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COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES (index) Commons Help desk Village pump (general discussion) Copyright Proposals Technical Graphics and photography discussion Photography critiques Image improvement Illustration workshop Map workshop Photography workshop Video and sound workshop Categories for discussion Undeletion requests Deletion requests Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard Translators' noticeboard Work requests for bots Contact administrators Vandalism User problems (Dispute resolution) Blocks and protections Bureaucrats' noticeboard CheckUser requests Oversight requests Telegram IRC webchat Commons mailing list (archive) Commons' bugs on Phabricator Welcome to the Village pump This page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/05. Please note: If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias. Have you read our FAQ? For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming. Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer). Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam. Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page: Please do not make deletion requests here: use the relevant process for it instead. For technical support and graphics talks (PNG, SVG, GIF, etc.), please post on the Graphics village pump. To ask for image improvement, see: Graphic Lab/Photography workshop for photographs. Graphic Lab/Map workshop for maps. Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop for other illustrations. To ask for video or audio improvement, see Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop. For translation requests, please post at Commons:Requests for translation. For media requests, please post at Commons:File requests. Search archives:       Start a new discussion

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Centralized discussion See also: Village pump/Proposals   ■ Archive How do we organize categories by date (14 May 2024) Proposal to prohibit political restriction templates (5 February 2024) Should PD-CQ Roll Call be used for recent images? (5 January 2024) Technical needs survey (17 December 2023) When does PDART apply to textile works? (15 November 2023) Does this image contain "love hearts"? (17 August 2023) Overhaul of categories by period (5 December 2022) Version of Saudi flag to use (11 July 2022) Concern regarding revocability of KOGL licenses (22 December 2021) Should deleting content from your own talk page be forbidden? (11 November 2021) Revise the COM:FOP Sweden section (1 February 2021) Change technical name of LRs to license-reviewer from image-reviewer(2 November 2023) User talk:湯崩正海#Image Tagging File:青島ビール放尿動画事件.jpgとUser talk:湯崩正海#File:青島ビール放尿動画事件.jpgで議論しています。皆様のご意見を募集しています。是非、ご参加ください。(2 November 2023) Template: View   ■ Discuss    ■ Edit   ■ Watch

	SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 1 day and sections whose most recent comment is older than 7 days.

April 24

Very large batch upload should get some consensus beforehand

i think, users who might not be familiar with commons maintenance, should not do batch upload without first getting more opinions or even approval. occasionally i see files getting dumped into major topic categories or left uncategorised.

is this recommendation valid? i guess it's just an extension or application of Commons:Bots#Permission to run a bot? RZuo (talk) 11:38, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi, How large are you talking about here? Bots need a permission anyway. Yann (talk) 11:51, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

i think anything more than 500 is too much and should seek a consensus. RZuo (talk) 15:58, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Why 500? Msb (talk) 16:20, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Any upload where a human is not individually checking every file name, description, author, date, and categories at the time of upload should be considered a bot edit and treated accordingly. That means community approval - either of the specific upload, or of the user in a discussion akin to a bot request for a approval - to ensure that a plan is in place for properly curating the files.

Commons has a longstanding issue of uncurated and poorly-curated mass uploads that are equal in scale to bot uploads but lack the same community oversight. This results in large numbers of files with major issues – useless filenames/descriptions/categories, incorrect author/date information, scope and copyvio problems, and/or being placed in overly-broad categories – that the uploaders refuse to fix. There has been general agreement that the problem needs fixing, but no specific policy has been advanced.

I would prefer a more tailored policy, but as an initial effort, setting an arbitrary limit like "over 500 files needs community discussion first" may be useful. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 18:05, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

How does a policy like that get enforced, though? Without any sort of automated enforcement, it's only going to effect users who are aware of the policy, and whose batch uploads are less likely to be a problem. If it is enforced (e.g. by an edit filter), that's going to add a lot of administrative toil in approving batches - and users who hit the limit will still have uploaded a few hundred potentially bad images before they get stopped.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of treating batch uploads with a little more weight than we do now. (I've still got a batch of ~2k bad images from earlier this year that I need to bring back to DR a chunk at a time.) I'm just not sure how we could effectively make it happen. Omphalographer (talk) 04:36, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@Omphalographer: The single most effective restriction would be on flickr uploads. They have inherent curation issues (because upload tools will copy the filename and description, neither of which tend to be particularly useful, from flickr), and the vast majority of uncurated flickr uploads are from a very small number of users. Put a reasonable rate limit on flickr uploads (say a few hundred over a few hours), and that will vastly decrease the problem edits without affecting those who do properly curate files they transfer.

In general, I think it's possible to use edit filters pretty effectively, especially with an edit notice that explains the reasoning. Edit filters can rate-limit as well as outright restrict edits; the actual number of good-faith users who are likely to upload at a high volume for long enough to upload a large number of files is, again, pretty low. For users that prove they can mass upload responsibly (either by curating before upload, or by uploading into cleanup categories that they then curate from), it shouldn't require much administrative work to have them approved.

Even if some unknowing users do upload a few hundred files before they hit a limit, that's still an amount that they can reasonably go back and curate if asked. It's the handful of users that upload thousands of uncurated files at a time - and know very well the issues they're causing - that the community has repeatedly expressed concerns about. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 05:11, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

The problem description shows that we are only talking about imports not about the regular upload of original content. The import of content from Flickr was and is still restricted to users with autopatrol rights, but only with built in tools of MediaWiki. External tools are currently not limited to approved users. GPSLeo (talk) 05:37, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Presumably because, one can see 500 thumbnails on one page, enabling an overview for initial assesment. Broichmore (talk) 09:48, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

because

1. category pages can show 200 per page. 500 is actually already 3 pages.
2. i vaguely remember that uploadwizard or something can allow up to 500 uploads in one go. anything more than that is most likely done thru a script or by a bot.

RZuo (talk) 21:01, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

The generic upload tool is the upload wizard. This allows batches of 500 uploads and even for new users uploads of 150 files. And the upload wizard can upload any number of batches in succession with the same settings. If it reaches a rate limit, it slows down but continues the uploads. This was not always the case. It is therefore a deliberate decision to make it easy to upload a large number of files as quickly as possible. I also don't see the problem on the side of poorly done uploads: Commons is for finding images and then using them. Images without categories or with bad file names will not be found. However, this does not impair the findability and usability of well-categorised files. On the other hand, a user who is thrown a spanner in the works when uploading will often not start to categorise them files afterwards, but will stay away altogether or upload them to Flickr, leaving it to the idealists at Commons to first import these images and then process them. Scaring off uploads in this way will not make Wikipedia more popular with the public.

In my opinion, the better approach is not to restrict uploads, but to provide better tools for editing files that have already been uploaded. For example, an easy way to find suitable categories without having to know what the first letters of the category name are in an arkane and alien language called "English". Luckyly thousends of new categories in chinese language have been created in the last month (Chinese is a language understood by a large part of the earth population). C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 20:56, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

The important thing is finding a middle ground between not allowing for batch uploads of junk that will be categorized or used for whatever reason while also not discouraging people from uploading images here to begin with. That's allowing people with certain rights to batch uploads is a good idea IMO. Its not like we don't do that for other things anyway. Otherwise what's so special about allowing for 500 images to be uploaded at once and who says that can't be reduced to a more managable number on the uploaders end without them just using another website? Say 100 or 200 files at a time is still a lot while allowing for better review and curation on top of it. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:32, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@C.Suthorn: This is not an issue that generally affects newbies - it is very rare for a new user to engage in mass uploads. (The few that I've seen doing so were, unsurprisingly, sockpuppets of blocked users.) Most newbies have a relatively small number of files to upload; while I fully agree that making it easier for newbies to properly describe and categorize their uploads is important, that's separate from the issue being discussed here. Uncurated mass uploads are a problem caused almost entirely by experienced users who refuse to care whether they are actually improving Commons.

Files with poor filenames, descriptions, and categorization are not neutral - they are actively harmful to the purpose of Commons. If a user browsing categories or looking at search results sees a bunch of files that don't have any useful indication of their contents, they will be unable to pick out the useful files they actually need. Flickr descriptions in particular often contain lengthy pieces of text with little/no relation to the file (very often, the entire copy-pasted text of a Wikipedia article), advertising for other projects by the photographer, and personal commentary. All of those cause the files to show up in search results that they absolutely don't belong in.

Poorly curated mass uploads also take up volunteer time: they force responsible users in that subject area to either clean up the mess, or to accept that their previous time curating files has been rendered a waste by the influx of uncurated files. These mass uploads have a lot of out-of-scope and copyvio images that must be nominated for deletion, and duplicate files that would have been noticed immediately had the uploader properly named/described/categorized them. All of this wastes the time of volunteers, who have more important things they want to do, just to get back to the same standard of quality that existed before the mass upload. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:20, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure if everyone involved in this discussion is aware of the following: MediaWiki is free software. That means that anyone in the world can write software that does bulk uploads and write that software to appear as the Upload Wizard. Especially if sockpuppets of experienced users act maliciously and make mass uploads, the consequence of upload restrictions will be that such users with multiple accounts and a software that pretends to be the Upload Wizard may upload many more files. This could be effectively prevented by making MW non-free and requiring an app key and an api key for the upload, both of which are only issued after effective checks. Or by limiting the number of uploads with the Upload Wizard (or, strictly speaking, each upload), e.g. to 50 uploads per day.

However, I think it would be better to provide people who want to upload files with tools that make it easier for them to make good uploads. For example, a tool could carry out automated checks when importing Flickr files (is the location and date of a photo named in the data imported from Flickr, is the description very short or very long, does it contain URLs) and then give the uploader hints during the upload as to what can be improved.

WMF is currently working on improvements to the UploadWizard, so it's a good time to make suggestions to the team working on it. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 06:18, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

There should be two upload wizards, we need one for artwork and/or museum derived images. Broichmore (talk) 09:53, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Uncurated mass uploads don't come from maliciousness - they come from irresponsibility. It's very easy to push a button and see the file number go up; it gives the satisfaction of accomplishing something without having actually done the work. I don't find it likely that someone who's unwilling to spend 30 seconds per file curating them will take the significant effort to develop software just to allow them to do so. This isn't like serial sockpuppeteers who have a specific fixation that motivates them - even the most prolific mass-upload sockpuppeteer got bored after half a dozen blocked socks. Cut off the low-effort low-quality edit opportunity; some will find something low-effort but more useful like tagging spam, some will decide it's worth the effort to properly curate their uploads, and those unwilling to contribute productively will go elsewhere. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 23:46, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Agree with the general idea. I don't think it matters what tool is used. We could use 999+1 as limit. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:20, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

1000 as limit saves a character though. 213.31.175.115 08:46, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Lol. How about 100 then? Really, I didn't know about this amount of uploads in one go, and I can't imagine 500 images that belong all in the same categories. For me, it makes no sense at all, it seems just like dumping, or even using Commons as cloud, I don't know... Sorry, didn't want to impose, I was just curious. MenkinAlRire (talk) 23:21, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

April 26

"Trentino" and "South Tyrol" or "province of Trento/Bolzano"?

