This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) is hosting a series of community calls to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year. Next calls will be held at 08:00 and 16:00 UTC, 12 December 2024. Join and have your say!
@Immanuelle: Do you mean with regards to the Summary section? I'm afraid you'll find a tremendous amount of files that were uploaded in the early days of Commons before upload forms were standardized that look like this. I'll fix this one but this is an expansive job to correct all of them. Bastique☎ let's talk!16:19, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Since most of the files in question were uploaded more than 10–15 years ago, the clear answer would be obviously not, or the problem would have been corrected by now. Then there's still the problem of mass uploads that are poorly described and/or poorly categorized. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 22:49, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
It's inappropriate to ask about this at villagepump, even more so when the category is just called "Brakes" like the section title and basically the first thing one would look for, and further even more so to remove the issue is solved template despite it obviously being solved. I suggest categories you find interesting are promoted elsewhere, if no place for that exists you could create such a category. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:00, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
There is lots of stuff on villagepump, maybe it would be good to have a separate page about casual talk. I was not talking about Smiley.toerist's questions. I was talking about this question. Lots of people watch VP. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:31, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Like I said 1. if the solution is pretty self-explanatory and in the section title it's not a good thread to begin with 2. it's pretty niche and doesn't need this much attention etc when there are lots of problems to solve etc 3. again, if it was a valid thread that doesn't mean it does to bloat this long page more by inappropriately removing the thread solved template when the thread is solved.
Moreover, maybe it would be a good idea to put these kinds of questions onto a separate page so this here is more focused on e.g. project-wide subjects and only get the question if it remains unsolved where it was asked earlier. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:39, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Search for image orientation and similar parameters
I've got an interesting question: "How can I search for a specific topic and only images which have portrait orientation?"
Seems normal search is not very smart, it can at least use semantic data somewhat, but not complex parameters, including image size, aspect ratio and orientation.
Is there any way to search based on media technical data as well? --grin✎16:22, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
All of the above are examples of a type of monument very common in Washington State, and which I'm sure also exists elsewhere: a cross-section of a large tree, covered by a shed. They are variously monuments to loggers who died in work accidents, monuments to the logging industry in general, or even just science/history-oriented displays of the trees themselves. We should have a category for these, but I don't know what to call it. I suspect there is no standard term, but if there is then I'd love to get it right. - Jmabel ! talk02:16, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel: , according to the Tyrolean website www.Kaiserhotels.com (Internet Archive's Wayback Machine) uses the term "Wooden fountain", though I'm not sure if they're talking about the display or an actual fountain made of wood, the Tyrolean hotel's wooden fountain is apparently the largest in the world, but searching for the term I only find actual fountains made of wood... According to the American website m.Wikipedia.org the one on display here is called a "cross section on exhibit", so following this website's model we could use the category title "Cross sections on exhibit", but that would also include tree cross sections not covered by a shed, so it's still more ambiguous than what you intend to categorise, but it should be a sub-category of that ("Category:Cross sections on exhibit"). You could make the broader category provisionally and then move it to the more narrowly defined category after you've discovered the correct term.
For context, I use Google Lens in Google Photos to search, I just take the image and look for similar images, if I find a term used in Google Photos I then Ecosia it for similar results, unfortunately, no name has been consistent. I can't find a name that has been repeated a lot with this specific type of image, if I can find something better using Google Lens I'll write about it here. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:31, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
I asked Google Gemini to define the structure, this is all the robot told me. "The structure in the image is a cross-section of a redwood tree. - A cross-section is a slice through an object that reveals its internal structure. In this case, the cross-section shows the tree's rings, which can be used to determine its age." - Google Gemini. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:40, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
I also asked Google Gemini to describe the first image for me, it said: "The image shows a large cross-section of a tree trunk displayed under a wooden shelter. - The structure is likely a tree stump display or tree stump exhibit." All these terms are a lot more ambiguous as they can include displays without the wooden shed, for example inside of a museum or on a sort of pedestal or podium. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:42, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
I feel like that name would invite some confusion with tree cross sections which are on display in other contexts, like in natural history museums - the "monuments" you're describing in Washington State are something a bit different, and I feel like it does make sense to keep them separate for the moment. Perhaps Category:Logging monuments in Washington State? Omphalographer (talk) 20:00, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Clarification Regarding the Appearance of the "Infobox" Template
When the site is displayed in the Arabic language, the "Infobox" template is shown by default on the right side of the page. However, there may be a need to adjust this layout to appear on the left side, either to suit specific design preferences or to ensure consistency with content in other languages.-- Mohammed Qays 🗣19:48, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
It's in PD because the party was founded 77 years ago, and Korean copyright law dictates "70 years from publication (anonymous or pseudonymous work)". Whoever uploaded that other file originally never checked this. NorthTension (talk) 03:39, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
I set the copyright status of both files to the South Korean PD but I'm not sure if I did it correctly, would it be fine if you took a look at that? NorthTension (talk) 12:36, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
remove the question about “personal use” for auto-confirmed users (phab:T370104)
remove the checkbox about media not including copyrighted material (phab:T370105)
We will also do some more revision of the texts of the “own” and “not own work” section, to give more information to the user about the options they are choosing (phab:T370103), and to match the new “describe” step style (phab:T361055). Plus, we are improving the options to choose a custom license/PD-tag (phab:T371050), and fixing some minor bugs (phab:T373567, phab:T373568 and phab:T380922).
A temporary account notification after publishing the first edit
The Wikimedia Foundation is in the process of rolling out temporary accounts for unregistered (logged-out) editors on multiple wikis. The pilot communities have the chance to test and share comments to improve the feature before it is deployed on all wikis in mid-2025.
Temporary accounts will be used to attribute new edits made by logged-out users instead of the IP addresses. It will not be an exact replacement, though. First, temporary users will have access to some functionalities currently inaccessible for logged-out editors (like notifications). Secondly, the Wikimedia projects will continue to use IP addresses of logged-out editors behind the scenes, and experienced community members will be able to access them when necessary. This change is especially relevant to the logged-out editors and anyone who uses IP addresses when blocking users and keeping the wikis safe. Older IP addresses that were recorded before the introduction of temporary accounts on a wiki will not be modified.
We would like to invite you to read the first of a series of posts dedicated to temporary accounts. It gives an overview of the basics of the project, impact on different groups of users, and the plan for introducing the change on all wikis.
We will do our best to inform everyone impacted ahead of time. Information about temporary accounts will be available on Tech News, Diff, other blogs, different wikipages, banners, and other forms. At conferences, we or our colleagues on our behalf are inviting attendees to talk about this project. In addition, we are contacting affiliates running community support programs.
Thanks! The OCR from Google is amazing, I have been rerunning older news articles that had so many errors, I could not migrate them to Wikisource. It even works well on handwritten cursive, I have been uploading wills from the 1800s of people recently. Google Cloud Vision OCR still makes mistakes with columns, as do all the others. It doesn't always recognize a column and continues reading the same horizontal line from the adjacent column, but you can isolate individual columns with the included tool. --RAN (talk) 20:54, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:24, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
Deletion of obsolete versions of a graphical file
I wish the old (previous) versions of a certain file to be deleted, since in those versions there is a graphical error making them misleading. Is it possible to use the “Nominate for deletion” option, specifying that it is the earlier versions that should be deleted? Or is the current version also deleted this way? Are there other ways to request this kind of deletion?
Thanks --Antonov (talk) 09:33, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:22, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
Conflicting info on sculptures
I uploaded two pictures of sculptures, you can find the images here and here. The relevant article on the Dutch Wiki states that the figure on the right is Hannibal Barkas, and the figure on the left is Philip II of Macedon, however a small number of files in the category for these sculptures (Category:Bearers of memorial tomb of Engelbert II of Nassau) are named/categorized the other way around. Can someone help me figure out which is accurate? ReneeWrites (talk) 22:15, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Hi Renee. It appears that the identity of these two figures is uncertain; there's no way to know for sure who they represent, much less which one is "Hannibal" and which one is "Philip". The figures of Caesar and Regulus on the other side of the tomb are identified by inscriptions, but the inscriptions for the two in your photographs are lost, and the tradition that they represent Hannibal and Philip, although frequently repeated, does not seem to have any contemporary (i.e, 16th-century) evidence to support it. See, e.g., E. M. Kavaler, Actors Carved and Cast: Netherlandish Sculpture of the Sixteenth Century, p. 84. This is the reason for the confusion in your sources: no one really knows who these guys are, and they may not be Hannibal and Philip at all. A quick Google Books search turned up several different suggested identifications in 19th- and 20th-century sources: Hannibal and Alexander the Great, Hannibal and Scipio (which Scipio is not stated, but presumably Africanus), Achilles and Ulysses, or simply "two Grecian heroes". Like the traditional attribution to Michelangelo, which was common in the 19th century but is unanimously rejected today, this is just a story that has become attached to the tomb: maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but without more evidence, you're never going to be able to put definitive names to your photos. – Cheers, Crawdad Blues (talk) 14:09, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
For most photos that are flipped at the source (ex. File:Mystic river drawbridge no. 7.jpg), I think it's best to flip to the correct orientation and note that in the file description. For selfies, given how common flipping is (and how difficult it can be to tell lacking a telltale background clue), I'm not sure. I'd certainly welcome a discussion.
It can be really tricky to decide which version is preferable when it was a mirror image in the first place. You can always upload the "corrected" version as a separate file. - Jmabel ! talk17:57, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Bot job request
I don't know where I can request a bot job on Commons, so I'm writing here. I have my own bot, but I need to manage WD statements linked with files, they aren't stored in wikitext, so standard bots can't change them. I need, for several categories, to do this job: remove one WD property and add another, with a different value for different categories. Could someine do that, or where should I request this? MBH06:09, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:37, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
Please delete all files in Category:Claire Szilard
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:19, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
Cooked food in supermarkets
Category:Cooked food in supermarkets is now used for a concept in Chinese supermarkets. I'm not sure how applicable this is for other countries.
The concept is, food that is sold like those sold in food shops/restaurants. They are ready for consumption. They can be consumed on site; or within a few days, usually not more than a week. Factory-packaged cooked food like canned food, frozen pizzas, frozen nuggets, biscuits, chips, tiramisu, ice cream etc. is not the scope of this category. For cooked food for sale similar to this concept but in other countries, I've only seen "siu mei" and roast chicken sold in Singapore NTUC fairprice, and sushi and baked goods sold in German supermarkets. In very rare cases I saw a German supermarket with a few food shops inside selling sandwiches, pastry and drinks.
There's the potential ambiguity of the current cat title (which can refer to all packaged non-raw food). What's your suggestion? Should we keep this title, or do you have an alternative proposal? RoyZuo (talk) 22:52, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
PS: these counters are behind the cashiers, like raw meat/seafood/cheese counters commonly found in western supermarkets. Not the shops that share the same building with the supermarket but outside its cashiers.--RoyZuo (talk) 11:20, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
A lot of US supermarkets have onsite delis with cooked food like this. Actual seating is more rare, but I recall seeing it. Complicating it some is places like Walmart and Target often have Subways or McDonalds or Pizza Huts or Starbucks inside them.--Prosfilaes (talk) — Preceding undated comment was added at 00:04, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Onsite seating is more common in co-op markets than the big U.S. chains, but not that unusual. I think pretty much every Whole Foods has it.
In Germany this concept is called Mittagstisch as it is mostly used for lunch. If in other regions this is also primarily for lunch and not for dinner „Lunch in supermarkets“ could be a good and not that ambiguous category name. GPSLeo (talk) 07:09, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
I don't see any connection in the delis I've been familiar with. I'm sure there's a lot of lunch, but there's some breakfast foods in the morning, and they sell a lot of rotisserie chicken for dinners. When I worked the job 20 years ago, we sold a decent amount of dinner food.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:36, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
@Prosfilaes: I have seen US supermarkets with seating, hot rotisserie chickens (available in preparation for dinnertime, with the remains resold the next day cold and packaged at a discount), and a hot chicken wing bar (available around lunchtime) that doesn't just serve wings (again, with the remains resold the next day cold and packaged at a discount). The ready-to-eat food is very popular with employees who have very short breaks. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:04, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Commonly used terms for this in US supermarkets are "ready-to-eat" or "grab and go". Sometimes also "prepared meals", although that's ambiguous with packaged items that need to be heated before consumption. Omphalographer (talk) 03:59, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Admin as supervoter
The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
What's the correct approach to resolve an issue with an admin, who I feel systematically misapplies our deletion policy? See discussion at User_talk:The_Squirrel_Conspiracy#CfD_closure.
While I often disagree with TSC, the closure was according to policies, perfectly fine and clearly clarifies that it can be recreated if photos are taken already in the CfD and again in a well-written response on the talk page that addresses your point. What you linked to was some talk page discussion, I just didn't address the good points in that comment because I thought it was best to rest the case for now and there is no reasonable chance that the categories will be re-populated again here anyway. Either way that's just a user's comment on a talk page. I wonder what makes you think that overrides well-reasonable established policies. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:24, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
What well-reasoned policies are you referring to? (a policy at Commons is a written page with a policy tag, not what an admin writes in their explanation). ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 12:27, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for clarifying your POV. This even if it's unrelated to a regular deletion not being handled appropriately (see applicable policy in the linked discussion). ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 12:37, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
What was the deal with the category to begin with? Like was there an image in it that got deleted at some point or was it always empty? --Adamant1 (talk) 12:54, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
Besides there being no consensus for its deletion, it was well-defined and "obviously usable for the future" (so not eligible for speedy deletion either). ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:13, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
I mean, I get that's your argument. It's not what I asked though. Regardless, there's only one Lamborghini Invencible in existence and I just spent 20 minutes looking for a freely licensed photograph of it with no luck. Really, there's barely any photographs of the car to begin with. So I don't think the whole "obviously usable for the future" thing is met here and it's your standard. But that's why I was asking if there was an image in the category at some point. If there was then maybe it would be possible to find another one somewhere, upload it, and just recreate the category that way instead of trying to Wikilawyer. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:20, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
It happens that we have well defined categories and then all content gets deleted and at some point users upload other pictures. Nothing really particular about this one. That's why we check such things at CfD and some admins handle the requests with the necessary care. Otherwise we could just use a bot instead. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:46, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
All content gets deleted and at some point users upload other pictures Or they don't. It doesn't matter what the guideline says anyway. All that matters is that multiple people say your wrong. So you are. That's it. Citing policy only works when there's people on your side and no one agrees with you. It's totally pointless to discuss this beyond that. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:55, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
You are complaining about missing care when handling deletion requests on categories but the example you are referring to is perfectly aligned with the current guidelines. It is nearly impossible to get a photo of this car. GPSLeo (talk) 18:28, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Peak editor activity
I noticed these last days a substantial editor activity on my watchlist (26,186 entries). Maybe it the dark season where many people are at home and closing the year with to do list. Are there any statistics of editor activity?Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:35, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
It could be different from 5 years ago (these trends can move fast) and it would be interesting to know what happened during the coronayears? Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:54, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
@Smiley.toerist and @RoyZuo: The ten-year trend is consistent with what I've been hearing anecdotally: "Everything's online now." Not everyone, though; some older folks eschew computers, smartphones, even "dumb" flip-phones. One couple didn't even have a touch-tone landline phone. However, pretending not to have a touch-tone phone can in some cases get one around an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system (the key being "don't touch anything"). — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:33, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
This message box is using an invalid "type=diffuse" parameter and needs fixing.
