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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 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/2026/09. 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. For questions about copyright, technical matters, or help that does not relate to the general Commons community as well as proposals, please see the other discussion boards linked in the blue panel at the top. 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]

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January 02

History maps of Europe

Hi, I would like to discuss the description in all categories of the scheme "Maps of <country> in the <x>th century" (see for example Italy, Belgium, Spain, Poland). There are three different points about the current system I would like to invite comments on:

• the wording of the definition in the first paragraph of the hatnote
• whether or not to include "you may also be looking for similar maps" (second and third paragraph) of the description
• whether or not to re-include a distinction between history maps (in this category group) vs. old maps (not in this category group)

For the first point, there are two proposals, the first is the current "Maps showing all or most of the territory (geographic area) of modern-day <country> - as the lands were in the 8th century (701-800 CE)" which I would prefer to replace with a simple "This category is about maps of the history of <country> in the 8th century (701-800 CE)", given that "modern-day territories" are not always the same as they were in the respective century. Another critism of mine is that "all or most" excludes history maps that only cover smaller parts of the country in question.

For the second point, my argument is that these paragraphs are not necessary, since the links to the Atlas project should be included in the respective parent category (i.e. "Maps of the history of <country>"), which is also linked via template.

For the third point, I find it essential to point out that Commons has always distinguished "current", "history" and "old" maps, formulated in Template:TFOMC: "history" maps include this map of Poland in the 16th century (created recently, depicting the past) but "old" maps include this 16th-century map of Poland (created to depict the present, back then). There are certain grey areas where these categories DO overlap, especially "old history maps", but in quite many cases they don't. The respective category names are quite similar and can be confused, so I would suggest to mention this right in the category description.

I've put my own opinion in italics to explain why I think this requires debate, but I would like for people to check out the scheme examples for themselves, and judge on their own. Peace, --Enyavar (talk) 08:11, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

@Enyavar: I'm trying to understand the first point. A couple of questions that may help me understand:

• Would there be no such thing as "maps of Germany" for any date before 1866? Or would we take "Germany" before that date to mean the German-speaking world (and, if so, would that include areas where the rulers spoke German, but most of their subject did not)? or what? (Similarly for Italy.)
• Similarly: would there be no such thing as maps of Poland or Lithuania between 1795 and 1918? If so, what would we call maps of that area in that period?

I could easily provide a dozen similar examples, but answers to those two will at least give me a clue where this proposes to head. - Jmabel ! talk 18:49, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for that question, our categories about "history of" do not really care for nation states existing. Germany's history begins quite some time before it became a nation in the 19th century, and Polish history did not stop during the times of division: Poland in the 19th century is unquestionably a valid category. Our history categories generally imply that people know the limits of a subject without exact definitions.

Your question is getting to the reason why I am uncomfortable with the current hatnote/definition of these categories. I have not checked for all countries in Europe, but I'm quite confident: We do not define the subject of "Maps of the history of Poland" with a hatnote. We do not define "Poland in the 16th century" either. So why would we define the combination subcategory of the two so narrowly and rigidly, that only 6 out of 26 files currently in the category even match that (unreasonable) definition? (And of course, Poland/16th is just a stand-in here, I would argue the same for Spain/12th and Italy/8th and all others)

I would even be okay with no definition at all, besides a template notice (my third point) that "maps of <country> in Xth century" is about history maps, and old maps have to be found in "Xth-century maps of <country>". --Enyavar (talk) 04:53, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Categories denoted as old, or historic, are not terribly useful. Much better to put dates on them. Rathfelder (talk) 17:05, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Please read the original post, that is not a comment on the actual questions of this topic. Old maps are not the topic here, this is about history maps (i.e. Maps showing history of specific countries/centuries) regardless of when they were produced.

The term "historic maps" that can denote both, has rightfully fallen (mostly) into disuse. --Enyavar (talk) 16:23, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

In our Commons:WikiProject Postcards we have the similar problem. Is this a "old postcard of the German Empire" or a "Postcard of Germany". There we are mostly agree, that today people often search for postcards be the locations of today. So many former German towns are now Polnish towns and so we are categorized this postcards under the polnish name of the town. See also Commons:WikiProject_Postcards#Categories. Best regards --sk (talk) 12:29, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

@Stefan Kühn: , I have not responded before since I am not sure how this constitutes a similar problem, or what action you expect other users to take on behalf of your project. My own case is less about the exact nationality of specific locations; and more about hatnote definitions of these categories in general.

As nobody has yet voiced any opinion on the subject matter, I'm resolved to wait a bit longer. --Enyavar (talk) 11:29, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

February 22

Maps from Our World in Data

A suggestion in regards with the maps from Our World in Data: remove from each map the category <year> maps of the world.

These maps weren't published in the years referenced. In addition, it could make the categories of <year> maps of the world more easy to browse.

Thanks in advance. --Universalis (talk) 19:15, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

As with other files in these categories, that's the year of the data. This categorization has large usefulness to find and update outdated images used on Wikipedia. And the category title does not imply that's the year the map was made. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:13, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

+1 to Prototyperspective. - Jmabel ! talk 20:39, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

I have been meaning to say something about these maps, and this is a good occasion. User:Universalis is right that these maps were not created in that year, and it IS practice on Commons to understand "<year/decade/century> maps" being the maps created in that timeframe, not the maps showing that timeframe - the latter would be better placed under "maps showing <year/decade/century>".

User:Doc James, who is creating the majority of recent OWiD maps that concern what might be called history, is producing them by the thousand each day, at least as far as I can observe. For 2026-02-24 I just checked and saw 5000 edits, most if not all of them creating and categorizing OWiD statistics/maps usually looking like this (1947), this (1664) and this (1800). That is an enormous output and just for example 1764 maps of North America is currently dominantly OWiD maps and I suspect that this is true for basically all year-maps-of-world/continent right now. Case in point: the categories for 1444 maps of Africa, 1445 maps of Europe or 1446 maps of Asia don't even exist right now, but they are already filled with OWiD maps.

With at least 300'000 OWiD maps already existing and no end in sight, I would really like to delegate all of these maps into specific OWiD-categories for each continent and year. My suggestion for File:Annual co2 cement, North America, 1764.svg would be Our World in Data maps showing North America in 1764 or Our World in Data maps of North America in 1764. These year-categories would themselves be categorized under Our World in Data maps showing 1764 and Our World in Data maps of North America in the 18th century.

The titles I suggest above are up for debate. Is it more practical to use "Our World in Data maps" or can it be shortened to "OWiD maps" ? Also, should it be "showing" (as per our category branch "maps showing <year>") or should it just be "of" ? --Enyavar (talk) 03:58, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Sure we can adjust the categories however folks wish. We have additionally build a tool to help with more fined toned mass categorization. See Help:Gadget-CategoryBatchManager.

