Commons:Village pump/Archive/2020/11

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How to mark images with upload issues?

All images from Special:ListFiles/Kállai Szaby have had some problems during upload that caused them to not load completely. Which template from Category:Image cleanup templates should be used to mark them? Gikü (talk) 12:06, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

@Gikü: {{Broken file|filetype=JPEG}} seems like the one. – BMacZero (🗩) 16:56, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
@BMacZero: It is, thank you! Gikü (talk) 17:00, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Any other examples?

Category:Overhead lines suspended by concrete archesIs this contruction only in the Netherlands?Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:42, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

In the USA there are historic examples left, see this blog. Couldn't find mention of any in the UK. --Fæ (talk) 19:07, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Edit protections?

I know on Wikipedia, there is the Wikipedia:Protection policy that protects articles from being edited by those who are not confirmed users. However, I don't seem to find anything similar on Commons. Only asking this because the file QarabaghWarMap(2020).svg is experiencing some edit conflicts, accuracy issues and possible canvassing.--WMrapids (talk) 14:56, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Never mind, found it!--WMrapids (talk) 15:06, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

PD-Art vs. PD-scan

Having done some housekeeping of sorts, I began to wonder: why should {{PD-Art}} and {{PD-scan}} be two separate templates? They seem to do the same thing and have the same effect. It was suggested back in June 2015 that the difference is that the United Kingdom and related countries may recognize copyrights in PD-Art files (where the work is taken from something of a distance) but not PD-scan files (where you just run a scanner). However, I think even UK law would see PD-Art files as unoriginal, in light of advice given by the British Intellectual Property Office in November 2015 where it says that the European Court of Justice. Not helping is part of the Bridgeman v. Corel ruling that led to these templates existing to begin with actually takes the position that UK law would not recognize new copyrights in such photographs, citing Interlego AG v Tyco Industries Inc and its refusal to give a new copyright to a work that is nothing more than slavish copying. Is the difference relevant somewhere else that I'm not thinking of? -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 01:52, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT: does not always work as expected

I have experienced that in categories such as Category:Jim Lauderdale DEFAULTSORT is required because otherwise it comes under the J of Jim in the subcategories. In the Category:Lauderdale (surname) the DEFAULTSORT does not work however. In that category is also given Category:Mandy Lauderdale, sorted on the M of her given name. In the subcategories of Category:Mandy Lauderdale her name is sorted correct althought there is no DEFAULTSORT used. The wikidata work apparently correct in that case. I checked a few other names in the huge category of Surnames and there it seems correct. Is there an explanation for that? Wouter (talk) 12:50, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

In surname categories people are or should be sorted by their given names, because otherwise all Lauderdales would be sort under L within Category:Lauderdale (surname), which could become a bit unfortunales in large surname cats like Category:Smith (surname). Thats mostly done by the {{Wikidata Infobox}} where used in the individual peoples cats. Otherwise it shoulkd be done manually. --JuTa 14:04, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
PS: the DEFAULTSORT is nor needed in i.e. Category:Jim Lauderdale because it uses {{Wikidata Infobox}} and "given name" and "family name" are set in the corresponding wikidata item. --JuTa 14:06, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Indeed now DEFAULTSORT is not required anymore. I checked it yesterday in Category:Bluegrass musicians and the it came under the J of Jim. Apparently it takes a night before wikidata does its job. I checked other categories of people I have created where I added the DEFAULTSORT because the sorting was wrong. Now it is correct without the DEFAULTSORT. Wouter (talk) 08:43, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
A nulledit might help to the at after something was modified/added on wikidata for it. --JuTa 16:25, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
I created a few hours ago Category:Daniel Ioniță. The sort was wrong in for example Category:Translators from Australia. A purge did not help but indeed a nulledit did help. Thanks. Wouter (talk) 16:48, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

"bereits bedankt" nicht mehr verfügbar, wenn man "InPrivate"/"Inkognitomodus" surft, mit einem anderen Browser/PC unterwegs ist bzw. nach dem Löschen des im Browser Cache

Es wäre prima, wenn "bereits bedankt" dauerhaft wäre. "Bereits bedankt" ist nicht mehr verfügbar, wenn man "InPrivate"/"Inkognitomodus" surft (neue Sitzung), mit einem anderen Browser/PC unterwegs ist bzw. nach dem Löschen des im Browser Cache. --Molgreen (talk) 04:43, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

@Molgreen: Odd, but I'd suggest that you would suggest this at the Phabricator, as that is where technical suggestions and alterations to the MediaWiki software should go. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 06:14, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
@Donald Trung: thank you very much for the hint. I have opened a ticket: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T266381 --Molgreen (talk) 10:23, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

File:Circular Quay, Sydney NSW 10th August 1908.jpg

I uploaded this file and found on it a new licensing comment "manual review is required to verify the file is indeed Public Domain in the source country and in the US". This image like the others I wish to upload was taken in Australasia by a Canadian and published on Flickr by the current holder, a Canadian Community Archive. All the photographs were taken between 1907 and 1910. Am I right to believe they can take the licence CC by SA 4.0? Thanks, Eddaido (talk) 12:35, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  • @Eddaido: From what you are saying, I would think they can't possibly take the licence CC by SA 4.0. That would mean that someone owns the copyright and is granting the license. Who are you saying owns the copyright, and where did they grant the license? - Jmabel ! talk 16:52, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Jmabel for responding. The licence CC by SA 4.0 appeared there without my involvement (is this AI?) but I guess the community archive assumes they own the copyright in anything they hold and can publish it with a Public domain licence. Eddaido (talk) 20:57, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
  • @Eddaido and Jmabel: The photo is definitely out of copyright in Australia (it was taken in Australia before 1955, so it qualifies for a "{{PD-Australia}}" tag) and in out of copyright in Cananda (it was taken by a Canadian citizen/resident before 1949, so qualifies for a "{{PD-Canada}}" tag. I believe that the publication date can be assumed to be Christmas 1910 as that was the date the album was presented to Mrs T.J.P. Power by somebody called "Heine". Mrs Power had the right to sell the album whenever she wished which makes this the publication date. It therefore meets all three requirements for a "{{PD-1966}}" tag (One is sufficient). SInce it is out of copyright a CC-SA tag is inappropriate. Rather it should have the tags described above. Martinvl (talk) 20:16, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
Many thanks Martinvl. Eddaido (talk) 20:57, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

PopComPics - Website to check popularity of user's Commons pictures

PopComPics

Hi all,

I have created a little web app to check how many times each picture of a certain Commons user has been utilized in Wikimedia projects. I called it...

PopComPics (Popular Commons Pics)

Hopefully it can be useful to some of you as well. If you know of a better place to announce this tool please don't hesitate to tell me.--Renek78 (talk) 18:43, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

@Renek78: I just tried it. Input my username. Nothing happens. How does it work? Thanks. Rodhullandemu (talk) 20:02, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Additional: Something flashed up to tell me it can't cope with more than 20,000 images. I have 23090 images here. Could it show, say, the first 1000? Rodhullandemu (talk) 20:07, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Try https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/glamorous.php?doit=1&username=Rodhullandemu&use_globalusage=1&show_details=1. This does not look as nice and is limited to the top 1000 images, at least for the details. But it works. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 20:16, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Hi Rodhullandemu, the top 20000 pics should appear after a while. Just now I am about to implement a loading animation so it gets clearer, that the data is still being downloaded. Gonna need a bit more time. Thanks for trying and giving feedback. Edit: There is a general problem with certain filenames, which contain special characters (e.g. "_, @, &, ...). Need to have a look at that. Robert Flogaus-Faust, this site is nice! Should have asked here before wasting my time on coding something up... --Renek78 (talk) 20:33, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
glamorous breaks on my account. I suspect that most queries will timeout and leave any of these tools hanging when handling large numbers. --Fæ (talk) 11:43, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
I just tried https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous.php?doit=1&username=F%C3%A6&use_globalusage=1&show_details=1 and it worked just fine on my computer, but the tool needed a couple of minutes to go through those 5262104 files. However, the details are still restricted to 1000 files, which is just a tiny part of your 98858 files that are used somewhere. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 22:12, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
Rodhullandemu, I think I was able to fix the problem. Your username works okay now on my computer. It is a painfully slow process for this amount of pictures though. Needed to wait roughly a minute until the table was rendered and 2.6MB of data had to be downloaded. But I have some ideas to improve the loading time a little. Thank you again for trying it out. Helped me to improve it.
Fæ, I was not able to find the user you mentioned. --Renek78 (talk) 21:14, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
@Renek78: Thanks for taking a look at it. I realise I may be an edge case (in so many ways) but it's nice to have choices here in case, for some reason, one or other tool is inoperational. Late here, and I'll try it tomoz. Cheers. Rodhullandemu (talk) 21:42, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
If my account is not shown, that's probably due to not character encoding correctly. "F%C3%A6" = "Fæ". --Fæ (talk) 09:43, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Hi Fæ, there was a treshold of 3 characters in place, after which the user name search engine only kicked in. I removed this artificial limitation. Your name works for me now. But same problem as with Rodhullandemu: You need to be very patient. Thanks for the hint. --Renek78 (talk) 11:00, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Any request for users with more than 4000 pictures fails suddenly. Maybe the API limit has been changed. Sorry, nothing I can do there... --Renek78 (talk) 20:29, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Works again. --Renek78 (talk) 21:46, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

RIAA threatens that youtube-dl is illegal and forces GitHub removal

The Recording Industry Association of America has successfully made GitHub remove youtube-dl yesterday by unilaterally declaring it "illegal", along with variations which have been used for several years by Commons and other open knowledge projects to legitimately and legally extract and archive videos shared on YouTube. This kills a number of our long term projects, such as maintaining copies of verified public domain medical related videos from the CDC YouTube stream.

There are obvious implications as to how Wikimedia projects across our community use YouTube for streaming conferences and video guides, as it can no longer be recommended that videos are shared on YouTube with the intention of later uploading versions to Commons.

An unbiased looking news report is at ZDNet. Apart from recommending that our projects try not to use or promote YouTube, do we have any recommendations of what to use instead? --Fæ (talk) 13:29, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

<snark>Can we unilaterally declare RIAA to be illegal, then? That'd be swell.</snark> — Huntster (t @ c) 15:11, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
It is a clear pattern. YouTube also blacklisted video2commons in 2019 –a clear violation of the spirit of the CC–BY license that many uploaders chose. Google donated 2 Million dollar to Wikipedia in 2010, and the same amount of money again in 2019. Perhaps it wouwld be a good idea for the Wikimedia Foundation to ask Google not to give money, but to teach their daughter company YouTube to share a bit more. If YouTube really puts moneymaking first (as they seem to do), they should stop talking about sharing with ohters and promoting digital wellbeing. Vysotsky (talk) 15:42, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
Its a bit misleading to say they blocked video2commons specifically, if all video2commons did was hit rate limits that apply to everyone. Bawolff (talk) 02:28, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
You can still download it at https://youtube-dl.org/. Hard to imagine it will disappear entirely. --ghouston (talk) 04:25, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
Trouble is, for the past year or longer, YouTube has been actively stamping down on automated downloads of any kind, so working around getting a copy of youtube-dl does not mean you can use it. Every batch upload project relying on YouTube has ended and become unusable as IPs are systematically blocked. They may not openly state it, but Google's actions here are to ensure that YouTube cannot be used for open knowledge projects, it's a money making machine not a public repository. --Fæ (talk) 11:58, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Nichalp-Upload_script

Hi, is someone known to have used (or tried) the Nichalp-Script and/or the anuta-Script ?
I'm trying hard to get that stuff to work, and could need every possible help. --Itu (talk) 11:44, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

If you want to customize code, wouldn't it be a lot easier to use Pywikibot's site.upload module rather than navigating perl scripts which are a lot less used? --Fæ (talk) 11:54, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
Its hard for me to know what brings me to success earlier. With the Nichalp/anuta i indeed feel i'm not so far from .... --Itu (talk) 12:14, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Please delete Template:Unsplash/zh-hant and Template:Unsplash/zh-hans

Only translate in zh. Pseudo Classes (talk) 14:58, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Anti-flooding proposal for Gadget-ACDC

Marking this as withdrawn by proposer. As the proposer, don't reopen this please. Blatant off-wiki canvassing, the club mentality, and off-wiki personal attacks demonstrates that the topic of Structured Data has become one where civil discussion and basic proposals are impossible to raise openly, even by established editors. Now washing my hands. --Fæ (talk) 08:57, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Proposal
All edits creating structured data statements by the gadget ACDC must be marked as minor in order to minimize watchlist flooding and recent change flooding.

The tool that anyone can use to make thousands, or millions, of edits Gadget-ACDC is responsible for flooding watchlists with changes that are marked as "major" and are not bot changes, despite behaving precisely as a bot account. The tool may be used to make multiple edits to the same file, there being no "rules" about how structured data statements should be added in a way that minimizes their disruption. As of today, most of the edits shown on my own watchlist are edits using ACDC.

Edits are marked as being by the using account, but the user has no option to mark the edits as minor. The gadget was developed by Lucas Werkmeister (talk · contribs). --Fæ (talk) 09:37, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Votes
  •  Support as proposer. --Fæ (talk) 09:37, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Comment Fæ, what do you want me to do about this? I said just yesterday on the talk page (section link) that there’s no technical way to mark any structured data edits as minor, as far as I’m aware. --Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 09:56, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
    Raise a Phabricator ticket, get the system fixed. There's no doubt that you have good intentions, but the current behaviour of this gadget is unacceptable. A "bot" that massively floods watchlists with millions of edits should be blocked until it is fixed, that is the norm for this project, just because a few folks are fanatical about Structured Data, does not make any bot that touches it exempt from project norms, such as flagging bot edits as bot edits or marking them as minor. --Fæ (talk) 10:04, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
    “Millions of edits”? According to Special:Tags, over the last 13 months, there have been 520,000 edits made with AC/DC. Jean-Fred (talk) 14:50, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
    Diese Edits sind aber nicht gleichverteilt über 13 Monate und 1 Million User, sondern sie kommen stoßweise und betreffen gerade solche User, die viel Content beisteuern und den selbst hochgeladenen Content im Auge behalten (WAS JA GERADEZU GERFORDERT WIRD VON DEN HOHEN TIEREN HIER). Schon wenn 1001 Edits innerhalb von 24 Stunden (und es sind ja nicht 24 Stunden, die Edits schlagen viel schneller auf!) aufschlagen, ist die eigene Beo wertlos. --C.Suthorn (talk) 15:31, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Apologies, you are correct, it's hundreds of thousands of edits rather than millions. Could you explain why people are still complaining about their watchlists being filled up with crap they have no interest in, and why you are still finding excuses not to fix this problem and instead marginalize them as fringe contributors to this project? Thanks so much. --Fæ (talk) 16:47, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
      I am taking this discussion very seriously − which is why I am trying to have it grounded in facts − how exactly is this finding excuses or marginalizing anyone?
      Conversely, I find your characterization of “a few folks […] fanatical about Structured Data” certainly marginalizing ; and while I can’t know who you mean by that, personally I find that this adjective has very negative undertones − I hope we can agree that this kind of characterizations are unhelpful to a productive discussion. In the same way, qualifying the gadget implementer as “fanboys” is not helpful, as I’m sure you realized as you saw fit to redact this comment − whether it was targeting Lucas Werkmeister (as the author) or myself (as the one who initially made it a gadget). Can we discuss things without throwing around unfortunate epithets and/or incorrect numbers? Jean-Fred (talk) 12:19, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
This thread is being canvassed off-wiki. Consequently any outcome of this as a vote process will now lack any credibility or legitimacy in terms of assessing a consensus.
Was the content of your remarks, including the odd objection to text that is not actually here, apart from you writing it, influenced by any off-wiki canvassing, some of which is blatant harassment and abuse against your fellow Wikimedians?
Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:09, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Do you always answer questions with other questions? Do you always refuse to acknowledge (let alone address) the points made by your interlocutor? Do you always conclude that community discussions, should they not go the way you would hope, are necessarily influenced by external shadowy forces?
To answer your question: I am not aware of any canvassing of that thread, off-wiki or otherwise. By extension, none of my remarks were possibly influenced by any canvassing (whether alleged or confirmed). Abuse has no place anywhere on the Wikimedia projects, which is precisely why I take issues with divisive and offensive comments that you made in this very thread.
Jean-Fred (talk) 16:01, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
You are way, way over-blowing use of "the f-word", presumably deliberatedly to create a tangent. Yes, I removed it, because it was unhelpful, just as you having now raised complaints several times about something that is not here proves. I had thought you would be more sensible than to waste 500 words gaming discussion complaining about an innocuous and humorous word based on a 2009 comedy film, that was not here until you insisted on using it, which by definition pretty accurately reflects that some folks are obsessive about inserting structured data that nobody is actually using into Commons. Go read Fanboy (disambiguation), the word means what it means, nothing more, it's not a swear word or harassment, stop pretending that it is. --Fæ (talk) 16:24, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
No, because they’re not Wikidata edits – it’s Structured Data on Commons. --Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 11:03, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
The description of the Gadget says Edits are tagged "ACDC", so it is possible to filter the watchlist and not see the edits by the tool. --C.Suthorn (talk) 16:59, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Except, you can't. The watchlist design allows to filter for tags, but has no facility to filter out tags.
The Phabricator request should be to automatically mark all edits with this tag as minor or more generically, make it possible for users to mark major/minor edits of this type, which ought to be a fundamental feature for any type of project edit; it's bizarre it's been left out. --Fæ (talk) 17:16, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
You can: Save a number of watchlist filters: one that shows all edits, that are not file name space edits, the other filters all show only file name space. The first all bot edits, the next all minor edits, the next all non minor non bot edits that have any tag but the acdc tag. This way you will see all edits that are neither acdc tagged or not tagged at all in the file name space and non minor non bot. No this is not a joke. It is what I am doing because of user:Multichill and user:Schlurcher. I have repeatedly asked for help at village pump and may be at phab and at user:RIsler (WMF) but this is obviously community consensus and work as designed. --C.Suthorn (talk) 18:31, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Oppose I think this is asking for the wrong flag. My watchlist, too, has been filled with automated structured data changes over the past weeks – but those have been the changes of BotMultichill and SchlurcherBot, adding structured copyright information. And because those bots used the “bot” flag (which, unlike the “minor” flag, is supported by all Wikibase APIs), I can easily filter out those changes in my watchlist if I want to. Fæ correctly points out that AC/DC behaves much like a bot account – consequently, it already sets the “bot” flag on its own edits: all that’s missing is the “bot” right on the user to make that flag effective. Fæ, if those edits you complain about come from a small set of users, then I suggest you ask those users to request the bot flag for their accounts (or create separate bot accounts for their AC/DC edits), so that their edits can be filtered out using the appropriate flag. --Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 17:30, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Is this a joke? You are washing your hands of any responsibility and expect to force everyone that uses your gadget to request a bot flag on a new bot account to access it? The answer would be to block this gadget until it's fixed. This is like someone giving away free guns on a street corner, and making it everyone else's problem to ensure they have a gun license.
Flooding is a real problem, and this gadget is a cause of it by design, not a symptom of users behaving badly. If the later were true, then we can start creating a list of users that need to be threatened with blocks for misusing a bot tool without a bot flag. --Fæ (talk) 17:43, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Here's a list of recent users. Will users pinged here please cease using the ACDC tool without correctly using a bot flag account to do so, thanks!:
@Jarekt: @Rachmat04: @Christian Ferrer: @Raymond: @Nikki: @Strakhov: @Sadads: @AntiCompositeNumber: @El Grafo: @Jean-Frédéric: @J budissin: @Sandro Halank: @Spinster: @Tetzemann: @F. Riedelio: @Ciell: @Seewolf: @DanielleJWiki: @Lucas Werkmeister: @B2Belgium: @Higa4: @QTHCCAN: @Daniel Baránek: @Librarian lena: @DavidJRasp: @Caddyshack01: @Pduive23:
--Fæ (talk) 19:06, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Heu no, this is not a BOT. Just for info the ping did not work, I noticed this discussion in my watchlist. Christian Ferrer (talk) 19:18, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Just to be clear, you are supporting this proposal because you prefer the edits marked as minor, rather than the alternative suggested of requiring all gadget users to use bot accounts. --Fæ (talk) 19:28, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Neither, I have no specific opinion. This is not a BOT thus it should not be required any bot flag, I'm have no strong opinions about the fact to mark the edits as minor or not; or about all other alternative possibility that will allow to make them disappear for watchtlist, e.g. a selectionable filter in the watchlist interface, for this tool alone or for all semi-automated tools. Christian Ferrer (talk) 04:29, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
I have made 256 edits with AC/DC over the course of 13 months, many/most of which on my own uploads. The biggest batch was 132 edits 8 months ago ; the next one is 41 edits 1 month ago. Do I really “need to be threatened with blocks for misusing a bot tool”? Jean-Fred (talk) 12:28, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
This actually seems to be true though: according to this database query, 10% of AC/DC users are responsible for over 80% of the edits. Encouraging these users to use a bot account, and/or to keep in mind that their AC/DC edits can flood other people’s watchlists and space them accordingly, could be a way forward? Jean-Fred (talk) 12:44, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 Comment mw:Snippets/Mark_minor_edit seems relevant. --Snaevar (talk) 19:00, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Actually the opposite is true. Users can set Cat-a-lot preferences to make edits minor or major, and it's rather irrelevant for VFC, this is rarely the cause of flooding and almost everything it is regularly used for, like deletion requests, you would want shown in watchlists.
This proposal is not for a new "rule", it is to ensure that users are free to mark these edits as minor, or make it a default, in exactly the same way they can for cat-a-lot. --Fæ (talk) 19:56, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
That sounds more like a feature request. Do we want to start having a proposal for every feature request? --GPSLeo (talk) 07:39, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
This statement is illogical. The "feature request" would be to have a new type of Wikimedia Commons user edit that:
  1. cannot be marked as major or minor,
  2. will appear in everyone's watchlist who is unfortunate to watch the edited file pages,
  3. makes no change at all to the wikitext,
  4. the changes cannot be searched using the Wikimedia Commons search engine.
Please provide a link to the proposal that agreed this fundamental change in the way that this project functions. In the meantime, how about not blaming everyone that asks basic questions about why, for being bold enough to ask. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 09:44, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
The comparison to VisualFileChange is, actually, quite relevant. I had a look at the “custom replacements” VFC edits (which are unlikely to be deletion requests) since September 19th 2019 (same timeframe as AC/DC): there were 964,328 such VFC edits, and only 109,855 marked as minor (11%) − hence 854,473 major edits, vs 533,413 AC/DC edits.
To gauge the flooding potential, let’s look on the number of days where there were more than N edits made with either tool (depending on where you’d draw the line of what would be flooding):
Days with: VFC custom replacements AC/DC
> 100 major edits 383 days 274 days
> 1000 major edits 166 days 129 days
> 10,000 major edits 17 days 8 days
So unless my SQL is wrong (always possible), this would indicate that however you want to slice it, VFC custom replacements have been more likely to generate flood than AC/DC.
Jean-Fred (talk) 16:01, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
This example appears to prove the opposite. For VFC "almost everything it is regularly used for, like deletion requests, you would want shown in watchlists". Nobody is complaining about VFC flooding, because users are not being put out by it. The entire point of this proposal is to be able to mark edits as minor; which apparently you actually agree with, but are disagreeing to make some sort of political point that having a meaningful consensus is not something one should ever be bold enough to attempt and that we should hide these discussions in Phabricator where the vast majority of active contributors to this project with large watchlists would never see or never engage with. Consensus should be a good thing, not something to shoot down, or result in off-wiki personal attacks and lobbying. --Fæ (talk) 17:24, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
To clarify: as far as I know, deletion requests are made with VFC using the “Nominate for deletion” mode. As I said, the numbers above are specifically about the “Custom replace” mode.
(“The entire point of this proposal is to be able to mark edits as minor” [emphasis mine]: the proposal is literally “[edits] must be marked as minor”.)
Jean-Fred (talk) 10:33, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
For what it's worth: I use VFC heavily, mainly for two purposes:
Work on batches of photos that I myself uploaded. Obviously, it is unlikely someone else is "spammed" by that.
Refinements and sometimes other improvements to categories. I would guess that most of the time people whose photos are affected by that would want a notification. - Jmabel ! talk 23:01, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Oppose at this time. My sense is that, if done manually, I would expect almost all of the edits I'm seeing in the history to be marked as major because they add content. If flooding messages is the problem, then the flooding of edits is the root cause, and generating more material than can be reviewed would be what needs to be stopped. "Solving" the problem by making the minor edit flag mean something different from what it is supposed mean, just to get past some other unrelated problem, is an obvious violation of the most basic principles of system design. I would not be entirely adverse to a modified fix of allowing the user to choose, except that it seems to me that the intent would be to abuse that choice and mark changes minor when they are not. A better solution would be to add a separate flag to allow picking out mass changes in the same manner as bot edits are marked. Mangoe (talk) 00:06, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Oppose by Mangoe. And. by the way, actual bot edits to add structured data are currently much more prominent in my watchlist. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 07:49, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Correction:  Oppose marking gadget edits as bot edits.  Support the workaround marking these mass edits as minor edits to avoid flooding of watchlists. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 20:42, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Ihr diskutiert hier hin und her, argumentiert mit Regeln und Präzendenzfällen. Aber: SDC hat eine neue Qualität nach Commmons gebracht und die bestehenden Regeln und Abläufe sind damit überfordert. Die User sind damit überfordert. SDC kann so nicht funktionieren. Eher wird es User vertreiben, die viel Content beigesteuert haben oder das derzeit noch tun. Ich habe bereits in der Vergangenheit ein Moratorium für SDC-Edits vorgeschlagen, bis zumindest die bekannten Probleme gelöst sind. --C.Suthorn (talk) 07:50, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
How about just proposing to add a filter to the preferences to be able to exclude structured data edits from being shown on the watchlist / causing mails? This would be more useful than any of the suggested workarounds. The problem with structured data is that it is a new feature. So many old files get structured data by bots or by gadgets like AC/DC, filling up the watchlist entries. I could support stopping certain tools for structured data addition, such as Special:SuggestedTags, because this tool suggests mostly tags that are wrong or way too generic. But this is not the question here and at least many AC/DC edits appear to be correct, in spite of being a nuisance to some people because of watchlist flooding. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 15:42, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Support this proposal as a step in the right direction, although I would either block that app or preferably mark those edits as bot edits. My watchlist is useless since it started and at the beginning I didn't even know where they come from, was it announced and agreed upon somewhere? Let alone the amount of useless and wrong data that is being added there. Most people using the app just add very generic information like "it depicts a building" or "it depicts something in Spain" although much more accurate infos like "it depicts this church from that town" would be possible (but of course it requires more effort). To me, as said, close to bot behaviour. Poco a poco (talk) 08:04, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
    @Poco a poco: The behaviours you describe seems to be from other tools: the watchlist flood is likely more from the bots adding SDoC than this gadget ; and the “it depicts a building” from either Computer-aided_tagging and/or Suggested_Edits. Can you double-check? Just to make sure we are all talking about the same things :-) Jean-Fred (talk) 08:37, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
    In answer to the question, nobody can supply a link because there is no proper consensus to flood everyone's watchlists with dubious structured data edits using the ACDC gadget.
    Reminder, we block other people's accounts for watch-list flooding and then refusing to fix it. --Fæ (talk) 09:03, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Oppose requiring a bot flag to operate this tool as a hacky workaround. The tool may "behave" like a bot with its high edit rate, but in terms of what it actually does it's just a tool.  Support support for marking edits as minor, in Mediawiki and the Tool and/or filtering out tags from watchlist. – BMacZero (🗩) 18:47, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Support for marking edits as minor, in Mediawiki and the Tool and filtering out tags from watchlist.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 20:16, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Oppose I'm not convinced by the proposal and this is a useful tool. Pyb (talk) 05:59, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Support Users must be able to remove the junk (User:BotMultichillT and User:SchlurcherBot - afaic) from the watchlist. I support every measure to make that happen. Now. Alexpl (talk) 09:37, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
    @Alexpl: For clarity, this proposal would specifically not address the problem you are raising (as I understand it), because these two bots are not using the ACDC gadget which is under discussion here. Jean-Fred (talk) 12:47, 15 October 2020 (UTC) - If I click "filter bots", but several bots get not filtered, somebody messed up. So something needs to be done. If some modus operandi for this problem here is implemented, it can be used for other problems as well... So. Alexpl (talk) 13:24, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
    Nur dass die hier vorgeschlagenen Lösungen eben mehr als ADAC betreffen würden und eine massgeschneiderte Lösung aussschliesslich für ADAC garnicht wünschenswert ist und dass SDC so wie es ist ein Problem ist und keine Lösung, noch nicht mal eine Lösung auf der Suche nach einem Problem. (ach ja, und Hinweis auf das Forum, wo gerade die Teilnahme an einer Strategiesitzung angepriesen wird, wo es angeblich möglich sein soll, derartige Probleme zu thematisieren) --C.Suthorn (talk) 13:31, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
    No. I really dont want to talk to any those people. They screwed up and their "additions" should be reverted for extreme Zeitraubing and wasting storage space. But to allow every user to ban them from the watchlist, is the next best thing. Alexpl (talk) 14:10, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Oppose Useful gadget that the author has put effort into. And should not be marked as bot edit. -Premeditated (talk) 14:22, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Oppose, Fae, it's your turn, instead of complaining about other's great work & tools. "Raise a Phabricator ticket, get the system fixed." Cheers, --Jcornelius (talk) 15:56, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
    These work and tools by others are not great, if they fill up watchlists of users. --C.Suthorn (talk) 09:29, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
    I filed phab:T265573, and upped phab:T174349. Jean-Fred (talk) 16:01, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
  •  Oppose This proposal is flawed in several aspects:
    • It is a solution to an ill-defined problem. It seems like the cause for this proposal is that the proposer’s watchlist was one day flooded by AC/DC edits. Did this happen once, twice, every day? Was the flood caused by a single user, a handful of users or many users? Were these users newbies or experimented? Did this flooding happen to anyone else? Unclear. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not disputing that flooding happened, nor that it is a problem that even one person was flooded even only once. However, it is a good idea in general to try to understand the problem before putting a solution forward: it helps finding the right solution (random example: if the flood was coming from newbies [it is not], then the tool could be resticted to autoconfirmed users). I certainly don’t expect others to do that work (because, yes, it takes time and effort to crunch data) ; I’m
    • It is not done in a spirit of collaboration. One wonders why the proposer did not go to the Gadget talk page or the author’s talk page and say “hey, I got flooded really bad today, is there anything that can be done?”. Seeking dialogue is always a worthy first step.
    • It would be a strange double-standard: as noted by GPSLeo, VFC edits are not systematically marked as minor, and as I have showed above, spurts of VFC “custom replacements” not marked as minor have been taking place more than for AC/DC.
    • It is not implementable. It is not possible, technically, to mark SDoC edits as minor. I don’t know why this is the case, and arguably it should be changed (which is why I raised it at phab:T265573). But I’m baffled that the proposer put forward a proposal they knew was not implementable. It either makes this proposal pointless (and is then a gross disrespect of everyone’s time), or, based on this comment, was a ploy to get into a situation where the gadget “should be blocked until it [can conform]” − an outcome for which there would be no real legitimacy: some users might agree with the proposal that edits should be minor, but disagree that it is worth blocking the tool over it − if that was the goal, surely a proposal “Let’s block the gadget until X” would have been more useful and respectful.
    • A minor point, as noted by Mangoe above: it is at odds with the definition of minor edits. As we do not have, to the best of my knowledge, a policy/guideline on Wikimedia Commons about minor edits, I will assume that meta:Help:Minor_edit applies. It states that “A minor edit is a version that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute.” Now, Structured Data edits are many things, but clearly uncontroversial is not one of them :-)
    I would argue that the proper solution for this is either phab:T174349 or phab:T247433#6562667. We should definitely keep pressure on WMF to address these issues as soon as possible.
    Jean-Fred (talk) 16:01, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
I can't see the point of continuing this vote, off-wiki canvassing makes it pointless and a closure by anyone at this point would lack credibility as to what "consensus" would now mean. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:11, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Biggest file and picture with the highest resolution on Commons?