So this message starting showing up today in Category:Mountains (it's also showing up in other cats I've checked). It is also adding this category to a non-existent tracking category. This category is using {{Diffuseat}} but as far as I can tell it is being used correctly (unless someone changed something else wheres and didn't update the relevant documentation). RedWolf (talk) 20:02, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
We don't have a formal process, but here's how I see it. First, communicate with the closing admin. If that doesn't yield satisfaction, bring it here. (In some cases it may be appropriate to start another CfD, but that's a judgement call.) And, please, if there was a strong consensus that you just don't like, let go. - Jmabel ! talk18:03, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Not in this case, I think. The categories in question have not been deleted. It was a discussion about renaming categories. The closing admin concluded to not rename the categories. Nakonana (talk) 21:52, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll follow the process that you've outlined. I really don't hold out much hope of obtaining a different decision though. Do Admins often self-revert their decisions after such an intervention? I doubt it. But I'll give it a whirl. And no, I don't think that I'm guilty of failing to drop the stick; I think that I have reasonable grounds for requesting an investigation into, and the overturning of, a bad decision. It would be remiss of me not to do so. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:39, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
It looks like gaming with system. No one user support your request but you disagree with this desicion. It may be discussed if 50/50 opinions but here is 100% oppose, so there may not be other decision.--Anatoliy 🇺🇦 (talk) 14:50, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
Given the above comment by the closing Admin @Ahonc: , may I take it that the first part of the process ("communicate with the closing admin") has failed and proceed to the second part of the process (bringing it back to the pump)? Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:46, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
@Laurel Lodged: that is a lot more complicated than we normally make a disambiguation page. In particular, it has an awful lot of links (apparently into en-wiki) esides the links to the categories someone might have meant, which distracts from the purpose of a disambiguation page. - Jmabel ! talk06:38, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
They are just located in the city. The city name serves as a disambiguator here because there are several churches of Virgin Mary in Ukraine (and other countries). The church belongs in Category:Virgin Mary churches, but not on the I-F disambiguation page, I'd say. Nakonana (talk) 13:05, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
I wanted to load the work on the left side of this page. It dates to the 10th to 11th centuries A.D., and I would tag it PD-Art|PD-old-100. However, the Vatican Library has stamped it with a copyright watermark.
My two questions are:
Does the addition of the watermark change it to a copyrighted status?
Does the watermark make it undesirable for Wikipedia. It is an image used in books about musicology and useful in discussing history of early harps in Europe, but not indispensable.
I hate when archives add obtrusive watermarks, at least when Google scans the watermarks are unobtrusive. This is an example of copyfraud, where you stamp everything as copyrighted, the New York Times does the same thing. --RAN (talk) 19:30, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
Reminder: upcoming Commons conversation about new media and new contributors on December 12
Hello everyone! The Wikimedia Foundation will be hosting the second round of a series of community calls to help prioritize support efforts from Wikimedia Foundation for the 2025-2026 Fiscal Year.
The purpose of these calls is to support community members in hearing more from one another - across uploaders, moderators, GLAM enthusiasts, tool and bot makers, etc. - about the future of Commons. There is so much to discuss about the general direction of the project, and we hope that people from different perspectives can think through some of the tradeoffs that will shape Commons going forward.
Our second call will focus on new media and new contributors. More specifically the questions will be:
There are periodic requests from the community for more support to contribute and edit audio and video files. At the same time, the community seems to be struggling under the current weight of uncategorized images and various patrolling backlogs. Does the community have the capacity to respond to substantially increased uploads of this media?
What is the right level of friction for new content uploads? Should we prioritize support for easier contribution or continue to introduce friction that reduces moderator burden?
The call will take place at two different time slots:
If you cannot attend the meeting, you are invited to express your point of view at any time you want on the Commons community calls talk page. We will also post the notes of the meeting on the project page, to give the possibility to read what was discussed also to those who couldn’t attend it.
If you want, you are invited to share this invitation with all the people you think might be interested in this call.
Can I advise people to NOT plan every single thing on a Thursday ? Thursdays are already very busy workdays, as well as busy extra curricular evenings for me (for the same reason as Commons/WMF people, other people ALSO plan everything on Thursdays and Tuesdays). At the very least VARY the days you plan stuff on, to give people a chance to participate every now and then. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:04, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
@TheDJ The next two meetings will be on a Wednesday. Sorry the first two happened in a rather busy week. We'll take into consideration also varying more the days. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
Wikidata links to Commons
Hi, There was a discussion recently (I can't find it back) about links in Wikidata to Commons categories. In the huge majority of cases, Wikidata links the Commons category. But in some cases, when there is a WD item for a category somewhere, Wikidata links instead the Commons category to this item (e.g. Joseph Bonaparte (Q7726) and Category:Joseph Bonaparte (Q31993664)). IMO this WD item is a dead end, and doesn't serve Commons. The categories being the main namespace for describing content here, they should be linked to the main WD item. It seems that this could be changed in Wikidata if there is a consensus on Commons for that. Opinions? Yann (talk) 19:23, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
Normally, if there is both a WD item and a corresponding WS "category item" it is because there are corresponding categories on some sister project other than Commons. (That's the case for what you link.) So I'm not actually sure this is a bad thing.
Rather than try to ping a bunch of users to ask about how the various big Wikipedias are deciding the issue of changing the flag of Syria due to recent regime change, I've opened a thread here. I know on English Wikipedia that the discussion is ongoing at en:Talk:Syria#RfC: Flag? but it looks like the revolutionary flag is gaining momentum. I'd like to know what discussions at Arabic, French, German and Spanish Wikipedias among others is looking like. Abzeronow (talk) 00:11, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
Or as commons users usually call them, intersection cats.
As I was checking some users' contributions, it seems to me that in recent years some users are creating more complicated cat trees. In the past if a photo of a tree is uploaded, it would go straight into the tree species cat and a few rather generic cats like "trees in london", "december 2011 in london".
The cause for this is that we do not have an integrated tool to search for the intersection of two or more categories. Then one person generates one for a case with many photos and later someone else comes and is scared of the category having so much files in it. So they start splitting the category even more. Then there is a scheme for a category which was useful for one case and is then used to place all photos from the parent categories in the subcategories created in these scheme which creates many categories with only one file. GPSLeo (talk) 18:14, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
so instead of building things like "Trees in autumn 2023 in Berlin", a file could have just been in 4 cats: trees, autumn, 2023-11-11, berlin, and then do a search "incategory:trees incategory:autumn deepcategory:2023 incategory:berlin".
actually, even "autumn" is not needed, because users could go with "incategory:trees insource:/2023\-[01][01289]/ incategory:berlin". this is a bit complicated, but tools can be made to simplify setting a duration range, which is a rather common and essential feature on other image sites like flickr. RoyZuo (talk) 10:27, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
I also think this would probably be the best option for many of these cases (except for cats where many are looking for exactly that intersection etc or when sortingcould beused instead). However,
it doesn't work if the category trees are many layers deep and cat-trees trees and autumn may be that long. (Maybe there is a phab issue about increasing the limit for many cases or in some way or even overall.)
manually intersecting categories like that using deepcategory and incategory (or alternatively petscan) is not intuitive and not accessible to users including users new to the site. It would need to be made more accessible, e.g. via some button "Combine/intersect with other categories" on category pages.
There is a constant battle here between lumpers and splitters. I'm a lumper, myself. It might be a bias because of that, but I think the field is tilted toward the splitters. Why? Because anyone can come along and split up a category without consulting anyone else, but to put them back together and get rid of the more specific intersection category generally requires a CfD or even a Village pump discussion. - Jmabel ! talk18:55, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
Not to mention the outcomes of CfDs or Village Pump discussions can always just be ignored since people are usually to busy policing minor non-issues instead of stuff that actually matters. but it's impossible to follow and deal with the creation of new categories anyway. Like with categories for "historical images." There was a CfD a year ago with a clear consensus to delete the categories, yet people are still creating them at a much faster rate then they are being deleted. And at least in my experience anyone who's told not to create the categories anymore will just ignore the message outright or obfuscate and continue doing it.
There's really nothing that can be done about it outside of admitting that CfDs are totally worthless and no one cares about enforcing any kind of standards on here. It's way more important to pander to the whims of a bunch neurotics so they aren't discouraged from contributing to the project then it is to have a system that actually allows people to find images. Screw that I have to click through 25 increasingly obtuse empty categories just to find a single image of a car. The more important thing is that the person who categorized the image that way isn't turned off from contributing to the project by someone asking them to use some standards. Adamant1 (talk) 02:30, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
To try to steer this to a more productive direction: I think part of what you're complaining about here could be summed up as "categories which focus on trivial properties of images like what colors, words, or letters appear in them, what objects incidentally appear in them, the number of those objects they contain, etc". I'm inclined to agree. Category systems like Category:Categories by quantity provide little value relative to the effort that's put into them, and frequently devolve into absurdities like Category:1 bridge in Australia (there are no categories for other numbers of bridges in Australia) or Category:Text with 34 letters (containing exactly one category for a phrase which appears in a single image). Extensive branches of these systems get created by individual users with no discussion, but removing them takes much more effort and tends to be a bureaucratic hassle. I don't know how to fix this, but something needs to change. Omphalographer (talk) 06:54, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
Users were quick to raise questions over a new cat tree.
But before anything could be done (cfd takes yearssssss), the tree has grown to thousands, or hundreds of thousands. RoyZuo (talk) 11:12, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
How much do you want to bet the dates for a lot of those photographs aren't accurate anyway? Like is anyone seriously going to argue that most of the dates for photographs taken in the 1800s are actually correct? Maybe years or months, but I find it extremely hard to believe exact days would be. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:15, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
Most of the 1800s dates are a misused template - they're scans of old letters tagged with {{Photograph}}. Someone ought to go through those and update the template to something more appropriate - possibly {{Information}}? Note that some of the template parameters will need to be updated. Omphalographer (talk) 22:45, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
I dont understand these people's mindsets. Isnt it beautiful to see a collage of photos of a place in a month/year together? But instead they are broken down into date categories, which often contain only a handful of photos. Then how do they have an overview of everything???
Thanks for the ping. It was an attempt to help navigate a big corpus. Done by bot so it would be self contained and wouldn't require much maintenance. But now we have structured data, so there may be a much better solution available. I'm travelling at the moment, so may not be attentive to the discussion. 99of9 (talk) 00:03, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
When you're back from your travels, is there any chance you can upload a list of these images, and what data sets they were based on, somewhere? I'd like to brainstorm better ways to organize these graphics than the current category structure, and knowing how they're structured would help. Omphalographer (talk) 23:05, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
All Rights Reserved statement in content published under CC-BY 3.0 license
Hello, I have a question regarding a video published on Youtube as CC-BY 3.0, but which contains an "all rights reserved" statement in the description. Given that "all rights reserved" is a statement of copyright (a statement which remains true even under CC-BY 3.0, since the license states that THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW.) and not a license, and given that CC licenses are irrevocable, is uploading screenshots from that video permissible? To my understanding, choosing to publish as CC-BY instead of the standard Youtube agreement constitutes a legally binding agreement and would override a statement like "all rights reserved" (which is, anyway, fully compatible with CC-BY 3.0). Thanks! --Sarah fides (talk) 13:48, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
It just means the uploader has the rights to license the video under CCBY basically. Of course you can upload screenshots of it if you credit the uploader / video. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:53, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
Thank you, I just wanted it clarified so I don't mess up. I am assuming that making collages / panoramas based on frames from the footage is also allowed etc. Sarah fides (talk) 13:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
"All rights reserved" is like a always used phrase. Microsoft uses it even for its free software, which is technically not true (it's rather like some rights reserved). --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 09:45, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
CC material is still copyrighted. However they have licensed some rights to you (and thus to others) to do certain things with it, despite this copyright remaining in place. In particular it's still theirs, they still retain certain rights to it (such as being identified as its author, i.e. the moral rights).
Can you screenshot it? Well that's generally regarded as making a derivative work from it. CC can either permit or deny that, and there is the specific CC-nd clause for this denial. If they didn't use then, then you're good. Also there are many jurisdictions where screenshotting video will either fall under basic use of the video (a '0th freedom' right in the GPL sense, seen as part of the process of watching it, assumed implicit in them having made a video and distributed it for people to 'watch the video'); or else it may even fall under the trivial technical processes viewpoint, where screenshotting is such a simple rote task that it doesn't attract any additional issues.
As you may know, OpenRefine lets users upload media files to Commons in batch. Because some of the uploads done in this way add too little metadata to the uploaded files, we are considering introducing more pre-upload checks to prevent that. We need your help to determine which metadata fields should be required for any file uploaded via OpenRefine. Are these guidelines still up to date and accurate? Based on this information, we would require the users to provide:
We would not require copyright license (P275) as this statement is not required for works in the public domain, and we don't anticipate being able to be able to express this conditional dependency.
We also looked into adding constraints on the wikitext associated to the media files but this is likely too complicated to implement reliably, as some required parts could be added via different sorts of templates, which OpenRefine isn't able to expand before upload.
What do you think of this plan? Can you think of any case where it would be fine to upload a file without one of the 5 fields mentioned above? Do you think OpenRefine should only warn the user about those missing fields, or even prevent the upload entirely if those fields are not provided? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SunilNOpenRefine (talk • contribs) 04:33, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
I'm not so sure requiring a date of inception is a good idea. Most of the time people don't have that information anyway and it wouldn't be good if the date of upload or some other random date was used instead. We already have that issue a lot with scans and its just causes extra work on our end end to deal with. Plus "inception" is kind of meant for real world objects. I wouldn't consider the date someone took a photograph to be the inception date and how would know if its the data for the photo and not what's being depicted in it anyway? Is there not a better property? --Adamant1 (talk) 08:59, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
I personally don't think inception and caption are required. Sure it would be good if all media had that, but to gate uploads on that seems harsh. I do however think that there is often a pattern where available information is not ingested, often due to uninformed, bad or lazy data prep. Simply giving suggestions and examples during the setup, might already help to combat that particular issue. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:00, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
White nose syndrome scientifically Pseudogymnoascus destructans previously geomyces destructans is still under Category:Geomyces destructans but the infobox is up to date with the current naming. The English Wikipedia pages are also up to date. Should it be renamed or should it remain a redirect. It caused me some confusion in my researchCyberwolf (talk) 15:12, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
This would seem more a question for COM:CFD (and pinging people who've worked in the area) than for the Village pump. I'll leave it here for now but, @Cyberwolf, you should ping the people you think are likely to have worked in this area, because the chance that one of them is a VP regular is slim. - Jmabel ! talk19:26, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
Support I don't know why, but from what I've seen there's some pretty obtuse category trees on here having to do with Germany. Way more so then with other countries for some reason. This category structure being an especially horrible example of the wider problem. So I say delete it. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:10, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Unfortunately this happens not only for forests, but for any object that may be categorized by several variables. For example, in football matches we have at least something like this for only THREE variables (one of which is a "children" (club of country) of another, so closer to 2.5). It is even worse in reality, as e.g. cities or stadiums aren't counted here.
Matches by year by country Matches by country by year Matches by year by club Matches by club by year Matches by club by country Matches in N [year] Matches in N [year] by country Matches in N [year] by club Matches in N [year] by date ("shallow" category — i.e. one that is used to view all of recursive items of a category) Matches in N [country] Matches in N [country] by year Matches in N [country] by club Matches in N [country] by date ("shallow") Matches in N [country] in N [year] Matches in N [country] in N [year] by club Matches in N [country] in N [year] by date ("shallow") Matches of N club Matches of N club by year Matches of N club by date ("shallow") Matches of N club in N year Matches of N club in N year by date ("shallow")
That's largely due to the whole "Double meta categories" thing. Although like everything on here there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it. This being an example of the wrong way. but ultimately "Double meta categories" should just be axed if people don't want weird category trees like these ones to be created in the first place. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:15, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Category:Double meta categories or "three subject categories" I guess. If I'm correct all the categories you listed would be double meta cats. The same goes for something like Category:Forests by city by season and it's subcats. Forests=subject 1, city=subject 2, season=subject 3. Or one main category and 2 meta cats? I don't know but I'm sure you get it. Either way cross sectional categories should only have two subjects at most. Really, even that can be over kill sometimes. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:24, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
So, do you think it should ideally be closer to something like this?
