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COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES Commons Help desk Village pump (general discussion) Copyright Proposals Technical Graphics and photography discussion Photography critiques Image improvement Illustration workshop Map workshop Photography workshop Video and sound workshop Categories for discussion Undeletion requests Deletion requests Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard Translators' noticeboard Work requests for bots Contact administrators Vandalism User problems (Dispute resolution) Blocks and protections Bureaucrats' noticeboard CheckUser requests Oversight requests Telegram IRC webchat Commons mailing list (archive) Commons' bugs on Phabricator Welcome to the Village pump This page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/03. Please note: If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias. Have you read our FAQ? For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming. Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer). Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam. Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page: Please do not make deletion requests here: use the relevant process for it instead. For technical support and graphics talks (PNG, SVG, GIF, etc.), please post on the Graphics village pump. To ask for image improvement, see: Graphic Lab/Photography workshop for photographs. Graphic Lab/Map workshop for maps. Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop for other illustrations. To ask for video or audio improvement, see Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop. For translation requests, please post at Commons:Requests for translation. For media requests, please post at Commons:File requests. Search archives:     Start a new discussion

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Water pump next to the church in the town center of Doel. Doel, Beveren, East Flanders, Belgium. [add]

Centralized discussion See also: Village pump/Proposals   ■ Archive Proposal for renaming and splitting of South Korean copyright tags (18 March 2025) Discussion on Copyright law of North Korea (16 March 2025) Commons_talk:Freedom of panorama#Proposal to abolish acceptance (2 March 2025) Categorization of SVG files (13 February 2025) RfC: Should Commons ban AI-generated images? (3 January 2025) Costumed character files (14 October 2024) Was the closure of the deletion discussion concerning the current lede image for Philippe Pétain proper under Commons policy? (22 September 2024) Third-party images published by the National Weather Service (26 August 2024) Commons:Requests for comment/Hosting of free fonts in Commons (18 July 2024) How do we organize categories by date (14 May 2024) Should PD-CQ Roll Call be used for recent images? (5 January 2024) Template: View   ■ Discuss    ■ Edit   ■ Watch

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

March 07

Respect and non-disturbance for long-term prolific contributor

A user has been contributing to Commons tirelessly for nearly 20 years now. His/her at least 110k photos can be seen at Category:Photographs by Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1.

A recent example of his/her prolific contribution can be seen at wikimap stats. S/he uploaded at least 7000 (6435 of them geo-tagged) photos of Okinawa this year (it's been only 2 months) alone. In comparison, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=deepcategory:%222024_in_Okinawa_prefecture%22 "2024 in Okinawa prefecture" has less than 400 files in total. 7k uploads are already quite a lot for any user, but just a fraction of his/her decade-long commitment. As far as I can tell, s/he has been doing so without much attention since 2006.

However, certain users have been targeting this long-term contributor in recent years because of this contributor's unusual habits. Actions they have demanded include but are not limited to: blocking, banning, locking all accounts; deleting all uploads.

As such, I would like to ask the community to help stop such harassment against the long-term contributor. In my humble opinion, anything, other than reasonable inspection of his/her uploads based on com:l, should be stopped. RoyZuo (talk) 07:30, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

+1 --Achim55 (talk) 07:34, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

+1 -- C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 12:58, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Shouldn't respect and non-disturbance be self-evident for every long-term prolific contributor on Commons? --A.Savin 07:54, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

@RoyZuo: But there is abuse. LuciferianThomas wrote in this Edit Summary: "Intentional wrong-naming files and incorrectly categorising files is clearly abusive behaviour; in scale it is even clearly vandalism". See also m:Requests for comment/Blatant sockpuppetry in good faith.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:09, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

I recognize Anonymous HK Photographer 1 made a lot of good contributions here, but the problems extends beyond “unusual habits”, many of their uploads have copyright issues. Although this problem only concerns a small proportion of their overall uploads, but since they upload hundreds of images weekly, the problematic uploads pile up to a lot.

I agree with you that the actions demanded above are not suitable, but at the same time I don’t think it is harassment to demand when there are valid concerns. It would be better if you can suggest examples of which specific actions by specific users you think constitutes as harassment. Tvpuppy (talk) 16:05, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

I salute the anonymous HK user, this can't have been easy. Everyone can make errors, and there are many other ano- and pseudonymous contributors who can eventually fix them. Where there are valid concerns with some of the uploads, we should of course adress that, but overly punitive reactions seem like overkill imo. --Enyavar (talk) 17:14, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Cosigning the original post. We do not need yet another case of prolific users being scapegoated and insulted until all eternity, like has happened several times on enwiki. Gnomingstuff (talk) 05:07, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

+1. I don't see any bad picture in Category:Photographs by Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1. As long as they don't name files incorrectly on purpose (some visitors may not even recognizing Chinese characters), we can consider them as different good-faith one-time newbie users trying to hide their public IP addresses for whatever reason (e.g. overdue stay without a permit). We don't deprive their rights on Wikidata by criticizing them hiding IP addresses, unless it's confirmed via CheckUser that all accounts were signed in and contributing on a single IP address in a short time, which seems inpossible as I see different camera models used by them, which may be in the hands of different people. XsLiDian (talk) 15:12, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @Donald Trung, @Solomon203, @A1Cafel, and admins @Yann, @Bastique and @Taivo. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 17:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

@Donald Trung, Solomon203, A1Cafel, Yann, Bastique, Taivo, and The Squirrel Conspiracy: Please give opinions regarding this issue. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 11:50, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Please don't shotgun ping. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 14:45, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

@The Squirrel Conspiracy Sorry for that. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 14:54, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Communicating with other users, and changing problematic behavior (like uploading copvios) when notified, are non-optional parts of participating in Commons. Not only does this user not respond on their talk page, nor in DRs and CfDs, it is not even possible to communicate with them because they are constantly changing accounts. They are also violating multiple account policy by failing to link the accounts: Where a user has multiple accounts it is an expectation that they publicly disclose those accounts, usually on each of the relevant user pages providing links to each other. The use of numerous accounts also makes it extremely difficult to track issues like copyvios and improperly named files; however, it is clear that these amount to a non-insignificant proportion of their uploads, and thus add a great deal of work for the community.

I believe a good first step would be a one-account restriction, enforced by technical means as necessary. If the user cannot abide by that extremely basic standard to enable communication and tracking of their behavior, then they are a net negative and do not belong on Commons. No amount of being prolific justifies a user ignoring basic community norms and uploading significant numbers of copyvios. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:24, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

@Pi.1415926535: I agree.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:02, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

+1 Longterm users shouldn't get a free pass from following the same standards on here everyone else has to just because of how long they have had their account. Its super easy for newish contributors to be sanctioned or blocked over minor non-issues but there's zero consequences for longterm users who don't follow the rules or act abusively. The same goed for admins. Things like repeatedly uploading COPYVIO should be dealt with accordingly regardless of how long the user has been on here or what privileges they have though. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:27, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

I do not understand how a blatant long-term violator of the Commons:File naming guidelines (Correct – The name should describe the file's content and convey what the subject is actually called. Inaccurate names for the file subject, although they may be common, should be avoided.) is considered a "long-term contributor" by some users above, so apparently people can just upload tons of images and name them incorrectly just to make a mess of Commons to be called a contributor and not an abuser? The large number of files uploaded actually made a heck of a lot more abuse and disturbance to Commons than any other normal user naming files inappropriately. I am very certain that mass contributions does not allow mass disruption and guidelines-breaking in the same scale.

I agree that the upload images are contributions, but the naming of files to an extent of requiring lots of file renamings is definitely abusive editing behaviour, which shall lead to a damning sanction. If RoyZuo insists on calling this abusive user a "contributor" without considering the harm to Commons and unnecessary work to fix all those issues, then I would say they probably did not care about the negatives the abusive user brings, and does not respect the naming guidelines, to a point that they can flat out intentionally cover the intended accused violations and point fingers at the accusers for accusations that we did not make. LuciferianThomas 23:59, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

I could (but will not) name quite a number of long-term contributors whose work here routinely falls short in one or another respect. I don't see a reason to single out this one. Yes, technically you can communicate with most of the others, but in practice? If they ignore all comments, or brush them off, the result is the same as if there were no channel of communication. - Jmabel ! talk 00:44, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

I personally do think we need to be more strict about that sort of editor in general. In this specific case, the use of multiple accounts makes it easier for this editor to avoid scrutiny - it would require a great deal of work to determine how many of their uploads have been deleted, or if they have ever been blocked, because the contributions are spread over dozens of accounts. (If any of the accounts have ever been blocked, then this is block evasion, pure and simple.) It also means that the editor likely has not even seen DR and CfD notices because they abandon accounts after using them once, so they may not be aware of the hundreds of copyvios they have uploaded. Forcing them to use a single account would put them on the same footing as every other editor and allow the community to address their issues with file naming and copyvios. Right now, the community has no ability to even address their behavior because of the account-hopping. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 01:14, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Could you be more clear as to your issues regarding HKTA's problems with filenames? DS (talk) 14:35, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

It's never the actual issue that's the problem. It's pointing out the issue that's the problem. someone can harass you on here all day and no one will bat an eye about it. But then you can be blocked for intimidation if you dare to point out that's what they are doing. The priorities on here are just screwed and it's always an endless exercise in pandering to seniority. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:12, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

I would say both are problems as important as the other. The long-term disruption pattern shows the inability of the Commons administration to "see what the problem is" and to enforce the very rules of Commons, and the counter-accusation of harassment or intimidation by those who think such abuser is a contributor shows the inability of such users and the Commons administration to care about the actual issue instead of pointing fingers at those who raise a problem. LuciferianThomas 02:14, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

You're allowed to call this person something other than an "abuser," you know. It will not kill you to treat them like a human being. Gnomingstuff (talk) 03:25, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

You can keep on ignoring the abuse. It's clearly within my right to call this anonymous user an abuser for his blatant violation described below. LuciferianThomas 11:00, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

And in return, "it will not kill you to actually care about what is actually happening and not just blaming the one who points out a real issue, whether you like it or not." LuciferianThomas 11:08, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Link to evidence of "blatant long-term violator of the Commons:File naming guidelines".

Otherwise, I consider the accusation as invalid and personal attack against the long term anonymous contributor. RoyZuo (talk) 21:54, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

For the fact that I had only gone through 5 of 98 MTR stations in Hong Kong to move over 50 instances of incorrectly named files and incorrect categorisation for MTR stations? At this rate, there's probably thousands of files misnamed and miscategorised from this user just for the files uploaded for MTR. This is blatant violations and circumventing anti-abuse. LuciferianThomas 10:59, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

"the fact that I... move over 50 instances"

1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=move&user=LuciferianThomas&wpFormIdentifier=logeventslist&wpfilters%5B0%5D=newusers 22 move logs.
2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributions&target=LuciferianThomas&namespace=all&tagfilter=RenameLink&limit=50 7 edits

As of 17:08, 11 March 2025 (UTC), you have a total of 22+7=29 edits related to renaming any files by the long term contributor.

