Commons:Village pump
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Latest comment: 41 minutes ago by Adamant1 in topic Category:Recipients of awards
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June 03
Bot for enwiki DYK stats
— Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 11:26, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
- Testing, maybe adding a comment will archive this thread. Tvpuppy (talk) 00:29, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 00:30, 19 July 2025 (UTC) July 14
Is there a limit as to how how much space custom licenses are allowed to take?
It does feel a bit extreme sometimes--Trade (talk) 01:01, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Trade: Do you have an example of one you feel is too long? I would draw the line at "diatribe" or "rant". — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 04:18, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Not that it's an ongoing issue, but I'd point to File:Berlin Bridge Bird 27.jpg as an example of excessive user licensing templates - there's a couple pages of templates, including some confusing additional requests in EXIF tags (!). Omphalographer (talk) 19:10, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- It looks like there are some redundant elements and not applicable terms. I hope the bird is not dependent on freedom of panorama :( --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:40, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- It's to bad there's no way to edit EXIF information on here. Otherwise I'd totally axe most of that. Really, I'm kind of tempted to nominate the images for deletion just because of how needlessly obtuse the whole thing is but I doubt anyone would vote delete purely because of the walls of nonsense. Or alternatively someone could download the images, edit the EXIF information, and reupload without any of the garbage. Then have the old files redirected or something. I don't know but something should be done to clean them up. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:41, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- I believe it's possible to do this by reuploading a version of the file where the excess EXIF information has been removed, without needing to delete the original. I could try this with File:Berlin Bridge Bird 27.jpg if there are no objections. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:36, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- No objections here. I'll probably do it for more files if it works. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:34, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- This appears to work. You can edit or remove most fields by right-clicking and going to properties, but the "JPEG file comment" field specifically required specialized software (I used ExifTool). ReneeWrites (talk) 18:42, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Cool. I'll have to go through his files at some point. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:36, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- @PantheraLeo1359531 I have already removed the FoP template. To the uploader @C.Suthorn: there is no reason to put {{FoP-Germany}} because there is no recent work of architecture or artwork (like monument or sculpture) intentionally included in the image. Be prudent in using FoP tags. Birds are not works of art (except if the "bird" is a sculpture permanently placed on public roads or squares). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 23:41, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Cool. I'll have to go through his files at some point. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:36, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- This appears to work. You can edit or remove most fields by right-clicking and going to properties, but the "JPEG file comment" field specifically required specialized software (I used ExifTool). ReneeWrites (talk) 18:42, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- No objections here. I'll probably do it for more files if it works. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:34, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Nominate the templates for deletion instead Trade (talk) 07:10, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- He's talking specifically about the file's EXIF data, not the templates. For File:Berlin Bridge Bird 27.jpg it's been trimmed to a more manageable size, here's a file that shows how it looked before: File:"Unteilbar" 009.jpg. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:12, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- Would you support a ban against QR codes in the EXIF? Trade (talk) 23:28, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Probably unnecessary. C.Suthorn was blocked indefinitely a few months ago, and as far as I'm aware they're the only user who was doing that. Omphalographer (talk) 23:48, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Would you support a ban against QR codes in the EXIF? Trade (talk) 23:28, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- He's talking specifically about the file's EXIF data, not the templates. For File:Berlin Bridge Bird 27.jpg it's been trimmed to a more manageable size, here's a file that shows how it looked before: File:"Unteilbar" 009.jpg. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:12, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- I believe it's possible to do this by reuploading a version of the file where the excess EXIF information has been removed, without needing to delete the original. I could try this with File:Berlin Bridge Bird 27.jpg if there are no objections. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:36, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- It's to bad there's no way to edit EXIF information on here. Otherwise I'd totally axe most of that. Really, I'm kind of tempted to nominate the images for deletion just because of how needlessly obtuse the whole thing is but I doubt anyone would vote delete purely because of the walls of nonsense. Or alternatively someone could download the images, edit the EXIF information, and reupload without any of the garbage. Then have the old files redirected or something. I don't know but something should be done to clean them up. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:41, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- It looks like there are some redundant elements and not applicable terms. I hope the bird is not dependent on freedom of panorama :( --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:40, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Not that it's an ongoing issue, but I'd point to File:Berlin Bridge Bird 27.jpg as an example of excessive user licensing templates - there's a couple pages of templates, including some confusing additional requests in EXIF tags (!). Omphalographer (talk) 19:10, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
Remedy for erroneously identified images
This recently exposed hoax makes me wonder how to remedy the harm caused by such commons uploads. even though those files may be deleted or their descriptions may be rectified, they have often spread to other websites due to wikipedia and will continue to pollute the information and knowledge of the world. worse still, they may get reposted and end up on commons again after some years.
i can think of an idea. someone should run a blog that publishes those images crossed out and with detailed explanation that "this image doesnt show xx. it shows yy. it was uploaded to <commons url> and misidentified." RoyZuo (talk) 10:50, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- @RoyZuo: Take a look at File:1st Ave. S. looking north from S. Washington St., ca. 1876 - DPLA - 571301e7640245dfce8110b0e1b41c2c.jpg for how I typically approach this. - Jmabel ! talk 17:58, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- There is also {{Fact disputed}} and {{Factual accuracy}} that can more prominently mark, describe, and categorize images with potential errors. --Animalparty (talk) 18:16, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Those methods dont work when the commons files are deleted. RoyZuo (talk) 20:17, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- There is also {{Fact disputed}} and {{Factual accuracy}} that can more prominently mark, describe, and categorize images with potential errors. --Animalparty (talk) 18:16, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
banned by the Wikimedia Foundation
Tulsi (talk · contributions · Statistics · Recent activity · block log · User rights log · uploads · Global account information)
sysop banned. anyone knows why? RoyZuo (talk) 11:25, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- His last Diff blog was in 2021. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 11:34, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Apparently undisclosed paid editing. [1] and [2]. Yann (talk) 11:39, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- We need to sysban half of the newly created accounts then Trade (talk) 14:48, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Trade: You will need proof to make such an allegation stick. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:14, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- but those links are more than one year old? RoyZuo (talk) 20:19, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- We need to sysban half of the newly created accounts then Trade (talk) 14:48, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Man that sucks. I didn't interact with Tulsi much but he seemed nice from what little I had to do with with him. It's never good to lose admins on here. Especially over something like that. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:56, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
July 15
Anti-social behavior
Sometimes you come across remarkable things in rail travel. Do any extra categories come to mind? I dont seem to find one for painted toenails. I did not speak to the (unidentified) person. The person sitting in the chair did not notice what happened behind him. I did not warn him, as this certainly would have caused a disturbance.
Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:55, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- No additional category ideas but I've gotta say, "Anti-social behaviour in Germany" is one of the funniest categories I've come across in a while. Hats off to you. 19h00s (talk) 13:42, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- (To be clear, I was chiming in that it was funny not out of support for the category but because it's a funny find. Not a category wonk so I wasn't that familiar with the guidelines.) 19h00s (talk) 19:21, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Don't be surprised if the category gets deleted. There was a CfD for a similarly subjective category a while ago that ended with the same result. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:44, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- The worst part of that category is that it contains:
- A photo and a video - that could be deemed subjective, as warned.