With respect to numbers, yes have uploaded about 600K so far and it looks like I am maybe a third done, so maybe 1.2 million more to go. Will likely not finish until this fall. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:03, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

and it IS practice on Commons to understand "<year/decade/century> maps" being the maps created in that timeframe, not the maps showing that timeframe this is an inaccurate statement. Look into any of these categories of years of the recent few decades and you'll notice how what you said is false. What you said applies to old maps and there usually the data shown is not known better than year of map made or the same. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:47, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

So what do folks want us to do? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:00, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

In 2014, it has been decided that "<year> maps" should essentially be empty disambiguations, and we should use "maps created in <year>" and "maps showing <year>" instead. Practically, this rule has never been enforced, and has lead to many simmering debates ever since. I'm striking my quarrelsome nitpicks from my previous comment, in order to focus on the suggestion at hand: Creating special categories for OWiD maps. Okay? --Enyavar (talk) 11:04, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

If you'd like to these could be subcategorized in the maps by year cats...I tried to keep them as flat as possible to enable viewing all the relevant files on one page, have easier to understand standardized cat names, and not start deep nesting that can cause queries and scans to break. Many hundreds of files would be moved. If there is agreement and no objections, should they be named Category:Our World in Data maps of the world showing 2014 data or Category:OWID maps of the world showing 2014 data or Category:Maps of the world showing 2017 (OWID) or Category:Our World in Data maps of the world showing 2014 or Category:2014 Our World in Data maps of the world or Category:2014 maps of the world (OWID) or sth else? (It's mostly maps of the world that I'd move.) Prototyperspective (talk) 12:40, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Doc James has stated above that we are going to have about ~1'800'000 maps once the current run of creating these files is finished. And I don't even think that will be the end of it. So I agree, we need to have a good standardized cat structure, and I am willing to hear if Doc James also has input on good names, or input on which names are less good. With that lead:

As far as I can see, we do have the following seven regions over which these maps are distributed: "the world", "Africa", "Asia", "Europe", "North America", "Oceania", "South America". These are the seven most common frames I noticed so far, please correct me if there are more. "World" is probably going to be a bit larger, but I don't think we should neglect the other regions, which are all going to be equally densely filled.

Now, thinking about the best name structure. I would prefer to pre-fix the data source, similarly to how we do it with other major map providers like "OpenStreetMap maps of...", "USGS maps of...", "ShakeMaps of earthquakes in...": The most important qualifier gets frontloaded. For easy manual input, I would prefer the name "OWiD maps of...". However, the categories are unlikely to get assigned manually, and it is much easier to understand what the acronym means when it is written out. So right now, I would tend to go with the general Our World in Data maps of... as the prefix, then followed with the seven (?) regions identified above.

Afterwards comes the suffix. Prototypeperspektive suggested ... showing <year> data, my own ideas leaned towards ... in <year> or ... showing <year>. These suggestions all look equally good to me. Prototype's suffix has the advantage of pointing out that these maps are data-driven and not cartography-driven. So I think that would be best.

Following that idea, we could go with Our World in Data maps of <region> showing <year> data. Taking an existing map like File:States involved in state based conflicts, Oceania, 1947.svg, one would assign Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data instead of the current three categories Our World in Data maps of Oceania, Maps showing 1947 and 1947 maps of Oceania. That new category would itself be categorized directly under the existing three categories it replaces.

If the above suggestion seems agreeable... how difficult is it for Doc James to change the automated exports and the templates that are currently in use? And would you be able to do an automated re-categorization of all the already existing files? Would you need help? --Enyavar (talk) 18:54, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Yah I think doing this in an automated fashion should be fairly easy. This would be subcategories of what main category? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:01, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

[[:category:Our World in Data maps of <region> showing <year> data]] would be subcategory of [[:category:Our World in Data maps of <region>]], [[:category:Maps showing <year>]] and [[:category:<year> maps of <region>]]. At a later point, I would like to reshape the last of the three parent categories to bring the OWiD maps under the 20th-century/1940s branches of <region>. With the example above, there is currently no sufficient subdivision of Maps of the history of Oceania, but the idea is creating Maps of Oceania in the 20th century and Maps of Oceania in the 1940s, and that would again be a subcategory of Oceania in the 1940s... But I think that work would not affect the OWiD-maps and their templates itself. --Enyavar (talk) 19:13, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Plan was to categorize once the initial uploads are completed, which will not be until this fall. And work on the 1.8 million or so files at that point. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:18, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

You are currently categorizing them upon upload by two mechanisms, one is the template:Map showing old data, the other is assigning regular categories. Right now, neither of these mechanisms is a bespoke template designed for OWiD content.

I can imagine a template that works like {{OWiD maps showing|Africa|1758}} that would create the categories we contemplated above, including links to skip forward/backward and also links to skip to the other continents/world extent. If we used such a template to create the category framework discussed above, couldn't you adapt your exporting automatism once that exists? I can only image it would take less work later.

Before I attempt working on such a template myself, I'm asking a few users who I suspect have more routine in templating, @Clusternote, AnRo0002, and Reinhard Müller: My question is how you would go about it: templates for the file descriptions; templates for creating these categories; or both? Are there pitfalls I am not aware of? We are talking here about ca. 2 million standardized files ranging from very few around the year 1021 to an abundance of such files for 2021, with hundreds of files per year per continent in 1834 already. The maps are optimized to be used in slider-frames elsewhere; for Commons I'm more concerned with handling the categorization. Thanks in advance! --Enyavar (talk) 21:51, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Here is my suggestion: Maps of Oceania in the 1940s anro (talk) 22:18, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

I can happily come up with a suggestion for a template based on the Navigation by system. But first let me make sure I understand correctly:

1. The template would be used for categories like Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data, right?
2. Would we also have Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1940s data (decade) and Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 19th-century data (century) as parent and grandparent of the year category?

Thanks --Reinhard Müller (talk) 09:07, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks Reinhard, regarding #1 yes that is idea.

{{OWiD maps showing|Africa|175|8}} --> Our World in Data maps of Africa showing 1748 data

{{OWiD maps showing|Oceania|194|7}} --> Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data

As for #2 I would have suggested "... showing the 1940s" and "...showing the 20th-century" as parent categories. But you're right, I talked above about "<year> data" so "<decade>s data" and "...<century> data" would be the logical consequence. Now I'm less sure about the format. I am not married to the idea of requiring the "data" suffix, but as long as the template could be made, I see no real problem. @Prototyperspective: , what do you think about "Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 20th century data being the respective category on the century level? Enyavar (talk) 19:11, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

I have now created:

Templates

• {{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and century}}
• {{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and decade}}
• {{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and year}}

Example use

• Category:Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 20th-century data
• Category:Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1940s data
• Category:Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data
• Category:Our World in Data maps of the world showing 1947 data

The usage of the templates is super easy, no need for any parameters specifying the continent or the year, they take everything they need to know from the name of the category they are used in.

The names of the continents are automatically translated using Wikidata labels. The first part of the title and the text above and below the navigation blocks are just examples. These can be used as an explanation for the category which is centrally maintained and must only be changed once if something should be changed, and if the texts are final, we can also make them translatable.

