Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/04

Overwrite a file with another existing file

Hello, last month I uploaded this YT video File:President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Oval Office, Feb. 28, 2025.webm. This was back when v2c isn’t working for YT so I had to manually upload it, but the initial version didn’t had the highest quality possible. Later, I wanted to upload a better quality version but I didn’t know how to overwrite using v2c, so I just tried first to upload it as another file, seen here: File:President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Oval Office, Feb. 28, 2025 (ajxSWocbye8).webm.

I then put it aside when I couldn’t figure how to overwrite, I was only reminded of it recently when it got tagged as duplicate. This version only has a slight quality improvement, so it will be fine if it was deleted, but still I wanted to ask is it possible to overwrite the current version with the slightly better version? Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 21:38, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

1. using v2c, you cant overwrite; you cant even upload to a filename that was once used but then deleted.
2. User talk:Rillke/bigChunkedUpload.js.--RoyZuo (talk) 21:46, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I will try chunked upload and see if it works. Tvpuppy (talk) 22:08, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@Tvpuppy right now with your new intended version already uploaded, the usual approach is let a sysop move the new to the old covering the old, or as you mentioned, "tag as duplicate" and the sysop will do just that. RoyZuo (talk) 22:35, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

I have just successfully reuploaded and overwritten the file using chunked upload, so it worked out as I intended. Thank you for the advice above. Tvpuppy (talk) 22:44, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 22:44, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2025-04

Volunteer staff changes

In March 2025, 1 checkuser was elected; 5 sysops and 1 bureaucrat were removed. Currently, there are 177 sysops, 6 bureaucrats and 4 checkusers.

Election:

• User:The Squirrel Conspiracy was elected (39/0/0) on 20 March.

Removal:

• User:Czar was removed on 13 March due to inactivity. They had served as sysop since 15 May 2016.
• User:Ellin Beltz was removed on 13 March due to inactivity. She had served as sysop since 28 February 2014 and as bureaucrat since 2 June 2015.
• User:Hesperian was removed on 13 March due to inactivity. They had served as sysop since 3 July 2008.
• User:MBisanz was removed on 13 March due to inactivity. He had served as sysop since 3 November 2008.
• User:Storkk was removed on 13 March due to inactivity. He had served as sysop since 1 March 2016.

We thank them for their service.

An appeal to all Commons users: please consider applying to become sysops or nominating users. Departure of multiple sysops exacerbates Commons volunteer staff shortage. Your experience and passion are much needed.

Other news

• Thanks to User:Don-vip, Video2commons was fixed so uploads from Youtube are possible again. This bug impeded Video2commons for approximately two months.

  Video2commons is in need of maintainers. Please help keep it running!

---

Edited by Abzeronow and RoyZuo.

---

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) 06:38, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Sadly it seems v2c just broke for youtube again in the wee hours today. RoyZuo (talk) 11:48, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

It still works. Sometimes one needs to retry (and also refresh page if it just keeps loading). Also it seems like YT (and by extension DuckDuckGo Videos) now also shows nonCCBY videos in the results (for one search I tried at least) even filtering by CCBY but maybe that's just a rare bug. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:52, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Maybe it wasn’t working earlier in the day, but it is still working for me now. I just tried and successfully uploaded couple YT videos using v2c. Tvpuppy (talk) 13:01, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?tagfilter=OAuth+CID%3A+394&title=Special:RecentChanges

i see indeed you imported more just now, but i retried mine and it still failed with the bug "Sign in to confirm you\xe2\x80\x99re not a bot..." :/ RoyZuo (talk) 13:22, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata and Sister Projects: an online event

Hello everyone, I’m writing to announce an upcoming event called Wikidata and Sister Projects that will be a mini online conference to highlight the different ways Wikidata can be connected and integrated with the other WM projects.

We are currently looking for session ideas and speakers for our program and wanted to reach out in case there were any editors here that might have a cool idea for a session proposal. More info and templates for sessions can be found on the event discussion page.

As previously mentioned, we would like to showcase the relationship between Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata and how data such as Commons Categories, Structured Data and depicts information help Wikimedians navigate through the projects and find relevant information and articles.

The event is scheduled between May 29 - June 1st, 2025. If you have any questions about the event, would like more information or have a session idea to propose, please feel free to get in touch by replying to this post or writing on the event page or on my talk page. Thanks for reading, - Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 07:23, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Foreign and non-latin cat name

Hello, I was working on some categories listed in Special:UncategorizedCategories, but I don't know what to do with Category:"Зручне Передмістя @patokovyna". Do we even accept non-English categories? If yes, should the name be romanized? I need an advice. Mikinisk (talk) 10:14, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

@Mikinisk: Invented cat names should be in English. Whatever the name, this should be a user cat. Pinging @Ratskui as sole editor.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 10:39, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I should romanized it either way I guess. Thank you for your ping. Ratskui (talk) 15:30, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

If they are redirects or text, e.g. Category:Жизнь (text), then we certainly do accept them. I've also seen categories for books being written in native script, but I don't know whether that's acceptable (though it might be for old books that have never been translated). For subjects that might not have an English name (e.g. a church in a small village), I tend to either translate the name (if possible) or romanize it. Nakonana (talk) 15:04, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Diff post, 1 April 2025, How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects

I think that this could be interesting here too. WMF just posted a Diff post on how after early 2024 Wikimedia has experienced a 50% increase in bandwidth usage primarily from AI scraper bots collecting training data from their image repositories, with at least 65% of resource-intensive traffic coming from bots. This is not from the WMF posts but i think that situation could be helped if there would be least pre-scaled image repository where to download images instead of hammering the main servers.

• Diff post, 1 April 2025, How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects

--Zache (talk) 12:21, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

See also m:Community_Wishlist/Wishes/Physical Wikimedia Commons media dumps (for backups, AI models, more metadata). Prototyperspective (talk) 13:05, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I've been getting random loading errors here and there for at least the last couple of months. I wonder if the load from AI bots has something to do with it. Hopefully they come up with a way to keep the load from effecting the user experince regardless. Off-site backups and hosting of popular files would certainly help. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:53, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Stoned Fox

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the Wikimedia Foundation office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

• File:Stoned Fox.jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Stoned Fox. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Category search by

Over the months i've developed a couple more Template:Category search by: Special:Prefixindex/Template:Category_search_by, by hour, month, number of direct cats.... you can test them out at for example Category:NASA files uploaded by OptimusPrimeBot. (i will update the older doc later.)

you can add the subtemplates directly to categories for use, so you have many customisation options and can choose what works best for the categories you use. RoyZuo (talk) 19:40, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

How did I edit a cascading protected page?

How did I edit the Picture of the Day, when it clearly says "This page is currently protected, and can be edited only by administrators."? Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 20:26, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I think it only prevents the image being overwritten, it doesn’t prevents edits to the file description. See Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/02#Cascade protection and bullet point 3 on Commons:Village pump/Technical/Archive/2025/03#Tech News: 2025-10. Tvpuppy (talk) 20:57, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Final proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter now posted

The proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and the U4C Charter are now on Meta-wiki for community notice in advance of the voting period. This final draft was developed from the previous two rounds of community review. Community members will be able to vote on these modifications starting on 17 April 2025. The vote will close on 1 May 2025, and results will be announced no later than 12 May 2025. The U4C election period, starting with a call for candidates, will open immediately following the announcement of the review results. More information will be posted on the wiki page for the election soon.

