling, The Rocks". Bjenks (talk) 15:30, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

@Bjenks:  Done, renamed it to Category:Model Factory and Dwelling, The Rocks. ReneeWrites (talk) 21:01, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Category:PDF maps

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:13, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't like the "All map images in this category could be re-created using vector graphics as SVG files" template that is shown when you enter Category:PDF maps. I also don't like some comments that can be seen in this discussion, such as until all PDF maps are converted to suitable format (eg SVG). If PDF files follow the scope (for example: The file is a scan of a document of historic or other external significance, e.g. scans of existing copyright-free or licensed books, reports, newspapers, etc., or The file is usable as a fixed, verifiable source document, e.g. for Wikisource or Wikibooks), according to policies, personal opinions are right, but they can't be used to impose personal views as if they were absolute truths (no, not all PDF files can be converted to SVG).
Any PDF file whose content is in scope, where the file was obtained from a third party (that is, not user-created), has its place in Commons. That is it. You can think whatever you want, but not use templates that can lead to mistaken interpretations about official policies.
That's something similar to controversies around BadJPEG template, that I have seen in the past: a legitimate, in scope, JPEG image that was get from a third party, is never bad in any way.
I think that the template should be removed from that category altogether (if it isn't removed, I will remove from the category the PDF map files that I uploaded, since I don't want to have them in a category that seems to make them something like "sinful"). What do you think about it? MGeog2022 (talk) 15:52, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

I will remove from the category the PDF map files that I uploaded, since I don't want to have them in a category that seems to make them something like "sinful". Done, at least temporarily. I propose replacing the current message, All map images in this category could be re-created using vector graphics as SVG files, by a text saying that it's desirable that all PDF maps have also an image version, in the most suitable format for each case (SVG, PNG, or even JPEG in some cases). Also, that PDF maps originally created by a Commons user (that is, not from a third party) are generally against policy and can be deleted once they have been replaced by an image version. Sorry if my tone sounded too angry, I don't like using that style. But a category should never include messages that sound as if its content was not legitimate only because of belonging to it. MGeog2022 (talk) 18:20, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Well, in any case, it seems that gross categorization of maps (or files in general) according to file type is not convenient in many cases, and the full system of categories for maps based in file format is under discussion (for example, Category:PNG maps and Category:JPG maps contain a negligible part of all maps in Commons in those formats, and it seems highly unlikely that this can change), so probably it's better not to use it, generally. Sometimes it's better to take a break and realize that solutions are simpler than they seem to be. MGeog2022 (talk) 20:30, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

I'll mark this as resolved, since there is no need (or even convenience) to use such categories, and they are likely to be removed in the future. But I maintain that a category suitable for legitimate files, should never include such messages "against its own content" (even if all content in the past was against policy and to be replaced, in a generic category there is no warranty that this will remain so forever). MGeog2022 (talk) 13:12, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

I apologize to the user/users who wrote those comments or made such proposals, if my tone was not the most appropriate. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:23, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Just noting that this system is not actively under discussion, the discussion was in 2019-20 and closed in 2023, just no one updated Category:PNG maps and Category:JPG maps to remove the template.  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   14:15, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

In any case, it seems really unlikely that some day those categories will contain a significant part of all maps in Commons in those formats. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:23, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Germany according to the far-right agenda

I have drawn a map of Germany according to far-right agenda (e.g. The Republicans, National Democratic Party of Germany, Alternative for Germany...). Is it worth uploading or are there problems? Carnby (talk) 12:45, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Apart from that you'll get into a quagmire of politics, I fear that's quite the duplicate from the Reich in its borders from 1937 or 1938. Despite that, an upload wouldn't IMHO fail the mandatory Commons scope clause, but I'd advise that you'll name the sources for the claims of borders represented on the map in its description. Better yet, make a colour coding of the claims of those different parties! Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 13:18, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you.-- Carnby (talk) 17:05, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

If you include references in the file description (not necessarily in the map itself), like which part is coloured according to whose claim when and where, it'll be a good illustration of the topic.

Commons hosts far many more useless fantasy maps. Your map if backed up by references is surely more valuable than those.

Another potential problem you might wanna consider though, is how comfortable you are about a file related to real-world controversies being associated with you. RoyZuo (talk) 17:20, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

I have found this. Though it could be debatable to draw the extent of this purported "German nation" using current borders, couldn't it?-- Carnby (talk) 11:40, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

 Info The "Nationaldemocratic Party" has been renamed to "Die Heimat" recently --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:09, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

How to specify rtl

in File:Singapore-Expatriates-1973-74-WUS08223.jpg, i just added a note.

the chinese shop name, in the natural order, is "勝發公司", but as it appears physically, is rtl "司公發勝". how do i record this info accurately in file description / sdc?

like {{templatertl|勝發公司}} rendering 司公發勝, so that both search can read the wikitext correctly as "勝發公司" and humans can see that it matches the picture as "司公發勝"? is there such a template?

another similar problem is chinese text appearing vertically, like File:灣仔 Wan Chai 軒尼詩道 Hennessy Road 東方小祇園 Tung Fong Siu Kee Yuen 霓虹燈招牌 Neon Sign, 2020.jpg. RoyZuo (talk) 21:06, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

You would have to use formatting characters. If you put a U+202E character to start and a U+202C at the end the characters in between will be forced RTL.