Please let me know what you think. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 09:52, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

P.S. Looking at the currently existing category tree about maps, I really think that the OWiD categories shouldn't be in Category:1947 maps of Oceania or Category:1940s maps of Oceania. For centuries, we already have Category:Maps of Oceania in the 20th century, and I think it might be a good opportunity to introduce these categories also on a decade and year level. If you want, I can also create the templates for "Maps by continent and century/decade/year shown". And/or whatever you consider useful for building the correct parent structure for the OWiD categories. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 14:37, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

@Reinhard Müller: Thanks a lot! This is even easier to apply than I thought. I populated three continents for the 1940s (Africa, Asia, Oceania) and also the world.

The decade-template for the world in the 1940s did not work (lua template cannot find "the world"), I hope this can be fixed. Aside from that it looks pretty great. Sorry, two more nitpicks, some links only appear once some other part of the structure has been fully built up. The year-ribbon only shows up once the decade-category is in place; and it seems as if the decade template only shows up once the century-category is in place? Also, I think that the subcategories could be sorted with a space (" ") instead of the "@".

I agree with your proposal that instead of "1947 maps of Oceania" we should have "Maps of Oceania in 1947" which would be the "maps showing"-version. "Maps of Oceania in 1947" would be a subcategory of "Maps showing 1947", "Oceania in 1947", "Maps of Oceania in the 1940s" respectively. This category would then hold the OWiD maps and all maps that show Oceania in 1947 through the historian's lens, similar to how we already have Maps of Poland in the 16th century (see also one thread above...) and Maps of the world in the 1940s.

@Universalis, Prototyperspective, Jmabel, and Doc James: when you check the bolded links... does this new structure look okay? --Enyavar (talk) 15:22, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Very nice. Are you using a bot to apply this? Or have you tried Help:Gadget-CategoryBatchManager? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:46, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback!

• I fixed "the world" (ooh, it feels good to write this ;-))
• It is generally true that the template works best when the categories are created top down (i.e. first the centuries, then the decades, then the years). Still the navigation ribbons should appear even if the parent category does not exist (yet), I will have to investigate why they don't. But for the addition of the correct parent categories for new categories, it is important anyway that the parents pre-exist.

FWIW, this is now also fixed. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 19:51, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

• I have (years ago) thought a lot about the question of logical sort keys, currently they are used very inconsistently across commons. I've even made a page summarizing my thoughts which you may or may not agree with. About this specific case, I think the space is widely used for meta categories (Blah blah by xyz) and should be reserved for that, and that the @ has the advantage of being sorted after all the other special characters, so if for example the category key "*" is before the alphanumeric subcategories, it is also before the numeric subcategories if the numeric are sorted as @. In the end I don't think in our case it makes much of a difference as long as all the subcategories use the same key so they are sorted correctly - which is taken care of by the template.
• About the "Maps of Oceania in 1947", would you want to also create them right now? Should I create a {{Category description/Maps by continent and year}} (and decade and century), and adapt the OWiD templates to the new parents?
• I don't use a bot, and I think that the CategoryBatchManager can add parent categories, but not a template. But since you don't have to change a single letter when copying the template from one category to a similar one, it can be done very fast. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 18:02, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

About the "Maps of Oceania in 1947" - yes, you could create a template for that, as well. We already have parts of that, but right now they were created in a manual fashion: North America/1770s and Asia/18th and Europe/11th. I'm not yet fully eager and ready to apply this structure as long as the other treat about #History maps of Europe is still unresolved. But having the templates prepared now might help later. Once those maps-per-continent-shown-by-year exist, the OWiD template would be switched from "1940s maps of Asia"+"Maps showing the 1940s" --> "Maps of Asia in the 1940s" and so on. --Enyavar (talk) 19:51, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

I have created:

• {{Category description/Maps by continent and century shown}}
• {{Category description/Maps by continent and decade shown}}
• {{Category description/Maps by continent and year shown}}

I have not (yet) changed the parent categories for the OWiD categories. Please just let me know when I should do that.

Also please don't forget that the texts above and below the navigation ribbons are just placeholders (in the OWiD templates and the new templates), and they should be finalized before the templates are widely used. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 22:02, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Looks great; thanks very much. I just don't know how complete these cats currently are and will be. They could be made complete via deepcategory category intersections and moving files with cat-a-lot. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:22, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

But first, we need to categorize the OWiD maps. I populated the 1940s structure with a few hours of Cat-a-lot, but there is a catch: all these maps currently have the template {{Map showing old data|year=1942}}. For the 1940s alone, removing that template means manually editing 17'500 files. We must use a bot to do these edits, I think. The algorithm, for all ~75'000 maps of Asia would be roughly as follows:

• for all files in [[Category:Our World in Data maps of Asia]]
  • if "{{Map showing old data|year=YYYY}}" occurs in the file:
    • take the YYYY as a variable to insert "[[Category:Our World in Data maps of Asia showing YYYY data]]" //** a single category for the location and year of the map **//
      • if that inserted category does not yet exist: create it with "{{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and year}}" //** (as helpfully provided by Reinhard)**//
    • take the file name as the variable topicname and strip File: and , Asia, YYYY.svg (or ,Asia,YYYY.svg) from that variable
    • insert "[[Category:Our World in Data maps showing ||topicname]]" //** for example Category:Our World in Data maps showing Absolute change co2, neatly collecting ~1800 files like this one or ~200 files like this one: a single category for the topic of the map, to have them all easily assembled **//
      • if that inserted category does not yet exist: create it with "[[Category:Our World in Data maps by topic]]" //** in many cases, better names might be found, but that cleanup can be handled afterwards manually where needed **//
    • remove all occurences of "{{Map showing old data|year=YYYY}}", ""[[Category:YYYY maps of Asia]]" and "[[Category:Our World in Data maps of Asia]]"
  • (else leave the file alone)
• repeat the same with "Africa", "Europe", ["North America" or "NorthAmerica" would need to be mapped onto "North America"], "Oceania", and so on.

I do not know how exactly to program a bot, but I think this would do the trick, not only to create and populate the categories for continent-by-year, but also to have distinct categories for each topic. Right now, I don't think the latter exist yet. --Enyavar (talk) 19:51, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

For the 1940s alone, removing that template means manually editing 17'500 files: I haven't been following all of this, but why manually? - Jmabel ! talk 20:53, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

True, the bot run would also touch those files. I just wanted to emphasize that so many files cannot be realistically processed manually, and then formulated how I think this could be automated. I struck the word in my earlier response. --Enyavar (talk) 22:21, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

I added the above request to Commons:Bots. --Enyavar (talk) 16:03, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

