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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/2024/04. 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 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 01

Help locating photo origin

I would like to upload this photo of Joe Clark which I found at ParlInfo. It states it is in the Public Domain, which is of value for the Commons. However, I have no idea when it was taken or by who. When I reached out to the Library of Parliament Canada, they told me they got the photo from an 'outside source'. Reverse searching gets me a full resolution copy, but still no author or date. Does anyone else out there by chance know anything about it or recognize this photo? Perhaps there is a better sleuth out there then me. Thanks.

April 14

Exporting Images at Full Resolution from Website

Apologies if this is the wrong place, but does anyone know how to export International Image Interoperability Framework images from a website at full size and resolution? I would like to upload a booklet titled USAF and Installations and Master and Plans from the David Rumsey Map Collection website, but cannot figure out how to obtain a full-resolution, non-tiled image. I can achieve one, but not both at the same time. (e.g. Full-resolution, but tiled; low-resolution, but untiled) I studied the IIIF URL formatting, but there doesn't seem to be a parameter for resolution.

To address two potential questions:

• Even though it was not strictly necessary as the booklet is public domain as a under contract for the US Air Force, I contacted the website and they confirmed "my use is permitted". (Further, note that the maps are also available directly from the USAF, but they are unfortunately even poorer quality than the downloaded images mentioned below.)
• Even when the largest size option on the image page is selected via the export function it does not appear to download a full resolution image.

Alternatively, since there are 269 images in the album, if someone knows an easy way to batch upload the images using a script (or something like that, I'm not really familiar with it) and could do that, it would be greatly appreciated. (My plan was to download, potentially slightly crop to remove whitespace, and upload them.) –Noha307 (talk) 22:44, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

@Noha307: Do you have proof that this document is no longer RESTRICTED?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 03:52, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

As per the USAF page linked above: "The entire collection was declassified in accordance with official guidance by the Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA)." –Noha307 (talk) 19:34, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

@Noha307: Allrighty then, I have uploaded File:Burlington Municipal Airport Preliminary Master Plan v52-2.jpg for you using the dezoomify extension with standard IIIF support, and the GIMP v2.10.0 to convert from png to jpg format.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:21, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: Excellentǃ Thank you so very muchǃ

A question: Why did you convert to JPG format? I work in the museum field and always understood that best practice is to avoid using it (at least for non-access) due to the risk of artifacting and other problems caused by lossy compression. I presume it is because the file is so large that PNG (or TIFF) would be unwieldy?

Lastly, I really appreciate you pinging me. It makes it so much easier to keep track of these conversations. –Noha307 (talk) 01:54, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

@Noha307: My default filetype for images is jpg for non-fuzzy scaled-down display of photos on-wiki per phab:T192744 (and in this case due to filesize of the png), but I uploaded File:Burlington Municipal Airport Preliminary Master Plan v52-2.png using User:Rillke/bigChunkedUpload.js (doc at User talk:Rillke/bigChunkedUpload.js, and help at Help:Chunked upload) for you, too. See how they look for you side-by-side in the following gallery:

jpg

png

  — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:00, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

@Noha307: You're welcome! Do you have plans to use either one?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:47, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: My goal is to try to upload the entire set and then, depending on need and applicability, insert them into the articles for the articles for the various air force bases. –Noha307 (talk) 18:16, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

April 15

Obvious copyvio patrol bot

seeing File:Barbie Headshot.jpg, i think a bot, which screens new uploads that fulfil certain criteria, will be good for commons copyvio detection:

1. exif contains phrases like getty, Shutterstock, No use without permission, all rights reserved...
2. wikitext contains such phrases
3. uploads from users who are newly registered or have low edit counts.

RZuo (talk) 13:46, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Does Commons file upload reject a file whose metadata specifies an incompatible license? Metadata is often missing licenses or is otherwise a mess, but sometimes it will clearly specify a license URL. Glrx (talk) 15:20, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

No. For better or worse, file metadata is treated as informational only. Omphalographer (talk) 18:52, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

There used to be one, operated by User:Krd, tagging files copied from elsewhere without a valid license. Yann (talk) 15:23, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

The thing is that statements from the Metadata may change. There are also some Commoners who have "All rights reserved" written in metadata of their photographs, but they release some rights with uploading here, which makes it obsolete. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 12:13, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

April 16

Should some images have huge margins, so they look right in wikiboxes?

one of many square election maps

longest side set to 100px with 100x100px

I just came across the claim, that some images with vertical motives should be square rather than vertical, "so they can look right in the wikiboxes". (Talk page and file history for context.) I think that can not be right. This idea probably refers to templates, that set the image width, although the intention is to set the longest side of the image. I would say, the obvious solution is to use the correct formatting in the template, and not to add left and right margins to vertical images. Any opinions? --Watchduck (quack) 10:25, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

@Watchduck: Please see en:H:PIC#Upright images.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:16, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

The use case here are templates, where the image could have any format. In case of the Infobox election template (see e.g. 2008 United States Senate elections#Illinois) the quoted argument seems particularly misguided, because it has the map_size parameter (which IMO should be 250x200px). @Jeff G.: Do you see any use case, where it could be necessary to have these margins? --Watchduck (quack) 14:17, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

@Watchduck: The use can be for situations when people refuse to make templates that take into account the upright images, when you can't or won't make such templates (yet).   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:40, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: You make this sound like we would need a new kind of template. We just need to replace the wrong image size by the one we actually want. Like this. (Well, actually like this, because width comes before height. The result can be seen here). --Watchduck (quack) 18:57, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

@Watchduck: Only for the states (for example) that should be represented upright (taller than they are high). But yes, custom templates can be modified to account for height, of course with the caveat that the system favors width over height.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:40, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't get it. Could you give and example, how the system favors Wpx over xHpx or WxHpx? --Watchduck (quack) 09:37, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

@Watchduck: The first parameter is width. Scaling with the URL uses width.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:20, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I suppose we could have files with different margins, though I'm not quite sure if it's needed for flags.