What is the biggest file (in how much it takes place on the servers) and what is the highest resolution picture you've got?

125.167.116.97 11:29, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

PS:I'm new here

There are several files tied in first place as the biggest file, at 4GB in size (at the file size limit), those are: File:Politparade.webm, File:Köln_Hauptbahnhof,_Juli_2020_02_part_1_of_2.webm, File:Genderwahn.webm, File:Dyke_March_Cologne_2020_01_part_1_of_2.webm, File:Dyke_March_Berlin_2020_003_part_1_of_2.webm and File:Dyke_March_Berlin_2020_002_part_1_of_2.webm.--Snaevar (talk) 12:55, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
Hi, and welcome. We also have 107 images in Category:Gigapixel images, some only completely available as tile sets due to file size. I think my largest upload is File:Waldseemuller map, complete 100%.jpg, 29,700 × 16,500 pixels, 490.05 Megapixels, 440.6 MB.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:44, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
An interesting observation, thanks to an apparent glitch, the largest reported media file is one of the recent COM:IA books uploads File:Books_from_the_Biodiversity_Heritage_Library_(IA_pliniussecundus00plin).pdf.
This is reported as being 4,473,916,666 × 4,473,916,666 pixels (20 exapixels)... it does not display.
Runner up is the apparent computer generated image File:Symbole Beyou .jpg at a modest 65,500 × 65,500 pixels, which does display. --Fæ (talk) 15:50, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
The really funny part of the IA file, is according to the metadata, the physical size of the page is 758x758 kilometeres big. For the curious, list of high resolution files at https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/49341 . Bawolff (talk) 02:52, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Nice measurement, that's more than big enough to neatly cover the entire surface of France. Perhaps we could propose a WMF grant of a couple of billion euros for a big print out? --Fæ (talk) 21:14, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Two separate Russian FOP deleted cases categories

Are two separate FOP categories for deleted Russian photos needed? These seem to create some confusion.

Since FOP is now OK for Russian architecture, I think the second mentioned category is superfluous, and the individual casepages should be moved to the first one (I think easy mass recategorization is possible by AWB, but I don't have that type of tool). Also the content at the second (sentence on top) should be moved to the first one. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 11:00, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

wpUploadDescription stopped working

Sometime between 02:04, 26 October 2020 (UTC) and 03:50 on the 29th, wpUploadDescription= as a URL parameter to Special:Upload started being ignored. I've long used that to pre-load the Summary box with some boilerplate. But now instead I only get a generic blank {{Information}} template. Anyone know who broke what where? DMacks (talk) 04:03, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

There were no code changes deployed during that time as far as I can tell (no train this week) - are you sure it was working on the 26th? --DannyS712 (talk) 04:14, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
According to my upload-log, I uploaded a file then that has a description matching my boilerplate (the "Upload a chemical structure" link on User:DMacks). Prior one to that was 02:28, 21 October 2020. I just tried enwiki, and it does work there. The one I uploaded a few minutes ago was manually copy-pasted, not via the URL magic. DMacks (talk) 04:21, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
It looks like a JavaScript issue, as adding &safemode=yes fixes things. I'm also not getting the ImprovedUploadForm. There haven't been any changes to that script either though. That was working the last time I uploaded something on 24 October 2020. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 04:26, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
@Krinkle: , who has made a bunch of changes to MediaWiki:*.js in the past few days. DMacks (talk) 04:30, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm going to second blaming Krinkle here, either for creating MediaWiki:Upload-default-description or for Special:Diff/502926856. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 04:40, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Sorry about that. This wasn't obvious in the old code. I've repaired it, and documented it for future reference. --Krinkle 04:42, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Works fine now. Thanks for the quick-fix! DMacks (talk) 04:45, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
@Krinkle: I think MediaWiki:Upload-default-description is what is causing MediaWiki:UploadForm.js to force the basic form at line 1255:
// Use the basic form if the description was set *initially*, or if it's a re-upload, or if it's a special
// form
		var useBasic = (originalDesc.defaultValue && originalDesc.defaultValue.length) ||
UF.isReupload ||
document.URL.indexOf('uselang=nlwikilovesmonuments') > 0;
In most cases, originalDesc would previously be empty, but now that MediaWiki is preloading the form server-side, UploadForm can't tell the difference between a blank form and a form with &wpUploadDescription. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 05:01, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

second wave COVID-19 France maps needed

In Category:Maps about the COVID-19 pandemic in France there is no map more recent than april 2020. Nothing about the second wave of the pandemic starting september/october. I to put the old files in a new subcategory: Maps about the COVID-19 pandemic in France (first wave).Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:05, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I want to rename the file to comply with De Minimis.

What I want to rename the file is: File:Lotte World Tower near Cheongdam Bridge.jpg

This photo was taken in South Korea, where there is no freedom of panorama, and can only be uploaded to De Minimis for posting on Wikimedia Commons.

In fact, photographs of buildings taken in countries where there is no freedom of panorama, such as France or the United Arab Emirates, are considered to be De Minimis and may remain intact without being deleted.

Many of the buildings in the image are blurry and difficult to identify, so it seems likely to meet De Minimis' requirements.

So I want to rename the file to File:View of Songpa-gu from Cheongdam Bridge.jpg.

After renaming the file, delete the existing redirect documents. The file name of the redirect document to be deleted is as follows.

File:Lotte World Tower near Cheongdam Bridge.jpg / File:Lotte World Tower in Cheongdam Bridge.jpg

--Ox1997cow (talk) 17:24, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

The name of a file does not influence its copyright status. Ruslik0 (talk) 20:54, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Adding images to a disambiguation category

I experienced that with cat-a-lot files can be added to a disambiguation category such as Category:Perth. I remember that sometimes I don't get this option, but have to select a more detailed category. How can you prevent files from being added to a disambiguation category inadvertently? Wouter (talk) 19:15, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

A disambiguation category where you have to select a more detailed category is Category:Shells Wouter (talk) 19:52, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

WebM - Lossy, lousy or both?

Hi all. Just uploaded a webm video, which looks a bit lousy / pixelated. Yet exactly the same video on You Tube looks fine. Anything I can do to get a better, crisper, higher resolution? Thanks! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 15:45, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Llywelyn2000, webm can be quite lossy, so that's part of it. The part you can control is the software you use for the conversion. Most of the free software solutions are absolutely terrible at converting to webm, even with maximum-quality settings selected. Recently, Avidmux was recommended to me, and I strongly recommend giving it a try. Just make sure you select (in the left column) VP9 for video, Vorbis for audio, and convert to Webm. Click "Configure" under Video Output and make sure quality is set to best (can't remember exact wording, not at my home computer atm). The program is a little more technical than other options, but the quality is superb. — Huntster (t @ c) 16:39, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Really thankful for this. One question: why is the upload on You Tube (see my link above) much better yet same file was uploaded to both sites? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 17:22, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Llywelyn2000, I'm looking back at things, and I'm wondering if you were seeing a lower-resolution version created by the Mediawiki software. I'm not sure how the back-end works for video, but I know the lower resolution encodes get finished first, followed later by the better quality encodes (which of course take more time). When you click on the video at File:Generating WP articles from WD.webmhd.webm and click on the little gear icon at lower right, is "WebM Source" selected or one of the lower resolutions? Honestly, the video is looking pretty good to me at the moment when it is in WebM Source mode. — Huntster (t @ c) 17:50, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
If it's possible for you to use Vimeo, that does the best conversions to Webm that I've been able to find. - Jmabel ! talk 17:52, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
@Huntster: No, HTML5 VP9 player is selected. No idea why. Can't seem to change it to the original. Is this the default? @Jmabel: i used Mirai Video Converter, and converted from a 1.48 GB mov file. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 18:02, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Llywelyn2000, I honestly cannot say why. I don't have that as an option, just "WebM Source", "sd 480p", "low 240p", "low 180p", "low 160p", and "low 120p". Anyone have some other thoughts? — Huntster (t @ c) 18:10, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Huntster Tried it this morning and the setting is on VP9 player! The quality is also excellent. So it must take time (over 24 hours!) for the MediWiki to finish encoding. If this is correct, then we need to improve it, otherwise users will be deleting their own stuff thinking that it's their fault. Thanks Llywelyn2000! Best regards... Llywelyn2000 (talk) 06:27, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@Huntster and Llywelyn2000: After 31.5+ hours, 3 transcodes haven't finished yet.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:42, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, I manually reset the transcodes for those that never finished, one yesterday as a test and the rest today. I think something just got stuck with this file, as I've not been having transcode issues myself. — Huntster (t @ c) 13:58, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
A few months ago I uploaded several videos and had quite a few issues where some transcodes needed resetting. Once reset they processed quickly. But I noted it is something an uploader has to check. PsamatheM (talk) 12:29, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

I did a few edits this morning, and uploaded another version here. This time, everything was done and dusted in 14 minutes!!! I'm a very happy person this morning, thanks to all of you!!! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 10:22, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Is this self-promotion?

In File:Land_Rover_Defender_110_First_Edition_2020_-_rear.jpg (a photograph of a Land Rover), the photographer (User:DeFacto) replaced the text on the registration plate with the text "D3F4CTO", a letter combination that could easily be read as his username. While blanking out a motor vehicle's registration plate for privacy purposes is commonplace, I believe that replacing it with text that alludes to the photographer's name contravenes COM:ADVERT. Any comments? Martinvl (talk) 22:03, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

My comment, meh. --Fæ (talk) 22:25, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
You asked this before https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2016/09#Is_this_self-promotion? Oxyman (talk) 23:49, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
On his own upload? Not a big deal. But it is sort of like a watermark, and probably deserves a template about retouching. - Jmabel ! talk 15:55, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Tbh I think his name over it ruins the image however they're his images and within reason he's free to do what he wants with them. Personally I don't really think it's self-promotion either. –Davey2010Talk 15:38, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Reporting a mistake at File:Astrological Chart -- New Millennium.svg

Please forward this wherever it should go - I was going to complain to the image author User:Fred the Oyster, but his page says he's banned.

The numbers outside the outer band of the circle are wrong. They're supposed to be degrees and minutes (e.g. 09°03' or 13°52') but instead both are written with the degree sign (10°30° and 13°52°). This should be easy to fix. The places where lines meet the degree grid also don't correspond with the numbers. The horizontal line is supposed to be at 09°03' at both ends, but it looks much more like it's at 10° on the left end at 8° on the right end, and doesn't look parallel (it should). This should be harder to fix.

I would fix it myself but I don't know how to edit SVG images. This image is in some templates on en.wikipedia and is used on a lot of pages. 93.136.69.44 20:44, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

US Embassy, Vienna

I came across the flickr stream from the US Embassy in Vienna. Unfortunately, it is one of the flickr streams consisting of images taken by employees of a US Federal agency where whoever runs the stream has chosen a restricted license.

I've sent them a flickrmail requesting they change their licenses to cc0. But I have another issue here.

I put a {{License review}} on these images. Unfortunately, in the past, I have found there is a rogue robot out there, that has been programmed to second guess choices of a {{License review}}, and quietly replaces them with a {{Flickrreview}}, when it recognizes the source is from flickr.

Of course, when the rogue robot second guesses me, and the flickrreview robot checks the incorrect license someone placed on these images, that review fails. Sometimes I catch those before the image gets deleted, and sometimes I don't. I'd like more sets of eyes here, and, if that bot is still active, I'd appreciate more help getting that bot under control.

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 23:42, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Why CC0 ? Andy Dingley (talk) 23:54, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
Also, why bother? If we just delete the lot and dump the feed, do we lose anything? The fact we could claim access to something doesn't mean that we need to, or that we profit from it. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:55, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
I am going to take your questions at their face value.
  1. cc0 and "public domain mark" are two additional license choices flickr added in the last half dozen years. "Public domain mark" is confusing. Flickr meant it to be used when a regular uploader uploaded an image they had not taken themselves, but which they had a good faith belief was in the public domain, due to age, or some other reason. Cc0 releases all rights, so functionally equivalent to public domain.

    We have robots that nominate all images a flickr contributor uploaded with a "public domain mark" for speedy deletion. I've uploaded hundreds of images that bear a "public domain mark" when it it crystal clear the uploader took the images themselves, mistakenly thinking it was the way to put their own images in the public domain.

    I am not aware of an easy way to add the flickr streams that mistakenly use "public domain mark" on their own images on a whitelist.

  2. Why bother? Clarification please, you are participating here because you want to help build a collection of useful images that are in scope?

    I uploaded seven images of Nina Jankowicz because she is a respected expert on Russian hacking, and I am about to start working on an article about her on en.wiki.

    This is a F4U Corsair. You aren't questioning whether an image of a F4U Corsair, or the cockpit of a C130 Hercules are in scope, are you?

  3. If we allow bots to delete them what do we lose, other than the time I spent uploading them? We lose images that are in Commons:SCOPE.
  4. I've been selecting images from the similar flickr stream from US consulates and the US embassy, in Canada. It has been a remarkably rich stream of good images. Diplomats show the flag. They go to remote places in Canada, and their flickr stream has provided many images of topics that are poorly represented.
  5. No, of course there is no point uploading public domain images that aren't in scope. No one would suggest that. However, when a flickr stream is going to be a rich source of interesting images that are in scope, of course we should use that stream. Is there some reason I am missing why you think we should skip streams from US diplomats? Geo Swan (talk) 01:31, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Removal of interwiki links?