This does not need a bot and does not need to edit no file, because the categorization is already made by a template on these same files , File:Death rate smoking, World, 1991.svg is in Category:Maps showing 1991 and that category is not written in its wikitext, it comes from {{Map showing old data}}, which is unprotected, I checked it today, and transcluded on 1,374,067 files, so the template can read the page name and emit the right category alone and the job queue does the rest. I have made the test with #invoke:String|match through action=parse and the names give what they should, World and 1991, North America and 1764, Africa and 1021, and no match for a file outside this corpus, but there is a trap, the covid files like ,Covid cases, Europe, Dec 11, 2020.svg, return Dec 11 as the region and there are more than half a million of them, so it needs a guard that the year in the name is equal to the |year= parameter, which kills them because they carry year=2020-12-11. And there is a second thing that worries me more than the first one, the bot request says to work over the files of Category:Our World in Data maps of Asia, which has 72,558 files, while there are 190,443 files that carry the template and have Asia in the name, and two that I took at random, File:Sugar cane yields, Asia, 1991.svg and File:Tomato yields, Asia, 1961.svg, are not in that category, so if a bot runs as it is asked in first place it does only a part of the work and everybody believes it is finished. I do not propose to save this directly, editing a template on 1.37 million pages queues 1.37 million link updates and the community has to agree before, so I can put the tested code in Template:Map showing old data/sandbox and somebody who knows this corpus better than me confirms the region names. @Enyavar, Reinhard Müller, Doc James, Prototyperspective, and Universalis: Wilfredor (talk) 18:38, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

August 13

Removing women from categories

Hello, I noticed that Mary Louisa Gow was moved from Category:Painters from England to Category:Female painters from England. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Mary_Louisa_Gow&diff=prev&oldid=420189141 Is this correct? There have been some other women moved the same way, at least one a politician. I am seeing that https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Zohran_Mamdani_in_2025 is in a "politicians" type category and not in a "male politicians" category or "Asian politicians" category. I don't see any help files about this. Thank you. Caffeinated Chihuahua (talk) 02:10, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

I've brought up this "ghettoization" issue about once a year, but it seems the splitters always win. I continue to believe that either (1) we should hand gender as orthogonal to other categorization, intersecting only where gender is very significant (vocalists, actors, sportspeople, maybe a handful of other areas) or that we should make an exception to COM:OVERCAT where subcat'ing by gender (and probably by ethnicity) should not remove something from the parent cat. - Jmabel ! talk 02:40, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

In my opinion, w:en:WP:ALLINCLUDED seems like it would be a reasonable model to adopt on Commons, particularly the bit about how [s]ubcategories defined by gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality should almost always be non-diffusing subcategories. Simple user utility would seem to favor this outcome, even if the issue of othering/ghettoization were not also present. -- Visviva (talk) 21:23, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

+1 Caffeinated Chihuahua (talk) 05:42, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

Agreed with both the above comments. In the short term, making gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality non-diffusing seems incredibly logical - it will never be possible to fully diffuse by these, especially because they aren't always disclosed by the subject. (Gender, religion, and sexuality can also change over time.) Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:11, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

1. Category:Zohran Mamdani is under Category:21st-century male politicians of New York City which is somewhere under Category:Male politicians of the United States.
2. Category:Politicians of the United States in 2025 has no male or female subcats, and contains women like Category:Pam Bondi in 2025 Category:Kristi Noem in 2025.

what's your point? what's the problem? RoyZuo (talk) 14:17, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

And as we argue this, Category:Memoirists from the United States is being systematically split in to male and female memoirists. - Jmabel ! talk 04:44, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Draft proposal

[This could either be an addition to COM:OVERCAT or a separate project page; either way, it effectively modifies OVERCAT.]

Nutshell: As a general rule, categories that intersect individuals' gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexuality with some other category should be non-diffusing categories. There are some exceptions to this, which are addressed below.

Rationale: Regardless of intentions, the introduction of categories such as Category:Female guitarists or Category:Jewish classical musicians can lead to ghettoization. Fundamentally, a female guitarist or a Jewish cellist does exactly the same thing as a male guitarist or Russian Orthodox cellist, but when they are sectioned out like this they are separated from their peers based on a characteristic that is irrelevant to the matter at hand. Some of the unwelcome results are:

• One ethnicity is singled out this way, separating them from basically everyone else in their field. Because they are somewhat separated out, they are overlooked for other diffusions of the main category, so they are never categorized by nationality, genre of music, etc.
• In an overwhelmingly male (or overwhelmingly female) field women (or men) are ghettoized with similar effect.
• Diffusing a category by sexual orientation can be particularly pernicious, because it requires you to know something not necessarily obvious about a person to find them in the categorization system, and because there are likely to be very large numbers of people of no publicly declared sexuality.

There are valid reasons to have categories such as Category:Female guitarists or Category:Jewish classical musicians, but they should be implemented as non-diffusing categories.

What does non-diffusing mean? We will need a paraphrase of text from en:WP:Categorization#Non-diffusing subcategories, including our policy on tagging these. Note that we already have {{Non-diffusing subcategory}}, but it is not heavily used.

Exceptions:

The following may be diffused by gender:

• actors
• dancers
• vocalists

The following may be diffused by religion:

• clergy
• missionaries
• theologians
• saints or other venerated individuals, diffused to the religion or religions that venerate them

other exceptions?

Jmabel ! talk 04:10, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

Years ago I remember proposals regarding the same. In general I think that Commons should allow the user to find intersections of categories, rather than having categories intersected by the editors. I upload many stamps, there are categories for stamps by colour, and there are also categories for the stamps by subject, and also for the stamps by face value, and finally by their country. I would hate to see Category:Red stamps of Russia 2026 with the cost 80 that are self-adhesive but do not depict any females while at the same time depicting groups of singers. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 04:23, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

I would just ban intersection categories in general and only define some exceptions. GPSLeo (talk) 05:06, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

Is there a reasonable technology which allows to find intersections of categories for those who need them? What if a person does need to only find Missionaries who are having sex in Missionary position or only those women on photographs who are male? ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 11:01, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

If you are looking for photos there is PetScan. When you want a list of people with a given set of properties, you should query on Wikidata and follow the link from Wikidata to category with the photos of this person. GPSLeo (talk) 11:32, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

There is a way to search WikiData using SPARQL. Caffeinated Chihuahua (talk) 05:41, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

makes no sense at all.

why "actors dancers vocalists" are exceptions, but not film directors, choreographers, musicians (instrument players)...? different people in the same job (drama, dance, music) but treated differently? RoyZuo (talk) 14:13, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

These are all performance-based occupations which revolve around the performer's appearance, and where performers are frequently chosen for a job based on their gender. The same principles would apply for athletes and fashion models, for instance. Omphalographer (talk) 20:28, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

that's gonna open more cans of worms.

how gender plays a role in an occupation is complicated and different from one to another.

the idea that actors/performers are hired according to gender, has plenty of counterexamples, e.g. Takarazuka Revue (Q586430): Japanese all-female theatre troupe Q17065438: onnagata (Q2425502): male actors who impersonate women in Japanese kabuki theatre.

then there're jobs that are imbalanced in terms of gender ratio (but to varying degrees in different countries or historical periods), including but not limited to domestic worker (Q54128): person who works within the scope of a residence butler (Q833899): domestic worker in charge of all the household staff nurse (Q186360): type of health care provider school teacher (Q2251335): teacher in primary and secondary education butcher (Q329737): craftsman responsible for the preparation and sale of meat bus driver (Q829020): profession... does the job requirement cause the imbalance? or is it specific cultures, customs and traditions? is gender a factor in hiring? is gender a factor in carrying out of duties?...