We mused about the question with @Yann for map tiles in Category:Swisstopo 1:25'000 map sheets. There are a few tiles that only show part of the area and would otherwise be blank. So to assemble several tiles in a row one would have to write custom code for a each file that hasn't the default size (we currently only have one, but there are a few more in existence, showing different sections of a default area). Enhancing999 (talk) 22:20, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

BSicon

I agree that this makes sense for image sets where every file has the same format. Certainly no one wants to crop the squares in the BSicon set.

The flags are just examples for using the WxHpx syntax. I suppose many users are just not aware of it.

The focus of my question are maps like these, and all the election maps derived from them. --Watchduck (quack) 10:53, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

@Watchduck: I would imagine that in order for templates and users to combine standardized sets in ways that make visual sense, they need to be the same size.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:38, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

That depends. The files in this set of state maps do not have the same size — nor should they.

But yes, election maps of the same state should differ only in the colors. It should be possible to use them as imagestacks. (That is what I try to achieve in the Illinois set.)

But that is not the question. The question is, if there is any compelling reason, that files like this should have these margins.

By now, this is basically a rhetorical question. There is no such reason. --Watchduck (quack) 16:28, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

@Watchduck: Oh, there is a reason, the uploaders used the only tools they had at their disposal instead of following the advice at en:H:PIC#Upright images. Not a compelling reason, but at least a reason.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:46, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes. --Watchduck (quack) 12:50, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

April 17

Download name should always be page name, not SVG title

The download name of an SVG will be based on the title in its code, if one exists. This is not practical.

• Downloading a diagram like this will create a file called Neo4j Graph Visualization.svg.
  There are many online tools, that write their name in the title. (This includes SVG optimizers.)
• The square version of this map will download as Illinois_Presidential_Election_Results_2020-svg.svg (potentially leading to confusion with this file).
  People often download SVGs, and upload modified versions. The title is not always updated.
  

--Watchduck (quack) 09:17, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Depends. If you download a thumb of the SVG, or if you use download buttons, or right clicking a url and using "Save linked file as" or "Save image as" then they should not. But if you open the image directly in your browser and then choose "Save as", then the image name is determined by the browser and you will see this behaviour I think. I'm not sure if there is a good method to easily correct this. Suggestions ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:17, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

@TheDJ: You are right, this happens in the browser. But the problem can likely be solved here, by passing the name to the download parameter of the anchor tag.

<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/OOKM_car_person_reified.svg" download="OOKM_car_person_reified.svg">CLICK</a>

Can someone try this on a test page? --Watchduck (quack) 18:17, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

But that forces a download, what if people just want to view the original image ? (It doesn’t force a download btw, because the download attribute doesn’t work cross site, but wikimedia has a url param ?download that does the same.) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:29, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

When the link says Download, that is what it should do. Below there is a link that says Original file. (A click on the image will also open the SVG.)

You mean this might not work, because of "upload.wikimedia.org" vs. "commons.wikimedia.org"? --Watchduck (quack) 19:12, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Ah. I think you are referring to the links provided by the StockPhoto gadget which is unique to Wikimedia Commons ? because of "upload.wikimedia.org" vs. "commons.wikimedia.org" exactly. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:06, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I have asked a question on StackOverflow about this. Maybe some CORS magic can help. --Watchduck (quack) 19:39, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if content-disposition headers can be used here to name the file even in non download mode. Bawolff (talk) 15:10, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, that might be a possibility.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:13, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I've given this some thought, but we'd have to inject content-disposition header when uploading the file to swift, and also change it in swift when moving and create a maintenance script to update all the swift entries. Possible, but not sure if that is worth the effort. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:20, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

i've made some minor fixes to the stockphoto gadget. Personally I think it requires a full makeover, but i don't have the time for that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:23, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

This is mostly relevant for mass downloads. Gladly, the download tool Imker does not have this problem. (And someone fixed it.)
So my problem is solved. If someone chooses to fix the download link, consider making a screencast as a tutorial. --Watchduck (quack) 10:58, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

April 18

watermarks and advertising

Some images on here are watermarked, which is fine. I could really care less about watermarks in general. Some of them are extremely obvious and seem to only serve as a way to promote the person or place where the image came from though. For instance the overly intrusive watermark on File:Sunny Leone snapped at Mehboob Studio.jpg, which contains the name of the company, their logo, and web URL. All of which are done in a way that seem rather promotional. Especially given that other images on here from the same source don't have such obvious watermarking. Commons:Project scope clearly states that files used for advertising or self-promotion are not realistically useful for an educational purpose. So I don't really see how a file with a watermark like the one on File:Sunny Leone snapped at Mehboob Studio.jpg would be in scope. Since it's obviously meant to advertise Bollywood Hungama and their website.

It seems like other users, mainly @Yann: (but he's not the only one), think watermarks can't be advertising or self-promotion for the purposes of project scope. Including the one in the image from Bollywood Hungama. So I'm interested to know what other people think about it. Are there instances where a watermark can disqualify an image from being in scope due self-promotion and advertising? Or are all watermarked images automatically in scope regardless of how blatantly promotional the watermarking is? Adamant1 (talk) 15:28, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: FYI, as I already told you, there are already nearly 17,000 pictures from Bollywood Hungama, so complaining about one picture seems quite out of place to me. These were not uploaded by Hungama, but by Wikimedia contributors interested by the Bollywood film industry. So yes, they may be indirect advertisement for Bollywood Hungama, but what's your problem with that? Yann (talk) 16:12, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

And like I've already told you and repeated here, most images from Bollywood Hungama don't have the same watermarking. So I think there's a difference between the file I've brought up and the rest of the images from them on Commons. Regardless, it's called an example. I assume you know what that is. I don't really care if the images where uploaded by Wikimedia contributors interested by the Bollywood film industry or whatever. That has nothing to do with watermarking and whether it can serve as a form of advertising or not. You seem unable or unwilling to answer the question without just deflecting for some reason though. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:32, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

And what is the need for a personal attack now? Yann (talk) 16:38, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