- A long chain of small nested categories (Animal aggression in Germany (1 C), Animal damage in Germany (1 C), Insect damage in Germany (1 C), Diseases and disorders of plants due to insects in Germany (1 C), Coleoptera (damage) in Germany (1 C), Curculionidae (damage) in Germany (1 C), Scolytinae (damage) in Germany (1 C, 1 F), Forests damaged by bark beetles in Germany (94 F)) that only contains the category:Forests damaged by bark beetles in Germany, which can hardly be considered anti-social behaviour.
- Pere prlpz (talk) 14:51, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah it's totally ridiculous. I have better things to do but someone should deal with it somehow. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:13, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Well, the problem is that somebody seems to have a confusion between "animals causing damage" and "people damaging animals". Pere prlpz (talk) 16:06, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- There are a whole bunch of problematic, mostly-empty categories upthread of it, too: Tactics in Germany (1 C), Revolutionary tactics in Germany (1 C), Terrorism tactics in Germany (1 C), Threats in Germany (1 C), Animal aggression in Germany (1 C) etc. And so we end up with the forests damaged by bark beetles, which have nothing to do with anti-social behaviour, or revolutionary tactics, or terrorism. This is not how categories are meant to be used. ReneeWrites (talk) 17:52, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yep. This is, unfortunately, a somewhat common pattern I've seen where users will create deep trees of categories through a process of free association; one notable instance is detailed at Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/05/Category:Cultural history of New South Wales, where photos of grain silos ended up categorized as "popular culture". (For whatever reason, this problem seems particularly common in categories by location.) Omphalographer (talk) 21:21, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Oh, no: That’s exactly how categories are meant to be used: Tidy cladograms in which any ancestor cat has a predictable linear connection with any of its offspring is but one subset of the much vaster kind of intercat relationships the whole of Commons harbours. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:45, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yes and no.
- Sometimes subcategories aren't a subset of parent categories, but when damage done by insects is a subcategory of antisocial behaviour or when industrial grain silos are a popular culture, some inclusion in the chain is wrong. In the first case, the wrong inclusion is that animal damage in Germany shouldn't be a subcategory of antisocial behaviour in Germany, and in the second case, none of the actual content of Category:Popular psychology in New South Wales is related to psychology because of several wrong inclusions. Pere prlpz (talk) 17:54, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- These particular cases may well be wrong, but there are definitely valid reasons why category inheritance (1) is not always an "is-a" relationship and (2) is not transitive. A simple example is that a category for a building is typically categorized under every use the building has had; a particular photo taken in that building is likely to be related to at most one of those uses. Things are often categorized under who they are named after or were formerly named after; sometimes this is direct inheritance, sometime via a Category:Things named after FOO; in almost no case will that eponym be relevant as we continue down the hierarchy of inheritance.
- There are a whole bunch of problematic, mostly-empty categories upthread of it, too: Tactics in Germany (1 C), Revolutionary tactics in Germany (1 C), Terrorism tactics in Germany (1 C), Threats in Germany (1 C), Animal aggression in Germany (1 C) etc. And so we end up with the forests damaged by bark beetles, which have nothing to do with anti-social behaviour, or revolutionary tactics, or terrorism. This is not how categories are meant to be used. ReneeWrites (talk) 17:52, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Well, the problem is that somebody seems to have a confusion between "animals causing damage" and "people damaging animals". Pere prlpz (talk) 16:06, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah it's totally ridiculous. I have better things to do but someone should deal with it somehow. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:13, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- This case is clearly anti-social. However what is anti-social? This is often depends on the local context and has to do with unwritten rules and conventions. The most broad definition is: Do not do, what you not like others to do to you. Example: When is being bare feet tolerated and accepted? We could write whole books about it and stil not have every unwritten rule and convention defined.
- We sometimes need categories, wich are more than objects, events, etc. How would you for example illustrate transience? (File:De tijdelijkheid van sporen.jpg).Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:17, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- The worst part of that category is that it contains:
- PS: I did use a bit of humor is using the category Footrests. Not everything has to be serious.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:17, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
Maps by Survey of India
Hi, I started upload maps by Survey of India. Since there are quite a lot of them, better to do categories right from the start. I have had difficulties finding the right administrative divisions in some cases, as they have changed over the years. Then I noticed that they exist in 3 scales (for the ones in the public domain): 1/253,440 (1 inch for 4 miles), 1/126,720 (1 inch for 2 miles) and 1/63,360 (1 inch for 1 mile), sometimes mixed up between them. I added categories year by country, local administrative division. What other categories do you suggest? More generally what category tree should we have for them? Yann (talk) 16:29, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Category:Maps by the Surveyor General of India (1/126,720)
- Category:Survey of India map sheets (1/253,440)
- Thanks for your link on my talk page, unfortunately I am not a big fan of the category system and I think it is more important that people are able to find what they want and I like the find maps feature at https://warper.wmflabs.org - also the mosaics - example https://warper.wmflabs.org/mosaics/15 - more useful and important for users. Some of these maps were made as parts of (time-bound) projects so there is Category:Atlas_of_India_(1827-1906) Shyamal L. 01:06, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Shyamal: Interesting. How is the mosaic created? I understand that coordinates of each file is needed, but after that? Yann (talk) 14:25, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Yann: - creating the mosaics involve some personal intervention from the folks behind wikimaps - I was assisted by User:Susannaanas. Shyamal L. 15:05, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Shyamal and Chaipau: I have dispatched all the files in subcategories according to the scale in Category:Survey of India map sheets. I removed some redundant categories, including Category:Old maps by the Survey of India (we can't have recent maps by the Survey of India for copyright reasons). All maps by the Survey of India we have are necessarily old. Yann (talk) 20:06, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Yann: - creating the mosaics involve some personal intervention from the folks behind wikimaps - I was assisted by User:Susannaanas. Shyamal L. 15:05, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Shyamal: Interesting. How is the mosaic created? I understand that coordinates of each file is needed, but after that? Yann (talk) 14:25, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Yann, I think using the provinces/districts, as available in 1918 or so, would be the most natural category tree. We could get the history groups from other Wikipedias involved as well to help us here - since they will most benefit from these maps. Chaipau (talk) 02:20, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Chaipau: OK, let's try a practical example: File:Survey of India, 42 D SW Dir (1931).jpg. How do you find the proper categories for this file? This is now in Pakistan, but Pakistan didn't even exist at that time. Yann (talk) 14:25, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
Anyone into making ship categories?
I've done some of these, but it's not really my thing. I recently was cruising around Seattle's Lake Union and the Lake Washington Ship Canal, and I can see that I photographed a fair number of ships that doubtless deserve categories of their own and don't have one. I did a few myself (including extracting a couple of images of particular ships), but I don't think I'm going to get around to doing all of what deserves to be done.