for example, for some people and cultures today, female drivers are nothing special. some socialist countries started training female drivers many decades earlier https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51116035 . but for some other people and cultures, some would have arguments for why women cannot hold the job of driver, like physique, stamina and whatnot https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-48367181 https://english.news.cn/20221230/18339a051965424490e9708fde3193c1/c.html . then commons would have to deal with all sorts of arguments before it can decide whether it's useful and reasonable to separate files about a certain occupation by gender. RoyZuo (talk) 22:41, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

there's also a problem with nouns that have a gender, e.g. Category:Governesses Category:Seamstresses Category:Waitresses Category:Actresses. how are those handled?

just like someone said, i also think that intersection cats should simply abolished, so things like Category:Buildings by city by country by material by color get broken up into basic pieces "building" "city" "material" "colour".

but until people agree on that, i dont think there's anything effective in stopping certain users from creating these flaky layers of categories. RoyZuo (talk) 17:49, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

But aren't you then requiring a picture of a green pair of gloves to go under both Green objects and Gloves instead of just Green gloves, thus overloading the more general cats? Arlo James Barnes 22:32, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

1. there's no "overloading". it's perfectly fine if a cat contains millions of files.
2. there's no "more general cats". all should be "general cats" that deal with exactly only 1 aspect. categorise files to answer five Ws (Q368722): questions whose answers are considered basic in information-gathering, but dont combine those answers to create cats like Category:France photographs taken on 2026-05-01. this one mixes where, what, when. problems of this specific one have been raised in 2016 Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/10/Category:September 2007 Finland photographs.

RoyZuo (talk) 22:57, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

I agree that the personal cats could benefit from non-diffusion (and we already have categories like that, the 'flat list' cats which don't allow substructure), but to make it the default I think goes too far the other way. The whole point of categories is that they knit together in such a way, otherwise we would only use/need the structured data statements to describe each file. Arlo James Barnes 01:26, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

On the exchange above between User:Gone_Postal and GPSLeo: I don't really think this particular discussion is the place to make an entirely different proposal that would completely redefine how Commons uses categories. Feel more than free to make a distinct proposal of your own, but it seems you are arguing "don't refine the current approach because I'd like to do everything almost completely differently," and that just really isn't fair, it's a derailing. In case you do plan to make a proposal along those lines, though, I want to point out a use case you may not be considering, where I think the current category approach performs particularly well: when a user starts, not from a rationally formed query, but from one of our files, and thinks "this isn't exactly what I want, but it's close." Right now, they can navigate from the file to a category that seems like it might be promising, and possibly from that to parent and child categories. I would hope that any proposed replacement for the current approach to categories takes that use case into consideration.

@RoyZuo: yes, there are some small number of cases where even for these types of performers, their gender is irrelevant, but I hope you would agree that these are relatively rare cases. Even some of your examples could as easily be seen as counterexamples: the Takarazuka Revue is an all-female troupe, which is pretty much a defining factor for it. Yes, many of their performers play male roles, but that doesn't change the fact that the members of the troupe actually being women is a defining factor in these performances.

Imbalance in gender ratio may be a reason to have a gender-specific subcat for those who are the exception to the rule, but it is absolutely not a reason to make that a diffusing subcat, quite the opposite. The latter is precisely the "ghettoization" problem this proposal is intended to address.

It is possible that the now mostly historical role of a governess might be another case that would call for an exception. Category:Waitresses, however, is simply a gendered subcat of Category:Waiters (with no corresponding specifically male subcat) and with possibly a few edge-case exceptions, waiters and waitresses do the same work. We could arbitrarily make it an exception here, but it would only be because in this case the English language is not our friend. - Jmabel ! talk 23:31, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

I really do like your counterexample of a person finding one file and then searching for another. It is definitely something to consider, and I do not think that there was an attempt to "derail" anything, only placing the discussion in a wider context in order to not make many small patches. At its current point I don't think that going the route of only the top level categories is a good approach, simply because the search function is not a replacement for the specific categories. The reason why I didn't vote for the proposal is because I do not know exactly how to approach this at this moment so that: 1) It will be useful for users 2) It will not create more work for editors 3) It will not need to be immediately reworked again. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 04:47, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

In general, this is a very good proposal, but I do not agree with any of the "exceptions". If you are going to say that male vocalists are not vocalists because they are hired for a particular vocal range, you might as well go straight to "bass, tenor, soprano" etc. categories. Likewise they say that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels, so how could you say that Ginger Rogers was not a legitimate dancer. And how could you categorize someone like Augustine by denomination, or some of the missionaries who were primarily notable as linguists.

Categories help editors find images. Removing already marginalized groups from broad categories will make them even less discoverable.

I would support implementing the "non-diffusing" parts now. It seems like the "exceptions" need more work before they can be agreed on. Caffeinated Chihuahua (talk) 05:37, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

@Caffeinated Chihuahua: I think you may be misunderstanding at least one aspect of this. You write If you are going to say that male vocalists are not vocalists and that is not at all what this proposal is saying. We already have Category:Male vocalists and Category:Female vocalists as subcats of Category:Vocalists, and they will remain so.

Also, FWIW, "bass, tenor, soprano" etc. are useful for talking about people with Western Classical vocal training, and less so the farther you get from that. I don't think those terms could usefully be applied to Tuvan throat singing, nor even to many rock vocalists.

Categories are primarily about helping people find things, and only secondarily about ontology. - Jmabel ! talk 07:01, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

Just implement w:en:WP:ALLINCLUDED. Trying to delineate every possible exception is a fool's errand that only ensures we will never reach consensus. w:en:WP:ALLINCLUDED leaves plenty of wiggle room for common sense exceptions. Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Nosferattus (talk) 22:16, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

How can we make this happen? Caffeinated Chihuahua (talk) 02:53, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

i think users should analyse for what purposes is the cat system being used, then you will understand why some users create categories for this and that.

then users can think and decide whether these uses should be fulfilled by the cat system, or whether there are better solutions than using/abusing the cat system; or whether the cat system should be modified. RoyZuo (talk) 18:23, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

 Support Jmabel's draft proposal. I don't see any reason why w:wp:ALLINCLUDED shouldn't also apply to Commons. Currently, subcategories based on gender etc are incredibly inconsistent and sometimes confusing. Better to keep things simple: its harder to miscategorise with this proposal, and less likely to lead to othering. LetmeEditit (talk) 18:45, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

• I  Support the adoption of w:en:WP:ALLINCLUDED on Commons. I  Oppose trying to explicitly list all the exceptions (see my comments further up). Nosferattus (talk) 10:34, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