It's not a personal attack. I just want the question to be answered and I don't think your response was adequate or addressed my original comment. It has nothing to do with who uploaded the images or what their interested in. I don't think it's that ridiculous or insulting to expect you to stick to the point of the thread if your going to respond to me. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:42, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Some don't have watermark because they were cropped. Otherwise, most if not all have a watermark. If you find some original images without a watermark, it may be a clue that it is not covered by the permission. Please nominate them for deletion. Yann (talk) 16:53, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

OK. That has nothing to do with the conversation, but whatever. Just to ask the question again since your ignoring it for some reason, are there instances where a watermark can disqualify an image from being in scope due to self-promotion or are all watermarked images automatically in scope regardless of how blatantly promotional it is? --Adamant1 (talk) 16:57, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

In some other cases, the watermark was edited out, as the original image has one. Yann (talk) 17:25, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Yann, it seems like a reasonable example of the sort of watermarking he is complaining labour. This does seem intrusive, so I think dismissing him out of hand is counterproductive. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 10:57, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, Bollywood Hungama files have an intrusive watermark, but so what? Adamant1 here is complaining for the sake of complaining. They started this thread after I closed this deletion request. IMO this is a typical example of Do not disrupt Commons to illustrate a point. In addition, this comes after Adamant1 made a large number of disruptive DRs about freedom of panorama in Belgium, and I am not the only one to find them problematic. So yes, I dismiss Adamant1's writing as counterproductive. Yann (talk) 11:56, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

@Yann: I have a right to ask a quesiton about something on the village pump if I feel like it needs clarification. Yet your the one who keeps saying not to make things personal and then that's exactly what you seem to do in essentially every single discussion we're both involved in for some reason. Go figure. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:51, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand the potential resolution here: Bollywood Hungama does not upload files directly to Commons, and they have >17,000 images on Commons. Do you want to nuke all images? Prevent future uploads of a potentially useful source? The current de facto situation is people upload images made by them on Commons, and if someone doesn't like the watermark it can be cropped out/removed with editing tools or AI. —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 19:15, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

No, I could care less about Bollywood Hungama or any images related to them. I simply mentioned the image as an example of a watermark that at least IMO is promotional and like I've said most of their images aren't like that. Apparently people are incapable of understanding the question or not making this about Bollywood Hungama even though I've retaliated the question multiple times now and said more then once that it has nothing to do with them. My bad for thinking it would be helpful to include an example of what I was talking about though. Is really that hard to just say if watermarks can be promotional or not? --Adamant1 (talk) 19:43, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: I can't tell what you think is the problem with hosting this image. Would we prefer if it weren't watermarked? Sure. Is it available without a watermark? As far as I know, no. So unless you think it is out of scope, or redundant for all intents and purposes to some other file, there is no issue here. - Jmabel ! talk 20:59, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Forget the file. It was tangential to the question about watermarking anyway. Its a simple yes or question that doesn't depend on or have to do with any particular file. Can watermarking on an image make it advertising/self-promotion or not per the sentence in Commons:Project scope "files used for advertising or self-promotion are not realistically useful for an educational purpose"? --Adamant1 (talk) 21:11, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I could imagine a watermark having that effect (e.g. a portrait shot with a blatant watermark across the face, like the ones professional photographers sometimes send out as proofs, precisely to prevent anyone from simply using the proof and not paying them, though I guess we could keep a handful of those precisely as examples of that practice). But it would be a pretty extreme case. - Jmabel ! talk 02:09, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: That seems reasonable. I like Jarekt's solution, but then it would be helpful if there was some kind of note about where the line was in a policy or guideline somewhere. Since I do think there is one. Even some people disagree as to whether specific examples cross it or not. Otherwise I could see it being a problem at some point. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:54, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

One way to deal with watermarked images is to either crop them or use photoshop, GIMP or some other tool to remove watermarks. Often the results are not ideal but better then not having some image. All Wikipedia-compatible licenses allow it. I just tried this tool on File:Sunny Leone snapped at Mehboob Studio.jpg. --Jarekt (talk) 18:36, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jarekt: Thanks! It's actually kind of crazy how well that works. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:47, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

All are welcome to read and comment upon Template talk:BollywoodHungama#Permission deprecation.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:31, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

April 19

Bill Cramer's photographs

I've encountered a new user, BillCramer, a professional photographer who wishes to contribute low-resolution images from his archives to Wikimedia projects. I've started a conversation with him at enwiki, at his user talkpage en:User_talk:BillCramer. He (and his assistant) have uploaded a number of hard-to-get images of famous individuals, of high quality. Given the issues we're recently encountered concerning David Iliff's images, I'd like to solicit some help and additional voices so that Bill Cramer can contribute without undue difficulty or risk, either to his own intellectual property, or to end users, and so he can appropriately license them and adjust his metadata statements. Acroterion (talk) 14:24, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Uploading low resolution files under a free license makes the license also apply to the original file (see Creative Commons FAQ). The only limitation is the access to the full resolution. But if you have access to the full resolution file you can overwrite the low resolution file with it. GPSLeo (talk) 16:45, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I have suggested to Bill Cramer that he should verify his account through the VRT process. Yann (talk) 15:52, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

As I noted there, see ticket:2024030210004094 as referenced on File:Mike tyson knocks out tyrell biggs.jpg. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:23, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

39 images in Category:Photographs by Bill Cramer. If I've missed any, please add them. The biggest issue that I can see is that BillCramer does not appear, from the Wikipedia discussion, to be BC, but his assistant. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:23, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

"The Arabian Kingdom"

Can people with interest in category maintenance please contribute their thoughts on CfD: Arabian Kingdom in the 9th century. Some basic knowledge about the Middle East might be required. This CfD is just one example category standing for dozens without any proper parent category like "Category:Arabian Kingdom". I first only encountered a few of those, but then kept finding more and more. The re-categorization of all this content probably has some far-reaching consequences. (In my opinion, "The Arabian Kingdom" is an anachronistic entity that never existed, and all content needs to be moved to "Saudi Arabia", "Arabia" or "Arabian Peninsula" and appropriate sub-categories.) --Enyavar (talk) 14:57, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

