Commons:Village pump/Proposals

Welcome to the Village pump proposals section

This page is used for proposals relating to the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons; it is distinguished from the main Village pump, which handles community-wide discussion of all kinds. The page may also be used to advertise significant discussions taking place elsewhere, such as on the talk page of a Commons policy. Recent sections with no replies for 30 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2023/03.

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Adding a “NWS” subsection to the Upload Wizard[edit]

There is a lot of images that are uploaded to the commons produced by the National Weather Service (NWS). The NWS is a branch of the United States federal government, which means all their products (and images uploaded to their website) are automatically public domain. With the Upload Wizard, on the section about an image’s Release rights, a user can click the This work was made by the United States government tab and then click the Original work of the US Federal Government button. Doing so will add the generic Template:PD-USGov for the copyright license. However, there is a special copyright template, Template:PD-NWS, for products from NWS and images uploaded to their servers. This is a unique template because NWS allows anyone to submit an image to them, which then releases the rights of that image under public domain. The NWS template explains that.

Currently, any user uploading an image from NWS to the commons via Upload Wizard has to click the federal government button, then after uploading the image, manually switch it to the NWS copyright template. Due to this extra step (which has occurred for thousands of images), I am proposing that a sub-copyright release button be added under the Original work of the US Federal Government button. My proposal would look similar to the following, with the bullet points replaced with the clickable buttons:

This work was made by the United States government (This is a dropdown in Upload Wizard for the other options)

Original work of the US Federal Government

Work from or released to the National Weather Service

Original work of NASA

—

Elijahandskip (talk) 03:34, 10 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I don't think a subdrop down at Special:Upload is feasible. Wouldn't be equal to US Federal government, NASA and military which are the current options? So people have some numbers, Category:PD US Government is about 719k files while Category:PD US NOAA is roughly 66k. PD-Government has about 70 subcategories. Category:PD NASA has like 4.3 million images, Category:PD US Military has about 260k and some others have a lot more images. I'm neutral about whether we should add it. Ricky81682 (talk) 22:19, 14 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I will note, NOAA and the US Military aren’t options in the dropdown. The only options for US Gov is the US Gov template and the NASA template. Chances are extremely high, there is some in the PD US Government that are suppose to be under either of those. Since the military has a lot as well as NOAA, both should be added as sub-categories. NASA is already a sub-category, so the NASA numbers are probably close to accurate. Elijahandskip (talk) 22:34, 14 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'd

Support a dropdown that included NOAA and PD-USGov-Military. Abzeronow (talk) 17:16, 15 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Year by populated place category[edit]

Looking at Category:2021, we have Category:2021 by country‎, Category:2021 by city‎, Category:2021 by continent‎, the recently created Category:2021 by town‎, and both Category:2021 in the Northern Hemisphere‎ and Category:2021 in the Southern Hemisphere‎. The country, city, and continent are sorted by " |[name]" while town and the hemispheres aren't sorted at all. Could we shove all these into a parent Category:2021 by populated place? I don't think we need a separate hemispheres parent. I also don't know if we should sort them all together or have "C" cover country, city, continent while "H" covers hemispheres and "T" for towns but curious. We could put populated places as a topic but I think that's excessive. Ricky81682 (talk) 22:05, 14 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ricky81682, Wouldn't "human settlement" make more sense than "populated place"? As abandoned places would still qualify. In fact, that's the title of the English-language Wikipedia article. -- — Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:20, 25 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Donald Trung Is it? I see en:Category:Populated places by type as the parent of cities but there is no parent for en:Category:2021 by city for each year. Category:2021 is the main one if we want to consistent with English but we have a lot more categories for some reason. Ricky81682 (talk) 21:31, 25 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Implementing global abuse filters[edit]