  @Nosferattus: I'm fine with not attempting to explicitly list exceptions, but I would at least like to include examples: that diffusing by gender makes sense for vocalists, but not instrumentalists, and for actors, but not for directors; that diffusing by religion make sense for clergy, but not for politicians? - Jmabel ! talk 04:51, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

  Sure, listing some examples is fine, IMO. Nosferattus (talk) 05:41, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

   Support proposal by Jmabel to include the given examples as well as per Nosferattus and if possible, adopt or adapt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:WP:ALLINCLUDED to avoid othering per LetmeEditit -- Ooligan (talk) 02:06, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

  If I want to see images of vocalists, why should I have to choose between looking at male vocalists or female vocalists? It does not make any sense to make the person looking for images jump through more hoops and more layers of subcategories. If they want to refine their search, let them do it themselves instead of creating artificial barriers and hiding them in layers of subcategories. Likewise with religion, it does not make any sense to me that, say missionaries, are hired on the basis of appearance so should be hidden under more categories. This opens up a can of worms for other occupations as well, and does not help with discoverability. I would rather encourage people to add more categories, than take them away. Caffeinated Chihuahua (talk) 06:59, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

See also

• Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/02/Category:SVG by subject

August 26

Colombian judicial decisions: Article 41 of Law 23/1982 and JEP court rulings

I would appreciate some guidance regarding the copyright status on Commons of official judicial decisions issued in Colombia.

The specific case concerns judicial rulings (autos and potentially judgments) issued by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), Colombia's transitional justice jurisdiction. These are official judicial decisions issued by its judicial chambers and Tribunal for Peace and published by the JEP itself.

We are exploring the long-term preservation of this corpus and would like to determine whether faithful copies of the official PDFs may be hosted on Wikimedia Commons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AmiGueko (talk • contribs) 22:47, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Colombian law

Article 41 of Colombia's Law 23 of 1982 states:

Es permitido a todos reproducir la Constitución, leyes, decretos, ordenanzas, acuerdos, reglamentos, demás actos administrativos y decisiones judiciales, bajo la obligación de conformarse puntualmente con la edición oficial, siempre y cuando no esté prohibido.

In English, approximately:

Everyone is permitted to reproduce the Constitution, laws, decrees, ordinances, agreements, regulations, other administrative acts and judicial decisions, under the obligation to conform exactly to the official edition, provided that it is not prohibited.

The Colombian National Copyright Directorate (Dirección Nacional de Derecho de Autor) describes Article 41 as a limitation allowing any person to reproduce these materials.

This seems different from the general regime for works created by Colombian public employees. Government works in Colombia are not automatically in the public domain; Article 41 creates a specific rule for legislation, administrative acts and judicial decisions.

The Andean Community's Decision 351 does not appear to contain an identical exemption for judicial decisions, although Article 21 permits Member States to establish copyright limitations and exceptions subject to the three-step test. Article 22 also contains specific permitted uses.

Article 2(4) of the Berne Convention additionally provides that it is a matter for national legislation to determine the protection granted to official texts of a legislative, administrative and legal nature.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by AmiGueko (talk • contribs) 22:47, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

United States

The U.S. side appears clearer.

Section 313.6(C)(2) of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices states that government edicts include judicial decisions and further states that the Copyright Office will not register a government edict issued by a foreign government.

Commons already reflects this in {{PD-EdictGov}}, which states that an edict of a local or foreign government is in the public domain in the United States and explicitly includes judicial decisions.

Therefore, it appears that {{PD-EdictGov}} could cover the U.S. copyright status of an official JEP judicial decision.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by AmiGueko (talk • contribs) 22:47, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Question about Colombia / Commons policy

The point on which I would particularly appreciate community input is the Colombian side.

Article 41 gives everyone an express statutory right to reproduce judicial decisions, but it also requires the reproduction to conform exactly to the official edition.

Would this statutory status be sufficient for an official Colombian judicial decision to meet Commons' requirement that a work be free in its country of origin?

More specifically:

1. Should Article 41 be interpreted for Commons purposes as making official Colombian judicial decisions sufficiently free for hosting on Commons, when combined with {{PD-EdictGov}} for the United States?

1. Or is Article 41 only a copyright exception permitting faithful reproduction, while leaving other exclusive rights — particularly adaptation/derivative works — intact, making the documents incompatible with Commons unless the relevant rights holder provides an additional free licence?

1. If Article 41 is sufficient, would it make sense to create a specific template such as a Colombian government-edict / judicial-decision tag rather than using {{PD-Colombia}}, which appears to concern expiration of copyright terms?

1. Would the answer differ between the judicial text itself and additional material embedded in a PDF (for example photographs, maps, illustrations, or other third-party material)?

Our intention would initially be to upload only faithful copies of the official judicial decisions published by the JEP, together with their original source URLs and provenance information.

Before uploading anything at scale, we would like to establish the correct copyright analysis and template combination.

Relevant legal provisions:

• Colombia, Law 23 of 1982, Article 41.
• Andean Community, Decision 351 of 1993, Articles 21–22.
• Berne Convention, Article 2(4).
• U.S. Copyright Office, Compendium, §313.6(C)(2), Government Edicts.
• Commons: {{PD-EdictGov}}.

Thank you for any guidance, particularly from editors familiar with Colombian/Andean copyright law or the treatment of foreign judicial decisions on Commons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AmiGueko (talk • contribs) 22:47, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

September 03

Help in Category:Falcon 9 by flight

I want to kindly request everyone interested to help in categorising the images present on Category:Falcon 9 Starlink by flights and Category:Launches of Falcon 9. Abdullah1099 (talk)

Template:Countries of Asia

Hello everyone,

In the template {{Countries of Asia}}, the entry for Israel has been removed and replaced with Palestine. I wasn’t able to find the edit that caused this change. Could someone help locate the source of this edit? -- Geagea (talk) 07:06, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

@Geagea: I can't see or understand what you mean or what the issue of {{Countries of Asia}} would be. The template contain these lines: Countries of Asia: Afghanistan ·[...]Indonesia^‡ · Iran · Iraq · Israel · Japan · Jordan [...] - Israel is clearly present in the display I have. There's also Limited recognition: Abkhazia^‡ · Taiwan · Northern Cyprus^‡ · Palestine · South Ossetia^‡ – Other territories:[...], where Palestine is evidently also present. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 10:46, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Well, now it's ok. it was:

Countries of Asia: Afghanistan ·[...]Indonesia‡ · Iran · Iraq · Palestine · Japan · Jordan [...] - Israel is clearly present in the display I have. There's also Limited recognition: Abkhazia‡ · Taiwan · Northern Cyprus‡ · Palestine · South Ossetia‡.