Is 29 even close to 50?

So you are making up "fact" and misleading the entire Commons community with exaggerated accusation against the long term contributor. It should be noted that you have repeatedly exaggerated this accusation since early 2024. In your own words, such repeated misleading actions are abusive and should lead to blocking of your account.

And this is only 1 single problem of your many similar accusations. RoyZuo (talk) 17:08, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I definitely said "incorrect files and incorrect categorisation", but I guess you are just blindsided to the side of the fact you believe in. I might have miscounted moved files, but I have definitely removed hundreds of miscategorised images – pictures of shops (within the station) in the focus, or even their products, instead of the actual station. You tell me this is an image of Po Lam Station? Yes the picture might be taken in Po Lam Station, but it's absolutely nonsense to say it's a picture of Po Lam Station.

Heck, even 29 misnamed instances of say 600 images is a 5% mistake rate, not to mention all the other images that are miscategorised to the level of nonsense. If any editor makes so much mistakes in their editing, how is that not even disruptive? I won't call 22 images of cakes, Mrs Fields cookie products, convenience store products to be "contribution to a station category" – it tells nothing about the actual station.

Your repeated negligence to the actual happenings of the case, making up what I say when you just didn't read, and making up "facts" to mislead the entire Commons community with exaggerated accusation of harassment without caring for the actual disruption is clearly abusive behaviour and should lead to the blocking of your account here on Commons, just like you have been in three other wikis. LuciferianThomas 00:31, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Oh btw, the linked image is geotagged in LOHAS Park station. Guess that's an extra count of misnaming images, heh? LuciferianThomas 00:33, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

"At this rate, there's probably thousands of files misnamed and miscategorised from this user just for the files uploaded for MTR"

there are roughly 3600 files related to MTR https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?sort=create_timestamp_desc&search=MTR+incategory%3A%22Photographs+by+Anonymous+Hong+Kong+Photographer+1%22 .

Either you can prove your extrapolation, or it should be considered as nothing more than just another exaggeration and personal attack. RoyZuo (talk) 01:16, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

And you now admitted that you had removed photos taken in a train station from a category under that train station: that is definitely violation of policy Commons:Categories#Types_of_reflected_relations.

Here is 1 such violation of policy by LuciferianThomas https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=952770572&oldid=715233481 which removed the file from anywhere under Category:LOHAS Park Station, its location of creation (P1071).

Then you made the false accusation of incorrect categorisation against the original uploader and also exaggerated your accusation. RoyZuo (talk) 02:18, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

And also Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2024/01#Problematic_file_names_and_irrelevant_categorization_by_sockpuppet_group, issue has been detailed before. You can keep pretending that this has not been talked about before, and dismiss my accusations against the abuse, but you will not change the fact that there is indeed abuse, and that the abuse causing widespread inaccuracies in Commons. Heck, you can even keep promoting this behaviour as contribution or "not a serious problem", but this will only show that you don't really care about the truth. LuciferianThomas 11:05, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

And whether you like it or not, sockpuppetry is clearly a violation anywhere on Wikimedia. From the start, you are supporting sockpuppetry, and it doesn't really matter who was abusing socks. I personally never asked for files to be deleted, I would only ask for a block on sockpuppetry to prevent further disruption, and if they are willing to contribute by the rules (especially for content accuracy and sockpuppetry), I'm more than happy to see further contributions from the user. However before then, sockpuppetry and disruption by inaccuracy is a big fat no from my stance. LuciferianThomas 11:13, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Ah, one supports like. Not to paint a bad picture on RoyZuo, but being blocked in two wikis for uncivil behaviour and IDHT respectively doesn't seem to have stopped them from failing to actually get the point yet again. I won't dismiss what they say by their past history, but I will dismiss it for the fact that it is negligent the truth and accusative against the ones who actually care about accuracy and compliance. LuciferianThomas 11:23, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/User_problems/Archive_110#RZuo, and it clearly isn't this user's first time defending the disruptive anonymous photographer with actions that do not comply to rules. Why would they now be caring about the truth? They won't. LuciferianThomas 12:00, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Just quickly skimming through Category:Yau Tong Station: I have already spotted 3 more files that are mislabeled, and are in fact taken in Tiu Keng Leng station. I guess here's your evidence? LuciferianThomas 11:57, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

If anyone tries to argue that Yau Tong and Tiu Keng Leng stations are easily mistaken for their similar livery, this is one example of the anonymous photographer labeling things completely and impossibly wrong. LuciferianThomas 12:03, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

+1 I don't think this contributor is a "net negative" for the project, but the issues he's causing are difficult to track because they are spread over literally hundreds of different (non-disclosed) accounts, and he is impossible to communicate with, and those are both problems. Enforcing a one-account policy restriction (with small carve-outs for things like disclosed alts or pseudonyms maintained for safety reasons) seems more than reasonable to me. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:13, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

I do not understand at all why RoyZuo brought up this issue as an alleged supporter of the anonymous photographer. This was debated almost everywhere because someone was really busy to get the anonymous photographer blocked or globally locked for socking by whatever means possible. There were two unsuccessful attempts on Commons to have the photographer blocked. The latest ate issue was also ported to Meta, meta:Requests for comment/Blatant sockpuppetry in good faith, where the request was recently denied. I really think that this should stop now, unless someone thinks that yet another attempt at Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems might have a different outcome. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 11:19, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

@Robert Flogaus-Faust the hostile actions against the user are succeeding and files are blindly massively deleted Commons:Requests for checkuser/Case/Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1.

It takes 1 sysop to give in to the relentless harassment and delete all the files, but it will take many more users' collective effort to fend for the contributor and their contribution, because they never dispute the attempts at deletion or defend themselves.--RoyZuo (talk) 22:03, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Then so be it. It is obvious that the anonymous photographer's socking without disclosure of the other accounts is not according to the rules, even though this had been tolerated for some time. The reason for the mass deletion is that there are FoP issues with many of the files. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 11:47, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

@Pi.1415926535 "They are also violating multiple account policy..."

that's not a policy, but merely an article, a write-up https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sock_puppetry&action=history .

all the policies (on meta) are here meta:Category:Policies. that page you quote is not part of them. RoyZuo (talk) 19:30, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Those alledged issues with "massive uploading of copyvios" etc seem to be massively overstated. First of all, these issues are not "these photos have been stolen from some photo agency and are falsely claimed own work" as it appears to being framed, but only FOP, where the uploading does not violate any copyright laws, only Commons policy which does not allow restrictions on commercial use. Then, the people who regularly nominate massive amounts of images uploaded by this person seem to be unwilling to use VFC for their mass nominations, which makes proper review of those DRs an incredible pain. Just a week ago I spend over AN HOUR copy-pasting keep under over 250 DRs, where the nominator apparently carelessly misinterpreted some FOP law (while reviewing them even longer before, and this is a pain when the files are in 200 seperate DRs instead of one or a handful). Those +250 (!!!) DRs have all been kept. The people witchhunting this anonymous guy keep creating massive numbers of questionable DRs, where commenters are unable to keep up with - most of the DRs have no comments as it is de facto impossible to properly review and comment on all of them. Also, many of the "issues" claimed at Commons:Requests for checkuser/Case/Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1 like "Using strange names in accounts.", "User pages only created as galleries." or "Indirect disclosure of personal information." are such non-issues to the point that they are laughable. Points such as a single instance of "Intentionally removing sockpuppetry tags." where it is zero indication that this was intentional, or "Systematic, but inconsistent categorization." with zero source, feels like "I just don't like that" instead of being based on any policy whatsoever. ~TheImaCow (talk) 00:46, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

@User:Krd has aparrently just casually deleted thousands of files uploaded by this anonymous person with the reason "created by abuser", without any consideration for anything. Where exactly is this mentioned as a valid reason at Commons:Deletion policy and how isn't this an act of massive vandalism? ~TheImaCow (talk) 00:58, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I browsed through a good percentage of their files laat night and a lot of them had FOP issues. Its pretty clear that isn't something they know or care or about. Regardless, its super unrealistic to expect other users to sift through and nominate their uploads for deletion. Especially given the sheer amount of socks. That's on them for using so many alts and not following the guidelines on a basic level. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:14, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

okay, and I just browsed to some random of their galleries at User:Gindcheoutarkoadf_OK, User:GISTZIS rAhsueLLS pxwomc, User:GEEHAWUMENKIN 106, User:GAUAI Shfj 992833 --- +1000 images, maybe five where I'd say "not FOP compatible", ~15 redlinked images, none of the DR's I checked had any comments. Perfectly acceptable rate. ~TheImaCow (talk) 02:04, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I'd keep the images of food myself. All the ones of store signs, packaging and the like are probably copyrighted though. Not to mention there's SCOPE issues with a lot of their photographs. I really don't see how most of the images don't go against the whole "must be realistically useful for an educational purpose" thing.

I forget where it is right now, but one of the policies says something about someone's personal vacation photos not being educational. That's essentially what these photographs are. 25 random, mundane shots of a hotel room the guy was staying at. Realistically how many photographs of a slept in hotel bed do we need on here? They are just using Commons as a personal file hosting site at that point. It would be a super pedantic time waster to separately nominate all of those images for deletion. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:19, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I mean, there are also a ton of photos of items in shops in MTR stations. I have absolutely no idea what the photos are even trying to express for some of them, not to mention the other disruptive bad naming and categorisations. LuciferianThomas 13:30, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

One problem about interacting with HKTA ("Hong Kong Throwaway Account") is that, because they only use an account for three to five days, it's impossible to tell them that what they're doing is inappropriate. If you leave HKTA a message after an account's activity period, it won't get seen. I wouldn't call this "socking", per se, since there's no attempt to pretend that this isn't yet another HKTA account. I've spent hours analyzing HKTA's thousands and thousands of photos from art galleries and auction houses, identifying paintings and hunting biodata so as to ascertain whether a given photo is copyvio, and I do not feel that there is anything abusive going on here. DS (talk) 14:20, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Another very important question: do you believe that all the HKTA accounts are the same person? Because there's really only three options, and they all strike me as wildly implausible (even though one of them has to be true): that one person is doing all this, that multiple people are doing this independently, or that there's an organized effort to do this but it's been kept secret. DS (talk) 14:43, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Maybe we can determine this with the camera model used in the EXIF data. If it is the same, the images are most likely taken by the same person. However, HKTA do uses multiple camera models throughout the years, but generally they use the same model at one time period. Tvpuppy (talk) 14:58, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

It's weird but plenty of people use multiple throwaway accounts on these projects. Maybe the person works for the government or is otherwise in a position that requires anonymity. Looking through their photos they clearly stay in a lot of hotels and eat out a lot. So it wouldn't surprise me. It's not my area of expertise, but IP hopping doesn't seem like an effective way to stay under the radar on here. So it makes sense to do it this way if they are trying to stay anonymous because of a job or something. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:05, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

March 10

"AutoCats" script for automatic categories

Please check out the new user script AutoCats - it attempts to provide a solution for what I think has long been a sticking point in Commons: the lack of translation for category names. Any feedback is welcome! Yaron Koren (talk) 16:32, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't fully understand: except for very rare occasions, only SD misses things that are in the categories but categories not things in the SD. Moreover, in the 1 in a 10-200 k case that SD has something that the categories don't, wouldn't the categories it displays be less specific? If this is about translation for categories, rel: Add machine translated category titles on WMC. Prototyperspective (talk) 01:02, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. It's true that there's generally less information in SD than in categories, but I wouldn't say it's that rare to find pages where SD holds information that categories don't. An obvious example is all the "quality image" assessments, which are stored in SD but generally not in categories. And there are other reasons to prefer SD to manually-generated categories, besides translation - a big one is that it's a lot less physical and mental work to deal with SD than categories. (If you upload a photo of the Eiffel Tower in fog at night, do you then need to tag it with six different categories?) I agree, though, that machine translation of category names would be a big improvement. Yaron Koren (talk) 18:15, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I suspect that because SDC isn't well populated this is currently of limited use, but it has a lot of potential. Tools like this are part of what it will take to make SDC actually useful. Obviously, performance could be greatly increased in the future by some sort of caching, rather than having to come up with results on the fly each time you access a file. - Jmabel ! talk 07:24, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

March 11

Possible mass upload of Trump-sensitive photos

Hi! In Denmark there are news reporting that Trump is trying to eliminate lots of photos that contain "sensitive" words. So Gay, Trans and Equity for example.

