Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/01

Commons Gazette 2025-01

Happy New Year! Happy Public Domain Day!

Volunteer staff changes

In December 2024, 2 sysops were elected; 1 sysop was removed. Currently, there are 181 sysops.

Election:

• User:Auntof6 was elected (38/0/1) on 5 December.
• User:Triplec85 was elected (19/4/0) on 9 December.

Removal:

• User:JarrahTree passed away on 2 December. He had served as sysop from 29 March 2010.

  A big loss for our community. We thank him for his service.

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Edited by Abzeronow and RoyZuo.

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Commons Gazette is a monthly newsletter of the latest important news about Wikimedia Commons, edited by volunteers. You can also help with editing!

--RoyZuo (talk) 23:35, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

How can Category:Gallery pages with a wrong format be removed from Help:Biology wikidata glossary?

How can Category:Gallery pages with a wrong format be removed from Help:Biology wikidata glossary as a parent? The format is OK now (User:Prototyperspective have moved it to the Help format) and he already removed this parent category, but it still is popping up. JopkeB (talk) 12:41, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

@JopkeB: it is presumably on one or more of the pages that are included there in their entirety, all of which are still in gallery space. - Jmabel ! talk 18:32, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks @Jmabel: . I renamed Biology wikidata glossary/Double Taxonomic Wikidata Items, and gave a Hard purge to Help:Biology wikidata glossary and now it is gone. Problem solved. JopkeB (talk) 05:50, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --JopkeB (talk) 05:51, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Mirroring request

See the billboard behind the U and the BBVA building to the right

Hi, where can I post a mirroring request for File:3D bUENOS aIRES - jUL 2019.jpg?

RotationBot offers no mirroring and I cant't find anything in Category:Gadget scripts → bertux 15:14, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

As the image is in use by two Wikipedias that might prefer the current version I´d rather recommend to keep it unmirrored and to upload a new version under a different file name. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 15:19, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! The question is still: where can I get the mirroring done? We are discouraged from rotating with a photo editor; is mirroring always lossless? → bertux 16:25, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I'd just flip it with GIMP. It's not like this was some gem of high-res photography. - Jmabel ! talk 18:39, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Isn't this what {{Flopped}} is for? Thuresson (talk) 12:14, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Applied. Also removed the photo from article space in eswiki and nlwiki as there are plenty of better alternatives available for es:Letrero gigante de ciudad and nl:Lettermonument → bertux 22:11, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Would this picture dated to 1954 have copyright under URAA?

I want to upload this photo of Dap Chhoun to Commons. It was taken at the Geneva Conventions in 1954, seems to be PD in Switzerland and Cambodia. I still don't really understand URAA, so a simple explanation won't hurt. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TansoShoshen (talk • contribs) 12:40, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

It is not clear where the image was published first. Ruslik (talk) 13:16, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Not sure what you meant here, if you meant where the image was sourced, reverse image search points to this image being used on this website and this random Facebook post.

If you meant the country where the image was first released to the public, then yeah, it's unclear. However, it's probably either France or Switzerland, but I can't find a definite answer. TansoShoshen (talk) 17:05, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Most likely, the URAA makes in unfree until 2050. Ymblanter (talk) 18:40, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

No thumbnail

Any idea why File:Vittore Carpaccio - la vie et l'uvre du peintre (1910) (14596474918).jpg won't generate a thumbnail? Underlying file looks fine. - Jmabel ! talk 00:41, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

File:Art Safari 2024 at the Dacia Building, Bucharest - 05.jpg, too, and I know that used to work. - Jmabel ! talk 02:11, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Both files work for me. I think there's currently a bug with thumbnail generation on Commons, though. I ran into a similar problem with a number of files I've uploaded which I requested a speedy deletion for. I suspect the files looked fine to The Squirrel Conspiracy, who left a message on my talk page about it. ReneeWrites (talk) 02:14, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Category:Deletion requests/pending

Is there a reason why we dont use a bot to automate the categorizing of the subcategories? Trade (talk) 03:47, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Probably as much as anything, no one having defined the rules by which a bot would know what is needed. If it can be simply described, and you can describe it, then a bot might be in order. - Jmabel ! talk 06:33, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Something as simple as "If the images in the category are deleted after the discussion have been closed, move the page to the /deleted category and remove it from the pending category. Trade (talk) 08:25, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

As everything in the deletion request is only in Wikitext a bot needs to parse the Wikitext and needs check for the deletion status of the linked pages. It is not that simple to build such a bot that does this without many errors. GPSLeo (talk) 10:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