Please be advised that this process will require more messages to be sent here over the next two months.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 02:03, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Recordings more than six days long

Not really long

These files are officially more than six days long. However, if you play them, you hear a single word or phrase, then the recording stops playing. Can anyone guess what's going on with them? Based on the descriptions (which match the recording) and the file sizes (7 KB in each case), the length is erroneous; I'm not concerned that we've lost more than six days of sound. Note that all three are uploads over originals that were 0.0 seconds long (but each original sounds the same as the one that overwrote it); all six versions should probably be something like a second or at least half a second. Nyttend (talk) 19:24, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

It looks as though @TheDJ just fixed these three files. I'll run a Quarry query in a bit to look for other files with similar issues. Omphalographer (talk) 19:55, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

I've found a few more files with similar issues, mostly pronunciations as well. (I wonder if there's an issue with the mobile application which is causing these files to have corrupted lengths.) See quarry:query/92525 for a list. Omphalographer (talk) 23:16, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Apparently really long

File:Eo-plezuro.ogg

This one, on the other hand, may be as long as it says. However, the original upload and the current version both begin with a few words and then go to silence. I don't feel like listening to 163 hours of silence; is there some way to review the file to see if it's just silence the rest of the time? And if it is just silence, is there a way to "crop" it (not sure what the right term is with sound) to just the first few seconds? Note that the file history claims that the original is 0.0 seconds long, but obviously it's not. Nyttend (talk) 19:24, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

This file wasn't actually 163 hours long; it was merely 15 hours and 40 minutes of silence. I've trimmed that off. However, the contents of the file don't even remotely match with the filename - the user reads the words "rondo, sango, sédio, speco", then makes some comments in Portuguese about "How do you pause? Am I pressing the right button?". It would appear that they didn't. Omphalographer (talk) 20:04, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Related: phab:T376137 (FLAC and MID files display a duration of 0 (zero seconds)). Prototyperspective (talk) 13:19, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Architectual style

is there a name for such kind of wall? or what is this pattern called in geometry? RoyZuo (talk) 06:36, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

They aren't the exact same thing but it looks pretty similar to diamond rustication. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:57, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

It reminds me of structures that could be found in the German Democratic Republic, some sort of large commercial building --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:06, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

I just created Category:Bauhaus Berlin Halensee, with two sources as proofs. The sources may give hints to the architectural style and category improvements. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 02:03, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh "sheesh", just found out that there already exists Category:Bauhaus Kurfürstendamm. I'll merge the two. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 02:05, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

List of Endangered US Gov resources

Connecting to older posts, The ArchiveTeam has a list with endangered US Government websites. These shall be downloaded and archived with higher priority: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/US_Government

--PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 20:12, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Default signature

Default signature looks like this

[[User:Example|Example]] ([[User talk:Example|talk]]) Example (talk)

However, also by default, users initially have no user pages.

So, what's the point of default including a red link to the user page, which often is non existent? An effect of this can be seen on Commons talk:Abuse filter, which is full of new users and hence many red links.

Instead of user page, a link to user talk page and a link to Special:Contributions are way more frequently used and useful.

(previously raised: Commons_talk:Administrators#c-RoyZuo-20241101115500-Commander_Keane-20241029164200.)--RoyZuo (talk) 10:07, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The fact that they don't have a user page is informative. - Jmabel ! talk 23:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Most people who lack a user page abandon their accounts shortly after creating one, or participate only very sporadically. For those who do choose to engage long-term, having the user page in their signature provides an easy and natural prompt to create one, and in a way it serves as your "face" on this site - neither the contributions nor talk page serve a purpose similar to this. Removing the user page link from signatures would diminish its visibility, and by extension its role in encouraging community participation. You could make an argument to have the contributions page added to the default signature, but I strongly oppose removing the user page from it. ReneeWrites (talk) 18:16, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

that sounds like circular reasoning for including links to non existent pages. why not let users choose to include the links only after they have created the pages? why make that decision for the users themselves? RoyZuo (talk) 13:06, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

People can already set their signature as they wish, with quite a bit of latitude. But I am saying that I find the current default useful, (and I believe ReneeWrites is saying the same). - Jmabel ! talk 15:22, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

NOAA services going offline soon

Apparently "Services for NOAA will be going offline as soon as tomorrow night. (april 4th)".[1] Some groups are already working on scraping the pages. It would be great if folks could look through the following sites for media and datasets that are worth transferring to Commons (before they disappear):

• https://www.noaa.gov/
• https://research.noaa.gov
• https://epic.noaa.gov
• https://adp.noaa.gov
• https://ci.noaa.gov † → Error 404
• https://oeab.noaa.gov
• https://orta.research.noaa.gov
• https://testbeds.noaa.gov † → Error 404
• https://qosap.research.noaa.gov
• https://oss.research.noaa.gov
• https://eeo.oar.noaa.gov
• https://globalocean.noaa.gov
• https://cpo.noaa.gov
• https://seagrant.noaa.gov
• https://researchprojects.noaa.gov → endangered in operation
• https://pier.seagrant.noaa.gov
• https://drought.gov
• https://viz.pmel.noaa.gov

If you don't live in the U.S., here's some context about what's going on: [2][3][4] Nosferattus (talk) 23:37, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

A mirror of climate.gov (subpage of NOAA.gov) can be found here: https://climate.govarchive.us/ --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:53, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

I am batch downloading some images. I am happy to see people joining :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:58, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Files can be found here: https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES18/

"DownThemAll" can batch download the links --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:59, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

• Additional useful links:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvi7dtWVn6c (Downloading through API via PowerShell) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:55, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Shutdown has been averted, for the moment: https://www.axios.com/2025/04/04/noaa-research-websites-go-dark-saturday-night

I already saved >1,6 TB and more than 530,000 files --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:07, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

@Nosferattus But the danger does not seem to be over yet --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:09, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Office actions/DMCA notices/2022–23

Can I split this into two separate archives (one for 2022 and the other for 2023) for consistency of archived pages, despite 2022 only having one listed DMCA takedown notice?

Note that I first archived both 2022 and 2023 notices into one single page for practicality, even if it may not be consistent with other DMCA page archives. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 09:26, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Just a note, the since 2022 action had a comment from 2023. So would depend on if we archive based on first post date, or by last comment date. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 12:22, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps this is the only instance of a comment that dates the next year (haven't seen such instances in other DMCA notice talk page archives). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 09:02, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

External archive of Commons

Please download the file

https://p-7.eu/MW/H.ASCII

This is an ASCII file of 6.2 MB in size. It contains the MD5 and SHA1 hashes of the backups as of 20 March 2025 of 1007 public wikis of the Wikimedia Foundation (including the German-language and English-language Wikipedia, Wikidata, WikiCommons and all other WikiMedia wikis).

If Wikipedia unexpectedly disappears completely, or if there is a suspicion that Wikipedia and the backups are being falsified, it is possible to use these hashes to verify that backups of Wikipedia from 20 March 2025 are authentic.

Please archive on a data carrier (SDcard, USB stick, DVD, mdisk, paper printout, MicroFiche) that is not connected to a computer, preferably in a fire and flood-proof safe.

Please also follow the account @Data_is@no.pony.farm which is about external archiving of Commons outside the USA. --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 18:41, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for you effort. But it feels a bit exaggerated to me. To have free online works like Wikipedia disappeared is very hard (especially when it has a rather handy size). There are several hoarders who keep copies and backups of Wikipedia snippets or as whole. Kiwix distributes ZIM files that are like snapshots of Wikipedia. Caution is good, but we should not fear the worst :). Anyway I downloaded all featured pictures on Commons some weeks ago, which make up around 350 gigabytes. For example, the university of Erlangen in Germany has copies of Wikipedias that are up-to-date (https://ftp.fau.de/kiwix/zim/wikipedia/) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:17, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

If Wikipedia unexpectedly disappears completely, or if there is a suspicion that Wikipedia and the backups are being falsified, it is possible to use these hashes to verify that backups of Wikipedia from 20 March 2025 are authentic.

Backups aren't public: they are kept in private by WMF (for a good reason, since they contain truly private information). Public dumps can be downloaded by anyone, and are copied to several mirrors worldwide. The problem is that media files are excluded from them, and there are no media dumps for now. But maybe an important part of the files in Commons is already stored offline by people even more paranoid than me :-)

This page contains useful information for mass downloading files from Commons, if anyone is interested.