The story in Denmark is that it also affect Category:Enola Gay because of the word "Gay". And story also tells that people try to avoid words that include "trans" so for example "transaction" and "Equity" even if the meaning is w:Equity (finance).

I do not know if it is actually true but if it is true then I wonder if someone can do some magic and mass upload files to prevent them from being deleted. MGA73 (talk) 11:00, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Presumably you refer to works of the US Federal government. Such works are commonly bulk-uploaded here anyway; have you found any sets that are not? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:00, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Correct works of US Federal government. No, I have not found any good sets. I just thougt it would be good if "everyone" helped out. --MGA73 (talk) 18:03, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Commons have un million files from Department of Defense (DoD): 300 000 from Fæ, 300 000 from OptimusPrimeBot (which is still uploading new files) and 400 000 from different uploaders. DVIDS, the wikicommons of DoD contains 5 millions pictures.

I've created a cat to identify files deleted by DoD: Category:Images removed from DVIDS. Pyb en résidence (talk) 19:08, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Pyb en résidence's new category also includes a list of deleted files from the AP's recently published database of deleted DVIDS files -- is anybody working on bulk uploading those links from that database that do work? Is there anything other Wikipedians can do to help? -- Gaurav (talk) 23:38, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm using Openrefine to categorize uploads by Fæ based on the AP database. Don-vip is categorizing OptimusPrimeBot uploads with a deadlink to DVIDS. It's not perfect because some files might be delete for another reasons than anti-DEI. Pyb en résidence (talk) 08:25, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Is it actually assured that all the photos will continue to be archived on Commons? That would be important :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

IMHO that is assured as long as Commons and Wikipedia exist. But I fear the Trump and Musk will soon close Wikipedia or make it actually unusable. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 18:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

DVIDS videos

Since videos aren't covered by the AP database, we have a limited window to use Google's snippets cache to locate the links until it refreshes. I've been manually combing through and added a few of these. Category here: Category:Videos_removed_from_DVIDS

I've basically run out of steam for manual uploads (it's very time consuming) but I'll continue to put links to archived videos in the category. Once we have a list of links it would be possible to write a script to upload them. Unfortunately, archive.org does not have an archive of every video DVIDs link. However, some of these videos are available from other links (i.e. to the division of the military that published them), and a few are on YouTube, so I've been able to source a few videos that way instead.

A perhaps useful note is that in recent years DVIDS switched from native hosting of videos to cloudfront, and these links are still live (and have a faster download speed compared to the archive.org one). So if you view source and pull out the mp4 link (just ctrl+f for mp4) that's the better link to use right now. Also if you know the DVIDS id number, you might be able to find the cloudfront link with trial and error. However at some point they might figure out cloudfront backups are still operational, so that could go away.

I'm also thinking we can run a script to just iterate through every single possible DOD file name (they follow a pattern) and just download everything, but this would quickly exceed the capacity of my hard drive, so would need to run on toolforge or something. It would also lack metadata which is also problematic. Mvolz (talk) 09:28, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Does anyone know of a bot that can operate on videos that might be a good jumping off point to automate this? Mvolz (talk) 09:38, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

March 12

software generated information

Screenshots are generaly treated as copyvio. However, there are cases the content, grafics, departure times, weather patterns, tracking information, etc, are automaticaly generated, with no human creative input. If company logo's and advertisements are avoided, I see no copyvio case. Excluded are maps extracts like Google maps, where the information and layout is protected. (database issue)

Example: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Schermafdruk treinpad test ECD naar Brussel.jpg Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:19, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I cannot tell for this case, but we have to assume that more and more digital content will be generated by non-human actors (graphics and pictures, but also schemes and graphs or concepts) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:07, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

What you see on your screen is only partially a computer-generated database query output. Someone had to program the thing, design how all the software elements had to be constructed, decide on the positioning, what color scheme to use, etc. As you can see at COM:SCREENSHOTS, unless the software is freely licensed (which it is not according section 7) or as simple as en:Command-line interfaces, this is rightly considered a copyvio. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:06, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Not sure I agree with HyperGaruda. Test case: someone working for another railway created a screen that looked just like that except for the (obviously not copyrightable) information about what particular train was going where when. Could NS possibly sue them for a copyright violation? - Jmabel ! talk 02:15, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

The software license is irrelevant. If I use Photoshop to edit or create images, the user (me) has the copyrigths, except of course if I use any copyrigthed material as input. This dynamic timetable information is publicaly available information. The train companies and infrastructure providers are legaly obliged to make this information available to all travel planners. There are no database rigths (such as by Google Maps). (Database rigths are different from the creative rigths)Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:24, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

The proper comparison with your Photoshop case would be: a screenshot of the Photoshop window with your image opened in there. That screenshot would be copyvio, as it includes the Photoshop interface around your image. Cropped to just your image without elements of the Photoshop interface would be fine. To extend this analogy to File:Schermafdruk treinpad test ECD naar Brussel.jpg, you would have to get rid of all the interface's creative visual elements like icons and color schemes, meaning you would be left with barebones {{PD-Text}} material. --HyperGaruda (talk) 11:15, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@HyperGaruda: which icons here do you believe to be above TOO? - Jmabel ! talk 17:09, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Individually, none. Together in this arrangement and coloring, however, is a different story. --HyperGaruda (talk) 04:38, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Coloring certainly won't take them above TOO, and the arrangement is just putting them evenly spaced in a line.

Again, as I asked above: if someone working for another railway created a screen that looked just like that except for the (obviously not copyrightable) information about what particular train was going where when, could NS possibly sue them for a copyright violation? If not, then nothing here is copyrightable. - Jmabel ! talk 16:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I would say yes, if someone (another rail company itself or just a freelancer programmer) creates an app with the same UI look-and-feel, the owner of the original app may sue for Copyright infringement. Design and layout matter. With just a different color scheme and different icons the infringement would be less obvious, but still noticeable to experts. I am using two different public transit apps than the one depicted here, and while the basic functionality is pretty much the same, there are also distinct design differences. --Enyavar (talk) 09:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Undeletion

I just noticed that there exists com:deletion policy but no undeletion policy. The entire page Commons:Undeletion requests misses out the most common kind of undeletion: copyright expiry undeletion, which doesnt happen because of "appeal". RoyZuo (talk) 11:13, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

It's kind of tangential, but back when I was doing DRs more there was at least a couple of people who didn't know images on are undeleted after the copyrights on them expires. I suspect that's one of the reasons DRs can be so contentious sometimes. So it would be good if there was an undeletion policy and people were made more aware that deletion usually isn't permanent. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:29, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

If undeletion of an image is 60 years from now, I suspect that many people aren't much comforted by that. But, yes, it's something that needs to be present, in order to take into account the usefulness of Commons as a tool for long term preservation of files. I've even thought about the possibility to offer the option to intentionally upload non-free files, deleted from the very moment of upload, to be undeleted when they enter the public domain in the future, as a means to contribute content for future preservation (without it being considered a copyvio, and without penalizing the user as if something wrong had been done: the user clearly states that the file is not to be publicly viewable until many years in the future, when it enters public domain). Maybe this idea is a bit out of scope, since, without forgetting about the future, Commons is made for the present in the first place. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:09, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

If ever implemented, it should be restricted to specially important content (very relevant and/or in high risk of total loss). Of course it's not a good idea that 90% of storage size used by Commons eventually becomes used for non-viewable media. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:15, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@MGeog2022: I've actually done quite a bit of that, especially with works of major artists who died 50-70 years ago, or with endangered buildings that are still in copyright in countries with no FoP. As an admin, I've also arranged for others to do it on request.

I don't think that there is any likelihood that this becomes even 10% of content, given that most people want the gratification that their work is immediately available. - Jmabel ! talk 16:28, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@MGeog2022: Some users already do this, compare Commons:Deletion requests/File:Akte im Freien (Max Pechstein)-WUS07217.jpg. I'm doing it myself as well, immediately deleting the uploaded files and adding them to the respective undeletion categories (like Category:Undelete in 2030). --Rosenzweig τ 17:13, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel and @Rosenzweig, thanks for the information. It's good to know that the option is available, even if the help of an administrator is needed. If people become aware of that, this option could be more widely used, and many copyrighted songs or even movies could be uploaded for posterity (especially, those that aren't among the most widely known). MGeog2022 (talk) 20:35, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

This is really a great idea. An idea that needs wider use. At a minimum, this would help me and other volunteers preload files for all future "Public Domain Days."

• What would be the best process, to formally adopt a policy or to document the best method of upload, delete, future undelete this "Future Media?"
• And then what is the best way the communicate this to the wider Commons community, Wikipedians in Residence and GLAMs?

Ooligan (talk) 20:55, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

There're potential technical problems for the process yall mentioned above. (I'd name that process Commons:Upload, delete and undelete, which was why I started this thread in the first place.)

That is, it depends on successful undeletion of files.