Wikimedia Commons would be affected by an ongoing proposal on Meta-Wiki to enable global abuse filters to have local effects. A list of the global edit filters can be found here. Three filters are set to block users or block autopromotion, and a good number are set to either disallow edits or warn editors about certain sorts of edits. The proposal would allow large wikis to opt-out of global edit filters, and I would like to start a discussion around whether or not we think that implementing these global edit filters are wise for Commons. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 21:56, 18 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Since we can't see the filters, it's pretty difficult to make a judgment. - Jmabel ! talk 03:33, 19 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Of the three filters directly linked two seem to be pretty specific for one person each, the third blocking audio/video/multimedia, except some probably non-problematic types, from new users (documented as including other suspected copyright infringements). I didn't see any way the two personal filters could catch a good-faith edit, but patterns are difficult on multilingual projects; hopefully false positives are reported. –LPfi (talk) 17:53, 19 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  note: blocking users / blocking autopromotion has been disabled for global filters now, global filters are only allowed to warn, disallow, tag or just log edits. Johannnes89 (talk) 07:19, 22 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- There is now a separate RFC on Meta to create a local Abuse Filter Helpers group so that local administrators can see the global filters. m:Meta:Requests for comment/Create local meta abuse filter helper and abuse filter manager role Abzeronow (talk) 20:38, 24 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Pinging @Achim55, Elcobbola, Steinsplitter as the three Admins here with the most recent interest in talking about our abuse filters on COM:FILTERT. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 01:26, 21 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Red-tailed hawk: I support the work of proposer Martin Urbanec as Steward and System Administrator in trying to streamline anti-vandalism work. Of course, some of our filters which were copied from global ones should be disabled if that proposal passes, but there should not be any outright conflicts. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 01:46, 21 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I definitely think the discussion on whether or not Commons will opt out of global filters is worth having. I'm inclined to towards opting out and the RfC looks like it will be successful so it is probably a decision that will have to made soon. Abzeronow (talk) 20:00, 22 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

We have a huge problem with spam and vandalism and not enough people managing this, so we should use every possibility to let some jobs be done by other people that we get more time. GPSLeo (talk) 20:22, 22 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Seems like the response of the Commons community over-all is a thunderingly silent "meh." If anybody has any specific concerns, now would be a good time to bring them up. El Grafo (talk) 12:28, 29 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have no concerns about implementing these filters. --August Geyler (talk) 15:20, 29 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Which language should be used for categories for parties[edit]

The categories for political parties sometimes use the original name and sometimes an English translation of the name. To avoid disputes and category moves we should get a simple guideline on this.

There are three options:

Categories for political parties should always be in English with redirects from the original name(s).
- Support Most categories are in English. (?)
- Support We do not have to decide which name to use if the region is multilingual.
- Oppose Most users search for the party will use the original name as they are from this region.
- Oppose We have to find a proper translation.
Categories for political parties should always use the original name of the party. In multilingual regions the most common name for the party is used with redirects from the other official names. There can be redirects from the English translation and transliterations.
- Support We do not have to find a proper translation.
- Support Most users looking for the party will use the original name as they are from this region.
- Support Categories about proper names are not required to be in English.
- Oppose Most categories are in English. (?)
- Oppose We have to decide which name to use if the region is multilingual.
Categories should be in English if there is significant coverage about the party in English. For only locally known parties the original name should be used.
- Support De facto standard for most categories also in other fields.
- Oppose Also if parties have broad international coverage most people who search for this party are locals.
- Oppose Leads to multilingual category structures and uncertainty for casual users.
- Oppose Lengthy CfD debates will be needed for each single case.

GPSLeo (talk) 17:02, 27 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting[edit]

English translation[edit]

Support in case of countries with non-Latin script, or where the local community chose to adopt the English translations. --Enyavar (talk) 10:12, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support That would probably be the most consistent solution to the issue. Abzeronow (talk) 17:33, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Original name[edit]

Support in case of countries with Latin script, where the local community chose to uses native names. --Enyavar (talk) 10:12, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support as per the general rule in Commons:Categories#Category names: "Category names should generally be in English. However, there are exceptions such as some proper names..." Party names are proper names and qualify for the exception. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 10:29, 2 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

English name or original name depending on coverage[edit]

Support This seems like the most reasonable option and not far from what we already do. Nosferattus (talk) 19:53, 30 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oppose This leads to mish-mash category structures like we see in Hungary or Colombia - partly native, partly English, depending either on the whim of category creators or on long boring discussions for each single case. --Enyavar (talk) 10:12, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
What long boring discussions have there been about how to name categories outside of this one? --Adamant1 (talk) 10:37, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Maybe you underestimate German pain tolerance when principles are on the line: Magadan's list of unbelievably snoozy discussions has of course a category subsection #;-D But I maintain the belief that net-nerds are net-nerds anywhere in the world. On this specific topic, I thankfully remember no boring discussions on Commons, and this one is still rather tame. --Enyavar (talk) 13:25, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Jmabel ! talk 18:47, 1 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Jmabel's solution of 17:57, 27 March 2023 (UTC) below[edit]