In any case, both these current worries and the AI bot activity that is affecting Commons (I don't know if anyone has already talked about it here, but it might be an interesting topic), are good reasons, I think, to have media dumps in place again (Commons size has increased a lot, but it's sad to think that for a brief period around 2012 there were media dumps, and now there aren't). MGeog2022 (talk) 15:44, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons is already on the radar of the archive team, but I don't have information about the status. But it's true, the remaining of files and data must be discussed broadly, as they are very precious. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:00, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

It feels like data hoarders could soon be the heroes of tomorrow, when many people realizing how many files are/were at risk --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:08, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Specific kind of tiling meant for car parking

what category fits? RoyZuo (talk) 22:55, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Category:Outdoor car parks, Category:Public car parks shouldn't be totally wrong. --Enyavar (talk) 23:23, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I would call these "pavers": paver (Q3328263), and following the category tree there is actually Category:Concrete paving slabs in Germany with one file already in it! No Category:Pavers by application that I could see though. I don't think it is a public car park, as it has a number so it belongs to somebody. Commander Keane (talk) 00:55, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

thx a lot! i will put it somewhere under such existing cats but not create new ones since there's Commons:Categories for discussion/2019/12/Category:Pavements (architecture). RoyZuo (talk) 07:59, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Help update wikis to 4.0

Hi! I have noticed that many wikis still mention CC-BY-SA-3.0 and some even still mention GFDL. I have tried to fix all the wikis I noticed but it is a big task to check all 860+ wikis and it is easier for someone who speak the language to check and fix.

So if you speak Foo it would be a big help if you could check foo.wiki and check if the relevant pages mention CC-BY-SA-4.0.

I imagine there can be pages like m:Meta:Copyrights, Template:File_license and v:it:MediaWiki:Edittools. So there are several namespaces that could be relevant to search in.

I also started Phab:T390898 and someone was kind and suggested https://global-search.toolforge.org/?q=%22License+3.0%22&namespaces=&title= but other ideas are welcome too.

If the wiki allow upload of files then MediaWiki:Licenses should also mention 4.0 instead of 3.0 (and if possible not GFDL-only). --MGA73 (talk) 15:51, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

A new Phab:T391176 has been created and as I understand it a few pages on Commons may be deleted because of it. For example MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning/sk. --MGA73 (talk) 12:44, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

British mailbox outside the uk

i'm not sure how to categorise File:(20250309) Sankt Augustin 10.jpg, or how to set sdc. RoyZuo (talk) 11:44, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I'd just note that there are cast iron mail boxes with royal ciphers elsewhere in the world (e.g.), so is there a chance that this is from some British colony rather than the UK? Sam Wilson 12:02, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

It's in Germany. Nakonana (talk) 12:07, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Place it in Category:Red post boxes in Germany, there are other British post boxes like this in that category. --Cart (talk) 12:22, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Not all red post boxes are British; not all British post boxes are red. There are many British post boxes around the world (even if the many in Ireland are discounted). A specific category would seem sensible. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:56, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Syrian flags again

File:Flag of Syria (2025-).svg and File:Flag of Syria (2025-) (stars variant).svg are currently in Category:Flag of Syria (1932–1958, 1961–1963), which seems wrong to me. The former seems to have been introduced at this anonymous edit 11 January 2025 and the latter at this 28 June 2023 edit by Illegitimate Barrister, respectively. The latter at least made some sense at a time when no internationally recognized entity was using the flag, but I think is a poor choice now that this is the current official flag of the country. Either we need to rename the category to include the current period, or we should have a separate category for the current period. - Jmabel ! talk 18:28, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Illegitimate Barrister has now moved the second file to File:Flag of Syria (2024–present, stars variant).svg, which introduces a disharmony in the file naming (something I had been trying to avoid). Abzeronow (talk) 19:51, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@Abzeronow: I think that should be moved back. The 2025 date was discussed, and is the date of de jure adoption. No one user should change that without building a new consensus. - Jmabel ! talk 20:13, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

 Done Move has been reverted. And your reasoning was included in the message. Abzeronow (talk) 20:23, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I also added entire protection for move and overwriting to prevent further problems. GPSLeo (talk) 07:28, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Help with trimming a video

Sorry if this is the wrong place to request this. I couldn't find any other obvious venue...
Would anyone be able to trim the last minute off of this video file: File:The Flower with Seven Colors (1948).webm? The original is at [5] if that helps at all. Nosferattus (talk) 02:38, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

The free tool LosslessCut allows to trim the video to the desired length --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:30, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: If you need someone else to do it for you, Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop is the best place to ask. - Jmabel ! talk 18:11, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I made the request at Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop instead. Nosferattus (talk) 21:57, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Weird sorting at Category:Museums in Italy by city

The subcats in this category are sorted by the name of the city they are for. However, when I look at the category, I see the subcats for cities starting with the letter "I" first, before the subcats for cities starting with the letter "A".

I've tried several things to get the "I" categories to move to their correct place -- null edits, retyping the sort key, retyping the entire category with sort key (in case there was a non-displayable character or something), clearing the cache after trying the above -- but I can't get things to sort correctly. Could someone take a look at this? Thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 04:36, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Category:Museums in Iglesias (Italy) has a corrupted sort key in the database which is almost certainly the cause of this issue: quarry:run/965547/output/0/html. I've tried making a dummy edit to that category page but it doesn't seem to have helped. Omphalographer (talk) 20:55, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@Omphalographer: It seems strange that one corrupted sort key would make all the I-ones sort wrong. -- Auntof6 (talk) 00:27, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

@Omphalographer: I fixed it, thanks to your clue. I deleted the category altogether from Category:Museums in Iglesias (Italy). Then the other I-ones sorted correctly. Then I added the category back and everything looks good now.

How did you determine that the sort key was bad? -- Auntof6 (talk) 00:30, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

I ran a database query on Quarry to view the internal representation of the sort keys for the category. You can see the query and its results at quarry:history/84386/995708/965547 - notice the garbage in the row for Iglesias. (This is a saved result from when I first ran the query - there's a newer result at quarry:history/84386/995730/965569, and as you'll see there, Iglesias now has a sensible sort key.) Omphalographer (talk) 01:14, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

@Omphalographer: Cool. Thanks for your help with this! -- Auntof6 (talk) 02:26, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Feature Pictures 2025, Chronological, February listing is strange

Hi! What is going on here?. February is duplicate, at least partially. Is there wrong code in the sub-template of January?This listing is listing a month and a half.--Paracel63 (talk) 16:15, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

It’s probably a mistake, I removed the duplicate February listings from the January page. Tvpuppy (talk) 19:49, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Web page for torrents of US Gov and other free media

If you need already shut down governmental ressources, you may find them at: https://sciop.net/uploads/. The web page offers several terabytes of potentially endangered data, but also frames of Blender films or Wikipedia dumps. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:46, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Categories by artist and by country

• Category:Sculptures by country by artist
• Category:Sculptures by artist by country

These two categories confuse me a lot. Which is relevant in the case of: sorting out categories of public art by Category:Anastacio Caedo? We do have some images of his Dr. Jose Rizal monument in Germany, so I just created Category:Statue of Jose Rizal (Wilhelmsfeld), and I'm planning to specify the artist's category further into two subcategories: one for the Philippines (to include Category:MacArthur's Landing (Anastacio Caedo, 1981)) and the other for Germany. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 03:13, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I just created Category:Sculptures in the Philippines by artist (and will plan creating categories for "Sculptures by Anastacio Caedo in Germany" and "Sculptures by Anastacio Caedo in the Philippines"), but I dunno if this is an appropriate categorization for this case. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 03:17, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Nevermind, I have understood. Will use the subcategories of German ones as guides for categorization.

• Sculptures in the Philippines by artist: would be filled with subcategories like "Sculptures by Anastacio Caedo in the Philippines", "Sculptures by Eduardo Castrillo in the Philippines" etc. -> under "Category:Sculptures by artist by country"
• Category:Sculptures by country by artist" - like "Category:Sculptures by Anastacio Caedo by country" and then "Sculptures by Anastacio Caedo in Germany", "Sculptures by Anastacio Caedo in the Philippines" etc..