That might be a big question. No one is actually certain, that WMF doesnt mess up the deleted (or say, hidden) files. Senior users will remember certain bugs in the past that prevented deletion or undeletion, or corrupted file revisions. On top of that, iirc, there're only 2 copies of commons. Incidents like Gitlab Dev Deletes Entire Production Database How GitHub's Database Self-Destructed in 43 Seconds could well happen given the lengthy future ahead. RoyZuo (talk) 18:04, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@RoyZuo, Can you ask WMF the current and future likelyhood of a "Gitlab" type database deletion or destruction. It would be helpful for this discussion as well as general interest. Thanks, -- Ooligan (talk) 20:24, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I just tried looking for ways to contact WMF. After skimming through

1. https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Home
2. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/contact/

I dont seem to find any on-wiki feedback methods. I'm unwilling to email, because what happens in wiki stays in wiki; wiki things should be dealt with on wiki. RoyZuo (talk) 20:35, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Reading about media backups, I remember that it was said that deleted files were considered in the same way that regular files. That is, even if lost from production copies, there would still be backups. 2 production copies and 2 backups, of all files (visible or deleted), all of them stored in RAID disk setups. With this in mind, it would seem unlikely that most deleted files are lost. Let's hope that they can recovered, and undeletion dates work as expected.

Senior users will remember certain bugs in the past that prevented deletion or undeletion, or corrupted file revisions: this was more likely to happen before 2021 or so, when there were no proper backups in place for Commons media files. MGeog2022 (talk) 20:42, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Hopefully, I think that a GitLab-type incident is very unlikely in Commons. Even if files could get mass deleted by error from both production copies, there are still 2 backups at different places. Both backups use different credentials, that are also different from the ones in production servers. So a mass loss from all copies seems highly unlikely. That said, I myself proposed media dumps or, alternatively, additional backups, to adress this with even bigger security. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:32, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi, I have also uploaded, and then deleted, a number of files not yet in the public domain, setting a future date of undeletion. These were mostly movies. Also because video2commons only works for Commons, and I copied the files to the English Wikipedia, as they are already in the public domain in USA, but not in their country of origin.

I think there are probably quite a number of deleted files for which no future undeletion date was added. It is difficult to find them, as they are by definition, not publicly available. Yann (talk) 23:24, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@Yann, would a proposal to require "Undelete by YEAR" on Deletion Request/deleted files that have clear year for undeletion? It seems that currently "Undelete by YEAR" it is often not added to the deleted file- even where it is obvious. I agree the 1,000's of potential files that would qualify for future undeletion have been missed. So, can we stop lost opportunities to restore files in the future that were uploaded mostly by volunteers in good faith? Thanks, -- Ooligan (talk) 06:59, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

At least, it should be mentioned on COM:DR. But requiring that is a bit too strong. Yann (talk) 10:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

For many files we don't know when they could be undeleted: for example, work of living third party photographers in countries with copyright for 70 years p.m.a. - Jmabel ! talk 16:19, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I would strongly recommend that if we do this more systematically:

1. If at all possible, we should set up a special way to upload these so that they do not pass through the state of being temporarily visible to everyone. If we cannot avoid that, we come up with some particular tag which will give a very visible warning on the file page during their temporary visibility.
2. We should limit this to users at a certain level of rights.
3. We should probably have a place to post where anyone who is doing more than, say 20 of these in a given week is expected to post what they are up to, and there is a chance to judge the advisability of larger projects like that.

Also, I'm very wary of uploading content that has no known date when it will become available (e.g. in most countries, work of living authors, including buildings in countries with no FoP for architecture). It's hard to keep track of when they would be undeleted and in most cases that is 70 or more years in the future, a really pointless amount of time over which to make plans. Possibly some exception to that for content of likely importance that is unlikely still to be available when it would become legal to publish. - Jmabel ! talk 02:27, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I would limit this to files they become public domain within the next 20 years with exceptions possible. GPSLeo (talk) 05:58, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Most buildings, especially in rapidly developing cities; or even most things, would not survive for 70 years+the remaining lifespan of their authors.

So their pictures people now take are the only records of them once existing.

Some users be like: upload them to other image hosting sites like flickr... well, that means preservation of those images also hinges on the survival of flickr into the far future. If commons is the ultimate repository of history and knowledge, they should be here and commons should not depend on another website to then import them in far future. RoyZuo (talk) 07:15, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

+1 MGeog2022 (talk) 12:26, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

By the way, if Internet Archive had the financial resources and infrastructure (including backups) that WMF has, I wouldn't be worried about this at all. The place for that ultimate repository of history and knowledge would be Internet Archive, not WMF. The problem is that it hasn't. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:35, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed with you 100%.

I've long criticised this. WMF has so much money but the impression left on me has always been that they waste all that money on dont know what. In comparison internet archive handles so much more with far less money.

https://archive.org/about/ : A single copy of the Internet Archive library collection occupies 145+ Petabytes of server space

Special:MediaStatistics: Total file size for all 116,084,240 files: 662,292,980,500,181 bytes (602.35 TB).

Commons is <1% of IA, but WMF funding is probably 10 times IA funding. RoyZuo (talk) 12:49, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Not to say the WMF couldn't allocate their funds better, but it's not fair comparison because the sites are different. The internet archive is super janky and always one lawsuit away from oblivion anyway. For all the WMFs faults at least this project is usable and it won't closed down because of a RIAA lawsuit. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:12, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes. With the money it has, WMF could have several offline backups in different places for even greater redundancy. But things are not so bad. WMF could remain operating and having several full backups of everything, even with a much smaller budget than it has, and if at the same time the total size of Commons increases greatly, that's the good part (WMF problem seems to be that there is so much money that it's hard to decide what to spend it on, there are far worse things than that).

I don't think a lawsuit will close Internet Archive. But Archive's content isn't well protected against cyberattacks or physical disasters. Of all content in Archive or its Wayback Machine, I only consider guaranteed the parts that come from third-party projects, such as Common Crawl, and perhaps also the content that uses Archive-it paid service. I remember how frustrated many people were last October when Archive went down. People seem to be unaware of the real risk of something much, much worse at any moment. MGeog2022 (talk) 20:12, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Anyway, i just wrote down a summary of this method Commons:Upload, delete and undelete. Feel free to edit, or suggest if you have a better title.

Commons:Undelete needs to be edited to include undeletion of free files, which is not contentious and doesnt need "appeal".--RoyZuo (talk) 07:43, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@RoyZuo: I made some significant edits there. - Jmabel ! talk 15:30, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

If we want files not to be visible, we could use something similar to Nsfw. However, these files should only be publicly accessible for a few hours, so I am not sure it is necessary. Yann (talk) 12:47, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel and everybody:

fyi, i wrote Commons:Upload, delete and undelete as a summary of current practice, not as a proposal of any possible future implementation of this mechanism. as mentioned above by many users, it's an informal method ppl have been using, and i felt it's necessary to write it down.

the info page could be a first step towards formalisation of this method, but i'm satisfied to bring this matter to wider attention and leave any development to the others.

and my key concern for my original post is, Commons:Undelete is seriously lacking info about many uncontroversial circumstances of undeletion of files. RoyZuo (talk) 16:29, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it would be good to add a timestamp to uploads where you can set when the uploaded files are published. Copyright reasons may be the most obvious one, but sometimes I was requested not to upload specific content. In 20–30 years, it wouldn't be a problem anymore. And documentation of works that vanished or will vanish are a crucial argument, no matter as it is in form of photographs etc. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:11, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

(And copyright legislation can change in the future) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:12, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531: we can do the same thing with "Undelete in YEAR" when the concern is something other than copyright. Has nothing systematic to do with the upload date. - Jmabel ! talk 16:10, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:32, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

March 13

March 2025 update from WMF Legal on "Vogue Taiwan and possible Copyright Washing" discussion

Hi, I’m LRGoncalves-WMF, from Wikimedia Foundation’s legal department, and I just wanted to provide an update to the Vogue Taiwan situation discussed here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright/Archive/2025/02#Vogue_Taiwan_and_possible_copyright_washing. We reached out to Condé Nast to give them a heads-up about the CC license in their Vogue Taiwan videos and specifically asked them if the content posted on their YouTube Channel is in fact CC-licensed. A couple of days ago they replied confirming that all videos on their Vogue Taiwan youtube channel were not available for reuse. In their words: “All copyrights are owned by the Condé Nast global network. The CC license was applied due to an unknown error. We have immediately fixed it and updated all videos and settings on the Vogue YouTube channel back to the "Standard YouTube License.”

Based on their answer, the Legal Department can’t confirm that the stills of Vogue Taiwan videos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons are openly licensed. As Condé Nast’s counsel and some commentators above pointed out, the attribution of the CC-license was made in error, and not a deliberate choice to freely license these videos. LRGoncalves-WMF (talk) 12:09, 13 March 2025 (GMT-3)

@LRGoncalves-WMF: Thanks, I started Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/03/Category:Screenshot images from VOGUE Taiwan YouTube account.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:59, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@LRGoncalves-WMF: Thanks a lot. I am deleting these files. Hopefully, they will be more careful about their license in the future. Yann (talk) 16:37, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

For the record, there are still videos on the Vogue Taiwan channel with the CC license as of today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJmSD03kJ0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir8ALM3zIs4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq37b2GZzGQ  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   16:41, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Given that they had mistakenly included CC license in their videos for many years, it isn’t far fetch for them to also missed removing the license for some videos. Maybe we can include a note somewhere for uploaders in the future, so they don’t mistakenly upload the copyrighted images here? Tvpuppy (talk) 16:56, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Side note, can some edit (or delete) {{Vogue Taiwan}}, since the license template is not valid anymore? Tvpuppy (talk) 17:11, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Please see Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Vogue Taiwan. Yann (talk) 20:37, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Since we forgive licensing mistakes by Condé Nast it may be worthwhile revisting other cases like this Auckland Museum marked cultural permissions deletion case that was closed as "Kept: no valid reason for deletion -- CC licenses are irrevocable". Maybe it was a different scenario though? Commander Keane (talk) 20:56, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

IMO the opinion of WMF Legal here is quite equivalent of a DMCA by the copyright holder. It means to me that WMF Legal would accept such a request if ever they would send one. Unless we have a similar legal opinion about other cases, I don't see any reason to change our decision. However I very much like to know the answer to PHShanghai's question below. Yann (talk) 21:28, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

As would I. Are Creative Commons licenses non-revocable or are they revocable when the licensor is a giant corporation with a team of expensive lawyers? I agree with Yann that WMF Legal seems to be saying they'd agree to a DMCA and thus I believe Yann's actions to be correct in terms of protecting our site and protecting our reusers (although we should also alert our reusers to this situation with Conde Nast). Abzeronow (talk) 19:10, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I second this. Not protecting the copyright on Night of the Living Dead was also a mistake (and a far easier one to make than positively choosing a CC-BY license!) and we don't just all agree "Whoopsies: we'll just take this out of the public domain for you". It's disappointing to see us taking free use media down that is clearly valuable for our mission. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:52, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@Koavf: IMO there is a big difference between Night of the Living Dead or similar cases, and Vogue Taiwan. There should have been a copyright notice for the film, as it was the distributor's duty to add one. While as Vogue Taiwan is not the copyright holder of these videos, the license was never valid. These licenses were not more valid than the ones added by license washing people we often see on Commons. I would not accept Condé Nast argument (We made a mistake.) if the free licenses were added by them. The whole point is to determine who is the copyright holder. Yann (talk) 19:53, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