In wikitext this is possibly to specify as entity references e.g. ‮勝發公司‬ makes ‮勝發公司‬ but i think for SDC you have to use the real characters not the entity reference which can be annoying to specify. Perhaps it works to copy and past from this comment. Bawolff (talk) 20:42, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Thx a lot! very useful tips!--RoyZuo (talk) 18:26, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Old maps of Bucharest

https://www.ideiurbane.ro/docubucuresti-planuri-harti-si-alte-documente/ . Most of these are old enough to be clearly public domain. Looks like they are all in RAR archives. If someone has experience with bringing such content into Commons, it would be very good stuff to have. As far as I can tell, we have nothing comparable. - Jmabel ! talk 05:36, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

File needs category clarification

The file is intented to be an image contains "non-angle" shapes. Do you know how the shapes in the file are called in math? It might need better categories. --린눈라단 (talk) 07:20, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

I think the shapes are curves. --린눈라단 (talk) 07:33, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

It looks very Korean --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:04, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

The text is Korean. The text says "[the shapes] aren't angles." However, the shapes below the text are not intented to be any script for linguistics because the image was used a Korean Wikibooks page about geometry. --린눈라단 (talk) 13:33, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Some old Inkscape files shrunk

right and bottom margin

Something was changed on Commons, so that some old SVG files now have a right and bottom margin. See entry at the graphics village pump. Watchduck (quack) 15:52, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

IP Editor creating talk pages as galleries

User:178.121.24.147 (Special:Contributions/178.121.24.147) is creating gallery talk pages with no corresponding Gallery page to an existing Gallery series. Talk:Sovereign-state flags in 1885 etc. I'm more familiar with Wikipedia than Commons, so I don't know if this is should be moved to the gallery page of each, or deleted as (Wikipedia term) "a talk page with no corresponding 'article'". I also don't know if their content is correct and/or sourced as you require. Would someone have a look and move or delete as needed? Thanks, Zinnober9 (talk) 17:41, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

The IP tried to create a gallery page but is not allowed to do so. I think it is the same person who edited such gallery pages in the past they are now deleted. I will delete the pages and we might need to change the filter or create a new one. GPSLeo (talk) 18:02, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! Zinnober9 (talk) 18:21, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

ERTMS sign

I suspect it means the start of the ERTMS section. At this station the tramtrain probably switches to main rail and ERTMS. Is this the rigth category?Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:53, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

About replacing File:75B.jpg with File:Bandera de la Provincia de Córdoba.svg.

Hi, I want to replace File:75B.jpg with File:Bandera de la Provincia de Córdoba.svg in the following pages in the Spanish Wikipedia: Jorge Westcha, Nicéforo Fernández, Roberto Ariel González, Víctor Acotto, Javier Antonio Becerra, Restituto Brito, Enrique Palomini.

As you might know, my IP has been blocked in the Spanish Wikipedia, which means I can't edit pages in the Spanish Wikipedia. I've contacted Platonides for the task but he didn't respond or act much. He and I talked about my IP block on the Spanish Wikipedia, and I've shown a screenshot of me editing the page there as a proof where you can see the notice of my IP block when I tried to edit. Other than that, nothing special.

I don't think it'd be worth waiting for a very long time just to have someone complete very simple tasks, in my opinion. Please, I'd like you to act quick and help me in replacing File:75B.jpg with File:Bandera de la Provincia de Córdoba.svg and delete the former, just to have more consistency. File:75B.jpg is a exact duplicate of File:Bandera de la Provincia de Córdoba.svg that was uploaded 5 years later (July 11, 2015) after the latter (December 19, 2010). I hope you hear me out and help me faster. Thank you. ★♚★♛★ 🅾🅿🅴🆁🅰🆃🅸🅾🅽𝒮𝒶𝓀𝓊𝓇𝒶⁶¹⁴⁴ ★♛★♚★ 《♦ talk • ♥ contributions • ♠ global • ♣ rights》 04:28, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

But File:Bandera de la Provincia de Córdoba.svg says it has been superseded by File:Bandera de la Provincia de Córdoba 2014.svg? Also, you IP is blocked there probably because of using an open proxy. --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:02, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

@HyperGaruda: I'm not worried about the supersession of the SVG file. Also, I'm really not using an open proxy for working on Commons and Wikipedia. Despite that, my IP is blocked somehow. Anyway, can you replace File:75B.jpg with File:Bandera de la Provincia de Córdoba.svg? I hope you'll help me in this. ★♚★♛★ 🅾🅿🅴🆁🅰🆃🅸🅾🅽𝒮𝒶𝓀𝓊𝓇𝒶⁶¹⁴⁴ ★♛★♚★ 《♦ talk • ♥ contributions • ♠ global • ♣ rights》 09:12, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Nothing here looks even slightly like an emergency to me, and I don't see why Commons should be involved in an edit you want to make to es-wiki. You should be contacting an es-wiki admin about this. Assuming the block was not directed at you, you presumably should be able to log in from a physically different location (a library, a coffeehouse, etc.). - Jmabel ! talk 19:37, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

@HyperGaruda and Jmabel: I contacted Platonides, who is also an admin in the Spanish Wikipedia, for that, but he didn't respond much, let alone act, except he talked about my IP block in the Spanish Wikipedia. As I said before, my IP is blocked in the Spanish Wikipedia, but your suggestion sounds kinda helpful to me. I'll try that if I'm outside home or using another computer with a different ISP. Anyway, it's indeed an emergency to me. So, I'd like you to rather help me fast than ask questions. ★♚★♛★ 🅾🅿🅴🆁🅰🆃🅸🅾🅽𝒮𝒶𝓀𝓊𝓇𝒶⁶¹⁴⁴ ★♛★♚★ 《♦ talk • ♥ contributions • ♠ global • ♣ rights》 02:21, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

It's not an emergency though and we don't arbitrarily replace jpgs with svgs. Abzeronow (talk) 20:31, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

CSS Image Crop tool

{{CSS image crop}} is a valuable tool for cropping images directly. It allows you to use a specific portion of an existing image, eliminating the need to upload a new file for simple cropping tasks. However, a key challenge with this template is that it requires users to manually identify and input the exact pixel coordinates for their desired crop. I have developed a JavaScript tool, User:維基小霸王/CSSImageCrop.js, using Google Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. This tool greatly simplifies the process. To install it, simply add importScript('User:維基小霸王/CSSImageCrop.js'); to your Special:MyPage/common.js. After installation, a "CSS Image Crop" button will be appear on each image file page. Clicking this button activates the tool, allowing you to select your desired cropping area directly within the image. Once you've made your selection, the tool instantly generates the template code for you. Furthermore, you can easily change the zoom level by entering a numerical value in the provided dialog box. This tool is also compatible with multi-page book files.--維基小霸王 (talk) 15:22, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Very cool.