It's now a trend - is it a policy (and why?) to remove interwiki links from Commons to the Wikipedias? Where is this policy and why is it? Is it another Wikidata "improvement"?

The {{Wikidata Infobox}} doesn't seem to include links to Wikipedias. Sometimes it did / does, but these increasingly aren't working, even when the link is given in the Wikidata item.

Also the bottom of the left-hand column used to contain a list of Wikipedia links, set by wikitext on the category page. These seem to have both been removed from the wikitext, but also are no longer populated by Wikidata.

Is there a reason for any of this? Andy Dingley (talk) 16:34, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

  • @Andy Dingley: Can you show an example where sitelinks present on a Wikidata item aren't working on Commons? It seems pretty obvious that it is best to maintain sitelinks in a single place (Wikidata) if they work, but of course it is a different matter if they don't work. - Jmabel ! talk 17:43, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
Today I've been working on sub-cats of Category:Steam locomotives of the Netherlands, such as NS 4050 and NS 5600. It looks like the LH sidebar might be a caching or database delay issue, as they seem to have returned now. However the Infobox is still without any links. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:49, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
Andy, when I change my language to NL, the Wikipedia link shows up correctly in the infoboxen, but that's the only language where an article exists for the two examples you give. No link would appear if you're set to another language, though the link to NL will still show up in the left-hand menu column. — Huntster (t @ c) 14:36, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
So this is a deliberate action? Don't show any link at all, unless the subject's language and the reader's language are the same, or else it's internationally important enough to have coverage in every language. Go Team USA again 8-( Andy Dingley (talk) 14:40, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Yes, because the infobox is an additional link to the traditional ones that always appear on the left side of the screen. It's literally no different than if there was no infobox at all; you'd still have all the interwiki links you would otherwise have. — Huntster (t @ c) 14:50, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
  • @Andy Dingley: I’m no fan of Wikidata, but I think that its managing interwiki links is one of the few things that are not a source of problems. As for listing all available interwiki links on the left of the screen instead of having them hidden off, that doesn’t happen in Skin Monobook — I recommend you use it. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 17:12, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Adding a row into a template, retroactively: should I do something else to make it work?

I added a row into the existing template Template:Spijkenisseyear: [[Category:{{{1}}}{{{2}}} in South Holland|Spijkenisse]]. For Leiden this works well. But for Spijkenisse it works only for categories yyyy in Spijkenisse, for instance Category:1966 in Spijkenisse (there Category:1966 in South Holland is now added), but I do not see it as a subcategory in Category:1966 in South Holland. Should I do something else to make it work? JopkeB (talk) 15:25, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

en:Wikipedia:Null edit solved the problem with Category:1966_in_Spijkenisse. Ruslik0 (talk) 13:30, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Searching in EXIF data

Is there a way to search in EXIF data on Commons? Eg. search all photos for a specific author in EXIF. Thanks, --Podzemnik (talk) 01:27, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes. There's more than one technical way of doing this, but it's not built-in to the search engine.
This is something that probably should not be encouraged, or handed out as an easy to use tool. We run a serious risk outing photographers, or outing Wikimedians, with lots of information they may have left in the EXIF data without thinking about privacy. If you have a specific need, depending on context, it may be an idea to ask for a private report for you at Commons:Bots/Work_requests.
Worth also adding, that if the interest is dealing with vandalism or sock puppets, it's very easy to jump to the wrong conclusions using EXIF or other non-visible file header data. If you are a functionary of any sort, this type of information is best left unused, or only as supporting evidence. It's incredibly easy to set someone up for a Joejob attack by manipulating or cloning file data, you don't need much technical skill, and most of our long term community would probably consider it good "evidence" if shared, without questioning it. --Fæ (talk) 16:14, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Help Renominating a File

I uploaded two files in May, and I noticed today that the files were deleted. I received explicit written permission from the copyright holder for their work to be used here. I mentioned that and included a detailed citation when I uploaded the files, so I am unsure why they were deleted. Will someone please help me understand what information I need to provide in order to renominate the file and use it on a Wikipedia page? OxfordKamala (talk) 01:53, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

@OxfordKamala: As is written in the DR, "Proper author/date/country of creation information should be supplied to determine copyrights status and license tags corrected." Please have the copyright holder license them on their website or social media or send the images and permissions via OTRS with carbon copy to you and advice to reply all to keep all in the loop.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 02:20, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: Thank you very much. The email has been sent. OxfordKamala (talk) 23:59, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
@OxfordKamala: We have contact via Ticket:2020110110011427. Please review en:WP:INDENT when you have a chance.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 01:34, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

New Feature: Watchlist Expiry

Hello, everyone! The Community Tech team will be releasing a new feature, which is called Watchlist Expiry. With this feature, you can optionally select to watch a page for a temporary period of time. This feature was developed in response to the #7 request from the 2019 Community Wishlist Survey. To find out when the feature will be enabled on your wiki, you can check out the release schedule on Meta-Wiki. To test out the feature before deployment, you can visit mediawiki.org or testwiki. Once the feature is enabled on your wiki, we invite you to share your feedback on the project talk page. For more information, you can refer to the documentation page. Thank you in advance, and we look forward to reading your feedback! --IFried (WMF) (talk) 21:47, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Sounds like an awesome new feature! Multichill (talk) 22:37, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

File:Demo-Berlin-Kanzleramt-FFF.jpg

Auf antrag von user:FkMohr hat user:Fridolin freudenfett die datei File:Demo-Berlin-Kanzleramt-FFF.jpg und eine reihe weiterer von mir erstellter dateien umbenannt. ich halte die umbenennung nicht für gerechtfertigt, sondern für vandalismus, da nun ein generischer dateiname verwendet wird, und nicht mehr zu erkennen ist, was eigentlich auf den betroffenen bildern zu sehen ist: nämlich ein spezifischer protest gegen den sog. autogipfel der bureg. --C.Suthorn (talk) 12:11, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Solche Umbenennungen sind Vandalismus und eine Urheberrechtsverletzung. Der Dateiname ist Bestandteil der Attribution. Aber Rechte der Fotografen interessieren hier ja schon lange niemanden mehr. Meine Konsequenz ist es, daß ich seit der facebook-Aktion gestern überhaupt keine Bilder mehr nach Commons lade. Aber das interessiert ja auch niemanden, es stehen morgens genug Idioten auf, die was zu verschenken haben. --Ralf Roletschek 12:27, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Der gewählte neue Dateiname ist ja der Beschreibung entnommen. Es macht wenig Sinn, wenn der Dateiname länger ist als die Beschreibung selbst. Zudem war in dem Text auch zu lesen, was eben nicht auf dem Bild zu sehen ist. Bei einem der anderen Bilder waren auch Falschinformationen und Schreibfehler enthalten. Welchen Sinn macht eine ganz kurze Beschreibung in Englisch und gar keine auf Deutsch? Bitte auch bedenken, dass es auf allen Kategorien-Seiten sehr unschön aussieht, wenn der Dateiname so extrem lang ist. Das Hochladen der Bilder ist zu begrüßen, bei der Bestimmung des Dateinamens sollte man jedoch etwas nachdenken. Bemühungen zu einer Verbesserung mit Vandalismus zu bezeichnen, ist auch nicht gerade freundlich. Gruß --Friedo (talk) 13:13, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Eine Urheberrechtsverletzung ist keine Verbesserung. Es ist hier Standard, zu verlangen, daß die Bildbeschreibung im Dateinamen zu stehen hat. Was Sinn hat oder nicht, ist hier nicht gefragt. --Ralf Roletschek 13:25, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Das hast Du falsch verstanden; die Beschreibung soll natürlich unter Beschreibung stehen, stattdessen wurde sie in den Namen geschrieben. Der Name soll "sinnvoll" sein und das Bild kurz beschreiben, aber nicht erklären, interpretieren oder kommentieren. Mein Umbenenungsantrag kann auch keine Urheberrechtsverletzung darstellen. Ich bitte darum, (gut gemeinte) Verbesserungsvorschläge nicht zu verunglimpfen. --Friedo (talk) 15:00, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Gut gemeint ist nicht gut gemacht. Der Dateiname ist teil der Attribution und darf bei CC-Bildern nur vom Urheber geändert werden, bei GFDL wäre es kein Problem. Eine Änderung der Urheberangaben ist eine Urheberrechtsverletzung. Ich habe es nicht falsch verstanden, es gibt hier zahlreiche Leute, die verlangen, daß die Beschreibung im Dateinamen steht. --Ralf Roletschek 15:32, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Worauf ist diese Ansicht begründet? In welchem Abschnitt der Lizenz wird das verlangt oder wer vertritt diese Rechtsansicht? Der Dateiname ist jedenfalls nicht ident mit dem Werktitel, dessen Nennung die Lizenzversionen vor 4.0 noch verlangt haben. Creative Commons selbst schenkt z. B. hier in diesem Tutorial (für die ältere 3er-Version inkl. Titelangabe) dem Dateinamen keinerlei Beachtung [1] Und wer, wenn nicht die Urheber der Lizenz selbst, soll denn sonst wissen, wie man es richtig macht? --Herby (Vienna) (talk) 19:40, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Worauf dieser Unfug begründet ist, weiß ich auch nicht. Mir wurden jedenfalls schon hunderte Bilder umbenannt, auch wenn im Dateinamen bereits Datum, dargestellter Ort und Urheber enthalten waren. Das reicht einigen eben nicht. Besonders aktiv ist diese Unsitte bei Flugzeugen anzutreffen, da wird zwingend verlangt, daß die Kennung im Dateinamen enthalten ist und sonst nichts. Alle Bilder, die das nicht erfüllen, werden in eine Kat. ".... bad Filenames" einsortiert. --Ralf Roletschek 10:38, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Beide Namen sind nicht optimal. Der alte ist klares getrolle. Der neue Name ist dann aber etwas sehr kurz, vor allem weil es viele FFF-Demos am Kanzleramt in Berlin gab. Wir sollten das jetzt aber nach Commons:Forum verschieben oder auf englisch weiter diskutieren. --GPSLeo (talk) 07:58, 24 October 2020 (UTC!
Es ist keine FFF-Demo. Der Veranstalter war FFF. Die Veranstaltung war keine FFF-Demo, weil sie dann Freitags stattgefunden hätte und nicht Dienstags (Anlass war der Auto-Gipfel), weil dann Schüler teilgenommen hätten (nur FFF-Aktivsten und Journalisten, die Polizei hat wegen Covid nur 50 Leute zugelassen), weil Du dann da gewesen wärst und fotografiert hättest. --C.Suthorn (talk) 17:36, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

100% Ack to FkMohr/Friedo. Filenames must not be Descriptions, they just should be descriptive! For crediting its always possible to use URL with curid to be safe against renamings. --Itu (talk) 12:11, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Deep-Linking is only possible by filename, not by curid. As it is, the file cannot be found at all: It doesn't tell about the Auto-Gipfel (not by name, not by description, not by category, not by depicts). A rename request for another image from the series has been declined, because the rename would be against the rules. Same is the case here. --C.Suthorn (talk) 17:36, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
As I already wrote, both names are bad. The original name is definitely to long. But the new one is definitely to short and matches the renaming criteria "ambiguous name". --GPSLeo (talk) 10:11, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Deep-Linking not possible? Did you mean Hotlinking? Is it true that Hotlinking is not possible with/via curid? If so then hotlinking should be avoided. --Itu (talk) 08:35, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Are you actually argueing to break millions of Wiki-Sites, that use the MediaWiki-Software and Instant-Commons (an official extension of the MediaWiki-Software)? (Example: https://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Alabama -> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Alabama.svg/120px-Flag_of_Alabama.svg.png) --C.Suthorn (talk) 17:41, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
„millions of Wiki-Sites“ ....
However, if Hotlinking is wanted for MediaWikis then software should manage commons-Renames.
And if filename is not perfectly bad, normally it remains as Redir. --Itu (talk) 21:16, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
Yes, Itu: millions. If you count in the WMF sites, it is millions+hundreds more. Nearly every Hosting provider in Germany offers MediaWiki as a "one-click-app" for free to hosting customers. For decades the .de-top-level-domain has been the most used top-level-domain after .com. Nobody can know the number of public available installations of MediaWiki, but Germany alone may account for a million or even millions of instant-commons instances available in the internet. Of course, Germany only has a poulation of ~82M, while the world has 7.8 billion people. Therefore it might actually be that there is a billion of MediaWiki web-sites. And even a single one of these might account for a billion page (media) views every month. Renaming does break these sites and renaming is actually never needed. It does make sense, if the uploader requests renaming of a newly uploaded file, or if the name of a file is hatespeech. --C.Suthorn (talk) 07:59, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
So, you understand sites =/= pages. And so your "million MediaWiki-sites" are obviously your own crude fantasy. Try to source that. Nothing said about your billion-bullshit. --Itu (talk) 14:59, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
Please do not forget names that are meaningless, or simply wrong and misleading. I am not sure why the image with the excessively long name qualified for renaming because the name was apparently not wrong (criterion 3), even though it might be now and even though excessively long names are not recommended. But I do not believe that millions of sites break because your file got renamed. Anyway, redirects should be able to fix most of the problems (as you were told already) and a better (though not excessively long) name can and should be chosen. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 08:54, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Dieser ganze Umbenennungsvandalismus gehört abgestellt. Ein Dateiname kann auch DSC0815.jpg sein, das wäre genauso gut oder schlecht. Oder wir schaffen die Dateibeschreibung ab. --Ralf Roletschek 10:38, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
This opinion is obviously opposed to the current rules. DSC0815.jpg is not an acceptable file name according to Commons:File renaming, but it is entirely meaningless (except, possibly, for the photographer; criterion 2 for file renaming). Personally, I am more interested in fixing obvious mistakes, mostly misidentified flowers (criterion 3). If the photographer of a misidentified image is an active commoner, who also performed the wrong identification, I usually correct as much as possible without having the file renamed and then explain my reasons to the photographer on their personal talk page. If they do not have their files renamed within at least a week (or sometimes a much longer time), I request the file to be renamed. The problem is that this takes a lot of time. Therefore, I have got a rather long list of files with obvious errors that I have not dealt with yet. However, if I am impatient and change something making things even worse, then I am very glad if I am told about my mistake nicely and without insults, so that the problem can be fixed asap. Claiming that someone commited vandalism will hardly help, especially if it so obvious that this was not their intention. My recommendation for User:FkMohr and User:C.Suthorn is that they should do their very best to agree on a useful name that is neither too long nor too short, respecting each other's opinion and sticking to the rules. This can get the problem solved without wasting too much time and effort. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 21:40, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Autsch! Ich hatte Ihre Babel-Box nicht gesehen, weil sie unüblicherweise auf Ihrer Diskussionsseite steht. Hier also nochmals in deutscher Sprache: Ihre Meinung widerspricht offensichtlich den gegenwärtigen Regeln. DSC0815.jpg ist kein akzeptabler Dateiname gemäß Commons:Dateien verschieben, sondern es ist ein gänzlich bedeutungsloser Dateiname, ausgenommen möglicherweise für den Fotografen (Kriterium 2 für eine Umbenennung). Ich persönlich interessiere mich mehr dafür, offensichtliche Fehler zu korrigieren, hauptsächlich fehlbestimmte Blumenfotos (Kriterium 3). Falls der Fotograf eines fehlbestimmten Bilds ein aktiver Benutzer auf Commons ist, der auch die Fehlidentifikation durchgeführt hat, dann korrigiere ich meist so viel wie möglich, ohne die Datei umbenennen zu lassen. Außerdem erkläre ich meist dem Fotografen auf seiner persönlichen Diskussionsseite die Gründe für meine Änderungen. Wenn der Fotograf seine Datei nicht innerhalb einer Woche (oder manchmal auch innerhalb eines viel längeren Zeitraums) umbenennen lässt, dann beantrage ich das. Das Problem dabei ist, dass das eine Menge Zeit kostet. Deshalb sitze ich auf einer ziemlich langen Liste von Dateien mit offensichtlichen Fehlern, mit denen ich mich noch nicht beschäftigt habe. Wenn ich allerdings mal doch zu ungeduldig gewesen bin und etwas verschlimmbessert habe, dann bin ich sehr froh, wenn man mir meinen Fehler nett und ohne Beleidigungen mitteilt, so dass das Problem so schnell wie möglich behoben werden kann. Es ist da wenig hilfreich, jemanden des Vandalismus zu bezichtigen, insbesondere wenn es so offensichtlich ist, dass das nicht die Absicht war. Meine Empfehlung für User:FkMohr und User:C.Suthorn ist, dass sie so gut wie möglich versuchen sollten, sich auf einen brauchbaren Namen zu einigen, der weder zu kurz noch zu lang ist, wobei sie die Ansicht des anderen respektieren sollten und sich an die Regeln halten. Dann kann das Problem gelöst werden, ohne zu viel Zeit und Mühe zu verschwenden. P. S. (und das steht nicht im englischen Text): Es ist immer äußerst bedauerlich, wenn ein so aktiver Mitarbeiter wie Sie offenbar wegen eines hier nicht ausgeführten Ereignisses auf Facebook diesem Projekt den Rücken kehrt. Aber Ihr Rückzug ist natürlich Ihre Entscheidung, auch wenn ich diese bedaure und nicht verstehe. Mit freundlichen Grüßen --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 23:42, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
While there are no specific policies dealing with file name length, please consider technical limitations, such as when downloading such files to a local pc: Windows only accommodates 260 characters including the file path (folder structure). --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:17, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
ach wie lustig! daran hab ich gar nicht gedacht, aber die Umbenennung eines oder eines teils einer serie von bildern, bei der das namenschema des hochladers kaputtgemacht wird, ist ja gegen die regeln hier. und damit ist diese umbenennung auch nach diesem kriterium vandalismus. (ist ja aber auch sonst niemand aufgefallen) --C.Suthorn (talk) 18:06, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
Nein, so etwas ist nach gängiger Meinung nur dann Vandalismus, wenn es um "vorsätzliche und bewusste Beschädigung von Inhalten" geht, vgl. z. B. de:Wikipedia:Vandalismus. Die entsprechende Commons-Seite Commons:Vandalism finde ich bei der Definition von Vandalismus ein wenig dünn; aber auch hier ist von "malicious change" als Charakteristikum des Vandalismus die Rede. Das ist hier nicht der Fall, da es sich um den gut gemeinten (aber leider nicht ganz erfolgreichen) Versuch handelt, einen schlechten Dateinamen zu verbessern. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 21:26, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
Es ist ein Foto von einer ganz konkreten Demo. Diese wurde mit dem Hashtag Abfckprämie angekündigt und unter dem Hashtag Abfckprämie wurde darüber berichtet. Wer in Wikipedia über diese konkrete Demo schreiben will, wird auf Commons mit dem Suchbegriff Abfckpämie suchen. Wer über das Bild stolpert und sich darüber informieren möchte, ein Bild von was für einem Ereignis das Bild ist, wird mit dem Suchwort Abfckprämie Informationen finden. Wäre die Umbenenung kein Vandalismus, dann wäre dieses entscheidende Wort (das im Dateinamen, in den Kategorien, in der Beschreibung, in den depicts stehen könnte) nicht ausgelöscht worden. Auch der Zusammenhang mit den anderen Bildern der Serie ist so nicht mehr gegeben (nur dadurch, dass die Nummer 12 nun in der Serie fehlt). --C.Suthorn (talk) 15:36, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Results

Does anyone know when the results of the WPWP campaign, that ended August 31, will be announced? I expect the results here, but there is nothing yet. Wouter (talk) 18:57, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Pinging @T Cells as a frequent editor of that page.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 00:31, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

I think Wikimedia Commons needs a document that can check the copyright of each country's cheques.

Commons:Currency describes the copyrights of each country's currency.

In this document, you can check the copyright status of national currency designs and whether they can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons or not.

For example, South Korean currency designs are copyrighted, but if they are images with a resolution of up to 72 dpi, and if "SPECIMEN" or "보기" is marked on the currency pattern, they can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

The US currency design is a work of the US federal government and is in the public domain, so it can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. However, UK currency designs are strictly protected by copyright laws and cannot be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

However, there is no document on Wikimedia Commons that can check the copyright status of cheques by country.

In many countries, money and cheques often have different copyright status and copyright holders.

So, how about creating a document on Wikimedia Commons that can check the copyright status of each country's cheques and whether they can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons or not?

I think the title of the document is like Commons:Cheque. The current Commons:CHECK document is redirected to the Commons:Requests for checkuser document. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ox1997cow (talk • contribs) 11:43, 4 November 2020‎ (UTC)

Is there anywhere where ordinary copyright law doesn't apply to cheques? At least in the UK, they're just forms issued by companies, and subject to the same copyright law as everything else. The broader question of copyright in forms in general might be interesting, but I don't think there's anything special about cheques. --bjh21 (talk) 12:14, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
@Ox1997cow: When you say "cheques" do you mean some sort of government document (e.g. paper currency) or just "cheques" (UK) / "checks" (U.S.) from banks? As Bjh21 says, the latter have no special status. - Jmabel ! talk 16:05, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jmabel: What I'm talking about means the latter. --Ox1997cow (talk) 17:31, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
@Ox1997cow: Then I agree with Bjh21. No more reason for a special page about cheques than about matchbooks. - Jmabel ! talk 22:45, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Consensus: Should PDF be preferred over DjVu alternates?

The recent upload project of COM:IA books has now released over 800,000 books in PDF to Commons, though for many of these DjVu alternatives were available and for some may have already existed here. This request is for a community consensus on whether for similar uploads from IA or other archives, we should automatically prefer the more widely used PDF standard over DjVu, for the same reasons that IA gave in 2016 when they abandoned the creation of DjVu with the reasoning of "declining use, errors in the creation of new files, and the difficultly for our supporting the java viewer".