License change at source

I've incidentally found this image (File:Mendebaldeko Sahararen aldeko Iruñeko elkarretaratzea 2020 2.jpg) with a license-review template. It was uploaded on 1 December 2020. I've checked the source and it says "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0". In Wayback-Machine, as of 3 December 2020 license was CC BY-SA 3.0 though (but I can not see every image there, only 2 of them). Is it reasonable assuming good practice, this image being properly uploaded? Do we have a templates in order to register this license incidents? Strakhov (talk) 12:38, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

If it's OK in Wayback Machine, you can approve it and link the Internet Archive page in the permissions and/or the edit summary. I'm not sure what to do about the pages that don't show up there, though. - Jmabel ! talk 18:30, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Magic word for SDC date of creation

Isn't there a magic word for SDC date of creation? If such thing exists, I don't have to input the date manually in an edit like this. In this case, I had to copy 2011-04 of the date field and paste it in {{Japanc|so|2011-04}}, which is quite tiresome. --トトト (talk) 13:42, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

@トトト: If "inception" property is present in SDC, and you leave the date blank, then {{Information}} will use the value in the "inception" property. However, that won't give you any Japan-related date category. - Jmabel ! talk 18:40, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

• If one is editing the file File:Nishina-ES.jpg, for example, then {{PAGENAME}} will automatically show the file name Nishina-ES.jpg. If {{Data|File:Nishina-ES.jpg|property=p571}} could show 2012-03-25, which is the structured date of creation of File:Nishina-ES.jpg, then the photograph-date related categorization would be a lot easier. Having seen Commons:Structured data/Modeling/Date, there seems to be no such magic word for the SDC of indivisual commons files, which is sad. --19:33, 6 January 2025 (UTC)--トトト (talk) 22:49, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Upcoming Commons conversation about tool investment priority on January 15

Hello everyone! The Wikimedia Foundation will be hosting the third round of a series of community calls to help prioritize support efforts from Wikimedia Foundation for the 2025-2026 Fiscal Year.

The purpose of these calls is to support community members in hearing more from one another - across uploaders, moderators, GLAM enthusiasts, tool and bot makers, etc. - about the future of Commons. There is so much to discuss about the general direction of the project, and we hope that people from different perspectives can think through some of the tradeoffs that will shape Commons going forward.

Our third call will focus on tool investment priority. There are constant calls from the community for the Foundation to adopt community-made tools in order to maintain workflows for the contributors that depend on them. The range of these tools varies widely, and includes media upload (e.g. Video2Commons), editing (e.g. CropTool), curation (e.g. Cat-a-lot) and metrics (e.g. BaGLAMa) tools. Batch upload and metrics tools are said to be critical for the affiliates and Wikimedians in Residence who partner with libraries and other cultural institutions to illustrate Wikipedia. They need to be able to contribute files efficiently at scale, and report on the impact of these contributions. However, community surveys have identified more than 30 different tools that are used for content partnerships.

More specifically the questions will be:

1. Does it make sense for the Foundation to invest in supporting the wide range of community-developed tools that don’t have active maintainers, or should a smaller set of critical workflows be enabled through new or improved features in core products?
2. Which tool would you recommend to prioritise? Something community-facing or GLAM-facing or video-related or something else?

The call will take place at two different time slots:

•  The first one will be on January 15, at 08:00 UTC, and it will be hosted on Zoom by Senior Director of Product Management Runa Bhattacharjee; you can subscribe to it on Meta;
•  The second one will be on January 15, at 16:00 UTC, and it will be hosted on Zoom by Chief Product & Technology Officer Selena Deckelmann; you can subscribe to it on Meta.

If you cannot attend the meeting, you are invited to express your point of view at any time you want on the Commons community calls talk page. We will also post the notes of the meeting on the project page, to give the possibility to read what was discussed also to those who couldn’t attend it.

If you want, you are invited to share this invitation with all the people you think might be interested in this call.

We hope to see you and/or read you very soon! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:56, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

FIDE logo

Until recently the logo used in the infobox of FIDE was en:File:Fidelogo.svg. This file has a lengthy discussion of licensing, the outcome of which is that it can be used at FIDE but nowhere else in Wikipedia.