"Saudi Arabia" is even more anachronistic. - Jmabel ! talk 20:37, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Applies to the whole tree: Category:9th_century_by_country. Some disclaimer could be helpful. Enhancing999 (talk) 07:50, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Some of the many categories that this is about, could belong into "Saudi Arabia", for example Category:Natural history of the Arabian Kingdom. Others don't fit in there, just as Jmabel says. "History of Arabia by century", and corresponding subcats seems to me like a good catch-all category for all history of the Peninsula prior to the 20th century. But I wanted to make sure before acting on my own. --Enyavar (talk) 13:21, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

April 20

Immediate deletion of upload by its own author/uploader

Is there any page describing the principles by which an uploaded file should not be deleted immediately by its author/uploader? If so, it would be interesting to know whether such principles should be applied in all wikis, or only within Wikimedia Commons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elena Regina (talk • contribs) 15:42, 20 April 2024 (UTC) (UTC)

@Elena Regina: A user can ask for deletion of their files within one week after uploading if they are not used. Yann (talk) 15:42, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Dear Yann, I repeat the question: Is there any page describing the principles by which an uploaded file should not be deleted immediately by its author/uploader? If so, it would be interesting to know whether such principles should be applied in all wikis, or only within Wikimedia Commons. Elena Regina (talk) 20:40, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry but your question makes little sense, so I will have to default to "no." The assumption would be that most files are not immediately deleted by the uploader. There is unlikely to be any page that describes this as it is a matter of common sense. While an uploader can request deletion of their upload, we would expect that to be the exception rather than the rule. From Hill To Shore (talk) 20:46, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Dear From Hill To Shore, your reply does not answer the submitted questions. Elena Regina (talk) 21:33, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

The answer was "no."

If you want a different answer then rephrase your question, as it is currently nonsense. If English isn't your first language, I would advise asking your question again in your native language. Good luck getting the answer you seek. From Hill To Shore (talk) 21:54, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Rephrasing: Is there any page describing the principles by which an uploaded file cannot be deleted immediately by its author/uploader? If so, it would be interesting to know whether such principles should be applied in all wikis, or only within Wikimedia Commons. Elena Regina (talk) 23:26, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

@Elena Regina: Your question was already answered by Yann. Per Commons:Criteria for speedy deletion#G7, author-requested deletions are generally granted within 7 days of upload, unless the file is in use on a wiki. That is only Commons policy; other wikis have their own local policies about courtesy deletions. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 23:33, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Dear Pi.1415926535: No, submitted questions were not answered by anyone yet. Please specify which part of the questions, e.g.: "cannot be deleted immediately by its author/uploader", you do not understand correctly. Elena Regina (talk) 23:47, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

@Elena Regina authors and uploaders cannot generally delete files by themselves, as this requires special privilege. Your question makes little sense to us, and perhaps by the "XY Problem" principle, you could describe some concrete circumstances or disputes or editors who have raised this concern and precipitated your very specific inquiry here. Without specifics or details, we're unable to comment on such a nonsensical general and hypothetical case. Elizium23 (talk) 04:31, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

By the way, if it is the case that your mother tongue is not English, please feel free to pose your question in the language where you are most fluent. There is no reason to be constrained by an imaginary "English barrier" here on Commons. Thank you! Elizium23 (talk) 05:16, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

The short answer: Commons:User access levels; and these principles in general are similar across wikis, but in the end it is the wiki-chapter's own decision on how to adapt these principles. The long answer: having looked into your editing history, it seems you would like to know why you yourself are unable to easily delete your own files, and instead have to patiently rely on others to delete them. In simple terms, the ability to delete pages is too powerful for regular users and, as far as I know, there is no safer "limited" version of the deletion ability. --HyperGaruda (talk) 06:52, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Does the page see Commons:Courtesy deletions answer your question about the page describing the principles? (note: it is only proposal and formally approved guideline, but describes pretty well the process and reasons). --Zache (talk) 07:20, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

@Elena Regina Commons (this site) is part of the websites by the Wikimedia Foundation. The purpose of the Wikimedia Foundation is to create and maintain an Enzyclopedia that is accessible to all mankind for free. Very early after creation of this Enzyclopedia it was decided, that images and other media are helpful in making an Encyclopedia. Later Commons was created as the universal repository for media that is used in any Wikimeda project. It is still possible to upload media files to some of the individual projects, but that does only make sense for a very limited number of use cases (fair use in the english language wikipedia is one such use case). These uploads in other projects are best made by experienced users who know about the rules and mostly have no need to have an upload deleted. On Commons on the other hand everyone is invited to upload as much media files as possible, as long as these files are in SCOPE and not COPYVIO. It is not in the interest, that any file that is in SCOPE and not a COPYVIO, is ever deleted. As contributers may become estranged to the project and its goals, contributers are not allowed to delete any image. Only admins can do that and admins do so only after a deletion requests has been discussed and decided or as a SPEEDY if it is absolutly clear, that an uploaded file is in breach of rules or laws. The exception is a courtesy deletion: If you upload a file in error, that you never meant to actually publish anywhere, you can ask for a courtesy deletion within the first seven days after upload. However this may not be granted, for example if you uploaded a public domain file that is within the project SCOPE. This is to protect reusers of media files and the encyclopedia project in general. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 07:22, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Just to be exact. Courtesy deletion can be after any period of time, but under seven days it will be speedy deleted (and by default) and after seven days process is that deletion request will go through deletion discussion. --Zache (talk) 07:27, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Interwiki notification of deletion requests

Does the interwiki bot that posts notices on talk pages of subject pages that display images coming from Commons no longer run? I noticed recently that an article using a media file from Commons, where that file had been nominated for deletion, did not have a notice on its talk page. After checking other language Wikipedias none of the others had a notice either. -- 65.92.247.66 22:27, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Are you talking about the Commons deletion notification bot task done by the Community Tech bot that is run from meta.wikimedia.org at meta:Community Tech/Commons deletion notification bot? The bot is run by MusikAnimal (WMF). Unfortunately, the Commons deletion notification portion of its tasks has been offline since 6 June 2023. See phabricator ticket phab:T339145 if you want to track the status of efforts to fix the bot. —RP88 (talk) 22:52, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. -- 65.92.247.66 23:25, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

April 21

I've done something great.