That's a valid concern and I'm not suggesting that you did the wrong thing as such. I respect your decision-making, in case that was not clear. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:52, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't really buy this "mistake". Unfortunate mistake, true, but these were under a CC license and if we are now deleting these it means CC licenses are revokable, which would set a dangerous precedent. On the basis of good faith I would support prohibiting uploading new Vogue Taiwan files from now on (even if CC licensed on YouTube), but those already uploaded on Commons or still CC licensed on YouTube as of 13 March should unmistakably be kept. Bedivere (talk) 22:26, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

The question to me is whether Vogue Taiwan actually had the legal authority to release the videos under a CC license. If the copyrights are owned by some other part of Condé Nast, and there was never internal authorization for Vogue Taiwan to release the files under a CC license, then the license wouldn't even be valid in the first place. To me, it's equivalent to the situation where a PR employee of a company uploads the company's logo to Commons without their company's legal department authorizing them to do so. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 23:22, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

There's always the possibility that someone went rogue on his last day of work and slapped "we license everything CC-BY" on a bunch of media, but if the holding company that owns them is just so big or mismanaged that the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing, that's not something anyone else should have to adjudicate. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:34, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@Koavf It shouldn't have anything to do with anyone going rogue. If Condé Nast owns the copyright and does not share ownership rights with VT, then VT putting a CC license on it may be invalid, period. VT could even have a good faith belief that they fully own the video--doesn't matter. If that belief isn't actually true, then any licenses they issue are likely invalid. I do not believe that this is a case of joint-ownership, but look at this family of cases for an idea of how a court would treat a situation like this, unless VT clearly had sole ownership rights over the video. You said above "It's disappointing to see us taking free use media down", but I don't think this was ever free use media. Alyo (chat·edits) 21:52, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

"If" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. We can make some perfectly reasonable assumptions here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:42, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

What are those assumptions? I see no one in this thread putting forth legally reasonable assumptions that result in a world in which VT had the authority to publish those videos under a CC license. Is is theoretically possible? Sure. But it makes no sense legally, it makes no sense given the IP policies on all CN sites, it makes no sense from a business structure standpoint, and we have a direct statement from the copyright owner saying otherwise. And for what, screenshots from youtube videos? I don't think this is a fight worth fighting. Alyo (chat·edits) 23:16, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

But these are big companies, not a single individual, who left videos with a CC license for years. It's technically possible Condé Nast doesn't even own footage from their photographers (just example), but we assume big companies know what they are doing when they create, publish and license content.  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   05:40, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Agree with Bedivere that this is setting a dangerous precedent. I believe the WMF legal department's communication with Condé Nast has helped clarify the situation. We can be confident that, moving forward, even if their videos are mistakenly CC-licensed again, these will be considered errors and should not be used. However, CC licenses are supposedly non-revocable, meaning that videos licensed as such within that timeframe should remain free to use, regardless of the reasons Condé Nast published them this way. 👑PRINCE of EREBOR📜 09:38, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

@Bedivere and Prince of Erebor: It doesn't matter if the CC licenses are revokable or not. The files should be deleted so that we aren't endangering our reusers with lawsuits (meritless or not). This is the same reason we shouldn't be hosting images by copyleft trolls. "Welcome to Commons! The repository of technically free-license images you'll probably get sued for trying to use!" Is it any wonder that people prefer paying $40 for public domain images on Alamy rather than getting them here? Nosferattus (talk) 01:11, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the update. For the record; just want to clarify how the non-revocable part of Creative Commons licenses work in this case? What is the official statement of WMF Legal regarding that? Thanks. @LRGoncalves-WMF: PHShanghai (talk) 20:43, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I will reply to @Yann's DMCA comment down here. Looking at the original post WMF Legal doesn't say to delete all photos, just that an error has been made. Rewarding companies that have hypothetical DMCA capabilities and disadvantaging organisations (and regular people) that don't is weird to me. Commander Keane (talk) 22:59, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I'd +1 to the PHShanghai's question in a personal capacity, although I do wonder if the Foundation's Legal folks would even be able to offer an opiniongiven that this isn't an attorney/client situation. Associated with that question, I'd opine that Yann's administrative decision to delete all of these images without additional discussion of this new viewpoint was made too hastily. As I've done previously, I'd encourage Yann to be much more careful when taking unilateral administrative actions—especially in a case like this, where deletion means that images have been removed from probably dozens of Wikimedia projects and cannot easily be restored. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 01:44, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Dozens if not hundreds of articles are now imageless because the Vogue Taiwan images were hastily deleted, with A list articles such as Adele and Billie Eilish. May I remind you that this decision to delete hundreds of images was done without any consensus of the community and was just a broad action applied. I also don't like how Yann is going about this, they templated me on my talk page for uploading some of those Vogue Taiwan images despite knowing WHY those pages were deleted. Quite rude. PHShanghai (talk) 04:57, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I think that's just the automatic behavior in VisualFileChange  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   05:32, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Editors are responsible for the edits made by the tools they choose to use. If the tool is wrongly templating people in such cases, it shouldn't be used for them. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:18, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I still agree with the argument Yann made previously; what court or judge will accept "Sorry, but the license which was published by our subsidiary company there for years is wrong."?  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   05:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

If the license is actually invalid/VT didn't have the authority to publish it? All of them. Good faith belief/reliance isn't a defense to copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is a strict liability tort. You either did it or you didn't. Alyo (talk) 21:18, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Come on, these videos were up with a free license, by a company with apparent authority to do so, for years during which anyone could find them on YouTube and use without knowing about whatever internal situation Condé Nast had. No judge is going to tolerate a claim of copyright infringement against users for using the media under the terms of the license.  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   15:49, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@999real: Do you really want to expose yourself to that risk?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:58, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@999real, I have limited experience in copyright law, but do not agree with this assessment of the situation. More importantly, even if I did agree with your assessment, I have no idea how that supports keeping the files, rather than just being thankful that users wouldn't be on the hook for damages accrued before the WMF/CN statement.

Regardless, predicting that a judge will decide that a 50/50 error leans to your favor is very much "we can get away with it", and so we must delete these files per the precautionary principle. Alyo (chat·edits) 13:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@999real: I think most judges would have no problem following Restatement (Second) of Agency to find there is no apparent authority. Agents have a scope of employment, and VT's scope does not include licensing the content of other CN entities. If you had a reasonable and honest belief that VT could grant a free license (e.g., you did not know other CN websites did not use free licenses) a few months ago, you might escape liability. Given the current discussion about VT and CN's actions, your and Common's apparent authority defense has evaporated. Glrx (talk) 01:50, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I suggest you refrain from playing copyright lawyer -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 08:55, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

 Comment Opinions seem versatile. Previously, a number of people argue for deletion of these files. Now that we have an opinion from WMF Legal department, people want to keep them... Yann (talk) 09:24, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

There was obviously a mixed consensus on the actual previous discussion. It was not a broad consensus to delete the files unless we heard from CN themselves. PHShanghai (talk) 12:58, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Well, we did heard from CN now. Yann (talk) 13:48, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Yann. And I say this as someone who uploaded 46 images for probably as many articles that were deleted due to this, and that makes me very sad. Yes, technically we could argue that the license was there on the files for many years, that we had every right to take the license as good, that many different articles are visibly the worse for losing these images, all that. But we're here to do a good deed, to make the single largest source of knowledge in human history, and not to be copyright trolls. If there is a reasonable chance that a good faith error was made - and that is what Conde Nast is asserting to WMF - then I can understand us forgiving the error, and letting the images go. So it goes. --GRuban (talk) 19:00, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Don't forget about downstream reuse, either. Displaying these images on Commons with a CC license is an assertion that "yes, you can use these images freely given these conditions" - if we have reason to believe that the images may not actually be CC licensed, and that reusing them may actually pose risks, we shouldn't offer them. Omphalographer (talk) 19:17, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I made a list of files, just in case: Commons:Deletion requests/File:陸弈靜.png. Yann (talk) 19:02, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

 Comment there's also Commons:Deletion requests/Files found with Vogue Taiwan Diddykong1130 (talk) 19:24, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

DMCA suggestion

@LRGoncalves-WMF: hello. Can you also inquire Condé Nast if the revocation of CC license applies to Vogue Taiwan content hosted here before March 13, 2025? If so, can Wikimedia suggest them to file a single take down notice vs. all of the said files through COM:DMCA? Without a DMCA notice, there is uncertainty whether those files should be deleted too or not. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 16:38, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I believe WMF Legal messaged it this way so we would understand that they would agree to a DMCA request if it was ever issued, and they would rather have us deal with it so a DMCA notice would be unnecessary. Abzeronow (talk) 19:58, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I think us and everyone who's been through this whole debacle deserve a clear cut explicit answer from WMF Legal instead of doing guesswork. I will be very disappointed if we do not get clarification because all of us have been busting ourb butts off here trying to get a proper consensus on this issue. PHShanghai (talk) 23:43, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

As I understand it, WMF's lawyers cannot provide legal advice as such to the Commons community. We are not their client. What they can do, and have done, is to communicate a legal position on behalf of WMF. - Jmabel ! talk 01:00, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

We are not asking for *legal advice*, we are asking for a comment regarding how Creative Commons Licenses worked in this context. We can't actually do anything anymore but I feel the community is at least owned a little more in depth explanation, *especially* regarding irrevocability of Creative Commons licenses and how it would work in this context. PHShanghai (talk) 04:41, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

@PHShanghai The application of legal principles/rules to a specific fact pattern is legal advice. CN is going to say "the CC license was a mistake, we retain all rights to the videos and any derivative stills"--repeating their previous statement. What you are asking for is for the WMF's opinion on whether or not that argument would hold up in court in a situation where we keep the files and CN issues a DMCA, which is legal advice. Again, licenses are only "irrevocable" if they are properly granted. In this case, those of us arguing for deletion believe no valid license was actually granted. If we are correct, then this situation never reached the question of irrevocability.

If I'm misstating your position, then please say exactly what question you think the WMF should provide an answer to. Alyo (chat·edits) 17:38, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I do hope that WMF Legal does answer your question, but as Jmabel says, they cannot provide legal advice to us. Abzeronow (talk) 01:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

March 14

PD license template maintenance task

I discovered a strange pattern as I'm working through PD-Art license maintenance: files that don't have any PD templates, but are placed in categories that PD templates would place them in. These need to be reviewed and have the correct PD templates applied to them, and the manual categories removed. If you have some time and that sounds up your alley, I put them all into Category:Files placed manually in PD-Art categories. – BMacZero (🗩)

Good catch. A category alone isn't a substitute for a license statement, even if it's PD. At a glance I think most of these will be {{PD-old-assumed}} at a minimum. Omphalographer (talk) 04:20, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

@BMacZero, to Category:PD Art i added Template:Image template notice which now also provides an extra search link to find such files (which was just added). RoyZuo (talk) 11:30, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

March 15

Prompt for AI

Wikidata has implemented AI-generation prompt (P13381) (poorly named, if you ask me), intended for SDC to be able to track the prompt used to generate a particular AI work. I assume we should do whatever it takes to make that usable on SDC. - Jmabel ! talk 07:31, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I wonder how it would work with longer prompts. I could see it for simpler ones like "1960's art of cow getting abducted by UFO in midwest" but SDC doesn't seem to work well with long, multi-sentence blocks of text. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:39, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Seeing as this is used on media files alone, wouldn't this information be more suitable for the description field on Commons? We could even make a field for the prompt itself to put in the information template, if people feel the description isn't the best place to put it. But from my understanding SDC is not very well-suited to storing strings of text, and is more suitable to other nodes of structured data (e.g. where and when a picture was taken, who made it, what it depicts). ReneeWrites (talk) 10:20, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Note that it could also be in both places and that there already is some template for these.