Support — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 19:27, 2 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

King of ♥'s solution of 07:30, 29 March 2023 (UTC) below[edit]

Support — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 19:29, 2 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Keep the status quo[edit]

Support — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 19:31, 2 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Discussion[edit]

I believe the two choices given constitute a false dichotomy. I would propose the following:

If the official party name is in English, obviously use English. Note that even here we often need to add country name to disambiguate, e.g. Category:Democratic Party (United States)
If the party has official names in multiple languages, one of which is English, we use English. E.g. Category:Liberal Party of Canada, known equally as Parti libéral du Canada (French)
If the official party name is in a different language, but the party itself routinely uses a consistent English-language name to refer to itself in English-language communications, use that English-language name. E.g. Category:Justice and Development Party (Turkey), known in Turkish as Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, commonly abbreviated as AKP, and consistently refers to itself in English as the "AK Party" should probably be moved to Category:AK Party (which, remarkably, isn't even a redirect at time of writing). Also, this is presumably why we favor Category:Communist Party of China over Category:Chinese Communist Party (the latter being a soft redirect).
If the party itself does not consistently use a particular English-language name (e.g. if they do not routinely translate documents into English), but there is a consistent or predominant name used in English-language publications, we should use that. E.g. Category:Iron Guard for the interwar and WWII-era Romanian party officially known as the Garda de Fier and before that as the Legiunea Arhanghelul Mihail ("Legion of the Archangel Michael").
If none of these apply, and English-language sources do not translate the party name, we should use the name as normally printed in English-language sources; in particular, we should use Latin alphabet. E.g. Category:Likud, Category:Bharatiya Janata Party.

Naturally, soft redirects (using {{Category redirect}}) should be provided from other reasonable names. - Jmabel ! talk 17:57, 27 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There is another potential option: use the common abbreviation if it is better known than the actual name. Probably not for the top level category, but using "SPD" in the subcategories of Category:Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands makes a lot of sense. El Grafo (talk) 07:05, 28 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Further note: if there is no evidence of any significant number of mentions of a party in English, or little consistency in how it is referred to in English, then we should probably use the untranslated name, probably transliterated into the Latin alphabet. - Jmabel ! talk 18:00, 27 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

To clarify with redirects a meant {{Category redirect}}. You describe the current situation which results in inconstancy or if me make this an official guideline a very complex rule with many unclear cases. I would really dislike if we get categories with subcategories where all huge parties are translated and all small parties are not. GPSLeo (talk) 18:08, 27 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Comment What is this, like the 4th place now the topic is being discussed? Either way, it would have been good to alert the people in the CfD about the discussion. Otherwise, it just comes off like yet another attempt to do a run around. Especially since this was started after Ricky81682's keep vote. Seriously, where's it going to go next once this inevitably doesn't turn out how you want it to?

As to the proposal, I agree with Jmabel that it's a false dichotomy. There simply can't be a hard and fast rule about how to name categories that applies to every situation, because that's just not how this works. As Jmabel has pointed out, if there is no evidence of any significant number of mentions of a party in English then there's no point in translating it. In situations where such evidence exists though, then I think Jmabel's alternative proposal is a perfectly reasonable compromise. Not that there needed to a proposal here for that, since it essentially follows how we are already doing things, but whatever. However this turns out I hope it will be the last discussion about it and the "losing" side won't just try to take their personal grievances about this to yet another forum. Either way, the proposal as currently framed by GPSLeo is clearly untenable. So I can't personally support it. Although I think Jmabel's idea is good, if not semi-redundant. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:56, 28 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I created this proposal because this is the place to define policies. General policies should not be defined at Categories for Discussion or Deletion request pages. GPSLeo (talk) 16:32, 28 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That's just disingenuous. If this was about the general policy then you wouldn't have made the scope of the proposal just about political parties, but every category for subjects where the names are commonly used in English. Also, if this was about the general policy, there would be an option in the proposal to maintain the status quo. Or there'd at least be an option to use the English name when it's common, but not when it isn't. Your clearly don't want to do either one of those because it wouldn't turn out in your favor. It probably still wont, but whatever. All your doing is rehashing the CfD. Except doing in it way that's extremely bad faithed and unfair to the other participants. You can't create a side proposal for something that's already being discussed somewhere else just because you don't like how the conversation is going. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:47, 28 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