One warning about {{CSS image crop}}: anyone who views the resulting image has to download the full image at the specified resolution, so for large files at high resolution this is rough on users who have slow connections. It's a good template to have, but use it judiciously. - Jmabel ! talk 19:41, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

@維基小霸王: Thanks. We use mw.loader.load to load such scripts now.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:24, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

OK. Thank you. 維基小霸王 (talk) 11:52, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

It seems importScript would not require entire url and more elegant.--維基小霸王 (talk) 11:59, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

@維基小霸王: You may do so at your own peril. See here for how I became aware of the change (over 3 years ago).   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:59, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

A Fully-Searchable Multimodal Dataset of the Illustrated London News, 1842–1890

Here is an interesting paper on the extraction and interpretation of images and their captions, from historical documents in the Internet Archive, which could equally be applied to those in Commons:

“A Fully-Searchable Multimodal Dataset of the Illustrated London News, 1842–1890”, in Journal of Open Humanities Data (in en), volume 11, 2024, DOI:10.5334/JOHD.284, ISSN 2059-481X, Wikidata Q132190119

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:59, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Pronunciation file and location of origin of the speaker

Where a person comes from and their accents/dialects are often related. How to record that relation on a commons audio file? sdc model? RoyZuo (talk) 16:51, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

More on the UK's Online Safety Act

Further to recent discussion of the en:Online Safety Act 2023, this new blog post about the OSA raises some interesting points; not least these statements from Ofcom (the body responsible for enforcement):

Whether you are an adult service that only provides that kind of content, or whether you're a [general service] that doesn't prohibit that kind of content, the requirement is the same: to use age assurance.

and

The requirement is if you allow this type of content, you need to use highly effective age assurance to prevent children from accessing it. [...] The act makes clear that this is now a cost of business to do that type of content and provide that type of content.

and:

If you've got a site that doesn't have any kind of login process [read: or allows access without one, as does Commons], you might consider age-assuring each unique user and doing it each time.

Is anyone (at WMF?) monitoring this? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:27, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Hi Andy, thanks for this timely question. Yes, staff at WMF are monitoring this very closely, in collaboration with Wikimedia UK as the local chapter. We are particularly concerned about the Draft Regulations for Categorisation Thresholds, published by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) just before Christmas. You can read the draft regulations at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348267174 but in summary, the thresholds chosen by DSIT are based on the number of users, plus a broad swathe of "features" common to many/most sites - rather than an assessment of risk. This means that many sites with over 7 million UK users a month might be treated as a Category 1 service, regardless of actual "safety" considerations." Staff from the Global Advocacy and Legal teams at WMF are in regular contact with Ofcom and DSIT to try and mitigate the risk to the Wikimedia projects, and I'm hoping that there will be a more extensive communication to editors and others on all of this in the next few weeks. Best wishes, Lucy LucyCrompton-Reid (WMUK) (talk) 11:32, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Commons Walkabout: new site for browsing Commons' structured data

Check it out here: Commons Walkabout. Any feedback is welcome. Yaron Koren (talk) 21:53, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

@Yaron Koren: This is a very elegant way of filtering files with a visual interface.

Some additional feedback:

• When selecting items from a large list (e.g. Valued image > location of creation) it gives me the option to write a custom value, but that field disappears the moment it loads the list of available locations. I think it would still be helpful to have that field there, and maybe have it auto-fill in based on which listed locations match.
• The button to go back is labelled "View list of items", which isn't very intuitive.
• It has a filter for "main subject" and "depicts", but after uploading something to Commons the structured data will only ask you what it depicts - and only ask you to add a maximum of 3 labels, presumably to prompt people to think about what the main subjects are rather than add items indiscriminately. So I think it might be better to only have a filter for "depicts"?

ReneeWrites (talk) 22:26, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback! The UI-related comments definitely make sense - I will keep those in mind. The only thing I disagree with is removing "main subject" - I can think of various ways where what is being depicted is different from the main subject; certainly I would think that's true for audio files, where nothing really is being "depicted". Yaron Koren (talk) 00:36, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I tried it again and it still only returns 6 of 40000++ files with Creator search and none with contributed-by search. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 06:17, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

It comes up with only 1662 files for location "Berlin" (there are hundred thousends of Berlin images, I alone made more than that). With added filter "publication date" there are none (at least a large number of my uploads have a depicts value that does not contain the publication date, but the date the images or videos were taken at). For example File:FFF Berlin Fahrraddemo 092.jpg contains depicts "Fridays for Future protest in Berlin 6 September 2019" -> d:Q73150789 which contains Location=Berlin and point in time=2019-09-06 C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 06:27, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

In think the tool uses the query service that is not capable of recursive search. GPSLeo (talk) 06:54, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Well, the main issue is that that data (location = Berlin, etc.) is on Wikidata, not on Commons; and Commons Walkabout only gets its data from Commons. (Except for the language-specific label of each Q and P item, which it does get from Wikidata.) It would be great if the site queried both - so that you could get every file depicting something that in turn is located in some country, for instance - but unfortunately that's not supported yet. Yaron Koren (talk) 15:36, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

More accurately, for the particular images, the data that would say that the picture was taken in Berlin is neither in SDC nor in Wikidata. @GPSLeo: I suspect you are looking at location (P276). The relevant SDC property would presumably be location of creation (P1071), which I'm sure is way underused. (Do let me know if you already knew that; I know you're an advocate of SDC and have looked at this more than most, so I wouldn't want to presume I know this better than you.)

This gets back to something I've been saying for years: yes, we have the technical means to describe plenty of things in structured data, but the modelling is often unintuitive, is not documented in a manner that would give the average user much of a chance to get it right, and we have an almost complete lack of tools to help anyone through the thicket. - Jmabel ! talk 21:45, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

But even using location of creation (P1071) would not help here as I would never use Berlin (Q64) as a value there but the neighborhood or even the street as the value. GPSLeo (talk) 21:05, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

It works well with depicts. I looked up d:Q117075694 (rail vehicle door) and it works well. However I would like to use combinations such as train doors and d:Q22986165 (swerve-swing door). As seen in Category:Rail vehicles swerve-swing doors.