Anyway, we're all good now. Thanks for taking a look. -- Geagea (talk) 10:55, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

I think the template uses the country name from Wikidata, and the problem was the Wikidata item for Israel (d:Q801) was vadanlized yesterday, and the edit had just reverted today. Not sure why the Wikidata item is not protected. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 11:00, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, i'be checked WD and it was ok. I didn't thought about checking the history. Thanks. -- Geagea (talk) 13:21, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

The item is protected, the vandal waited to get the confirmed status (and is now globally locked). Ymblanter (talk) 18:04, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

The recognition of Israel is limited too. I certainly do not want to open the can of worms of defining what is limited and what not, but if someone says the template "Countries of Asia" is taking a political stance they may have a point. See:

Palestine recognition

Israel recognition

Regards. Strakhov (talk) 16:40, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

@Strakhov: I think in these cases we have always considered full UN membership as a clincher. - Jmabel ! talk 01:06, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

@Jmabel it is a flawed reasoning. Both Vatican City (Holy See) and Palestine are not full members. They are merely observer states. Vatican City, nevertheless, remains part of {{Countries of Europe}} as a regular country as opposed to state with limited recognition. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 02:05, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

I "don't have a dog in this fight" with reference to which UN observer states are listed; just that we don't exclude any UNmember states. - Jmabel ! talk 02:23, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

PIP removal requests on "embarrassment"

Recently, I have seen several instances of individuals nominating photos of themselves (no explicit evidence they actually are the person in question) for deletion on the allegation that it causes embarrassment. Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people#Removal_requests does state that embarrassment may be a reason for deletion, but does not guarantee this. Now, the claim that a photo causes embarrassment is difficult to assess when looking at these photos, as it is somewhat subjective. However, many such requests concern photos in which there is basically no element of degrading or insulting content. This includes many neutral portrait photos or screenshots taken from videos. We should obviously not cave to every allegation that a photo is embarrassing, as this could quickly become a tool of censorship for individuals wishing to promote a particular image of themselves.

Since COM:PIP does not elaborate on what constitutes embarrassment, can we come up with some guidelines for future deletion discussions? – Howardcorn33 (💬) 09:57, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't know if the nominator being the uploader counts as 'explicit evidence' but it seems appropriate that if someone adds an image to Commons they should be able to subtract it unless that would disrupt reuses on WMF wikis. Outside of that, it sounds more like a matter for the email addresses at meta:Safety Resource Center/Digital Safety. Arlo James Barnes 14:38, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

I am also including cases where the photo was uploaded by a different user from the person depicted on the image. – Howardcorn33 (💬) 15:33, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

The process for the deletion of a picture based on the request of the depicted person always requires the identification of the person. Deleting the photo based on false claim of someone being the subject of the photo would be a massive personality rights violation. GPSLeo (talk) 16:40, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Should we always require VRT verification for users claiming to be particular individuals in deletion discussions? – Howardcorn33 (💬) 17:09, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

No, VRTS should not be automatic. There are plenty of cases where an unused and unremarkable photo can be quietly deleted in good faith. Requests like "I was the child in this photo and I prefer it to not be online anymore" can be treated respectfully and it benefits the project goals to have a courteous way of handling such requests. If it's in use beyond user pages or just within Commons, especially on a Wikipedia article about a person, or has some objective historical value, then asking a user to go via email (and avoid drawing attention in public) is at that point justifiable and easy to explain if challenged. Fæ (talk) 07:50, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

We should generally default to deleting photos of people on the subject's request unless there is a compelling reason to keep it - e.g. if the subject is clearly notable, or the photo is in use and no good alternative is available. These sorts of photos typically have negligible educational value, and/or are easily replaceable; hosting these photos against the subject's wishes does not advance the purposes of Commons. Omphalographer (talk) 02:33, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

Ah I should have specified I was referring to notable people (eg. those with Wikipedia articles). – Howardcorn33 (💬) 09:29, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

• Just a few recent ones:

• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Silvia Leal.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Shana Pearson dehors Casa Del Popolo.png (BullDoser !)
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Fa-مجتبی عیسی پور.ogg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Anne C, Agungsn, Aesthetic of Me 5-5-2026.png
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Abendrot Rittersgrün.jpg

I too would welcome a guideline on this. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:53, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

September 07

Wikimedia Commons turned 22

Some ice-cream for the Occasion! EugeneZelenko (talk) 12:35, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

AH thank you for the reminder. Time flies by (so fast D: ) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:06, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Good news! Hope that Commons will live and thrive! Юрий Д.К. 17:10, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

commons-nominator, nominations without leaving the page you are in

I comment here a script I maintain since some time, commons-nominator, because I just added a thing that maybe is useful for more people. In a file page it puts a row of links that nominate the file to FP, QI and VI, each one with its dialog and one single edit per click, and next to them it also schedules a featured picture as Picture of the day in the next free date, sets the picture as the image of its Wikidata item when that item still has none, and searches which English Wikipedia articles the picture could illustrate, which is what a Commons FP needs before it can be a featured picture over there. What I added now is that all this arrives to the category pages too, written over the thumbnails themselves, so you can go through a whole category deciding while you look at the pictures instead of opening them one by one. Every picture that is still not a Quality Image gets a small QI button, in green when the file is already a Featured Picture, because a FP without QI is almost always an oversight and not a decision, on my own files 84 of my 212 featured pictures were missing it. Pressing it opens the normal dialog with the short description already filled from the file, and when you finish you stay in the category. In the FP nomination pages it also adds rename buttons and it warns you about the two open nominations rule before you edit instead of after. It only offers what each process could accept, so it stays quiet on videos, on small images or when your five QI nominations of the day are already used, and it never writes anything without a click. Documentation and installation in User:Wilfredor/commons-nominator, and I read everything that you tell me is wrong with it. Wilfredor (talk) 17:58, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

September 08

Images and files not loading properly on Commons

Hi, I have noticed that when I am uploading pictures and PDFs to Commons recently, they are sometimes not rendering properly when I open the file page. Examples: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phylloscopus_forresti_-_James_Eaton_-_338161400.jpeg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pelargopsis_melanorhyncha_-_James_Eaton_-_435252346.jpeg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Photo_Guide_to_the_Lycaenidae_of_Bolivia.pdf Mitsingh (talk) 08:28, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Can you be more specific ? They look fine to me. I cant know what you think ‘properly’ means. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:37, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

I am sharing some screenshots of what it looks like to me-

https://postimg.cc/MMBfDtyw

https://postimg.cc/BXpLMj1Q

https://postimg.cc/4nbQRNhF Mitsingh (talk) 11:39, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

A script for the wikitext and structured data coordinates that disagree

A file can carry its position twice, as {{Location}} in the wikitext and as P1259 in structured data, and nothing keeps the two honest. Category:Pages with local camera coordinates and mismatching SDC coordinates has about 19,000 files where they do not match.

User:Wilfredor/commons-sdc-coords shows both sides on a file page with the distance between them and a button to fix whichever one is wrong. On a category page it reads the whole category and lists only the files where the camera EXIF settles which side is right, and then writes them in one run with pause and stop. It carries on from where the last run stopped, or you can ask it for a random sample instead, because a category that size never gets read in one sitting.

In a batch it only ever writes structured data, never wikitext, because the structured data was often copied from the EXIF by a bot and rewriting somebody's corrected wikitext on that evidence would undo human work at scale. And it will not touch a file where the camera is as far from one side as from the other.