For context, I assume this is because of Commons:Categories for discussion/2023/03/Category:Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany where I must have given a good opinion since the only response is a wholesale re-write of policies lol. Yes, terrible false dilemma and I support Jmabel's analysis/proposal. We have Category:Schmalhorststraße 1 because it is the name of an office building and I don't think anyone cares enough to come up with an English language name for this. When we have some sort of English-language name, we use that. Again, if you want to change the overall consensus for English for category names, start at the top and see if people have changed their views but it seems utterly bizarre that we must keep Category:Mumbai rather than a redirect to non-English text because people have an absolute obsession over German political parties not having their name in English. I don't think political parties need a carve-out. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:21, 28 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Also, what is "sufficient coverage"? I'd say a Wikidata item and an English-language article is enough. I don't think Commons needs to be debating whether the English-language "coverage" is "sufficient" enough to figure out whether this political party category should in English when it is only to store images that relate to a political party. Different if we had various translations or Romanizations like I see over Japanese language stuff. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:27, 28 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Fully agreed on the false dichotomy. Consensus doesn't come from a few users dictating for everyone how to use Commons. It seems this movement is a hot topic for a few German users who want everyone in the world to use English party names? Or something? Yeah, big nope on that. Names are Names, we don't necessarily translate them, and doing so can be confusing. The Partido Revolucionista Institutional (PRI) gets a changed word order in English - is it IRP or RIP? Same happens with most French parties? So: every country's users should find their own consensus on how they prefer the category names, within some parameters: Full name and no abbreviations for the main category; the category should correspond either to English Wikipedia or the native language's WP, and (sorry Russia/Armenia/Thailand/Egypt) the latin alphabet should be enforced for the category names. And that's it. For people who don't speak Italian, Spanish and German, we create Redirects from the English language to the chosen name. "Category:Austrian People's Party? Yup, leads to the correct place, if Austrians has found a consensus to translate into English. Category:Bündnis 90/Die Grünen? Same, if Germans appear to have found a consensus to not translate to English. In that case however, we need a redirect from Category:Green Party (Germany) and maybe some other variants, so that people can find the correct category more intuitively. Another simple way is checking Category:Green parties, where I find a simple majority of English category names, but a plethora of non-English ones as well. --Enyavar (talk) 01:22, 29 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Enyvar: Unless I'm missing something, you seem to have flipped to everyone else. The issue is a dispute over a few titles for German political parties where we have an English-language name and people wanting those pages to be kept in the German name. For the most part, we use an English-language name just for consistency and then would have a redirect from the German to the English (as I note, Mumbai is the category name). The PRI (in Mexico) is at Category:Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and has changed word order which is not a surprise; many languages use a different word order from English. As I noted, the office building that the Marxist-Leninist party is on has not article in English so we just use the German name because we need a name since this is all about organizing media anyways. This is the few users who are demanding that German political parties (and nothing else from what I can tell) be in German while languages with a non-Latin script be translated. Of course, this is the fourth separate discussion had on the subject which seems to go into the same arguments. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ah, didn't check on the PRI, and sorry for getting a few things backwards. Yet I know that all parties in France are also listed here in the native tongue, and I can imagine the French might be similarly on the barricades once you start to change hundreds of categories because of a previously ignored rule. And if we only rename the main category while leaving the lower nodes on the category tree untouched, this will cause further claims of being wholly inconsistent: Would we rename all sub-categories as well? Where do we stop? Also note that we use stuff like Landkreis Nordsachsen instead of "Rural district of North Saxony". Other countries are fully committed to translate (Category:Lower Silesian Voivodeship instead of "Województwo dolnośląskie"). We can translate all kind of official names, but should we enforce communities to do it? Parties in France and Germany have official names, all I propose is we continue to use them. --Enyavar (talk) 11:12, 29 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Parties in...Germany have official names, all I propose is we continue to use them. Not to answer for Ricky81682, but at least with the German political party that the original discussion was about the English name is official. Plus from what I can tell the English name is more widely used the German. The same also seems to be the case for a lot of other political parties. For instance the Communist Party of China is rarely if ever referred to as gongchandang or whatever the translation would be in none Chinese characters. So it's not as cut and dry as just going with whatever the political party is called in the original language "because communities" or whatever. Also, most countries don't really care about this. It's only a problem in a few European countries, including France and Germany, but they aren't the only countries out there. Plenty of "communities" either don't care or are already following the guideline as is, which is to have the category name in English if it's common. Not do whatever a "community" wants because "community." Again, at least in this case the political party already officially uses the English translation and it's more widely adopted then the German name. So it would be ridiculous to not go with English just because a few German users think the current policy is imperialistic or some nonsense. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:45, 29 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Written like someone who never had to look up foreign-language categories for stuff they want to upload. The people who are involved in this discussion are not the entire community, but just a select few power-users in Commons who are on top fluent in English. People from the communities DO care once the disaster has been carried out (just like with the new interface that was brought upon us in January), people just don't participate in discussions beforehand because they weren't notified something might even become an issue. Aside from the fringe MLPD (0.1% and below), I can't even find any other party in Germany where the category name is in English. I find just the same scene for France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Czechia, Poland, Slovakia - basically for most countries in Europe the general rule is "native party names". A few indeed, and among them some of the most populated political categories outside the Anglosphere. Well: Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Switzerland are the ones where I just checked and found a significant mixture of languages; and Romania, Finland, Slovenia, Baltics and Turkey go all-English apparently. Some more don't even count here, as they don't use the Latin alphabet. --Enyavar (talk) 16:32, 30 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Written like someone who never had to look up foreign-language categories for stuff they want to upload. Sure, but I've looked at many foreign-language categories when organizing files or creating child categories. Like with Category:Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany I created two of the child categories that are in it and organized images having to do with the party by putting them into the categories, which I probably wouldn't have done if the whole thing was in German. In fact I probably spend more organizing images having to do with non-English speaking countries then I do the reverse. Even if that weren't the case, there's clearly many more benefits to having categories in English then there is having in the "native language." So your comment is rather vacuous. I definitely don't think category names should be in the "native language" if the people who speak that language aren't even the users who are organizing files related to the topic. Like with the only involvement the person who instigated this whole thing had with the categories or the files was him throwing a fit over the category being in English. Same goes for GPSLeo. I probably wouldn't have an issue with someone who has done a lot of work in a specific area saying a specific category should be in their "native language" because it makes their work easier. But in this case it just seems to social justice warriors who aren't involved in organizing images related to the categories that they are throwing the fit about.