Matches by year by country Matches by country by year Matches by year by club Matches by club by year Matches by club by country Matches in N [year] (functioning as both normal category and shallow) Matches in N [year] by country Matches in N [year] by club Matches in N [country] (normal & shallow) Matches in N [country] by year Matches in N [country] by club Matches in N [country] in N [year] (normal & shallow) Matches of N club (normal & shallow) Matches of N club by year Matches of N club in N year (normal & shallow)
Myself I don't really see a difference between "Association football matches by club" and "Matches of association football clubs" so I'd remove the second in favor of the first (and the unification). I agree though that there is no need of a category when there is just one item and categorization by club is in most cases an example of this. So maybe something like this?
Matches by year by country Matches by country by year Matches by year by club Matches by club by year Matches by club by country Matches in N [year] (functioning as both normal category and shallow) Matches in N [year] by country Matches in N [year] by club Matches in N [country] (normal & shallow) Matches in N [country] by year Matches in N [country] by club Matches in N [country] in N [year] (normal & shallow) Matches of N club
I'm not sure why I am being pinged here; I am not involved nor interested in this, and the creator who agreed above is an administrator themself, so I don't think there would be an issue for them to delete their own creations if there is consensus for that. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 10:49, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
I created a mass deletion request but I haven't submitted it yet. I feel bad for the author and their efforts. I'd appreciate any feedback. -Slevinski (talk) 19:21, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Yes. It's a large number, but I don't see the benefit and I see actual harm. In the least, the facial diacritic section needs fixed for characters U+1DA00 to U+1DA6C. I provided feedback on one of the facial diacritic images talk page. Either include the head anchor character U+1D9FF, or include the dotted head placeholder in the image. The Noto SignWriting font is still in development and not production ready. The images in the category are not final, but a work in progress that will need to be updated later or left in a unfinished state. The shaping reports from GitHub shows 50% for Noto SignWriting. Why use static images of a development snapshot?
@Slevinski: I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. Are you simply saying that this isn't a good enough font, and we shouldn't document it? Or that these files do not accurately document the font? Or something else? - Jmabel ! talk22:17, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks Jeff for pinging. I see notability in the following two reasons: 1. The Noto font family is a widely used one created by Google. It is notable because of the huge amount of glyphs and the goal to provide a glyph for every Unicode character. 2. The Sign Writing language is one of the main communication techniques, especially in the non-verbal purposes. The SVG file makes it freely scalable and the extraction easier to only get the desired sign. I wonder if the glyphs are that wrong in total. In case the glyphs here get outdated, we either have the option to import the newer ones and delete the old ones or move the old ones in a cat for deprecated glyphs. But I think at least the fact it is part of the Noto font family which has its own Wikipedia article should be relevant. If we have really big problems in accuracy or other issues, then this could be put in a broader discussion. Generally I try to cover fonts that are significant enough to have its own article or illustrate a special art of style like ornamented fonts, isometric fonts or 3D style fonts to illustrate the possible amount of variants that can be put into the styling. Greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:38, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
Noto SignWriting is a useful font, and I support using it with CSS and the font file for flexibility and accuracy. However, I have concerns about creating new static files documenting its glyphs due to ongoing issues. The font remains unfinished, with about 200 new errors identified this past week. These errors affect around 200 files on platforms like Commons and Wikipedia, causing inconsistencies. There is no clear way to notify users about these problems. Recent discussions are available on Gitter, and the issues will be tracked on the Noto SignWriting GitHub issues list.
A few examples of problematic files on Wikipedia and Commons:
U+1D835: 90 files use an incorrect glyph, displaying a thumb handshape instead of the correct glyph.
U+1D86F: 96 files on Commons and Wikipedia display an impossible handshape with two thumbs, contradicting the correct glyph with a single thumb on the outside.
Additionally, the 108 characters in the range U+1DA00 to U+1DA6C are facial diacritics, and over 1,000 files on Wikimedia Commons fail to follow the Unicode standard for these characters. This issue affects both the names and the images of these files. Correcting these files to follow the facial diacritic rules for SignWriting in Unicode 8 (uni8) characters is possible, but it would require significant effort and understanding the complexities involved.
In summary:
The unresolved inaccuracies of the font are propagating errors across Wikimedia projects.
Extensive maintenance is required to address existing issues, update files, and manage future changes.
While I agree that the Noto SignWriting font is notable, I do not consider it educational or a good idea to document with static files given the font's ongoing issues. -Slevinski (talk) 19:21, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
Leaving a note in case anyone is interested. WordPress.org now has a photo directory of CC0 1.0 licensed images that anyone can contribute to. It might be worth importing those images here for reuse within our projects. Ckoerner (talk) 23:02, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
Very interesting, thanks for letting people know. Seems like they have many files and also lots of metadata per file. Thus, I think some kind of importer tool or import-programme would be best similar to the bots that import from flickr. Would be good if somebody could set it up, it would need to check whether the file has already been uploaded here. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:40, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
Sadly, though, usually no geographic data, which makes it more a "stock photo" site than one that can be used to illustrate specific subjects. Also, makes Freedom of Panorama issues very thorny. - Jmabel ! talk20:55, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
If the photo is showing a place – and not all of the images are photos that show places – the info where it is is usually in the file description. They do contain exif data but I couldn't find any image with location exif data so maybe that's not included. They can still be used to illustrate all sorts of subjects, I think usually photos of places is the kind of files there already is a lot of on WMC so there it would be more unlikely that the file would fill any gaps which is not the case for various objects and abstract subjects. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:01, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
Still: out of the first few dozen photos there right now, here are a few that would be problematic on that basis: [1], [2], [3], [4]; a few more could imaginably have similar issues. So if we do bot-import the lot, someone had better plan on doing some checking. - Jmabel ! talk22:40, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
Disagree. No. 3 might be de minimis, but it doesn't look to me like an open-and-shut case. In many countries the structure in No. 4 would be eligible for copyright, just like a bridge. - Jmabel ! talk19:27, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
Category "Glass sarcophagi"
Some time ago I created the Glass sarcophagi category, but it doesn't seem very correct to me.
Perhaps one of the terms is more correct, like: "reliquary tombs", "funerary urns", "Christ's tombs" "encased effigies", all under the category "glass coffins".
Of course, it can be differentiate depending on content, namely:
Not that it's relevant to the discussion at hand, but out of curiosity: what would then be the defining trait? I assume we wouldn't call a wooden coffin a "sarcophagus". - Jmabel ! talk05:49, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure, but it seems to be a coffin that's displayed above-ground. To be honest though prior to yesterday I only ever heard the phrase used in the context of ancient Egypt. I didn't know it was a type of coffin that's used in other cultures and that's still in use today. ReneeWrites (talk) 21:48, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
"Glass coffins" seems to be the broader and more accurate category for all these images (and it's odd to me that that parent category doesn't exist, but this one does). I would move the images up and subcategorize from there as you start getting more images of a specific type, but currently I don't think this category is so full that it's in high need of further subcategorizing. ReneeWrites (talk) 00:13, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
It contains many empty categories so those are misleading numbers. Somebody should delete these but manually it would take too much time. Also there's categories like "!PAUS3" which aren't the name of the person. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:11, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
Hi, I'm User:OperationSakura6144. I've been working for a while on clearing Category:Miscellaneous non-vector files with vector versions available, which is a category I've created to keep some non-vector files, other than the Japanese municipal flags/emblems, which is my main expertise and interest, that need to be replaced by their available vector versions. The work I'm doing there is tedious and impossible for me to complete, and I also need to focus on my studies and school assignments. So, I'm leaving the work of maintaining and clearing the category to you. I'll come back to see the status of the category after my school work. Until then, I'm taking a temporary break from Commons. Hope I see you later. OperationSakura6144 (talk) 04:46, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
This file was uploaded by a user who has uploaded several football logos while claiming to be their original author, a highly unlikely claim that has led to all of them going up for deletion. However, this one should be able to stay as it is mere shapes and letters. How do I change the licencing from the false claims of authorship by the original uploader? Every time I try to change it, I get blocked by an edit filter. Unknown Temptation (talk) 18:20, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
Commons:What is this? (Get help with file categorization)
This is a new page intended to become a place where users can ask about what is shown in an image/video so that fitting categories can be added or for people knowledgable about a subject to add requested fitting categories:
I created it due to recurring posts on this page asking about what individual pictures show where having a separate page could make this page here more focused on project-wide issues and all of the remaining discussions. It could become more overseeable (shorter) as well as to enable users (only or especially) interested in such requests to have a separate dedicated page they can watch.
Requests that for some time remain unsolved there could be asked about here in a brief post that bundles several requests. These could look like the photo challenge results posts.
If you're interested in these kinds of requests, please watch that page. It probably won't work well early on for some time but that may change over time. If you have any media files where you think a category is missing and you'd like to know which, just create a new section on that page. There also probably is a better name for that page, I'll try to think of a better one and if you have any suggestions please name them. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:59, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
1 The lack of such a place. 2 This place being overcrowded. 3 Insufficient resources for the large backlog & open VP issues/discussions. 4 Files missing categories and missing categories for files. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:57, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Seems to me the main effect of this is that it is less likely that someone with expertise is likely to see the requests. - Jmabel ! talk19:57, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Nor is Village pump really "overcrowded".
The main problem of Village Pump, as I see it is that Proto closes threads they don't seem to fully understand while hiding in edit summaries that they are closing such threads and then complain when knowledgeable people reopen them, bloating these threads with meta discussions about the threads. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 08:23, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
I didn't create this page because there is so much interest of people to find fitting categories. And I also never said there was "so much interest". Prototyperspective (talk) 11:52, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
I like the idea, but it needs to be properly advertised. Perhaps the MediaWiki Upload Wizard could include a line like "If you don't know what categories you should use you can ask experienced users" or something like that. The main issue is that a lot of power users don't even know where things are, for example I know a good map maker who didn't know about the Maps Workshop. Another example is how the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) "hides" are their projects and places by not putting it in a highly visible navigational template. For this page to be successful, it should be advertised in the help desk, community navigational templates, and the MediaWiki Upload Wizard. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:04, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Makes sense but linking it anywhere at the Upload Wizard would be a wrong place for this. It's meant for experienced editors who would like to find out a fitting category for some media, particularly:
if they think it's too important to identify what is shown and categorize it than to just dump it somewhere into Category:Unidentified subjects
It's best to describe what is unidentified as that there may not be an unindentifed xyz category for it or because it's briefly described somewhat unclear what is unidentified
It's best to describe what is unidentified as one can use multiple examples and can use some text to describe it
for example I know a good map maker who didn't know about the Maps Workshop I find aggreggating everything into a category useful for such purposes (at best also an overview page using that) and I've created Category:Wikimedia projects and maps regarding that example.
The current way people would find this page is via Category:Unidentified subjects. I again recommend people to watchlist it. People could also learn about the place if it's linked from some relevant template (is there any?) or if unsolved requests are bundled into a VP post that links to the page. Another name for it may be better, one doesn't necessarily have to be an expert in the subject to be able to help out, it's like connecting people who are sufficiently knowledgable in some area to identify/characterize something with people requesting such info. Maybe Commons:Category identification requests or something like that. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:02, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Unrelated images in photo challenges
A user maintains that this image is to be added to the photo challenge called "Footprints" about footprints, hoofprint, pawprint, etc. It shows marks in sand by a dry blade of grass. Do you think this image is within the scope of this challenge and should not be removed? Please also consider other challenges and the other participants / submissions, thank you. --Prototyperspective (talk) 20:17, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
It's not something I would submit myself to this challenge (the specific term for this is a scratch circle or pseudotrace, see Category:Partial scratch circles (pseudotraces) in sand) but whether I would have it removed depends on other factors as well, like the general consensus among participants or the broader goal of the challenge itself. I don't see much harm in people thinking a bit further outside of the box than I would for a competition with comparatively low stakes as the monthly photography challenge here on Commons. ReneeWrites (talk) 21:11, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
I think thinking outside the box and submitting things to challenges that are at the fringes of its scope are great things. I think neither of this is the case here. I don't see much harm in Just to note, I didn't say that I would think it's harmful if these challenges don't remain ontopic and not get frequently flooded with unrelated images. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:37, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
Also removed: Craters around entrances to an ant nest You're not helping anybody by unfairly letting people submit unrelated images to challenges. Maybe you want to be friendly but you're just harming the project, the challenge, and other participants. I suggest we also stop deleting any images, because we'd like to be nice and friendly and nobody would ever intentionally upload something problematic right.
It's not fair competition and deteriorates the quality of the challenges, confuses people, etc. The image on the side is also unrelated, it does not show any footprint. It's fine to include these images in a challenge but then don't name it Footprints and have the info that it's about footprints when it's actually anything. This just highlights how unfit the photo challenges are for being linked from the very frontpage. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:34, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Stance of Commons about usernames - verification needed?
Hello,
I happened to encounter User:ESackmann when I saw and nominated for deletion the File:Dreieckcover.jpg (so as to clarify its licensing status). I'm accustomed to DE-WP username verification procedures which are activated when an individual registers an account that seems to be named after a existing, living person. That is most likely the case here for this account, see comicplus+ und Eckart Sackmann. Does the Commons:Username policy also mandates a username verification? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 13:47, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Commons doesn't have any policy I'm aware of for up-front username verification in the sense you're asking about. If there's doubt as to whether a user has rights to upload content, that's processed through COM:VRT - which may in fact end up verifying that the user is who they claim to be, but the focus is on the permissions, not the username. Omphalographer (talk) 21:10, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Heartily agree, but there was a long discussion of this, and someone (or someones) insisted that for consistency we needed to use the Gaelic plural, despite it being unknown to practically anyone who does not speak Irish Gaelic. I believe this was in the same discussion where someone else was insisting that we should call the Chancellors of Germany "Prime Ministers of Germany." - Jmabel ! talk23:29, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Asking for license reviewing of 10 files
I'd like for a license reviewer or an administrator to apply the "LicenseReview" template to the 10 files in this category. I ask for it here, in place of using the template myself in each file, because some instructions are needed for the review (since there are not direct links to the individual source files, or even the collection containing all of them), and it's best done to all the files at once.
To verify the files and their license, one has to go to https://ideas.asturias.es/centro-de-descargas (most of the website is in Spanish, even if you select English at the upper right side). Then, click at Ortofotografía e Imágenes, and then, use the browser's search to find "ORTOFOTOMAPA DE ASTURIAS (1:5.000)" item, and click on it. There, in a paginated list, are (among many others) the 10 PDF files that were converted to the JPG images in Commons. Files names in the website don't have the "Ortofotomapa Asturias 2010-" prefix that they have in Commons, and they have a "C XX" municipality prefix in its place, but the rest of the name is exactly the same for all of them.
When you click on the download button for each PDF file, a "License and Terms of Use" dialog is shown, saying that the file is licensed under CC-by 4.0 "if not otherwise indicated" ("si no se indica lo contrario"). Since no other thing about the license is said in the page, list, or the files themselves, they have CC-by 4.0 license, and the "LicenseReview" template can be added to the file pages in Commons.
Probably, this is not the kind of file that most needs to have its license proved, but I highly appreciate having these files in Commons (in fact, helping to their dissemination and preservation is the reason why I started contributing here), so I would like to prevent any possible problem in the future. I wasn't aware that this option was available; if I had known about it, I'd have asked for it much earlier.