Got it.

This section was archived on a request by: 12:40, 14 April 2025 (UTC) JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 12:40, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Fastest way to find the category/item for geotagged photos？

I upload a photo that's geotagged by gps. it shows clearly what the subject is.

now i need to find what the category/wd item for that subject is so i can add it. how do you do that in the most efficient way?

i'm doing this right now and find it tedious:

1. ctrl click coord in {{Location}} (1st new tab)
2. ctrl+f wikishootme
3. ctrl click (2nd new tab)
4. zoom in wikishootme and find the thing i'm looking for
5. click and it opens the category/wd item (3rd new tab)
6. copy the name and go back to my photo to add it.

i think the process would be streamlined if mw:Extension:Kartographer could display "nearby categories" by default, then i imagine i can find the category name by 1 click, at most 2 clicks. RoyZuo (talk) 10:50, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Is there any definition of the categories that can do that for you? The Wikidata entry may have coordinates, but the relevant categories may be on country, province or municipality level (or something else, like parish) – the neighbouring municipality usually has coordinates closer than the country. For some of these entities, there are geoshapes in OSM, which would tell whether the subcategories of it are relevant for the location, but the tool then needs to find and propagate the "is in" to any (?) subcategories. The category tree often isn't straight forward.

I don't know whether needed computational effort is too big or if this only requires writing the code (categories that cannot be automatically bound to the location would still be ignored – but listing subcategories, like the Upload Wizard, would help).

–LPfi (talk) 07:03, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

for example File:Arrow in Ho's residence.jpg.

i use my 6 steps to arrive at Category:Ho Residence, Pak Sha O Ho Residence, Pak Sha O (Q15936448).

Kartographer already can show "nearby articles", but on commons they show galleries, which are not commonly created, and not what we use for categorisation / depicts.

there's already the coord on the page. i'd like an easier method to get from the coord to a view of items around it. RoyZuo (talk) 14:54, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I assume you won't find Category:Dogs in Hong Kong and its subcategories, as the coordinates for Hong Kong aren't close enough. I was referring to that kind of categories, which in many cases are more important than categories of the more specific location. –LPfi (talk) 10:41, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Copyright of dioramas

What are the rules of dioramas on Commons. I have a photo of a castle model located in Polish museum, it was based on old drawing and some old documents from XVI century. I see a lot of Dioramas in Category:Dioramas in museums is there some official statement about them? Can I upload my diorama to commons? Jakub T. Jankiewicz (talk) 21:48, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't know what the general practice is on here, but I've felt like dioramas should have to follow the same rules for freedom of panorama as anything else. If these statues of Nazi soldiers were outside then the photograph would clearly be a copyright violations per Norway's freedom of panorama laws. There's also Commons:Derivative_works#TOYS. But for some reason they get a pass "because diorama." I really don't see any reason why such images should be allowed on here though. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:58, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

In terms of FOP, indoor works are not covered in Poland. Abzeronow (talk) 23:20, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jcubic: How old is the diorama itself? - Jmabel ! talk 23:53, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel I don't think that it's old enough to have the copyright expired. Jakub T. Jankiewicz (talk) 10:58, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I have some other diorama pictures. The original dioramas are old (1910-ish?), but they were restored and modified to some – unknown – extent in the 1980s or so. These include stuffed animals, arranged foreground landscapes (stones, shrubs etc.) and background paintings. I assume the original settings were respected; would slight improvements be enough for a new copyright (this is Finland)? –LPfi (talk) 07:14, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I can't say anything definitive, except that usually when something is refurbished, the changes aren't creative enough to generate a new copyright. - Jmabel ! talk 18:10, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I understand it is hard to say anything more without before/after images. –LPfi (talk) 08:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Additional wishes in Permission field

I stumbled upon File:Erlend Apneseth Kongsberg Jazzfestival 2018 (181337).jpg which is properly licensed and templated as CC BY-SA 4.0. However in the Permission field in the information template User:Toresetre/PhotoreleaseTore-CC BY-SA 4.0 is used which asks for more favors than the license requires (in particular, making it looking like a CC BY-ND license). As this is under the heading Permission, it may be confusing for reusers. Do we have any documented policy about this? I found an old and slightly similar discussion about home-brewed licenses but this seems to perhaps dodge it by having a regular license template as well. Ainali (talk) 07:15, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

@Ainali: Please see the COM:USER#Regarding licenses guideline.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 09:21, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) The licensing seems invalid. The "I kindly ask" seems to apply only to the rest of that sentence, while "Credit […] in the immediate vicinity of the image" seems to restrict the ways to attribute from what the CC licences say (3 a 2: "in any reasonable manner based…"). Additional requirements are not allowed.

Thus, either one needs to comply, in which case the file isn't CC licensed, or one can ignore the additional text. I think we should ask Toresetre whether they want to remove the CC licence or change their template to clearly state its content is a friendly request, not a requirement.

–LPfi (talk) 09:24, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

See also COM:USER#Not acceptable. –LPfi (talk) 09:25, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Oversighter not available

Hi, I sent a request by email (to oversight-commons@lists.wikimedia.org) 2 days ago, but no answer so far. What's happening? Yann (talk) 10:36, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

I think they do not prioritize cases where the content is already hidden with regular admin deletion/hiding. GPSLeo (talk) 12:45, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Still, they need to reply. In the English Wikipedia I always get a reply within 24h, typically much faster, something like a few hours, Ymblanter (talk) 17:59, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Red links

Any red links on commons should not open that page in the editor automatically. unlike other wiki projects, commons users dont ususally create pages by writing a text but by uploading a file. as Special:Statistics shows, the majority of pages are in file namespace.

on wikidata, for example https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q124150929&action=edit&redlink=1 is what i get from clicking a red link to an item. the url is "action=edit" but it doesnt open up the wikitext editor, i guess due to wikidata's special page structure and some local mechanisms?

(previously raised: Commons_talk:Administrators#c-RoyZuo-20241101115500-Commander_Keane-20241029164200.) RoyZuo (talk) 10:07, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@RoyZuo: what you are saying is true of "File" space on Commons, as on any other project. Of course, we use "File" space a lot more than other projects, but is there any other page space on Commons of which this is true? - Jmabel ! talk 23:20, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Another use case is red link categories. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Example without opening the editor automatically, you can start using hotcat, but hotcat doesnt work if you click Category:Example and land on the editor.

This could even become a setting, so users can choose the default behaviour of opening red links. RoyZuo (talk) 05:15, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Re:Hotcat, since I always create new categories by hand-editing, the current behavior is better for me. - Jmabel ! talk 20:24, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I also use redlinks to create or sometimes mark categories for future creation (and it sometimes irks me when those are removed because it makes it more difficult to create the category when I'm ready). Abzeronow (talk) 23:54, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

HotCat used to work on undefined categories, but it hasn't for some time. -- Auntof6 (talk) 02:17, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

what's wrong with Special:Transcode_statistics ?

Hi all, in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Video there is a call to -> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Transcode_statistics but no response is received, with following timeout report :

Le délai d’attente du serveur a été dépassé
Le temps de requête maximal de 60 secondes a été dépassé.
[93e526fa-9c6f-4b93-8dd1-12525ff4f3f8] 2025-04-09 10:51:25: Erreur fatale de type « Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\RequestTimeoutException »

Can someone realign or suppress the reference in the page ? Thanks.

-- Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 10:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

@Wladek92 This query needs that entire database table to be redesigned, the query is super inefficient. There’s a ticket about it somewhere. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:59, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Investigating a bit about the behaviour I see it takes a long time to reply. BUT it works if I call the result in a NEW tab of the browser (on desktop, or on tablette). Here for FR version of page Special:Transcode_statistics :

Statistiques de transcodage

7 184 734 transcodages

281 079 Vidéo QuickTime (144p MJPEG)

342 750 Petit VP9 (240p)

318 794 VP9 (360p)

342 841 WebM (360p)

300 126 VP9 SD (480p)

246 612 VP9 HD (720p)

116 167 VP9 HD complet (1080p)

3 703 695 MP3

1 532 670 Ogg Vorbis

224 transcodages en cours

12 Vidéo QuickTime (144p MJPEG)

12 Petit VP9 (240p)

12 VP9 (360p)

13 WebM (360p)

9 VP9 SD (480p)

9 VP9 HD (720p)

6 VP9 HD complet (1080p)

76 MP3

75 Ogg Vorbis

-- Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 09:57, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Promenade des Anglais, Nice

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the Wikimedia Foundation office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

• File:Promenade des Anglais, Nice.jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Promenade des Anglais, Nice. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 20:39, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Clarification on OECD's new licensing policy and compatibility with Commons

Hello everyone,

After a brief discussion] on pt.wikisource, I'm bringing this question here for the Commons community to weigh in. I’d like to clarify the compatibility of OECD publications with Commons’ licensing requirements, particularly for documents published before July 2024.

The OECD recently updated its Terms and Conditions as part of a wider policy change toward Open Access, retroactively applying the following permissions for pre-July 2024 content:

   Use, copying, and distribution: Free for commercial and non-commercial purposes, provided the original source is cited: "OECD (year), Title, URL."
   Adaptations: Allowed (commercial or non-commercial), but without the OECD logo/visual identity. Must include: "Adapted from OECD work. The views expressed do not represent the official OECD or its member countries' views."
   Non-commercial translations: Permitted without prior authorization (no OECD visuals). Requires: "In case of discrepancy, the original text prevails."
   Commercial translations: "you must request authorisation to translate OECD written content published before 1 July 2024 for commercial purposes.  Please send your request to comrights[at]oecd.org with the title of the OECD publication and the name and address of the entity requesting authorisation. If granted, authorisation will be free of charge. No exclusive rights will be granted."

For post-July 2024 content, the OECD now uses CC BY 4.0 as the standard. Questions:

• Do pre-July 2024 documents (e.g., 2007 Open Science Declaration) meet Commons’ licensing standards, given the non-commercial restriction on translations?
• For post-July 2024 CC BY 4.0 content, are there any additional requirements for upload? Should there be a specific license tag for OECD files?

Thanks in advance for any insights! Parzeus (talk) 18:11, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

The restrictions on reuse - even just for commercial translations - place this squarely in the category of "non-free". Omphalographer (talk) 19:46, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@Parzeus Mistis Maids (talk) 22:56, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

But for images with no translatable text, there seems to be no restrictions other than to remove the "OECD logo/visual identity". A derivative with those removed would be free. The attribution requirement and the note on not representing the OECD seem fine. –LPfi (talk) 10:46, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Partial Spoken Wikipedia audio

Please help moving files from Category:Spoken Wikipedia articles by language subcats into Category:Spoken Wikipedia of parts or simplified versions of articles subcats.

I noticed the former has audios of the narrations of only parts of articles such as their lede mixed with no distinction whether the audios are a (near-)complete read only a small part.

If these are separated, one can for example more easily see which articles have (not) yet been read in full and signify for the uses of the respective audios that it's just a part of the article – e.g. if they're used in Wikidata items or Wikipedia articles.

If you know of a way to more easily find them, that would be helpful.
Apparently one can't sort the files by duration (also note that it may take a day or so until the short Dutch pronunciation audio aren't in the search results anymore of deepcategory:"Spoken Wikipedia articles by language").
Also copying files to the Category:Audio files of 2005 etc cats would also be useful to enable querying for the year they were made.
Maybe I'll also add this to Commons:Categorization requests.
Prototyperspective (talk) 13:07, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

As far as I can see not even one file or one subcategory has been added so far but there's many of these on Commons, all currently undistinguished from audios that read the full or nearly the full Wikipedia articles. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Batch uploading

Is Commons:Batch uploading as badly backlogged as it appears to be? Is anyone working on requested uploads? Is it worthwhile to post new requests there? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:35, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Too bad we let Fae get harassed off the project :( Nosferattus (talk) 22:00, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. The problem is sometimes a very sophisticated programmer is needed who is fluent in programming languages, scraping needed information and knowledge about how to build up a bot. So I guess it's highly dependent on what resources need to be transferred --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:28, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing I've it on my list of to-do https://github.com/DaxServer/wikibots ;) -- DaxServer (talk) 20:30, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Consistent author credit in structured data

Is there any way I can get the structured-data "creator" credits for my photos that I've uploaded via Flickr (e.g. File:Fremont Solstice Parade 2024 - participants waiting for the parade to start 009 (53825059864).jpg) to match those I've uploaded directly to Commons (e.g. File:Seattle - Skid Road Theatre 02.jpg)? I would really prefer to be identified as a single "creator", not two distinct creators. It would also be nice if I had a way to mass-apply that credit to the videos in Category:Videos by Joe Mabel. - Jmabel ! talk 18:18, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I think it can be done with AC/DC but the first thing is to remove creator (P170) individually (If I try to add the new one and remove the old one at the same time it removes both). Then add creator (P170), right click the 3 dots on the side and select "Some value" and copy/paste the right values  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   21:16, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

It amuses me that a bot has tagged thousands of my photos "creator=some value; URL=https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pigsonthewing; author name string= Andy Mabbett" when there is an easily-findable Wikidata item about me, which links to my user page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:07, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

@999real: there is no way in the world that I am going to go through thousands of images by hand. I'm looking for an automated method. - Jmabel ! talk 03:57, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

AC/DC is for batch edits to structured data, it can load a whole category at once or 500 at a time from search (by select all the files in Cat-a-lot and then open AC/DC it will load them).

Let me know if you would like me to do it for you.  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   10:03, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

@999real: that would be great, but unless it is easy to do this more than once you should probably hold up a little, because CuratorBot seems still to be adding more of these. - Jmabel ! talk 23:04, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

It looks like it is working on files from Flickr so I have added the "creator" SD to files in Category:Videos by Joe Mabel  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   23:18, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel I'm updating CuratorBot to update the SDC. Do you want the "Flickr user ID" P3267 qualifier removed or to be left alone there? -- DaxServer (talk) 08:04, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

@DaxServer: Thanks. I just want this to include something consistent with the way SD has chosen to represent my normal uploads, so that someone searching for my uploads will not fail to find those that came in by other routes. I don't really care what additional information it may or may not have. If I really had my druthers, I'd want a Wikidata item for myself to be used as the author of these, but I take it that I would have to be more "notable" for that to happen. - Jmabel ! talk 18:28, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Sporadic errors "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError" on Commons

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T390510

I put the reports on -> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bistro#bizarre_-%3E_MediaWiki_internal_error Maybe someone has seen the same behaviour. Action was when returning back from FR updated translated message page on to the generated FR page of an article. Thanks. -- Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 11:06, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, same here. It was a few seconds around the time of Special:Diff/1019262854 for me. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 12:06, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

I saw such problems on other projects too, so it's not Commons-specific. EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:14, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

None observed on MediaWiki where I spend most of my time. Commons is the first case I met. Which are theses projects concretly you have met ? -- Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 13:06, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I've been getting random errors for at least a couple of weeks now. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:55, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Most likely it is https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T390510 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:08, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

What is the best way to get the native resolution from a single page at Google Books

What is the best way to get the native resolution from a single page at Google Books without downloading it as a pdf? https://www.google.com/books/edition/Official_Register_of_the_United_States/M_ZQAQAAMAAJ (page 460) I get this resolution with the clip feature which is less than I can see on screen. File:Official Register of the United States (1883), page 460.png --RAN (talk) 19:59, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I right clicked and open image in new tab and got 1024 x 1471 (https://files.catbox.moe/s6oikh.png), but it does not really seem any more readable  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   12:10, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