Some of the pictures where this would be worth doing for one or more ships (& as of this writing I'm still uploading more):
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DONE -
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DONE -
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(mostly the same ships as the previous one) -
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(mostly the same ships as the previous one) -
Jmabel ! talk 22:14, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Is there some better place I should post this, or some relevant maintenance category to add? - Jmabel ! talk 19:36, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- Sheesh, the amount of things you have to take care of... Well, never done this before, but tried my hand at it. Now, we have: Category:Point Nemo (ship, 1993) and Category:IMO 9043914 to deal with what I though as simple case from File:'Andrew Foss' and other ships at Northlake Shipyard, Seattle.jpg - "simple" because you provided an IMO number and the vessel's name. I hope that I did the Wikidata stuff right enough; I more or less copied the patterns of Category:COSCO France (ship, 2013) and Category:IMO 9516416 (as I knew that on this photo of mine, there were ship categories available). But Category:Point Nemo (ship, 1993) still has an issue: it's not mounted in any of those "Ships by XY" categories, I wasn't able to find out what its homeport is - searching for external imagery to maybe see the homeport painted on the ship wasn't successful, as Marinetraffic and other AIS trackers had image galleries, but only with probable sister ships of Point Nemo. @Joe, do you have any clue? I will also try to ask our marine buffs on DE-WP who likely have paid accesses to those databases, let's see what will come out. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 06:42, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Done: de:Portal Diskussion:Schifffahrt#Heimathafen für ein US-Arbeitsschiff?. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 06:50, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Grand-Duc: Looks like you did a fairly thorough job (more thorough than the average, in my experience). I'll make a few changes on things that weren't quite right. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting! - Jmabel ! talk 16:19, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Joe, could you advise for which ships you deem actually deserving categories? I'm not deep enough into the usual local practice about categories for that to be able to decide that myself. I won't mind doing that at least for all vessels with known IMO numbers, but I'd like a second opinion. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 18:13, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Made another one: Category:Dominator (ship, 1979) / Category:IMO 7940467, advising it here so that interested parties may add anything useful. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 21:04, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Grand-Duc: Thank you very much. Usually, any shop with an IMO number for which we have media that could reasonably be used to illustrate the ship merits this pair of categories (and the corresponding Wikidata items); there are certainly a fair number of ships without IMO numbers that also deserve categories, but that is harder to delineate. - Jmabel ! talk 00:15, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- Report on File:Seattle - boats on the north side of the Ship Canal, near NW 40th Street - 2025-07-09.jpg: Category:Wide Bay (ship, 1977) pair created, no IMO number for Lady Joanne (MMSI 303419000) found. We have Category:Vessels by MMSI number, but I did not unearth enough details about the vessel (like the launching date) to be confident in creating a category for the Lady. Grand-Duc (talk) 12:09, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- & just to confuse things further, there is a different Lady Joanna (not Joanne) with an IMO that fishes in the Gulf of Mexico. - Jmabel ! talk 18:43, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- Report on File:Seattle - boats on the north side of the Ship Canal, near NW 40th Street - 2025-07-09.jpg: Category:Wide Bay (ship, 1977) pair created, no IMO number for Lady Joanne (MMSI 303419000) found. We have Category:Vessels by MMSI number, but I did not unearth enough details about the vessel (like the launching date) to be confident in creating a category for the Lady. Grand-Duc (talk) 12:09, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Grand-Duc: Looks like you did a fairly thorough job (more thorough than the average, in my experience). I'll make a few changes on things that weren't quite right. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting! - Jmabel ! talk 16:19, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
July 16
AI training bots overwhelming GLAMs
Piece of possible interest from National Information Standards Organization (NISO). Forwarded to me by a GLAM I coordinate with for uploads, in the context of some serious difficulties they've been having with keeping their content available. I wonder how much of this traffic hits our site? My guess is that we are used to enough traffic that it is not as (relatively) heavy for us. https://www.niso.org/niso-io/2025/06/ai-training-bots-and-cultural-heritage - Jmabel ! talk 01:11, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- It is quite heavy for Wikimedia. See this blog post from the WMF in April. "Since January 2024, we have seen the bandwidth used for downloading multimedia content grow by 50%." and "65% of our most expensive traffic comes from bots". When people think of wikis in the context of LLMs they often think of Wikipedia, but it's moreso the mass-scraping of our media files that is expensive and causing issue (or at least enough of a concern so far for the WMF to put out this blog post). ~Kevin Payravi (talk) 01:22, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- This is a very interesting aspect. In addition, the growth in media files (quantity) this year is already as high as the growth in 2024 as a whole (approx. 11.1 million files), and the additional data volume in 2025 already reaches 75% of 2024. This is therefore a remarkable increase on both sides. PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:28, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Can confirm this issue is massively impacting GLAM institutions with open online collections, many of which are nowhere near large enough/well-resourced enough to handle this kind of thing. Coming on the heels of the Gallery Systems hack that took down ~50% of U.S. museum collection databases for an extended period, this is starting to spark conversations among some GLAM leaders about the long term viability of open collections (which imo is the wrong takeaway from what's happening and has already earned substantial internal pushback in most cases). 19h00s (talk) 01:32, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Something I noticed recently is that views to my talk page have gone up by an insane amount since the middle of last year. Apparently it got 5000 views last month. Either it's bots or someone is mass posting about me on some forums somewhere. But I doubt that many views is organic. Anyway, I don't see how it couldn't impact the sites performance.
- As a side to that, Flickr has been totally unusable for me recently. Probably for the same reason. They recently implemented a thing where you can't see search results unless your logged in and you can't mass download images without a paid account anymore either. My state university website has also been crashing a lot recently. Really, I wouldn't be surprised if more sites don't do the same thing as Flickr. I'm not sure how it would work on here but that seems like the only sustainable, long-term solution. There should at least be restrictions on mass downloading by bots if nothing else. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:33, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
I am Nikon ad campaign logo
Can this be uploaded as {{PD-logo}}
I used Liberation font to recreate the original logo. Does it meet Commons:TOO Japan? Can I upload it to Commons?
Jakub T. Jankiewicz (talk) 12:04, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think that is safely below TOO pretty much anywhere. I'd use {{PD-textlogo}}. - Jmabel ! talk 18:35, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
Alternative for Glamorous file usage stats tool?