Thanks in advance. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:14, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Hi MGeog2022! Done. Thank you for adding the detailed guide. The files are also there as jpg but I did not check if the resolution is better on the pdf than on the jpg. --MGA73 (talk) 11:06, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Thank you VERY much!!! Yes, there are also JPG versions in the website, but they are very low resolution, the ones in Commons were generated by me from the PDF files. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:58, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Community Wishlist – Voting open for 'focus areas' about Commons tech proposals
In the Community Wishlist, one can now vote on new "focus areas" that bundle proposals relating to Commons – take a look.
If some of these problem areas win, maybe some of the tech requests contained in them actually get implemented. This may also include some of the requests in the Technical needs survey.
These are the new focus areas:
Improved discovery of media files – What is the value of contributing to a site or any of the other proposals if only very few know about/find and use it – proposals here include better discoverability on the Web as well as a date range filter in MediaSearch (by date taken)
Better stitching between Commons and other projects – e.g. directly show the Commons page which has the categories instead of this intermediate Wikipedia page; suggest media set in Wikidata items for their Wikipedia articles
Media formats, editing, and display – e.g. colored 3D models; easier subtitling; CropTool fix; video chapters / audio chapters (like clickable timestamps for sections in spoken Wikipedia audios)
New consumer experiences – e.g. make it easier to generate spoken Wikipedia audios (Video is difficult – Audio is the format Wikimedia could tackle next after text); reading-lists on desktop
I recommend checking out some of the wishes contained in these if you haven't yet which may clear up any potential confusion (why is this needed? what's the benefit of this? doesn't that already exist? etc).
One can vote for many focus areas, there's also Commons-unrelated ones. It could be that those are all the Commons-related areas or that there will be more but these four already do contain lots of the WMC-related proposals in the Wishlist.
@Jmabel: It's not super intuitive but there's a blue "Support focus area" button right below the start of the "voting" sections. I assume that's how people vote. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:47, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Better stitching between Commons and other projects: if this is done at the file level, from Wikipedia, I fear that vandalism in the file pages will multiply, if no additional measures are taken. MGeog2022 (talk) 09:32, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Bad bot recommendations
I thought we had put an end to bad bot edit recommendations, but this just came through on one of my photos today: saying that a photo of a sousaphone depicts a bugle. It says in the edit summary that the edit was suggested by the Android app. - Jmabel ! talk03:32, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
So the app now just suggests adding a "depicts," without suggesting a value? Anyway, that is clearly a sousaphone, and I have changed the "depicts" value to say so. - Jmabel ! talk05:24, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Replace non-vector files with its vector versions.
Hi, I'm User:OperationSakura6144. I need to replace the following non-vector files with its vector versions in the following Wikipedia pages:
All of the pages have restricted editing, which makes impossible for me to edit the pages myself. So, I'd like you to do my job on my behalf. Thank you for hearing me out.
I wonder if there are any templates or pages here at Commons that should be updated too. For examples screenshots of Wikinews can now be licensed another license than CC-BY-2.5.
The question is if we can simply change 2.5 to 4.0 or there needs to be a longer text explaining in details. --MGA73 (talk) 10:47, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Support for updates in media formats
Hi!
Currently, there is a voting process on Meta currently going on. You are invited to express your support if you think these issues are important. The topics also touch working on Commons, so this sounds relevant here. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:26, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Kenhub videos
i'm asking because i made a tool for quick access to topedits, but i embedded it in another tool. i'd like to know if there is demand for this functionality and hence a standalone tool.--RoyZuo (talk) 18:24, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
"prove a license"
Hi, swetrails.com has many images uploaded by a particular user with CC-BY 4.0 (example)- so far so nice and good. On the page, the license is shown as a text overlay on each image but not embedded in the image. I uploaded several of those images with appropriate license information etc. to wikimedia commons. Per chance, over last weekend, the swetrails.com server was not accessible, which made me think, what actually would happend if the server were taken down for good and the copyright owner then denied they ever granted the CC-BY 4.0 license? There is also no contact information anywhere on the site, neither as Imprint nor for the particular contributor. Since nothing is embedded in the original image, it would not be possible to prove that the license was indeed granted at some point in time. How would Wikimedia handle such a case?
--Uli@wiki (talk) 12:10, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
It's not really clear to me how you could do it on swetrails.com, but sometimes people will save a copy of the page to the Wayback Machine and use it as the source. Otherwise you can just ignore it since they don't really care about dead links on here to begin with. We aren't as dependent on external sources as a project like Wikipedia would be and their pretty lax about them to. So it's probably a none issue as long as you provide a source to begin with. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:19, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
Someone contacted VRT a month ago to warn us about this user uploading questionable AI upscales of paintings and other artworks.
One was nominated for deletion, but there are hundreds others and the user nominated them as valued images (and of course replaced the original image on all Wikipedias).
You should also ping User:Archaeodontosaurus. He is a longtime and extremely productive and active user, and it's not appropriate to talk behind his back. We're going to have to discuss AI images going forward, and as they get better, the issues around them will get trickier. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:42, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for pinging him. It looks like we're working toward a consensus. I agree with the concerns expressed below, but I have to wonder whether we'll even recognize AI in a few years, and that's when problems of accuracy and authorship will become critical and possibly irresolvable. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:52, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Part of what bothers me about these images is that they're all being uploaded without any disclosure that they've been AI upscaled, and without making the original image available. The Fra'Mauro map is a great example - the original would have been a great image; the upscaled version is a mess. And I'm worried that a lot of the other upscaled images may have hidden issues as well. Omphalographer (talk) 08:50, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
I wondered if the upscaling might be occurring in-camera without the uploader being aware that this was happening, but from the EXIF they're using a Nikon D850 from 2017, which I guess rules that out. Belbury (talk) 10:14, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Comment I am very open to discussion. Making AI takes me a lot of time. It is difficult and the results are questionable. We must explore this path, it is a tool, we must learn.
I understand the reluctance.
We could find a simple solution: I propose that there be a label to be placed on the images saying whether there was an AI intervention or not.
Could one tell me a reasonable use case for AI upscaled raster images that falls in our scope (beyond demonstrating the technique)? {{AI upscaled}} words it this way: "This process may have introduced inaccurate, speculative details not present in the original picture." I think that any media that relies on details to be understood (portraits, maps, biological organisms, depictions of machines and mechanics...) should not be processed in a way that introduces "inaccurate, speculative details". That would be kind of "alternative facts" that I would not welcome. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 09:36, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Putting aside the scope and accuracy issues, why even bother upscaling a portrait to begin with? Because I really don't see the benefit of it regardless of if AI upscaled images are accurate or in scope anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:14, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Archaeodontosaurus, would you be able to add the {{AI upscaled}} template to all of the files you have uploaded which were upscaled by AI? Another editor could also automate this templating process for you if you provided a simple list of the files. --Belbury (talk) 10:57, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Comment As far as overwriting files with upscaled versions goes, there is already a policy in place on Commons, which states not to do that. In case of overwritten works, those edits should be reverted. The upscaled versions could still have a place here on Commons as separate uploads, though I agree with the others that their status as upscaled with AI should still be disclosed. ReneeWrites (talk) 14:33, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
There's a bit of a hole in this policy in that it doesn't say anything about uploading upscaled images as the only version of an image. We may need better guidance to users about this, probably along the lines of "if you're going to upload an upscaled photo, upload the original first". Omphalographer (talk) 19:26, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
The DR has been closed as keep since it is COM:INUSE. I don't think any AI upscaled file should be a Valued image, and this is definitely a cross-wiki issue that needs resolving because AI upscaled images should not replace originals. Abzeronow (talk) 19:37, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
@Abzeronow: Just an FYI, but I started a discussion about AI artwork on Wikipedia a while ago here. The discussion hasn't gotten many comments yet, but it sounds like AI generated or manipulated images clearly go against the guidelines on Wikipedia's end. Especially in cases where it isn't explicitly clear that's what they are. I'm not going to claim to know how that meshes with the guidelines on Commons, but I really don't think someone can claim AI manipulated or generated images are "legitimately in use" on Wikipedia if there's multiple users and guidelines saying they don't belong in articles. At that point the images clearly aren't being used in good faith. I'm not going to suggest it myself, but maybe it would be worth editing Commons:Project scope to say as much. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:52, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
I think AI advocates have good faith views. As someone who is somewhat resistant to technological change, I can see their viewpoint while disagreeing with it. And I think Archaeodontosaurus has good intentions. Abzeronow (talk) 20:03, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Just to be clear, I meant it purely pragmatically. I don't really know or care what Archaeodontosaurus or anyone else's intentions are but there's no reason images should be kept on our end if the usage violates Wikipedia's guidelines to begin with. I assume they wouldn't consider it good faithed on their end to put AI generated artwork in articles anyway though. But hey, whatever. It's all about the vibes right? Who cares about policies, standards, or what Wikipedia users want. The more important thing is not offending anyone who advocates for AI artwork by saying that people on Wikipedia don't think it belongs in articles. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:14, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
I think the English Wikipedia might be something of an outlier for actually ruling out AI-upscaled historical content in its MOS. Most upscaled photographs I see going through Commons are for the French and Russian projects. Belbury (talk) 20:30, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Oh yeah for sure. I don't know about the French language Wikipedia, but the Russian Wikipedia has absolutely no standards what-so-ever. At least from what I've seen they are totally fine with clearly inaccurate historical content. Everyone is different though. So I wouldn't go as far as saying every project doesn't allow for AI generated or altered images, but English Wikipedia clearly has a problem with both. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:35, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
There's also quite a few projects which don't have a position on AI content simply because the local community is small and hasn't made it a priority to develop policies. AI content ends up getting used on these projects not so much because it's permitted, but because no one's telling editors to not use it. Omphalographer (talk) 21:07, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Then some Russian-speakers should do a RFC or some other policy discussion on Russian Wikipedia to see if the community thinks AI content violates rules. It is not in Commons purview to usurp that decision making. Abzeronow (talk) 21:33, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Well, only when the English Wikipedia doesn't want it on their project right? Then it's totally cool to usurp their decision. Otherwise we have to respect the projects decision making. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:55, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
The only usage on Enwiki is a talk page, and the AI upscaled nature of it is discussed. It's used on other Wikipedias though and we don't privilege Enwiki above other Wikipedias. Abzeronow (talk) 21:19, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
I don't think we do either which is why I didn't claim we did, but I don't think we have a policy on Commons saying Commons:Project scope doesn't apply when AI is involved either. Or are you going to argue that Commons:Project_scope#File_not_legitimately_in_use shouldn't matter to AI generated images just because some random people who have absolutely nothing to do with this what-so-ever are generally good faithed about it? --Adamant1 (talk) 21:52, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Not sure whether that close was the right call. As a counterpoint, Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:AI-upscaled paintings was closed last month with all the images being either deleted or reverted/redirected to non-upscaled versions, despite some being in use at the time.
It seems reasonable to expect that where this map image has been added to an article by someone other than the uploader, that person did not realise that it was an AI-upscaled version with smudged inaccuracies, and that they would not have used it if they'd been made aware of that. It's been the first search result on Commons for a year, presumably because it's a Valued Image, and is of a significantly higher resolution than all the other copies we have. Belbury (talk) 20:23, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
I just had a train of thought... Does somebody know about a Wikimedia project, be it a Wikipedia, -news, -voyage, -species, etc., who doesn't have criteria for verifiability and a need to name sources for its contents? If there's none as I tend to assume, then the whole point of whether AI generated or AI upscaled images are in scope (also per COM:INUSE) is moot IMHO and every addition to any Wikimedia project, besides a few usages to illustrate AI technology, from the outset against the basic requirement of verifiability, even if any project does not have a explicit policy about AI media. AI modified graphics are never verifiable and traceable back to their sources, inherently so due to the underlying software techniques of the AI models. They are always a condensation of most statistically probable colour and luminosity values for each pixel for any given prompt. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 01:04, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
As a past contributor to enwikiversity: those guidelines have never been enforced. The "Review Board" proposed in those guidelines is entirely hypothetical, and the project has been a magnet for crank science for years. This is part of why I'm no longer involved with that project. Omphalographer (talk) 03:20, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Wikisource doesn't really care where the images on the author pages come from; they're not part of our primary content. And OCR is at least AI-adjacent, and it's heavily used on Wikisource. Honestly, any digital picture is full of "statistically probable colour and luminosity values"; converting the raw to JPEG involves approximating the data from the camera with cosines that hopefully don't change any important details as well as storing only one color sample for every four luminosity values (often after extrapolating the color sensors of the camera, which has RGB filters on each pixel, so they were a bit questionable to start with), plus in-camera corrections for lenses, plus a pile of numbers set by the camera or photographer (ISO, f-stops, camera speed, plane of focus) that may or may not be preserved by the EXIF data. It's always better to have an actual picture of a peach; but if I'm comparing a human drawn T-rex with an AI drawn T-rex, and the paleontologists say the latter is more accurate, I don't think verifiability changes anything.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:42, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Comment More on topic, I was comparing some of the upscaled images with the originals. The text on the map in File:(Venice) Fra'Mauro's World Map - Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.jpg is clearly smeared to the point of being unreadable. Whereas the text in the original is perfectly fine. People can debate all day if someone intentionally uploading a clearly blurry, smeared file is good faithed or if a map that no one can even read because it's smeared is educational. It's pretty clear that these images shouldn't qualify as "valued images" though. Per Commons:Valued_image_value "valued images are less about perfect technical quality...and more about the useability of the information on the image page. There's nothing usable about a smeared, unreadable image of a map. None of the other files seem to be any better either. So all of these AI upscaled images should have their "valued images" status revoked since they clearly don't meet the standard. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:39, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Artifacts from the upscaling are all over the drawing if you view it at full resolution. If you put them side by side you can see that the cardboard of the original has a texture of its own, and that texture returns in the other version, but here they are morphed into paint blots. As for the claim that no AI was involved, maybe by that he means he used a different post-processing method, but whatever you want to call it has severely impacted the integrity of these images. I would honestly like to see the originals uploaded to Commons as well, even if Archaeodontosaurus feels they are of inferior quality, but other people may feel differently about that. ReneeWrites (talk) 22:01, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Ooof! yeah, that totally blows out a bunch of legitimate texture, to the point where if it is in any sense a photograph, then the "camera" in question is doing a bunch of dubious post-processing.
Given that the VI system has no described process for removing the status from an image, and that nobody has answered a project talk page thread asking about this from six months ago, I've been bold and removed the {{VI}} template from this map, to see if anybody connected to the project reacts to that. Commons shouldn't be boosting this to the top of search results as its "most valued image" of Fra Marco's map, when it is of significantly lower quality than other photographs in the same category. Belbury (talk) 11:34, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
I asked about it myself two days ago and haven't gotten an answer yet. From what I remember with prior incidents the images were just deleted, which isn't possible here even though it clearly should be. So just removing the templates seems like the only other option outside of waiting for months until someone responds with an actual solution. There really should be a more formal process for revoking valued image status from a file though. I'm actually kind of surprised there isn't one. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:42, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
Comment I confirm what I have already said, and I urge you to go and see the works of Suzanne Valadon, they have the particularity of being very colorful... See it for yourself and do not trust images from the Web which are of poor quality. --Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 06:24, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
@Archaeodontosaurus: No offense, but the images are clearly AI upscaled and there isn't any reason you wouldn't know about it. Especially since multiple people have confirmed it at this point. Can you at least stop nominating your uploads for "valued image" status until this is sorted out? Otherwise it seems like your just intentionally ignoring the issue, which isn't a super great way to deal with it. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:34, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
Would people support replacing this image with one that's maybe color-tuned to be a but less yellow but not AI upscaled? I'd be happy to do that. I don't think AI-upscaled images can ever be acceptable. AI upscaling introduces inaccuracies, it's a guess about what extra details are present. We should be about facts-we should not use a fake image over a real one over it just because it looks nicer. Otherwise I'd support deletion, removal of valued image status, etc. Blythwood (talk) 03:33, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
"Ever be acceptable" as valued images in particular? Or in general for Commons? Because I can agree with the former, but as to the latter, I think AI upscaled images can be very instructive here at Commons. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯03:39, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
In summary, the main question explored in these calls was whether the Wikimedia Foundation should continue to develop structured data, or make the category system multilingual and easier to use. In both calls, there was broad agreement that we shouldn’t maintain two essentially separate systems. There was a preference by the people who intervened for developing structured data, tempered by an awareness that the community has been using categories for so long that any switch would require a lot of technical and social commitment.