Hi, I'm OperationSakura6144. Now, I've done something great. I've created Category:Flags of municipialities of Japan used in Wikipedia articles with vector versions available. Now, I will not be dependent on requests I make to everyone in WikiComms. If you're interested in helping me, please go to this category. OperationSakura6144 (talk) 11:57, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Questions about FoP in UAE

I am surprised that not all countries have panoramic freedom. From the standpoint of FoP, can the image of Dubai in this link be accepted by Wikimedia Commons? And what if the image contains only trains? Thanks! --Tim Wu (talk) 15:09, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

See COM:FOP UAE. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:00, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

@TimWu007 one can argue that the said image does not focus on a specific building or two or even three (which may warrant restrictions by the buildings' designers or architects). IMO, weak allow an image similar to that here ("weak" because I don't know if there is a visual artists' group similar to ADAGP of France that may oppose hosting of modern Dubai architecture on Wikimedia or even Wikipedia sites).

If an image contains only trains and no intentional focus on any copyrighted building or artwork like public monument, then it is very acceptable here. Trains are not works of fine or visual arts. Though there may be licensing problems if there is substantial advertising artwork on trains, IMO.

It is rather frustrating that despite being last-updated in around 2021, the UAE law only provides FoP for free uses of copyrighted public art and architecture in "broadcasts" (this implies only traditional media can exploit these landmarks of UAE, not lucrative Internet media that only accept commercial licensing, like Wikimedia sites). That's their law, and Commons need to respect it, even if that means no good images of famous towers of Dubai. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 19:51, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

@JWilz12345 Thanks for your comment, and I have some few naive questions:

1. Commons:Deletion requests/File:PICTURES BENOIT TORDEURS Palace Abou dhabi.jpg was kept for architecture is not shown. How do I determine whether a photo of building interior contains copyright contents?
2. Aedas has posted Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Dubai_Metro_Station.jpg under CC BY-SA license, so can I upload other photos of this building (or other Aedas-designed Dubai Metro station buildings... XD) to Commons?

Best regards, Tim Wu (talk) 13:46, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

@TimWu007 I renominated the first case as I don't think the claimed main subject, the chandelier, is simple or in public domain. It is certainly artistic and does not appear to have been designed by someone who died more than 70 years ago. Regarding the 2nd one, no. Only Aedas can release images under commercial CC license, so the only way is to import other images of the metro station from the account of Aedas. You cannot upload your images of that metro station, unless the UAE law is changed. You cannot also import images of the station from other Flickr users, except the Flickr account of the architecture firm itself. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 15:40, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

April 22

Insufficient information at Wiki Loves Folklore images

I often come across images from Wiki Loves Folklore where the description says nothing about what is in the picture and no category is indicated. For example File:Madarsa.jpg. The description is

This media has been taken in the country: India

. The filename could refer to Category:Madarsha Union, but that doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Is there any way to at least ensure that when uploading, the description must be more complete before the upload is accepted? Wouter (talk) 09:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Probably no, because only a human can determine that, and no other human besides the uploader can view the description before it is uploaded. - Jmabel ! talk 09:45, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Every upload must have a description though. If you used the Wiki Loves Folklore upload form it automatically adds the WLF template in the description, which allows people to upload them without writing one themselves. I think this problem could be fixed by moving that template elsewhere, like giving it its own field or moving it outside the info box (like the larger WLF template proper, which is below the licensing field). ReneeWrites (talk) 16:26, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

That being said, I think people not writing sufficiently detailed descriptions or not categorizing (or miscategorizing) stuff is always going to exist to some extent. WLF also says your images should have EXIF data to be eligible for any awards, which these photos lack as well. ReneeWrites (talk) 16:28, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

@ReneeWrites this is not only limited to WLF. Similar issues exist in images submitted in other photo competitions like those of COM:UAE in Lens Competition, in which many of the images' descriptions only read as "This illustation is part of the Images from UAE in Lens Competition." JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 23:06, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Ambiguity of the term "cars"

Since there has been a CFD on Category:Automobiles at Commons:Categories for discussion/2018/07/Category:Automobiles with no consensus, I don't want to open another CFD to discuss the name. Instead, I want to discuss whether the term "car" is inherently ambiguous, since consensus can change and many of the oppose comments are little more than !votes. As per my analysis of that discussion, many users agree that the term "car" is more common than "automobile" even in the USA. Therefore, it makes sense to use "cars" instead of "automobiles". However, the arguments against this proposal are that the term "car" has several related meaning other than an automobile, that the cognates of the term "automobile" and its clipped form "auto" are common in many European languages, and that the name change would be disruptive for Commons. My counterargument is that although Commons is a multilingual project, English, like in many other domains, is the lingua franca of this project. Many of our categories are named according to the common usage in English. Not only that, if the term "car" is inherently ambiguous, we can stick with the term "motor car". However, the term "motor car" may also be used for Category:Railcars, which is no big deal. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 13:50, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Looking at Category:Automobiles by function, I've found that there are already some categories using the term "cars" in their names despite the term being de jure deprecated in Commons. As said before, some users have complained that the name change wod be disruptive for Commons. However, as one can categorize files quickly using Commons:Cat-a-lot, the potential disruption will be more manageable. You can refer to the example of how we move away from the technical term Category:Rolling stock to use the more common term Category:Rail vehicles. We can do the same thing with Category:Automobiles. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 14:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

 Comment Category:Car and Category:Cars both are category redirects through to Category:Automobiles. To also note Category:Cars (Q7238000) and Category:Automobiles (Q6491972)  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:02, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: I am seeing an argument in search of a problem. What is your issue? What sort of solution are you looking to have? Tell us what is the problem that you are seeing with the categorisation, and how we could be implementing a fix.  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:07, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The problem is that the technical term "automobiles" is less common than the term "cars", even in the USA. Many newcomers will be frustrated to find that we use "automobiles" instead of "cars". If we use the term "cars" instead of "automobiles", none but non-English-speaking Europeans will complain about the usage. We can always use {{Translation table}} for such users. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 14:17, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