With this edit an editor, Bildersindtoll, changed FIDE to use instead Logo FIDE International Chess Federation.svg. The new logo is/was apparently identical except that the silhouette is reversed, i.e. blue replaced by white and white replaced by blue. I do not know why the logo was replaced (no edit summary), but I note that the FIDE website, FIDE.com, is currently using the logo that Wikipedia changed to, rather than the logo that was changed from.

However, the new logo must not have had the same lengthy discussion of licensing as the old. As a result it was deleted from Commons, see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Logo FIDE International Chess Federation.svg. This doesn't seem right. I think licensing of both logs should have been identical.

As a temporary measure, I have restored FIDE to use the old logo. What I would like to see, however, is for the new logo to be undeleted, and the same licensing text added to it as is used in the old. Bruce leverett (talk) 20:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

The old logo was hosted on en.Wiki under fair use. The new logo was hosted on Commons which does not allow fair use. The new logo could be hosted on en.Wiki under fair use.

The only way the logos could be hosted on Commons is if they have a free license. The crux of that DR was whether the silhouette of the knight is public domain. That argument did not carry the day but it could be revisited.

Glrx (talk) 21:24, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata Infobox

Is there any way to control which statements shows up? On some categories the statements in the infobox are largely useless while excluding actual useful ones Trade (talk) 08:24, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

@Trade: Please see Template:Wikidata Infobox and be more specific on the talk page there.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 11:01, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Need of pictures

Dear all, is it possible for someone to take free pictures of the new building 7 Hudson Square building, aka Robert A. Iger Building in Manhattan ? I would illustrate the article i've created on french wikipedia. One of the adress is 310 Hudson St, New York, NY 10013. If possible it would be fine. For your information, the buidling is opened since December 4th 2024 accoridng to this article --GdGourou - °o° - Talk to me 10:31, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

@Gdgourou: You can request pictures at COM:PR. You can also leave a message at WikiProject New York City as NYC has a sizeable and highly active Wiki community. I did notice that on the Wikidata page for the building Q111600151 the address is listed as 137 Varick Street, and there is an image of that: File:137 Varick Street.jpg. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:29, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Dear Renee, This one is a previous building shamelessly razed in 2018. Thanks I will post on PR and NYC project page. --GdGourou - °o° - Talk to me 11:52, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:37, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Importing files from de-wikipedia

On the German-language Wikipedia there arfe two files (de:Datei:Boskop-Schädel.jpg and de:Datei:Boskop-Schädel (2).jpg) which the German page says should be checked before transfer. However, they were published in the US before 1918 and should therefore be free. But commons file importer does not want to do this, saying "This file cannot be imported to Wikimedia Commons because it is marked as Vorlage:NoCommons." Joostik (talk) 11:44, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

@Joostik: Good to know that the file importer works as designed. Why are you stating that here? Or do you have a question? Questions usually end with a question mark.

Oh great, a grammar nazi ... Joostik (talk) 13:40, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

The date of publication is 1918 so well before the URAA date (1930 now) and author died more than 70 years ago so should be ok to transfer. Multichill (talk) 12:32, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

@Gerbil: You tagged each file {{Bild-PD-alt}} using de:Vorlage:Bild-PD-alt, which indicates (translated from German): "Due to URAA problem(disk.) for the time being:", "This file may not with the policies of Wikimedia Commons.", "It should be checked individually whether it may be moved to Wikimedia Commons.", and "Do not transfer this file to Wikimedia Commons without an individual review!". Is there a more appropriate tag?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:14, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

The license I used is specified in the rules of the German-language Wikipedia for “old works”, see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bildrechte#Alte_Werke According to German law, both drawings are in the public domain 70 years after the death of the artist. However, I am not familiar with image licenses and will therefore not make any changes. Sorry. Gerbil (talk) 15:08, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

@Gerbil: Thanks. Perhaps other users of German Wikipedia will weigh in.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:01, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

I have transferred both files to Wikimedia Commons, same file names. You have to tweak the license tag at de.wp first (using the parameter Commons=Ja) to be able to do this. --Rosenzweig τ 04:55, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for that! I actually tried to modify the license tag, but could not because it did not show up when clicking on "modify". Joostik (talk) 13:39, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

help needed from Spanish speaker

Hi, Recently {{PD-AR-Photo}} was changed and the old translations are no longer valid. Can a Spanish speaker go to Template:PD-AR-Photo/i18n and help translate this template. Previous version which likely can be altered to match the current English text can be found at Template:PD-AR-Photo/es. Thanks in advance. Jarekt (talk) 18:34, 8 January 2025 (UTC)