To read the full summary of the call, please refer to the appropriate subpage.
Next steps and upcoming conversations
We are working on the summary of our December conversation about new media and new contributors, and we hope to publish that in early January. You will be alerted in time when this happens.
Also, there will be another two rounds of conversations on January 15 and on February 5, at 08:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC. You can subscribe to the events by going to the Commons Community Calls project page and clicking on the relevant link (you'll be redirected to the event on Meta).
I hope that you are in good spirits. My name is Chinmayee Mishra and I am a part of the Let’s Connect working group - a team of movement contributors/organizers and liaisons for 7 regions : MENA | South Asia | East, South East Asia, Pacific | Sub-Saharan Africa | Central & Eastern Europe | Northern & Western | Latina America.
Why are we outreaching to you?
Wikimedia has 18 projects, and 17 that are solely run by the community, other than the Wikimedia Foundation. We want to hear from sister projects that some of us in the movement are not too familiar with and would like to know more about. We always want to hear from Wikipedia, but we also want to meet and hear from the community members in other sister projects too. We would like to hear your story and learn about the work you and your community do. You can review our past learning clinics here.
We want to invite community members who are:
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We look forward to hearing from you :)
Are there any templates, or any other standard way to notify users about possible pseudoscientific images etc.? I am talking about cases where deletion is not an option (for example, it may be legitimately used in a wikipedia article describing some pseudoscientific view, or when there are different views about it on local project). --Hwem (talk) 16:11, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
This sounds like a good idea, but it could be used to edit war over controversial concepts are disputed within the scientific discourse. Social sciences are also a form of science and more often than not different countries have different official narratives which they deem as "scientific history" that would quickly turn this template into a nightmare. Don't even get me started on medicine, for years now the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been arguing that "Western medicine" (their word for scientific medicine) isn't definitive and that "Chinese medicine" (Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)) is "just as valid" (this is despite of decades of the same Communist Party trying to eradicate TCM and promoting some forms of scientific medicine within the People's Republic, likewise, the Republic of China (Taiwan) also grants special privileges to TCM). A lot of pseudoscience gets "legitimised" when going over national borders.
I like the idea of warning ⚠️ people of pseudoscience, as a free educational document that explains a concept in pseudo-medicine can have real life negative consequences and even kill people, the definition itself of something that is or isn't considered to be a "pseudoscience" is more difficult to state in an authoritative voice. Of course, nobody is going to dispute that the Miasma Hypothesis is still considered to be scientifically valid, but I've seen Dutch medical journals pussyfoot around outright calling commonly used forms of pseudo-medicine as pseudoscientific often using terms like "currently unproven" and "alternative medicine" rather than calling it fake medicine (pseudoscience).
The VRT is a voluntary team that handles emails with copyright issues but also permissions. If the team gets permission for the use of Roblox screenshots here, then it would be possible --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:50, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
There's some utility, sure. I think the best-case scenario is that they are converted to SVGs and that the redundant ones are deleted. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯23:00, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
I tried to improve some of the descriptions of the diagrams and missing categorization.
Reviewing it a bit closer, I'm not entirely convinced by the title of the work being used and the person mentioned as author. The PDF includes a one page memorandum and a revised version of a circular. All diagrams are from the circular.
How can we prevent the same from happening again in the future? For this to determine, we would need to know in more detail how the automated process worked. In the meantime, I'd suggest doing it manually and reviewing each file. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 08:35, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
The one suggested by the symptoms mentioned above, possibly leading to the upload of 260 files including nine for "a)".
If you did it manually, I think you should more careful review what you are uploading.
Also, please include the subjects of memoranda in descriptions, just mentioning its date, sender, number and addressees isn't really helpful. More importantly, don't delete the information when complete by others. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 10:25, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
The suggestion about the missing subject is not really off topic. The diagrams were extracted from there and, as mentioned above, none of the descriptions mentioned it. In the meantime, I added it to several of them. It's is or was also missing in the pdf, Wikidata and the category.
The don't delete is about your deletion at [6]. If the subject of the memorandum is cryptic to you, it really makes me worry about your editing in general. Your replacement description is somewhat pointless as it repeats what's in the infobox and parent categories.
No need to worry about my editing thanks, nor will I reasonably remember how many files I've uploaded among the thousands and thousands I've added in the past two decades. Bizarrely formatted descriptions that are sentence fragments about parts of the contents of a document are not as helpful as the description I left. If you were giving a description of what the United States Constitution was, would "American founding legal document" be better or "Includes Bill of Rights"? Clearly, the former is better. Including obscure and unhelpful descriptions does not help anyone. Finally, I never wrote or implied that the subject of the memorandum is cryptic. Please re-read this exchange and please post more carefully. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯11:03, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
Maybe you missed that the 1-page memorandum was about transmitting the 78 pages of the appendix. So "Bill of Rights, including Constitution" would have been the better comparison.
You seem to be willfully missing the point about descriptions. I didn't make the original document, so I can't tell you why so many images were included nor why the choice to make certain strings of characters into images was made at all. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯11:11, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
It was four years ago and I've made hundreds of thousands of edits to WMF wikis since then. What is it you are trying to get at with continuing this thread? What do you want from me? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯11:29, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
Hopefully, you rarely upload hundreds of files instead of 17.
@Bakhos2010: Without having a specific death date for an author, if it is from 1915 then it's got about another decade until we could use {{PD-old-assumed}} 120 years after creation. Being 120 years old is not a guarantee that it is public domain—for example, it could be discovered that it was by someone young who lived into the 1970s or even longer—but that is our policy on how old something has to be before we assume PD rather than assuming copyrighted.
It is out of copyright in the U.S. (95 years from publication, rather than based on death of author). I don't know much about Kazakh copyright law other than in it being "pretty normal Berned-Convention copyright. If the piece is truly anonymous, some countries would have it enter the public domain 70 years from creation, but for that "we don't know whose work it is" isn't enough, we'd really have to show that it was published anonymously, and I don't even know whether Kazakhstan allows that. You might find someone who knows more at COM:Village pump/Copyright. - Jmabel ! talk06:52, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
"From" is probably best. "By" is OK, but could be misunderstood as referring to who is doing the quoting rather than who is quoted. "Of" is pretty much wrong for a category name, though I can see where it could come up in a sentence.
"Here are a set of quotations from Rousseau." - good
"Here are a set of quotations by Rousseau." - confusing, could mean Rousseau is quoting something, rather than being quoted
"Here are a set of quotations of Rousseau." - clear, but a little odd.
"Here are a set of quotations of Rousseau by Will Durant." - Will Durant is quoting Rousseau, and probably the clearest succinct way to say that.
"Here are a set of quotations from Rousseau by Will Durant." - Will Durant is quoting Rousseau. Probably clear, but a little awkward.
Printed images being put in categories for photographs
(@Jmabel: since I thought he started a similar discussion although I can't find it). Recently I've been going through and trying to find improperly categorized images of postcards. It seems as though a lot of people have been putting images of printed postcards in categorize for photographs. Simply because they depict a specific place, person, or object. This seems wrong because a printed postcard clearly isn't "an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface." At least not in any way that matters. After doing some research, it seems to be a much larger problem outside of postcards. For instance, this image is in Category:Photographs of Rome in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam even though the image in the book clearly isn't a photograph or based one. So is there any consensus about what does or doesn't belong in a category for photographs? I'm sure there's a line there, but it seems weird to put every image of a place, person, or object in a category for photographs simply because the postcard or whatever it is might have been based on one. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:01, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: I would definitely take the view that your example is not a "photograph of Rome". It's a photograph of a drawing of Rome, but not directly a photograph of Rome. That category also contains a number of photographs of paintings that are (presumably) in Rome. I'd say they shouldn't be there either (a photo of an object in Rome not necessarily being a photo of Rome itself), but that's at least somewhat arguable. --bjh21 (talk) 15:55, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
I'd agree that if it doesn't even derive from a photograph it absolutely should not be in a "photograph" category.
If they do derive from a photo… I don't really know how to best handle that in category terms (and I guess I wouldn't worry a lot about it). In looking into this, I came across an interesting example.
Clearly both retouching and colorizing the same photo; clearly at least one of the two must be unfaithful to the photo in ways we would never accept from our own contributors of their own work. - Jmabel ! talk18:03, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
That's unfortunately very common with early postcards - very often, the colorists were working off a B&W image without ever seeing the scene in person. They would also often alter the sky, as seen in your example. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 18:35, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
Broken image
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 22:10, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
Long-term disputes on various wikis involving a cross-wiki IP author
There are numerous disputes involving an IP user indulging in cross-wiki spam, particularly articles on West Germanic varieties. I am hounded for a while.
From what I can see, he's a user who upload much about mapping and cartography, for which is great, but to engage in further conversation with German Low, or etztes with or without a s, Low Saxon with Low German to Low German only, for me all this and the on-going conversation, does not contribute to anything positive. Germanic lang have much variation, as well as French or Latin, especially from those area. You could simply add a variant, or suggest that it might be spelled with a different phonetic sounds. I did review quite a few contribution he made, and this could be solve quickly. In my opinion he is contributing for which is great, if you are trying to bring post back from 2003... It seems like he is using the same account, and he will keep using it since he's in love with the appreciation of contribution... I suggest to close this topic for now and simply add a watch alert.
@Sarcelles: Is this some sort of request for administrative action? If so, it belongs on the appropriate Administrators' noticeboard, not on the Village pump. Conversely, if it is something you are just bringing up for general discussion, I don't know what you want discussed. - Jmabel ! talk18:37, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
None of these accounts have edited in recent weeks, some not in as long as half a year, so it is hard to imagine what anyone can do about this at this point. - Jmabel ! talk18:40, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
It can be anticipated, that this author continues to be active on several wikis including Commons. I think this is a good place to discuss this cross-wiki spam. On en.wiktionary I have been removing numerous typical edits by this user. Sarcelles (talk) 14:29, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
File:Niederfränkisch.png is a file of this kind. It attempts to picture Low Franconian varieties in Europe. It has the following threefold-division:
A minor transitional area to Low Saxon, in the Netherlands
East Bergish running from near the city centre of Essen to Westphalia, also quite small#
A somehow larger area cutting through all of the following: an arrondissement bordering to Brussels, Antwerp province, Dutch Limburg, Belgian Limburg, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Wuppertal, German-speaking Belgium and French-speaking Belgium.
This is called Nordniederfränkisch (North Low Franconian) and running from France to Holland, Friesland province, Brussels and Westphalia. Sarcelles (talk) 11:45, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
Dialects of Dutch and German This is a typical German map of some of the dialects from Italy to Denmark. The author is MicBy67, User:Postmann Michael (The discussion creator's blatant and deliberate lie has been corrected! The map creator was not the Commons accounts mentioned, but the account User:Et Mikkel~commonswiki! Let's stick to the truth for once! --MicBy67 (talk) 02:34, 7 December 2024 (UTC)). There should be a further discussion of this issue. Sarcelles (talk) 20:07, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
Yawn!
Cook up a fresh idea! ;)
Hey, did you happen to catch the latest post on the discussion page? Just checking!
@MicBy67: consider yourself formally warned that the wording of your posts here has been unnecessarily uncivil, and continuing in this vein will probably result in me (or someone else) blocking you. - Jmabel ! talk17:53, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I take note of that. And I'm aware that the discussion creator (or his mentor) will bring up the old story again with the original account (Postmann Michael) was blocked on the German-speaking Wikipedia because of POV from dubious sources, trivialization of National Socialism. Harmful to Wikipedia on the one hand, and with the successor account (Et Mikkel) was permanently blocked on the German-speaking Wikipedia as a way to circumvent the blocking on the other hand.
Nobody really cares about the past two decades anymore!
What is striking, however, is the fact that the discussion creator is trying to construct a connection between the IP's and me. And is cross-wiki hounding actually allowed on Wikimedia Commons? I am asking now for an interested friend … --MicBy67 (talk) 02:55, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
Are the accounts I allegedly attacked just one that launched a smear campaign against me, to which I responded sarcastically? By the way, this is irrelevant to Wikimedia Commons!
I doubt the identity of the account stated. And that is my right.
You were for yourself banned from the German-speaking Wikipedia for years because of “pointless article work,” right?
Do you haven't anything better to do than try to link my account to the Paderborn IPs in all Wikimedia/Wikipedia projects?
Sarcelles has a history at Dutch Wikipedia of dropping questions about dialects and languages and their boundaries, aimed at construing one opinion as being the truth and falling silent when objections arise. Even so one day before arrival of the archive bot he used to add a random remark to avoid archiving so I took to manually archiving his messages or scrapping them altogether. Also I often alert unsuspecting users to this behavior implying that answering is pointless.
Although Sarcelles poses no acute threat to the wikis, I would be relieved if he could be banned for good from all projects. These tedious and time-consuming discussions lead nowhere, least of all to our prime objective. His minor contributions in the main space do not in any way compensate for the inconvenience.
Not. They will be resolved when the linguists reach consensus i.e. not before 2080. Our task is to describe the debates, not to resolve them → bertux16:14, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
I reject this type of “apology.” It is not sincere and is merely intended to fool!
First and foremost, the person who initiated the discussion is a die-hard advocate of a “missionary” mission. That's always been the person behind this account!
I'd like to remind you that this account initially solely campaigned on Wikipedia for “human rights violations” outside German-speaking countries and indicated in its blocking procedure on German-speaking Wikipedia that it had created these “reports” or “articles” at Wikipedia “at the risk of its life.”
We all realize that this statement is complete garbage!
The owner of this account has primarily focused on languages and dialects. He now describes himself as one of the “most experienced linguists,” most likely due to his participation in dubious accounts.
In addition, there is a tendency to conduct monologues that usually lead nowhere!
Based on my history with this account, I expect this discussion will go nowhere and reopen in a month or two with a different lemma—as is typical with the person behind this account! --MicBy67 (talk) 01:06, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
"of" and "in"
Hello. I have a running debate with User:Eurohunter on my talkpage about whether we should use the term "of" or "in" with the example of police automobiles. This category should contain files of police automobiles in Germany. So it can be a file of a german police automobile in Berlin, but also a file of a Polish automobile somewhere in Germany. However, this category should contain files of automobiles of the german police no matter whether this was made in Germany or an other country. At least thats my opinion. Is there an other interpretation and should we use both terms simultaneously? Regards Lukas Beck (talk) 11:45, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
For me in this case it is very clear. All police cars located in Berlin at the moment the photo was taken are "Police cars in Berlin". These cars can also be "Police cars of the Berlin state police" or of other state police of federal police. Of is for the ownership and In is for the location. When categorizing for the manufacturer I would always explicitly state that the of refers the the manufacturer "Policy cars of German manufacturer". GPSLeo (talk) 13:27, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
+1. I was just in the process of writing a message to the similar effect. There's only 1587 categories with "of" to begin with and most, if not all, of them have to do with the ownership or manufacturer. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
Photography as a verb
Normaly photografers respect each other and move away so you can take a picture. The probably professional photografer did not care and was buzy with his two subjects. The lighting created a surprising effect with shadows. Is there a category for a working photografer. I wanted to use photoshoot, but this category does not seem to exist.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:08, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
Hola @AbchyZa22: no soy un administrador, pero las imágenes generadas mediante AI no están sujetas a copyright (más información), y quedan, por tanto, automáticamente en dominio público, luego, hasta donde yo sé, cualquier imagen generada mediante AI por un usuario puede ser subida sin problema a Wikimedia Commons, en cuanto a copyright (siempre que además sea considerada como apta para una finalidad educativa). MGeog2022 (talk) 15:33, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
@MGeog2022:Si pero chequea bien la imagen (abajo lado derecho aparece el logo de Grok ,pero no se si esta usando con watermark osea bloquea la visibilidad de la imagen) AbchyZa22 (talk) 16:59, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
@AbchyZa22, cierto, ya veo: la imagen incluye una marca de agua, la cual es un logo que no tiene licencia libre. Lo indico debajo en inglés para que todos lo entiendan. MGeog2022 (talk) 19:43, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
AbchyZa22 wrote here to warn administrators that images generated by Grok AI (created by Elon Musk) include a non-freely licensed watermark, so when images generated by this AI tool are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and they contain that watermark, it may be necessary to delete them (or maybe removing the watermark is enough, since AI generated images are public domain in any case). MGeog2022 (talk) 19:43, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Vale, el logo es dominio público, luego solamente se trata de una cuestión estética. En ese caso, no es algo que sea muy importante (no creo que sea tan necesario que los administradores lo tengan presente).