This consensus is not an official guideline and would not stop users creating DjVu files in the future, or be a rationale to delete existing DjVu files in favour of new PDFs, however it would be a rationale to keep both formats and as our 'norm' to encourage future large upload projects to always prefer PDF for document formats where choices exist.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:05, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Bit quiet, perhaps it's too technical an issue. I'll take it as a mild consensus by inertia. --Fæ (talk) 11:39, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
I prefer PDF per IA and native support on my iPad and Android devices.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:48, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
I'll note that Wikisource still prefers DjVu, because the Wikimedia software extracts the text from it better.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:55, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
OCR text of PDFs is processed by the mediawiki software. If it could be done better to match whatever DjVu might do, rather than fundamental to the format, these could be useful requests. --Fæ (talk) 10:06, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
That request for improved proccessing of OCR text in PDFs is at phab:T242169 and has existed for couple of months now.--Snaevar (talk) 19:36, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
Related is User_talk:Fæ/IA_books#Automatic_detection_of_possible_copyright_issues, which uses the OCR text within the API accessible metadata, not the PDF. --Fæ (talk) 21:47, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

SDC Coordinates discrepency

SDC Coordinates discrepency

I am pleased that my confession of confusion has provoked a learned discussion among experts, even though I don't understand much of what is being said. Eventually, I hope, the warning flag will link to a page that explains how people like me, who know some places well, can fix location errors without spending much time in studying how the sparsely documented bots, structured data, and connections to Wikidata work. That will show that the flag is meant seriously as an invitation to adjust those errors. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:00, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
@Jim.henderson: The warning now links to Commons:Structured data/Reconciliation. It was put together quickly, so I’d be grateful if you could have a read and assess whether it makes sense / would have helped you figure out what was going on. :-) Jean-Fred (talk) 10:26, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

At last, after doing many other things, I return to something I started weeks ago, @Jmabel: @Jean-Frédéric: . Eventually I came to understand two points that have become utterly obvious to me after some study. I can easily understand how the experienced could be surprised I didn't figure it out instantly. First, the two different locations are under the tabs for "File information" and "Structured data". Second, I cannot simply edit the coordinates to move the "Structured data" pointer but must delete. Hmm, after starting this message, I see that my opinion is mistaken that I actually did put the correct coords into Structured data in File:Titanic Memorial Park jeh.jpg which means it will require a little more study and work. Eventually I intend to write something into the Reconciliation page that will guide future newbies so they don't lose themselves for such a long time.Jim.henderson (talk) 21:39, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Ah. That's the correct location. ✓ Done. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:43, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Wiki of functions naming contest - Round 2

Hello. Reminder: Please help to choose the name for the new Wikimedia wiki project - the library of functions. The finalist vote starts today. The finalists for the name are: Wikicode, Wikicodex, Wikifunctions, Wikifusion, Wikilambda, Wikimedia Functions. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at Meta-wiki. Thank you! --Quiddity (WMF)

22:10, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Al-Aqsa Mosque ambiguity

Coming from Category:Al-Aqsa Mosque, I am utterly confused about how to handle the distinction between Jerusalem's Temple Mount and the prayer hall on its southern edge. In the West, said prayer hall is commonly called Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Islamic world, however, uses Al-Aqsa Mosque (Masjid al-Aqṣā) for the entire Temple Mount, while the prayer hall is named variously Al-Aqsa Chapel (Muṣallā al-Aqṣā), Al-Aqsa Congregational Mosque (Jāmi‘ al-Aqsa), or Al-Qibli Chapel/(Congregational )Mosque. (Muṣallā/Jāmi‘/Masjid al-Qiblī).

Tl;dr How do we solve the following categorisation problem?
Subject Western name Arabic name Commons category name?
Area/complex Category:Temple Mount Category:Al-Aqsa Mosque Category:?
Prayer hall Category:Al-Aqsa Mosque Category:Al-Qibli Chapel Category:?

--HyperGaruda (talk) 11:47, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Call it Temple Mount and Al-Qibli Chapel, and make Al-Aqsa Mosque a disambig page. That's the most practical solution, and recognizes the more universal (and English) name for the Temple Mount, and the fact that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is specifically a Muslim name.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:40, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
Sometimes the solution can be as simple as that. Thanks! --HyperGaruda (talk) 14:16, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
Hello, I want to comment, I think that this area should be called by the Arabic name, not because I am Arab, but because the place is in the Arab region, and the building belongs to Muslim Arabs and it is like Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, which are Arab names, and Mecca, Medina and Al-Aqsa are the three holy sites for Muslims in the world. Thank you. أمين (talk) 20:27, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
From our language policy: Category names should generally be in English, excepting some of proper names, biological taxa and terms which don't have an exact English equivalent. But what is more important, "al-Aqsa Mosque" is too ambiguous, because part of the world equates it to the Temple Mount/Mount Moria/Haram al-Sharif, and another part to just the prayer hall. Commons is an international project and should strive to cater to all, not just the Arabs. --HyperGaruda (talk) 13:20, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/File:Steven Adams Sculpture (43617464242).jpg

Is the file at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Steven Adams Sculpture (43617464242).jpg (File:Steven Adams Sculpture (43617464242).jpg) supposedly to be deleted as per the flow of the discussion?

Also: File:Dino eggs, Wild Adventures.JPG (atCommons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Wild Adventures), which should also have been deleted according to the flow of the discussion. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 01:37, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: The best place to take care of this in the future would be COM:AN or the talk page of the deleting admin (billinghurst, in the first case).
In the second case, it would appear that one of the listed files had no copyright problems and so was kept. – BMacZero (🗩) 02:17, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
Don't know what happened that it wasn't deleted (was three + months ago, so no recall of the moment). I have deleted it now, and thanks for bringing it to my attention.  — billinghurst sDrewth 06:19, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Category:Stanley Baldwin (Stoneman) or Category:Stanley Baldwin by Walter Stoneman as per Category:Albert Einstein by Schmutze

Should it be Category:Stanley Baldwin (Stoneman) or Category:Stanley Baldwin by Walter Stoneman as per Category:Albert Einstein by Schmutze and other images of known people by a known photographer? It took me the longest time to figure out that Stanley Baldwin Stoneman was Stanley Baldwin because of the odd way it was presented. --RAN (talk) 20:08, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it matters, but regardless of what we call it, in my opinion the category shouldn't exist. Do we really want a Commons where every photograph has its own category? --Animalparty (talk) 21:00, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
Not every photo of course, but I don‘t see how a well known or widely reproduced photograph is in principle any less deserving of its own cat than a painting is.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 00:46, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I would agree if there was just one copy of it in Commons, but my questions was more about consensus, since the creator of Stanley Baldwin (Stoneman) keeps reverting and trying to delete the other category. I kept trying to figure out who Stanley Baldwin Stoneman was, rather than recognizing it was the combination of a subject and the last name of the photographer. --RAN (talk) 04:14, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
    The [Sitter] (Creator's Surname) format follows that of Category:Abraham Lincoln (Healy). In my opinion, this format is concise enough and the parentheses/brackets dispel any ambiguity. ᴀlbanɢeller (talk) 13:15, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
We have two formats and need to harmonize on one. Please help gain consensus to determine which format is easier to understand: "Category:Sitter by Photographer" or "Category: Sitter (Photographer)".

Category:Sitter (Photographer)

Category:Sitter by Photographer

  • The naturalistic language is better. For instance, names in parenthesis, like "Stanley Baldwin (Stoneman)" is the way we show nicknames and people who changed their name, or women with maiden names, it is inherently confusing, I couldn't figure out if this was a category about someone named "Stanley Baldwin Stoneman" or "Stanley Baldwin" now going by the name "Stanley Stoneman". --RAN (talk) 16:50, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I agree that S by P is more natural, and much clearer absent context. That is, were I to come across S (P) while browsing the Portraits by P category, perhaps also Photographic portraits of S, the penny would drop pretty quickly, but elsewhere not so much. I disagree with ᴀlbanɢeller above that the parentheses dispel ambiguity: indeed we normally use parentheticals as disambiguating modifiers, which would suggest interpretations like “the P kind of S” or “the S that is located/used/studied in P“. I don’t share as strongly RAN’s inclination to read S as an epithet, because maiden names & nicknames are more often inserted between the first & last names, but that only goes to show that the ambiguity of S {P) is experienced in multiple forms.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 20:09, 8 November 2020 (UTC) P.S. Just occurred to me: what if this photographer’s name had been Mason? Encountering Stanley Baldwin (Mason) out of the blue, I’d likely assume the topic to be an S.B. who was known for being a Freemason, or perhaps a builder (with a capitalization error).—20:24, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Language versions

It seems that since an unknown time (some days?) the automatic fallback of Autotranslate/Autotranslate does not function. AFAIK a link like that should continue with the en-version as a vietnamese created with template does not exist. -- sarang♥사랑 08:06, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what kind of template soup {{Igen|U|+|s=tl}} is, but it calls {{Created with ...}} which says it's a dummy template which is not intended for real usage. Multichill (talk) 11:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Confusion in my upload

Hello everyone from Wikimedia Commons. I made a little confusion in this file here. I would like to place this image (with a uniform background). How could making this possible? Mário NET (talk) 21:49, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

@Mário NET: Hi, and welcome. You can click "Upload a new version of this file" on the file description page.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 21:54, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
Thank you, I will do that. Mário NET (talk) 21:55, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
@Mário NET: You're welcome, but it seems you are edit warring with yourself, perhaps you are not seeing results quickly enough. Please review COM:PURGE.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 21:59, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
Isn't there a way to remove the two uploads I made by mistake, prior to the image with a uniformly black background? Mário NET (talk) 22:07, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
@Mário NET: administrators can delete (hide) previous versions, but that‘s not normally done except for copyright violations, vandalism/hoax/attack images, &c., and it doesn’t save any space on the servers.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 22:16, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
I can also create a new upload with this enhanced image, instead of modifying the original image. But I don't know if this upload of mine is already blocked, because in the image it is already blocked for me to do. Mário NET (talk) 22:11, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
@Mário NET: We have safeguards to dissuade duplicate uploads.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:15, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
@Mário NET: Yes, but it's not necessary and an Admin would have to do it.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:15, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
So the way is to hope that an administrator can undo the mistake I made. Thank you. Mário NET (talk) 22:20, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
The image was reversed again and I created another one to use in the article i wrote, a little bigger and in the same way as it was. Would this be categorized as bad behavior of me? Mário NET (talk) 04:58, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Category:Bain News Service photographs by Stoneman

Category:Bain News Service photographs by Stoneman As pointed out by another editor these images are by Walter Stoneman and his images are protected by copyrights. The Library of Congress has copies but they are released under "no known copyright restrictions", they have not been released into the public domain by an Act of Congress. It appears that we have found a restriction. Bain News Service was known to copy other photographers images, and we have no evidence that they were legally licenced. No one has found that they have been published in the USA to fall in the public domain within the USA. We have seen this before where Getty Images claims they own the active copyright for Bain images that have not been published. See:where a copy of one of the images has already been deleted because of copyright concerns. So what do we do with these? --RAN (talk) 00:28, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

  • For what it's worth, the Library of Congress never describes third-party works as "public domain"; they never come closer to that than to assert "no known copyright restrictions". - Jmabel ! talk 01:35, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I originally thought that since we are housing the Bain Collection copies, the NPG copy would have the same copyright status. The NPG copy of the same image was deleted as a copyright violation, so the same status should be applied to all copies, regardless of whether a copy is domiciled at a website in England or at a website in the United States. The only thing that would give them public domain status would be if they were published in the United States prior to 1962 and no renewal notice was filed. Someone would have to search through online newspaper archives. I was able to do this for another set of images, but the work was tedious. If we decide to keep them, thenneeds to be restored. --RAN (talk) 03:02, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
    Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Stanley Baldwin ggbain.35233.jpg: LOC says there are no restrictions. Their source is the Bain collection, which comes from a USA news service, so the first publication was probably in the USA and there is no notice. ᴀlbanɢeller (talk) 11:04, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
    If the image is acceptable for Commons then we have to restore the NPG version. The rules apply to the image, no matter where a copy of it is domiciled. --RAN (talk) 13:21, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
    No, that's not how it works unfortunately, since the source country of the NPG version is the UK. Per COM:L: Wikimedia Commons only accepts media that are explicitly freely licensed, or that are in the public domain in at least the United States and in the source country of the work. ᴀlbanɢeller (talk) 15:09, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Application of US federal law to Commons materials

Where would one go to report the use of Commons servers to violate US Federal laws not related to copyright? Seazzy (talk) 13:47, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

From COM:AN: "for child pornography or other potentially illegal content e-mail legal-reports@wikimedia.org .--Túrelio (talk) 13:52, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Government videos

Following recent discussions, the Welsh Government are in the process of uploading and licencing their YouTube videos on a CC-BY licence. Their email asks if these can also show a second (OGL) licence, on both YouTube and Commons. In other words, can I add {{CC BY 4.0}}, {{OGL |1= Welsh Government and link to YouTube}} and {{Youtube}} on the files here on Commons? Here's one I did earlier! I'll use video2commons to upload the rest (over 100 videos on the way) as soon as possible. Thanks! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 13:19, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks both! 'Licence review' - do I need to request? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 06:29, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
@Llywelyn2000: to request reviews is simply to include {{Licencereview}} in the file pages.--RZuo (talk) 10:51, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Villages in Alpujarras

There are files of a 1999 trip wich have been a long time in the Category:Unidentified locations in Andalusia. The 'Alpujarras mei 1999 xx' and 'Sierra Nevada mei 1999 xx' series. They are probably several vilages, within a walking day distance from each other. More images are in Category:Spain slide scan june 1999. Once one location is found, one can zoom in to the area.Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:47, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I have done one, The chimneys in File:Alpujarras mei 1999 35.jpg are shown Google StreetView, and are in Capileira. I have updated the file. Verbcatcher (talk) 18:48, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
And the one shown above is Trevélez. Verbcatcher (talk)
The picture before: File:Alpujarras bus mei 1999 34.jpg shows te bus parked in the space next to the bus stop. The picture after (File:Alpujarras mei 1999 36.jpg) must also be in Capileira.Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:55, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Linking to specific point in video, externally

If I want to mint a URL, for use outside of Wikimedia wikis, linking to a specific point in a video, how would I do that? For example, I want to point to 1h 12mins into:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiCite_2020_The_frontend_of_WikiCite.webm

I have tried to find where this is documented, but without success. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:52, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Looks like it was added a few months ago in phab:T203994. You can use start= and end= as URL query parameters with the same values as in the normal file syntax. In your case, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiCite_2020_The_frontend_of_WikiCite.webm?start=1:12:00. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 15:00, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
copied to special:diff/511720125.--RZuo (talk) 10:51, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Keyboard layouts

Which key combinations do the blue, green and purple colored characters in these images represent? Is there a special place on Commons where these illustrations are discussed? Thanks. datumizer ☎ 04:21, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

@Datumizer: I found this zh:注音輸入法#大千注音鍵盤排列 which is roughly the same as your image Standard Taiwanese Keyboard Layout.svg. So, the three sets of symbols are Cangjie input method (bottom left, green), Bopomofo (upper right, purple), and Dayi method (bottom right, blue). these keyboards are usually found in Taiwan and Hong Kong.--RZuo (talk) 10:51, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Pictures of prisoners in custody

These are stills from YouTube videos of interviews with prisoners held by the Artsakh Defense Army. They may be in breach of the Geneva Convention, Protocol III, article 13, which says:

  • Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.[2]

Commons is failing to protect these prisoners from public curiosity. I don't know whether the Geneva Convention applies to this conflict or these prisoners, but we should act on the assumption that it does.

I did not find anything specific in Commons:Photographs of identifiable people. Is there an applicable policy elsewhere? These images have been nominated for deletion for copyright issues. Verbcatcher (talk) 05:09, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

There is nothing more specific than the Commons:IDENT guidelines. However these are sufficient as written as the images fail to meet the section on 'Defamation' and the section on 'Moral issues', it may also fail Commons:Country specific consent requirements. Consequently a credible rationale for deletion may include these failures against the official guidelines, without a complex debate about the Geneva Convention. --Fæ (talk) 10:45, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Tool for statistics of uploaded files usage on wiki projects?

I would like to know which uploaded files by a user have been used on which wiki projects, or at least statistics of the number of times files have been used. Is there a tool for this? I kind of remember there is but I cant find it. :/ --RZuo (talk) 10:55, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

See Commons:Glamorous. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:21, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Upload wizard not working well at the moment?

I'm currently trying to upload a single JPG file with a size of 18 MB via the Upload Wizard; normally, I don't have any issues in such cases. But I've now tried it thrice and it always failed. The first time, it was always displayed as in the queue, but no progress was made. I aborted the upload; the second time, it was for a while in the queue, then a message "The server did not respond within the expected time" appeared. The third time, I immediately got that "The server did not respond within the expected time" message after trying to upload... some known current issues with the Upload Wizard? Or where to report best? Gestumblindi (talk) 16:14, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I have the same issue.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:36, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
@Ymblanter: Thanks for confirming that I'm not the only one, I've now reported it through Phabricator. Gestumblindi (talk) 17:11, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
The Wizard has many problems. But today I also had a timeout while uploading directly using the API with a python script. When reporting issues with the Wizard you should definitely add some information about the browser you are using. Many problems in uploading to any site(I frequently experience this with Nextcloud) are caused by memory and power saving features of the browser. --GPSLeo (talk) 19:02, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, GPSLeo, I added the browser information to my Phabricator report. Gestumblindi (talk) 19:09, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
I've now managed to upload that image quickly using the old form, it's File:Amanz Gressly plaque Laufen.jpg, after the Upload Wizard still responded with a timeout ("The server did not respond within the expected time") when I tried it again, so it does look Upload Wizard specific to me, or specific to the way the Wizard is using for uploads. Gestumblindi (talk) 19:19, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
PS: As also noted in the Phabricator report, I was able to upload a different, smaller JPEG file (5 MB) with the Upload Wizard right now; but normally, 18 MB shouldn't be an unreasonable size for the wizard that is supposed to handle much larger files easily... Gestumblindi (talk) 19:42, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
I managed to upload my file now.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:56, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
I had a similar problem 2 days ago when trying to upload this 46 MB file: even using the old basic uploader, I ran into repeated WIkidata errors. I was able to get around it by uploading a smaller copy first, then using Rillke/bigChunkedUpload.js to upload the full size file. --Animalparty (talk) 20:44, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Long time unidentified station

This picture has been placed in Category:Unidentified train stations in Italy in 2014. This station wil probably have been renovated, as the structures where not in a good state. Any Italians with railway knowledge?Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:36, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Could be almost anywhere on a 3kV DC network, as those E.626 locos were long out of service by then, so were only working historical specials. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:24, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Eric Ravilious painting

Please refer to File talk:November 5th.jpg where an IP editor has just claimed "Whilst this painting is out of copyright the right to the reproduction of the photograph are not..

The image is of a painting by en:Eric Ravilious, who died in England in 1942.

I have today received an email from someone at a design agency, claiming "An image you have uploaded to Wikimedia of the work of Eric Ravilious is the copyright of our client, we would ask that you remove it please. [...] We are not suggesting Eric Ravilious is in copyright rather that the digital copy and original transparency of the image are my clients copyright.". My reply read:

Without commenting on the merits of your claim; deletion requests for images on Wikimedia Commons can be made according to the process described at:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests

Alternatively, please refer to:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Contact_us/Problems

Both they and I are in the United Kingdom.

I have also just reverted a malformed attempt by the IP editor to change the licensing of the image. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:31, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

I commented on the talk page. Ruslik0 (talk) 20:30, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Provided a link to the WMF DMCA process in the DR. If they wish to continue making legal looking statements, these would be better done with a lawyer, not volunteers. Andy, it may be sensible to forward further emails direct to WMF Legal for their records rather than engaging any further. It is not normal, or acceptable, to be emailing volunteers directly. --Fæ (talk) 14:38, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
The second link in my OP has details of the WMF DMCA process. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:52, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
Now at Commons:Deletion requests/File:November 5th.jpg. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:52, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Photo challenge September results

Nature's blues: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Cielo blu con scia nuvolosa a San Magno Iceberg in Lilliehöökfjord, Svalbard Antarctic Ice
Author Mino Altomare Hgrobe 5snake5
Score 16 14 13
Mobility aids for the handicapped: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Woman on mobility scooter on
stormy pier in Hoek van Holland		 Fotowettbewerb September 2020 -
Menschen mit Handicap		 Handicapped
boy on a wheel
chair Shot on
a cozy evening
Author Spielvogel Heike Merz Chetan Siddharth
Score 20 17 12

Congratulations to Spielvogel, Heike Merz, Chetan Siddharth, Mino Altomare, Hgrobe and 5snake5 -- Jarekt (talk) 03:29, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

File:Friesstrasse Oerlikon (Ank Kumar) 04.jpg

The files File:Friesstrasse Oerlikon (Ank Kumar) 04.jpg and File:Friesstrasse Oerlikon (Ank Kumar) 05.jpg are identical. Both were uploaded with the uploadwizard and within seconds. Therefore this is very likely not an error of the uploader, but of the wizard. It looks like many more files from the same upload run are duplicates of each other, but i did not check that.

Another anoying feature of wikipedia commons whatever brought to you by the amazing upload wizard.

I will not create a phab Task entry, it would only be closed as no way to reproduce.

--C.Suthorn (talk) 08:19, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Looking for the English expression for the Dutch word "Demonstratie" (Demonstration), not being a protest

I am looking for the right category or English expression (to make a new category) for the Dutch word "Demonstratie", not being a protest. It is about demonstrating/showing in real life how to do things: how do you use a certain tool or machine, how does a product work, how to make a long division, how to cook potatoes, how to iron a blouse, and so on. It has elements of (old fashion) education and instruction, and might have an element of marketing (showing the advantages of a product and hoping it will sell better this way). It is a combination of the categories Education by method, Shows and Presentations (without the slides). But in those categories I did not find the right subcategory. In the Enlish Wikipedia I only found Product demonstration, but not a proper parent category for the demonstration part. Can you help me? JopkeB (talk) 11:26, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Demonstration seems like the best word, better than presentation for a practical "showing" of how to do something. Category:Demonstrations is currently redirected, but could be tuned into a disambiguation. A new category, if nothing already exists, could be something like Demonstrations (teaching), or maybe in singular form. --ghouston (talk) 12:15, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
Demonstration is the first and major use of the word in English, even in Wiktionary the protest version comes in as the fifth meaning, in the Cambridge dictionary it's the second major meaning. Demonstration of whatever is fine. the alternatives are: Exhibition, exposition, illustration, presentation, showcasing..., all not quite as good... Broichmore (talk) 12:20, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
You mean demonstration roughly in the sense of Category:Pre-flight safety demonstrations, right? I don't think we have a proper category for that (yet). Would probably belong somewhere under Category:Instructions. --El Grafo (talk) 12:22, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you all for your answers, research and suggestions. I'll turn Category:Demonstrations into a disambiguation one and make a new category Category:Demonstration (teaching); one of the subcategories will be Category:Pre-flight safety demonstrations. JopkeB (talk) 15:12, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

i dont think a new category is needed. it's essentially the same thing as Category:Presentations. presentations need not be confined to "presentations using slides".
see for example Presentations -> Food presentation -> Category:Cooking demonstrations.--RZuo (talk) 16:48, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
A sales presentation that exhibits a product in use, with an intent that’s more persuasive than instructive, is often called a “demo(nstration)” as well. So I think it’s worth distinguishing a teaching from a pitch. Regardless of how these go, I agree that Demonstrations should be a disambiguation cat.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 01:04, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Uploaders name and employer in file name

While removing some over-categorisation, I have come across images uploaded by User:Ank gsx. The images as such seem fine and the copyright ok (from what I can tell), but some of the file names seem potentially problematic, also I can't find any policy that specifically says so. All files seem to include the uploaders name, but some also seem to include the name of his/her employer. See File:Zurich HB (Ank Kumar Infosys) 01.jpg, File:Byron Bay ( Ank Kumar Infosys Limited) 22.jpg or File:Uetliberg (Ank Kumar Infosys Limited) 01.jpg. From what I suspect, Infosys refers to en:Infosys, an Indian company. Apart from a large number of these files seeming to be personal images and out of scope, is having your companies name in the file name acceptable? Seems a little wrong to me, and completely unnecessary! Calistemon (talk) 05:56, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

+1 Per Jmabel, there's no specific policy, and specific guidelines about what is or is not 'spammy' in a filename is for the most part better off not being a big issue. It is a 'norm' to avoid adding emails and phone numbers, but it's accepted that contact information may be in the attribution, including website links that are promotional by nature.
Agree that Commons filenames are not "titles" or what is considered attribution. So there's no impedement to someone renaming to make it seem less spammy, with the same view that care needs to be taken to preserve what may be an expectation for this to become a more literal attribution if that's in the license. --Fæ (talk) 14:38, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Is this appropriate?