As a user from India, I had never heard of the term "automobile" till 2020, when I started to contribute in Commons extensively. I've always used the term "car" outside Commons and I always rent for a car instead of an automobile. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 14:22, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Admittedly, I'm one of the older Wikimedians, but I still to some extent have the older connotation of "railroad car", especially when dealing with older material. I agree that it's an archaism now, but if someone referred to "Franklin Delano Roosevelt's car" I would guess that was as likely to mean rail as road. - Jmabel ! talk 14:58, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

For what I worth, I have already created Category:Railroad cars for rail vehicles carrying passengers and/or cargo. I have used the term "railroad cars" in line with Wikidata and Wikipedia. However, for Category:Automobiles, neither the Wikidata item nor the English Wikipedia article is titled "automobile". The Wikidata item is titled "motor car", while the English Wikipedia article is titled simply "car". English Wikipedia uses "car" for automobiles even though it can have other meanings. Similarly, Bengali Wikipedia uses গাড়ি (gāṛi) for automobiles even though it can also mean bullock carts (গরুর গাড়ি garur gāṛi), horse-drawn vehicles (ঘোড়ার গাড়ি ghoṛār gāṛi) or trains (রেলগাড়ি relgāṛi). As long as the context is obvious, the English word "car" and the Bengali word গাড়ি (gāṛi) would specifically refer to automobiles. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 03:06, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Just my opinion, but the top parent category should be . Otherwise you have people putting images of trucks into Category:Cars, which is just weird. There should be two separate category trees for cars and trucks. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:37, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I will open a CFD on automobiles vs cars if there is no prejudice against it. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 07:02, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

a no-no in specifying disambiguation categories

in Category:Disambiguation categories we have

• Category:Disambiguation categories of artists (140 C)
• Category:Disambiguation categories of churches in Sweden (20 C)
• Category:Disambiguation categories of naval ships of the United States (22 C)
• Category:Disambiguation categories of populated places (20 C)
• Category:Disambiguation categories of saints (36 C)
• Category:Disambiguation categories of sportspeople (10 C)
• Category:Disambiguation categories of taxonomy (4 C)

and essentially these are nonsensical.

Disambiguation is of the word/phrase in whatever, and every, form it is used, so to sub-categorise these is contrary to their purpose of the word/phrase not having a specific meaning [for disambiguation is essentially a label without meaning]. It would also mean that if there was a term that aligns with the disambiguation page that you are going to split it? Change its form? What? We should just appropriately explain the linked categories with suitable explanations.

I propose that we remove these intermediary categories and align all the subcats to the top-level cat. The reason that I note it here is for that higher level discussion, and that there is no other realistically useful place to have this conversation appropriately.  — billinghurst sDrewth 13:56, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Assuming that by "the top-level cat" you mean Category:Disambiguation categories, I agree. - Jmabel ! talk 15:02, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I'd like these to be kept. They are useful when someone wants to work on disambiguating a specific kind of topic. They are similar to the subcategories on English Wikipedia in en:Category:Disambiguation pages.

The subcategories are, as far as I know, all in Category:Disambiguation categories as well; if they aren't, that is easily fixed.

By the way, it would be nice if you would notify the creators of each of these pages. I created some (although I did so only after others had been created), but there are at least two other people who created some of them. -- Auntof6 (talk) 20:45, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I find them very useful, just as they are useful in Wikipedia, too many ships, cemeteries, and churches have the same name. Wikidata should do the same thing, list all the entries for Saint Mary Church or Evergreen Cemetery. Currently we only do this in Wikipedia but in the past the red linked ones were deleted. Commons has entries not in Wikipedia. --RAN (talk) 00:10, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

That's not how Wikidata works; you can query Wikidata for the sets you describe. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:08, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

 Support. Disambiguation pages are navigation tools, not content. Time spent placing them into highly specific categories is time wasted. If anything, having all the disambiguation categories on a single level makes it easier to spot the ones which aren't empty like they should be. Omphalographer (talk) 05:36, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Omphalographer: They are all on a single level, or they can be in addition being in the categories being discussed. English Wikipedia doesn't have trouble with the ones they have (and they have many more than this). Each of theirs is in a category for all disambiguation pages as well as in a more specific one, and the ones here can be managed in the same way.

There's no requirement to create lower-level disambiguation categories for every possible topic, so no one has to do so. People can create the ones they want to have available to work on. Having them grouped into subcategories makes it easier to find them. I really don't see what problem these cause. -- Auntof6 (talk) 08:20, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

 Support. @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): no one is suggesting getting rid of the disambiguation pages, just that categorizing them like this is inappropriate. For example, if we had a Category:Saint Augustine (which, surprisingly we don't) it should include not only all saints with this name, but also the city in Florida. - Jmabel ! talk 08:17, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

 Support The whole point of disambiguation pages is that they cover more than one thing sharing the same name. I agree with moving these pages to the main cat and deleting the subcats. ReneeWrites (talk) 09:34, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

•  Comment There is some commentary about English Wikipedia's similarity. At enWP they are disambiguation pages, they are not disambiguating categories. There is a whole heap pof difference between main ns content pages and categories. Here I am specifically talking about categories that disambiguate categories.
  @Auntof6: It seems like what you are wanting is more like what we are seeing in Special:PrefixIndex/category:Things_named they are more like listings (which can be a separate issue for another day). Disambiguation is best just being clean simple disambiguation, otherwise it is becoming some weird morphing. When things morph they are confusing to many in my experience. Already have enough issues with people populating disambiguation pages.  — billinghurst sDrewth 03:24, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

  @Billinghurst: That's not equivalent, or even very helpful for the kind of thing I use the dab categories for.