Basically for most countries in Europe the general rule is "native party names". Sure, but for most of the rest of the world the rule is to have the names of the parties in English. This proposal also isn't just about creating a policy specifically for political parties in Europe either. It's possible I'm just missing your point, but I saying something should be done a specific way because it's being done a specific seems like a non sequitur. True, that aren't any other parties in Germany where the category name is in English. But so what? Are you saying that if X policy is being ignored, that's it fine because X policy is being ignored? If so, that's not really an argument. "Vandalism is fine because it's vandalism." Uh, OK? Right. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:01, 30 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Please refer to Commons:IAR and read that essay careful: When ignoring a policy makes sense, I would rather ignore the policy than follow its letter through to the end, with potentially nonsensical results (like renaming 19th-century defunct parties). Also, please just don't bring up "vandalism" when talking about "using native language names". It's not the same.

That said, I see the big advantages in the English category system as well, especially with overarching category structures. We have "Members of the German Bundestag", "Members of Polish Sejm" and "Members of the Knesset". Going native would lead towards "Mitglieder des Bundestags", "Posłowie na Sejm" and "Knesset seated members" (as an example for a random structure that uses latin characters but doesn't follow conventions). So yes, we don't want total native structures, we want "Members of <parliament>". Notice how the parliament names don't get translated. For categorization, it is GREAT to be able to rely on categories always looking like "Political parties in <country>", "Politics of <city>" and "Election maps of <province>". Each city has "Buildings in...", because on a structural level, all cities have buildings, they are similar in that way. We need to keep all-English structures.