Hi all! As per title: the categories for the two provinces of Trentino-South Tyrol (Italy) are not uniform. For example we have Category:Churches in the province of Trento but Category:Cemeteries in Trentino, Category:Churches in South Tyrol but Category:Maps of municipalities of the province of Bolzano (and also Category:Municipalities in the province of South Tyrol, a third option that occurs only for South Tyrol). The Template:Provinces of Trentino-South Tyrol works with "Trentino" and "South Tyrol", meaning it doesn't display anything in several categories (like Category:Interiors of churches in the province of South Tyrol and Category:Interiors of churches in the province of Trento). Approximately, it's most often "South Tyrol" for South Tyrol, and "province of Trento" for Trentino, which is uneven in itself. Shouldn't this be fixed somehow? I'd go for "South Tyrol" and "Trentino", which however is not the standard for Italy (cfr Category:Churches in Italy by province). I'll link this thread in the Italian village pump; is there a German village pump or something too? -- Syrio posso aiutare? 19:55, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

For German there is Commons:Forum. - Jmabel ! talk 22:36, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

This story of the "Province of Trento / Trentino" and the "Province of Bolzano / South Tyrol" recurs periodically. The problem lies in the fact that the South Tyroleans do not accept being part of Italy, feeling invaded and conquered by Italy after the First World War, and therefore they would be part of Tyrol and Austria. But here we must not discuss whether that annexation was right or not; the issue here is that they are today an integral part of the territory and population of Italy. And in the Commons we need to consider this. The problem in Commons is that the German-speaking part does not accept the words "Alto Adige" and "Province of Bolzano"; and then were added those from Trento who do not want to hear about the "Province of Trento" but about "Trentino". However, this creates a lack of uniformity of the categories with the rest of the provinces of Italy. There were very heated and even lacerating discussions in the Commons in 2007 and 2009 and again in 2012 which led to the very laborious solution agreed between the various parties and different needs to use "Province of Trento" and "Province of South Tyrol" and for the region the name "Trentino-South Tyrol". Now, however, in recent years someone has silently and arbitrarily changed the names of several categories from "Province of Trento" to "Trentino" (and all "Province of South Tyrol" to "South Tyrol"), leading to the current inconsistent situation. So all these names should be changed in the way that was decided 15 years ago, and so the uniformity created then should be restored. Or a new discussion will open, that will turn out to be a new world war over these names. Who is willing to do it? I remember that a very heated discussion had taken place few years before in the English context (I think in Wikipedia), before the discussions in Commons was started. If you want to know about the discussions we had in Commons, here are the links.

2007-2009 2008-2009 2009 2011 2012. Enjoy the reading ! --DenghiùComm (talk) 08:08, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Jeez, I had the feeling there were some politics behind this, but I didn't think it was that much. Well. "Province of South Tyrol" doesn't exist, it's not used in Italian and, as far as I know (but correct me if I'm wrong), neither is in German. Regardless of all that, there has to be uniformity, one way or the other. It has either to be "Trentino" and "South Tyrol", or "province of Trento" and "province of Bolzano". As i said I wouldn't mind the former, but I'm ok with both, as long as it solves the issue. -- Syrio posso aiutare? 12:39, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Here in Commons I am against the use of "Trentino" instead of "Province of Trento", because then we could call Sannio the Province of Benevento, Irpinia the Province of Avellino, Polesine the Province of Rovigo, etc. In spoken language that's fine, but here in Commons we have a system that needs to be consistent. If for all the Italian provinces we use "Province of Xyz" this must also be applied to all the categories of Trentino which must be renamed correctly and consistently in "... in / of the province of Trento". For Alto Adige = Province of Bolzano = South Tyrol we will still be able to discuss and decide. But all of us together, not just you and me. DenghiùComm (talk) 15:46, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Let me leave a note, en:Polesine and en:province of Rovigo are not overlapping, the former identifies a historical territory, the latter a political one. I imagine that going through history books one finds more than one different territorial subdivision so, as of course we already do in the different wikpedias separated by language, we keep the last one institutionally correct. Returning to the therad issue I well remember the discussions and stubbornness of a single user who, in defiance of the concept of collaboration, de facto imposed his own POV. Agreed that a South Tyrolean knows the deonomy of his territory in German (but also in Ladin eh), but for the rest of the Italians who read (or used to read) a map will find Bressanone and not Brixen, as well as a native French-speaking would put us in check by imposing the place name Aoste instead of Aosta. Mixing political opinions and bibliographic needs-we are still cataloguing as if we were in a library-is not a good idea. :-) --Threecharlie (talk) 09:25, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

"Province of South Tyrol" doesn't exist, no wonder that a consensus on such a denomination didn't last. It's either "South Tyrol" or "Province of Bolzano", I've no preference on that, but please let's not come up with made-up denominations only to reach a sloppy compromise between users. BTW "Trentino" and "South Tyrol" are the only italian geographical regions which are defined by the administrative borders of the provinces. The other aforementioned regions such Irpinia or Polesine are a totally different story, so please let's keep them out of the discussion. Friniate (talk) 21:48, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Opinions of some admins ? DenghiùComm (talk) 16:06, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I think Friniate is correct that it would either need to be called "South Tyrol" or "Province of Bolzano". I also don't have a preference for either. Abzeronow (talk) 16:50, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Syrio, DenghiùComm, Friniate, and Threecharlie: While I agree that the official, authoritative names should be used, are you aware of category redirects? See template {{Category redirect}} itself or one of its shortcuts (actually redirects). So, the unofficial, but commonly used names could be redirected to the official one. Both Cat-a-lot and Hotcat are respecting this. Only issue here: In theory, a bot should do frequently cleaning, but Category:Non-empty category redirects shows a quite large backlog. — Speravir – 23:28, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

@Speravir: Obviously, if a minority knows the subject under a different name, there are redirects, as in any other Wikimedia project, which redirect the reader to the item or other element, and I don't see what problem there is in using a bot to fix the incoming links to the categories, which even if all the work had to be done by hand, I don't see it as such an insurmountable impediment rather than doing nothing about it, and if we are here to discuss it is because, here, it's worth it.--Threecharlie (talk) 04:05, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

@Speravir: (sorry for the late reply) yeah of course, whatever option we choose we can set up the redirects for the other option, that's not an issue. -- Syrio posso aiutare? 21:40, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

April 27

Is Commons is no longer of any value as a repository of documentary protest images?

I've been contributing images to Commons for the past decade or so, and am at the verge of quitting and deleting my profile.

• Mostly I take wildlife images of Australia - but also cultural festivals and occasional protests that I might see. I'm not a professional, and definitely not a great photographer ... but I do get lucky with some quality pictures, Featured pictures, and #20 spot in the picture of the year a while ago. Capturing images of my community, such as protests, festivals, annual commemorations and international visits such as the G20 conference here in Brisbane and its associated cultural events means that there's a pool of images for future historians and which occasionally also get picked up by academic journals.
• I tried to avoid the underbelly of Wikipedia and Wiki Commons politics as much as possible. I've seen some journals describe the toxicity and why some good people prefer simply not to deal with it. I think most people are well-meaning, but I've seen others who appear revel in those politics and in-fighting ... but I honestly have better things to do. Sadly, I seem to have been reluctantly caught up in it this week.
• My concern that's pushing me to stop contributing is that we currently have a small group of self-appointed guardians who've been deleting images of protests about the war in Ukraine (including two of my images here and here).
• In other cases, they're deleting valid protest images of Abdel Fatah el-Sisi or Women's rights campaigners in Iran. There were also recent Gaza and Iraeli protests where the uploaders have been forced to pixelate signs and photographs of hostages - which really makes the Commons version unusable from a documentary perspective.
• In all cases, the images are of an EVENT. There is a placard visible - giving context to what the protest is about, but the graphic they're complaining about might be less that 5% of the total image area! In no case is it attempting to circumvent copyright. FOP and Derivative works policies appear to being misused - the fact that someone is holding a protest sign doesn't necessarily mean that our photographic images are derivative works ... we're simply documenting a protest event, and people will generally be holding placards.
• Admittedly, one of my images has an image placard taking about 15%. I purposefully made faces in the crowd out of focus as it contained children who I was uncomfortable including ... although the protesters and their Australian plus Ukrainian flags are still visible. The resulting photograph contains an image based on a work by an NZ cartoonist from 2008. After some research, I contacted the Alexander Turnbull library who holds the work of that cartoonist (now retired) - and they have no issue with it. The image is copyrighted but even they see that I was photographing an event.
• Based on the examples that I've seen, and if it continues, I can see that Wiki Commons is set to lose a lot of documentary photographs where there are events at which people are carrying placards with images ... such as these from the January 6 insurrection: ex1 ex2 ex3 ex4 ex5

My feeling is that some of these Commons' policies triggering deletions are reducing the viability and usefulness of Commons as a repository of documentary photographs - or maybe that well-intended policies are being misapplied. These deletions are being pushed by a small number of individuals - so it's hard to tell if it's just them or if this truly was the Wiki Commons community viewpoint. The deleted images are fine on every other platform. My own photographs in Wiki Commons (at least prior to this deletion) have been used in magazines, academic journals and websites, our Australian national broadcaster, and even an Australian documentary feature film. It's just Wiki Commons admins that started making drama lately and saying that they can no longer be hosted because of some hypothetical that no-one else whatsoever has an issue with. Thoughts?? Is there any point of Wiki Commons containing documentary images if they're just going to get deleted?? Bald white guy (talk) 12:20, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

@Bald white guy: Please have the Alexander Turnbull library send permission via VRT.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:14, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

What would you suggest as a solution? The problem is that the protestors violate the copyright of the original artist and documenting that copyright violation is therefore a copyright violation too. When we are talking about paintings made by the protestors themself I would agree that we should write down the guideline that holding a self made painting into a camera at a protest is considered as consent for publishing the photo of the artwork. Especially as getting a written down permission is not possible in such cases. GPSLeo (talk) 13:24, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

@GPSLeoThanks ... I understand that there's a challenge. But imagine if the George Floyd incident had occurred in front of a movie theatre and there just happened to be a movie poster on display in the background. Essentially there's an event that needs to be reported but it cannot (or at least not on Wiki Commons). No respected publication or image repository other than Wiki Commons would actually have a problem with it. In the Australian and New Zealand legal jurisdictions, any copyright claim would be moot as they would come under "fair use" which isn't acceptable on this site for some reason. I think there needs to be an acceptable threshold. I think it's dodgy saying that something that occupies maybe 5% of the total image space (and was incidental, and outside the photographer's control) should trigger deletion. It just seems like overkill and, again, it makes Wiki Commons unfeasible for images of protest or other similar events. I'm seriously just losing my love for Wiki Commons over policies or interpretations that don't seem to make sense. Bald white guy (talk) 13:50, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