Creator:Moheen Reeyad is a page that seems to be in violation of the proposed guidelines for Commons:Creator ("Who should not have creator page: Wikipedia and Commons users, as well as photographers from image-hosting websites, like Flickr, who do not meet notability criteria."). Is this appropriate? If it is not then what can be done about it? Commons seems to have no deletion discussion process for such pages. Aditya (talk) 01:14, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

You can make use of the regular deletion procedure. Ruslik0 (talk) 21:00, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
See also parallel discussions at en:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive326#Is it okay to use Wikimedia Foundation projects for self promotion? and d:Wikidata:Administrators' noticeboard#Is this appropriate?
In the former, the OP was advised "When you start a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on the editor's talk page" and later "In the future if you open a thread about another editor in some noticeboard, you should notify that editor immediately. And if you are engaged in a conflict with that editor, you should disclose that fact too."; this has again not been done here.
I also note that in that discussion, another editor pointed out "It seems that the two editors in question, User:Aditya Kabir and User:Moheen have been involved in a bit of an edit war and a content dispute of some sort at en:Nurul Alam Atique... I have a feeling that the current WP:AN thread originates from that dispute."
The concept of "violating" proposed guidelines is also an interesting one... Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:31, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Interesting defence. I have some pictures uploaded to Commons. Can I create a creator page for me? And then create a Wikidata item for me using that? As you were busy trashing me, you failed to read the original question: "Can someone use Wikimedia Foundation projects for self promotion? If yes, then I would like to do the same." Shall I? Aditya (talk) 18:07, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
@Aditya Kabir: This falls under the heading of "kind of bad but barely tolerated behavior." If that's really the reputation you want, then we probably won't stop you. - Jmabel ! talk 23:28, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
This last comment really needs a barnstar of good humor. After a long stint of facing bullying and rudeness from multiple editors (who seemed like a pretty cabal) you really reminded me why I work at WMF projects. You made my day, Jmabel. Of course I am not going to do any such silly thing. Time is precious and can't really be wasted on such frivolous and unsavoury practices. Cheers. BTW, that proposed policy needs to become a real policy, fast. Just to cull such silly self-promotion, if nothing else. Aditya (talk) 04:14, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
"Defence"? I'm not defending anything; there is nothing for me to defend. You and your malfeasant behaviour , on the other hand, have been treated with a gentle and patient courtesy which you are fast exhausting. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:43, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
  • My two sence on the actual issue here: I would absolutely love if the content creators of all stripes and sizes will consider it an honour to "promote" themselves by uploading their content under a free licence on Commons. Not only should we not try to stop that, but I would suggest encouraging that behaviour as much as possible, since that would result in more quality content being here. We do have some good photographers, videographers, diagram creators, illustrators here already; but if we would stop punishing people for releasing their work under a free licence we could have hundreds more. Just imagine somebody like Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Atlanta that currently uploads content to Youtube to promote themselves deciding to switch from Youtube to Commons and announcing that they will begin publishing all their content under a free licence in order to do so. Or maybe if Journey to the Microcosmos puts even a portion of their videos here, how great that would be. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 04:36, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Does that mean that I can do the same without damaging my reputation (not a "kind of bad but barely tolerated behavior")? Complaining about that is surely damaging my reputation for people who have been treating me "with a gentle and patient courtesy". Sounds good to me. Looking forward to my creator page (created by me) and my wikidata item (created by me). 😊 This was most enlightening. Aditya (talk) 03:47, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata getting in the way of editing and corrections

Why have we allowed Wikidata to come in and muscle us out of flexible editing in commons and put us into a complicated difficult and unforgiving environment such as Wikidata? It's so frustrating when you just need to make small but crucial changes (correcting errors) in file data? This an escalating problem as the number of files transferring to Wikidata is increasing at an alarming rate.

The problem is acute when it comes to fine art files.

This came to light because Maximilian by Winterhalter (Hearst Castle) is not the same painting as Maximilian by Graefle (UK Royal Collection). The dates of creation need clarifying, and the other version by a different artist and collection owner needs to be linked etc. Are the people at Wikidata going to take the responsibility of ensuring the information with a file is complete and correct, before commonists are locked out of the file? Where is the flexibility here? There is just no interface worth mentioning? The time taken to make changes in Wikidata is prohibitive.I dont have the time or inclination to learn all of Wikidata just to make minor occasional changes. Broichmore (talk) 17:08, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

I can't even edit Wikidata any more. I'd have to get an IP exemption. Why on Earth is it being allowed to force users to abandon Commons editing? It's not beyond the wit of humanity to allow reasonable changes on an image page, specific to that image, and keep Wikidata editing secondary. --Fæ (talk) 17:30, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
"Why have we allowed Wikidata to come in and muscle us out of flexible editing in commons " We haven't. I can still edit Commons without difficulty; there must be an issue at your end. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:53, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: Okay Andy, change this file to show a date created of Before Dec 1868. Broichmore (talk) 19:01, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
This is the edit you needed. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:15, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
This diff demonstrates precisely how Commons contributors are being systematically forced to abandon Commons editing, when there never has been any consensus to do this. Reminder Commons' editors write text that is Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Systematically moving it to Wikidata without any attribution and then blanking the original, goes against the terms of this website.
Commons is not a sub-project of Wikidata. If that changes then most of the regular contributors here may as well retire and do something more interesting and valued with their spare time, than being unpaid copy-editors of a database for Google and Amazon to make huge profits off. --Fæ (talk) 19:30, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Your revert is getting on my OCD nerve. Why don't you go all-in and have the Artwork template subsituted in all its parameter glory, instead of having one parameter here and the rest on Wikidata? --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:37, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Creating files on Commons with no Wikitext is not something that we have any consensus for. If this is allowed to become "normal" for our popular collections, like our wikiloves projects, then new editors will have huge barriers to overcome, not just how to edit on this project, but they have to learn about the badly designed structured data editing where even things like 'captions' nobody can define properly, and have to learn about the complexity of relationships and Q numbers for Wikidata, before they can even edit one single image page correctly. That's not a project that "anyone can edit", it's a closed system for technical experts that will drive newbies to give up and load their photos to Flickr or the latest Google photos project. --Fæ (talk) 19:49, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
That is a rant against structured data, not an answer to my question. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:53, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
{u|Fae}}, I couldn't agree more and on top of that I am yet to see any benefit to me resulting from Wikidata in my commons or Wikipedia efforts. It doesn't seem to materially improve on the google search engine's findings in practise, though in theory it should. @HyperGaruda: Thanks for the advice. How do I insert against that file the Other version for comparison, which is Maximilian by Winterhalter (Hearst Castle)? Broichmore (talk) 19:56, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Sigh, facts are not a rant. You may as well be calling me hysterical. In the meantime please respect the moral rights required for other contributors edits to Commons which Wikidata does not, thanks. --Fæ (talk) 20:31, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

What I think Wikidata/SDC does better than Commons, is the international aspect that Commons tries but fails to support. Let's face it: the Commons way of bringing structure to our file database (i.e. categorisation) is very Anglocentric and spelling-sensitive. As to your question: I tried some things, but to no avail. While it is possible link two such painting entries in Wikidata, it will not translate to Commons yet. @Fæ: still not an answer to my question. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:46, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Answer:
Because I do not want to be forced to edit Wikidata or hide information in unexplained and undocumented structured data entries that don't have any credible API support and do not support formatting or explain to contributors that they have varied maximum lengths.
Because what I write on this project has moral rights, which are not protected on Wikidata.
Because my edits are supported by policy and consensus. Blanking them is not.
This answer was already within my statements above, which you derided as ranting. I rarely see any benefit when responding to repeated questions that are already answered. --Fæ (talk) 21:16, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
@HyperGaruda: Thanks for making the effort to insert other info at File:Maximilian of Mexico by Franz Xaver Winterhalter (Hearst Castle).jpg. This is an important issue. If you look at the history inside it you'll see that back in 2019 an editor misguidedly overwrote the original Hurst Castle picture with a different one from the UK Royal Collections, with a different artist. Since 2019 courtesy of commons that picture has spread around the net quoting wrong attribution as a result. I have changed the old way in the commons file. Now that change has been made, how does Wikidata capture and integrate it?Broichmore (talk) 21:36, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
An important point is that updates in the Commons must also carry through in structured data. Robots are scanning the Commons to put licences, dates, authors, etc into structured data. I suppose this happens once and there is no check if the values change in the Commons. Example: In File:Stomer uit Harwich briefkaart.jpg the bot took the scan date and put it into structured data. Because this is a postcard this is obviously wrong and I changed the dat to 'Before WW I'. I manualy removed the date from structured data, but I doubt that many similar updates are worked into structured data. Quite often incorrect licences are changed. Typically PD files are wrongly uploaded under 'own work'. If we are not carefull a lot of garbage will be created in structured data. I made a robot filter proposal: see User talk:Schlurcher#Taken over dates from post cards.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:56, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
One of the most obvious omissions in Wikidata is that nowhere does it indicate the optimal licence for the use of images for any particular creator. Broichmore (talk) 11:25, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
There is no optimal license for the use of images for any particular creator. For one author, who died in 1959, his works first published in India could be out of copyright there (life+60), his works first published in the UK still in copyright there (life+70), his photos of Rome published in Italy copyrighted or not depending on whether they were considered simple photographs in Italian law, and his paintings for American magazines PD-1923, PD-US-not renewed, and still copyrighted, depending on the work.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:48, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
Each particular creator has their own specific creator page, Example: Creator:Amrita_Sher-Gil It is here that all tailored licences pertaining to him and him alone can be held, whether he was first published in India or not. - Broichmore (talk) 15:46, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Concerns on images of Central Park, Pennsylvania

Hi all, I didn't want to file a deletion request as wasn't sure if these images should be deleted or not. I came across several images such as this one: File:1925 Central Park Cyclone.jpg of Central Park in Pennsylvania. I don't think the uploader has provided the necessary source information as it appears they've been copied from this website, though I'm not sure if the author of that website is the owner of these photos either. Can we consider these images old enough that they could be in the public domain anyway? There's several other similar images uploaded by a couple of different users in Category:Rides at Central Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

I was hoping to use these on an external project but am concerned they may not be public domain after all.

Thanks, NemesisAT (talk) 15:57, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

{{PD-US}} notes a cut-off of "prior to 1925" for first publication in US in order to be "old enough to be public domain". Some of that category is identified as older, some is exactly 1925 (so with any luck if you wait 7 weeks, those will be also:), and two are 1930s. DMacks (talk) 17:09, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Pinging the uploader @Connor7617: . I don't think there is enough information to be sure about the status of that image. I couldn't find any other uses on the net, and the site you found does not say anything about a 1925 date asserted by the uploader for the image, or the context in which is was published (i.e. whether or not it had a copyright notice). If that date is accurate, the image would be public domain on Jan 1, 2021, and if the image as originally published did not feature a copyright notice, the image would be public domain per the current license.
Another consideration is that copyright starts from the time of publication, not creation - so if the site owner does own those images and only published them on that website, they are copyrighted in either case for quite some time still.
The website owner does post his e-mail address, so someone could see what he has to say. – BMacZero (🗩) 17:21, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
I knocked out a bit because the site owner's father was born in 1923, so it's pretty safe to say that he is not the original photographer. – BMacZero (🗩) 17:27, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Hmmm, the images are definitely not correctly dated because the roller coaster in question didn't open until 1927. With no original source for the image, would this template apply? {{PD-anon-50}} 21:21, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
@NemesisAT: No, just because we have lost or failed to find the chain of attribution for an image does not make the author anonymous. An anonymous author is one who intentionally did not reveal his or her identity when publishing the work. We would need to positively demonstrate that this is the case to use that license tag. See Commons:Anonymous works.
Overall I'm afraid this is a very tricky case. Despite the fact that the uploader is evidently a sockpuppet with a history of license problems, some of the images do appear to be original scans with potentially valid licenses, while others are obviously copied from the site you found without acknowledging it. The potentially inaccurate dates are another complication. Someone probably needs to either sort through these one-by-one, or just nominate the lot for deletion under COM:PCP. – BMacZero (🗩) 07:25, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Copyright law change in Mainland China

Moved to Commons talk:Copyright rules by territory/China

Grass plumes

There seen to be no category for grass plumes. Another example: File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Graspluimen en wolkenlucht boven Campuhan Ubud TMnr 60030207.jpg.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:33, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

It falls under category:Grass inflorescence or one of it's sub categories. Broichmore (talk) 15:15, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
The easiest solution to this issue should be by creating redirects, many topics have many names and synonyms might make it harder to find the right category, redirects solve this. But for whatever reason redirects aren't common on Wikimedia Commons, not because of policy but because of common practice. So I'd say that if "grass plumes" and "Grass inflorescence" are synonymous terms then a redirect would solve future ambiguity. Of course, it would be even better if the MediaWiki Upload Wizard software would recognise redirects (especially in different languages) so they would have more use. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:56, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
Adding the phrase like this makes it much more likely to be discovered in a search. - Jmabel ! talk 00:49, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
Apparently grass plumes is a term often used or really about Plume grass, which is a different subject in a sense. Apparently more accurate terms or used terms are flower heads, seed heads or panicles, then there is spikeletsjust to make it more complicated. No doubt there are other terms used by the common man... In English plumes are much longer than mere heads. Broichmore (talk) 13:02, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Category:Politicians of Turkey

I need help from people who use bots or other instruments for collective (mass) changes. The people in Category:Politicians of Turkey are all "male politicians", as we already categorized the females accordingly. I need someone to add the word "male" to the individual cats of all these men, taking them out from Category:Politicians of Turkey into Category:Male politicians of Turkey. Attention: Once I asked a similar help, and instead of "changing" the cat, another cat was introduced, which did not help me much. Again: I only want the individual people cats in Category:Politicians of Turkey to be pushed into Category:Male politicians of Turkey. Whilst doing this change, if you also have a chance to add the recently-created Category:Politicians of Turkey by name to each individual politician cat, that will be excellent! Thanks in advance. --E4024 (talk) 13:48, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

@E4024: This can be done quite easy using Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot, but this seems to be a controversial topic. It's probably wise to wait for the resolution of Commons:Categories for discussion/2019/04/Category:Female diplomats of the United States and follow the results of that discussion. – BMacZero (🗩)
Thanks for the reply. 1. Cat-a-lot for me has always been something that causes me to remove cats involuntarily, as my screen moves when I am trying to see the contents of a cat. I will not use that gadget. 2. That discussion is irrelevant as we already have cats for male and female politicians everywhere. OTOH, we will have to have "women by occupation" cats as long as we have women (thank God :) --E4024 (talk) 17:24, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
BTW you can still help -if you so wish- by adding Category:Politicians of Turkey by name to the cats of politicians of Turkey, irrespective of their sex or gender. --E4024 (talk) 17:27, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
@E4024: I did that for you. – BMacZero (🗩) 17:33, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
Thank you very much! Very kind of you. --E4024 (talk) 17:38, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
VFC also makes this sort of change easy. -  ! talk 18:54, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
Jmabel, BMacZero, could one of you be kind enough to add Category:Politicians of Turkey by name to the individual cats of the women in Category:Female politicians of Turkey also? After the recent changes, now we only have male politiicians with name, this is too unjust for a country like Turkey that had her first (and 18 of them at once!) female deputies elected to the parliament as early as 1935... --E4024 (talk) 19:52, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
@E4024: Done. Tedious but easy.- Jmabel ! talk 01:15, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
Thank you very much; very kind of you. If you look at my categorization efforts, you will see that I am also doing a lot of tedious work; and using only one or two fingers. The reason I asked help was there are -I guess- gadgets I cannot use; I am a bit computer-unfriendly perhaps... Thanks again. E4024 (talk) 01:18, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Did you know that Cat-a-lot can operate on subcategories? I only ask because I had no idea until relatively recently. You have to enable it in the preferences - I usually only do it in the "temporary" mode to prevent horrible accidents. – BMacZero (🗩) 03:28, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
@BMacZero: I had no idea. Not my tool of choice, but clearly the one for this job. - Jmabel ! talk 04:37, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

I’m out of the loop

Have closures of regular deletion nominations just stopped? I posted two obvious violations of an NYT photo six weeks ago and nothing has happened. (I’ll use speedy next time but I assume it’s too late for that on these (1, 2))? I wish I could offer to help with the backlog to at least close NAC keeps, but I don’t have the expertise or capacity to learn right now—I will def prioritize it going forward tho if there’s a major lack of admins to review. But maybe I am misunderstanding what’s happening? Innisfree987 (talk) 17:07, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

There is a rather large backlog; it's not that uncommon to have even rather obvious cases sitting in the queue for several weeks. I've deleted these two files now. It seems we just don't have enough admins dealing regularly with deletion requests. Maybe not all are aware of the existence of DelReqHandler, I wonder? Because, even if you have experience with deletion requests with regards to the content and would be able to close them with confidence, the technical side of dealing with them is rather cumbersome without DelReqHandler's help, and I know that my own activity in the area of DRs markedly increased as soon as I discovered that gadget. Gestumblindi (talk) 17:45, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
Oh, thank you, Gestumblindi, for your assistance with those two, and for bumping that gadget. I do hope it will help—I looked at old discussions and unclosed noms stretch back at least to August?—-and I’ll try to do my part to learn enough to assist. Innisfree987 (talk) 17:53, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

WLM organisers, you sent the mass message with the wrong year in title

Also I dont know where or whom to give feedback to, that's why I post here. Could some kind heart please relay the message to the people in charge? thx!--RZuo (talk) 11:37, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Commons talk:Wiki Loves Monuments 2020 is probaby a good starting point. This message might be the mass message from WLM India about an participation survey, but it might as well be the organisers participation survey by the global team.--Snaevar (talk) 22:00, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
Hi @RZuo: Thanks a lot for pointing out. It is my mistake, sorry! I have sent the survey on behalf of the global team. I will see if I can fix it with help of some bot. KCVelaga (talk · mail) 07:29, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
@Snaevar: it didnt look like an actively monitored page. none of the talk pages/help desk of WLM seems to be actively monitored, based on how well feedbacks have been replied to, so i took it here.
@KCVelaga: i'd say let it be lol XD. correcting a minor error by editing thousands of pages seems too much.
One suggestion i have for the organisers is to designate a page for feedback, like Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments/Help desk maybe, and reply to feedbacks more often.--RZuo (talk) 08:30, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
I, as a former organiser, do watch those pages, but if I don't know the answer I do not answer... But I did pass on your comment about the wrong year (in the header no less, lol), to the main organising team. This (quite small) team relies on national organisers to follow relevant pages on Commons, like their own national competition page, but also the WLM general helpdesk page. Especially in this year, with WLM being spread out over three months instead of one, peak work is totally different from previous years, sometimes they (we) need to set priorities and general helpdesk questions get overlooked because other international coordination tasks need more attention. Ciell (talk) 11:03, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Mobile uploads statistics

Where can I find some statistics regarding mobile upload? I'm looking for at least the share of mobile uploads. The split by operating system would be even better. I've already had a look at Commons:Statistics, Commons:Count of uploads and https://analytics.wikimedia.org/ but without any luck. Thanks in advance. Ayack (talk) 16:34, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

New subcategory for Category:Atomium

I'm planning to create a new subcategory under Category:Atomium (and also, under Category:Atomium at night) to house images showing close-up of its parts (e.g. File:Atomium reflects.jpg, File:Atomium window.jpg, and File:Atomium (T. Baranowski pic) - Flickr.jpg. For a while I'm thinking of something like "Category:Close-up views of Atomium," but some might confuse it as also for close-up views of the whole structure. Hope someone will provided another, more suitable suggestion. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 10:25, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Why not: Category:Atomium (details)Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:11, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
The subcategories of Category:Details of sculptures and Category:Details of buildings seem to suggest a preference for Category:Details of the Atomium. --El Grafo (talk) 11:38, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

✓ Done creating Category:Details of the Atomium, including the Category:Details of the Atomium at night. Thank you for the suggestions (and for the new nomenclature hehe) @El Grafo and Smiley.toerist: 🙂. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 13:27, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Wien Museum Online Sammlung (Vienna Museum Online Collection)

Recently I found https://sammlung.wienmuseum.at/ . Over there many files are licenced und CC-0 and CC-BY. Does anybody know if there already are imported files or if an import is beeing worked on? --D-Kuru (talk) 13:30, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't see anything under Category:Wien Museum so I'd guess not. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:37, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
They just announced it yesterday. They're planning to open up their API. That would be a good moment to mass upload the images. Multichill (talk) 21:43, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

How much time should I wait for limited of email user ?