Party names are not part of this overarching structure. Similar party names do not imply similarities. "Die Republikaner" are not the German equivalent to "Les Républicains" in France or the "Parti républicain" of Tunisia. "Republicans" are positioned anywhere from the extreme left (Jacobin republican movement during the French revolution) over the center-liberal branches up to the extreme right (currently in the US). Translating the names, at best, helps an international reader understand the name of the party, but that can also be done via the description. The people who upload and categorize their own pictures, are predominantly not international and they understand their own language better than English. A person on the ground, seeing that an already complicated official party name is preferred in its English translation, might just give up. Why even bother categorizing anything anymore? Let the "imperialists" (your words) do that work, if they want that so desperately. To make it clear, that's not how I'd react, but I know some people who rather break than bend. I noticed that non-English countries with English party names seem to have less content in their political categories, and seem to have more badly categorized images, but I don't have a full overview and other factors might be at play.

So please see it this way: The more Commons prescribes English as the working language (and it prescribes a lot already!) the fewer people will be willing to work with it on a local level, and the more work people like you have to do: It shifts more and more work on the English-speaking part of the community because locals stop to be willing to use foreign-language category structures. As a correlating observation: The more local we get, the more native language tends to seep in. "Cemeteries in Paris"... and the names are all French. "Public baths in Hannover"... and the names are all German. "Festivals in Salvador"... and the names are all Portuguese. My argument is that this is okay+tolerable, and not in violation of the rules, especially not in violation of CC-CN. --Enyavar (talk) 09:45, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

With potentially nonsensical results (like renaming 19th-century defunct parties) I doubt that would be an issue because whatever sources are talking about them mostly already been written. It's pretty unlikely that the name of a 19th-century defunct party would ever change on Wikipedia or Wikidatas side either. There's no reason it would. So that's really a nonissue.

I don't necessarily disagree with the rest of what you said in theory, but it doesn't extend outside of political parties. For instance there's plenty of companies in none English speaking countries where their names are exclusively in English. It would be completely ridiculous in those cases to translate the names to German, Polish, or whatever the "native language" is just because that's how a few people from the local community want it. So it doesn't scale, which then goes back to question of why create a special cut out in the guideline for political parties? Personally, I see no reason to and in the grand scheme of things it's not at all useful to have the categories for one subject follow a specific rule, but not every thing else. It also imposes the preferences of Europeans on everyone else in the world. So you, I, Jmabel, and a few Germans vote on this. Then 99% of the rest of us who are fine with their countries parties being in English regardless of what language they speak have to just suck it up and rename the categories? How is that at all fair?

Like you said you don't want long boring discussions for each single case, which I sort of agree of with (although I think it's solved by just going with how Wikipedia/Wikidata has the name), but there's going to be way more long boring discussions if we try to force everyone else to change the name of the categories to the "native languages" when it's not their preference then there ever will by just telling the few Germans who have an issue with this to suck it up. There would have been zero discussion here if Chaddy hadn't of made it into an issue. It's ridiculous to overturn the whole system just because of one stubborn user who doesn't want to follow the policy. Also, I disagree with your statement that having category names in the "native language" will encourage more contributors. All it does is create ownership silos where only a few people can edit or find anything related to that topic. Some one in Poland should be able to find categories related to Germany if they want to just as much as the reverse. Your just creating a precedent where no one except an extremely small group of people can function anywhere in the project outside topics related to like North America and the UK. Including Germans. This actually screws them and other European editors over in the long run way more then any other group of editors. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:49, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You claim it doesn't scale, but it does: We either rename none or we rename all: That is this proposal in a nutshell. The proposal essentially aims to change all parties' names to English, no matter how insignificant they are in today's media coverage, because at some point in the past their name has been translated to English. Even long defunct parties like Grütliverein have an English translation as "Grütli Union". I was reading the other discussions yesterday: This began with the MLPD. Your original attempt was to rename one of the most ignored parties of Germany (even nationally), and that tells of the far-reaching intentions here: rename EACH AND ALL parties in France, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, Peru... . This can potentially make your work in categorization a tad easier, it will also certainly make others people's work more difficult. It's ridiculous to overturn the whole system just because of one stubborn user who doesn't want to follow the policy. Exactly, so please give up on your idea to convert other countries' party names to an English variant. This is in essence an argument about whether or not proper names should get translated: Is “Gartenfriedhof in H.” okay or must it be “Garden cemetery in H.” for the sake of fairness to English speakers from other continents? I say don't mess with it, it's a local name! The editors from all the countries mentioned above chose at some time in the previous years to use their native language names, and that is still fine. Nobody gets excluded from any "ownership silo", as long as editors properly maintain Commons' structures: Politicians of character-string or Members of character-string is perfectly understandable even for people not from Italy or Czechia: See, this is a category about the members of the "character-string" political party. Easy concept, and there cannot even be confusion about whether or not you found the correct party, because the proper name has been given. Which one is the "Italian Social-Democrat Party": "Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano" or "Socialisti Democratici Italiani"? Sure, meaningful distinctions can be made even in translation, but now everyone gets to be equally confused: Foreigners still have no idea which party is which; regular Italians won't know which of their parties is which in translation; and only an extremely small group of people can function anywhere in the project, namely English-speaking content categorization specialists. Apparently just like you, I have categorized stuff all over the world, but rarely found problems with local idioms. A bit of a problem persists when an English translation gets used but all you ever heard of is the party's acronym: Which political party of Turkey is the famous "AKP"? Click all the categories to find out! But it shall be the decision of editors from Turkey how they spell their party names. Not editors from Germany or US. --Enyavar (talk) 13:05, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