But background or only 5% has nothing to do with the examples you linked above. At these two examples the main subject of the photo is the poster that is presumable shown without permission by the original author. GPSLeo (talk) 13:59, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Essentially there's an event that needs to be reported but it cannot (or at least not on Wiki Commons). No offense, but Commons isn't a news site. Nor is it meant to be a general media repository that hosts whatever people want to upload here. It's not even good for that purpose either. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:08, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Commons is the media storage site for Wikinews.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:44, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

And? That still doesn't make it a news site. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:13, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: As acknowledged by the English Wikinews image use policy (en:wikinews:WN:IUP) Commons is only to store freely licensed or copyright free works. Images with copyright restrictions can be stored locally with a fair use claim. If you are involved with another language version of Wikinews that doesn't accept fair use, then you may want to build consensus there to adopt a local fair use policy. From Hill To Shore (talk) 17:13, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you @Bald white guy. Be me, a user who has only being 6 months and has being harshly “bitten” and insulted quite a lot by seasoned users even though there’s an explicit guideline against it (literally). So this clique of seasoned Wiki users bend the rules to their convenience. What I do is just ride it out. But that’s me as a new or outsider, in your case it must feel different of course. We at the end of the day, it is a community. Miguel Angel Omaña Rojas (talk) 17:23, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Commons is, in general, a perfectly good repository of many types of protest images. However, because of our particularly strict adherence to copyright law, it is not a good repository in which to document materials that violate copyright, and protest banners and placards often disregard copyright, so those particular images can't be here without a long chain of licenses that is almost never achievable. - Jmabel ! talk 14:52, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

@Bald white guy I agree with J. Mabel here. Personally, I would want Commons to be able to host images of protesters with protest paraphernalia, but unfortunately, almost all paraphernalia are essentially artistic works, like creative placards and effigies. Even one image that I imported from Flickr got deleted recently (I imported it when I still had little familiarity on derivative works). There is of no use of applying Freedom of Panorama in many images that intentionally include such protesters' artworks, since FoP rules in 70+ countries do not typically cover non-permanent artworks in public places (Australian FoP itself does not cover flat arts like posters and tarpaulins). I'd like to take note also that Commons does not accept fair use content. Only content that are licensed for commercial re-uses is allowed, and this is a major reason why images containing unfree artworks cannot be hosted here. Perhaps we are meant to host such protest images to document events, but the commercial Creative Commons licensing means there is 100% certainty of an Australian postcard maker or a web developer misusing those images, to the detriment of the artists who created those artistic paraphernalia. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 16:56, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

@JWilz12345 @Jmabel: You and others make good points. However, I find the copyright arguments misguided. The images aren't seeking to surreptitiously capture those works for commercial gain - they're recording an event. The record of that event may be useful for others at some future point and used to highlight an issue I'd never considered (such as a couple of images that I captured at a May Day parade showing a small group of protestors highlighting the unfairness of the Australian/East Timorese Maritime Oil Lease). They had a graphic. Maybe they drew it themselves or maybe it came from other sources. However, that photo was used to illustrate discussions on the issue in several journals and in a film. That debate triggered change. I'm not saying I was responsible for anything meaningful but I was glad to have played a tiny part. I really appreciate Wikimedia for making the images available. Similarly (although not protest images) I was happy to see my Australian bat images being used early on in journals discussing COVID-19 or other bat-borne viruses. The fact that it's been so valuable is why the deletion of otherwise useful images makes me so disappointed.

Once again - the copyright argument is spurious. As mentioned, these types of images are used by the media and others every day without issue since we do have fair use within our legal doctrine. Even without it, our judges and legal professionals here are very smart and reasonable people (Hooray for us antipodean countries without political judicial appointments :-) ). I had the pleasant experience seeing that first-hand working within the NZ judicial system for over a decade.

The problem is that Commons enforces over and above what copyright law actually requires. Policies are aimed at making everything commercially viable. That's not going to always be the case with documentary images. Look - we know that images with identifiable people can't be used in all commercial scenarios because of Personality Rights, and we've found a way to still include them through availability of the Personality Rights Warning. Maybe something similar is needed to protect documentary images where there's some other potentially copyrighted recognisable image. I have used Personality Rights in my protest images where I have faces that are visible (thanks @Yann for having pointed that option out to me some years ago). Anyway - as per my original post, I see the current round of enforcement will result in removal of many valid images - not just mine. It will purge images of important protests on European and Middle-Eastern issues, and many of the January 6 images with visible banners. In the meantime, I'll need to explore other options for hosting my images. Thanks for the discussion. Bald white guy (talk) 01:17, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

@Bald white guy one possible but potentially tedious option is to contact the artists themselves. I assume that the protesters who held the materials were the artists themselves, and if you have acquaintances with them you may try to ask them to have your images of their artistic paraphernalia released under the free culture CC licensing mandated by Wikimedia Commons. The email template for them to use as well as Wikimedia VRTS email address is at COM:VRTS#Email message template for release of rights to a file. If the artists of the paraphernalia have no plans to gain royalties from commercial re-users reusing images of their works, then it is a green light for the licensing permission to proceed. Note that the permission should not be restricted to non-commercial or non-profit uses only. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 04:11, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

• Remember nothing actually gets deleted, just hidden from view to non-administrative editors. Should Commons display rules change to allow fair-use of protest signs, or Freedom of Panorama copyright laws change, those images will be restored. And in 95 years those images will enter the public domain and be visible. --RAN (talk) 18:51, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

  @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) most protest art are temporary only and are not permanently-situated in public places. So unless the demonstrators decide to permanently showcase their artworks in an open-air museum (to fulfill outdoor requirements of around 60+ yes-FoP countries), FoP is not applicable. And note that there is no chance of Australian FoP extended to 2D flat arts. If some art societies there already oppose sculptural FoP in the Australian copyright law, what are the chances of 2D FoP being introduced there? 0%. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 04:21, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

@Bald white guy "these types of images are used by the media and others every day": absolutely. And we could legally publish them on Commons, under the U.S. fair use doctrine. For that matter, it would be perfectly legal for Commons to publish works that are available under an NC license, since we are ourselves non-commercial. However, Commons policy has been from the outset, and remains, that we are specifically a repository of material that, at least in terms of copyright, is available for commercial use and for derivative works. - Jmabel ! talk 07:10, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

if more people know about cc licences...

if more people know about commons...

if these people will then add a caption underneath their poster art: "released under ccby/ccbysa 4 licence"... :) RZuo (talk) 20:36, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

The idea that a major website would care in the slightest about copyright without an DMCA request is still unthinkable to most Trade (talk) 00:13, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Bald guy, having photos deleted is not at all a slight against nor an attack against. It's just simply an unfortunate side effect of Commons strict enforcement against copyright. My suggestion would be to upload your photos to Flickr as well as Commons. That way people can still access the ones that occasionally gets deleted.--Trade (talk) 00:00, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

yes that's also what i occasionally do. photos of things like packaging, non-fop-covered art... are uploaded to my flickr.

i dont care about my copyright (of my photos), but i dont have the copyright of the artworks i depicted. RZuo (talk) 13:57, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

@Trade @JWilz12345@GPSLeo@Jmabel @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) @Prosfilaes @Jeff G.

Thanks for discussion. Look I'll just let those photos get deleted, and stop uploading. I'll find somewhere else more conducive. At the end of the day, I'm just a contributor, and just want to take photos and make them available to my community. I really don't want mess around with someone else's internal organisational politics and agendas. Everyone says I've gotta do this, or I've gotta do that. They say it's a copyright issue - but I feel that's BS, since it's a complete non-issue for everyone in the media, photo library business or legal professionals.

From my side, I see there's a simple remedy with Fair Use defined in our legal system - and it would be very simple for Commons to set up a tag for this type of image in exactly the same way as has been done already for Personality Rights. That tag would highlight that there might be a copyrighted graphic within the image that might impose some restrictions on usage. However, the powers that be within Commons have chosen to avoid that route. The only defence that I saw was a silly argument that someone (somewhere) might want the right to put my protest images onto a postcard! Seriously?! That's a very weak excuse. I'm not sure what postcard images they have in your part of the world - but here, in Queensland Australia, no rational person would ever put that on our postcards. Our tourists prefer their postcards with cuddly koalas, kangaroos, parrots, dolphins, the obligatory pretty landscape/cityscape, and pretty girls in bikinis on a white sand beach.

Thanks to those of you who've helped me through the years and who've made many great contributions of your own both in uploaded photos and your time. However, with this policy, it just isn't the place for me ... and I'm deeply saddened by the deletion of what I believe to be important images by the documentary photographers around the world whose work I've seen come up in those Pending Deletion pages. The way that its done is very disrespectful - maybe the elements in mine were kinda obvious, but the ones for Abdel Fatah el-Sisi or Women's rights campaigners in Iran were blanket deletion requests never specifically calling out which element was at fault within the image. I saw comments on others but never got to see the images as they'd already been removed. Anyway, I'll find another home for my images going forward. Thanks again. Bald white guy (talk) 11:16, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I won't try to convince you to stay. You have a fundamental disagreement with one of the key principles of Commons that was introduced at its creation. We can't change the whole project to suit the demands of an individual.

The key reason for me in maintaining the ban on fair use is that Commons files are automatically copied into websites and databases all across the internet through Wikidata and Wikipedia clones. Those sites and databases place trust in Commons to keep its files free of copyright issues (and remove copyright violations as quickly as possible). Allowing fair use images will break that trust and will require a lot more effort than a single warning template to fix.

There was some talk a couple of years ago about setting up another Wikimedia project for fair use files, but I haven't read any updates about it in a long time. If it does ever launch, that may be a suitable place for you.

Failing that, there are plenty of image archives out there to store your files. It is a shame that we can't accept your fair use contributions but we can't be everything to all people. From Hill To Shore (talk) 12:25, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Bald white guy "...it's a complete non-issue for everyone in the media, photo library business or legal professionals."

it's not bs. it's not non-issue. pretty sure you can find common law precedents (and quite likely australian ones) when artists sue for compensation for violation of copyright by photos depicting their artworks being distributed without their permission.

see https://www.copyright.org.au/browse/book/ACC-Photography-&-Copyright-INFO011 . RZuo (talk) 08:47, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

• Likely this was said before in this lengthy thread, but here my take: I had a look at the 5 samples given initially. All but the last one (which isn't listed for deletion), they seem to be images of specific posters or banners rather than protests in general. As such, the question in their deletion requests is correct. If there happen to be posters in images showing people at protests, the question would have been different. Enhancing999 (talk) 14:25, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

  I read this long thread with interest. I occasionally attend open source law conferences and mix with copyright and patent lawyers on a regular basis. As I understand it, the United States fair use doctrine is an affirmative defense related to the specific use‑case in question — and cannot just automatically pass thru to downstream reuse‑cases in other situations with other facts. Other legal jurisdictions — and I live in Berlin — do not support fair use but rather provide an exhaustive list of exceptions.