General note regarding prompts: one should keep in mind that many use many prompts in succession for one image....I would even say that may be the normal case for higher-quality files. A singular prompt is still useful and should probably be the first prompt used for the image. Often, the prompt is altered by inserting a few words and removing some others and applied to the image (using img2img) created with a prior prompt to adjust the image to morph it closer to what the person has in mind or to fix issues in the initial version. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:11, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Does SDC not support the wikidata property series ordinal (P1545) to be used as a qualifier? - Jmabel ! talk 01:04, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

"language policy on Commons to use English" for categories named in proper nouns, true claim or false?

I contributed court judgements (originals but redacting privacy parts) from China from time to time. Six mostly-used titles of final (in one proceeding) judgement texts (a.k.a. adjudications) are:

1. Civil judgement; (民事判决书)
2. Civil ruling; (民事裁定书)
3. Penal judgement; (刑事判决书)
4. Penal ruling; (刑事裁定书)
5. Administrative judgement; (行政判决书)
6. Administrative ruling; (行政裁定书)

Where ruling means a adjudication decided purely by examing procedures. None of which have a perfect English equivalent as far as I can see.

For recent uploads, I categorize each ducument using its title (first two lines) as category names, which I think appropriate to preserve the Chinese form of terms (proper nouns). One example is File:（2024）鄂0102行初375号.pdf titled as "湖北省武汉市江岸区人民法院 / 行政裁定书" (Jiang'an Dist Court, Wuhan, Hubei / Administrative ruling). I added it to Category:湖北省武汉市江岸区人民法院行政裁定书, then add this category to Category:湖北省武汉市江岸区人民法院 (Court name, non-controversial) and Category:行政裁定书 (Adjudication type).

Some stalkers attempted to remove my contributions in mass, claiming that I don't respect "language policy on Commons to use English". (Actually, because I uploaded one real evidence that the Xi'an Government boycotted anti-Fascism making them uncomfortable.) One succeed today:

2025-03-14T18:44:00 Ameisenigel Deleted Q129843186 （Does not meet the policy: RfD]: Commons only category that does not follow language policy on Commons to use English）

The category isn't Commons-only: s:zh:Category:中华人民共和国行政裁定书 (prefixed with P.R.C.) & s:zh:Category:行政裁定书 (short). So the problem lies here on Commons: does the name "Category:行政裁定书" (lit. Administrative ruling) violates COM:CAT#Category_names? --XsLiDian (talk) 16:15, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, it does violate policy. You can add {{zh|行政裁定书}} as hat text for the category, but the category name should be in English if there is common English for it. This is especially true for languages that do not use some form of the Latin alphabet. - Jmabel ! talk 16:55, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I read from Commons: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. See Commons:Categories for the exact policy.) and followed it, as I don't know an exact English equivalent for Administrative ruling.

So the latest consensus is to prefer machine-translated messy text over proper nouns in their native form? It's a pity that this exact rule didn't appear in the guidelines yet! XsLiDian (talk) 17:20, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Administrative ruling is fine. I think Jmabel's suggestion to add a hatnote for these categories is a good compromise. ReneeWrites (talk) 19:24, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

The hatnote practise is what I'm already exercising. The problem lies with proper nouns that can't be translated well and sound. In this example, judgement and ruling are two main types of judgements in China. I don't know if native English speakers would find they're different things with legal powers of the same level. Should I think this much for future readers? XsLiDian (talk) 23:42, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Native English speakers will certainly understand that better than they will understand Chinese ideographs.

Again, if there are subtleties to be explained about the distinctions between two categories, that can go in hat notes. Also, you might want to create corresponding Wikidata items, which are more truly multilingual. - Jmabel ! talk 07:15, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Upload of twenty-four files with wrong license tag

I have just uploaded 26 localized variants of the European Committee of the Regions (Q205203) logo (viewable here). They are not copyrighted but I don't have a plausible option in UploadWizard. Can it be fixed? My uploads are almost entirely below TOO (so copyright-free) and have to (!) select one of the five option (first published in US before 1930, author has been deceased for more than 70 years, original work from the US Federal Government, original work from NASA, I am not sure if it out of copyright in USA) is bizarre and awkward. Also I have to write always in the box below ({{PD-textlogo}}{{Trademarked}} or {{PD-simple}}). Why not simply add an option like "The work is surely below TOO in US". Also the date parameter: the date is always requested but with this type of files is rarely found and almost always unknown in logos (however sometimes I was able to recover it in the source file URL o in trademark offices registers), so I must write Unknown date for it to turns a blind eye. If I understood well the policies the date (of original publication) is used to check when the copyright expires, so it is also useless to add and search in files not copyrighted. ZandDev (talk) 17:21, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello @ZandDev, it might be helpful to see the discussion over at Commons:Village pump/Proposals#RfC: Changes to the public domain license options in the Upload Wizard menu, which discussed specifically about adding {{PD-textlogo}} option in UploadWizard. Tvpuppy (talk) 17:42, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

@Tvpuppy Sure! I replied here (and also on phab ticket). -- ZandDev (talk) 19:37, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I think however that the date parameter question aforementioned should be treated here. -- ZandDev (talk) 19:40, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

March 16

Getty fotos are faked

The newspaper "NZZ am Sonntag"/"Neue Zürcher Zeitung international" reports today that images in the Getty stockphoto library that are marked as "foto", "for use in news media" - as authentic fotographs - are in fact computer generated images, with no way provided by Getty to find out. NZZ has found the creator of a "fiber cable in the occean" computer visualization that was used in news articles about the North Stream II explosion and sold to the newspaper by Getty as real fotograph. --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 07:08, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

That's standard practice with these picture agencies, isn't it? They are quick to charge for public domain photos and historical images. No scruples --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:58, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Images from NASA, for example, often say “Source: dpa” or some such nonsense --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:59, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

At least that are real photos, not complete fabrication. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 17:46, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

The thing is that agencies are primarily concerned with profit and not necessarily with the veracity of the content. This must be taken into account when working with (news or press) media --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:15, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think any getty stock photos are uploaded here. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:13, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@C.Suthorn can you plz give a link? would be interesting to read. RoyZuo (talk) 19:44, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Link: https://no-pony.farm/@Life_is/114170586739846604 C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 07:01, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't see how this is relevant to Commons. Getty photos are, as a rule, not freely licensed and can't be posted to Commons regardless of how they were created. Omphalographer (talk) 23:02, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

If they are AI-generated, with no further human contribution, then they are not copyrightable in the U.S., and we could choose to host them if they are within scope. Getty can't enforce a license fee on PD materials. - Jmabel ! talk 01:06, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

"Computer generated" doesn't imply "AI-generated", though. In any case, this seems kind of pointless to discuss in the absence of specifics. Omphalographer (talk) 04:40, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

"Computer generated" is common parlance for AI generated images. Otherwise is there another computers can "generate" images besides with AI? --Adamant1 (talk) 06:50, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Certainly. Graphics created by computer programs, like 3D rendered images, have been commonly referred to as CGI ("computer-generated imagery") since at least the 1980s. Omphalographer (talk) 07:06, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I thought the relevance to Commons was that it is increasingly important to distinguish between traditional and AI images to avoid disgrace and losing credibility. Archiving RAW files for photos would be a step towards that. Commons:AI-generated media is the relevant page. Commander Keane (talk) 07:04, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Category:L'Illustrazione Italiana by year

Could someone please fix these templates so they end up in Italian categories? Rathfelder (talk) 10:48, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Rathfelder: Could you what you think should be done? I don't understand your request, as there are no templates here except {{Magazine by year}}. Which Italian categories? -- ZandDev (talk) 11:14, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

They have a template Magazine by year- also for decades and centuries, which puts them in, for example Category:1911 magazines, not in Category:Magazines of Italy, 1911. Rathfelder (talk) 11:30, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Rathfelder, I didn’t edit the template too much, to avoid maybe accidentally breaking the template. So, I just added a |country= parameter. If you specify a country (e.g. Italy), it will categorise the page into the country-of-year category (e.g. Magazines of Italy, 1911), instead of the year category (e.g. 1911 magazines). See Category:1874 L'Illustrazione Italiana for example. Tvpuppy (talk) 16:39, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! Rathfelder (talk) 16:43, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

By the way, I also changed {{Magazine by decade}} and {{Magazine by century}} the same way as mentioned above. Tvpuppy (talk) 16:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Very helpful! Rathfelder (talk) 19:26, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

One more - could you do a similar job on Category:La Ilustración Española y Americana? Rathfelder (talk) 19:47, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

The template for the year categories and century categories already categorizes into the magazine-of-Spain categories. So, I only changed the template for the decade categories (e.g. the one in Category:1860s La Ilustración Española y Americana) since it didn’t categorize into the “YYYYs magazines of Spain” category. Is this what you were referring to? Tvpuppy (talk) 03:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes thank you very much. I hope that is the last one like that. Rathfelder (talk) 18:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Gadget to find category redirects

As a categorist, I often want a dedicated gadget to find category redirects of a given category. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 15:28, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: Try Special:WhatLinksHere or the "What links here" link.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:46, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: It gives me only hard redirects. I want the soft redirects to a given category using {{Category redirect}}. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 15:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: Such cats should be near the top of each given cat.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:05, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: The top results for Kolkata are not cat redirects, despite having cat redirects like Category:Calcutta. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 16:17, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: So what (partial) results are you looking for, when given a certain cat you are familiar with?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 19:32, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

1 way you can do that is https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=hastemplate:%22Category+redirect%22+insource:/\%7CKolkata/ . RoyZuo (talk) 19:48, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@RoyZuo: Thanks for this. I'll make a script out of it. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 02:40, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413 for more search tricks: mw:Help:CirrusSearch mw:Help:Extension:WikibaseCirrusSearch. :) RoyZuo (talk) 07:16, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

What do you mean? Redirect pages using that template are also showing in "What links here". Prototyperspective (talk) 19:16, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: I meant that I should only get a list of soft redirects to a category using the template {{Category redirect}}. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 02:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

That would indeed be useful. One can "Hide redirects" but not vice versa see only redirects. If many pages link to a page, one has to scroll for long to manually find all the redirects. This also impedes redirect maintenance. It doesn't only affect Commons but all Wikimedia sites. A way to sparql query which pages redirects to a page would also be useful. I think it's not unlikely there already is a phab code issue about it, so I'd look for one and if it doesn't exist recommend to create the phab issue and linking it here. Thanks. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:48, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Statistics of uploads vs deletions

Hi, I updated this page. Curiously, I got slightly higher numbers for uploads. Also why did the uploads drop in 2022 and 2024? Any idea? Yann (talk) 19:11, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Just a guess, but how do this numbers relate to the active user base? Grunpfnul (talk) 19:41, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Fæ's departure alone would have made a statistically noticeable difference. - Jmabel ! talk 01:09, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Would make sense. Fæ dropped out in 2021 --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:21, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Around September 2022 was a sudden increase of uploads, but the increase was deleted later. Maybe this lays heavy --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:24, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

March 17

Help with uploading an image

Hi, can someone help me upload an image found at [1] as a new version of File:Acrobasis_normella.jpg? If you click on the image on the website it shows a clearer version, but it's a png, which doesn't match the original version. What can I do? Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 00:16, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Myrealnamm: there are tons of ways to turn a PNG into a JPEG. My usual way is to download to my PC, open it in GIMP, and save it as a JPEG with quality=98. - Jmabel ! talk 01:14, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Myrealnamm: I was able to do this for you with the help of Image downloader - Imageye.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 01:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your help. Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 20:09, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Possible case of copyleft trolling

See Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Possible case of Copyleft Trolling.