I used to check my file usage with Glamorous (glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous/?), but for some time now it doesn't seem to work. It works on smaller users, like up to 300 files. For my account (1068 files) and similar big galleries it seems to be loading forever. Are there any alternatives, other than clicking each and every file in my uploads? Tupungato (talk) 14:07, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- I've uploaded around 18000 files and was having the same issue a few weeks ago. It seems to be fine now though. So it might be something with how they index files or something. Anyway, you might give it a few weeks without uploading anything so the database has time to catch up and then try again. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:14, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- I haven't uploaded anything in 5 weeks. The issue seems to persist for, i don't know, maybe 8 months. I had a period of 5 months with no uploads, and it didn't help. Tupungato (talk) 10:47, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Tupungato: It just worked for me at https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous.php?doit=1&username=Jeff_G. and for you at https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous.php?doit=1&username=Tupungato . — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 20:03, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- This works, yes. But I was also using the one I linked to (https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous/ or https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous/? - supposedly two different versions). It has additional useful stats, for example File Usage Details: this is list of your files from most popular to least popular, with all instances of usage listed under each file. It was really neat. Normally you input a username, click Run, and depending on size of portfolio it took 3-60 seconds to load everything. Now for many portfolios it runs endlessly and never loads. Tupungato (talk) 10:53, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- When I run it it's getting lots of "429 Too Many Requests" responses from calls to the
action=query&prop=info&titles=File%3AFoo.jpgAPI. It looks like it's sending requests for individual files rather than batching them into groups. Sam Wilson 11:47, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- When I run it it's getting lots of "429 Too Many Requests" responses from calls to the
- This works, yes. But I was also using the one I linked to (https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous/ or https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous/? - supposedly two different versions). It has additional useful stats, for example File Usage Details: this is list of your files from most popular to least popular, with all instances of usage listed under each file. It was really neat. Normally you input a username, click Run, and depending on size of portfolio it took 3-60 seconds to load everything. Now for many portfolios it runs endlessly and never loads. Tupungato (talk) 10:53, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Escritora Cora Coralina
In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the Wikimedia Foundation office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.
The takedown can be read here.
Affected file(s):
To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Escritora Cora Coralina. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 22:11, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
July 18
Riverina and the South West Slopes
Can I invite people to review Category talk:Riverina - is the Riverina part of the South West Slopes in NSW. I believe it is as parts of the South West Slopes seem to encompass the Riverina, this is disputed. Happy with whatever outcome so long as it's clear. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 03:43, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
Interested users may participate in this "Requests for comment" discussion. All comments and opinions should be posted there, not here on Village Pump. Regards, JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 06:15, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
Voting on new proposed text for project scope policy for PDF and DjVu formats
Now that (I think) the proposed text is growing mature, thanks to feedback from other users, I invite everyone who wants to vote or comment on the new proposed text for the project scope policy for PDF and DjVu formats. No change in the policy is intended, the change is only about making objectively determinable when a PDF or DjVu file is in scope and when not.
Please carefully read the full proposed text before voting or commenting. MGeog2022 (talk) 10:04, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
Setup errors on Category:Monaco
If you look at Category:Monaco, you can see the following issues:
- Stray characters after the "Selected maps" hatnote
- Categorized in Category:Categories by country, which it shouldn't be
It's caused by something in the processing of Template:Country category. I tried tracing through that processing, but I couldn't make sense of it. Would someone else like to try? Thanks muchly. --Auntof6 (talk) 11:42, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- Probably some category for Monaco does not exist. Ruslik (talk) 20:28, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Ruslik0: Maybe that's it. I did a little more checking, and it seems that {{Country category}} doesn't work for city-states. I removed it from the Monaco category and it seems OK now. Thanks for your reply. -- Auntof6 (talk) 23:29, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
Flinfo not working
Wanted to add some cc-by licensed pics from Flickr, but the Flinfo uploading tool has stopped working; when I enter the flickr pic number, it throws up this error message:
- Looks like there’s a problem with this site
- https://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/flinfo.php?id=5742671475&repo=flickr&user_lang=en might have a temporary problem or it could have moved.
- Error code: 500 Internal Server Error
- The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
It's been like this for a few days now. Anyone know if/when it'll get repaired? Thanks! - MPF (talk) 22:08, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- Pinging @Flominator as author and presumed maintainer. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:39, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the ping. Should be fixed. My hoster forced me to update to php 8 and I didn't test Flinfo. --Flominator (talk) 06:20, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Flominator @Jeff G. working now, thanks! - MPF (talk) 13:16, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the ping. Should be fixed. My hoster forced me to update to php 8 and I didn't test Flinfo. --Flominator (talk) 06:20, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
Categories for discussion backlog
As I have mentioned a few times before. This categories for discussion Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/01/Category:Setsumatsusha has been running for a year and a half. Is there any backlog function for old non-closed categories for discussion? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 23:42, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
July 19
Australian pages
I know most of Comoms is done in the category space, but I am interested in the purpose of main space. My reason is that my focus is on documenting the South West of Sydney, and I have so far covered (I would estimate) about 75-85% of the City of Liverpool in terms of geotagged photos.
I would love to establish a main space page, but I don’t know what is appropriate content for the pages. I clearly don’t want to compete with Wikipedia but I would like to find a common ground that allows Commons users to navigate our content around this region.
Does anyone have any advise on what to do with main space pages? It seems a waste not to use them. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 04:25, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Chris.sherlock2: gallery pages are (or should be) about curated content. A gallery is most valuable when there are too many images or subcategories in a category to easily check. Select representative images you think are are best for various purposes (general, historical, aerial, selected sites/details/landmarks etc.). You might consider annotating some images. Keep text to minimum and concentrate on images. You can always improve it later.
- While galleries are underused there are some and Sydney is quite good. You could use it as a model and start with some smaller town. MKFI (talk) 08:00, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Commons:Galleries provides fairly good guidance. The examples linked near the bottom of the page are quite varied and give a sense of what is appropriate. - Jmabel ! talk 16:32, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
Jungian archetypes
Broad categories should not be placed under Category:Jungian archetypes, supposedly a concept in a specific school of thought? such listing is more appropriate for wikipedia or wikidata. do you agree? RoyZuo (talk) 16:34, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Agreed. If there were populated categories specific to the Jungian archetypes, e.g. Category:Mother (Jungian archetype), those would be appropriate subcategories. Broad categories like Category:Mothers are not appropriate subcategories, as they aren't specific to the parent category. Omphalographer (talk) 17:16, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- I removed some. RoyZuo (talk) 18:54, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
July 20
ImageNotes
Does anyone have any guesses why File:Streetcar on Stone Way Bridge, 1911 (2942061361).gif isn't giving me the "Add a note" tool to add an ImageNote? - Jmabel ! talk 00:17, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Jmabel: It works for me. I just added a test note to the street car. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:23, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Adamant1: still doesn't work for me, nor do I see your test note (which you should probably revert), though of course it is present if I go to edit. I'll see if I can get it to work in a different browser. - Jmabel ! talk 00:33, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- Hhhmm weird. It's probably your browser or something. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:35, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Adamant1: still doesn't work for me, nor do I see your test note (which you should probably revert), though of course it is present if I go to edit. I'll see if I can get it to work in a different browser. - Jmabel ! talk 00:33, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- probably https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-ImageAnnotator.js#c-RoyZuo-20250326061000-Not_showing_when_browsing_zoomed_in . RoyZuo (talk) 06:10, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- I doubt it, at least not if the description of the causes there is accurate. - Jmabel ! talk 18:11, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
Country-specific photography laws, and national borders
Imagine the hypothetical scenario where I'm at the China-North Korea border on the Chinese side at Dandong, I launch a drone, fly over to the North Korean city of Sinuiju, and start taking photographs. In terms of rules such as freedom of panorama, personality rights, et cetera, which country's rules would I be required to follow, if I were to upload the photographs to Commons? The drone would be physically located within North Korea, however the operator controlling the drone (and ultimately performing all photographic actions) would be physically located within China. --benlisquareTalk•Contribs 05:35, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think in this case, it would be irrelevant, because both countries have a variant of FoP. In my opinion, it is important where the camera is located, when it comes to FoP, pers rights, etc. But you get the copyright protection of the country from which you shoot the photos (your physical location), IMO --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:21, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- The Choice of Law section of the FoP page talks about this, and funnily enough uses North Korea as an example:
- The law used is likely to be one of the following: the country in which the object depicted is situated, the country from which the photograph was taken, or the country in which the photo is used (published/viewed/sold). Because of the international reach of Commons, ensuring compliance with the laws of all countries in which files are or might be reused is not realistic. Since the question of choice of law with regard to freedom of panorama cases is unsettled, current practice on Commons is to retain photos based on the more lenient law of the country in which the object is situated and the country in which the photo is taken. For example, North Korea has a suitable freedom of panorama law, while South Korea's law, limited to non-commercial uses, is not sufficient for Commons. As a result of the practice of applying the more lenient law, we would generally retain photos taken from North Korea of buildings in South Korea, as well as photos taken from South Korea of buildings in North Korea.