  Also, I see that you removed a lot of things from the various categories under disambiguation pages of saints, and as a result all of those categories are now empty. I think doing that while this discussion is going on was in bad faith. Also, doing that isn't helpful unless you replace the dab category with a category for a specific saint, which you didn't do in all cases. Please undo those changes, except in cases like this one which already had a specific saint category on it. -- Auntof6 (talk) 06:11, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

  Disambiguation categories are not hold all categories until someone comes and does a better job. They are neither Template:CatDiffuses nor Template:Meta categorys.
  The only cat pages where I took out the categorisation of "Disambiguation categories of saints" is where they were not just about the people, instead were about the term, and they should never have been categorised so. With regard to my removing files from disambiguation categories, they should never have been populated with files (in the first place). Disambiguation categories are to be empty. I don't believe that I have removed any pages from standard categories. I have been slowly depopulating disambiguation categories for weeks, and up J.  — billinghurst sDrewth 08:07, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you, I understand how the cat diffuse and meta cats are different. I work with all them all the time.

  And yes, ideally disambiguation categories should be empty, but for the most part they aren't deliberately populated with files. They get populated when the a person or bot either 1) doesn't understand categorizing or 2) doesn't understand that many terms have multiple meanings and they have to pay attention to what they're doing. There are people, me included, who regularly look at the non-empty disambiguation categories and fix the categorization -- not just remove it, but fix it. You're making those fixes impossible. -- Auntof6 (talk) 09:40, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

While we're at that, can we get cat-a-lot to handle disambiguation categories? --Enyavar (talk) 07:56, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose Per Auntof6. I don't really see what the issue with sub-categories is or how it can't just be resolved with something like a flat list. Plus they seem helpful in the meantime. There doesn't seem to be a clear reason to delete them either. Since unless I'm misunderstanding something even if I buy that it's inherent to disambiguation pages that the word or phrase not have a specific meaning, that has nothing to do with what parent category said page is in. It's not like they can't just be put in multiple parent categories in that case either. Although I think it's a rare case anyway. Most of the time categories in disambiguation pages have to do with the same broader topic. Otherwise there's something like Special:PrefixIndex/category:Things_named for organizing them in a coherent listing. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:31, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Crop tool

Commons_talk:CropTool#Not_working --Lewisiscrazy (talk) 18:53, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

• Still not working. :( --Rosiestep (talk) 13:33, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

For a replacement, see Commons:Village_pump/Technical#New_tool_for_cropping_and_rotating_images_(proposal). Enhancing999 (talk) 16:30, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

April 23

File extension ".pdf" does not match the detected MIME type of the file (unknown/unknown).

When I download a New York Times public domain article from the NYT archive as a pdf, and try to upload it to Commons, I get the error message: "File extension ".pdf" does not match the detected MIME type of the file (unknown/unknown)." I tried reading the file into Adobe and saving it again as a pdf, but I still get the error. Normally I would just convert the pdf to a png and then upload, but I have a multi-page article I do not want break into two pieces. Any solutions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk • contribs)

A very non-ideal solution is to take a screenshot, save that PNG (or whatever image) into a PDF, and then upload that. Images of text are generally very inaccessible and not a good idea, but if you are trying to scan it for Wikisource, then at least text would accompany it there. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:33, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Richard, can you give a link to the article? Maybe I can diagnose. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:34, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

• You need a subscription to view: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1921/08/25/98721158.pdf all NYT pdfs has the same problem. I want to keep this as a pdf since it is two pages. --RAN (talk) 05:23, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

  I was able to view that without a subscription, FWIW. Something weird did happen when I downloaded it, though - the file has a HTTP response header on it! This is probably a misconfiguration on NYTimes' end. If you want, I can repair the PDF and upload it. Omphalographer (talk) 05:39, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

• Thanks, please upload and then tell me how you fixed it, every download has this problem. I guess when you post the url to the file, you get free access, just like newspapers.com. I try opening the file in Adobe and resaving it, but it still did not upload. --RAN (talk) 17:16, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

  I've repaired the PDF and uploaded it as File:Doctored Records In Graft Case Bare Mysterious $3,500.pdf. @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), could you fill out the rest of the metadata and categories?

  I was able to upload the file by saving the PDF from the NYTimes URL, then opening the file in a hex editor and deleting about 500 bytes of extraneous text from the start of the file before the PDF header (%PDF-1.4). It might be possible to do this in a plain text editor if you're careful. Omphalographer (talk) 17:28, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Category with all microprocessor models available (flat list)

Hi!

I want to structurize the microprocessor main category with additional subcategories. Would it make sense/is it okay to create a flat list as category with all CPU models? It might help to figure out what models are missing.

Thank you and greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:31, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't know what people will conclude, but at worst you can create it as a maintenance category. - Jmabel ! talk 15:36, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:55, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Category:Latinx

Soooo. How do we determine which photos belongs in this category?--Trade (talk) 13:40, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Trade: How do the people who want their photos categorized as such self-identify?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:49, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Hard to tell when 1/3 of the photos doesn't even mention the word anywhere Trade (talk) 13:50, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I just having a similar discussion with myself about Category:Orientalism. Both categories are convenient ways for white European's to group different non-whites who are slightly related together, but that kind of thing is also pretty outdated. It also doesn't really work in the real world. No one from Latin America calls themselves "Latinx", just like no one refers to themselves as an oriental. So if it were me, I'd just delete both and categorize the images based on the country, or at least something better. Whatever that is. Although I don't see what's wrong with just categorizing the images based on the country of origin and leaving it there. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:59, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: I have seen TV commercials for some sort of "Latinx Awards". Take a look at these search results.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:07, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: I mean sure, the term exists. I don't think that negates what I was saying or makes it any less problematic though. Its an unfortunate feature of neologisms around race or culture that they only tend to be issues in hindsight years later. Anyway, per this page from the Chicago History Mesuem "“Latinx” is an attempt to be more inclusive of gender nonconforming Latinos, but Spanish speakers have not widely accepted it. The criticisms are that it is difficult to say in Spanish and that people who are used to “Latino” don’t want to change their habit." --Adamant1 (talk) 14:23, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the issue is a broader one. Since the term “Latino” is still questioned (even by myself) and now we see the spin-off term “Latinx” being dropped on us. This, because Latino is not a race or ethnicity, but allegedly a geographical term. In another discussion people got feisty just attempting to define what a “white” person is. Trust me, attempting to define Latino is worse. I for one don’t identify as Latino, but other people (White American people) identify me as Latino. The same conundrum applies for Latinx. That is why I’ve always preferred the way Wikimedia and other Wikis identify by city/country/continent of origin instead of an identiterian label. And this would especially be a mess in an image-based repository. I oppose any, Latino or Latinx. Miguel Angel Omaña Rojas (talk) 16:25, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Trade: We could push the problem down a level with Category:Latinos and Category:Latinas. I would think that anyone who speaks Spanish natively, comes from a country which is majority Spanish speakers, or self-identifies qualifies. Of course, people whose photos are categorized as such may opt out.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:01, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