---
OK, the logo is in the public domain, so it's only a purely aesthetical issue. In that case, this isn't a very important issue (I don't think it's so necessary for administrators to keep this in mind). MGeog2022 (talk) 20:55, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
@AbchyZa22, bien, por tanto, no hay ningún problema con el copyright, como te decía (sólo podría haberlo si el logo no fuera libre, pero no es el caso, porque ya vimos que es un logo de texto, por lo que aplica PD-textlogo). Las imágenes generadas por AI, como tales, no tienen copyright, incluso en el caso de que el proveedor de la AI afirme que sí lo tienen (puedes ver aquí lo que dice al respecto la política de Wikimedia Commons (en inglés). MGeog2022 (talk) 14:00, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
A dangerous precedent - DMCA after false relicensing
I wish to make the community aware of a serious issue that seems to be arising as Commons ages. I had a habit of uploading material in 2014-2016 from other sources to Commons, with much of it lost from the internet today, no longer accessible through traditional sources. I did not have the habit of archiving all pages with license information at that time, something I only later began with.
The reason I bring this up here, is twofold: 1) this is the second time I have seen this bait-and-switch with regard to licensing, with me having to spend time to comb through the Internet Archive last time to identify that it was originally licensed under CC-BY, and 2) that I do not find that the message on my talk page abides by community guidelines or takes account the WMF's role on Commons. It makes threats of banning me relating to repeat DMCA violation - which can not be grounds for a ban. Rather the question is if the copyright has been violated, which it hasn't, an issue which as far as I can see has not even been explored here. This has a potential chilling effect, in part because it requires me to disclose my name to counter-claim, which violates community guidelines - but also in part because this legal battle should be precisely for the WMF to take, not me personally. This is about a private entity, uploading to a YouTube channel which they still control, then revoking the CC-license, and issuing a DMCA-takedown request 9 years later.
There was never a source linked on these file pages and the license was never proven. When noticed by someone these files would already have been deleted. GPSLeo (talk) 19:17, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Of course there was, are you telling me that it was unlicensed for 9 years? And what do you mean by proven? The page included a link to a page that upon being uploaded in 2015 included correct license information, that subsequently was changed. As I said, this is not about "proof". The matter at hand is about pages changing their licensing. I don't care one bit about the file itself, it was of marginal use. CFCF (talk) 19:19, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Your license information was Anatomy video from youtube by Kenhub. Licenced as CC-BY as of download date 3/1/15. This is quite plausible, though you didn't provide a link to the YouTube video directly. I'm absolutely assuming your good faith and willing to believe that this was the case, but we would need proof (see my comment below). Gestumblindi (talk) 19:23, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Just as a service, if you intended to ping Joe Sutherland, your link didn't work, because his user account is User:JSutherland (WMF), but this link should generate the ping now. - Without deeply delving into the specific case, I agree that, if the videos ware originally uploaded to YouTube under CC-BY and the license was changed later (after you transferred the videos to Commons in 2015), you are of course not at fault and could have done nothing to prevent this. There was no License review as far as I can see (as an admin), so we have no proof, but maybe the original license can still be found at the Internet Archive or the like. As CC-BY licenses are irrevocable, maybe the WMF itself should file a counter-notice in case it can be shown that the content was - and therefore would still be -, in fact, freely licensed? Gestumblindi (talk) 19:21, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
As response to both comments, that seems possible I could have for whatever reason have omitted the link in lieu of the name of the video. I don't think it's likely that the correct license can be found, as YouTube is generally not covered by the Internet Archive, and I have no idea at what date they relicensed. Also, frankly - I don't think it's worth it for these files (also why I only uploaded 2 of maybe something like 50 files at the time). I never did find any use for them in any project, and restoring them would likely leave them as orphans. However, I think the issue itself is the dangerous thing. We have amassed a huge trove of material that could be relicensed incorrectly, and even if material has been "proven" - does that imply that a permanent record of the licensing has been kept? CFCF (talk) 19:43, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
YouTube video pages which are linked from Wikimedia web pages are generally pretty well covered by the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, since none of the source videos were linked on these files, it's quite possible that the original videos weren't archived. Even if they were, we have no easy way to find them. (Kenhub appears to have refreshed their YouTube content at some point between 2015 and now; the original videos don't seem to be online anymore.) Omphalographer (talk) 20:59, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
Asking for license review before it's too late, as I just did here, is a good option, especially for sites like YouTube and Flickr (this fact should be better known). Sadly, it seems that for this case, it was too late. Linking to the exact video, if a Commons bot automatically archived the page in Wayback Machine, would be another way to prevent this. About a year ago, a survey was carried out, and I created this proposal to try to avoid this kind of problem. In fact, I wasn't aware of the existence of license review then: that's basically what I was asking for, and nobody said in the discussion page that it already existed (perhaps what I exactly meant was not well understood). MGeog2022 (talk) 21:17, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
There's the larger issue of lack of license review at the time of upload. Commons in general brings a lot of problems on itself by emphasizing quantity over quality. Attacking this problem one file at a time is simply laughable. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 19:53, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is suggesting to tackle this one file at a time. I don't care about this file, and came here to make this general point. CFCF (talk) 20:15, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
The "Show more" link on the Wayback Machine archive doesn't work properly for me, but looking at the HTML source isn't hopeful (whitespace elided): <h4 class="title">License</h4><ul class="content watch-info-tag-list"><li>Standard YouTube License</li></ul> --bjh21 (talk) 22:38, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
That's what I was looking for. IMO this doesn't look good. I support deleting these videos unless we get some evidence of a free license. Yann (talk) 18:07, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
@Yann: I've found some evidence of a free licence. Since this is complicated and not really related to the original subject of this thread, I plan to start a discussion about it over on COM:VPC. --bjh21 (talk) 14:08, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
Unfortunately, one of the details of the DMCA is that a web publisher relying on the DMCA, like Wikimedia does, must block users that get too many DMCA strikes. You do have the right to counter the DMCA, at which point the company would have to drop it or initiate legal action against you. I don't think it's an issue here; Wikimedia just doesn't get enough DMCA strikes to ever block someone over them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:58, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
I agree with attempting to counter the DMCA takedown notice if you believe that it is wrong. Sometimes DMCA notices are overzealous, specious or downright fraudulent. During my time at Wikimedia, there were several successful counters, and I have myself countered takedown notices from YouTube successfully as well (for public domain music, for example. Bastique☎ let's talk!17:11, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
Typically, the WMF refuses to act on DMCA complaints that are clearly bogus. In this case, however, I think the WMF took the correct action. There is no evidence to point to in order to back up the free license claim, other than CFCF's statement. Thus it is up to CFCF to dispute the DMCA take-down. It would be dangerous folly for the WMF to risk its DMCA safe-harbor status by blindly defending every challenged upload. The best way to prevent this from occurring in the future is to simply link to the YouTube video from the file page, as this will cause the YouTube page to be archived in the Internet Archive by IABot. Nosferattus (talk) 18:49, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
Nosferattus - Please take a look at the discussion started by bjh21 on the copyright VP - people have managed to dig up some evidence of CC-licence.
What I think is important to note here, is that this is a DMCA complaint that is bogus, but not clearly so - because the ability to dig up evidence is limited because it was so long since the files were uploaded. I think this is an important issue, as it is not isolated to this case. The fact that the DMCA led to a takedown, and a legal threat is indicative of a broader problem - something that we as as community should strive to solve sooner rather than later. CFCF (talk) 08:03, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
I doubt it will ever happen, but I've been arguing for a while now that they should allow for fair use on here. That seems to be the only way to deal with these types of things to any meaningful degree outside of just taking down the file regardless of if the license was changed at some point. Expecting people to create mirrors of licenses on archive.org as fall back doesn't seem like a sustainable solution though. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:27, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
How would that help here? Fair use is pretty limited and wouldn't apply to videos like these. Someone's photo of a castle or a mountain is unlikely to be fair use. The whole of 1984 (deleted last year) couldn't possibly be fair use.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:24, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
As far as I know fair use still applies to movies and other videos. With something like this it would be more about giving the WMF a reason to not take down the video so they can see if the people who gave them the DMCA notice to will actually challenge it. 99% of the time no one wants to spend the time or energy actually taking someone to court. Especially with something that was already PD to begin with. There's no reason the WMF couldn't use fair use as a reason to keep the video up in the short term and then say the license was changed "but fair use anyway Your Honor!" if it ever actually goes to court though. But I certainly wouldn't advocate for something like that with a full movie being hosted on here. Fair use obviously isn't a valid reason to host the video in that case. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:31, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
No, "fair use" wouldn't work here. English-language Wikipedia is quite strict in its application of fair use, as you certainly know: There needs to be a specific rationale for each file kept, it needs to be in use; and for images, the size is limited to what is necessary for display in the article (so, no full resolution). That's because for "fair use", there needs to be a particular "use" indeed for it to apply, it's not applicable for just hosting files that might be educationally useful, whether actually in use or not (which is what Comnmos does). Gestumblindi (talk) 12:06, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
I got an e-mail ping waking me up, apparently it was this edit, which I found was odd. The page blanking was done on 24 December 2024, but the admin tagged it on 18 November 2022 meaning that more than 2 (two) years went by without anyone finding it problematic that a user page existed unblanked.
I have long noticed that some users treat the unblanked user pages of blocked users as "some sort of backlog" even when the blocking admin didn't decide to perform this form of damnatio memoriæ. What I find interesting is the edit summary "I really can't see any policy-based reason to blank this,m and at the moment the content of this page is relevant to an arbcom case. This is literally an admission by an Enwiki ArbCom member that the blanking of user pages isn't rooted in any policy. In fact, the blanking of a user page would be considered a form of vandalism in any other context.
Hmmm… usually the sockpuppeteer tag is added when the user is blocked. I assumed they were blocked and someone added the tag for it, but didn’t remove the rest, which is usually the status quo around here. Not sure about enwiki, and why it’s even relevant to bring up. Are you proposing something here? 1989 (talk) 19:22, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Just for clarity, the edit I made there was less than one month after I made this account. I was not an admin and didn't even have autopatroller when I made that edit. I don't exactly now why I made that edit (probably random browsing and just seeing it wasn't tagged). —Matrix(!)ping onewhen replying {user - talk? - uselesscontributions} 19:39, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
To answer the original question: I'm not aware of any particular policy here, but in this case the removal seems so trivial that it is hard to care. - Jmabel ! talk19:33, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
No, I just wondered if there is a policy which states that such pages must be blanked and why it didn't happen back in 2022, or why it would happen so late after it (implying that there is some sort of backlog). Still, usually user pages are blanked by the tagger, I haven't seen that many people explicitly search them out to blank them, especially since this is a highly visible user who has participated in many discussions and whose user page is linked to quite extensively, so I wonder what the value of such blanking is. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:34, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Historic England aerial photos
Historic England have put a number of PD aerial images (example - one of many taken by the RAF prior to 30 June 1957, so now expired Crown Copyright) behind software that makes it difficult, but not impossible to download the high-res versions. They do not assert copyright, but charge for making copies available to download, under what purport to be restrictive terms.
Various methods for downloading high res copies have been described online (see sources at w:SmartFrame).
A claim has reached me that they will launch a new system in the new year, to prevent such downloads.
I just want to say: that is so tacky, posting PD materials (which means you have no special legal claim to them) and hiding them behind a deliberate technical barrier to prevent others from acquiring them. - Jmabel ! talk19:02, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Its tangential, but I got in a little tiff a while ago with the lady who runs the local historical society where I live because the images on their website are super low quality and watermarked to the point of not even being viewable. Let alone downloadable. Her excuse was that it didn't matter becauae they sell people copies of everything on their site. I really don't get the mentality. Local history shouldn't be pay walled or otherwise controlled like that. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:34, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Colour difference
Hello
I recently created a SVG file of a PNG logo with Inkscape, I used the colour picker tool and everything seemed fine. I then save as optimised SVG and uploaded the SVG file to Commons, but the red square seems darker than on the original PNG (the blue and yellow also seem a bit different).
I then uploaded this original PNG, but its colours are the same as the SVG.
I then took a screen capture of the original, compared it to the Commons files, and the colours are definitely not the same (3rd image in the gallery below).
SVG
PNG
Compared screenshots
Is it a known issue, or am I missing something ?
Regards, Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 19:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
Hello ReneeWrites. I've done more tests and the problem seems to be linked to the web browser used (see the new version of the screenshots compared above, CTRL+F5 to clear the page cache).
So Firefox seems to display different colours on linguistlist.org and Commons whereas Chrome and Edge don't, but all three browsers seem to display slightly different colours to the PNG/SVG files.
I'm a bit confused and can't figure out where the problem really lies...
Regards, Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 15:56, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
I don't think it's a browser issue necessarily. I notice that the color picker is sometimes slightly off when I'm working on a file in Illustrator, at which point I eyeball the process. ReneeWrites (talk) 23:54, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
As someone who is not an expert, that doesn't track to me: the SVG defines these colors with hex codes, which are at a re-encoding of RGB values. My eye doesn't see a difference between the SVG and PNG logos and an online color picker calls the PNG's red #800000, the PNG thumbnail of the SVG #810000 (!!!), and the code of the actual SVG itself defines it as #800000. The codes fro the blue and yellow squares have the same values in all three files.@SyntaxTerror: , this warrants a ticket at phab:. Are you willing to make one? If not, I will. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯19:51, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
Hello Koavf and thank you for your reply. I was also thinking of making a ticket on Phabricator, but I still don't know if this problem is related to MediaWiki or browsers (or maybe my computer?).