I ran it over 670 files and 654 were written. It also purges the pages it corrects so they leave the tracking category, which does not happen on its own because the statement lives in a different slot from the wikitext.

Source and documentation at User:Wilfredor/commons-sdc-coords. Reports and complaints welcome. Wilfredor (talk) 13:01, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

@Wilfredor: Did your script also make this change? It is wrong! The EXIF coordinate in this image are false. So I correct it with my knowledge about this location. Had visit this museum. Please don't change coordinates if a local wikipedian correct this in first step. --sk (talk) 14:29, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

This one was wrong too. Strakhov (talk) 14:32, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Idem, also wrong. 2/2 in my watchlist so far. Several more to check. Maybe not a great idea changing this automatically.Strakhov (talk) 14:37, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

@Stefan Kühn and Strakhov: Yes, it was my script and the two of you have reason, I have switched off the category run and I am reverting what it did. The error is in the rule and not in the code, I supposed that the two sides were not symmetric, that bots copy the EXIF into the structured data but not into the wikitext, so I took the EXIF agrees with the wikitext, as a proof that the statement had drifted, and that is false because the bots write also the wikitext from the EXIF, and the summary of Rkieferbot says it with those words, "Bot: Inserted location tag from EXIF", so my test was comparing one number with itself and passed always. In the Venice file the history Strakhov removed the EXIF claim in September 2020, put the correct one and marked the file page as "bad location", a bot returned the EXIF value into the wikitext in August 2025, and my script then saw the wikitext and the EXIF agreeing and wrote over that correction a point at 474 m, on the Rialto bridge instead of Piazza San Marco, from a Nikon D750 that does not have GPS receiver, so that coordinate never came from the camera. Stefan, if your file has the same shape then it is the same cause. The numbers for now, the run wrote 900 files and 392 of them, the 44%, carry {{Location}} with source:exif, which means the wikitext was the EXIF again and there was no independent evidence for any of the two sides, and I am checking the 900 one by one to find the ones where a person had put the statement by hand before me, which is the subset that really undid the work of somebody, and in the first 100 there are 7, with the names of Ermell, Strakhov and MIGORMCZ. Please, you should not clean this yourselves, I will revert every one that I find and I post the list in this thread when the check finishes, and if you already fixed some please tell me which ones and I leave those alone. Two things changed already, a location template that says source:exif is not treated anymore as a second witness, and the category run stays off until I rebuild the rule over the page history, where a person set the statement and a bot inserted the location template after, is a signal that can be read instead of a guess, the panel on the file page continues, because there a person is looking at one file and deciding. Sorry for the mess and thanks for detect it. Wilfredor (talk) 14:42, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Everything is reverted, so nobody has to check their watchlist. The run wrote 1319 files and touched a hand set P1259 in 110 of them, but 13 of those were people who had removed a bad value, where my edit was the good one and reverting would put the rubbish back. In File:2018-10-19 Buenos Aires by Sandro Halank–111.jpg there was a coordinate in Turkmenistan, HenkvD removed it in 2022 and a remnant stayed. The other 97 were people who had set the value I wrote over. @Strakhov: had already put 2 back, so I restored the other 95 from the revision before mine, same guid, same rank, same qualifiers, and purged them so they return to the category. The list is at User:Wilfredor/commons-sdc-coords/overwritten. The cause is that I took the EXIF agreeing with the wikitext as evidence, when a bot had put the EXIF into the wikitext in first place. Rkieferbot says it in its own summary, how I told in the previous message. And I trusted the EXIF without looking at it. One file had latitude and longitude changed of order and a building of Berlin went to the Arabian Sea, another had the sign wrong and Budapest moved 2835 km, another said 90, 0, which is the North Pole. @Strakhov: you have reason about doing this automatically. The category mode stays off and it does not come back with that comparison, because the wikitext is almost always the EXIF again. Any new rule I test against these 95 files before it writes nothing. Sorry for the work and thanks again The file page panel continues, there a person looks at one file and decides. Wilfredor (talk) 15:36, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. Strakhov (talk) 15:38, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

September 11

Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/05/Category:Threshold of originality-related deletion requests in Albania

This discussion which I started needs attention. Kindly go to this discussion page. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 07:56, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

POTD

The photographer of the POTD of 20260917 and 20261127 and some other dates removed his pictures because he wants to give the honours to other photographers. Is someone busy to choose other pictures? Hobbema (talk) 08:13, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

It appears that this has been solved. Hobbema (talk) 17:40, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Commons as the host of Global Gadgets

Have been using Commons to host this code: MediaWiki:Gadget-owidslider.js

Followed by using this code on EN Wikipedia among other wikis.

Are folks here good with being a central code repository for gadgets? Or should we push for another wiki to be the central repository for this sort of material? Also thinking ahead to a central repository for templates, as hopefully global templates eventually roll out. May need a separate wiki for these... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:46, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

Technically I think Meta might some day become a host for global gadgets if that is ever handled by MediaWiki. At the moment personal global.js is already on Meta. But without having any extra mechanism for global gadgets I think Commons is fine for hosting code. Nux (talk··dyskusja) 10:11, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

The main thing about global gadgets and templates is having a subpage for configs and translations, like en:MediaWiki:RefToolbarConfig.js for example. Mw:Extension:Chart modules are allready global and they are on commons. Snævar (talk) 10:15, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

User:Snævar is this what you are refering to as a subpage for translations? [1] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:10, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

September 12

Announcing Wiki Loves Peace!

Hello everyone,

I would like to invite the Commons community to participate in Wiki Loves Peace 2026, an international photography campaign organized in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) under the Wiki4Disarmament project.

The campaign runs from 21 September 2026 (International Day of Peace) until 30 October 2026 (conclusion of United Nations Disarmament Week) and aims to document peace-related heritage, memorials, museums, educational institutions, public art, and peacebuilding initiatives through freely licensed media on Wikimedia Commons.

The winning photographs will be featured on UNODA's official social media platforms with appropriate attribution to the author(s).

Examples of eligible subjects include:

• Peace memorials and monuments
• Peace museums and exhibitions
• Anti-war memorials
• Sites associated with reconciliation and coexistence
• Public art promoting peace
• Peace education and disarmament initiatives
• Hiroshima and Nagasaki heritage sites
• Remembrance and commemorative sites

The project page, participation guidelines, jury process, and campaign details can be found here:

Meta page: Wiki Loves Peace, Commons: Campaign:Wiki Loves Peace

Feedback, endorsements, questions, and participation are all welcome. We would also be grateful for help with outreach, translations, and community engagement.

Best,
❯❯❯ Raydann^(Talk)

Wikimedian-in-Residence
United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA)
09:37, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

September 13

Listed building

In my family archive I found this 1951 picture. On the back was written 'Priory court Hold'. I found a link to File:Antique Exports at Pevensey - geograph.org.uk - 5196866.jpg and it seems to build a listed building. However the template (Geograph from structured data) does not allow me to link back to the 1951 picture.

Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:35, 13 September 2026 (UTC)