Location is problematic. I only use location in a depict, if it is relevant. For example for train stations I only use station name in depicts if the station or part of the station is visible. If only a train is visible, and this picture could therefore have been taken anywhere, I use the station name in SD parameter location.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:18, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

By the way, you can use the interface to select multiple values for any one filter; here, for example, is the intersection you may have been talking about. Yaron Koren (talk) 20:25, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Good to know. It would be nice if (OR) is also posible. Of course one can start a second screen with another search. One posibility is that the results are kept (and manualy delete some results) and add the results of the next search to the selection. And maybe export the final results.Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:51, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Cropping Tool

This new layout has removed the link to the Cropping Tool. Why??? James Kevin McMahon (talk) 10:24, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

The croptool link is in the right side "tools" menu. It is added only when you are in file namespace. (ie in image description page) --Zache (talk) 10:40, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

"Use this file"

UI question, unrelated to the new skin. Does anyone other than me find it weird that there are two different "use this file" links on file pages (one for using it in Wikimedia projects, one for using it elsewhere)? And that the help text for the former is "Use this file on the web", even though it is the only place we even vaguely explain how to attribute the file for print publications? - Jmabel ! talk 00:51, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I find that weird, too.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 01:22, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

How to archive my user talk page conversations? (plus a personal message for @ReneeWrites)

Hi, I'd like to archive my user talk page conversations, but I don't know how to do it. Can you give me some suggestions on that? I'm curious.

Also, apologies to you, @ReneeWrites. I know I could've apologized you in your talk page, but your reply was too hard for me to do that. I didn't mean to make you feel disgusted with my conversation. I was overenthusiastic about my opinions and experiences about the images I linked to your talk page. I thought you'd be easy with me, and, didn't pay attention to your actual feelings and thoughts about my topic. I hope you forgive me for this unintentional mistake.

Also, I thought I could use Telegram or Viber for personally messaging you. I hope you're okay with that and don't feel nauseous about personally messaging me. And, you said you're not angry and offended because of me and I'd like say the same to you. I hope we could be just friends as usual. As said before, I'd bless you with my heartfelt Valentine's Day afterwishes, and, as always, love you so much. ★♚★♛★ 🅾🅿🅴🆁🅰🆃🅸🅾🅽𝒮𝒶𝓀𝓊𝓇𝒶⁶¹⁴⁴ ★♛★♚★ 《♦ talk • ♥ contributions • ♠ global • ♣ rights》 05:28, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

You can create a subpage of your user page like OperationSakura6144/Archive and manually move old conversations there. That's how most people do it. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:37, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

I successfully archived my user talk page. Speaking of archives and talk pages, I was reminded of @ReneeWrites. What do you think of my situation with @ReneeWrites I've mentioned in my message? ★♚★♛★ 🅾🅿🅴🆁🅰🆃🅸🅾🅽𝒮𝒶𝓀𝓊𝓇𝒶⁶¹⁴⁴ ★♛★♚★ 《♦ talk • ♥ contributions • ♠ global • ♣ rights》 06:15, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. What a weird thread. User is now indefinitely-blocked. Bedivere (talk) 20:30, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Sand-box ?

File:Pipipupukaka.png (pipi, popo, caca in French) probably deserves a speedy deletion. Io Herodotus (talk) 11:14, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

@Io Herodotus: So tagged.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 11:21, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:37, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Request for a simple drawing of a passenger train

I would like to ask for help in constructing a simple train shape . I am enriching the article on the Tempi crash train and constructing a train with the wagon numbers I think would greatly aid in understanding the article. The relevant material is here https://www.onlarissa.gr/2023/05/09/tempi-nea-stoicheia-apo-tin-erevna-ton-pragmatognomonon-ton-oikogeneion-oi-theseis-sta-trena-pou-eginan-pagides-thanatou/ Lord Mountbutter (talk) 18:53, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

check: Commons:Derivative works modern_primat ^{ඞඞඞ ----TALK} 19:25, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Frame of the {{Decade years navbox}} disappeared

I've found today that in pages using {{Decade years navbox}}, the frame of the navigation boxe is no longer shown (example). The code of the template seems unchanged. Is this being caused by the new appearance setting of commons? --トトト (talk) 08:25, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

It seems so, the template uses {|class="toccolours"}, and I tested it. In the old skin, {|class="toccolours"} displays the frame by default, but in the new skin, the frame will not display by default. Tvpuppy (talk) 09:29, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

toccolours is not guaranteed to be defined. Also this doesn't seem to be a navbox, so the template is misnamed. I advise rewriting it with TemplateStyles. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:52, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Fixed for now by changing it to class="navbox", which is styled via MediaWiki:common.css, making TemplateStyles unnecessary. (For very heavily used styles, common.css is more efficient than TemplateStyles; this template isn’t that heavily used, but if navboxen are already styled via common.css then we might as well reuse that here IMHO.) Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 20:34, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

• Thank you all for the tips and the edit. But the template became always full-length in the page; it used to be flexible depending on the contents in the box. Isn't there a method to keep it as class="toccolours" but still displaying the frame? There are hundreds of local templates that need to be fixed (example). I am a little annoyed at why WMF did such a skin change which necessitates a large number of edits. --トトト (talk) 23:20, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

  For the frame to be flexible around the content, the width has to be specified as automatic, like this: class="navbox" style="width:auto". Tvpuppy (talk) 01:23, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

• Thanks. I think I've found another solution. How abou not using any CSS class at all? {| style="border-style: solid; border-width:1px; background-color:#f5f5f5;" I have tested it at {{Kitakyushumonth}} (diff) --トトト (talk) 01:37, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

  This is a good idea, but it doesn’t not work for users with dark mode. Tvpuppy (talk) 01:48, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

  Alternatively, I found out that class="catlinks" also works. Tvpuppy (talk) 04:10, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