- ReneeWrites (talk) 08:29, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- If I'm reading this section correctly, we'd pick the most lenient out of the two countries' rules? Going back to our hypothetical border scenario, China has FoP for buildings and 3D works (e.g. statues), but not 2D works (e.g. painted murals), while North Korea has FoP for buildings, 3D works, and 2D works. In other words, North Korea would have the more lenient FOP rules. With this in mind:
- Fly drone from China to North Korea, and while drone in North Korean airspace, photograph a 2D mural in North Korea: Permissible on Commons?
- Fly drone from China to North Korea, and while drone in North Korean airspace, but looking back towards the Chinese border, photograph a 2D mural in China: Still permissible on Commons, since the drone is physically in North Korea?
- Based on the wording on Choice of Law, it seems like both cases would be permissible. Of course there are other laws to worry about, such as flying in restricted airspace (personally I'd consider any drone geofencing to fall under COM:HOUSERULES, i.e. a problem for the photographer to sort out with the country arresting them, and not a problem for whether or not an upload is permitted on Commons), but let's not overcomplicate this discussion for now, and just focus on copyright and non-copyright restrictions for Commons uploads only. --benlisquareTalk•Contribs 10:04, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- Any concerns related to security, privacy, COM:CSCR (consent of identifiable persons), etc. which aren't copyright related are not relevant for Commons. It is the uploader's decision to continue taking photos despite these non-copyright restrictions. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 10:14, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- I thought North Korea even does not have copyright protection for architectural works? Then, is wouldn't even fall under FoP --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:47, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- If I'm reading this section correctly, we'd pick the most lenient out of the two countries' rules? Going back to our hypothetical border scenario, China has FoP for buildings and 3D works (e.g. statues), but not 2D works (e.g. painted murals), while North Korea has FoP for buildings, 3D works, and 2D works. In other words, North Korea would have the more lenient FOP rules. With this in mind:
New train liveries in Italy
There does seem to be no corresponding livery category for these:
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Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:48, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
Expedite cfd
I'd like to invite more participation in Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/07/Category:Localities of the Novel "The judge and his hangman" (Dürrenmatt) so it can be closed asap. thx. RoyZuo (talk) 19:10, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
.svg/20px-Pictogram_voting_comment_(orange).svg.png)
Comment I agree with deletion (and have voted there), but I don't see why this is an urgent matter that needs expedited closing asap. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 19:37, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
July 21
In scope?
I was wondering. Is the description of a place provided by a geographical dictionary that is in the public domain deemed to be in scope for the project? This would be an example. Thanks in advance, Alavense (talk) 01:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- Borderline; since the file is in use, the question is moot for this particular file. - Jmabel ! talk 03:06, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- It could be even better if the whole dictionary could be uploaded, or maybe each full page rather than just some particular excerpts? I think it is in scope. Sam Wilson 03:13, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- Jmabel: Thanks for the reply. I only provided that file to better illustrate what I was referring to. Anyway, leaving the fact that it is in use aside, what do you think about the idea of having those clippings? I think they are interesting and useful, but I have no idea whether they are in scope for the project. That is why I was asking. Alavense (talk) 03:55, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- Samwilson: Yes, some editions of the dictionary have already been uploaded to Commons. I was just wondering about this format. Kind regards, Alavense (talk) 03:55, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- FWIW, I would only upload a clip like that if I had use for it, otherwise I'd definitely upload at least a page, probably a book. I wouldn't want to see a separate file for every entry in a dictionary, for example. - Jmabel ! talk 04:10, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you very much for your opinion, Jmabel. Kind regards, Alavense (talk) 04:15, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- FWIW, I would only upload a clip like that if I had use for it, otherwise I'd definitely upload at least a page, probably a book. I wouldn't want to see a separate file for every entry in a dictionary, for example. - Jmabel ! talk 04:10, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Samwilson, see Category:Diccionario geográfico-estadístico-histórico de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar. MGeog2022 (talk) 11:41, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks. It sounds like this comes down to "when is it appropriate to have a clipping as a separate file, when the full file is also available." Or something like that. I've sometimes also done details of scans (e.g.) for transcription purposes. Sam Wilson 12:37, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- Does COM:INUSE always trump Commons:Project scope#Excluded educational content? This is indeed nothing more than raw text, and I no not see why it's used in gl:Curtis... Doesn't make a lot of sense, IMHO. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 13:25, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2025/02#c-維基小霸王-20250208152200-CSS_Image_Crop_tool
- this tool could eliminate the need to upload clippings. RoyZuo (talk) 14:15, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- I don't think you can effectively clip a DJVU, though.
- Yes, COM:INUSE is a trump card for anything about scope. Got to fight it out on the other wiki first if you want to get rid of the file. In this particular case, I think the use is well within reason.
- The only tricky case about that I know is if things get "circular" between Wikidata including something only because there is a Commons cat and Commons keeping an image only because it is used to illustrate that Wikidata item. It's a bit hard to "break" procedurally, but usually the thing to do is a DR on Commons to agree that the only reason it is on Commons is the Wikidata item, then a DR on Wikidata citing the Commons DR and questioning whether there is any other justification on Wikidata beyond the Commons category. - Jmabel ! talk 18:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- - Jmabel ! talk 18:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks. It sounds like this comes down to "when is it appropriate to have a clipping as a separate file, when the full file is also available." Or something like that. I've sometimes also done details of scans (e.g.) for transcription purposes. Sam Wilson 12:37, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
.jpg){kind=link}
Category Hotel stamps?