      The one solution I have been advocating in this context is to prompt protest organizations to add suitable CC‑BY‑4.0 license notices to their placards and posters. None so far have been remotely interested. They do not care how their material may be used and abused, but equally they cannot be bothered adding public license notices to enable use on Wikipedia.

      Similar to other editors, I cannot talk the OP into staying with Wikimedia Commons. But I would encourage them to review the merits of the reasoning presented thus far, reconsider their position, and work within the necessarily cautious legal policies that Wikimedia has rightfully settled upon in my view. HTH. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 11:03, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

April 28

Photos in png resulting in big filesize

i stumbled upon a user uploading new photos in png, so a typical photo takes up nearly 100 Mb (whereas jpg is normally less than 20).

what's the community's opinion about this? RZuo (talk) 14:03, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

examples https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?sort=create_timestamp_desc&search=filemime%3Apng+hastemplate%3Aown+filesize%3A110000

you can find more by lowering the filesize number. RZuo (talk) 14:13, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

In principle, it is perfectly fine. We welcome high resolution images in uncompressed/low compression formats link PNG and TIFF. For the purpose of archiving, the higher the quality the image we can obtain, the more future-proofed we will be as display technology improves. JPEG are good for making thumbnails but the compression can cause frequent artifacts after repeated editing. It is best to copy the original uncompressed file and edit that and then save as JPEG, which produces usable files with no artifacts. Whether I would have gone to the effort of making such high quality PNGs of plain packaging is another question. From Hill To Shore (talk) 14:20, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with From Hill To Shore. PNGs, TIFs (and lossless compressed WebP files) are very good for archiving purposes (and to edit from them). As interchange format (like embedding images or nominating for QIC/FPC), JPG is better. I used PNGs for the historical cellar of our town hall and TIFs for HDR images, to handle the brightness differences. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:19, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I think it's ridiculous. I like my files to be 1 to 5 MB or so. I might use PNG for images that are fit for PNG such as maps. Even then they should be smaller than 10 MB for sure. But who knows, maybe I'll feel different after buying a 4k monitor? My monitor is 1680 × 1050 so it's really small. A PNG file sized my monitor size is 2,9 MB at the most. Konijnewolf (talk) 22:55, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Everyone has their preferences. I would not use PNG for "ordinary" pictures (landscapes, people, etc.), but for technology, i.e. File:PC-Hardware HOF1969 RAW-Export 000165.png, I could imagine the use lossless images. Yann (talk) 23:12, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

PNG is typically very useful for cartoons and so, that have large areas of same color. A photo of a processor has no large areas of same color. Konijnewolf (talk) 23:30, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

PNG offers fortunately adding transparency to the image ;) (as I did in recent computer hardware images often) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:44, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I use to scan and upload images of postcards in Tiff format, but it just took to long and the upload would time out. So now I do it in JPEG. I thonk that's a good use for loseless images. Since there's details in the original postcard that can be distorted or lost otherwise. I'm not sure about the benefits of loseless images of packaging though. As there really isn't finer details that need to be preserved. Maybe with the actual CPUs, but I don't think so. But its not like there's a file size limit on here either. So to each their own. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:38, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: Please see COM:HR and Commons:Why we need high resolution media.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:51, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

As time passes by, so do the technical standards. Screens with 1680 × 1050 pixels are out of date for example now, 3840 × 2160 is a standard (I work with two 4K screens for example). I am categorizing the images of CPU, and it is a pity, that resolutions like "720 × 260" were used back then. Might be appropriate for 2005, but now, in 2024, it is far too low. There are so many reasons for and against filetypes, it only depends on the manner of use. For archives, high-quality images are preferred (usually lossless compressed), for use and reuse JPG fits probably best. On the other hand, we have limitations and additions on different filetypes. JPGs compresses lossy, only allows 8 bit per channel, has now transparency, and cannot safe different color spaces (AFAIK), TIF is suitable for HDR images, etc. And I can say out of my experience, 100 MB per image is not necessarily much in 2024. Even JPEGs can reach 60 or even 70 MB with a high-resolution camera --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:42, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I created pages with arguments for and against high-resolution/high-quality images in German: User:PantheraLeo1359531/Argumente für große Bilder, User:PantheraLeo1359531/Argumente für kleine Bilder --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:51, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

You are right. I'll try to upload bigger files from now on. Konijnewolf (talk) 22:25, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

With the examples you use, you are certainly right. Most of them are reproductions of art work, and, yeah, there is no example more fitting. But you argue with jpgs of 20Mb, not a hundred. And this seems (even for your argument) sufficient.

But for pictures of art, architecture, landscapes and especially scientific images there can't be a limit, they are priceless. But these are mostly made by professionals, often provided by institutions, and serious amateurs. And many restrict their file sizes, so that they remain the (c-) keepers of the original. That's a pity.

In the case of these huge sized formats the question would be, if for the purpose of 'daily use' these formats should be transformed in jpg versions (with minimized compression), since noone wants to unpack huge files on his phone or tablet if he pays for it or the reception is bad. I want huge resolution, but highest resolution is only of special interest, as you rightfully described (e.g. cropping).

Who would do that? One could formulate a disclaimer for such files that asks uploaders to already produce jpg versions. And maybe a note or a link to the original HR image for the beholder. A possible limit could be about 10 or 20Mb. MenkinAlRire (talk) 20:11, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I kind of buy into the idea of uploading the same image in multiple file formats and sizes. But then it can quickly became a curation issue. There does seem be a conflict (for lack of a better way to put it) between the needs of archivists versus average users who doesn't have the bandwidth or urge to load 200mb images. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:30, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. i wanted to stress that too, but forgot. It the question of encyclopedia or archive, and I think the archive part is for most readers the part that remains hidden. The linking from Wikipedia to Commons with or w/out the Media Viewer in between often feels awkward, even for me, who works with/on both. I just worked with interwiki links to Commons to avoid picture overload in the article. But imho the pictures you actually see in the article are crucial. Who isn't somehow already familiar with Commons, will be reluctant to explore it, because it also looks like the archive (and bureaucratic). MenkinAlRire (talk) 22:39, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

It's simple. In an ideal world archival reference files are in tiff, sometimes png formats. Files for display on websites are the smaller friendlier jpegs.

We are an archive, that hosts files for websites.

Certain types of files demand, different formats to these. There's no need to keep multiple format variations, only the most appropriate.

Many historical and art files often don't conform to this ideal, we upload whatever we can get in those cases, at the best possible resolution. Variations in colourisation very often have to be kept as a result. Broichmore (talk) 18:05, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

April 30

Crowding of categories by date

Hi to all, I would like to apologize if I write inaccuracies using the English language, a language I know well enough but not enough to use in a fluent discussion, so I am getting help from a good online translator. I think everyone is aware of the problem of overcrowding of any category in Commons, overcrowding that complicates the choice of an image that is useful, I recall, both to Wikimedia projects but also, thanks to the choice of license, to any sphere even commercial and usable with some ease even to those who are not familiar with Wikimedian dynamics. If this is well understood in a mother category, such as Category:United States or Category:Mountains or Category:Churches or Category:Women etc, in a category by date it is perhaps less felt, since very often those who upload multimedia content do not also categorize by the date of the photographic shot. I don't know how many people like me spend a lot of time in working these specific categories, I find them very useful because they fix a particular moment in time, so you can see the evolution of an image such as, for example, the maintenance and change of painting of a building, as in the more or less philological restoration of a church, or of the deterioration of a mural that, of course, being exposed to the weather becomes discolored until it disappears. It has also been useful to me on several occasions in identifying the location and/or subject of the shot when the information provided was minimal, making a joint search between the photographer and the dates of the shot. In conclusion, I find it very difficult to tackle the job of emptying the parent categories by date as it is often not possible to use the cat-a-lot toll as templates such as {{Taken on}} or {{According to Exif data}} do not allow it, forcing me to edit every single file with a huge investment in time. I am therefore asking for help to make this work easier for me, and I have a proposal if someone creates a bot for this purpose, even if only by doing a test run to see if everything works smoothly. Since human intervention might be necessary, it would be sufficient to create a temporary over-categorisation, so that they coexist, for example, Category:Photographs taken on 2024-04-30 (mother) and Category:Italy photographs taken on 2024-04-30 (son), and where the bot, recognising this situation would enter |cat=|location=Italy}} at the end of {{Taken on}}, {{According to Exif data}} and similar, by also removing the mother category. I invite you to scroll through the categories by date to make you aware that some are full of hundreds and hundreds of images which, if catalogued IMO more accurately, could improve their visibility and traceability. One of the problems is the large number of institutional images uploaded, reports of meetings of political personalities representing other countries or at international meetings, such as at the European Parliament, images that clog up these categories by the date taken. Sorry for the length of my intervention, thanks for reading.--Threecharlie (talk) 11:09, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

PS: I would like you to go and see my contributions to better understand what I am talking about, I think it is illustrative of the work I do.--Threecharlie (talk) 11:12, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Threecharlie: given your link here I looked at some of what you are doing, and the first three files I looked at raised questions for me, so let me come back to you with some questions:

• File:Secretary Blinken Arrives in Amman - 53689658570.jpg: what is the point of putting this in a Category:2024 at Queen Alia International Airport if you are not then going to create the category?
• File:Entrada de escuela primaria el día de las infancias.jpg, File:Hervás 3.jpg: for both of these, in the {{According to Exif data}} you added, there is a "cat=" with no value. What is that about?

You are correct that when things are catalogued through templates, Cat-a-lot is not the right tool. Are you familiar with VFC? - Jmabel ! talk 17:47, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

• For the subcategory of Queen Alia International Airport I have sorted it out now, unfortunately sleep comes every now and then and I am forced to stop working on Commons.
• cat= I always add it because, even if in a very small percentage of cases, I have seen it exploited, and by reporting it as indicated by the template, I think I am urging those who find it in front of them to deepen their use of it and, if necessary, supplement it; if it doesn't cause trouble, it is better to propose one more alternative than one less, or they wouldn't have created the template that way (but if somewhere it is indicated as deprecated, I will comply and remove it)
• No, I am not familiar with VFC and now that you have pointed it out to me I study it and see if I can understand how it works, forgive me but at almost 61 years of age and although I have been on the web for at least 25 I have no computer training and have to apply myself a bit more than a millenial.

A note Jmabel, I know it makes more noise a tree falling than a forest growing but I think it deserves more attention what I do rather than what I DON'T do, don't you think? ;-) Threecharlie (talk) 23:45, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Threecharlie: FWIW, since you bring it up, I'm almost a decade older than you.