If you'd like to make a ticket, it's no problem with me as I'm not a native English speaker, and technical terms can sometimes be difficult for me. Mention me anyway so I can answer any questions. Regards, Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 00:43, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
SVG uses the sRGB colorspace. librsvg turns SVG into a PNG bitmap. By default, PNG does not have a default sRGB colorspace, but its colorspace can be set to sRBG. Last time I checked, librsvg or the libraries it uses do not set the PNG colorspace to sRGB. Consequently, we should not expect the colors to match. There are also questions about screen grabs and color pickers. Are the colors before or after the system color correction? Glrx (talk) 01:17, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
Afaik Adobe has CMYK as standard color space for software focused on printing, like InDesign. This could also apply to Illustrator in some way. Another topic is (which I found out accidentally), that the color/RGB code can change when you're using the HDR function in OSes like Windows 11 (I measured it with the color picker). Another reason could be a secret color aberration while processing/converting. I have this when I trace a PNG image to have it as SVG. The used colors are not identical. Sometimes Adobe applies a narrow color palette, that is affected by anti alised pixels that have colors between to edge colors --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:16, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
I doubt there is a useful distinction. Possibly there are techniques that are not "processes" (e.g. the use of a polarizing filter), but every process is a technique. - Jmabel ! talk19:07, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
I think the intended distinction is that a photographic technique is something that the photographer does when taking a photograph, whereas a photographic process involves film chemistry and the processes used to turn it into a print in a darkroom. This isn't really borne out by the current contents of the categories, though. (And, of course, this distinction completely breaks down when dealing with digital photography.) Omphalographer (talk) 22:35, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
Maybe it's of some help to look at how other projects deal with this distinction. This is what the category descriptions on enwiki have to say:
Category:Photographic processes - "This category groups together articles that describe procedures by which light-sensitive materials are made to produce an image. The category should not be confused with Category:Photographic techniques, which comprises articles describing procedures related to how a photograph is taken or composed, or is manipulated during or after processing."
Category:Photographic techniques - "This category contains categories and articles relating to the theory and methodology of composing and/or taking photographs, or to their manipulation during or after processing. It should not be confused with Category:Photographic processes, which comprises articles relating to the production of images using light-sensitive materials."
The descriptions are very similar to the ones Omphalographer stated. "Photographic technique" is defined slightly more broadly so it's inclusive of digital photography, while "Photographic process" describes an explicitly analog process. I like these descriptions, they seem clear to me, leave very little room for ambiguity, and solve the issue being discussed above, with maybe one exception: The page for "Post-processing" is a disambiguation page, of which the one relevant to photography is titled "Image editing". This page is categorized as a technique, not a process. ReneeWrites (talk) 14:25, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Genre seems to concern itself with subject matter - what a photograph depicts, so that's not really an issue. Style seems to be a bit more problematic. ReneeWrites (talk) 14:58, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Is the "Style" category something we want to discuss here further, or should I open a CfD for it? The other three categories seem well-defined enough for me. ReneeWrites (talk) 17:40, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
I had it speedy deleted before you asked because everything in it seemed better off in other categories. Thanks for the thought though. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:32, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
Merry Christmas - A year in Wikimedia
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to the good people of Wikimedia who have helped me learn the ropes and supported me. Obvious flagrant exceptions, especially from veteran editors who don't respect the Wiki policy of not biting newbies -- still worth it though, to contribute to the project and be a volunteer. It's year one for me, and I've focused on ordering the category of Category:Nuevo Laredo. When I came it was barely there but I've managed to structure it. Being a newbie, I took as a basis how the categories of other cities such as Berlin, Dallas or Phoenix where structured. Additionally, I've populated and/or organized the Category:People of Nuevo Laredo with notable persons as well as images of public places or public events. This has attracted some of you to help me organize or twitch things that I may have missed, which I thank. Other categories I have heavily organized are those related with People of Mesoamerica, People of Mexico, images from Montreal, images of Mexican people or places. Recently I started to upload my videos, which I will continue. And finally, it is amazing that websites, media and news outlets use these contributions -- which I have listed on my personal user page, an idea I took from an experienced contributor who does the same thing. Some of you may have my differences with me, but I'm not going anywhere since I am not only learning but also it is imperative for the Wiki project to have a diverse of insights and way of thinking. To new Wiki editors, do not be discouraged! For many upsetting experiences you may have (and will have) with other user, there are others who will be not only friendly but also will teach you and guide you. And if you want to team up in the topics of my interest, I'll be more than delighted. Cheers! Miguel Angel Omaña Rojas (talk) 00:32, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
At Commons:Questionable Flickr images, there is a list of blacklisted users. Sometimes I think, "Hmmm. This image from that account looks good. I wonder why it is blacklisted?"
Looking at the list, the reason in most cases is "Flickrwashing." Personally, I do not think that it is very helpful. So, I wonder if we could agree that for new requests, it would be good if a link to a discussion is included?
Next is when do we blacklist? What if a user has 99 good images and 1 bad? Or 50 good and 50 bad? Or 1 good and 99 bad? I think in some cases the reason to blacklist has been derivative works and the lack of Freedom of panorama. Personally, I do not think we can set up a general rule, but if a Flickr user is in bad faith and tries to push files to Commons, we should always blacklist. If most of the uploads are bad, we should also blacklist. But if it is only a smaller part of the photos or if the reason is derivative works, we should not blacklist.
You could say, "If you think it's a problem, then just watch the damn page and fix the requests." You would be right. But I also think that it would be good if we had some guidelines about what to add as a blacklist reason and when to add or remove. For example, I have sometimes thought about going rogue and just removing all requests without a link to a discussion. But the result would probably be a lot of bad images and angry users.
So, even if we can't set up a rule saying that if the bad ratio is > 40%, then blacklist, perhaps we can set up a few "rules of thumb"?
"Flickrwashing" is a fairly specific term. It doesn't mean "uploading images with copyright issues". It specifically means "uploading and taking credit for other people's copyrighted photos". Taking a photo of a painting or a non-FOP architectural work isn't Flickrwashing; copying a photo from a stock photo web site or a newspaper and reposting it is.
QFI listings should generally be reserved for instances of true Flickrwashing, not other rights issues. If we blocklisted accounts just because they took a few photos of paintings or toys or whatever, we'd be here all day (and we'd probably be rejecting a lot of perfectly good photos in the process). Commons users importing content from Flickr need to evaluate it for DW/FOP concerns themselves; QFI should be reserved for sneaky copyright violations which aren't apparent from the image itself or its subject matter. Omphalographer (talk) 22:17, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
I agree 100% with that. So far the accounts I have added to QFI is because they were specifically created for license washing. Yann (talk) 22:56, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
Some good points above. Two points: 1)Keep in mind that Flickr is in some ways social media, and allows derivative works of copyrighted material (eg photos of posters or book covers, etc) which Commons cannot allow. So Wikimedians copying images from Flickr should keep this in mind as something to consider before uploading a given image to Commons, knowing that while some may be tagged as free licensed on Flickr they are still not properly free for Commons. 2)"Blacklists" are not simply for Flickr accounts that don't live up to Commons standards, nor for accounts that are generally good but the users are sometimes careless with with license claims. It is for accounts that generally or deliberately make false license claims, usually with intent to deceive as to actual license status. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 23:06, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the input. I agree that the user that import files to Commons is the one responsible for the files. So to me that indicates that a blacklist is not the right thing to use if a Flickr user have uploaded derivative works etc. Unless of course it is done to push files to Commons.
I think the idea of allowing some users to upload files from a blacklisted account sounds interessting. But it may require too much coding. An alternative could be to request a temporary removal and then upload the good files and categorize them in "Files from Flickr user Foo" and then add the blacklist again. If User:Donald Trung finds another case that could be used as a test. --MGA73 (talk) 15:37, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
Categories combining city and photographer
Hello fellows, we have three categories which (together with their subcategories) sort photos by a combination of the criteria by city and by photographer:
The former category is for categories for photos of specific cities by specific photographers. The latter is for photos of unspecific cities by specific photographers. Ruslik (talk) 19:56, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
What's the use case for the latter? Surely all of those files would already be categorized as photographs of cities and photographs by that photographer; the added value of a category specifically for photographs of cities which aren't identifiable as any specific city seems minimal. Omphalographer (talk) 23:23, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
So, the former should contain categories like "Photos by John Doe of London". The latter - "Photos of cities by John Doe". Ruslik (talk) 20:00, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
@Aristeas: If it were me I'd up merge whatever subcategories overlap between the two into whichever one makes more sense and then go from there. It be that a lot of the parent categories end up being empty and/or otherwise pointless once the overlap is fixed though. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:25, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
It's probably a lost cause at this point but there's a ton of problems and whatnot with how user categories are organized. This being one of them because some users want to be associated with professional photographs by way of putting their images in the normal category tree. I spent some time trying to organizing it a few years ago but it just led to drama. So I stopped. It would make things a lot easier though if user categories explicitly had to start with "User:" and weren't being randomly mixed in with normal ones. But I really don't see that changing with how much uploaders are coddled to on here. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:02, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Sure. I don't really care if a professional photographer or notable person who also happens to be a user wants to use normal categories for their files. They aren't who I was refering to. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:09, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
I just looked at this and saw one overpopulated category replaced with three overpopulated categories. What exactly was accomplished here? It's common practice to place navigation templates in categories that size. Since the filenames all begin with "Deepin Icon Theme", I'm not sure that's possible. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 21:03, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
I was just looking through this earlier and all the files seem to already be in more specific ones for the set of icons. So I don't see what the point in this whole thing is. Its way pointless to have a single catch all category for a bunch of files that are already subcategorized based on the specific icon set. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:23, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
I did a lot of categorizing icons of this theme over the last few weeks. But I didn't do all of them and many just by color which I don't think is that useful. 999real (talk) 18:50, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
The way I've always understood it a path is more informal. Whereas a walkway is usually paved and has a barrier on both sides. Like a walking bridge across a roadway or similar. You wouldn't really call an unpaved back country footpath a walkway though. But its kind of a meaningless distinction in a lot of instances. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:10, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
At File:Flag of Uzbekistan.svg, there seems to be a dispute over the flag's colours, that may require further effort to resolve at the file's talk page. I post the message here as an uninvolved editor, because the flag is a heavily used image, and the constant tit-fot-tat reverting has a significant impact on the Wikimedia wikis, as well as wikis using InstantCommons. --Minoa (talk) 10:58, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
As always, the answer to a dispute about colors is that the older version stays where it is, the other version can be put under a different name, and the various Wikipedias are free to use what they will. - Jmabel ! talk17:19, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Well, "always" was a bit much: if there is a strong consensus for one version, "older" doesn't necessarily win the more obvious name just because there are a few dissenters. - Jmabel ! talk17:20, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Bayeux Tapestry
New Bayeux Tapestry website attempts to assert rights over high-res images of this 11th century work, via a "shrinkwrap" terms of use agreement.
Any commercial use of this tool is prohibited, as well as the extraction of images from this panorama.
They are located in an EU country. The EU has banned copyright claims on public domain works with the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (Article 14) in 2019. -- Herbert Ortner (talk) 19:59, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Reindeer symbols
Is there a specific category for reindeer symbols?
@TheDJ: This is very bad. We can upload up to 5 GB videos, so the servers should be able to process videos that large, otherwise there is no point to be able to upload them. More generally, I feel this is (again) bad management by the WMF about Commons. How an organization with a 100 M US$ budget cannot do that??? Yann (talk) 11:23, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
There is a point in uploading videos larger than 4GiB. Some time in the future videos that cannot be transcoded now, can be transcoded then. However videos that have not been uploaded because of a file size limit can neither be transcoded then nor be downloaded in original size now. They will be lost forever. And if someone takes the pain to transcode a 5GiB video to 4GiB (few are able to do that, less are going to take the pain of doing so), the video will always only be available in a lower quality than was possible in the first place.
In the mean time it is always possible to upload a different version with smaller file size and resolution under a different file name for the purpose of streaming it now.
Different aspect: I experienced a number of my uploads of files with 1GB or less have not gone through but failed with the omnious "some one is doing something with this file" or other fail messages. This seemed to be history after @Bawolff's work on large file uploads, but has returned now. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 13:16, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
No one is arguing that there isn't a point in doing so. The thing is that Commons is not a video archive. We have never been. We do not have the hardware and software engineering required to support it, and it has become clear (over the last year in various conversations) that Wikimedia will not dedicate the resources (likely in the 10+ million range) that would be required to get us there. And while it is cool that the file limit was lifted, that doesn't mean that other limits do not apply. When we push boundaries, we find new boundaries.
All of this is not helped by people choosing bad encoding parameters for the video. For instance. The original of this archive.org video seems to be a mpeg2 1080p DVD rip (3.8GB, 20Mbps 30fps). It seems that his has been converted here by the uploader into a 3.8GB 1080p AV1 file, which is terribly wasteful (esp for a black and white video) and it shows a lack of understanding of how video encoding works and this is a recurring pattern that I see with uploads (choosing 'quality' and wasted bits over useful content). It seems to me that the only way from preventing people from continiously shooting themselves in the foot, is to reduce how much ammunition we provide them. This is not YouTube, we can't handle what people are uploading. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:38, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
@TheDJ: I disagree partly with that. Yes, Wikimedia is not YouTube, and it will never be. But it is essential to me that we should be able to host historical and/or high quality videos with educational value. Wikimedia should also adapt to new paradigms in web hosting. We are not anymore in a a world with text encyclopedias and a few pictures. Video is the main medium now to convey messages on the Internet. It seems especially important now that old movies with sound come into public domain. And excuse me, but saying that it would cost in the "10+ million range" is quite nonsense. We only need a few servers with enough memory. I know what I am talking about, that was my job for 10 years. Yann (talk) 14:36, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
It is possible btw, that this is a downsampled version of the 4K version that exists on Youtube, but if that is the case, then the sourcing for this current upload is not correct. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:55, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
@TheDJ I feel we suffer a bit from all or nothing thinking on this. Yes, software development is expensive, much more so than most of the other people on this thread probably realize. We definitely aren't going to be competing with youtube any time soon. However I think there is a middle ground where we could have a team dedicated to backend multimedia stuff. Just look at phab - half the reports nobody is even sure what the cause is because there are very few people familiar with the entire backend stack for multimedia in mediawiki to debug/isolate the issue. We can't possibly fix anything if we're not even sure what is broken. Just look at the bug C.Suthorn mentioned (T358308) - it turned out to be a software upgrade accidentally put a time limit on things that is too short. Stuff like this happens in software development all the time. It is to be expected. The true failure was that there was no monitoring to discover something was wrong, there was no automated tests that failed, and there were very few people who knew enough about how all the components worked together to debug the problem or escalate tickets to the right people (Not entirely evident from that report, but most upload bugs were being bounced between frontend teams who didn't know anything about how uploads work on the backend [not their fault, its not their job to know and nobody can know everything] and operations teams who knew more about the job queue/swift/etc but didn't know that much about MediaWiki file management and didn't really have anyone to ask.). WMF could have a small team dedicated to keeping the lights on and improving robustness for backend multimedia support. It needn't cost 10 million plus, and having a team working on that stuff would mean institutional knowledge is less lost, which would allow for putting together reasonable proposals on where to invest limited resources in this area. Bawolff (talk) 21:38, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
I wholly agree, but that would just keep the lights on for existing functionality. It does not solve the fundamental issue of large file support, an increased storage demand, hardware encoding and decoding via dedicated gpu's (integrated through kubernetes), adaptive bitrate streaming and all the other many things required for the ever increasing size of video. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:42, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
@TheDJ: Do you mean reverting the huge overwrite? Should the huge version be moved to a separate filename, or just discarded as unsourced and currently unusable? — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:58, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
Reverting the huge overwrite yes. Only current versions are transcoded, so older versions are straight 4GB to your mobile phone via 3G if you are so unlucky, but people aren't very likely to view the old version of a video. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:01, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
As I say below, the issue is not one of file size, but of glitchy codec support. WMF needs to update to a version of ffmpeg that doesn't choke on AV1 grain synthesis. I figured they would have done so by now, but I have no control over that. This is actually important even for shorter videos (since it causes transcodes to fail for shorter videos too).
Worst comes to worst, I would rather temporarily overwrite this with a manual transcode into AV1 without grain synthesis. This would be a larger file (probably almost 5GB), but this would solve our issue. At the time I uploaded this, the limit was still under 4GB.