so please give up on your idea to convert other countries' party names to an English variant. If you read all the other discussions you should know that's not "my idea." I never claimed other countries' party names should be in an English variant. I've actually been pretty consistent that I think it should depend on if the name is commonly in English or not. No one, including me, is forcing anyone from any country to do it that or doing it for them. Like you said, there's already plenty of countries where the party names are in the "native language." No one is saying that should change. The only reason it's came up to the degree that it has is because GPSLeo including changing all the party names to English as an option to the proposal. That's not on me though. If people in Turkey what their political parties in Turkish, cool. I could really care less. That's why people, including me, have said the proposal is a false dichotomy, because there no reason it has to be an all or nothing choice between every category being in English or the "native language." It only is because you and GPSLeo are making it one.

In the specific case of Category:Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany, the reason I changed the name to English originally was because I had already created to sub categories in English, was organizing images related to party, and it was just easier to do that if the main category was English. I would have been fine putting it back into German if Chaddy had of just asked me nicely to change it back on my talk page instead of being extremely aggressive about it and accusing me of edit warring/vandalism. Otherwise, I wouldn't have really cared. The idea that I'm trying to convert other countries parties to the English variant is just ridiculous though. To the degree that it became an issue was 100% on Chaddy for turning it into one. Although at the end of the day I think the name of the category should be determined by who ever is organizing the images in the categories. I could really care less if that person speaks Turkish, German, English, or some other language. English just happens to be a good bridge language that allows most of us to work together organizing images in a fairly sane way.

If some German speaker comes along and wants a category to be in German simply because they trying to push a German-centric nationalist POV, not because they are even working in the area at question, but an English speaker is then I'm going to go with the English speaker. Like I've said a bunch of times now we're here to organize files. Not just arbitrarily name categories after the whims of whomever wants to do POV editing at the time by having the name in "their" native language. That's not a functional way to do this. At the end of the day I could really give a crap what language the categories are in. Except, again, I was organizing files related to the party and it was easier to do if the category was in English. That's it. I'm not the one who escalated this or tried to make it about more then that specific category. The suggestion that we should just defer to the opinions of someone who isn't even working in the area at question just because of their race or cultural background is just ridiculous though. -Adamant1 (talk) 13:38, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I would simplify Jmabel's rules a bit, because to me being "in English" does not necessarily mean "composed of English words", but rather "commonly found in English sources" (in line with w:WP:NCUE). So I would suggest instead:

Use the name most commonly found in English-language sources. The title of its English Wikipedia article, if it exists, will generally meet this criterion.
If not commonly found in English-language sources, then use the name most commonly found in original-language sources. If the original language does not use the Latin alphabet, it should be transcribed in line with accepted romanization standards for that language on English Wikipedia.