(file rename pending) And what of compagny stamps? In this case there is no licence problem as I am a heir. (hotel of my great grandparents) Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:19, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- Wierd. I was just looking at that image or another one yesterday and could swear I created the category. What are the odds? --Adamant1 (talk) 13:28, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- They seems to be quite popular as poststamps. File:Stamp of Seychelles - 1988 - Colnect 655627 - Hotel cabanas.jpeg, File:Hotel Bloudon RS Stamp.jpg, File:Stamp of Peru - 1951 - Colnect 386552 - Tourist Hotel in Arequipa.jpeg. But not as ink stamps. There is the Category:Rubber stamp imprints. Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:14, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Smiley.toerist: There was a couple of hotels in Gibraltar that used handstamps like the Bristol Hotel and Grand Hotel. It's definitely a niche of a niche though. It would be cool to get a collection of them together on here. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:34, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- I am thinking of creating two categories: Hotel poststamps and Hotel handstamps. Unfortunatly there is some confusion in the categories between a stamp (impression with ink) and a seal (a piece of paper affixed to the object). most of the time stamp is used for both. Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:51, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Smiley.toerist: There seems to be Category:Hotels on stamps for postage stamps with hotels on them. The second category sounds good, but I'd probably just go with "stamps" since there doesn't seem to be specific categories for handstamps on here and probably rightly since there's usually no way to know where the line is between a machine or handstamp. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:57, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- As both use ink, I suggest the Category:Hotel inkstamps. (d:Q644099). The first one (d:Q37930). In English both definitions use the word stamp. In Dutch it is handstempel / postzegel. rubber stamp is not always correct as it can be metal, see (d:Q2387838 / signet ring.Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:41, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Category:Recipients of awards
Over the years users have built these cat trees like Category:Recipients of awards. are they actually useful, when most files under the persons' own cats are not actually related to (receiving) the awards? RoyZuo (talk) 14:29, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- This feels suspiciously like yet another instance of misusing categories as metadata ("person X received award Y"). Some of the subcategories like Category:Nobel laureates are justifiable, as the awards are significant enough to be a defining property of the recipient, but most (like, say, Category:Brian Piccolo Award winners) aren't. I've also removed a couple of categories for individual people - describing a person as a "recipient of awards", without specifying an award, is meaningless. Omphalographer (talk) 18:42, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
without specifying an award, is meaningless.
There might just not be a category for said award yet (or someone could not have been bothered to find the correct sub-category). Nakonana (talk) 19:12, 21 July 2025 (UTC)- If the award is significant, a category should be created for it. If not, it doesn't need to be represented as a Commons category. Simply saying that a person is a "recipient of an award" says very little - there are a lot of awards in the world, most of which are completely non-notable and do not need to be annotated in Commons. Omphalographer (talk) 21:27, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- I'd go beyond that, though. There are awards that deserve categories, but not every winner of the award needs to have that as a parent category. E.g. we appropriately have Category:Order of Labour Merit to show what the medal itself and its ribbon bars look like. That doesn't mean it is an important enough award that our category hierarchy should track who won it. Similarly for Category:Jubilee Medal "80 Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945", where I see we have an (empty) Category:Recipients of the Jubilee Medal "80 Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"; I don't think we should. - Jmabel ! talk 23:12, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- I was just going to mention the "Recipients of Whatever Jubilee Medal" categories. Their a perfect example of where this whole thing goes wrong. From what I remember there's a rather rude, aggressive user who won't allow the categories to be removed and/or deleted though. Although I think they are being added on Wikidata's end through infoboxes. So I'm not sure it's something that can be dealt with anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:50, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- That medal was recently created in September 2024 and the first medal weren't handed out up until 2025, so, that might explain why it's still empty.
- It might actually be one of the more interesting categories of the jubilee medal series because they are awarded to veterans, but there are hardly any veterans left. The veterans must be around 100 years old by now. If we'd delete recipients' categories of the jubilee medal series then I'd rather argue to get rid of the first awards of the series, e.g. Category:Recipients of the Jubilee Medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" because they are flooded with 1154 sub-categories, which isn't really helpful.
- Ah, interesting. I know at some level we get to control what comes in via {{Wikidata Infobox}}, but I've never been involved and don't know the granularity of control. - Jmabel ! talk 17:35, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Jmabel: Do you happen to have any idea where to even start with figuring out where the categories come from or how to remove them? I looked into a few months ago but couldn't find jack myself. It seems to involve multiple templates from both here and Wikidata that work on top of each but that's as far as I was able to get. I'm a strong believer that Commons should have control over, or at least a say in, things like this though. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:50, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- I don't know. I've seen discussions that led to changes before, but I don't know who tunes this, or how tunable it is. If you've found the relevant templates, you might look at who edits them, and ping them here. - Jmabel ! talk 19:13, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- As far as I understand, the Wikidata Infobox template (or one of its integrated templates) probably makes some property call (e.g. https://wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P27) and that's what probably adds the category. So, when going through a template's code you'll probably have to look out for the mention of those properties. Ruwiki infoboxes often use such calls, example: [3]. There, you can see code lines like:
|изображение2 = {{wikidata|p94|{{{герб|}}}|.- So, here we see the property p94 and the purpose of the line is to automatically add the image of the Coat of Arms (герб) to the infobox on ruwiki from the wikidata item that is associated with the article. More specifically, this will add the image that can be found on wikidata under the p94 property (or under the statement "coat of arms image" https://wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P94). Similarly, there are properties for awards received, but I don't know their p-numbers. Nakonana (talk) 19:15, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- OK, the number was easier to find than I thought: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P166. Does the code of {{Wikidata Infobox}} mention p166 anywhere? If so, then that might be what's adding the categories. Nakonana (talk) 19:25, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- There's a whole list: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikidata_Infobox/doc/properties Nakonana (talk) 19:30, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- Interesting. Thanks for looking into it. I left @Mike Peel: a message on his talk page about the discussion since he seems to be the main editor of the infobox template. Hopefully he can add some information to this. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:36, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- There's a whole list: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikidata_Infobox/doc/properties Nakonana (talk) 19:30, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- OK, the number was easier to find than I thought: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P166. Does the code of {{Wikidata Infobox}} mention p166 anywhere? If so, then that might be what's adding the categories. Nakonana (talk) 19:25, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Jmabel: Do you happen to have any idea where to even start with figuring out where the categories come from or how to remove them? I looked into a few months ago but couldn't find jack myself. It seems to involve multiple templates from both here and Wikidata that work on top of each but that's as far as I was able to get. I'm a strong believer that Commons should have control over, or at least a say in, things like this though. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:50, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- Ah, interesting. I know at some level we get to control what comes in via {{Wikidata Infobox}}, but I've never been involved and don't know the granularity of control. - Jmabel ! talk 17:35, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- I'd go beyond that, though. There are awards that deserve categories, but not every winner of the award needs to have that as a parent category. E.g. we appropriately have Category:Order of Labour Merit to show what the medal itself and its ribbon bars look like. That doesn't mean it is an important enough award that our category hierarchy should track who won it. Similarly for Category:Jubilee Medal "80 Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945", where I see we have an (empty) Category:Recipients of the Jubilee Medal "80 Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"; I don't think we should. - Jmabel ! talk 23:12, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- If the award is significant, a category should be created for it. If not, it doesn't need to be represented as a Commons category. Simply saying that a person is a "recipient of an award" says very little - there are a lot of awards in the world, most of which are completely non-notable and do not need to be annotated in Commons. Omphalographer (talk) 21:27, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- And Adamant1 is right, those categories are added via the Wikidata Infobox. People probably see that the infobox creates red link categories and then go ahead and create those categories so that they aren't red links anymore. Nakonana (talk) 16:04, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- I pretty much agree with Omphalographer. Nobels, Oscars, César Awards, Congressional Medal of Honor, British knighthood, Order of the Paulownia Flowers: sure. Stranger Genius, Purple Heart, Order of the Rising Sun Sixth Class: no. Sometimes in between it is hard to know exactly where to draw the line. - Jmabel ! talk 19:08, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- Seconding (thirding?) this. I also agree that it's hard to draw the line, but a line should be drawn somewhere. ReneeWrites (talk) 09:18, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
July 22
What is the difference between "Transparent roofs" and "Glass ceilings"
Yes, what is the difference between "Transparent roofs" and "Glass ceilings"? Since I doubt that all pictures from the second are showing ceilings made of glass (and not of any other transparent material), I feel like the categories should be merged. Thanks --A.Savin 09:36, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- In theory, there are other materials that can be transparent, e.g. plastic. For example, think of small-sized greenhouses with plastic foil roofs or acrylic roofs made of Plexiglas (which isn't actual glass despite its name). Nakonana (talk) 10:35, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- Are you sure all photos from Category:Glass ceilings truly showing glass ceilings? Or was this category once created just to collect pictures of something that "more or less looks like a glass ceiling"? That is more my question, I didn't intend to ask about differences between glass and other transparent materials, thanks --A.Savin 11:00, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- Personally, I'd just up-merge Category:Glass ceilings. There's some pretty convincing plastic (or other synthetic material) windows these days like faux stained glass and I doubt anyone can tell the difference from a photograph taken at the distances most of these ones are. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:39, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah, most probably can't tell the difference between glass and plastic, however, there's still another difference between the categories: one is Category:Roofs by color while the other is Category:Ceilings by material (or Category:Roofs by material), so if you want to have glass/glass-like ceilings/roofs included in categories by color and by material, then we probably need both categories. Nakonana (talk) 15:46, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- Are you sure all photos from Category:Glass ceilings truly showing glass ceilings? Or was this category once created just to collect pictures of something that "more or less looks like a glass ceiling"? That is more my question, I didn't intend to ask about differences between glass and other transparent materials, thanks --A.Savin 11:00, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- Roofs are seen from outside; ceilings are seen from inside. (And, at least in principle, you can have a glass ceiling between two stories of a building without the roof being transparent as well.) Omphalographer (talk) 17:15, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
How should courtesy deletion requests be handled via VRT?
I'd like to raise a broader question on how courtesy deletion requests should be handled when they come through the VRT system, especially in cases where a subject contacts WMF Legal or VRT directly (e.g. via info-commons) rather than using the public DR process. Let me describe a general situation:
A person depicted in an image on Commons has contacted WMF Legal to request its removal. Legal defers to community processes and suggests the person request a courtesy deletion. However, due to the sensitivity of the situation (potential embarrassment, privacy, safety concerns, etc.), the person prefers not to go through the public deletion request system. Legal then points them to VRT for more discreet handling.
The relevant guidance is spread across multiple pages:
- Commons:Courtesy deletions notes that admins are
"normally sympathetic to well-reasoned removal requests"
even if no policy is violated. - Commons:Photographs of identifiable people says requests from subjects may be considered even if there's no legal violation, and can be routed via Commons:Contact us/Problems.
- The Contact us page explicitly acknowledges that there's no uniform policy and such requests are handled case by case, but they can email VRT to request deletion (
"For quick help, you can email the support team"
).
However, these statements leave some open questions from a VRT or admin point of view:
- What discretion do VRT agents (who are also admins) have to act on these requests without requiring a public DR?
- Is it within scope to process a request entirely via VRT and delete a file under courtesy grounds with admin tools?
- Or is a DR always required, even if the requestor has compelling personal reasons not to go through a public venue?
- Is there a meaningful difference in expectations when the request is coming via WMF Legal's advice?
I’m asking both as a VRT agent and as an admin. My default has been to suggest DR even for sensitive cases, but that seems to contradict the guidance that discretion may be used, or that VRT can serve as an alternative path.
Would appreciate clarity from the wider community. If these policies guidelines are meant to grant discretion, it would be good to know what the limits are. And if they're not, then maybe the language should be clarified so requesters (and WMF Legal) are not misled.
Thanks in advance for thoughts and input. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 23:05, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- In my years in Wikimedia projects I feel that deleting without DR /under the radar is not appreciated by the community and should be avoided (or should be kept to an absolute minimum).
- Also, I would like to point out, that deleting without DR could also cause a backlash and attract unwanted attention (like en:Streisand effect).
- VRT-agents could still help, for example, write up a good DR that expresses what original itent, but is more in line with the typical language we have here --Isderion (talk) 23:28, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
- As an admin, I can also see how a DR could also attract undue attention to a matter that could be handled discretely. Generally if the person isn't notable and there is an actual privacy concern, I'd close as delete as far as a DR. Notable people is more a case by case basis where if we have a number of photos of the person, I'd also probably delete. It's tougher when there are fewer or the only freely licensed photograph of the person. Abzeronow (talk) 00:12, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
It's tougher when there are fewer or the only freely licensed photograph of the person.