File:Ismael Cala (63587723).jpeg

Some people are dealing with uncategorized files and I popped into this one. I've found who is Ismael Cala, and there's a category. But the picture is signed by the photographer in the very middle. I don't know if that's enough to ask for a deletion. Is it? B25es (talk) 15:58, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Courtesy link: File:Ismael Cala (63587723).jpeg.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:12, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @DarwIn as uploader.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:14, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

What would be the deletion rationale? The source link isn't dead, you can see that the license is valid. Sure watermarks are discouraged but the license permits to edit the image as one pleases so anyone can remove it if they feel like it. Nakonana (talk) 17:15, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

@B25es Watermarks are only significative if they somehow interfere with the educative use of the image. I can't see how it would be the case here. And on top of it, from the tags we can see it even documents the writer in a specific event, "Make It Happen Venezuela". Darwin ^Ahoy! 21:50, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Ok then! If it's fine, it's fine. B25es (talk) 07:30, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Ismael Cala (63587723) (cropped)

Here you go. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:15, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

AI tools to improve or edit images at Commons

Are there any AI tools to improve or edit images at Commons possible to use? Eurohunter (talk) 11:09, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: Please see COM:AI.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 11:21, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Almost anything you are likely to do with AI will be viewed as a detriment, not an improvement. - Jmabel ! talk 16:13, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

What sorts of improvement or editing are you trying to achieve? Your question as is feels like a solution in search of a problem; you should instead start by identifying a problem and then see if there is a solution. – BMacZero (🗩) 16:15, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

More often than not, AI edits don't improve images. Especially when trying to upscale or to sharpen old photocopied images, and especially when it comes to images of humans. --Animalparty (talk) 22:22, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Administrator conduct expectations and desysopping

This is a follow-up to Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2025/02#Expanding an explanation on the De-adminship policy and meta:Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Cases/A.Savin#Motions.

I agree that the change previously proposed shouldn't have been made (if for no other reason than we don't have or seem to want an ArbCom). But I think some changes are warranted: both in their own right, and to address the U4C's concerns. I've made a proposal below. Some commentary:

• It is much more minimal than the previous proposal.
• It also doesn't say outright that the standards for administrator conduct are/ought to be higher than for non-admins: I think that would be more appropriate to say in either COM:Civility or COM:A than the de-adminship policy. That said, if this is a community expectation (as I hope it is), the final bullet would cover it.
• I added the word "egregiously", as if an admin acts badly enough on one occasion, I think the community ought to have the power to de-admin them. (Of course, if e.g. the community is persuaded that it won't happen again, the community doesn't have to de-admin them.)
• The logistics, including the requirement of some consensus at a prior discussion, are unchanged from the current policy.

Here are the changes. The left is the current policy, the right is my proposal.

−

== De-adminship process as a result of abuse of power == In the rare case that the community feels that an administrator is acting against policy and routinely abusing their status, it may seek de-adminship in the same way as adminship is sought. Please note this process should ''only'' be used for serious offenses in which there seems to be some consensus for removal; for individual grievances, please use [[Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems]]. De-adminship requests that are opened without prior discussion leading to some consensus for removal may be closed by a bureaucrat as inadmissible. [[Commons:Administrators/Archive|Previous cases]] may provide some guidance.

+

== De-adminship due to misconduct == In the rare case that the community feels that an administrator should lose their adminship because they routinely or egregiously: * abuse their status as an administrator, * violate Commons policy, * violate the [[wikimedia:Universal Code of Conduct|Universal Code of Conduct]], or * otherwise violate community expectations of administrators it may seek de-adminship in the same way as adminship is sought. Please note this process should ''only'' be used for serious offenses in which there seems to be some consensus for removal; for individual grievances, please use [[Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems]]. De-adminship requests that are opened without prior discussion leading to some consensus for removal may be closed by a bureaucrat as inadmissible. [[Commons:Administrators/Archive|Previous cases]] may provide some guidance.

Thoughts? —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 23:00, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

(Pinging previous discussion participants: @Wilfredor, Bedivere, Alachuckthebuck, DarwIn, and Barkeep49: . —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 23:00, 12 April 2025 (UTC))

I highly doubt that this proposed change will be accepted, especially considering active administrators voting or involvement in the discussion. Additionally, there's already an excessive reliance on the UCC. Personally, I believe that fewer rules would significantly benefit the project, and ideally, fewer administrators as well. Unfortunately, Wikipedia/commons has increasingly become more bureaucratic, burdened by countless rules, templates, and individuals compulsively adding unnecessary templates in the usertalks. I imagine this observation applies broadly to Wikipedia in general. Please refrain from pinging me about this issue in the future. I'm not interested in sparking any controversy; I'm already aware that my viewpoints can be particularly polarizing. --Wilfredor (talk) 23:11, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

It's much better worder now @Mdaniels5757. I support this proposal. Bedivere (talk) 23:13, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I also support this proposal. I don't see this as excessive reliance on the UCC, merely putting our guidelines more in line with it, a criticism from U4C which has jurisdiction here as we as a community do not want a ArbCom. One of the things about the amount of rules we have is that this project supports more than 200 others, so some things here would have a big impact on other projects. Abzeronow (talk) 23:44, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping:

Regarding Wilfredor's point about rules: We have shockingly few rules outside of copyright and rules that apply across all project considering our impact, and we don't have enough admins, we currently need about 200 more just to handle the flickr LR queue as it is. This doesn't include the catch all LR catagory that's over 100k files at this point. We also need at least 3 dedicated admins to rewrite our abusefilters for temporary accounts, as IP edit checks will all break because temp accounts have age now. As to our opinions regarding UCC, If our policy on a topic is just meeting UCC, we should try to stay well above it, the UCC is a bare minimum, not a maximum . Do admins have a en:w:SUPERVOTE on commons? Maybe, but they are also the most respected users on commons, that's why they are the admins.

As to the actual text, routinely should be repeatedly, because while admins aren't perfect, a pattern of repeated misuse is a indication they shouldn't have the tools.

All the Best -- Chuck ^Talk 00:43, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

•  Support Although IMO a good percentage of what instigated this whole thing was because of admins playing defense for A.Savin, not the lack of a process for desysopping an admin per se. Whatever helps though. But it's not like the same circling of the wagons can't, or won't occur, if this is approved. Administrators need to stop giving each other a free pass when it comes to bad behavior. Otherwise this will just be toothless. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:44, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

What do you have in mind with the „otherwise violate community expectations“ point? I want to avoid that people who do not like the outcome of a deletion decision where a majority supported keeping the file but the admin deleted it demand sanctions based on this. Maybe we should add that acting against majority in some cases especially deletion requests is no violation of community expectations. GPSLeo (talk) 05:59, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@GPSLeo I agree that desysopping should be unavailable in that case. But the community expects and wants admins to have a w:en:WP:SUPERVOTE where policy is being violated (see Commons:Deletion requests#Overview and the last bullet in Commons:Guide to adminship#Checklist of stuff you should know), and an admin who does so is meeting -- not violating -- community expectations. So I don't think that that there would even be "some consensus" for removal at the required prior discussion in that case.

What I have in mind is behavior that doesn't violate *policy*, but isn't acceptable coming from an admin (or, often, anyone else). For example, edit warring isn't technically prohibited by policy (although the blocking policy says that people can be blocked for it). But desysopping could be warranted for an admin who repeatedly gets into edit wars, even if they don't abuse the tools while doing so. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 15:54, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons is permanently lacking active admins, new applications are rare, backlogs on some tasks are months if not years old, while we are now going to desysop admins for having called someone an asshole? Did I understand correctly? --A.Savin 19:29, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

That is my understanding of current consensus, with the bar being a little higher than calling someone an asshole, but yes, that is the situation. All the Best -- Chuck ^Talk 19:36, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

I appreciate the ping. This conversation is ultimately up for the Commons community to decide so I will be following this discussion but do not plan to weigh in substantively. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:29, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

 Support. Convenience links: change location section and WMF UCC. For the text Alachuckthebuck suggested that "routinely" should be "repeatedly" - that is minor but fine.