King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:30, 29 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That would mean that you need to individually showcase whether or not to use English or the native language, which is hardly practical and possible to flip-flop whenever a scandal blows over to the English media sphere (or not, which means to revert to the native language when a party name has not been used for a decade or so). --Enyavar (talk) 11:12, 29 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think that's essentially the system that Wikipedia/Wikidata uses and it seems to work fine in both cases. From what I've see are pretty strick about it to. Especially Wikidata. On our end the simpliest thing would be to just defer to how both of them have the name in the english fields/article title and just call it good there. The only probably might be someone arbitrarily changing the name on Wikidatas end, but then we can just refer to the title of the English Wikipedia article since they tend to be a lot more stable. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:11, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Where are the guidelines?[edit]

For future reference: Where are 'guidelines' like this one here enshrined? This survey doesn't seem likely to attract more than a few dozen users, which is far from the hundreds of contributors who are later expected to follow it. Just so that future editors can be referenced to this survey, or that they can challenge it? All I know is Commons:Categories#Category_names, which is very general. Yet this whole thing including voting, implies that there have been previous rulechanges about proper naming of categories. I'd like to be made aware of the list where this rule will be added after the current survey has been archived. --Enyavar (talk) 10:12, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

File names of road sign images[edit]

Hello. I'm here. In what format should the file name of road signs including the country name, words "road sign" and their number, be formatted? Recently @Wieralee rejected my rename requests on images of Ukrainian road signs. @Fry1989 has requested renaming the file with images of road signs in this format: XX road sign YY.svg, where XX is the two-letter ISO 3166-2 country code, YY is the road sign number according to a road sign standard. @Fry1989 and @Wieralee maybe you can discuss this topic here? WWBM (talk) 07:48, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

User:WWBM tried to rename File:5.57.3 Ukraine road sign.svg into File:UA road sign 5.57.3 (2014–2021).svg, with such a reason: "Criterion 4 (To harmonize the names of a set of images so that only one part of all names differs) · UA is the two-letter ISO 3166-2 code for Ukraine. In DSTU 4100:2002 on road signs indicating a detour, the word "об'їзд" was written only in Ukrainian. But in DSTU 4100:2014 the words "об'їзд" and "detour" began to be written in Ukrainian and English respectively.".

I looked into the upper Category:SVG road signs by country for France, Finland and Estonia and I saw a format: "France road sign B30 (30).svg, "Estonia road sign 721d.svg", etc... and I realized that WWBM is trying to provide a new format for all road signs. This entails thousands of rename requests across hundreds of folders... without any discussion... just because "his format is better". So I've declined. Wieralee (talk) 16:16, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It should be noted that the original format "Country road sign..." was instituted by myself quite a few years ago. I have since updated my policy to follow the ISO 3166, which is universal, rather than the country name in the English language. I would be open to further modification, but a standardised file name format remains desirable. Fry1989 ^eh? 18:22, 1 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think the ISO 3166 codes are obscure to as many people as the English names so, although I generally like them, I don't think it is worthwhile (or even beneficial) to change the naming scheme. What is important is that the files are easily findable, through the appropriate category hierarchies, category descriptions (include the native country names and the ISO code!), and redirects where needed. My biggest problem is that the "YY" road sign number is obscure – a link from some category pages to a list would be nice. Also the naming scheme should be explained on the category pages (or on a linked page), e.g. the year span (or first year of current signs?) is sometimes essential. –LPfi (talk) 07:16, 4 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wikimedia maps Update[edit]

Hello,

I think Wikimedia maps (commonly used in Template:Maplink) could benefit from the inclusion of names for some large/notable parks, rivers, etc... Without context, a lot of these areas blur into one color when in fact, there are multiple different parts to them (especially the green color for parks and protected areas). It might look a little like how Google Maps makes their map but with far less named areas and no pinpoints. Thank you for your time and have a great day! DiscoA340 (talk) 03:56, 1 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Restrict audio and video uploads for new users without (auto)confirmed/patrolled rights[edit]

During the ongoing sockpuppet cases, I'm filing this as similar to that topic dating back to 2017 here. Many times ago, I saw recent changes and the abuse filter log to find them. They made throwaway accounts as sockpuppets to evade blocks using proxies or VPNs and uploaded files containing copyrighted (non-libre) works that don't belong to what they claimed as their own. I and a few others tagged those files as copyright infringement to notify them as warnings. What's worse, they ignored multiple warnings and did it again.

The goal is to make an abuse filter to prevent new users from uploading audio and videos. - The Harvett Vault | he/him | user | talk - 03:26, 8 April 2023 (UTC); edited: 08:14, 9 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

We may consider this in light of meta:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. One feature set being clamored for there consists of a wider set of browser fingerprinting that can differentiate and uniquely identify users/devices. Browser fingerprints and other technical aspects of the editing sessions are currently used by CheckUsers. Elizium23 (talk) 23:55, 8 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]