You said to look through your contributions and it would be clear what you were doing; I picked the latest three that were at the file level and looked. - Jmabel ! talk 01:39, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: , I wanted to thank you for your suggestion to use VSC, with which I was able to achieve what I set out to do. I'm sorry it's not so intuitive to know these tools, if I had been aware of them of course I wouldn't have come to 'torment' you at the Village pump, but I guess the way Commons is structured it's not easy to create a 'for dummies' section (I'm going to die a newbiee). I'm afraid I'll be using this new little toy a lot. ;-) --Threecharlie (talk) 04:15, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

@Threecharlie: I like to use the VFC shortcut.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:15, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

We can be easily overcrowded by date. There comes a point where common sense should prevail. We already include for a date field. Search will find the date parameters we seek, without spoon feeding by catting. Broichmore (talk) 18:19, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Mirrored image

File:North city wall (with piles of oranges) (Jerusalem) LOC matpc.00473.jpg seems to be left-right mirrored. It is possible to fix? 93.47.36.56 16:33, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

The text added later is definitely mirrored but is there evidence to say the scene itself is mirrored? One possibility is that the Library of Congress fixed an earlier error and the scene is now the right way round. From Hill To Shore (talk) 16:54, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

File:Siur wikipedia in Jerusalem 080608 53.JPG confirms that the orientation is indeed correct, even though the text number is mirrored. - Broichmore (talk) 08:11, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

The number was written on the negative, on the flipside it seems (so it could have been mirrored anyway). MenkinAlRire (talk) 22:56, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I will add a warning to the file so that there are no prompts to flip the image. DenghiùComm (talk) 14:11, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

May 02

PD-USGov-POTUS Flickr account uploading photos under a non-commercial license

How do we go on about this? flickr2commons won't work for obvious reasons--Trade (talk) 03:11, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

My longstanding requests for Flickr2Commons (and more recently, Flickypedia) to allow uploads by trusted users of PD images wrongly tagged on Flickr with non-free licences have, to date, fallen on stony ground :( Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:16, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

People of / People in

Hi, While most categories are "People of ...", couples are Couples in .... Any reason? Yann (talk) 06:55, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

there's also Category:People by country of location.

origin vs location. RZuo (talk) 07:23, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Each can make sense. Certainly almost no category about a person could be a subcat of a "people in" category, because people move. Conversely, sometimes all we know is where someone was photographed, with no idea where they may have been from (or knowing full well they were from someowhere else). - Jmabel ! talk 14:53, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Question about Wiki Loves Earth 2024

COM:WLE2024 This page has a list of participating countries, and my country is not among them. Participating countries each have their own prize pools and judges. Are these separate from the event-wide judging process, and if so, can people from countries that aren't participating still take part in the contest and be eligible for the judging process? --ReneeWrites (talk) 07:58, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Probably better to ask at Commons talk:Wiki Loves Earth 2024. - Jmabel ! talk 14:54, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I'll crosspost my question there, but people there don't seem to have much luck, considering one topic that's brought up has not been dealt with for years. The Village Pump sees a lot more activity and gets a lot more eyeballs. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:21, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

It's better to ask there because it concerns WLE. there aren't any old topics at the wle 2024 discussion page.

I guess your question could be answered by the international orga.

I'm a member of the German WLE organisastion team, I try to answer you as far as I understand :-)

When your country doesn't participate at WLE, you can't participate with pictures of your country at WLE. But you can participate at other WLE competitions from other countrys. You are from the Netherlands the German WLE competition waits for your pictures of German protected areas. Greetings Z ^thomas 16:48, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Feedback period about WMF Annual Plan for 2024-25 is open!

Hello everyone! The work of the Wikimedia Foundation is guided by its Annual Plan. We’ve now published the full draft Annual Plan on Meta. Please share your feedback and ideas!

This is really one of the best chances to influence how the Wikimedia Foundation works and what it chooses to focus on and prioritise, as the Annual Plan is the main guiding document for planning what to do. This is a high-level document, as it aims to find the key points for the entire organisation – this is to find the main direction, which will help the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation to find more tangible objectives.

These are the main goals:

• INFRASTRUCTURE: Advance Knowledge as a Service. Improve User Experience on the wikis, especially for established editors. Strengthen metrics and reporting.
• EQUITY: Support Knowledge Equity. Strengthen equity in decision-making via movement governance, equitable resource distribution, closing knowledge gaps, and connecting the movement.
• SAFETY & INTEGRITY: Protect our people and projects. Strengthen the systems that provide safety for volunteers. Defend the integrity of our projects. Advance the environment for free knowledge.
• EFFECTIVENESS: Strengthen the Foundation's overall performance and effectiveness. Evaluate, iterate and adapt our processes for maximum impact with more limited resources.

You can read more about what this means in practice on Meta, where you can find both summaries of what the Wikimedia Foundation wants to achieve and links to more detailed pages.

You’re very welcome to share your thoughts on Meta or here, in your own language, and we’ll make sure they are passed on to the relevant parts of the Wikimedia Foundation and that your questions are answered. We can also set up meetings in your own language to further discuss the implication of the Annual Plan, if needed.

Thank you very much for your participation! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:23, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

How is Commons in there? In terms of people, infrastructure cost, enterprise services cost/income, development expenses?

I noticed it mentions improvements of UploadWizard as 2023 achievement. Enhancing999 (talk) 11:01, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I wonder how the Upload Wizard was improved if we can't even upload a new version of an image that is larger than 100Mb. Also a complex process where we cannot enter the details of the files but have to wait for them to be uploaded (even if this means waiting hours until midnight) to then enter the details of title, description, etc. In Internet archive you can upload large amounts of files without problems, why do we have an upload wizard that does not accept large files? Wilfredor (talk) 12:27, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

@Enhancing999 while it's not explicit in the text, some support for Wikimedia Commons is planned as part of Objective & Key Result WE2.3. The implication of this are still being defined by the people who will be in charge of this objective, so I can't go into detail, but there will be some support and development work going around Commons also for next fiscal year (i.e. from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025).

@Wilfredor Thanks for pointing this out. I'll take note of these two tickets, and see if I can get some answers about them. I do share your feeling that these problems should be fixed, I'll try to give you a response ASAP. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:54, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

@Wilfredor: you might want to look at Commons:WMF support for Commons/Upload Wizard Improvements and its talk page. And, FWIW, while Sannita and I have had our disagreements about specifics, he is much more responsive and available than his predecessors, and you really should feel free to engage him, probably on the talk page there, which I think is the main place discussion has been taking place. - Jmabel ! talk 14:59, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

According to your recommendation I have created a section here although I think this will be more hidden: [1] Wilfredor (talk) 16:26, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

@Wilfredor You should try the big files again btw. Some major bugs were found and fixed by various ppl in the last weeks. See also the gazette note here one day ago. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:27, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

No, it not was fixed Wilfredor (talk) 18:38, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

The upload wizard limitation being discussed here appears to be an intentional choice not a bug afaik. I imagine you are already aware of this, but User talk:Rillke/bigChunkedUpload.js is basically the best currently existing choice for uploading new versions of an existing large file. Bawolff (talk) 07:29, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

A section in the plan about Commons would be helpful, even if it says not much is planned. I guess the persons handling DMCA requests mostly work for Commons, so this could be in there.

"Enterprise services" cost/income would be good to plan too. Possibly cost is higher than actual income. Enhancing999 (talk) 10:52, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

@Enhancing999 You're not the only one suggesting this, and I will report that there is cross-wiki substantial consensus to get more info about this kind of data. It is true, nonetheless, that the Annual Plan is a more general document that describes the strategy, while the objectives are defined in the other page I suggested you (and are, in fact, being defined in these very days). Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:40, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I did read WE2.3. It might not impact existing contributors/contributions that much though.

We could brainstorm on points that should be covered from a Commons perspective and then add to the plan, specifying for each if anything is allocated to it or not.

I guess it's also in your interest, not that you end up being the only person working on Commons. Enhancing999 (talk) 16:18, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Enhancing999 - Thank you for your comments. In the first half of the new financial/annual plan year, we are going to continue improvement work on UploadWizard to help decrease bad media uploads, with a focus on copyright. We also plan to include further user interface improvements to the “release rights” step, and an initial version of logo detection integration in the upload flow - which represents the second largest reason for deletions. An initial discussion about the logo detection model happened on the village pump. We will continue to keep an eye on ongoing discussions on the Commons village pump about issues that need attention for further planning. Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF) (talk) 14:00, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Can you ensure this is detailed in the plan as well and can be readily found from a Commons section of the plan? Enhancing999 (talk) 15:00, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Next 12 months at Commons

Let's list a few points and try to align them with the main ones (infrastructure, equity, safety & integrity, effectiveness)

• ensure system keeps running (infrastructure)
• identify core missing Mediawiki features (infrastructure)
• develop or fix missing Mediawiki features (infrastructure)
• determine staff active for Commons (infrastructure)
• be transparent on cost for Wikipedias, storage, enterprise users (infrastructure)
• provide a safe environment for volunteer and professional contributors (safety)
• assess cost/income from Commons images as an enterprise service (effectiveness)
• streamline mass uploads (effectiveness, infrastructure)

Enhancing999 (talk) 08:22, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

• I think that's all reasonable. I have a very specific thing I'd like to suggest additionally, and I haven't read the document in question well enough to categorize it, but we could really use a paid program manager to help coordinate the volunteers who develop and maintain tools. (Just for Commons this may not add up to full time, but we could share the resource with other wikis.) No one is going to volunteer to be a program manager, and it is pretty evident that we need one. - Jmabel ! talk 15:42, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

  There is just a risk that a headcount for this would reduce resources actually available at WMF for improving Commons directly or providing support for tools written by volunteers. Enhancing999 (talk) 08:47, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

  • @Enhancing999: I personally think that at this point that even if we sacrificed even 1 FTE developer for 1 FTE program manager coordinating our tech volunteers, we'd be ahead on the deal. - Jmabel ! talk 16:01, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand what the costing stuff has to do with commons. Bawolff (talk) 07:35, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

@Bawolff: If they have only so much budget for Commons-specific work, a program manager would come at the expense of some resource currently devoted to Commons. - Jmabel ! talk 17:23, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I doubt budget is broken down that way. Operational costs are shared with other sites, enterprise is an independent organization (for tax purposes i guess). For most of these things, if money is saved on them it goes to something else in the same department. It probably wouldn't go to something commons related in a totally different department [i dont work for wmf dont really know how the budgeting works]. Bawolff (talk) 18:16, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe some intro for such a section would be helpful. "Commons provides photos and other files for all Wikimedia projects. These are described using standard wikipages with templates, categories, exif and structured data." In the more detailed section we could mention what for these could be improved (even if ultimately it wont over the next 12 months). For wikipages we can mostly rely on what is done for Wikipedia. We could improve category redirects and should make sure hot-cat and cat-a-lot keep working. Structured data has still some basic problems with the interface. Enhancing999 (talk) 08:47, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