I'm the organizer of Wiki loves monuments 2020 in Taiwan. When I was noticing all 31 winners via the tool "Email this user", the system limited my action for an anti-abuse reason. The system message told me "Please try again in a few minutes", however I am still limited after 7 hours. There are 4 winners I need to contact still, so I'd like to know how long I should to wait really? Or is there any way to shorten the time? Thanks.--Reke (talk) 23:39, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

By default you are limited to 20 e-mails per day. Ruslik0 (talk) 13:48, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Making links for commons in Wikipedia articles

Can I encourage people to start putting in links to commons on Wikipedia. Examples: a prominent link or the more discreet version. --Broichmore (talk) 14:39, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

The former are being gradually removed under the assumption that everything can be automated through Wikidata and/or the assumption that people don't read anything more than the infobox and therefore any boxes traditionally placed at the bottom of articles are clutter.RadioKAOS (talk) 14:55, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
A lot of people also read the text in the Wikipedia article. Maybe not all of it, but I would certainly not suggest only articles with infoboxes out of Wikidata information.Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:07, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@RadioKAOS: There are no links in the Wikipedia infobox to commons, nor is there ever likely to be. There are links in the Commons infobox to Wikipedia, but that's not what we are talking about here.
Have I misunderstood you, are you saying that people in Wikipedia have been deleting links to Commons?--Broichmore (talk) 17:51, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Not relevant here
No, it is correct. Setting up an experimental page with links to Wikidata and then starting an RFC on how to link to it, brought on the punitive audit by the people opposed to it. The longer you have been editing, the more edits you can pore over looking for something to ban you for. --RAN (talk) 00:47, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Doesn't this suggestion belong at (English) Wikipedia? You are using English as an example but I'd imagine you can make the same suggestions for other languages or even Wikinews or other sites. Otherwise, in my opinion, I don't think it's appropriate to put it under "External" links as it's not necessarily external. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) that RK is referring to the trend of assuming Wikidata is the only organizational tool anybody needs anymore, which many of us do not exactly agree with. I don't believe there is an actual policy or anything on EN.WP reflecting this, it's more a matter of people who think Wikidata is the greatest thing ever imposing their ideas on other projects. Personally I add the commonscat tag regularly to any article that I am aware has a category here. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:17, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
@Broichmore: Formal guidelines regarding linking to Commons and other Wikimedia sister projects is at Wikipedia:External links and Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects. Linking to Commons or other sites is neither mandatory nor prohibited, but often is a service to the reader. Debates regarding individual articles should be handled on Wikipedia. In my opinion, people who remove the links because "Commons is in the sidebar now" are foolish. Sidebars don't show up in mobile view, which is how many people around the world view Wikipedia. And Wikidata is not the all-mighty, benevolent, one-and-only-true-god whose word is law that some people seem to want it to be. --Animalparty (talk) 06:11, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
@Animalparty: The sidebar is in the mobile version, its further down the page in collapsible form, calling itself Quick Facts. I've never seen a commons link in any sidebar. I agree with you about Wikidata, I'm yet to see any benefit to us; but in the meantime I do persist with it to a limited extent. Eternal hope prevails. Broichmore (talk) 12:43, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
@Ricky81682: I note your view. My thinking is that we should make links in the English Wikipedia as a minimum the rest will follow soon enough... At some point I'll be asking Wikipedia editors to do likewise and put in links. One of the reasons I'm pushing for this, is that this project, suffers from indiscriminate (at times) over diffusion of categories, people actively creating empty categories, or categories of 1 file, or multiple categories for simple subjects, actively hiding files from view just for the sake of filing.
My major goal here is to provide a library of useful files to Wikipedia, I'm not interested in being a feeder for Getty, Alamy and pinterest. If we were putting in links at Wikipedia to get our files used, perhaps we would take more care on making them accessible, instead of hiding them.
Getting them used is the paydirt for our efforts. There are astonishing numbers of biographies on wikipedia without a portrait, where PD portraits are available. Astonishing numbers of artists without a gallery or link to their artworks.
I suggested two types of link the prominent one is not relegated to External" links, only the discreet one. Last but not least, wikipedia for all its faults is our advertising outlet for what we have to offer. Broichmore (talk) 12:43, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
Either way, this is a discussion for English not here. I suggest asking someone to have a bot create a list of all pages of biographies (start with a small subset, maybe stubs or something) where there is a link or there is a category on Commons with the same name or something. From there, just attack it via AWB or something simple. If you need advice or help, ask me there. Is there something here that needs to be done? Perhaps a list of all images here that has a page on English with the same title but no linkage? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:31, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

relationships

I recall having read something in Commons or maybe some discussion here about the relationship between Wikipedia categories and Commons categories. So far, all I can find is this: Commons:Categories#Categorization tips "Categorization of Wikimedia Commons is more detailed and deep than categorization of Wikipedia projects. Comparing to them, Commons have more categories of individual subjects – places, people, organizations, events, terms etc. Almost every article of Wikipedia can have a corresponding category of Commons." Does anyone here know of other material related to this in particular or about the relationship of Wikipedia articles to Commons in general? Thanks Hmains (talk) 04:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@Hmains: Your question is little vague - do you have a more specific question or problem you are trying to solve? At a high level, most non-stub Wikipedia articles probably have a Commons category, but Commons also has many categories for subjects that do not yet have Wikipedia articles, and also many categories used for organizing our other categories that will likely never correspond to a Wikipedia article. – BMacZero (🗩) 07:04, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
@Hmains: Let me guess, based on your talk page: you are trying to justify your claim that the names of Commons categories must always match the names of English-language-Wikipedia categories when the latter exist. No, there is no consensus to that effect, as several of us have told you. (If that is not where you were headed, then my apologies for presuming.) - Jmabel ! talk 17:14, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Download count

Is there a way to see how many times the content you have donated has been downloaded? I think it would be interesting and a nice incentive if people could see their contributions being used.Back ache (talk) 08:43, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@Back ache: For media views of your most used File:VeggieChelseaBoots.jpg, you could find this link helpful. Per the defaults of Commons:Glamorous, you could also find these results helpful for use by project, with all or limited details available.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Glad to see people finding my footwear interesting :-) Is there no way to see a download count rather then the number of pages linking to it ? Back ache (talk)
I think it is technically impossible to distinguish between just viewing the full resolution file in the browser and saving that file on the computer. Maybe it would be possible to monitor the full size views and download in general but there is not such a feature yet. --GPSLeo (talk) 19:39, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Not to mention that people often have a reason either to save a scaled-down version, or to look for detail without saving, so viewing full-res is may not even correlate to saving a copy. - Jmabel ! talk 00:50, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Polyhedron with no vertex visible from center

Why are these images named so?? --Palosirkka (talk) 10:58, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

No idea, after a bit of analysis:
  1. Special:CentralAuth/Suat35uysal tr
  2. Special:CentralAuth/Nasser_TH ar
  3. Special:CentralAuth/Noemilb16 en
  4. Special:CentralAuth/Rajkumar_wadiwala en
Does not show any obvious or more subtle connection that might indicate sock accounts. Some are apparently abandoned test accounts. It's possible that there was an interface error on either a mobile version of the standard wizard, or an app that badly predicted a filename. It might be connected to the use of the Visual Editor to do a cross-wiki upload, I have no idea what the failure modes of that workflow would be, nor even whether there's a set of known errors. There's no obvious connection via camera data, or connections via sister wikis.
Not done a deeper dive into metadata as not seeing a worrying connection to indicate it's worthwhile. --Fæ (talk) 12:27, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Call for insights on ways to better communicate the work of the movement

The Movement Strategy recommendations published this year made clear the importance of establishing stronger communications within our movement. To this end, the Foundation wants to gather insights from communities on ways we all might more consistently communicate about our collective work, and better highlight community contributions from across the movement. Over the coming months, we will be running focus groups and online discussions to collect these insights. Visit the page on Meta-Wiki to sign up for a focus group or participate in the discussion.

ELappen (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Is it allowed to ask donations?

I saw two files with photo's in which the maker asks for a donation to himself, see File:Kanaal Almelo-De Haandrik in Vroomshoop (136FJAKA_3870)_-_Flickr_-_Janko_Hoener.jpg and File:Boom in Ommen_(136FJAKA_3354)_-_Flickr_-_Janko_Hoener.jpg. Is this allowed on Commons? I would say no because Commons is not-for-profit and the project scope is no advertising or self-promotion. If indeed the answer is no: can an administrator handle this matter? It looks like the maker did not upload the photo himself, but a bot did. JopkeB (talk) 08:01, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

That is simply the fault of the uploading bot. It also copies all Flickr-tags into the description. --Túrelio (talk) 08:15, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
OK, thanks. JopkeB (talk) 08:18, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
I've removed the donations-req (and Flickr-tags) from both images. --Túrelio (talk) 08:34, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Quite often these files show the artist or author as as being the modern day uploader as opposed to the original photographer in 1914 or artist from the 18th century, which is also patently wrong. --Broichmore (talk) 13:13, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I agree, there might be several issues with photos from Flickr: no name of the real author, no categories added, far too little information in the description about who, what, where and when, and so on. And on top of this I wonder: Is it desirable at all that bots upload photos from Flickr? How is the selection then made (not all photos on Flickr are appropriate for Commons)? JopkeB (talk) 14:46, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

I wonder why don't have PayPal on a block list? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:00, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Redirects for Demotic Egyptian glyph images

Hello. I’ve been working recently on producing and uploading images of ancient Egyptian Demotic characters/glyphs — see most of the contents of Category:Demotic — for use in English Wiktionary entries, since the Demotic script is not yet encoded in Unicode. As part of this I’ve developed a system (analogous to WikiHiero) through a Wiktionary template that takes glyph codes as parameters and spits out corresponding images with those codes in their filenames, e.g. inputting nb-3 causes the image at File:Demotic-character-nb-3.png to display. However, many Demotic characters are multivalent, able to represent several different phonetic values or semantic categories, and so I’d like to produce numerous file redirects to character images to allow them to be input with multiple different codes. My question is: is this permissible? I see that Help:File_redirect#Redirect_for_other_purposes says this sort of thing should be assessed on a case-by-case basis, so I’m posting here to make sure I can go ahead with this without getting into trouble. Thanks in advance, Vorziblix (talk) 08:05, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Seeing no objections, I’ll go ahead and start making redirects. Vorziblix (talk) 05:50, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Why not sort?

At Category:Mayors of New Brunswick, New Jersey, I think they didn't sort on the surname because I left the surname field empty at Wikidata, I since added and purged my cache, but they are still sorting on the first name, will they eventually sort, or do I have to add in a defaultsort? --RAN (talk) 06:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@RAN: You can hurry it along with purge or a null edit.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 06:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
Let me try that. --RAN (talk) 06:22, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Copyright files without permission

What are people's opinions about tagging new images which have been tagged with a source and author, but the source states they are copyright? My usual response is to assume good faith and tag them with {{No permission since}}, giving the uploader seven days to contact OTRS. After all, it's possible that they have asked permission. However I frequently notice that they are tagged soon afterwards as copyvios and deleted. If this is the correct response to these images, why do we need the no permission template? O Still Small Voice of Clam 18:48, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Voice of Clam: Just my take, I would use {{Copyvio}} when it is obvious that the image is copyrighted and the source has not released it under a free license. I would use {{No permission since}} if it's not obvious and the situation might plausibly be resolved with an OTRS ticket or additional information - for example, the uploader appears to be the author but needs to be confirmed, or the file looks like it might be public domain but clear evidence and info is not provided. – BMacZero (🗩) 22:01, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

List of images

Is there somewhere I can get a list of the pictures I have uploaded -- not all contributions, just pictures? --Jim Evans (talk) 00:46, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jim Evans: Are you looking for Special:ListFiles/Jim Evans? --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 01:15, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. No, I had found that page. I'm looking for just a list -- no images. It would be like Contributions but with only image files listed.
@Jim Evans: a couple of possibilities come to mind: in your Contributions filter (click “Search for contributions”) check the “Only show edits that are page creations” box, and unless you’ve started a lot of other pages that will show mostly image files; there’s also your log (linked beside your username at the top of the contributions page) which will show both page-creations and other uploads (along with moves &c., if any).—Odysseus1479 (talk) 03:58, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jim Evans: The process described above would give you this list. Is this what you're looking for? I'm not sure how to generate a complete single simple list without copy-and-pasting into a spreadsheet. --Animalparty (talk) 06:29, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jim Evans: There's also your upload log.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 04:02, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Just what I wanted --Jim Evans (talk) 20:20, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jim Evans: You're welcome.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 19:29, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by:   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 19:29, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2021

The 2021 Community Wishlist Survey is now open! This survey is the process where communities decide what the Community Tech team should work on over the next year. We encourage everyone to submit proposals until the deadline on 30 November, or comment on other proposals to help make them better. The communities will vote on the proposals between 8 December and 21 December.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can write proposals in any language, and we will translate them for you. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing your proposals!

SGrabarczuk (WMF) 05:52, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): Commons:Txokoa has redirected here for over a year. How can we get it off of m:User:SGrabarczuk (WMF)/sandbox/MM/Es fallback so you stop sending Spanish language texts here?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 06:13, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: yes, we can and I will. Thanks for the ping and sorry for the trouble! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 06:16, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Can i uploading virtual concert or closed-door audience concert screenshots on Wikimedia Commons

I'm talking about virtual concert or closed-door audience concert screenshots for Wikimedia Commons is allowed or not allowed, if taken from videos make sure can accept to uploading and while if not taken from video such as video game screenshots, would can upload or not. --Firzafp supports #SaveHTTP (talk) 12:48, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

  • @Firzafp: In general, screenshots are not allowed unless you are the creator of the content in question and therefore hold the copyright. E.g. for a concert, we would presumably need permission from the performer and the camera person, plus if the performer did not write their own material then the writer as well. - Jmabel ! talk 17:07, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Upload issues?

Is anyone else having issues trying to upload files? A bit ago it started going to the server-error page throwing 408 and 502 errors whenever I try to upload. - The Bushranger (talk) 03:55, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

@The Bushranger: Not according to Special:NewFiles.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 05:01, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
It seems to have cleared up. - The Bushranger (talk) 05:03, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Grand Canyon National Park's B-Roll archive

Hello.

I've found this site : [4].

A bot could upload on WikiCommons all videos from this website.

--ComputerHotline (talk) 07:07, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Awesome source. I don't think this can be automated by a bot because the files lack really any kind of machine-readable metadata. However, I will take a look at doing it at some point if nobody gets there before me. – BMacZero (🗩) 01:56, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I need a blacklist to block specific users who leave messages on my talkpage

I need a blacklist to block specific users who leave messages on my talkpage because someone said that I had Asperger's syndrome and spreading such false rumors everywhere. Although I have wrote to the Wikimedia Foundation, I have not received a response yet. Now that same person comes to me and quarrel with me again.--Kai3952 (talk) 00:54, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

@Kai3952: Please follow the steps at Commons:Dispute resolution.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 01:11, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Template:Wikidata/FamilyTree

Let's discuss the use and abuse of {{Wikidata/FamilyTree}}, apparently in use in around 1100 category and gallery pages. In my opinion more often than not it's an eyesore and distraction, clogging what should be media repository pages with relatively trivial genealogical info. It's fairly benign when a family tree has only a few entries, but borders on the absurd for cases like Category:Polly Caton or Category:Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild. Wikimedia Commons is not a genealogy database, it's a media repository first and foremost. It's not Find a Grave, not The Peerage, and not Wikidata. Commons is a repository, not a presenter: a warehouse, not a classroom; a library, not an encyclopedia. Most immediate family members are now included in the now ubiquitous {{Wikidata Infobox}}. I admit that the diagrams do have educational value, but Commons may not be the best place to present the info, and the info should not dominate screen space, nor hinder users' ability to locate media (is it sensical that the first thing someone sees when looking for media on Charles Dickens is a lineage to his great-great-great-grandson and all of his offspring with no media whatsoever?). Potential fixes to the screen clogging phylogenies include: A) removing all instances of the templates as obsolete/redundant to Wikidata Infobox (was it ever discussed before widespread implementation?), or restricting placement to galleries alone; B) making the template collapsible and collapsed by default, so it doesn't take up so much screen space; C) standardizing display and placement of the templates to be less prominent (e.g. coding so they display below rather than above media files and categories). I'm partial to a combination of B and C, but otherwise A would suit me just fine. --Animalparty (talk) 20:06, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

D) Moving to a subpage (or talk page) of the subject's main page, with a link to them from the main page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:29, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
I don't C is technically possible. I agree with the idea that Commons doesn't really need to display these huge family trees and they really take up an excessive amount of prime screen space. I'd support (B) default collapsing this FamilyTree template, that seems like a clean and relatively uncontroversial solution. – BMacZero (🗩) 03:16, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
B, collapse it. Or, limit the height of the box.--RZuo (talk) 11:37, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
  • One person's eyesore, is another person's needed navigation tool. They have a built in vertical size limit, so they do not overwhelm the page. I find them incredibly useful when I am looking for an image of Baron X or Count X or "John Smith, Baronet" and need to look at several generations before I am sure I have found the correct person. In some cases there can be 5 generations of someone with the same name or the same title or a combination of both, infoboxes just show parents and children, and rarely a distant relative. When we first introduced infoboxes, thay had the same pushback as being "ugly" and "a distraction". I can see a student making a screenshot and including it in a school book report. It also answers one of the most common internet search questions for historical figures: Does person X have descendants? Also when uploading and categorizing images from the Library of Congress it is very helpful. For instance: How do you know who Lord R. Innes-Ker is in this photo without consulting a genealogical chart to know you have the right generation of Innes-Kers? I also don't think having 1K charts out of, my guess is, 1M categories, is a distraction, you would only see it if were specifically interested in that person. My guesstimate is that we may have 5K to 10K categories where [we] have both an image and a 3-generation lineage or more, [that could be made into a family tree]. --RAN (talk) 05:16, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): In practise, the reference for identifying portrait images and the like is Wikipedia and and its disambiguation pages, not here. In the case of the en:Rothschild family the family article is the place to go. Just hovering over the named links (like tooltips) will display the ID photos for speedy reference. Commons is vastly inferior to Wikipedia in this regard mainly because of the ongoing cancerous and destructive behaviour shown here of over diffusion of filed images, and no tooltips function. Family trees are helpful IMO, but best as sub pages. In fact they too are better off left to Wikipedia as collapsible trees. If you want to code up a tree your better off putting it over there, where it can have a wide audience. --Broichmore (talk) 13:40, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@Broichmore: How are ImageNotes not a tooltips function? What else do you have in mind? - Jmabel ! talk 17:14, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I'm talking about Wikipedia page preview functionality. ImageNotes are of no value in the context of this discussion, they don't show image portrait previews on family trees here. --Broichmore (talk) 17:45, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@Broichmore: No, but they can show clear identification of any individual in a photo, and could link to their family tree elsewhere if that is germane. Admittedly: I don't spend a lot of my work time on the nobility and aristocracy. I don't think I've ever run across a family tree on a Commons page. - Jmabel ! talk 21:39, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
  •  B, I think that Wikimedia Commons needs much more navigational templates, we actually already have a lot, but they tend to be under-utlised. Though big navigational templates should always be collapsed by default. I think that these navigational templates are really handy for discovering related categories and finding out which categories don't exist yet (hence need media files). Using Wikidata is good, though I really hope that more navigational templates and standard templates will be created. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:23, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

wrong history

This page shows incorrect information https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec/commons.wikimedia.org/Jim%20Evans

It says I registered in 2015. I've been a member since 2006. --Jim Evans (talk) 02:04, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

And so does this one https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Jim_Evans --Jim Evans (talk) 02:07, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

You probably used a different account. Ruslik0 (talk) 08:46, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
That's when you first edited at Commons, you have edits since 2006 on the English Wikipedia: https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec/en.wikipedia.org/Jim%20Evans. --ghouston (talk) 10:51, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
Don't worry, noobs are welcome here. --Fæ (talk) 11:04, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jim Evans: You registered on English Wikipedia Wednesday, March 22, 2006 1:34:02 PM (UTC), with your Single User Login global account 16:53, 17 March 2015 (UTC), and on Commons Saturday, May 16, 2015 2:56:16 PM (UTC).   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:50, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies even if I still don't understand. So, I was uploading pictures to Commons in 2007 even though I wasn't registered? --Jim Evans (talk) 14:07, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jim Evans: Not that I can see.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 00:11, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
not the first time this user asking this exact same dumb question: MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-VisualFileChange.js#Can't_Figure_Out_How_to_Change_Previous_Contributions.--Roy17 (talk) 21:45, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
I don't see this as the same question. Even if it were, there is no need to be rude. This kind of behavior makes people reluctant to participate here. --Jim Evans (talk) 01:10, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jim Evans: I see now that you used account Wiki name here from 03:29, 8 May 2007 (UTC) to 07:04, 10 September 2014 (UTC) and it was renamed locally here to Wiki name~commonswiki 10:49, 19 April 2015 (UTC) because you neglected to respond to the bottom two sections of what became User talk:Wiki name~commonswiki, and then the English Wikipedia and global account instance of it was renamed globally to Jim Evans 07:04, 19 December 2019 (UTC) per this request. You also neglected to tell us about those other usernames here.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 02:17, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
I posted under wiki name from joining until about a year ago when I requested my name be changed to the current one. I didn't request it and was never aware my username was Wiki name~commonswiki and the name on my user page never changed until last year. But, I find this place so arcane I my have just brushed it off as another wikiism. In any event my change from wiki name to my current name was done last year -- not in 2015. I still don't understand what has happened because I was unaware a name change would overwrite my initiation date. --Jim Evans (talk) 02:50, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jim Evans: before global accounts were a thing, different users could have the same name on different wikis without conflicting. Cross-wiki linking one’s accounts, through something called SUL, was optional. During the ‘globalization’ process, many unlinked same-name accounts got disambiguated (following a User Talk notice) with a suffix identifying their home wiki, so from that point onward your identities were separate, and your recent renaming of the tilde-less account had no effect on the other.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 03:31, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
Probably best to just redirect User:Wiki name~commonswiki to User:Jim Evans and User talk:Wiki name~commonswiki to User talk:Jim Evans, just like at User:Wiki name. Multichill (talk) 11:51, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
If you're suggesting I should do this I have no idea how. --Jim Evans (talk) 23:27, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jim Evans: For example, go to User:Wiki name~commonswiki and replace the content with '#redirect [[User:Jim Evans]]' - Jmabel ! talk 02:07, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
That worked. Thank you. --Jim Evans (talk) 02:43, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Initiatives within recommendations by Movement Strategy

We should learn that either the recommendations are now subdivided into priorities initiatives or we can discuss priorities initiatives related to the recommendations. Either way, we can now vote "Support", "Oppose", or "Comment" on whatever priority initiative you would like to discuss. --George Ho (talk) 00:15, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Just in case, here is the list (i.e. simplified versio) of initiatives: m:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/List of Initiatives. --George Ho (talk) 03:30, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Shoot, I forgot to give you the link: m:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Discuss. --George Ho (talk) 00:14, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Search for: (posted)

To make my case in Wikidata:Property_proposal/date_posted I want search for al files where by the date is added the remark (posted). Example: File:S-Gravenhage Nieuwe - Uitleg briefkaart.jpg. Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:12, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

This should find what you want: [5] --Andreas Stiasny (talk) 14:05, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Photos of unknown locations

Hi all,

I have a few photos I took a long while ago when I was on holiday. I'd love to upload them to Commons but sadly I don't remember where I took them and didn't take any notes on where I took them either. I use geotagging now but I didn't have a camera with GPS function back then. Anyways, I'd like to upload these photos but I don't know which categories I should give them seeing as I don't know their location. Does anybody have any suggestions?