The accusations seem quite serious to me, and both the evidence and the reasoning are solid. Since this is a user with nearly 300,000 edits, I believe this matter may require broader attention, which I assume the copyright Village pump might not fully provide (unlike this, the main one). Therefore, I am notifying you here as well.

Best regards, RodRabelo7 (talk) 01:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Does anyone want to look at a template issue?

Template:Italyeventyear isn't setting sort keys consistently -- at least not in a consistent way I can identify. If you go to Category:Events in Italy by year, the first page has some miscellaneous stuff at the beginning, then it starts with the "<year> events in Italy" categories. If you then go to the next page, you will see that some years, starting with the year 1647, are sorting after all the other years instead of in numerical order.

When I look at Category:1716 events in Italy and Category:2016 events in Italy, the only difference I see in the setup is the first two digits of the year, which you'd expect. However, the 1716 category is one of the ones sorting at the end, whereas the 2016 category is not. If anyone wants to investigate a mystery, here's one for you.

Bonus points if you figure out how to get Category:492 events in Italy to sort correctly, although I can understand why that one is where it is.

Thanks in advance! -- Auntof6 (talk) 07:52, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

For "Category:492 events in Italy" the sort key must be " 492" (i.e. "[space][space]492" — two spaces in front of the year). For four digit years it must be " 1716" (i.e. "[space]1716" — one space in front of the year). Nakonana (talk) 08:48, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Nakonana: OK, so a 5-character sort key. But why is the template treating 1716 and 2016 differently? -- Auntof6 (talk) 08:49, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't know what in the template is causing it but "1716" is seemingly using a 4-character sort key. It's using "1" as the first digit instead of ".". Nakonana (talk) 08:56, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

This code bit appears to be responsible for the sort key:

[[Category:Events in Italy by year|.{{#ifexpr:{{{1}}} < 100 |0}}{{#ifexpr:{{{1}}} < 10 |0}}{{{1}}}{{{2}}}]]

Pinging @Orijentolog who added this code bit. Nakonana (talk) 10:14, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Nakonana: Yes, I saw that but I couldn't figure out why it didn't seem to be doing the same thing with similar categories. -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:18, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I checked some other countries and one that I've found that does not seem to have any hick-ups is {{Japaneventyear}} (see Category:Events in Japan by year). It uses "Japan" as default sort key, and the following code bit for the year:

[[Category:Events in Japan by year| {{padleft:{{{1}}}{{{2}}}|4}}]]. Nakonana (talk) 10:29, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

No wait, "Category:Events in Italy by year" isn't using spaces for the year but peeiids/dots (.). So, it's ". 492" or "..492" and ".1716". Nakonana (talk) 08:50, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Auntof6: @Nakonana: Fixed --Orijentolog (talk) 10:43, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Orijentolog: Thank you! -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:54, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Auntof6: You're welcome. To explain a little bit: when sortkey is changed in some template, sometimes all subcategories are automatically refreshed (purged) in few seconds and everything is under a (new) order. However, sometimes it's not automatically purged so everything before editing template stays under an old order, while only later edits are under a new order. In that case, the solution is null edit one-by-one. I changed sortkey because I believe that ordering under point is meaningless since years are numerals, and numerical ordering on Commons works fine. --Orijentolog (talk) 11:09, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Stats about user tenure

Does anyone know the median and the average of the number of years a user remains a sysop? or know of data or ways to calculate this? i only know Commons:List of former administrators an almost complete list of former sysops and their removal date, but no duration. RoyZuo (talk) 09:33, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Charts in Category:Deaths from diseases and disorders

• Should charts in there be somehow separated more since these cats mostly contain people died from diseases?

• Could somebody categorize the charts in there or in Category:Epidemiology of diseases and related health problems that show deaths by age/age-group into Category:Deaths from diseases by age – that cat currently misses most items.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 11:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Search for categories that have corresponding Wikidata items but no infoboxes

Anyone know if there's a way to do it? --Adamant1 (talk) 14:14, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Depends on what you mean with "corresponding". I think a bot adds the infobox automatically if it is linked. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:21, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

It's fairly difficult to identify what a "corresponding item" is outside of the most trivial cases, like entities which are already linked to Commons categories and lack only the infobox. Omphalographer (talk) 20:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Adamant1 and Prototyperspective: like this? Multichill (talk) 21:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

You might want to ask at Wikidata, too, whether there's a way. Or go through Category:Wikidata related maintenance to see whether there's anything that would fit the bill, e.g. something like "Creator templates with Wikidata link: item missing link back". Nakonana (talk) 07:22, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

March 18

Category:Photographic silhouettes of people against sunsets

I have been populating/adding photos to the Category:Photographic silhouettes of people against sunsets, which already existed but was practically empty. I believe I can only add a few hundred more photos. Questions: 1. The category name seems too complicated. Perhaps it could be changed to "Silhouettes of people with sunsets," since on Commons we are always dealing with photographs. 2. The category is becoming very crowded (with around 2,300 items) and perhaps it should be subdivided. One possibility would be to divide it by the number of people in the image, as dividing by color is not very useful (most photos have red backgrounds) and dividing by country also doesn't seem practical, since in most cases the country is not indicated and it is not very relevant to know where a photo of a black silhouette with a usually red and poorly defined background was taken. I would appreciate advice and suggestions from more experienced users. Thank you! --JotaCartas (talk) 09:59, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for populating that cat. I don't think there is any need to subdivide it further. It can be ideal and is refreshing to see a category containing its contents directly and I see no need for any particular subcategories like the number of people in the image or whether it's children vs adults. One could use the deepcategory search operator to combine it with other categories (example) and/or some search string to find results. However, if you are to subcategorize what likely would be most useful is distinguishing between images that show one person vs multiple/many. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:20, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer, and for the tip (example), I didn't know it, but it's very useful to avoid creating very complex Category trees, again thanks JotaCartas (talk) 17:48, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Category:Erotic paintings of the Qing dynasty

Hi, Many of these files do not a proper date and/or license. {{PD-Art}} should be replaced. At least {{PD-Art-two|PD-China|PD-US-expired}} should be OK for most of them. Also some English description would be useful. Help needed. Thanks, Yann (talk) 11:56, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I tried one but couldnt find info. All are quite definitely made before 1911. This specific genre is called Category:Chungongtu. RoyZuo (talk) 15:38, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Syrian Flag, the third time around

Once again, the question of what to do with File:Flag of Syria.svg has come up in File talk:Flag of the Syrian revolution.svg#Move. I have changed the redirect target since the Revolution flag is now the official flag of Syria. As previously discussed it seemed as if the consensus was that we should try to future proof changes to flags in making "Flag of Example" a redirect. For some reason, templates love using Flag of... in them so adjustments tend to have to be made anyway. But the question that came up is that now Syria is treated differently from other countries in that their "Flag of..." is a redirect as opposed to a file page and so what would be our best practices in handling changes to flags of nations. As Jmabel points out, the flag of the United States had been changed twice in his lifetime, and it is possible that within our lifetime, that flag could change again.

So the reason for this thread is to ask what would be our best practices in future proofing flags and what steps should be taken in the future when flags do need to be changed. Since this is a question that would affect a lot of communities in Wikimedia, I felt the Village Pump is the best place to ask, and I would be willing to post about this thread in various Wikipedias if needed. Abzeronow (talk) 19:50, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Files should be identified and reused with a unique number like [[File:M56856129|thumb|example]]. This would eliminate 1 of 3 things doing roughly the same thing: filename, caption, description; and all the rules and maintenance tasks about filename like Category:Media requiring renaming. RoyZuo (talk) 17:07, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I'll also mention in the interest of transparency that there is a proposal by User:Freedoxm to move the revolution flag to File:Independence flag of Syria.svg. Now that the revolution flag is the official flag of Syria, we probably should figure out what the permanent name for this flag should be where its usage would depend on a permanent name that doesn't change (unlike template that only care about what the current flag of Syria is). Abzeronow (talk) 17:25, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

VFC dark mode fixes

Hi, I've made several dark mode fixes to VFC, if you guys could try adding importScript('User:Matrix/vfc.js') to your common.js, then changing to dark mode, which is on the sidebar if you are using Vector 2022, that would be very useful. Please report any bugs here or on my user talk page. —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 20:16, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

@Matrix: It looks good so far, but I haven't done any action with it yet but simple prepending.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 21:06, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

March 19

Photo challenge January results

Ovals: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Horseshoe Bend (Arizona)	Underpass of Michelinstraße in Hallstadt	Fontana in un giardino storico in Roccalvecce (Viterbo)
Author	Gzzz	Ermell	Albarubescens
Score	15	12	11

Leatherwork: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	2
image
Title	Tanners at work in one of the old tanneries of Fez, Morocco	Pilot with Leather Aviator Helmet	Handmade shoes
Author	Lusi Lindwurm	Roy Egloff	AK-Bino
Score	24	11	11

Congratulations to Gzzz, Ermell, Albarubescens, Lusi Lindwurm, Roy Egloff and AK-Bino. -- Jarekt (talk) 02:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Excluded educational content

A certain user uploads a few raw text lists onto Commons and then places them in an article in some wiki project. Is this enough to ignore the Commons:Project scope#Excluded educational content policy? Please see Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by BlackStar1991 and User:Infrogmation's closure rationale. --Komarof (talk) 10:51, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes it is. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:33, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, I think it'S in scope but I am not happy about the file format. SVG would be much better --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:19, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