Directly below the proposed change it says Although the process is not a vote, normal standards for determining consensus in an RfA do not apply which could be simplified to "The normal standards for determining consensus in an RfA do not apply".

In the removal section of COM:A it currently says administrator rights may be revoked due to inactivity or misuse of sysop tools which needs to be updated.

A single instance of calling someone an "asshole" isn't repeated or egregious in my opinion - but that can be decided in a discussion. And we shouldn't have editors running to meta every time they have a grievance. Admins may have to work a little more on communication techniques. Commander Keane (talk) 09:02, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Renaming multiple files

Hi, I uploaded a few photos of cows yesterday, but I've realized that I had put incorrect information about their breed in the file names. Is there some sort of gadget that would let me mark all the files for rename at once without placing {{rename}} on every page manually? Mikinisk (talk) 11:02, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@Mikinisk: Hi, and welcome. If you are comfortable with regex, you can use VFC for that or User:Jeff G./massrename is available for filemovers.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 11:16, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

If you are not comfortable with using regex but the files follow the same naming pattern, you could still use VFC by loading your own uploas and choosing the option "prepend any text" and add the {{Rename}} template (with filled out parameters) to all selected files, plus, a note that the file mover should add a different number to each file name so that the files have different names. Nakonana (talk) 11:44, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@Nakonana: Have you done this before? How was the reception from the filemover(s)? What wording did you use?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:04, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

No, I haven't done this before, but it sounds doable to me? Would the renaming process be any/significantly different for a file mover if one would manually add the renaming template to each file instead? It would still be the same amount of files that need to be renamed, and file movers don't always use the name one suggests anyway, so I think it's reasonable to make such a request? Maybe there's even some mechanism that automatically prevents file movers to rename a file to a file name that already exists, so that it would be clear that a number needs to be added for any subsequent file?

Would your masserename tool be helpful for such a task by any chance?

As for wording, maybe something like {{rename|1=Cow.jpg |2=3 |3=Please note that I've tagged several files for renaming with the target file name always being "Cow.jpg". When moving the tagged files, please add a number to the target file name to prevent overwriting, e.g. "Cow 1.jpg", Cow 2.jpg" etc.}}. Nakonana (talk) 16:33, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

I can't tell what your example is meant to illustrate. Do you not have a "Move" command on the file pages when you see them? As a non-filemover, what that tab will do is to make a move (rename) request.

If, as this appears, this is only 4 or 5 files, it is unlikely anyone will use a massrename tool. You have already expended more words here than it would have taken to describe exactly what renaming you want. If you can just say what you want changed, it will save everybody a lot of time. - Jmabel ! talk 20:28, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Jeff asked me what wording I'd use, so I answered. I don't know why my reply is suddenly being listed as a response to your comment rather than Jeff's comment -- it was displaying correctly earlier. I also didn't check how many files Mikinisk was talking about before I replied to Jeff and assumed that there must be a lot. You have already expended more words here than it would have taken to describe exactly what renaming you want. If you can just say what you want changed, it will save everybody a lot of time. Are you confusing me for the OP??? I didn't open this thread, I'm merely responding to it. It's not me who wants to have files renamed but Mikinisk. Mikinisk only made a single post in this thread, and my lengthy message was to answers the questions that Jeff directed at me with a ping. I'm going to fix the thread order again, so that my previous comment shows up as a response to Jeff again rather than to your post. Nakonana (talk) 20:51, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I think I'll use VFC with wording similar to that proposed by you in the future (of course when I'll have reasonably high number of files to rename). Mikinisk (talk) 04:51, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

It looks like you only have five uploads in total; surely you can mark them up by hand. - Jmabel ! talk 16:12, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Of course I could, I'm just lazy :) + I wanted to know a way to do this faster just in case I need to tag more than 4 files in the future. They are already renamed, thank you for it @Hjart. Mikinisk (talk) 05:04, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Question regarding maps on tl|Wikidata Infobox

So, something I've been wondering about. Is there anything special you need to do (here or in Wikidata) to have the area of a...well, area display on the OpenStreetMap display in {{Wikidata Infobox}}? Compare the infoboxes in Category:Tiger Bay State Forest to Category:Plank Road State Forest. I'd like the latter to be like the former, but don't know if there's something I need to do or if it's just "it will do it if it has the data". Thanks! The Bushranger (talk) 03:15, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

You need to link the object on OpenStreetMap to the Wikidata item. GPSLeo (talk) 10:45, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Ah, so it's on the OSM side of things. I've never poked around there. Thanks for the tip. - The Bushranger (talk) 20:46, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Urgent advice required re false images in Commons and Wikidata

Hi everyone,

I’d appreciate some advice, please.

There are a few images of my client on Commons and Wikidata that were modified in a malicious way to cause emotional stress. The original Flickr images have been made private, but we can no longer reach the user for deletion.

We have photos taken at the same event that clearly show the subject in a completely different context from the version uploaded, which appears to have been significantly altered.

Is there any way to have these removed under these circumstances? Any guidance would be really appreciated.

Thanks so much, Monique — Preceding unsigned comment added by MoniqueB1987 (talk • contribs) 10:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

If it is related to Category:Rebecca Wang, "modified in a malicious way" probably means cropped. I'm not a big fan of uploading bad quality pictures, but it's clearly not a malicious way to cause emotional stress to your client. This case is clearly not urgent because you already obtained answers from the community on March. Pyb en résidence (talk) 11:21, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

In general, a good way is to upload an alternative and then use that. People generally use the best picture available so providing a better one for any purpose, means the prior one will not be used anymore. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:47, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Copyleft enforcement - concern about stretching of a guideline

pings

I'm going to ping some past participants of these discussions. Pings from the DR (probably folks from that previous VP discussion should be pinged, too, but I think the DR covers most people? @Colin, Eyavar, Aristeas, W.carter, A.Savin, Julesvernex2, Jeff G., Adamant1, Chris.sherlock2, SHB2000, Nosferattus, Ikan Kekek, Yann, Normanlamont, Diliff, Cmao20, Юрий Д.К., GPSLeo, Pigsonthewing, Acroterion, AFBorchert, MichaelMaggs, Thincat, IronGargoyle, Nil Einne, Bluerasberry, PARAKANYAA, Pppery, Glane23, Zymurgy, A1Cafel, JPxG, Dronebogus, NinjaRobotPirate, Glrx, Deb, Mackensen, Huntster, Enhancing999, Jmabel, and Wilfredor:

I am concerned about a few users who seem to be trying to extend existing consensus about "copyleft trolling" to apply to a much broader swath of copyleft enforcement. Most directly, this has taken the form of straightforwardly renaming the guideline "copyleft trolling" to be "copyleft enforcement". At least on the surface, this seems to say "if you upload to Commons, you can't enforce your license unless the most aggressive enforcers of this guideline approve it", which is well outside any sort of consensus we've established thus far.

Discussions about this subject have thus far been filled with well-intentioned but incorrect/misleading information which has left us in a confusing position. For example, there was this long thread, where a closer found consensus for the creation of Commons:Copyleft trolling and a procedure about CC4, but that stuff about CC4 was based on a false premise -- that CC4 provides a grace period to fix attribution, which it doesn't, and nobody supported it after that was clarified.

Many of these disputes regard Diliff, a difficult case in that he was/is a Wikipedian who contributed photos, not someone who uploaded photos in order to make money like others we apply the label to, and doesn't have e.g. an overly complex attribution statement to try to trip people up. He nonetheless does use Pixsy, a firm associated with copyleft trolls, and seems to demand money even when there's no real damage to him. He's in a gray area where someone doesn't seem to be acting in line with the spirit of openness this project tends to endorse, but also not trolling, so we're left with an uncomfortable question: how do we prevent such behavior without putting a big banner up saying "if you upload here, you give up your right to enforce copyright"? I don't have a good answer to that, but it seems a few users are intent on pushing forward with taking some action on 's images, despite a DR finding no consensus to do so.