We really need someone to maintain the CropTool. It seems like the thing is breaking every other week. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:30, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

The real solution would be to make cropping of files part of the thumbnail generation. Then we do not need any cropped variants. The users just define the crop they need when adding the file to an article. GPSLeo (talk) 19:40, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

@GPSLeo: Have you considered using {{CSS image crop}}, available on some 76 projects?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 21:46, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

But that is not a crop that works in the regular thumbnail boxes in articles and also not in the MediaViewer. And of course such a tool needs a UI to define the crop. GPSLeo (talk) 18:39, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

AI generated images of Shinto deities

I noticed that it seems the majority of Shinto deities have no images available here. Some of these deities are relatively important so I feel they should have images to give people some idea about them. Would it be acceptable to upload ai generated images for this purpose or would that violate rules of commons? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 16:26, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

@Immanuelle: I would expect that for any Shinto deities where there is a traditional visual representation, it should be easy to find images old enough to be in the public domain and use those. What is the difficulty in doing so? If there is no traditional representation, what would be the basis to consider these AI images culturally valid? - Jmabel ! talk 18:43, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel you make a very good point. I am unsure what the reason behind the lack of visual representations here is, but they are very hard to come across. Shinto is not traditionally ancionistic, but for many deities, even seemingly relatively prominent ones it seems the majority of visual representations are from Gacha games or Shin Megami Tensei. It is quite confusing. Maybe people just are not searching for and uploading enough paintings. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 18:50, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

@Immanuelle: do you have specific deities in mind as an example? --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:22, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

@HyperGaruda Ame no Hoakari is the one I was thinking of. He comes up a lot when talking about the Tenson Korin, but I cannot find any images at all. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 19:26, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Any images in the public domain, or in general? If the latter - what do you expect the AI-based image to be based on? AI isn't a crystal ball. Omphalographer (talk) 21:52, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

If you could provide a list of these deities (or point us to a place where we can find which ones you mean) we can help look for visual representations in the public domain and upload those directly. I'm personally really not a fan of using AI if alternatives exist, but I don't know how other editors feel. ReneeWrites (talk) 19:25, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

@ReneeWrites I will get back to you with a list. Thank you for your help! Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 19:27, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I cannot imagine AI-generated images being appropriate illustrations for these subjects. They fall into the same category as user-created artworks, which are generally considered out-of-scope except for edge cases (flags and heraldry) where a standardized and detailed starting description is available. That does not appear to be the case here. AI-generated images have additional concerns which have been discussed at length on Commons. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:02, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

It's probably a shot in the dark, but you might ask someone from Japan on here to take pictures of the statues of these people. I know they exist, but apparently are hard to find images of for some reason. Especially ones that are freely licensed. Maybe it could be turned into a Wiki Loves Monuments project or something though. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:51, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

May 03

Steamboat Willie – Frame by frame

Hi!

As the film "Steamboat Willie" is in the public domain now, would it make sense to upload the frames as single frames here? The Internet Archive offers a lossless movie file (https://archive.org/download/steamboat-willie-16mm-film-scan-4k-lossless/) from where it would be possible to extract all single frames.

Greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 06:09, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

how many frames in total?

why not the movie directly? RZuo (talk) 07:28, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

The file is as an MOV file with a filesize of approx. 32 GiB. It should be ca. 10000 frames in total --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:54, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Some specific frames, yes. All the frames separately? I don't see the point. But the whole movie, yes. Yann (talk) 07:55, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I could try a high-quality conversion of the mov file to webm (it wouldn't be lossless, but probably without visible artifacts) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:56, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that would be useful. As the Quicktime version is 34.2GB, it can't be done with COM:V2C. Yann (talk) 07:59, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Ok! --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:17, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

You can do it with lossless AV1 in webm, and split the result in 5GiB chunks for upload to commons. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 23:29, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I did upload it with File:Steamboat Willie (16mm Film Scan) ProRes (3400x2550) 01 von 03.webm, File:Steamboat Willie (16mm Film Scan) ProRes (3400x2550) 02 von 03.webm, File:Steamboat Willie (16mm Film Scan) ProRes (3400x2550) 03 von 03.webm, because I thought, lossless would result in too large total filesize --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:13, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

• Steamboat Willie (16mm Film Scan) ProRes (3400x2550) 01 von 03.webm
• Steamboat Willie (16mm Film Scan) ProRes (3400x2550) 02 von 03.webm
• Steamboat Willie (16mm Film Scan) ProRes (3400x2550) 03 von 03.webm

Privacy issue

I am sure that File:Venedig-352-Klingeln-2003-gje.jpg has multiple privacy issue, there are various family surnames. Is there any Commons rules broken? --93.47.37.244 09:41, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

As long as the location of this residential building is not publicly identifiable, there are actually no rules broken. Regards --A.Savin 09:54, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

IMO, privacy concerns usually have no merits and deletion requests usually result to "kept". See COM:Non-copyright restrictions. However, if the uploader him/herself decides to nominate their image on their own, then admins may grant deletions (based on non-copyright concerns) as courtesy. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 10:56, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

The image was 16 years old when uploaded and is now 21 years old. That to me alleviates any privacy concerns. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:49, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Tram construction

It looks like France but which city? Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:30, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Do you want to give us some clues, as to where you were, in September 2002? _Broichmore (talk) 17:25, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Tram? This looks like a 1435 mm railroad to me. Or even bigger? Konijnewolf (talk) 22:35, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Trams can go on standard gauge — see Category:1435 mm track gauge trams. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 14:06, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

You were standing at approximately [45.69445°N, 4.94101°E], looking west, down Boulevard Edouard Herriot in Saint-Priest. This particular stretch of rail would eventually become Category:Esplanade des Arts (Lyon Tram). --HyperGaruda (talk) 06:59, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

i'm amazed by your geotagging skills. Orz.

how do you always manage to pinpoint these places? they dont even look so similar on google maps streetviews. RZuo (talk) 09:21, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Aww, you are flattering me, but if you really want to know... First I had a detailed look around the photo, the architecture is typical of suburban residential mid/high-rises in France, and then there are a couple of signs in the distance in French, but the license plates were decisive in excluding other French-speaking countries. I then checked what other uploads Smiley.toerist photographed in September 2002; in relation to France I saw Le-Puy-en-Velay and Vienne, both relatively close to each other. Trams are usually found only in big cities and the nearest one is Lyon. According to en:Lyon tramway, after the 2001 opening, line T2 was extended in October 2003, meaning construction work as photographed would have taken place before that, which nicely fits the hints so far. From here I used Google Maps/StreetView/Earth (their historical aerial and street-level imagery is exceptionally useful) to see where on that extension one can find a tramway slightly bending to the left and passing a curved building. The apartment blocks are quite generic, but that curved building in the distance was a key hint in confirming the right location. Finally I try to place myself in the photographer's shoes to figure out the most likely position for taking the picture with this arrangement. Tl;dr: some background knowledge, looking up history, a lot of browsing through Google Maps/Earth/StreetView, and a great deal of luck ;) --HyperGaruda (talk) 15:53, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

excellent detective skills! Orzzzz. thx a lot for sharing!

i forgot about checking related uploads (from which approximate location might be inferred). i gave up when i saw that it's a pre-internet-boom photo so most shops would probably have changed. RZuo (talk) 18:08, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

@HyperGaruda: You are really good at it. It's an incredible skill. Good for you. Good for us ;) MenkinAlRire (talk) 23:03, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to all. I suspected something like this location as the image was just after Le-Puy-en-Velay, but I learned to never make any assumption, as often the next image on the film could be weeks later somewhere totaly different.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:30, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Videogame thumbnail

I attempted to upload a game thumbnail picture, but it got quickly deleted. Is there any legit way to upload it? The game producer has told me that everything from this webpage "can be published on any website", as it is the game's official press kit, but currently, no success. Siberian Snake (talk) 14:01, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

@Siberian Snake: Hi, and welcome. Please have the game producer send permission via VRT with a carbon copy to you to keep you in the loop.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:17, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

A reminder that we don't just share in this place. We make available for other people for all purposes, including commercial use. Especially that last thing is not always what a producer might expect. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:52, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

May 04

Category:Files from Personal Creations Flickr stream

712 images in this Category. I think they all should be deleted. Every image (bar 1 that I edited) contains a link in the Description to commercial web site advertising personalised goods. Each Description consists of this plus a superfluous part of the Licence conditions and nothing more. So each would need the Description editing Many of the files are potentially Copyright Vios - the licence of the photos is correct on Flickr but they are Derivative Works of the items photographed. Its a lot of work to go through the whole lot editing.

In my opinion the whole photostream was created as an advertising promotion for website. Does the other Users agree? Is there is a simple way to delete all files in the Category? I am not very good with Mass Deletion nominations and if I were to follow the instructions in Help it would seem I would have to create a list of 712 files!! Suggestions?? --Headlock0225 (talk) 09:24, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Disagree. The descriptions containing the license conditions is no big deal. The titles describes the images sufficiently anyways Trade (talk) 09:49, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes you're right. The descriptions containing the license conditions is no big deal. What is big deal is that web link in every Description. One option is to do a mass edit to remove the web link in every description but I don't know how to do that. Or we accept my contention that the whole lot is one big advertising promotion and delete all 712 files . Headlock0225 (talk) 10:24, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

If those images are useful in Commons and in scope, the fact they are sourced and linked to a commercial website is no problem.

If those images aren't useful in Commons or not in scope, they should be deleted, but not because of the link.

The descriptions could be improved, with the conditions and the link moved to a more appropriate section. You can do it by hand for each image or learn how to do batch edits. However, I would say that is one of the least useful uses of a Commons editor's time, but YMMV and since we are all volunteers it's up to each one to choose their tasks and if you want to take this one it's perfectly fine.--Pere prlpz (talk) 11:23, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

@Headlock0225: I zapped that spam for you using VFC.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:43, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you - that is just what I was hoping someone would do! Headlock0225 (talk) 16:34, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

We are gonna be real busy if we have to delete all photos that includes links to the author's website Trade (talk) 12:12, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I will help with the descriptions and categorization. GeorgHH • talk   12:47, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks Headlock0225 (talk) 16:35, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

CropTool

Seems to be down again. I keep getting the error message: "Upload failed! undefined ". --Rosiestep (talk) 13:37, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I am also facing issues with the tool from yesterday.--Rocky Masum (talk) 13:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

May 05

What issues remain before we could switch the default interface skin to Vector 2022?