• Beautiful! With class="catlinks" a fix will become minimal and easy. And it also works with the black skin. If it is OK to letting it be the ultimate solution, I will start fixing the whole lot of navigational templates. --トトト (talk) 09:46, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

  Do know that .catlinks includes a clear:both;, which can be troublesome in some cases. Also, it's again a really hacky solution. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 14:05, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

• Currently I see no problem with using class="catlinks" in navigational templates (example, diff). If a problem arises, then I'll think about another coding. 00:25, 14 February 2025 (UTC)トトト (talk) 04:35, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Making dark mode available for logged out users

Hi, so now that Vector 2022 is available by default, I think we can make dark mode available to all logged out users. I have worked quite hard to help make Commons dark mode compatible, and so have other users through replacing everything with Codex tokens, CSS styling changes etc. You can test dark mode compatibility in beta features and I think it is ready, thoughts? —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 19:47, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

@Matrix: Would you please look into making VFC compatible with dark mode?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 20:28, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Sure —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 20:42, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

support —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:23, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Yes, please do that as dark mode is important and there are many large issues with the Commons app which already has dark mode. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:41, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

@Matrix: Thanks for doing that work, I'm using dark mode now. I'm noticing that the normal body text on this page is not using the intended color (--color-base / #eaecf0) in dark mode, but a much brighter and less confortable #f8f9fa (compare en:Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)). I'm not sure where this is happening, if I manually change the color to things other than #eaecf0 it sticks, but #eaecf0 is transformed to #f8f9fa somehow. – BMacZero (🗩) 19:57, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

@BMacZero: It works perfectly for me. Are you sure it's not a user script or something? —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 16:06, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

@Matrix: Hmm, okay. I tested it on a blank copy of Firefox and I don't think I have any on-wiki appearance stuff. I'll try to dig more. – BMacZero (🗩) 17:23, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

@BMacZero: The only place here using f8f9fa is the top header saying "Welcome to the Village Pump". I can't find anything else. Could you screenshot your browser console showing your CSS? If you need help with this let me know —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 17:47, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

@Matrix: Well this is weird - today the body text is the correct #eaecf0 in Edge, Firefox, and Chrome for me, but section headings are still #f8f9fa in Edge and Chrome (but the correct #eaecf0 in Firefox). It does seem like those are also intended to be #eaecf0, so I grabbed that screenshot in case it's helpful. Pretty bizarre, if you do think it needs to be chased down more let me know if you want anything else.

I will also note that I'm almost certain that subpixel rendering was not working on any of the text yesterday but is working on both the body text and the section header today. – BMacZero (🗩) 07:29, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Nevermind, --color-emphasized does seem to be intended for the section headings, so I think everything is working correctly on my end now. – BMacZero (🗩) 07:43, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

phab:T386560 created —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 16:09, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Anyone recognize this photographers mark in lower right corner?

File:Rosalind russell.jpg I want to see if they registered or renewed copyrights. RAN (talk) 02:56, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

I can see Ros. 17. That's probably not a photographer's signature but No. 17 of a series of pictures. -- Herbert Ortner (talk) 21:12, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

"The watermark in the bottom right corner of the photo appears to read "Ross 17." This likely refers to the famous classic Hollywood photographer Ernest A. Bachrach, who often signed his portraits with a style similar to this. However, "Ross" could also be a reference to another studio or photographer from that era, such as "Ross Verlag," a well-known German postcard publisher specializing in movie star portraits in the early 20th century." sic ChatGPT JotaCartas (talk) 22:58, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Help reverting very large files

Due to an issue with ffmpeg, certain AV1 video files (using the grain-synth features) used to fail to transcode. This issue has now been fixed (see File:Zaza (1923).webm, for example).

I have a few videos for which I uploaded a newer, inferior encode while we were waiting for the fix to roll out. I would now like to revert them back to the better AV1-GS encodes (from which the inferior encodes were later made), but I'm running into errors when I try to do the revert. I figure this probably has to do with the large file size. The reverts in question are:

• File:Cyrano de Bergerac (1950).webm - to the version uploaded March 2, 2024
• File:Night of the Living Dead (1968).webm - to the version uploaded March 2, 2024

Would an administrator be able to help revert these files? D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 18:35, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

@D. Benjamin Miller: I tried with the second file (I had visited it before) and got: "Request served via cp1104 cp1104, Varnish XID 377035162" and "Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Thu, 13 Feb 2025 18:45:22 GMT". Similarly, with the first file, I got: "Request served via cp1104 cp1104, Varnish XID 370271423" and "Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Thu, 13 Feb 2025 18:51:37 GMT".   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 18:46, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

I get the same error. GPSLeo (talk) 19:15, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Is there a phab: task yet?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 19:17, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Error logs:

Wikimedia\FileBackend\FileBackendMultiWrite::doOperationsInternal: failed sync check: mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-public/2/24/Night_of_the_Living_Dead_(1968).webm, mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-public/archive/2/24/20250213183518!Night_of_the_Living_Dead_(1968).webm, mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-public/archive/2/24/20250101022713!Night_of_the_Living_Dead_(1968).webm
[b90a47bf-c3d4-4a3d-92f0-a7958d29f32e] /w/index.php?action=revert&title=File:Night_of_the_Living_Dead_(1968).webm   Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\RequestTimeoutException: The maximum execution time of 200 seconds was exceeded

You might have better luck downloading the old version of the file, and then reuploading with chunked upload. I know that is silly, but that will make the timeout be longer than 200 seconds. Bawolff (talk) 04:35, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

@Bawolff: Where to see this logs? Phương Linh (talk) 15:26, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Its the private WMF logs. You need special access to see them Bawolff (talk) 17:51, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

@Bawolff and @D. Benjamin Miller: I finally was able to finish reuploading File:Night of the Living Dead (1968).webm and File:Cyrano de Bergerac (1950).webm for you. It seems that chunk size over 10MB contributed to my many failures.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:29, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks to @Racconish, @D. Benjamin Miller and @Jeff G. for the original and subsequent uploads of these great films here on Commons. Cheers, -- Ooligan (talk) 20:56, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Category:Categories by association

The whole category scheme of organizing things by "association" with Category:Categories by association seems rather half-baked and to ambiguous to be meaningful. It also goes against multiple things in Commons:Categories. So I was thinking of either axing it myself or at least started a CfD. But it's pretty well established and the CfD process seems to be totally worthless at this point. So I was wondering what other people think about the whole category scheme.