By Spanish grammar rules, a photo of one man and six women would be categorized as "Latinos", and we're unlikely to sustain that sort of linguistic correctness on this project. Elizium23 (talk) 14:19, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Jeff G., the most adequate category name would be "Latinos". As as a Latino myself (sort of?), I despise the existence of such an unpronounceable word. RodRabelo7 (talk) 03:41, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

@RodRabelo7: I'm guessing you already know this, but in both English and Spanish it is pronounced as if it were "Latinex". - Jmabel ! talk 05:57, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

This seems like it should be about the term or be deleted. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:12, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Seeing as the subject of File:Mariana Gomez Ruiz.jpg calls herself Latina in an interview i took the freedom to remove her. --Trade (talk) 14:19, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

This is going to be so tricky. It's like it would be to separate out "Native American" and "American Indian" or what it would have been in 1968 if you separated out "Negro", "Afro-American", "African American", and "Black American". The terms all refer(red) to the same groups, it is a matter of preferred vocabulary. Our categories should refer to a concept or a thing, not a term (unless the category is about the term). "Latino/Latina" and "Latinx" refer to the same group of people. The latter is an effort to be more gender-inclusive, which some people like and some don't (either on a linguistic basis or a political one). I would not like to see us categorizing actual people, organizations, images, etc. on the basis of which term they prefer for the same concept. - Jmabel ! talk 15:43, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

While I don't speak Spanish myself, I heard arguments by Latinos and Latinas who can't identify with the the x suffix because they claim it was not homegrown in any native community but instead invented in an academic ivory tower and is now pushed as a label onto them by (certainly well-meaning) US elites. I don't know - maybe some Latinxes embrace the term, but this seems highly controversial to include as a categorization. --Enyavar (talk) 20:06, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Pretty sure it originated from LGBT people within the ethnic/geographic/linguistic group, but I agree it has had more adoption outside than in. - Jmabel ! talk 21:48, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

A user is harassing me

I posted about it here Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Blocks and protections#ip user making bad faith deletion requests and vandalizing categories but I am not sure if it was actually the right place to do so. They are doing bad faith deletion requests and also did a fake block on my talk page Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 16:48, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Immanuelle: The correct place would have been Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems [or Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Vandalism ]. However, you already got a response at Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Blocks and protections, so leave it there. Please, in the future, do not cross-post: there was nothing here that belongs on a general-user forum like the Village pump. - Jmabel ! talk 21:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I would note that someone got to you within 30 minutes of your original post. Please, have some patience about getting a response. - Jmabel ! talk 21:57, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I will avoid that. Sorry about that in the future. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 07:52, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

April 24

Category and location info directly from Upload wizard

Hey there! I've launched a campaign for Wiki Explores Bhadrachalam, you can find it here. As a part of this campaign, I've compiled a list of categories where the images we capture might fit. Can we pre-add these categories to the upload form, i.e., by just clicking on the special upload wizard provided in the right side column on that page, can it have respective category already placed in the form. -- iMahesh (talk) 07:52, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Not from that link. But if you provide your own link somewhere, you can use Commons:Upload_Wizard/Fields_prefilling. There is also Commons:Upload Wizard campaign editors who can make upload wizard campaigns. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:00, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the info about Pre-filling the Wizard. I have created a few of them and linked to my campaign. --iMahesh (talk) 14:56, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

create a new category

Hi, I'm trying to create a new category called "Archeofuturism" for the picture I uploaded, "A_Martian_colony_with_a_medieval_village.jpg," but I haven't been successful. Can someone assist me with this?--Raresvent (talk) 08:19, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Convenience link: File:A Martian colony with a medieval village.jpg.

@Raresvent: before getting into your specific question, why is that image within scope? In particular, how is it educational? It seems like a hypothetical imagining of something that certainly does not now exist, and is very unlikely ever to exist. - Jmabel ! talk 09:41, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi, sorry, it's probably a mistake. Where do you see that the image is within scope?--Raresvent (talk) 10:03, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

@Raresvent: Please read COM:SCOPE. AI images are essentially personal artworks - they generally lack educational or historical value and most should not be uploaded to Commons. (Because generative AI is simply mimicking elements and patterns from other images without understanding their meaning, it is not equivalent to "artist's renditions" where all details of the image are intentional decisions by the artist, and should generally not be used for illustrations in Wikipedia articles.) I have nominated this image for deletion as out of scope. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 18:22, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

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)

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)

April 25

Vote now to select members of the first U4C

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

Dear all,

I am writing to you to let you know the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open now through May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 20:19, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Can someone help me out with a task using AWB?

I want to edit these files to add the categories specified in the list. I think AWB can help but it is tedious otherwise. Can someone help User:Immanuelle/Toki Pona categorization Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 21:40, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@Immanuelle: any reason not to use Cat-a-lot? - Jmabel ! talk 01:44, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel the structure of the list makes cat-a-lot not useful. There are 107 files and 107 categories, each file needs to be added to exactly one category with no overlap. I might be misunderstanding what AWB does, but I thought you could write queries with it that could categorize all of these in a few seconds. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 03:19, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

April 26

My 2024 Wikimedia Summit report

meta:Cascadia Wikimedians/2024 Wikimedia Summit report. Written for Cascadia Wikimedians, but presumably much of interest here to people on Commons. - Jmabel ! talk 01:46, 26 April 2024 (UTC)