The current default interface skin is Vector 2010, which is now legacy. I've been trying the new Vector 2022 skin here for a while now, and it seems to be working well. You can try it by changing the interface at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. The fixed width issue has been a sticking point on other wikis, but since that is motivated by the length of a line of text that is easily readable, and we have a very different use case here since we're dealing with media browsing, I think we have a good case for disabling that part by default. Is there anything else that could be an issue? Do we want to have a vote here about changing the default, or should we just submit a request to make the change? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:52, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

This is what it looks like to me: https://i.imgur.com/GQvAaZK.png (Win 10, Chrome 123.0.6312.107)

The only thing I have a strong opinion about is the ability to continue using the Vector 2010 skin even if it's no longer the default one. ReneeWrites (talk) 12:20, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I am on the same boat of opinion as ReneeWrites. Just like the current implementation at enwiki, older Vector skin still exists as an option in the user preferences even if the default skin is Vector 2022. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 12:44, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

@ReneeWrites @JWilz12345 Thanks for your comments! It will be possible to use the old Vector skin, after that Vector22 becomes default. You will have to update now your GlobalPreferences to choose Vector10, or change to legacy version once the new default is set on Commons, since the default will change. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 12:57, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

The problem with Vector22 seems to be the lack of easily accessible interwikis.

2022 is already a while ago, so we might as well wait for the next Vector version. Enhancing999 (talk) 20:31, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

 Oppose I have tried the Vector 2022 but I think for Commons it is not an improvement. Because so much space on the right is taken by standard stuff that is useful on sister projects (even when you do not want that stuff, it still takes a lot of empty space), that less space is left for the things Commons is about: images. In the old version there are eight images on a row in a category (on my desk top), in the new version seven (that is four more rows to scroll through when there are 200 files in a category). Same for gallery pages; when the "widths" is set on a larger number than the standard, there are only three or four images left, while in the old version there were five or six. For instance Gallery page Art, with standard width: five images on a row in the new version, eight in the old one. That is why I decided not to use the new version. I would like to grant users who are not familiar with vectors the same experience as I have with the old version. So my plea is to keep the old version as the default interface. JopkeB (talk) 07:23, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

•  Support I originally disliked V22 due to how much space was wasted, either by whitespace or by things I wished would just be out of the way, but figured I'd give it a chance when enwiki switched to it. So I found the settings for fixed the annoying things. Like enabling full-width rather than limited-width (in the preferences pane). Like sending the TOC and tools menus to become collapsed pulldowns rather than being sidebars (the 'hide' buttons), which includes the interwiki links. I just compared Category:Benzene on my small/medium-sized desktop browser: V22 gives the same or even more images per row (depending on exact window width). DMacks (talk) 07:58, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

  It's possible that interwikis aren't of much use if one uses mainly English Wikipedia and Commons and relies on being logged-in. The Commons default layout is already a problem in mobile view. Let's not make it worse for the other 50% of users. Enhancing999 (talk) 14:56, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

May 06

StockCake – how to handle

The website StockCake offers public domain AI-generated images. How should the site be viewed in relation to the scope and educational use, including copyright?

Thanks and kind regards --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:12, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

There is some conversation, but no definitive local policy. Have you seen Commons:AI-generated media? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:17, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

There is no copyright concerns. Trade (talk) 12:13, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your annotations! --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:02, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

AI are the sort of images we should not be uploading, they are counterfeit, consequently non-educational, have no validity or veracity. The project could and will be easily be swamped with this rubbish. Our reputation will be damaged and our admins drowned. They are a threat to the project. Broichmore (talk) 18:12, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, Trade, and Broichmore: please review Commons:Village_pump/Proposals/Archive/2024/02#Ban the output of generative AIs.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:19, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

That discussion is a muddled mess. @The Squirrel Conspiracy: shut it down far too early; and what does he mean by the consensus (is) against adopting these changes? What changes? It's no exaggeration to say that AI threatens the very viability of the project. Computers can create fake images faster than we want to cope with. People just haven't thought out the implications here. Broichmore (talk) 15:26, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

There were over two weeks between the last comment in that discussion and when I closed it. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 15:56, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

What did you mean by the consensus (is) against adopting these changes? What changes were mooted? Can you please advise? Broichmore (talk) 00:27, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

The proposal was "Ban the output of generative AIs". The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 01:36, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I just wanted to ask what the positions are here in case a user gets the idea of obtaining masses of images from these kind of sources. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:09, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Hungarian category without upper categories

Category:MÁV machine repair plant This is a fairly confusing categorie with some images of rail vehicles and some derelict site.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:22, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I added Category:Economy of Budapest. Ymblanter (talk) 15:16, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Is this username appropriate?

User:Mark Nakoykher. Na koy kher / На кой хер in Russian means What the f*** (heck) in English. --Quick1984 (talk) 18:35, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's an issue, especially for someone who hasn't edited in two years. Commons:Username policy does not prohibit profanity (although some other projects have username policies that do.) He edited for five years with 2500 uploads and doesn't appear to have had any significant issues with other editors, so the clause of Offensive usernames that make harmonious editing difficult or impossible doesn't apply. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 05:29, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Usernames are not allowed if offensive, profane, violent, threatening, sexually explicit, or disruptive, or that advocate or encourage any such behaviour (including criminal or illegal acts). w:WP:USERNAME that's the policy set by the Foundation.

That it's been overlooked to this point is irrelevant.

There is at least one person on the project who adopted an IP address as a user name; IMO, another, that should be added to the list. Broichmore (talk) 15:54, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

That is the enwiki username policy. It is set by the enwiki community, not the WMF, and has no bearing whatsoever on Commons. The Commons username policy, which I linked above, differs in several ways and does not prohibit profanity. I see no compelling reason to force a username change, especially since the user has been inactive for two years and is unlikely to respond to such a request. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 01:17, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

The user indeed took a lot of excellent photos, which are actively used on external resources. If you saw the comments that appear under serious articles on reputable news websites when readers discover a credit to the author of the photo, you might not be so sure of it. I believe that mentioning WM Commons next to such a dashing nickname does not brighten the reputation of the project. --Quick1984 (talk) 07:48, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Another tram question

Trying to identify the location of File:TramFromAbove(50352061186).jpg, i think it's the same tram model as here: File:Tram Ce 4-4 145 + Anh. C4 311 (22053976288).jpg , thus pointing to Berne / Switzerland, but i don't know if the same tram model was used in different swiss towns, too. There was a line 11 in Berne, between main station and Fischermätteli, but i wasn't able to match the street and the buildings to any location there. Is anyone able to recognize the street or the buildings? Fl.schmitt (talk) 19:11, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

@Fl.schmitt: many thanks for narrowing it down to Bern, that made it a lot easier. I am fairly sure we are looking over Hirschengraben, toward the northeast. Quite likely a tourist photographed this from a window or balcony of the Hotel National. Most of the buildings in the back (address numbers 1 to 11) are visible in File:ETH-BIB-Bern-LBS H1-026968.tif, except for the one at number 9 (probably built some time after the tram picture). File:ETH-BIB-Bern-LBS H1-012239.tif is a few years older and less sharp, but does seem to confirm all the façades we see in the tram picture. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:13, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Categories vs articles

I made this category Category:Moto-Ise Shrines and connected it to the French wikipedia article but it was changed to the category. I feel this may be a significant issue with wikidata generally. How should it be resolved? Have efforts been made for it? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 21:35, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

This is a persistent issue. Wikidata items that are "Category:x" should link to "Category:x" here. Items that are "X" (i.e. just an article) should link to "X" here (i.e. a gallery). We should not generally link cross-namespace items unless said namespace just doesn't exist on one project or another, but Main and Category exist on all projects. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:03, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I've had that happen a couple of times myself. It doesn't help that there's bots on their end constantly changing links to Commons. There's been a couple of times were I just said screw it and gave trying to have things linked the correct way because a bot kept reverting me. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:33, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

If there is no "Category:X" Wikidata item (and typically there isn't), and there is no gallery page on Commons, then (and only then) it is correct to give a non-category item in Wikidata an interwiki link directly to the Commons category. And, in any case, Commons category (P373) should be the Commons category. - Jmabel ! talk 02:23, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Jmabel is exactly correct here. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 05:12, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Error in Upload Wizard

When I go to "upload file" in the navigation bar on the left, it says:

"Sorry, we could not find a tutorial in your language. The English one is shown instead."

However, my language is set to Canadian English. Is this a bug? It's been doing this all the time.

Thanks! Myrealnamm (💬talk · ✏️contribs) at 23:16, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

It's probably a bug that "en" does not normalize to being identical to "en-CA" in this case or a "bug" that no one has "translated" from en to en-CA. See also Commons:Upload Wizard feedback. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:48, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

May 07

Purge button

Can we please have the ability to purge the cache of pages, like we do on en-Wiki. I'm currently working on the second page of Category:Oasts in Kent and it is not updating on reload. It is not possible to do a manual purge either. Mjroots (talk) 05:08, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

@Mjroots: There's a few gadgets listed at Help:Purge to choose from. I personally use Page Purge and have no complaints. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 05:34, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Pi.1415926535, found Page Purge in preferences and enabled it. Mjroots (talk) 06:32, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

you can always add "?action=purge" to the end of the URL. - Jmabel ! talk 16:11, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Dating Geneva postcard

The black and white postcard was posted on 1963-7-21. However the last classic postcards in black and white, where in the 1950s and most publishers switched to colour from then on. The image looks old and I managed to find a coloured in version in https://www.jhpostcards.com/fr/products/geneve-geneva-ile-j-j-rousseau-et-le-mont-blanc-7001-switzerland-old-postcard-used. Coloured in postcards where the fashion before WW I. So I strongly suspect the original photograph was pre WW I.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:49, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Is that a lake steamer converted into a jetty at the Genève-Jardin-Anglais? Might be good for dating? Broichmore (talk) 14:35, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Providing historical context for photographs of Berlin, Dresden, and Prague as Communism fell in 1989

In 1989, I traveled as a tourist to East and West Berlin, Dresden, and Prague and photographed events in the two weeks spanning the Fall of Communism using 35mm Nikon gear. I have now had those negatives digitized and would like to upload them to Wikimedia under Creative Commons CC‑BY‑SA‑4.0 licenses. The images are probably equivalent in terms of content and scope to any currently on Wikipedia — and usually of far better technical and aesthetic quality. And a couple of the photographs are quite likely historically unique.