I'm not home at my computer where I'd have my own files, but this is my own cut and render of the film. The main source is the Blu-ray, but the credits sequence is at least partly based on another source (since this was edited in the Blu-ray version). Also, I recall that I made the cut frame-conform to the version already on Commons. After cutting it together, I rendered it to this AV1 file using ffmpeg. It's not from an external source. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 17:14, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
If the source is the Bluray, the file information and sourcing on the description page should be updated to reflect this. It now pretends to come from the internet archive, and that doesn't seem to be true. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:45, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
While i can't say for sure, most likely WMF is using whatever version of ffmpeg that the OS (Debian) they are using ships with. There isn't really a dedicated team responsible for backend multimedia stuff at Wikimedia. Using a different version of ffmpeg (or any software program) than the one shipping with debian requires a bunch of work to test it, make sure it stays up to date, generally be responsible for it, etc. If there is no team volunteering to do the necessary work and be responsible for any unexpected consequences of using a custom version of ffmpeg, than it is not going to happen [This is my personal view, I have no inside knowledge on this, if someone from WMF tells you something different you should ignore me]. Bawolff (talk) 21:08, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
@Yann: Unrealistic restrictions on memory. Surely, they can provide one machine with enough memory to transcode our biggest videos. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:33, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
No. This is wrong. It has nothing to do with the size of the video. It has to do with the version of ffmpeg used failing to process AV1 correctly. This video uses the grain-related features of AV1. The old version of ffmpeg used by WMF chokes on this because it doesn't properly support the codec. Videos of extremely large size that don't use this codec feature work fine. See phabricator. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 17:00, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
@Yann @Jeff G. @TheDJ @C.Suthorn please note this has almost nothing to do with the file's size. Large videos such as File:The Kid (1921).webm which do not use the grain synthesis feature of AV1 work fine. Meanwhile, my test videos of even thirty seconds that use AV1 grain synthesis would fail. The issue is that there is a memory leak in this older version of ffmpeg (it works fine in current versions). It's not that the video files are too big to be processed. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 17:05, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for this information. Falling to upgrade to the latest version of a free software is even worst that not having servers big enough. :(( Yann (talk) 17:12, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
I can understand being conservative about updating software for the sake of stability. It's just that this old version of ffmpeg has a bad bug with dealing with this feature of the AV1 codec. There is nothing wrong with the video files themselves.
The best stopgap solution, actually, is for me to re-encode using AV1 without grain synthesis. This will be a little bit worse and/or produce a slightly bigger file, but it will decode properly. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 17:20, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
It's a bit complicated, but the basic idea is that it separates the compression of film grain from the compression of the underlying video. The thing is, a lot of things shot on film have a ton of grain, and the grain is basically random, and, though it being present is desired (you don't want an unrealistically smooth film), the detail of the grain itself does not matter content-wise in the same way the actual image matters. AV1 supports a number of methods for internally separating the grain from the other content, which makes doing a high-quality encode of content shot on film much more efficient. Of course, it is possible to store grain at high quality — look at any Blu-ray — but this normally requires huge file sizes (again, look at any Blu-ray). D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 17:47, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
@TheDJ @Yann@Jeff G. I uploaded a new re-encode which doesn't use AV1 GS. The file is actually a bit bigger, but of inferior quality. The encodes should work, but the file should be reverted after ffmpeg is updated. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 03:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
It was actually reported, it is phab:T357215. If someone wants to experiment with ffmpeg and find a solution, I'm more than willing to adapt the pipeline, but someone will have to invest a couple of hours to find a sustainable change that is smaller than 'update ffmpeg' (I wouldn't be surprised if the issue isn't even in ffmpeg, but in one of its dependencies). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:48, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
Last October, I helped the new Commons user @erictétreault upload files to illustrate the article CHAA-FM on Wikipedia.
However, the user @lachuckthebuck made several deletion requests even though these files are perfectly legitimate.
@JBouchez: Assuming for the moment that Eric Tétreault is the person in charge of that station, and that the station has an internet domain, email from an email system connected to the station's domain should suffice. Alternatively, if no such email system exists, email from an official address referred to on their website or social media (or referral to that ticket on such website or social media) should also suffice. Answering any followon queries is mandatory, or the ticket stays in resolved status with the files still deleted. Good luck. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:22, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
I see!
I do believe he owns a professional email address linked with the radio station, but I'm not sure if he used it when answering to the request. I'll contact him and check everything. I better understand the process now.
JBouchez, we received the mail and the permission was not sufficient. Eric was instructed on how to send permission in the response by an agent but we've received no reply so far. Consider using COM:RELGEN which will make it easier to generate a permission release statement and then send it to VRT. Ratekreel (talk) 22:23, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks alot for your follow up. I sent an email to Éric Tétreault to explain what he has to do, via COM:RELGEN. He will start with one file (the official logo of the radio station) and he will use his admin email to answer to someone from the VRT project. He is absolutely not used to that (I'm not as well), he created his Wikipedia account a couple of months ago. JBouchez (talk) 18:56, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
Happy New Year to everybody! A quarter of the century is over. A century that is being recorded real-time in Wikipedia and its sister projects, including Commons, with everything freely available to everyone. In 1999, I couldn't even dream this would be so, much less that I would be contributing a (very tiny) part of it. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:58, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
Abzeronow originally proposed one solution for Commons, but Rudolph Buch has suggested several alternatives, and I have a different idea of my own, and I want to make sure we have at least a strong consensus before moving files. Proposals C, D, and E all come from Rudolph Buch; I've done my best not to alter any of his meaning but you can check [10] to verify that. Keep in mind that due to templating, there are many templates on various wikis that will necessarily use File:Flag of Syria.svg.
C) Do nothing and to trust the wiki editors in updating their pages.
D) Rename File:Flag of Syria.svg to File:Flag of Syria (1980).svg without leaving a redirect. This will lead to a huge amount of broken image links (which is bad) but prompt the editors to check what flag is right for the respective page (which is good).
E) let a bot replace File:Flag of Syria.svg by File:Flag of the Syrian revolution.svg at all wiki pages. [If I understand correctly, this means to bot-edit all of the sister projects, rather than change anything at Commons. @Rudolph Buch, please let me know if that is not what you meant.]
I believe the following remark from Rudolph Buch sums up his objection to proposal A (and presumably to proposal B): "Would that automatically feed the new flag into ~500 Wikipedia pages regardless of context and caption? Like when File:Flag of Syria.svg is now used to illustrate that this is the flag that was adopted in 1980 and after the move it shows the 2024 flag without hint in the page history or any other warning to the Wikipedia editors?" User:The Squirrel Conspiracy replied to that (in part), "Correct. However the projects have backed themselves into a weird corner because there's also templates that - instead of asking for an image - automatically pull the file with the name "Flag of [country name].svg" - and those would have the wrong image if we don't move it."
Further thought: in both proposal A and proposal B, if we allow "Move and replace" to take place when we move File:Flag of Syria.svg to Flag of the United Arab Republic (1958–1971), Flag of Syria (1980–2024).svg, that will change all explicit uses of File:Flag of Syria.svg in sister projects to use the new name, which will show up in the relevant page histories, watchlists, etc. It will not affect those pages where a template generates "[[:File:Flag of Syria.svg]]. In contrast, proposal E is likely to change exactly the uses that specifically meant this particular flag, while not solving the issue for template uses, and proposal D will break all the template usages. So 'my own "ranked choices" would be B, A, C, while definitely opposing D or E. - Jmabel ! talk01:28, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
I'd be fine with B if we know it won't break any templates so for me I'd favor A or B* (*providing it doesn't break templates) over C. I also would oppose D because it breaks pages and would be out of harmony with variants (which is why I proposed the name I did, it stays in harmony with variants). I also would oppose E since it could break templates. Abzeronow (talk) 17:15, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
I am going with "B". Abzeronow, the original proposer says he is fine with it. I think it works best. No one else seems to be saying Rudolph Buch's approaches are better. - Jmabel ! talk18:23, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
Made the moves, but the "replaces" apparently did not work as I wished. It looks like there were a lot of uses of things like {{Flag entry|Width=200|Image=Flag of Syria.svg|Caption=Syria}} even for things that were about a specific year. Not a great choice. I think there is a ton of hand work to do, no matter what.
I'll do my best to take this on, starting with Commons itself, then en-wiki. If someone wants to help on some other wiki, please say so here and have at it. - Jmabel ! talk18:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
@Abzeronow: are you sure about that Commons Delinker command you just gave? I'm going through these by hand, and seeing some I don't think should be changed, although admittedly the bulk of them should. - Jmabel ! talk20:03, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
I think it probably should be removed. I'm finding it runs about 60% should change, 20% certainly shouldn't, and an awful lot of tricky judgment calls where I am trying to leave messages for more appropriate people to decide. - Jmabel ! talk20:19, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
@Abzeronow: I'm finding more and more that should not change. Yes, we should definitely remove the command. In fact, since you said you are OK with that, I'll do it. - Jmabel ! talk20:23, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
Now that I have a larger sample: at the early time of my remark above, I just happened to hit a bunch that should change. I've looked at maybe 1500 pages now, and less than a hundred specifically wanted the Assad-era flag. So (1) this is overwhelmingly correct as it is and (2) there is still going to be a lot of hand-correction in a lot of wikis, way more than I personally can do. - Jmabel ! talk22:37, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
I have left this note at en-wiki. Similar notes on other wikis would be useful. ar-wiki would be a priority, and I don't read, write, or speak Arabic. - Jmabel ! talk23:45, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to the proposal itself (in fact I do support it!), but the point is we should first clean up old usage of the flag, and then change the redirects, since this is a national flag widely used on all wikis. The issue was brought to me by members of the local community finding lots of articles showing historically erroneous Syria flags, which could not be instantly changed at once, and need time or outside assistance (e.g. global replace tool) for doing so. —— Eric Liu（Talk）05:07, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
@Ericliu1912: Based on my experience so far in cleaning up several hundred of these in en-wiki, it is going to be very hard to identify what needs to be cleaned up if we don't make the change first. How do you propose to identify the places that are affected? - Jmabel ! talk05:11, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
And is it possible to have a one-time global replace done, replacing all non-Country data usage of "File:Flag_of_Syria.svg" with "File:Flag_of_Syria_(1980–2024).svg"? I guess that would ultimately do the job. —— Eric Liu（Talk）05:18, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
@Ericliu1912: No, that would definitely not do the job. It's a long story, some of which is above. I want to give you this quick reply now, because explaining in detail will take 15+ minutes. I'll write out the more complicated picture and then post that. - Jmabel ! talk05:27, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
I guess it is appropriate that we leave notes to the communities using Country data Syria templates on their Village Pump respectly. —— Eric Liu（Talk）05:39, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
But I wonder why it'd not work? As all direct (non-Country data) global usage of "File:Flag_of_Syria.svg" currently were indeed just "File:Flag_of_Syria_(1980–2024).svg", the replacement should mostly be smooth and sufficient. Even is it not enough in some cases like certain template wrap usage, we could still go ahead and replace most of the current links first, that should also decrease the burden for the remaining manual changes. —— Eric Liu（Talk）05:41, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
@Ericliu1912: Why a global search-and-replace is a bad idea here (and also almost impossible to do in an effective manner):
Many—I strongly suspect most—of the places where the Syrian flag is used should switch to the new flag. The following is a representative set of examples, though certainly not exhaustive.
All geographical articles should be using the current flag, not the flag of a prior regime.
There are presumably a lot of templates in Category:Templates related to Syria that use a flag. Those should all use the current flag, not the flag of a prior regime.
Any infoboxes related to geography that contain a flag should all use the current flag, not the flag of a prior regime.
As far as I'm aware, the new government of Syria, presuming it is widely recognized, which appears to be happening, will inherit (or already has inherited) all of Syria's positions in international organizations, e.g. the UN and its various affliates, the organization of non-aligned states, status as a signatory of various treaties unless the new government were to renounce those. All of those should update to the current flag.
If you think about how flag files are used, search-and-replace is very tricky. They are almost never used in a syntax that writes out File:Flag of Syria.svg in the wikitext. For example, there are templates that effectively do File:Flag of [COUNTRY].svg, or that get at these other ways. If that's not clear, I'll elaborate; I'm trying to get you a response quickly, so I'm not approaching this at essay length.
Also: when the template is updated, if there is anything that should permanently use the current revolutionary flag regardless of future regime changes, there should be a way to specify that, too. Let's not get caught in the same thing again! (en-wiki has already done this.) - Jmabel ! talk05:50, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
I understand the difficulties, so I suggest that we at least (1) replace direct file links and update about ~110 Country data Syria templates (which is the most obvious and widely-used template), adding a "1980" alias for them (and maybe an "opposition/revolution" alias too, just in cases which do "permanently use the current revolutionary flag"); (2) list the rest of the templates that indeed embed File:Flag of Syria.svg (in a historical context) and try to do the replacement; (3) regretfully ignore the rest like File:Flag of [COUNTRY].svg you mentioned above and change the redirect to the opposition flag, at the same time also notifying the communites, reminding them to finish rest of the work. —— Eric Liu（Talk）06:05, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
@Ericliu1912: In my experience (mainly Commons and en-wiki) there is very little correlation between how the file was used (in a technical sense) and why it was used (to refer to a regime or a country). I think each wiki is going to have to work out for itself what is right for how usage is shaped on that wiki. No matter how we do this, there is going to be a LOT of hand-work, because neither case ("it meant the country" or "it meant the regime") is clearly dominant. This isn't going to be an 80-20 case, it's more in the range of 60-40. My personal guess is that more cases mean country than regime, but (on en-wiki, at least, which I'm guessing is typical of the Wikipedias in this respect) it's not dramatically more.
The more a given Wikipedia covers events relative to how much it covers geography, the more often it will mean a regime. But right now it is totally jumbled together.
This suggests a large area in which we have not at all future-proofed (for the hundreds of other countries in the world). Wikipedia wasn't around in 1989-1992, or we would have recognized this as a potentially major issue up front when we designed flag-related templates. - Jmabel ! talk06:16, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Which is to say, among other things: be cautious about replacing direct file links, they might have either meaning. - Jmabel ! talk06:18, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
I believe I've successfully gotten the word out to the English, Spanish and Romanian Wikipedias, and I presume Ericliu1912 is driving this on the Chinese Wikipedia, but does anyone have a way to spread the word more broadly? - Jmabel ! talk02:32, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
but sooner or later we should change the redirect after doing requests in the others Wikipedias. Currently the situation is not normal. Because for lots of templates we have still the old flag when he is not used in a political context. In some cases, we could change the flag manually, but in others no. Panam2014 (talk) 10:46, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
So what do we do? At some point we clearly need to have File:Flag of Syria.svg redirect to the current flag of Syria, and if we can't inform other wikis in advance, someone is going to feel blindsided, just like zh-wiki appears to have felt first time around. - Jmabel ! talk00:43, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Is someone going to pick up the ball here, or are we just going to wait a month or two and then have a crisis when someone makes the appropriate redirect of File:Flag of Syria.svg? I've put about 16 hours into this (mostly on en-wiki, some of it here on Commons, and on es-wiki and ro-wiki). I feel that is more than my share. - Jmabel ! talk18:15, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
I could do some on frwiki as my French is decent enough to do it. I also keep getting edit requests to change the current redirect for Flag of Syria back to what we originally did. Abzeronow (talk) 19:59, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
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This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:24, 10 December 2024 (UTC) 
Done Artist died in 2017. These won't be in the public domain before 2088. Yann (talk) 12:12, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
Oppose). Multichill (talk) 20:34, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
Support I don't know why, but from what I've seen there's some pretty obtuse category trees on here having to do with Germany. Way more so then with other countries for some reason. This category structure being an especially horrible example of the wider problem. So I say delete it. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:10, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
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Comment I am very open to discussion. Making AI takes me a lot of time. It is difficult and the results are questionable. We must explore this path, it is a tool, we must learn.
Chinmayee Mishra 05:44, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
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Question pinging @Yann:any opinion?? (google translator). AbchyZa22 (talk) 21:02, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
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