Just to give a couple of my issues, it's a child of Category:Clubs and societies when most of the subcategories have nothing to do with either one. I could just remove the parent category, but that would just leave Category:Categories by parameter which seems less then ideal. More importantly, it's not really clear what makes two subjects "associated" with each other or how organizing things this way is any different then doing it the 100s of other ways that already exist. I. E. by type, subject, topic, Etc. Etc. Everything in a subcategory is inherently "associated" with everything else in the category anyway. Therefore making something like Category:Categories by association totally pointless to begin with. Anyone else have an opinion about it though? Adamant1 (talk) 04:33, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Yup, that is a total clusterf***. Also looks like it had nothing to do with clubs and societies for over a decade until W like wiki added that about 2 years ago. I suspect multiple intentions here, some of which might merit categories, but this shouldn't be the name of any of them. - Jmabel ! talk 05:35, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

The "Categories by..." title should be a warning sign. If the only way to sum up the contents of a metacategory is to describe the children as "categories", the category is probably too abstract. Categories on Commons exist to organize files - they shouldn't exist just for the sake of organizing other categories. Omphalographer (talk) 07:47, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Us gov Flickr accounts

Hiball, I apologise ahead for this political post but I think it is worth attention.

The us govt Flickr accounts such as USAiD probably are at risk of deletion. As news say, the employees count have been reduced by 90%.

The files on the flickr accts are listed with copyrighted tag but ID imagine tney proabably are works of the us gov employees themselves.

Possibly treat them as public domain. SeichanGant (talk) 21:46, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

You mean they will be deleted on flickr? --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:47, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm concerned they will be deleted. SeichanGant (talk) 15:16, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Fyi, @SeichanGant @Trade & @PantheraLeo1359531

• At least three U.S. Government Flickr accounts have already been heavily deleted. Many thousands of photos recently vanished from these sources of Public Domain photos. Unknown 1,000's of photos were never uploaded to Commons from these three Flickr accounts. -- Ooligan (talk) 10:35, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

@Ooligan, which three were deleted? SeichanGant (talk) 17:46, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Three recently censored U.S. Government Flickr accounts containing Public Domain photographs are below, @SeichanGant.

United States Secretary of Defense Flickr account.

• 37,378 photos on February 1, 2025

https://web.archive.org/web/20250201194336/https://www.flickr.com/photos/secdef [2]

• 84 photos on February 9, 2025

https://web.archive.org/web/20250209065440/https://www.flickr.com/photos/secdef/ [3]

- Note 1 - The total number of photos is found on the top right of the Flickr page, just below The Pentagon photograph.

- Note 2 - This Flickr account was continuously maintained since 2011.

+++++++++++++++

United States Department of the Interior Flickr account.

• 4,978 photos on January 14, 2025

https://web.archive.org/web/20250114213030/https://www.flickr.com/photos/usinterior/. [4]

• 1,096 today.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/usinterior/ [5]

+++++++++++++++

United States Environmental Protection Agency Flickr account.

• 8,225 photos on January 20, 2025

https://web.archive.org/web/20250120123618/https://www.flickr.com/photos/usepagov/ [6]

• 0 photos today.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/usepagov/ [7]

- Note 3 - Nineteen Eighty-Four, Chapter 3, 3rd Wikiquote. -- Ooligan (talk) 09:36, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Typically you need someone to manage a Flickr account to maintain it Trade (talk) 02:34, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

What would be the best solution? Should one user cover one USGov Flickr account and archive their images here? --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:41, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Probably best to suggest it to Commons:Bots/Work requests and see if multiple bots can split the task. Ricky81682 (talk) 05:06, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for this suggestion @Ricky81682. Have you had positive results with a bot work request? -- Ooligan (talk) 09:38, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

It's been years but I recall yes when I was incredibly specific with my request. The bot operator has to design the parameters and get approval so they need estimates on the size of the task. Ricky81682 (talk) 06:57, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Ricky81682, I will go file one immediately. SeichanGant (talk) 17:46, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Issue with CfD talk page notifications

The notification message for CfDs that is place on people's talk pages seems to be broken as the link to the CfD is now showing up as "[[{{{2}}}|its entry]]." This has been happening for at least a couple of weeks. I tried to figure out where the issue might be coming from but it's not my area of expertise. I couldn't find the page for the template that sends the messages either. Is there a central board for getting broken templates fixed on here or does anyone know which one might be causing the issue? --Adamant1 (talk) 09:02, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

@Adamant1: Do you have an example diff?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 11:16, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: There's three examples on my talk page. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:53, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

@Adamant1: Thanks. This looks like a standard "Category discussion warning" using {{Cdw/layout}} as a part of {{Cdw}}. It is triggered by the "notify the creator of the category in their activated language" step of the Nominate category for discussion tool in the Tools menu on the sidebar provided by the AjaxQuickDelete gadget. Please make a section on MediaWiki talk:Gadget-AjaxQuickDelete.js, with an indication of the timeframe in which you think it started.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:36, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Upload issues, classic upload form

Hello, since around 30 minutes, I have issues in uploading one of my photos. The servers return a 503:

Service Temporarily Unavailable Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem. Please try again in a few minutes.