Before making the circa 40 JPG scans public, I would like to better articulate their historical contexts. I am therefore looking for input from folk who can help explain these photographs. I think you would need a detailed knowledge of these events and/or know where to find such information. I can easily arrange Zoom video meetings if useful (my timezone is CEST). RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 11:20, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Do remember that much as with a Wikipedia article, it is easy to edit the text after upload. - Jmabel ! talk 16:13, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

You might want to create a gallery page with the full set of your photos, either in unqualified gallery space (like Places of worship in Seattle) or under your own user page (like User:Jmabel/People). - Jmabel ! talk 16:16, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Normally I am quite relaxed about evolving text in public, wiki‑fashion. But in this case I would like to add reasonably accurate metadata to the scans before uploading them in public. Because at that point, I think the files will be downloaded and circulated and any opportunity to correct or extend that metadata will be lost. Finally, I assume that there are no private spaces on Wikimedia where I can work with selected others prior to going public. It may also be that some images should not be made public due to privacy and right to likeness issues and that publish‑then‑take‑down does not seem a very satisfactory way of dealing with those questions. Any thoughts? RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 19:05, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

@RobbieIanMorrison: Do you have a pro account on Flickr? That would quite possibly be a good way to do this (where you could give individuals access to the photos without really publishing them). Commons does not have content that is not public-facing, except for the deleted images that are visible only to admins.

I would guess that in most cases there are few privacy concerns after 34 years, but there might be some. - Jmabel ! talk 21:42, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Thanks for the information. Flickr Pro is reasonable suggestion for working in private. But I have decided to work within Wikimedia Commons instead — and will seek contextual information by adding requests to the relevant Wikipedia talk pages. Moreover, I will not add any depiction metadata to the JPG title and description fields on upload, but rather provide an embedded note that that depiction metadata is being developed and archived on Wikimedia Commons.

    On the privacy front, I did photograph demonstration organizers in Prague and elsewhere — clearly with an implied consent to photograph, although not an explicit consent to make public. I guess most individuals will have retired by now in any case — so I think I should carry on regardless. Also I think it was probably clear that this was (citizen) photojournalism and not simply my holiday snaps.

    Thanks for your suggestions. Much appreciated. I want to get this process right first and your comments have been very helpful. See also this German reference desk posting. Best wishes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 11:33, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

@RobbieIanMorrison: If you don't mind me asking, exactly what level of metadata are you trying to attach to the photographs and how exactly do you plan to do that? Like through Wikidata items that are attached to categories containing the images, individual file descriptions, or what? --Adamant1 (talk) 08:01, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Acceptable photo ?

I found a 1950's era lined exercise notebook with the picture of en:Marilyn Bell on the cover. It was printed as a promotional item for Crown Brand corn syrup with a motivational text for school children using the swimmer as a role model. Before taking the time to import it here, I want to make sure this kind of 70 year old image may be imported and used on WP ? JeanPaulGRingault (talk) 13:51, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

@JeanPaulGRingault: Hi, and welcome. Was that corn syrup sold in Canada or the US? Was the notebook found in either country? If US, and there was no copyright notice, it would be {{PD-US-no notice}} (I am unsure of the formalities in Canada).   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:30, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

It's from Canada...JeanPaulGRingault (talk) 15:12, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Name of age groups

So since Category:Young adults have been mvoed to Category:Young adults does that mean that Category:Middle-aged people should be moved to Category:Middle-aged adults as well? --Trade (talk) 15:17, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Your prior category should be Category:Young people? A typo I guess. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 15:44, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I think young adults and young people is something totally different. Young adults are young but adult people something like 18/20 to 25/30. But young people is about all young people including children so for example all between 0 and 25/30. "Middle-aged adults" does not make sense as middle-aged people is clear as the term "Middle-aged children" does not really exist. GPSLeo (talk) 19:01, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

May 08

How useful is Template:Types of goods?

How useful is this template when even after nine years the vast majority of the links is still red?

1. Do we need it on Commons? Isn't it too theoretical, more something for Wikipedia? Commons is for organizing files.
2. If we indeed need it on Commons, can categories be made for the red links and fill them with correct subcategories and files? Who is going to do that?
3. If we do not need it on Commons, can this template be removed from the categories it is in now, and be deleted (or put on hold or something like that)? Do the blue categories all have proper parents?

Note: I tried to discuss this on the talk page, but there was only one reaction (in favour of deletion), while I think this kind of questions need more reactions. JopkeB (talk) 08:18, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm a highly literate native English speaker, and a fair number of these are terms I've never heard. E.g. Post-)Experience goods"? "Credence goods"? - Jmabel ! talk 18:26, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

I think this style of navigation template can be perfectly useful on gallery pages, but are a problem on category pages. I have seen several of these over time which seem to be well-meaning efforts to port over templates from Wikipedias to Commons. This style was designed to be an aid at the bottom of an article page, and similar placement on a gallery should work fine. However, that usage does not push down the main contents of the page, which putting it on a category does. So for that reason, using this style of navigation page at the top of templates is a bad practice. The redlinks are also an issue. In my experience with nav template implementation, redlinks are not generally preferred by most users. Even much black text can get in the way of the mission of expediting navigation to parallel topics, so a compact nav that only lists real destinations is usually best. A parameter can be used to allow redlinks to still show up for special cases or temporarily while building categories, but should be suppressed normally. Josh (talk) 00:48, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Not useful at all. This is a "coatrack" template - it's a mixture of terms from economics (e.g. "club goods", "veblen goods", etc) and unrelated phrases which happen to include the word "goods" (e.g. "damaged goods", "confiscated goods"). Of the few links which do have an associated category, those categories are frequently misapplied and may themselves be ripe for discussion. For example, Category:Public goods is a fairly eclectic assortment of images and categories largely unrelated to the economic concept of a public good; the few supply/demand charts which actually illustrate the economic concept could probably be moved to Category:Supply and demand curves or subcategories. Omphalographer (talk) 03:57, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, @Jmabel, Joshbaumgartner, and Omphalographer: for your reactions. So:

• The template contains unclear concepts and a mix of concepts from economic theory and daily use of the word "good". This alone is reason enough to define it as "not useful".
• A template like this one is only fit for gallery pages, not for categories, and it should not be on top, but on the bottom of a page. My comment: I do not expect to have soon so many gallery pages of the (rather abstract) concepts mentioned in the template, that we should need this template to guide us through them.
• Overall conclusions:
  • [New] An alternative is Category:Types of goods (already exists, but does not contain yet all the subcategories that should be in it and it should have a description).
  • We do not need this template on Commons.
  • This template can be removed from the categories it is in now, and then be deleted. Note: check whether these categories all have proper parents.

 Question Do you agree with these conclusions? Can this template be deleted? --JopkeB (talk) 09:02, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

@JopkeB: If it were me I'd get rid of "goods" altogether and merge things into Category:Products by type since "products" is less ambiguous and more established. There's no reason to have two competing category schemes for whats essentially the same concept though and I assume doing that would involve deleting the template along with the categories. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:09, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

There is a difference between "products" and "goods". Goods are tangible, products can be goods and services as well. So I would like to keep both. Though I must admit that this definition has not always been consistently applied to all the concepts in goods (like in public goods). JopkeB (talk) 09:21, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

"Public goods" is almost a coincidence of words, with a different meaning of "goods" ("things that are beneficial" as against "objects that can be the subject of trade"). - Jmabel ! talk 18:11, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Best way to collect images?

I have a roll of film to upload, shot in Prague during the Velvet Revolution of 1989, as it happens. And I would like to indicate that the individual images are from that same photoshoot.

The two technical features on offer, as I understand it, are categories and galleries. Categories apply to individual images and provide structured heirarchical metadata tags about their content and circumstances. Galleries provide a means of collecting sets of images together after the fact.

So neither feature seems to offer the functionality I seek?

Or should I bend the category system and create a relatively arbitrary category like: "robbies snaps from prague velvet revolution"? Any help would be very welcome. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 12:14, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

@RobbieIanMorrison: Please see if you like any of the cat names or structure at or below Cat:Jeff G.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:21, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

@RobbieIanMorrison: I think what you want here is a user category as described in COM:USERCAT. I'd use a more formal name, something like "Photographs of the Velvet Revolution in Prague by RobbieIanMorrison". The files should also be categorised under a topic category like Category:Velvet Revolution in Prague. --bjh21 (talk) 14:22, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: @Bjh21: Exactly what I need. Thanks both. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 14:51, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

@RobbieIanMorrison: You're welcome.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:36, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

NARA photos

I've tried to upload several photos from the NARA website: [2], [3] but receive a message that they've failed verification. What does that mean? Mztourist (talk) 12:38, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Category diffusion, again

When was it decided to diffuse categories such as Category:United Kingdom photographs taken on 2024-03-15 to Category:England photographs taken on 2024-03-15 etc?

What purpose is served by doing so? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:00, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

And others have brought this clear down to London on particular dates. I'm completely against this. - Jmabel ! talk 18:28, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

See also Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Blocks and protections#Sahaib, battleground mentality, and edit warring and User talk:Sahaib#May 2024. The user really believes that there is clear consensus for splitting the cats. This is the zillionth time it happens (every time with a different user). I believe all these categories must be deleted, and the files must be categorized back. Ymblanter (talk) 19:25, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Special:UncategorizedCategories

A reminder that Special:UncategorizedCategories has been bloating once again, and could use someone to take a serious shot at it. - Jmabel ! talk 18:29, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Template that captures taking conditions for analog images

Is there a template for recording the photographic conditions for scanned images from SLR analog cameras. For comparison, digital cameras embed a ton of metadata in their JPEG files. So I am thinking of things like:

• camera make and model (Nikon Nikkormat FT2 body)
• lens type and characteristics (Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 telephoto lens)
• taking conditions (shutter speed and aperture, if known)
• film stock and rating (Ilford 135-36 HP5 (coded 2357) black and white negative film, shot at ISO 400)
• development history (developed by professional lab)
• scanning history (negative scan at high-resolution by FotoMeyer Fotoservice, Berlin, Germany)
• other (anything else of note)

Template:Camera is way too basic. I guess I might be able for force some of this information into the scanned image file (using say ExifTool) but I would prefer not too. Thanks in advance. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 21:33, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

@RobbieIanMorrison: perhaps {{Photo Information}}? MKFI (talk) 08:16, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

May 09

Question about file

Is there something wrong with my computer or is this image completely white? Adamant1 (talk) 14:35, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps it is the backside of File:Karayan Coffee Co. Float, Industrial Parade, King Wamba Carnival, Toledo, O., August 24-28, 1909 - DPLA - 9b9e1305a1ecbb0221cfe865819aabab (page 1).jpg? Not that it makes a white rectangle any more useful. --HyperGaruda (talk) 17:03, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the source, page 1 has the image and page 2 is a blank sheet. It was uploaded here by a bot, so the redundancy was missed. From Hill To Shore (talk) 17:34, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

At this point the lack of copyright notice would be irrelevant, but it would once have mattered. - Jmabel ! talk 18:12, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Quad with tracks

How to categorize this?

Hi, There are several pictures of similar vehicles on Commons (but not so many), but with different categories, sometimes much too board. I am surprised that I can't find a specific category for this type of vehicles. Any idea? Yann (talk) 19:37, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Category:Off-road quads is probably the closest we have. Ymblanter (talk) 20:09, 9 May 2024 (UTC)