All the best, - NeoMeesje (talk) 18:10, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

@NeoMeesje: even clues like county/state/province/country/continent and year/decade can be helpful. So can comparing memories with traveling companions and people you left at home, as well as checking old documents and memorabilia. I have memories of the 20 US states, 2 Canadian provinces, 7 total countries, and 3 continents I lived in or visited, but I'd have to do similar research on counties and municipalities. I am not counting anything I only flew over or traveled by train through.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:35, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
@NeoMeesje: Are the photographs realistically useful for educational purposes, per COM:EDUSE? High quality images of certain things may be instructive/informative even if the location isn't known with certainty: e.g. an old building demonstrating a certain style of architecture, or scenes depicting everyday life (household objects, people working, etc.). Having only the country or province is better than no locality data at all. There are a lot of files in Category:Unidentified locations, and while some may be forever overlooked and unidentified, some are widely used Featured Images (example 1, example 2). Of course, a photograph with location (not to mention date), even if approximate, has immensely more value, and is much more likely to be utilized. For some subjects like certain plants or invertebrates, location is crucial to ascertaining species. --Animalparty (talk) 19:36, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your replies, I'll be sure to see if I can recall some locations and otherwise I'm sure most of the images will be of some use. :-) - NeoMeesje (talk) 20:55, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
@NeoMeesje: You can find out about the date that you took the fotos by EXIF or filename: IMG_20200101_101010.jpg and even a filename like IMG0034.jpg will give you a hint, if you compare the file to the fotos with smaller and bigger numbers as name. Once you know, at what time you took a foto, you can estimate the position: from your calendar, from tickets you bought and from other fotos you took at the same day (week/month/year). --C.Suthorn (talk) 11:55, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
You can narrow down the posibilities by looking at Commons categories for similar pictures. (but it is a lot of detective work) Google Streetview is also helpfull if you dont need to go to far back in the past. There are unkwown categories in the Commons, but a full effort is expected to find the location before (example: Category:Unidentified train stations in Belgium). These should not be used as a dumping ground. The combination of the date time and your personal agenda (when you took holidays etc) should help. Sometimes there are no precise dates/times (ex slides) but there is cronological nummering, wich can trigger your memory: was it before or after?Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:12, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

InternetArchiveBot

There is an ongoing proposal to enable InternetArchiveBot on Commons. The bot would be tasked with identifying broken external links and adding links to working archives. As this could potentially affect millions of file description pages, your input is welcome on the bot request page. Harej (talk) 23:21, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Locked out of an image file by Wikidata

Currently I can't get into a simple image file to add a note against a ship. All I want to do is put in when the ship was built and who at some stage owned it. This is a simple exercise in a file not hijacked by Wikidata. There are possibly a 1000 different variants of information you may want to add or correct to a file now impossible, without a degree from Philadelphia.

I can see the point of Wikidata taking over and presenting a human individual, say an artist, or a ship, or ravioli for that matter. However an image of ravioli on a plate decorated with Elephants, at table in Kowloon, under fluorescent lighting with a Somali eating it, is far too complex for this media. There's no way to easily add t an image, when Wikidata has stolen it and locked it away. This nonsense needs to stop now, we are losing access to files at an escalating rate. --Broichmore (talk) 11:48, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

As has been made clear several times in several discussions, there is no consensus for systematically creating files on Commons that have no coherent Wikitext. At a minimum the most novice newbie should be able to add to or correct a description without being forced to log in to Wikidata, or be forced to edit strange structured data fields that have no consensus for what they mean or what templates or formatting is "allowed" to exist in them.
These mass changes by Wikidata evangelists undermine the future accessibility of this project.
With regard to your specific examples, I suggest you paste in a new information template and ignore what automatically generated dummy text is on display. Whatever you have to add is of far more value to the specific file. If someone reverts your changes, raise the case here where the community can see this is happening, right now, today, not in some fantastic future. --Fæ (talk) 12:00, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
@Broichmore: I don't quite understand why you cannot add a note against a ship. Take this image file as an example: Template:Artwork automatically provides information from Wikidata:Q50919855, but we can add "description" to Template:Artwork to provide additional information (like this edit). --Neo-Jay (talk) 12:33, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

On a separate tangent, it's rather worrying that these mass uploads from the Royal Museums Greenwich, make no mention of the fact that on the RMG source website, and at the ArtUK site, the license is a non-commercial use only one. We should not obscure or mislead about the copyright claims at the source websites, even if we add a suitable PD license by our later analysis. Again this failure to provide all the relevant information seems a direct consequence of driving the uploads via Wikidata, rather than it being a Commons based project first. This appears to be deliberate license laundering, obscured by the used of Wikidata.

UK copyright law may well change and be retrospectively applied, as it has in the past. The copyright claims for the photography might well be asserted and both reusers and uploaders should be clear about these risks and their personal liability for failing to correctly represent the publishers copyright claim.

Nowhere on the RMG website is there any statement about their metadata/database being on a CC0 license. Systematically scraping their website and pumping it in to Wikidata makes the assumption that there are no database rights and that all text data can be reused as CC0. This looks like a fundamental legal exposure for the WMF, volunteers participating in this mass data harvesting and Wikimedia Commons long term collections, considering this is being systematically done across multiple archives in multiple legislations. --Fæ (talk) 12:59, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

So in this case when the bot scraped the item up it didn't bother with uploading the items date of painting, it's dimensions, the identity of the vessel (the subject) it relates to, the museum ID/catalog number, and the actual collection within the museum that it belongs to. Note: this particular item is unusual, in that, the ID for the picture is the same as for the image, usually they are different. Who is supposed to put that data in, if it's missing? I notice on this particular item the Wikidata number not displayed within Artwork template, on others it is. No consistency?
@Neo-Jay: So Jay we just overwrite at the commons end, anything coming from wikidata. --Broichmore (talk) 14:30, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
@Broichmore: Yes, we can overwrite information from Wikidata. In a template, only those parameters without local information on Commons may present values from Wikidata. --Neo-Jay (talk) 14:51, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
@Broichmore and Neo-Jay: You can overwrite any fields coming from Wikidata with local wikitext, but on this workshop page I've added some thoughts as to why that might be something to do only sparingly (ie most of the time allow the information to live on wikidata, and to come from there). YMMV and your thoughts would most definitely be welcome -- in particular, how to reduce disadvantages as far as we can in such an approach; or how to keep as much of the advantages as we can for any alternatives. Best, Jheald (talk) 21:39, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jheald: I agree with you. I personally prefer the information from Wikidata. Thank you for the message.--Neo-Jay (talk) 07:11, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Is this Queen Victoria?

This statue looks like Queen Victoria to me, but can anyone confirm so that it can be categorized better? Pinging User:Dipan S since they uploaded the file. --Auntof6 (talk) 08:59, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

@Auntof6: Looks like a safe call, particularly with the orb in her left hand. (Sceptre got eroded or broken?) Jheald (talk) 11:16, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
The lower end of the sceptre is clearly broken off, along with the last knuckle of her index finger; most of the shaft is visible along her forearm. The orb & crown also appear to have lost their crosses. I don’t think erosion—even aided by corrosion from air pollution—could do that much damage in less than two centuries. Anyway, I think she’s fairly recognizable (compared to official portraits &c.) even without the royal/imperial accessories.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 19:52, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
It's clearly Queen Victoria, but to date this further, the statue is wearing the Royal Victorian Order which is the medallion on her left breast with what looks like an "RVI" monogram, but is actually the RVO symbol. The RVO was created in 1896, so the statue must date from after then. This makes the identification pretty much as validated as it can be without a plaque telling you so. --Fæ (talk) 21:25, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jheald, Odysseus1479, and Fæ: Thanks to all. I see that another user has categorized the file as Victoria so it's all set. --Auntof6 (talk) 23:07, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Odd subcatting

Category:James M. Cox presidential campaign, 1920 is a subcat of both Category:Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Category:Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1920. Besides the fact that the former seems like an overcat given the latter, even the latter seems weird: unsurprisingly, only about half the images for the campaign show FDR, and given that parent cat, it would be considered overcat'ing to mark these with Category:Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1920. This seems to me to be massively wrong. - Jmabel ! talk 03:20, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I agree. @SecretName101: Why did you do that?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 03:35, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Agreed. Not appropriate. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 03:53, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
I will remove Category:Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Category:Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1920 as parent categories, and use Category:Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1920 on the photos where he is visible. - Jmabel ! talk 18:58, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
@Jmabel: He was James Cox's runningmate in 1920. That's why that campaign belongs in a Roosevelt category, and those images of Roosevelt were during his time on the ticket, that's why they fit in that category. 21:28, 26 November 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SecretName101 (talk • contribs)
Yes, completely anonymous editor, I am aware that he was Cox's runningmate in 1920. All of the above was on that basis. - Jmabel ! talk 05:05, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
I see that despite what seemed to be a consensus here among everyone else, User:SecretName101 reverted my edit to Category:James M. Cox presidential campaign, 1920. I'm not going to get dragged into an edit war, but I stand by everything I wrote above, and think my edit should be restored. - Jmabel ! talk 05:08, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
Not anonymous but a mistaken signature by User:SecretName101. Also, just because there were running mates doesn't mean the Cox 1920 campaign alone belong as a top category at Category:Franklin Delano Roosevelt (not even FDR's campaigns are top level categories). The better method is what was done with Category:Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Garner but that requires discussing things with people here rather than ignoring everyone with a drive-by comment and revert to get your way. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:51, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Jacques Forestier photos on Commons.

Not sure who or where to ask this... BIU Sante uploaded a photo they said was of Jacques Forestier (see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jacques_Forestier); the one in the white lab coat. I was contacted by one of Jacques' grandchildren (via my French Wikipedia talk page), who confirmed that was not him in the photo. They have since uploaded two family photos to correctly identify Jacques Forestier. How should we handle the other two photos of the man in the lab coat who isn't Jacques Forestier but was labeled as such at the time of upload by the BIU Sante? I wanted to ensure this discussion was on record somewhere for transparency, but not sure how to proceed at this point? I checked the BIU sante website and it would seem they've also corrected the photo. What do we do with the photos of the man in the white lab coat, who's identity remains a mystery?Oaktree b (talk) 04:53, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

@Oaktree b: Is this article about a different person? Courtesy links: File:03572 Jacques Forestier.jpg and File:03572 Jacques Forestier (cropped).jpg.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 05:03, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
The article is about the same individual as the Wiki article, but uses the incorrect photo. Oaktree b (talk) 16:07, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Guessing: Einar Meulengracht? Fits with: 1) the signature, 2) the general looks of the subject [6] and 3) at BIU Santé, the image number 03571 where the image is missing right before the image number 03572 about Forestier. -- Asclepias (talk) 21:06, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
See also this photo in the issue in homage to Einar Meulengracht in Acta Medica Scandinavia, supplementum 213, Rosenkilde and Bagger, Copenhagen, 1948. -- Asclepias (talk) 07:13, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
Good catch. Sometimes credible repositories and sources get things wrong, sometimes from simple catalog mix-ups, other times from incorrect identification, e.g. the wrong James Parkinson. --Animalparty (talk) 18:46, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Martin Urbanec's answer for File:Літары беларускай арабіцы.svg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Seveleu-Dubrovnik#Martin_Urbanec's_answer


Maybe despite number of the issues[7] we cannot remove the file itself, but at least it should be removed from all the Wikies, and decategorised from "Belarusian language", "Belarusian Arabic alphabet" (I would propose "Lingvofreaks", "Fakes" or something like this.)! Thanks. 195.114.148.224 20:29, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

The “consensus” on “UN maps”

Hello everyone, I am a new editor and trying to better understand the various policies, standards and consensuses that exist with respect to editing certain maps. I am also interested to hear what others feel the ultimate goal of such maps are.

To preface this discussion, it is my opinion that maps should be clear, precise, and factual. With a good map, a user should be able to read the title, read the legend and have enough context to have a rough understanding of the point the map title was attempting to make without the need for much supporting details or data. Maps are often used as a quick reference or cheat sheet as they are often located in the infobox, so it is especially important that they are clear.

Anyways, after reading the Wikipedia article for the Paris Agreement after the United States pulled out, I noticed this map titled “Signatories and parties to the Paris Agreement” showcasing in the legend “Parties”, “Signatories” and “Parties also covered by European Union ratification”. It sounds like a straightforward and simple map until I noticed a few inconsistencies with disputed territories, such as Taiwan being colored as a party to the Paris Agreement. There is no indication that the map is a “UN map” (whatever that means… from the perspective of the UN?) or that any sort of dispute exists with respect to the data being presented. On 8 November 2020 I made a comment on the Talk page about the issue and nobody commented, so after two weeks I made an edit to correct what I thought was an overlooked issue. Within a few hours and without a reply to my comment on the Talk page, the map was reverted. I later asked for clarification why, for which a user responded “This is a UN treaty and the UN recognizes Taiwan as part of China” and the user later stated that such decision was part of a “consensus”.

My question is, where do such consensus come from? And what is the ultimate point of such maps like this one in my example?

There is no debate that the Paris Agreement is a UN treaty, and that Taiwan/ROC/Formosa/Chinese Taipei or whatever name you prefer to call it is not a United Nations Member State. It is a fact that only UNFCCC member states are entitled to become parties to the Paris Agreement. However, this map is simply titled as "Signatories and parties to the Paris Agreement" and it is a fact that the government that has full de-facto control over that area of land we informally or formally call Taiwan did not sign or ratify the Paris Agreement. The government over this specific area of land is not bound or obligated to the terms in the Paris Agreement.

I am of the understanding that the purpose of this map is not to debate the internal political positions of UN members or other territorial disputes, but to showcase the reality of which countries/states/territories/jurisdictions of a specific area on a map are "signatories or parties to the Paris Agreement". Even though the treaty itself is a UN treaty, shouldn’t the map be from a neutral perspective based on the reality and facts, independent of internal UN Member State positions? I also proposed a potential compromise making Taiwan and other disputed territories striped, to indicate some sort of dispute does exist in case it’s relevant to that specific user looking at the map.

The majority of us have studied the topics we are editing and we understand much of the context to these issues. However, your typical student or person glancing at this map wondering if Taiwan is part of the Paris Agreement would read the title- “Signatories and parties to the Paris Agreement” - read the legend “Parties”, “Signatories” - and see Taiwan is marked as purple and now might assume that <the government with de-facto control over> Taiwan is a party to the Paris Agreement, despite the reality being that Taiwan is not bound or obligated in any form or way to the the Paris Agreement. This situation requires additional context not displayed on the map, but this map is without indication that such additional context exists… and that in my opinion, makes it a bad map.

I also searched the Village Pump for other discussions, but they simply said to refer to the Talk page of each map that has this issue with Taiwan, often which has unanswered people asking every few years why Taiwan is colored on the maps and many reverts when the map gets changed, but I did not see anything that seems like a "consensus". Eclipsed830 (talk) 18:07, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

For better context, I was the person participating in the discussion with the user above and wanted to comment more on the situation. The user felt that all maps needed to represent the de-facto situation in the world, to which I explained that while that it is very appropriate in certain situations where geopolitics matter, it is more common to find maps that simply rely on international recognition, generally outlined by the UN. It is even more common to find those maps when the subject is of a UN treaty such as the map of the Paris Agreement, which the user still fails to understand is a map of a UN basis treaty signed by UN members under the jurisdiction of the UN, precisely why Taiwan was coloured as part of China in the first place. I further explained that relying upon the policy of international and UN recognition is a common method of avoiding POV pushing after he stated that "states such as Abkhazia, Somaliland, Ossetia, or Kosovo whose governments are not bound to the Paris Agreement, should absolutely be highlighted or striped". It is a common practice of Wikipedia and Commons to try and present neutral information, and while the inclusion of contested regions often helps NPOV, at other times when the matter refers specifically to a version of a state on a map recognized by larger organizations such as the UN, it is simply most appropriate and neutral to present the common international recognition policy. --Ratherous (talk) 20:01, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Even if the map would have Taiwan as part of China, Taiwan should be grey. en:List of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change clearly states "Applies to Macao, extended by Portugal on 28 June 1999. Application remained in force after transfer of sovereignty to China. Applies to Hong Kong from 8 April 2003." As the other special administrated areas of China are specially mentioned as part of the membership. I would assume that the other special regions of China Taiwan and also Tibet are not part of the UNFCCC. --GPSLeo (talk) 20:59, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Actually in terms of special administrative regions the Chinese UN membership only extends that to Hong Kong and Macau and no other region, as can be seen by its ratification of the Paris Agreement [8] and the declarations made by the state. Neither Tibet nor Taiwan officially hold that status. Otherwise there would be explicit territorial exceptions made by the state as Denmark has done in regard to Greenland, which can also be seen in the source. That is why Greenland remains grey on the map, despite Denmark's ratification. --Ratherous (talk) 21:41, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Ratherous, GPSLeo brings up a few good points and it seems the Paris Agreement map by including Taiwan as part of China is indeed inconsistent compared to other maps related to the UNFCCC. Taiwan appears grey on the "Parties to the UNFCCC" map, the "Kyoto Protocol Parties" map and lastly the "Ratification of the Doha Amendment of the Kyoto Protocol" map. So 3 out of the 4 maps related to the UNFCCC have Taiwan as grey, with the Paris Agreement map being the exception. Furthermore, the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/China and Chinese-related articles#Maps states that the rule of thumb is "On world and regional maps, Taiwan should not be included as a part of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in general.". Eclipsed830 (talk) 12:46, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
It's not very surprising that Taiwan would appear grey on older maps, many of which were perhaps created prior to the general agreement of displaying disputed territories, as the maps automatically create Taiwan as a separate object on SVG editors, and I don't see much reason to change that at this point as they are not as widely used and refer to essentially defunct agreements. More so, I'm sure there are a number of maps that do not properly display UN member state boundaries, however that does not mean that general NPOV understandings for UN maps should be ignored for the future. One of those maps entirely uses a wrong map template with the inclusion of circles for overseas regions, which is generally not appropriate for UN maps, so using them as examples really doesn't make them correct. As per the recommendation made by the Manual of Style, I would completely agree that Taiwan should generally be shown separately from mainland China as I have numerously done in maps such as File:COVID-19 Outbreak World Map.svg and others, however when it comes to maps specifically intended to visualize UN members, under UN parameters, Taiwan's area does fall under the Chinese UN membership whether one agrees with that or not. --Ratherous (talk) 13:20, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
Ratherous What "general agreement" are you referencing? I think it's clear that to be consistent with other UNFCCC maps, Taiwan should be grey on the Paris Agreement map too. By having Taiwan colored, it is implying something that simply isn't true and is inconsistent with the other related Wiki maps. I also must reiterate, nothing in the Paris Agreement map indicates that it is from a "UN map" (whatever that means?) or from the "perspective of the United Nations". Let me ask you, is the government that has full control over the area we formally/informally call Taiwan either a party or signatory to the Paris Agreement? Eclipsed830 (talk) 13:57, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
The general agreement exercised on most maps of the UN and other international organization which generally tends to follow their recognition of boundaries, exampled of which I have already presented to you, the most prominent of which is File:United Nations Members.svg as well as maps of other organizations such as NATO and the EU which include certain disputed regions and omit others based on the organization's recognition. Also, I'm not sure how many more times I'll have to repeat this, as I have already done this over and over in response to your comments, the Paris Agreement is a UN Treaty signed under the parameters of the UN, which is why the map displays UN members in accordance to UN recognition. Which leads to the response to your last question, the answer to which is when it comes to maps displaying UN member states, the position of a UN unrecognized governments is quite irrelevant as it does not fall within the framework of the organization (members of which, once again, are displayed on the map precisely as member of the UN). It then becomes absolutely clear from contexts of articles on Wikipedia that the disputed Taiwanese government is not a party to the treaty as it is a UN treaty, allowing the reader to understand the situation regardless. --Ratherous (talk) 14:17, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
I do not feel that all maps need to represent the “de-facto situation”, but what is the readers intention with respect to the data they are looking for? Is a user that clicks on a map of “Signatories and parties to the Paris Agreement” looking to see the internal affairs of member states and border disputes within the UN, or the actual jurisdictions that are “signatories and parties to the Paris Agreement” and therefore bound to the agreement? Nothing on the map indicates it is a “UN map” and from the perspective of some UN member states. If this is a UN map based on internal recognition of some member states, it should be stated in the title, or if there is a dispute, it should be indicated or noted in the legend. A good map should be able to stand alone without additional context, something this map cannot do. Eclipsed830 (talk) 01:41, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
It hardly seems likely that a government can have much influence on pollution in areas it doesn't control, so using the de-facto situation isn't illogical. It would particularly affect countries like Somalia, Libya and Syria. However, such a map may also become out-of-date very rapidly. It should be consistent at least in what method it picks. --ghouston (talk) 04:34, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps there may be a need in the future to have maps based on the level of active commitment to the Paris Agreement, or mitigation of pollution under the Agreement, or anything of such sort where 'de-facto' boundaries matter above all, but when it comes to a map of UN member signatories and ratifiers of a UN treaty, there is simply no need of ever-changing unrecognized boundaries. --Ratherous (talk) 13:20, 27 November 2020 (UTC)


Sorry to add another top level comment but I didn't want to edit my original post. After further research with “UN maps”, aside from the map of “Members of the United Nations” linked in the infobox on the United Nations page, I found the vast majority (every one I looked at aside from one resolution) of other “UN maps” have the area we call Taiwan/Formosa/ROC/"Chinese Taipei" greyed out or highlighted and does not include it as "part of China" (PRC).