Request served via cp3066 cp3066, Varnish XID 454611988 Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Fri, 21 Feb 2025 04:53:38 GMT

Request served via cp3066 cp3066, Varnish XID 463153079 Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Fri, 21 Feb 2025 05:06:05 GMT

What's happening? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 06:02, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

@Grand-Duc: That looks like a bug, please see mw:How to report a bug.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 06:31, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

OK. As I retried it just now on another machine, with the same error, I did so: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T387007 . Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 10:59, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

@Grand-Duc: With classic upload form you think of Special:Upload? Just a shot in the dark: How large is the file you intend to upload? As far as I know the classic upload form is not able doing chunked uploads. — Speravir – 01:23, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I meant, the special page is advertised as "classic upload form" in: "For experienced users of the classic upload form:

Already know the license, and its copyright tag? Go directly to the main upload form [...]." The file has less than 20MB - in fact, it's this one: File:Englischer Garten Meiningen, Gruftkapelle - 2020-04-22 HBP.jpg. I grudgingly switched to the UploadWizard to (successfully) upload it; I would still prefer to have the option to use my pre-filled {{Information}} template. Is less than 20MB beyond the threshold of chunked uploads? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 01:47, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Upcoming Language Community Meeting (Feb 28th, 14:00 UTC) and Newsletter

Hello everyone!

We’re excited to announce that the next Language Community Meeting is happening soon, February 28th at 14:00 UTC! If you’d like to join, simply sign up on the wiki page.

This is a participant-driven meeting where we share updates on language-related projects, discuss technical challenges in language wikis, and collaborate on solutions. In our last meeting, we covered topics like developing language keyboards, creating the Moore Wikipedia, and updates from the language support track at Wiki Indaba.

Got a topic to share? Whether it’s a technical update from your project, a challenge you need help with, or a request for interpretation support, we’d love to hear from you! Feel free to reply to this message or add agenda items to the document here.

Also, we wanted to highlight that the sixth edition of the Language & Internationalization newsletter (January 2025) is available here: Wikimedia Language and Product Localization/Newsletter/2025/January. This newsletter provides updates from the October–December 2024 quarter on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects and support efforts, details about community meetings, and ideas for contributing to projects. To stay updated, you can subscribe to the newsletter on its wiki page: Wikimedia Language and Product Localization/Newsletter.

We look forward to your ideas and participation at the language community meeting, see you there!

MediaWiki message delivery 08:28, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Method to add photos directly from Google Photos would increase uploads a great deal

Very often when I am looking through my photos on Google Photos I will see a photo it would be great to upload here. But I would need to download it, change the name, add my name and license choices, etc, etc, and frankly it's just too much effort 99̬̤% of the time. If a cooperation could be established with Google, where one of the options when we click on our own photos is to "share this photo on Wikimedia Commons", and it auto-fills our license name/info, allows us to rename the file if we want, and then a quick upload, for individual and groups of photos, I know I would upload much more often and assume many others would as well. I assume Apple has some equivalent photo storage as well. If Commons could approach these companies and see if the development of such a mechanism is a possibility, it could be a boon for the collection of photos here. RaffiKojian (talk) 13:36, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Yes, this is my main way to upload. Looking at the photo in the Google Photos App, I click the Share button and Share With Commons App. The Commons App talks me through the upload process, asking me for a "Caption" which will actually be the the filename. It offers me a choice of "Depicts" and "Categories" and carries out the upload. Afterwards on the real computer and its browser, I do more categorization, insertion into whatever articles the pic can illustrate, and so forth. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:10, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Delete duplicate without replacing filename

A file should usually have exactly one name. But there are (often mathematical) files with systematic names, where different names must lead to the same image. Often this is achieved, by uploading duplicates. (E.g. this category contains many duplicates, such as 4-demicube t02 D3 ... 8-demicube t06 D3, 9-demicube t07 D3.) Theoretically, the best solution would be, to upload the file with a neutral name, and then create redirects with the systematic names. (E.g. the neutral name is foo and bar, and the redirects are foo and bar.) But that is tedious and error-prone. Most people will not even consider that, and just upload duplicates. Those could be deleted using {{Duplicate}}. But that would lead to the automatic replacement of the old names in articles. (E.g. I have once marked 6-cube t0 B4.svg as a duplicate of 4-cube t0.svg, which lead to this replacement in the article 6-cube.) I want to propose a parameter for {{Duplicate}}, that will prevent this. (The redirects should go into a category called synonym redirects.) --Watchduck (quack) 14:21, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Adding support for C2PA metadata to photos uploaded to Commons

A new initiative to help determine the provenance of an image, called “Content Credentials” has recently emerged as one way to help detect AI or otherwise manipulated images. Image editing applications, AI-generation tools, and camera makers are implementing these credentials in their products.

When an image that contains these credentials are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, Commons should display this metadata alongside the image.

I created a this Phabricator task to consider the technical implementation of this idea. I’d love to hear what others think from a social and administrative perspective.

While few cameras today support this feature I think it would be a good idea to get ahead of things. :) Ckoerner (talk) 21:11, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Duplicate Sanborn maps

What should be done with Category:Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Middletown, Butler County, Ohio, 1901 and Category:1901 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Middletown, Butler County, Ohio? I don't have any issues with the images which seem to be from separate sources but I assume to merge the categories. There has been numerous categories organized with either naming convention but rather than a single vote, just a general poll of (a) keep separate; (b) Sanborn first; or (c) 1901 first or (d) something else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ricky81682 (talk • contribs) 08:40, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

If they are the "same" images, just from different sources/scans, I think it is useful to (a) keep them separate so we don't just have two slightly different duplicate sets mashed together. But in that case the categories should be renamed to clarify the actual difference between them. – BMacZero (🗩) 01:03, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

They are often two or maybe three different versions of the same scans. You can see that they are page-by-page duplicates with different levels of lighting. One is directly from the Library of Congress while the other is from Kent State from the Library of Congress. The naming conventions won't cause a mash up. There is literally no actual difference as both are Sanborn Fire Insurance maps for the city of Middletown, Ohio for the year 1901. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:19, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I've found that with postcards sometimes there will be three or four different images of the same postcard essentirally from the same original source but with slightly different file sizes and imported from different websites. Like So and so historical society will have the full size original image on their site, the Library of Congress has a slightly smaller sized one on theirs, then the LOC's Flickr account has the same image but slightly adjusted somehow. So all three of them get imported because there isn't clear standards or guidelines about how to deal with duplicate images on here. Practically though its just a needless hassle to deal with. I don't think most people care which archive a file comes from. Its mostly meaningless trivia on our end. I certainly don't think its worth creating multiple directories for duplicate images based on the source. There's to many uber pedantic "1964 black and white photographs of men wearing hats at half length in the Rijksmuseum" categories as it is. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:55, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Help for uploading works by a third party

I've written a draft of a help document Commons:Uploading works by a third party, largely inspired by the difficulties that Bloomagiliw experienced trying to do this as a new user. I suspect that their experiences were reasonably typical; all that was unusual was that they articulated more clearly than most the difficulties, frustration, and even near-trauma they encountered.