At the same time, there are also some people who Commons may not have photos of because they've tried to maintain a low public profile, and (IMO) Commons should aim to respect that where reasonably possible. Omphalographer (talk) 01:17, 23 July 2025 (UTC)- This exact conundrum has come up recently, and I would tend to agree that Commons should aim to respect someone's desire for privacy if they have made a reasonable effort to remain private. 19h00s (talk) 13:32, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- Very few people outside the Wikisphere are even aware that DR exists. I'm not really sure how much undue attention there really is attracted here Trade (talk) 12:05, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think that all we can do as VRT members is to confirm the requester identity if they explicitly wishes so and express our personal opinion about deletion reasons without revealing what the reasons indeed are. I think that I participated in a courtesy DR when the real deletion reason could not be revealed and I just supported the DR providing info that a strong deletion reason has been provided to VRT. I think that we should not go beyond this line. Ankry (talk) 00:19, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- I'd have no problem with a VRT member who is also an admin deciding to do a courtesy deletion on this basis, as long as they (1) verify that if this came from an online source, it has already been removed from that online sources, (2) believe that a courtesy deletion is genuinely appropriate, (3) make sure that if the image is in use there is an appropriate substitute image, and they do that substitution everywhere, and (4) indicate clearly in the deletion log that this was a courtesy deletion. - Jmabel ! talk 01:24, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- As an admin, I can also see how a DR could also attract undue attention to a matter that could be handled discretely. Generally if the person isn't notable and there is an actual privacy concern, I'd close as delete as far as a DR. Notable people is more a case by case basis where if we have a number of photos of the person, I'd also probably delete. It's tougher when there are fewer or the only freely licensed photograph of the person. Abzeronow (talk) 00:12, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- Josve05a, Thank you for bringing this to the attention of the Village pump. It is an important matter. The relevant modifications to the guideline "Commons:Photographs of identifiable people" (COM:PIP), and the related modifications to the information page "Commons:Contact us/Problems", were made in connection with this discussion on the page "Commons talk:Photographs of identifiable people" from November 2013. (Special attention can be given to the comments by Maggie Dennis (WMF)). My understanding of it all is that the (only) role of VRT, whenever it receives a deletion request, is to determine what type of case it is and then to dispatch, to judiciously redirect it to the proper decisional entity: either to WMF Legal, in the cases that require it, or to the Commons deletion procedure. It must be noted that at the time of the discussion, in November 2013, the relevant section of the page "Commons:Contact us/Problems" mentioned only "Inappropriate images of children" and such requests had necessarily to be sent to WMF Legal [4]. The November 2013 discussion started when a user controversially added to the COM:PIP page a suggestion to send other types of deletion requests directly to WMF Legal [5]. After the discussion, the wording ended up being "In any case you may address a removal request through the normal public process of a regular deletion request. if discretion is required a deletion request may also be sent privately through this page." [6] ("this page" meaning "Commons:Contact us/Problems"). Then there was a discussion at "Commons talk:Contact us" to change the wording of the page "Commons:Contact us/Problems", which was changed on 26 December 2013 [7]. That change added the email address related to en.wikipedia ("info-en-c") as a possible entry point for more general deletion requests related to COM:PIP. That was later changed for the email address related to Commons ("info-commons"). The role of an entry point is to evaluate and send the request to the proper decisional entity. It doesn't seem that there was any intention to confer to VRT members any decisional power to decide to delete files. (That doesn't mean that an administrator can never take the initiative to delete a file after receiving a deletion request through VRT. Administrators can delete files in cases of copyvios and other cases covered by the deletion policy such as "Commons:Criteria for speedy deletion". It doesn't matter if the administrator became aware of the case through their own research or through a mention on Commons or through VRT, as long as the deletion is allowed by the deletion policy. But that is unrelated to the matter of the present discussion. An administrator cannot invoke their additional VRT membership in order to bypass the deletion policy and to surrepticiously delete a file in cases when deletion is not allowed for an administrator who is not a VRT member. In other words, VRT membership doesn't change anything to the powers and duties of an administrator in their role as administrator.) As for the guideline "Commons:Courtesy deletions" (COM:COURTESY), it merely says that it can be an acceptable reason for deletion. It doesn't change the procedure. Courtesy deletions follow the established procedures. In cases that do not require any confidentiality, the deletion rationale can be explicit. If a level of confidentiality is required, the problematic details are left out. In most cases, there can be at least some indication of the general type of reason. In extreme cases, I think the comment above by Ankry states a proper course of action. Extreme cases should be rare. Could there be even more extreme cases that would justify that Commons might change its deletion policy to allow an administrator (or an administrator from a small subset of administrators who happen to be VRT members) to unilaterally decide to secretly make courtesy deletions? Maybe, although given the inherent subjectivity of courtesy deletions and without the possibility to check, there would be a serious risk of abuse when giving someone an unchecked power to perform actions in secret. If there are cases so extreme that total secrecy is required, they are likely cases that should be sent to the WMF. -- Asclepias (talk) 15:40, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- One situation that keeps recurring in VRT is when someone contacts us with a clearly sincere and understandable wish to have a file deleted for personal, sensitive reasons. Legal has no basis to act (as nothing illegal is involved), and the person does not want to file a public DR, as even doing so might draw attention to themselves or suggest they're trying to "scrub the web".
- In some of these cases, I personally believe the file should be deleted. But I don't have a deletion rationale of my own to point to, especially not if the person is notable and the image is otherwise "in scope" (I can make up a scope reason I don't actually believe in, but...). And as VRT is NDA-restricted, I can't share the details without consent; so it ends up in a catch-22: they don’t want to go public, I can't make the case without breaking confidentiality, and deletion policy offers no discrete pathway.
- This does happen from time to time. Often the person gives up after realizing there's no viable option, which I find unfortunate. If we want to offer meaningful privacy options, maybe we do need to revisit whether some narrowly defined process could exist, perhaps through a confidential committee as GPSLeo suggested below, or a revised understanding of what admin discretion can cover in extreme courtesy cases. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 16:01, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, I can think of some legitimate cases for which it could be much preferable to have a more discreet procedure and avoid starting a DR. (Although there are probably not many cases for which it would be absolutely necessary.) I remember a case from a few years ago, when someone contacted me about photos she had taken of her home and then, because of some events, she had actual reasons to fear for her safety. At that time, I wasn't sure what to do with that (I had not researched the matter as I did here), so I contacted an admin and asked if that required a DR or if the files could be speedy deleted. I was prepared to start a DR although a speedy deletion seemed preferable if possible. The admin kindly speedy deleted the files in good faith. I suppose that such cases may happen from time to time although we don't realise it. Maybe someone can think about a change of policy to officially allow it. The concern, of course, is the obvious risk of abuse. Just like with anything else in life, we would like rules to be flexible enough to allow good and wise people to do just and fair actions, and strict enough to prevent bad or irresponsible people to do abusive actions. That balance is difficult to reach, maybe sometimes impossible. There's the risk of a slippery slope where actions that were intended to be rare exceptions become widely abused. Wikimedia projects have always been aware of that danger and they insist on transparency. GPSLeo's idea can be explored. And other ideas that people might think of. -- Asclepias (talk) 17:55, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
Question time
- Should people requesting courtesy deletions be expected to provide a reason behind their request? Anything beyond "I dont want this photo up anymore"? It can more difficult to convince the community to delete photos when no actual reason is provided i often feel
- Should DR be consideerd mandatory in cases where the image in question is used to illustrate the subject on Wikipedia?
--Trade (talk) 12:08, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- "I don't want this photo" is certainly sufficient in some cases and not in others. If we have (say) 5 photos from the same photo session, and one of them is uncomplimentary, we should be willing to delete the one that makes the subject look bad. Conversely, if (again, for example) we had a free-licensed photo of Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein, and Trump wanted it deleted, no way in the world should we do such a thing. - Jmabel ! talk 19:19, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- I also already thought about this problem. I think we need a decision body that works like the ArbCom for such cases. Such a "Privacy complaints committee" or how ever we call it consists of elected community members who decide on privacy related deletion requests in a confidential way. If there is a public reason for the decision has to be decided based on the case. GPSLeo (talk) 14:29, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
July 23
MediaWiki:Signupstart
- Why an imperative phrase saying that people "should" create an anonymous account, as it should be a choice? And most of us are photographers, have our name spread is not a bad thing, quite the opposite, and for legal reasons, would be more efficient use our full legal names, as we can prove that the photos were licensed by us, seems an import from Wikipedia with the fear of the violence spread around there, not the ideal
- How can we translate this warning (after fixing it)? By now, seems that the warning is only in English.
I suggest:
- "Creating an account with your full name can make you not anonymous, as this will be a public account."
-- Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton m 16:30, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- That's terribly roundabout. How about, "Your account name will be public. In selecting an account name, choose carefully whether or not you want to use your real name." - Jmabel ! talk 19:23, 23 July 2025 (UTC)