With respect to other UNFCCC maps (which the Paris Agreement falls under), Taiwan is grey on:

I also went down the “List of specialized agencies of the United Nations” and found that every single agency that has a map of its member states or various resolutions passed also has Taiwan grey and/or not "part of China". For reference:

In addition to those UN organizations, the same applies to every "related organizations" map of members/participants listed within that same wiki:

This same practice also continued with various UN moratoriums or resolutions that contained maps, such as:

At this point, I am just not seeing the "general NPOV understandings for UN maps" that Ratherous claims exists, but actually the opposite. I do believe it would be appropriate to revert the Paris Agreement map back to my edit so it stays consistent with the other UN maps. Ratherous do you still object? Eclipsed830 (talk) 14:56, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

The existence of those maps really doesn't justify anything, it just shows that if the policy of displaying maps according to the displayed organization's recognition continues, then those maps need to be changed. I can just as easily present an array of UN maps where Taiwan is shown as a part of China. Some examples:
The most basic idea of consistency applies as well where the main UN map used by Wikipedia clearly shows Taiwan as part of China, under the UN framework. Other UN maps should stay consistent so long as that is the chosen display. Not to mention that there are numerous precedents with maps of other international organizations, which also depict disputed areas per the recognition policy of the organization.
Some examples would be maps of the European Union, which for the most part include Kosovo, which has recognition from the organization as a whole (and is even given a status of a potential candidate, but usually exclude disputed states such as Northern Cyprus, Abkhazia, Transnistria and others, which hold no recognition from the EU as a whole.
Maps of NATO follow a similar pattern, where relations with Kosovo are established, unlike other disputed states.
Maps of the Council of Europe, which does not recognize any disputed states, including Kosovo which is shown as a part of Serbia (despite not being a part of the organization similar to the Taiwanese government and the Paris Agreement), exclude all disputed states.
Following the organizations' recognition allows for the most consistent NPOV. Wikipedia is a space where you often have to put your personal opinion aside and stay neutral. --Ratherous (talk) 04:10, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
Ratherous All of the maps I linked were top level maps specifically related to the UN and its organizations. Many of the maps you included are "regional maps", not based off member status, but the physical geography (WHO regions, WTO regions, WMO regions, etc). You also linked to multiple maps and organizations that both Taiwan and China are members or observers of such as the Asian Pacific Group so of course Taiwan would be colored in those situations too. Lastly, you also included many maps such as the Refugee Convention Signatories map which was adopted in 1952 and 1967, at which point ROC/Taiwan was still a UN Member State.
Significantly more important, you linked to maps that show states that ratified various UN treaties, its important to note and understand that despite Taiwan not being a UN member, the Taiwanese government continues to de-facto ratify such treaties and therefore essentially becomes bound by them. For example, the Taiwanese government ratified the terms in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Factually it is correct to color Taiwan green on the map of states that ratified CEDAW, as CEDAW was de-facto ratified as domestic law and its terms and conditions apply on the jurisdiction that Taiwan falls under. With regards to the Paris Agreement (the initial map in debate), Taiwan domestically ratified the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, but not the Paris Agreement itself. If the Taiwanese government passed domestic laws to indicate that they will ratify the terms and conditions of the Paris Agreement, I agree that it should be indicated that Taiwan ratified the Paris Agreement too.
The most consistent NPOV would/should generally show the de-facto point of view. In simple terms, a map showing "Signatories or parties to the Paris Agreement" should show the de-facto situation in which areas on a map are Signatories or parties to the Paris Agreement.
If I ask you independently: "Yes or no, is the government that has de-facto control over Taiwan a signatory or party to the Paris Agreement?" You or most people will probably say "no".
If I show you the map and ask "Yes or no, based on this map is the government that has de-facto control over Taiwan a signatory or party to the Paris Agreement?" You and most people would say "yes".
Do you not find this a bit problematic? | Eclipsed830 (talk) 05:59, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
Very deceptive of you to say most. I can maybe agree with you on two of the maps being only region - the WHO and UNWTO, the rest even WMO specifically show member states where only China is a member but Taiwan is highlighted as well, so I'm sorry but that does not discard the absolute majority of linked maps to be directly relating to member status. You also presented a link to a completely wrong organization than the one that I presented a map for. I gave an example File:Asia-Pacific Group Member States.svg which is a United Nations regional organization entitled Group of Asia and the Pacific Small Island Developing States consisting of actual members. You sent a link of the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering, which is a completely separate organization. Also there really is no such thing as 'de facto' ratification under the actual framework of the organization itself. No one is arguing that Taiwan is not an excellent example of democracy and the country may have changed its laws domestically yes, but that does not make it a party to any of the treaties is chooses to take example of, especially not in the views of the actual organization. If you look at official lists of the parties to those treaties on the UN Treaty Collection, including your given example of CEDAW, you can clearly see that it is only China that is listed [9]. Also I'm glad that you mentioned the historic time period of 1952 and 1967, because at the time mainland China and Taiwan were already de facto separate states and yet they are both highlighted on the map together. Is it suddenly okay for you to include both states when they are represented by the government in Taipei, because that is now starting to look like POV pushing. Readers of articles can very clearly understand from the article itself whether or not the unrecognized government in Taipei is a part to the treaty, that is not a reason to violate NPOV. --Ratherous (talk) 10:58, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

 Comment This argument does not belong on Commons, except as in connection with advice to map makers. If there is a dispute on how some regions should be marked on a map, Commons hosts both versions and the Wikipedias and other users can choose what one they use. If you make a map to be used on en-wp, it of course makes sense to follow the Wikipedia MoS, but any relevant point of view can be the base for a map hosted here (but name and description should match content). –LPfi (talk) 20:18, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Using ndash in category names

I have come across a category Category:Marshal's batons – Germany. This name strikes me as a very weird name that should probably be changed. Firstly, if we are using ndash rather than a minus sign, then we should probably use an apostrophe rather than a single tick; but in this case I would support using minus because it is easier to type. In general I believe that it is appropriate to name categories correctly even if the symbols do not exist on a keyboard, but this case is strange. Secondly, this ndash is not even grammaticaly correct. I would read this category name to mean that there is a specific type of Marshal's batons that are called "Germany" not that that they come from there. Thirdly there is a sub-sub-category called Category:Marshal's batons Nazi-Germany – on flags, which shows that ndash is being added in random locations of the category name, or it would have to be something like "Marshal's batons – Nazi-Germany on flags" or "Marshal's batons – Nazi-Germany – on flags". In short the whole thing seems to be a mess. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 06:29, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

The preference is for basic ASCII characters. See Commons:Categories#Category names: Basic English characters (ISO/IEC 646) are preferred over national variants or extension character sets (for instance, 'straight' apostrophes over 'curly'), where reasonable." --ghouston (talk) 03:40, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
ASCII is preferred where ASCII contains appropriate characters, as in "-" etc. Where a name cannot be written in ASCII, we do not limit ourselves to it. We have e.g. Category:Niña (ship, 1491)‎ and Category:Lech Wałęsa‎. –LPfi (talk) 20:27, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
I would argue that even a minus sign is not needed here, however. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 05:19, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
Not a minus, but "U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS" (in Unicode parlance), which is the one found in ASCII. There is also a real minus available. But yes, here the "–" should probably be replaced with "in" or "of". –LPfi (talk) 09:22, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
"Of" seems appropriate. The naming scheme in Category:Marshal's batons by country was apparently started by User:HHubi, who has since been blocked. --ghouston (talk) 23:34, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Bug report for wrong cats on upload

File:Oil lamp on thrikarthika.jpg is sorted in Category:Photographs taken on 2020-11-30. The information table says "30 November 2020 (according to Exif data)". The EXIF data says "Date and time of data generation: 18:40, 29 November 2020" , "File change date and time: 18:40, 29 November 2020", "Date and time of digitizing: 18:40, 29 November 2020".
I am confused. Is this now a bug or is this person somewhere in the world where it already is the 30th of November?
--D-Kuru (talk) 15:12, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

@D-Kuru: Uploader Rahulrnath001 appears to write captions in Malaysian. Malaysia uses time zone UTC+8 (MST). The file was uploaded 13:53, 29 November 2020 (UTC), or 21:53, 29 November 2020 (MST). I think you're right, some logic is at least 10h7m fast, as the date in the Information template should be UTC. The uploader could also be visiting any of the 8 jurisdictions with documented time offsets East of +10:00 per en:Template:UTC time offsets, but how would the logic know, unless Mobile Android App (Commons mobile app) 2.13.2~757c7b008 is leaking this info via "|date={{According to Exif data|2020-11-30}}"?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:32, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
Pinging @Misaochan as maintainer.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:54, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
This is something that we are still trying to figure out (see Github issue). It happens only very occasionally, so it is difficult to reproduce so far. Any assistance would be appreciated. Misaochan (talk) 14:57, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
@Misaochan: Thanks.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:27, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
@Misaochan and D-Kuru: Rahulrnath001 wrote "I am not a Malaysian. I uploaded the image on IST." in this edit and on User talk:D-Kuru. That would be en:Indian Standard Time, +05:30, so upload was 19:23, 29 November 2020 (IST), 43 minutes after photography.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:10, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
At least we know that it is the mobile app that is causing it. If it's not already dones, some bot could check all files in Category:Uploaded with Mobile/Android and see if the inserted value fits the EXIF data. Maybe that way we can figure out what is going on here --D-Kuru (talk) 21:56, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of

In April 2020 I uploaded this file. User:A1Cafel has nominated this picture for deletion for reasons that I consider to be wholle inadequate. I have tried to use reason, common sense, humour, irony and sarcasm, to no avail. See Commons:Deletion_requests/. He just does not bother to reply. This picture has been flagged for deletion for five months now. What is the procedure for the community to decide on a request for deletion? Kind regards, MartinD (talk) 20:32, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

The procedure is simply for an admin to decide to delete or not to delete and close the discussion. But when an admin checks the discussion and thinks they cannot make a good judgement because of lack of expertise and lack of strong arguments, they may choose to leave the decision to the next one passing by. If none of the admins seeing the discussion feels confident, it may stay open for a long time. –LPfi (talk) 09:31, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata descriptions changes to be included more often in Recent Changes and Watchlist

Sorry for sending this message in English. Translations are available on this page. Feel free to translate it in more languages!

As you may know, you can include changes coming from Wikidata in your Watchlist and Recent Changes (in your preferences). Until now, this feature didn’t always include changes made on Wikidata descriptions due to the way Wikidata tracks the data used in a given article.

Starting on December 3rd, the Watchlist and Recent Changes will include changes on the descriptions of Wikidata Items that are used in the pages that you watch. This will only include descriptions in the language of your wiki to make sure that you’re only seeing changes that are relevant to your wiki.

This improvement was requested by many users from different projects. We hope that it can help you monitor the changes on Wikidata descriptions that affect your wiki and participate in the effort of improving the data quality on Wikidata for all Wikimedia wikis and beyond.

Note: if you didn’t use the Wikidata watchlist integration feature for a long time, feel free to give it another chance! The feature has been improved since the beginning and the content it displays is more precise and useful than at the beginning of the feature in 2015.

If you encounter any issue or want to provide feedback, feel free to use this Phabricator ticket. Thanks!

Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 14:38, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@Lea Lacroix (WMDE): Thanks, but please ensure that we don't get more duplicates like the one below.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:48, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
Apologies. This is a known bug of MassMessage tracked here, no solution was found so far. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 14:56, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
@Lea Lacroix (WMDE): Thanks.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:28, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
This improvement was requested by many users from different projects.. You mean a few people asked essentially to bother every other user with Wikidata-Changes (...) and you thought that would be a good idea. Great. I´m out. Alexpl (talk) 17:03, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
You can turn on or off Wikidata changes. This is about showing more relevant ones for those who haven't turned them off. Whether on or off should be the default is another question. –LPfi (talk) 09:26, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
@Lea Lacroix (WMDE): Commons is multilingual. Descriptions in Bezug auf welche Sprache werden auf Commons angezeigt werden? Für ein hochgeladenes Bild können Beschreibungen in mehreren Sprachen (auf der Beobachtungsliste) relevant sein. Wird es endlich mal eine Möglichkeit geben SDC-Bearbeitungen (und nur diese) auf der Beo auszublenden. Da ergeben sich immer wieder tausende Entries in der Watchlist in wenigen Stunden, was die Beobachtungsliste unbenutzbar macht. --C.Suthorn (talk) 15:52, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your question. Most of the time, it will be English, as the "content language" setting of the pages is English. However, on specific pages that use another language, like Hauptseite, it will retrieve information in the content language of this page. Unfortunately, I can't give much update about SDC, as I'm not involved in this project. I hope that helps nevertheless. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 08:43, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

UNESCO's Women in African history website licenses

One of the files I have uploaded here, File:Mariama Bâ.jpg, has recently been deleted, and I am a bit confused as to how to handle photos and other material from UNESCO's website «Women in African History». The UNESCO website states that all material on the site has a CC BY-SA license. Is that not to be trusted? If that is so, I might as well stop uploading their material, which is often unique and interesting, and meant for dissemination. It is not worth the «trouble», if it will be deleted by someone who does not trust UNESCO's (and M. E. Joubeaud's) statement. I added an explanation in April, but obviously, that was not enough/trustworthy. What to do? Kjersti L. 10:37, 24 November 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kjersti Lie (talk • contribs)

Some images are historical photos/paintings, so site's licensing statement doesn't appear reliable. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:20, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Does everybody share EugeneZelenko's view? Will there be a consensus, or will I just have to try to upload the photos from UNESCO's website that I think have a reliable license, and risk them being deleted again? Maybe I should try to get UNESCO to state the license explicitly for each photo (as a byline?) on their website? Kjersti L. 11:09, 30 November 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kjersti Lie (talk • contribs)
(Pinging @Anthere: here, maybe she has connections or knows more, from her role as international organiser for Wiki Loves Africa and Wiki Loves Women. Ciell (talk) 12:41, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
This is irritating... Indeed, I read The license obtained by UNESCO applies to all content on this platform (including text, illustrations and soundtrack). which seems to suggest that all the women images are indeed CC BY SA. Whether it is credible is another story. Because even if Unesco claims those images to be CC BY CA, they do no properly provide attribution for them. I could not find any place where the name of the photograph is mentionned. The only mention of attribution is Unesco itself; Which really calls for caution... as "Unesco" is not the name of a photograph person, and even if it was satisfactory to "remove" the name of the photographer and attribute it fully to its organization (I do not find that satisfactory for the record), I doubt VERY much Unesco is the author of ALL those historical photos. It may be, but most likely is not true. On [10], it states that the attribution should mention both Unesco AND the authors. Unfortunately... missing the author name for the picture... So well, indeed, I agree with @EugeneZelenko: on this. I do not consider the site's licensing statement reliable. I would consider it reliable when it comes to the texts written about all those women. I would not consider it reliable at all when it comes to pictures. Anthere (talk)
On the bright side... all the artists who worked on the cartoons and pictural representation of the women ARE clearly identified. And clearly attributed. Check out the Artists section, and for example this text. This suggest that what is CC BY SA is the text about each women, and the artistic representation of them (we should be able to use those visuals). But the historical pictures... should not be counted in the licence statement. Anthere (talk)
lol. Clearly a typo ;)) Anthere (talk) 22:32, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
@John Cummings: do you have any helpful advice here ? Did you already experienced that ? Is there a way to get someone to send permissions for specific historical images ? How should we deal with that ? Anthere (talk) 14:38, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
Hi, for context I work as Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO, a couple of questions:
  • Where does it say on the website everything is CC BY-SA or is it just in a private email?
  • Which photo was deleted? I can't seem to find a similar named thing on the website
Also to say if you're interested in this topic the entire General History of Africa is available under CC BY-SA here including instructions on how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles.
Thanks
John Cummings (talk) 14:56, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
@John Cummings: File:Mariama Bâ.jpg was deleted per Commons:Deletion requests/File:Mariama Bâ.jpg. "The license obtained by UNESCO applies to all content on this platform (including text, illustrations and soundtrack)." appears on https://en.unesco.org/womeninafrica/open-educational-resources.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:08, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
By the way... I found this old historical file.... File:Nzinga Mbandi Queen of Ndongo and Matamba French.pdf Anthere (talk) 22:32, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
@John Cummings: , (or someone else), I still hope you can give us some advice on how to handle the material/photos on the UNESCO site. There are several photos there that would be interesting to use in Wikipedia articles/biographies Kjersti L. 15:49, 3 December 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kjersti Lie (talk • contribs)

Wiki Loves Monument, a mediocre contest

Not all the local contests but the vast majority of the organizers make an absurdly mediocre photo selection and It should be required to clearly inform who will be the judges of the contest that must meet a series of requirements and not place judges without any kind of photographic knowledge. Sadly I note with great concern that many low-quality images, with filters that add artificial colors, exaggerated contrasts, dramatic filtering, and even fake retouching are selected as winners in many countries. On the contrary, images of high quality and superior from a technical point of view are not selected in several countries. I think that countries are interested in participating in WLM but they pay little or no attention by selecting mediocre photos, which results in a negative impact for those who collaborate in the contest, which causes excellent photographers to stop contributing to Wikimedia Commons. It is something that I have raised every year without receiving any response, I wonder, what the hell are the organizers playing? --Wilfredor (talk) 14:46, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

The competitions and the judging panels are hard to arrange, and probably getting harder each year. Of the "Wiki Loves" contests I have helped the judging for, the technical issues of quality, composition, and potential fringe copyright issues have been raised in the ranking of photographs, but are not necessarily as important to the goal of finding a diverse selection of photographs taken by volunteers that represent the spirit and aims of the competition. In some circumstances a very unusual but representative photograph may be chosen that could be poor on any of these aspects, but better quality alternatives are not submitted that score higher in the competition values. For example in one competition we were looking for 'historical' photographs, such as those taken in the 1980s that had been scanned for the competition. It that scenario, it's reasonable to accept some digital enhancement post-scan, or to accept that the photograph's quality is limited to the original technology and print quality.
If you feel you have the eye to make good photo assessments, be sure to volunteer or ask about helping with judging in the future. Keep in mind that most of the initial assessment is a case of whittling down the submissions to a final hundred or so, and has to be done with very little of our valuable volunteer time per photo. --Fæ (talk) 17:09, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
@Fæ: Every year I contribute as a jury, this year I have been a jury in three different countries (Portugal, Iran, Italy) reviewing thousands of images, however, I cannot be a jury in all the Local WLM contests especially in which I participate as a candidate. Additionally, for each jury trained there are other jurors that are not trained (generally normal people without any photographic knowledge), so the jury vote is lost in the tumult. The result is obvious, beautiful thumbnail images but when you expand them, they are usually full of a lot of noise, artificial colors, changed skies, exaggerated distortions, with fake HDR filters, etc. Images of excellent photographic quality, of monuments without photos and with great value not only encyclopedic, remain behind impossible to compete against predetermined artistic filters on cell phones. This kind of thing frustrates me --Wilfredor (talk) 16:00, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
@Wilfredor: Competitions are stupid. Don't enter them, and don't be surprised when they are stupid. - Jmabel ! talk 17:50, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
When the prize can be enough to pay for a good lens or even a runner up can win enough to pay for a month or a year's broadband costs, it does encourage photographers to find out about this project. --Fæ (talk) 20:06, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
Speaking as an organizer for the U.S. contest, Fæ pretty much said what I wanted to say. Technical quality is indeed one of the factors the jury is tasked to take into account (we ask our jury to review Commons's quality image guidelines and take them into account), but we also ask the jury to consider originality; usefulness for the encyclopedia; and our existing coverage of the historic site, among other factors. Ideally each selected photo is the best of all worlds, but depending on each juror's background and how they prioritize, certain criteria can come out over others. I absolutely do recognize that previous winners have included photos that are poor from a technical standpoint, and understand how that's frustrating to Commons regulars (it is for me too). We have been trying to remedy through various means (adjusting criteria, better jury training, adjusting our juror selection, etc.). Something new we did this year was hold a live meeting between jury members to review the final rounds' photos together, partly so that technical quality issues could be surfaced—we'll see how the results go. I think the most obvious way to remedy is bringing on more jurors from the pool of Commons's quality photographers, especially for later rounds, but this can be more challenging than one might expect based on availability (which was worse than ever this year given *waves arms wildly at the country*). But I do think we can put more effort into recruiting from Commons in the future. ~Kevin Payravi (talk) 07:48, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Is WLM looking for the most artistic, the most technically correct these two can be in conflict depending on the photographers aim. WLM should also be looking encyclopedic value in the photographs. Countries are limited to selecting what is their best photos both by the criteria and ultimately by what is entered. When I put the judging panels together for WMAU I reached out to my non-wikimedia networks to get trained judges we also sat in one room and talked about each image. Requiring everyone to use the judging tool eliminates that critical feedback and discussion, makes it robot motion 1/0, 1/0...... Ultimately the purpose is to get useable photographs of "monuments" for free use and to expand the number of people contributing. By all means expect exceptional quality and artworks at the peak of International judging but actually organising a national WLM is a lot of work getting people to judge what can be 20 entries or 20,000 entries can put a lot of pressure on volunteers. I remember there being a year where India competition fell over because of the shear volume of entries was beyond the teams capability to process. Gnangarra 05:42, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Good point about encyclopedic value. In the United States, we seem to be encouraging people to upload more photos of the same National Register of Historic Places sites which are already covered abundantly on the site, while at the same time ignoring other sites of historical value.RadioKAOS (talk) 08:38, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
~ 3-4 years ago, on public meeting at WMF headquarter, I recommended to include coverage statistics about each monument, so participants would know which monuments are still not so well represented and jury could account this too. Another recommendation still not implemented: to clearly warn about monuments that are problematic from freedom of panorama point of view. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:21, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
@Gnangarra: That is the problem, most of the jurors are not photographers or do not have any basic elementary knowledge about photography. An image with encyclopedic value should be a faithful representation of reality and not filled with fake HDR filters oversaturated with altered colors. --Wilfredor (talk) 18:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
We aim for the opposite in the U.S. actually. One of the criteria for the jury is encyclopedic value, and that includes ranking uncommon and less-photographed sites higher. Unlike all (or nearly all) other national contests that only cover their national equivalent of the NRHP, the U.S. contest also allows users to upload any historic site that is recognized by some sort of authority (like a state- or local-level historic society), and we do get many images from those lists. Photos of common sites will always be inevitable of course, because that's what people, well, commonly photograph. ~Kevin Payravi (talk) 06:48, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
Agree with Jmabel. Comeptitions are stupid, and when you enter any, don't be surprised if it turns stupid. So, my best way to go is simply to ignore all that "Wiki Loves something" stuff, both as photographer and in case someone invites you to a jury. I do, for several reasons, with poor focus on quality and usefulness being just one of them. --A.Savin 19:04, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what people are expecting. This is not a project for experts and often it's a project that is hostile to expertise. I mean, in the end, it's not like we are asking experts about which image should be used for the encyclopedia pages. I suggest we have different awards with perhaps a smaller prize for technical quality. What I think we should do is start the equivalent of English Wikipedia "red lists" for something like "villages in India (or towns in the US or streets in London or whatever) that have no images" and ask for those instead which is something that will not encourage technical photographers but will help the encyclopedia strongly. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:50, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
    • It would not be that hard to create a auto-refreshing reports page for desired photographs. Using a bit of SPARQL to generate a basic list of prospect topics, then filter that down to assess not just missing, but with no Commons category and topics/places that have some photos but no Quality or Featured images, could be useful to give folks ideas for future photography promotions, editathons and even the somewhat tarnished idea of competitions. In all of this, consideration should continue to be given to the fact that our volunteer time is scarce, and we should always be thinking of smarter ways to make best use of it. --Fæ (talk) 12:54, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
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