I'd appreciate further contributions to this new page on two fronts:

1. It's a wiki. Have at it. I'm sure I've overlooked at least one thing that is pretty important: there are so many issues involved, that there is no way I've thought of everything, especially because this is not something I often do.
2. There are two places where we should lay out step-by-step approaches using Commons:UploadWizard. I pretty much never use the wizard myself (I tried it a couple of times, which just confirmed that as an experienced user I'm better off with Commons:Upload), so I'm not the one to guide anyone through it. I would greatly appreciate if someone would flesh out those two sections, currently both marked with ">>>" in the draft document.

Jmabel ! talk 22:26, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for this, it will certainly be useful. I already made some edits. See also the talk page.

IMHO this is already too complex. I don't think we should mention FoP or TOO in this page. We should just use simple cases: a picture of a person by another photographer, or getting permission for an artwork from the artist. For cases more complex, send them to the general policies. Yann (talk) 23:16, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm not at all unhappy with scaring people off of trying to make this very difficult task the first thing they do. Right now, we have a lot of people who wade in, fail, and then get angry. - Jmabel ! talk 02:40, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

Further help/review requested

I've added the section Commons:Uploading works by a third party#To upload content that is already free-licensed or in the public domain. As I mentioned above, I never normally use the Upload Wizard, so I may not know all of the possible cases here, or how people deal with edge cases. It would be great if someone who has experience using the Upload Wizard to upload a third-party file would review what I wrote. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmabel (talk • contribs)

Admittedly I didn't read through every last bit of the essay so maybe I missed it but a problem I see all the time is people attributing themselves as the author of someone else's work purely because they scanned it or uploaded it to Commons. I guess it's inherent to the essay that the uploader isn't the author of someone elses work. It should really be explicit though. Especially with things like scans of old documents. The Upload Wizard doesn't seem to make it clear who exactly the is should be with any given scenario either. There really should be a warning on it's end though saying that the uploader isn't the author if they are uploading someone else's work, be that a scan of a document or whatever. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:09, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

@Adamant1: you can search the page for the various places I use the word "author"; I think it's pretty clear. Also in the instructions about uploading "Indicate, to the best of your ability the name of the author. If may be that the best you can do is a company, or a website, or "found in a book authored by XX" Do the best you can. In the worst case, there is a box to check for "unknown"." Do you think that also needs an explicit "You are not the author"? I can't see how anyone could misunderstand it that way. - Jmabel ! talk 21:51, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Still needing review as to whether I am missing anything about the Wizard interaction. - Jmabel ! talk 21:51, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

AI-generated uploader

All of Special:ListFiles/Muskygirl appears to be AI-generated. Could someone tag all the images that violate personality rights for deletion? I'm a bit too lazy right now. Not sure what to do with the other images. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:24, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

They got speedily deleted. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 21:29, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

@Grand-Duc But the source is correct; they're just AI-generated. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:32, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

The reasoning for deletion wasn't "bad source", but "copyvio derivative", the images claiming as having been made by AI generative software and said to depict contemporary actresses can only be derived from unfree sources. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 23:09, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I realized. I meant to talk about the images without any personality that Artemisia just tagged as lacking a source. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:11, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Wait, I didn't realize you meant the personality images, sorry. @ArtemisiaGentileschiFan The images don't necessarily satisfy the bad source SD criteria as they're simply AI-generated. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:34, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

@Aaron Liu: The ones I tagged don't seem AI-generated to me. The pants seem to be a photograph superimposed on a background with a paper texture and the gif and images of the necks seem to be cropped photos. ArtemisiaGentileschiFan (talk) 23:35, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

@ArtemisiaGentileschiFan 1. That doesn't mean they couldn't have been self-taken. 2. There's a lot of characteristic AI blemishes, such as the number of fingers and basic human anatomy (lip splitting in side-view Adam's apple, weird hip section for bell bottoms) Aaron Liu (talk) 03:34, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Video recording location start and end points

suppose I upload a continuous, unedited video taken of the view on a train ride between two adjacent train stations. How to record those start and end points in sdc?

Or a time lapse video made of 10 pictures, of which all the coord are known? How to record the two end points? Or even all the 10 points? RoyZuo (talk) 08:07, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

No idea how it could be done for SD but here is how it could be done with categories. If it's written into the categories, that can be used for SD and vice versa. Here is a previous discussion about this and I recommend to check both of the videos embedded there to see something that can be done currently. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:27, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Sandbox files for test edits

Hi, there is currently a commons:sandbox page for carrying out experiments and test edits. However, I haven't found any file pages dedicated to test edits. I need these for developing gadgets like Cat-a-lot, HotCat, bots, and for testing Structured Data on Commons edits, as well as for guiding others in Commons editing. For these purposes, it would be beneficial to have some clearly named test files with explanatory content for test editing.

Example filenames:

• File:Sandbox - test file 1.svg
• File:Sandbox - test file 2.svg
• File:Sandbox - test file 3.svg
• File:Sandbox - protected test file 4.svg
• File:Sandbox - protected test file 5.svg
• File:Sandbox - protected test file 6.svg

I believe these would be beneficial for other users as well. I would like to know if there are already existing sandbox files for test edits that I haven't been able to find, and if not, would it be acceptable to create them? --Zache (talk) 08:46, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

They exist and are all in Category:Test images. GPSLeo (talk) 09:04, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Hi, thank you very much! --Zache (talk) 09:27, 23 February 2025 (UTC)