• That "excluded educational content" paragraph is poorly written and should be reworded. As written now it is used as a bludgeon in deletion arguments to delete historic news articles. There is a paragraph saying we do not want images of text, those should be hosted by other projects like Wikisource. Then we have another paragraph saying that we do want images of text, that they are actually demanded by Wikisource. Just combine the two into one well written paragraph instead of two contradictions. --RAN (talk) 22:13, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

  I think it is also important how text is depicted. Text uploaded as Commons file can be okay when it is a specimen of a font, a typologo or another special style of text presented (e.g. a glyph of a popular font or a unique glyph) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:32, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

There's obviously a huge difference between an image of a historical document and one of a modern spreadsheet some user put together in Excel. The former is (or at least should be) educational. Whereas the later IMO has no business being on Commons. Otherwise it should be as a proper table in the data namespace. That's what it exists for. Uploading images of self-created spreadsheets just seems like a way to get around the rules though. I can't create a page of text because it's OOS, but if I upload an image of the same text then somehow that's in scope? OK. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:44, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

• I think we are trying to exclude original text/data that is previously unpublished, not historic text/data already published. Also get rid of the phrase "Excluded educational content", it sounds like it was written by a lawyer.

how to undelete all my files which was deleted?

i'm new on commons i mistakenly claimed old pics as own work. those pics are free from copyright — Preceding unsigned comment added by RyanRai11 (talk • contribs) 07:00, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

• Hi! You can add a request at COM:Undeletion request and why the files should be undeleted. You need to say how the names of the files were. And don't forget to sign your posts ;) (type --~~~~) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:42, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Display bug with the Help icons on upload page

Hmm...

Just noticed this. I don't think these icons were like this previously, but instead fit the "display" box with perfectly round icons? (Firefox 136.0.2 here, have NoScript with nothing blocked on Commons and uBlock Origin). - The Bushranger (talk) 22:36, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

March 20

DESI releases the DR1 dataset

Hi!

DESI announced that they released a free dataset recently. It may have useful data to be uploaded here.

Greetings --11:52, 20 March 2025 (UTC) PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:52, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

User pages

I'd like to seek clarification from the community for questions about user pages, i.e. pages in the "user" namespace.

1. can other users make major edits/changes to a certain user page without that user's permission?
2. can a user put galleries of their uploaded files or other users' files on their user page?

Thx. RoyZuo (talk) 12:43, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

There isn't a simple "yes" or "no" to either of these.

The second question is the easier one to answer: generally yes, though if it becomes disproportionate to their other activity here, then that's not OK.

On the first question: usually not, but there are times when it is allowed, and I'd really want a more specific question. The most obvious cases are a deceased user or an indef-blocked user. - Jmabel ! talk 23:15, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Thx for answers.

obviously most of these questions were quite commonsensical. most users have basic etiquette and dont even need to be told a set of rules to behave. i merely wanted to generate a newer discussion for future reference.

otherwise, i could also quote something from 20 years ago such as Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2005/10#c-Ranveig-2005-10-27T12:02:00.000Z-Mark_Dingemanse-2005-10-27T10:48:00.000Z. RoyZuo (talk) 08:41, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

which peugeot model is this?

File:Ankara'da Üzeri İmzalanmış Pejo - 2025.jpg i uploaded this and cannot find exact model. please help me out. i suspect it is Category:Peugeot 207 Compact , but im not expert. please ping me when you find answer, thank you so much! modern_primat ^{ඞඞඞ ----TALK} 23:10, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

@Modern primat ChatGPT also says it's a Peugeot 207 --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:26, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

 Thank you. modern_primat ^{ඞඞඞ ----TALK} 20:20, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Kein Ding :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:30, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

March 21

Many study-specific short videos in category

What do you think of the many videos in Category:Experimental psychology?

Please first take a look. Another example is Category:Videos of biology.

Category:Videos of anatomy is a case where they have been moved to subcategory "Videos of biological studies relating to anatomy".

These clips were uploaded by the User:Open Access Media Importer Bot years ago.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 00:09, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: when you say "the many videos in Category:Experimental psychology" do you mean the videos in Category:Videos of experimental psychology or something else? And when you ask "what do you think" are you asking are they in scope, are there copyright problems, are there personality rights issues, do we personally like them, or what? - Jmabel ! talk 00:52, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

User Allforous just moved these there. So the other category is now a better example. Note that in the former cat there is this video File:Harm Aversion video explanation.webm which is not study-specific short clip. In other categories there are more videos like it, here there seems to be one exception. Below are some examples.

Prototyperspective (talk) 01:13, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

IMO, many of the videos imported by the Open Access bot - especially the ones used as experimental stimuli in neuroscience papers - are out of scope for Commons, as they have essentially no meaning outside the context of the papers they accompanied. I appreciate the intent of that import job, but it was perhaps overly broad. Omphalographer (talk) 03:51, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Agree. There are over 10,000 of these clips and the problems are:

• that they flood categories where it's then hard to see the actually useful videos / media and
  • (another example cat is Category:Videos of science which before I subcategorized a bit had 10 k files directly within it and even a category only containing subcategories is better than it being flooded with these clips)
• that they are a time sink for contributors who categorize these or deal with files that drown under these clips and
• that They can also substantially degrade the quality of search results, making this site significantly less useful

I also appreciate the intent and agree that they "have essentially no meaning outside the context of the papers they accompanied". I think something should be done:

1. Either deleting all of the clips from studies uploaded by the bot except for the very few clips that are in use (and any clip with more than e.g. 50 views per month if one can query for that) or
2. removing all their categories except for an Open Access Media Importer Bot-specific one like Category:Videos from studies uploaded with Open Access Media Importer which is removed from cats not specific to the bot since it screws up deepcategory search results (this doesn't address the search results but one could maybe add a deboost template) or
3. moving all of these to some separate Wikimedia project / related site like https://mdwiki.org/ or
4. something quite similar to any of the above to the same effect

I think option 1 would likely be the best (easiest to implement, most effective) option. If this isn't the right place to discuss this (and I think it is), maybe somebody or I should make a request for comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:55, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Priority licence review - VOA

Since voa funding will be or is cut soon, their websites and youtube channels might soon shut down. as such, licence reviewers might wanna prioritise these files:

1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=VOA+deepcategory:US_government_images_review_needed
2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=VOA+deepcategory:US_government_videos_review_needed
3. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=VOA+deepcategory:License_review_needed_(audio)
4. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=VOA+deepcategory:License_review_needed_(video)
5. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=VOA+incategory:License_review_needed
6. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=VOA+deepcategory:YouTube_review_needed

in total about 1000 files. RoyZuo (talk) 09:49, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

It's also important to have Wayback Machine snapshots of the source webpages --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:24, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Aren't all VoA files public domain? Thus, license review is not needed and the tag should be removed from all files in that cat. Instead what would be good to prioritize is uploading all remaining VoA videos not yet on Commons in case these can't be found elsewhere anymore soon. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:39, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Arent all usa govt files pd? why review for them then?

The problem is, until a reviewer verifies that the file is indeed sourced from and produced by voa, its copyright cannot be confirmed. RoyZuo (talk) 13:52, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

For instance, i just uploaded File:美國陪審團的否決權 VOA.mp3 from https://voa-audio.voanews.eu/cant/2013/12/11/b9173473-1903-43bf-9fd4-c8ccdc20e763.mp3 , but i cant record the source evidence because Special:Upload doesnt allow imports from voanews.eu yet, and url2commons doesnt allow mp3, so i have no choice but to add the licencereview template. RoyZuo (talk) 15:04, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Video2commons still broken

Tracked in GitHub
toolforge/video2commons/issues/237

It's been around a month now and video2commons is still broken and can't upload any videos.

It still shows:

Error: An exception occurred: DownloadError: b'ERROR: [youtube] [video id]: Sign in to confirm you\xe2\x80\x99re not a bot. This helps protect our community. Learn more'

when trying to upload any video.

Since this is the most-accessible most-used way to upload videos to Commons, could somebody please fix this problem or at least identify what the problem is? It's one if not the most critical tool for Commons and WMF has millions of dollars so I think a tool like this shouldn't be dysfunctional for over a month.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 12:28, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

+1, need to download and upload them by hand --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:21, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Might be a YouTube issue too given that error. Abzeronow (talk) 01:10, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Can I run a pywikibot script with my regular account ?

I would like to use a pywikibot script to upload images with my regular account. The main reason is avoid all the clicking involved in uploads, not to actually run some kind of bot. I'm talking about a maximum (!) of one or two dozen files per day. Can I do this with my regular account and without a botflag? (Sorry for asking, but it has been >15 years that I ran a bot on a Wikimedia platform). Regards, --Polarlys (talk) 23:10, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think you need a dedicated tool for this. The upload wizard can accept uploads of up to 50 files at a time. Omphalographer (talk) 23:31, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I use Pattypan for uploading more then a couple of files at a time myself. It makes things a lot easier because everything can just be copied and pasted in a spreadsheet. You might look into it. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:11, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

If the files are your own, I think using your main account is encouraged. Going by the discussion at my withdrawn bot request in 2018 the amount or bot flag is not a concern (I was using pywikibot to upload hundreds per day). pywikibot is very nice for uploading :-). Commander Keane (talk) 01:09, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

@Polarlys: Commons is fairly relaxed about using automated tools on non-bot accounts as long as you're supervising them. So I wouldn't expect using pywikibot to upload a few tens of files per day would be a problem at all. Bot accounts (and approval) are really needed if the bot is running automatically or making its own decisions about which edits to make. --bjh21 (talk) 11:27, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for all your responses. I already create most of my information templates using a python script, so adding a pywikibot script is the next step. Regards, --Polarlys (talk) 17:04, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Polarlys (talk) 19:38, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

March 22

Category for technology / software in public administration?

Are there any categories on that subject? I was looking to categorize File:Migration to LibreOffice and ODF for 30,000 clients in government of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.webm but I couldn't find such a category. Seems like a large subject with quite a few potential files here that would be contained in it.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 19:41, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

March 23

Flickr - possible change of licensing?

Went to Flickr's search to look for suitably licensed photos of a topic. Seems it is no longer possible to search on Flickr: I got a splash screen requiring signing in to Flickr, with the search results blurred out and unclickable, so I couldn't search for photos. I suspect this may contravene Creative Commons licensing, and thus mean that Flickr is no longer a legitimate source, like when 500px stopped being a legit source in 2018? - MPF (talk) 00:44, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

The licenses for photos have not changed, nor has the ability to view the license of an individual file, so this does not change anything about copyright or our ability to transfer files here. The logged-in restriction on the search function doesn't have anything to do with copyright. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 00:53, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

For me Flickr works normally. You need first search something and after that one can filter results using licence. I am not logged in to Flickr (and I am accessing it from EU if location matters) --Zache (talk) 01:09, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Same for me. Weird change even if it doesn't effect copyright. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:02, 23 March 2025 (UTC)