To my eyes, it's hard to see a clear consensus for anything beyond a consensus that (a) Commons does not like "copyleft trolling", (b) Commons wants to take some sort of action where there's consensus that someone is engaging in the practice, and (c) we need a guideline explaining the concept and possible actions.

I will not be sad if Diliff's images get watermarked, but I will be sad if we take a vigilante approach to this problem, and I'll be sad if we can't better articulate expectations for enforcement to our uploaders. At minimum, before any of the remedies outlined at Commons:Copyleft trolling can be enacted, we should require have an explicit discussion at COM:ANU with formal consensus that the person in question is engaging in behavior that runs afoul of that guideline. Then it's time to sort out remedies. That consensus may emerge, but we don't have it yet, and process is important. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  20:35, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

If we are going to ban any enforcement of CC licenses, we may as well bar any CC licenses besides CC0. They are licenses. They come with rules, and if you break them the rights holder has the right to payment. If we bar enforcing the terms of the license, then why are we allowing people to upload using them? PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:41, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. As you point out, there's been multiple discussions and proposal having to do with this already. So I don't really see how the process isn't playing out or what exactly you think should have been done differently. From my perspective there's two issue here. 1. Diliff's actions 2. How the project deals with it and similar issues. From what I remember there was no consensus to sanction, ban, or otherwise deal with Diliff or their files. So watermarking images is really the only other option left outside of just throwing our hands in the air and allowing uploaders to extort re-users. I would have supported just banning Diliff and deleting their uploads myself, but there clearly isn't a consensus for that. So what other option is there outside of watermarking images or letting people get tooled? Because it doesn't seem like anyone has proposed anything else. Renaming the guideline is a separate issue IMO, but there should at least be an alternative if what people are currently trying isn't adequate for whatever reason. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:47, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

@Adamant1 If we are going to prohibit people enforcing the license on CC licenses, why are we allowing people to upload using the licenses? The only way to protect reusers who refuse to read the actual license is to only allow licenses that require no attribution or share alike status, e.g. CC0 or public domain. It makes no sense to ban people or watermark images for doing what is well within their rights, unless we want basically to treat it like they have no rights, in which case why do we lie about what licenses we accept? PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:51, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

If we are going to do this to protect reusers, we should ban all licenses that require attribution. Nothing else will protect people who just grab the image off of Wikipedia. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:53, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

@PARAKANYAA: There's obviously a difference between someone enforcing the license and them enforcing the license in a way that puts users at needless legal risk. I maybe wouldn't say it's our job to protect users more generally, but there is an expectation that if someone uses a file with a CC license that it won't lead to legal issues. If it were me, everything on here would be PD though. Anything outside of that is just needlessly complicated and obtuse. What are they on now, like the 5th version of the CC license? The whole thing is totally ridiculous. But we have to deal with people who take advantage of it or the site somehow. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:03, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that is what enforcing the license is, short of legal action there is little one can do. It would be nice if they asked first (and newer CC licenses do have a provision regarding that) but usually people will ignore it until legal notice is brought.

That expectation is false, and if we are doing that then we should ban the licenses altogether because it is against the spirit of the license. Punishing the content creators for enforcing rights that we allow them to have is absurd. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:08, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Copyleft trolling isn't allowed. That's kind of whole point here. Your acting like this whole revolves around a normal enforcement of a license when that's not what happened. No one cares if an uploader enforces their license by following the normal precedures to do so. That's not what this is about. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:26, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

"short of legal action there is little one can do"

You can send a message asking for the attribution or removal of the image, though a formal cease and desist letter is probably more effective. Immediately demanding lots of money is not essential. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:28, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Strange. I was under the impression that you would embrace such a change of tone, Rhododendrites? That we stop calling those people "trolls" (thus vilifiying them), when they aggressively send bills to re-users of their images without giving them chances to fix it? Our page "Copyleft Trolling" states that such an enforcement practice is out of step with our community's ideals of media that is free to share; and I wouldn't dream of changing those statements. Just, to stop vilifiying them.

It's not ANY form of Copyleft Enforcement that our guideline is intended to act against. The page lines out that there is a grey zone, and that we have to carefully consider each case. But we SHOULD act against those forms that directly ask for high lump sums of money due to minor licencing errors based on outdated CC licenses. We can still act against actual trolling while still calling it by a "nicer" name.

@Parakanyaa, I think you might have come upon this without prior knowledge of the cases. If you add up the money that the specific cases have allegedly "made" from their targets, you're talking about really large sums of money, enough to keep a florishing industry of full-fledged lawyers busy and expanding. The guideline in question is not a broadband remedy to get rid of everyone who checks re-users. It is intended to stop the worst excesses. --Enyavar (talk) 21:03, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

If it's not any form of enforcement that is the issue, then why would we move the title, indicating that it is all forms of enforcement?

I participated in the Diliff discussion. If we can ban users for enforcing rights that we give them then why allow those licenses at all? Why not ban all of the licenses that require attribution instead of doing it piecemeal? I do not think enforcing the rules on people who broke it is the "worst excesses", unless it's someone without a presence here who was clearly doing it as part of some scheme. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:13, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

That we stop calling those people "trolls" (thus vilifiying them) I do appreciate this intention, to be clear. Regarding aggressively send bills to re-users of their images without giving them chances to fix it being out of step with our community's ideals, there is absolutely a conflict there, but you're talking about a very broad scope that's more akin to the Flickr community guidelines that require contributors to the Commons to give people a chance to fix attribution. We can absolutely do that, but there's no consensus for that at this point. This section is trying to head off an assumption that such a consensus exists, and to steer folks who want to go in that direction to a formal proposal to achieve said consensus. It would be a profound change in our guidelines. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  21:36, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I disagree with watermarking Diliff's images. If the basic terms of CC licenses need to be clearer, they should be put in big red letters on every file page. I don't believe in damaging photos because reusers who don't do any kind of due diligence reuse images at their own risk. A big red warning could also appear at the top of every Commons page, if we think that's necessary, stating that people who reuse Creative Commons-licensed images without attribution may risk legal action from the authors. But at a certain point, it isn't our job to protect people from themselves.

I do agree that suing small reusers and not giving them a chance to correct their errors for a small fee is mean and disreputable, so I don't dispute the description of Copyleft trolls in the beginning of the article about them (I haven't read the other sections), but that's a different matter from defacing great photos. ---- Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:24, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

A few months ago someone proposed moving licenses to the top of pages but it was rejected. I'd be supprised if most people scroll down far enough to read the fine print though. And it doesn't help we allow for users to create their own licenses and terms that can be (and usually are) pretry different from the norm. Really though, user created licenses should be banned and the template moved to the top of the page. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:32, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

user created licenses should be banne — or they should at least go through some review process for approval. Nakonana (talk) 08:44, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

100% agree there's a design problem that could solve a lot of problems (actually talked a bit about that in a Wikicon presentation last year :) ), but [how do we stop people from violating licenses] and [how do we articulate and enforce expectations for enforcement within our community] are worth separate conversations. Here I think we're squarely talking about the latter. Specifically, it's about what we do when our uploaders are suing small reusers and not giving them a chance to correct their errors for a small fee, and where to draw the line. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  21:41, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

It’s worth pointing out that all that’s required to attribute a Diliff photo correctly is to include the text ‘Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0’ together with the picture. And that this very short and clear licensing statement is quite literally in bold text on every single image page for every photo he has ever uploaded. Are we really saying that the priority is to ‘protect reusers’ who couldn’t be bothered to follow these simple rules? And that hundreds of photos the community has judged to be of excellent quality should be defaced as a consequence of a handful of people’s failure to do this? Honestly speechless at how little this site seems to value its own contributors’ rights. Cmao20 (talk) 22:15, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Re-users are really no copyright experts. We see often enough that people misunderstand "public domain" for "image that is publicly accessible on a website". The CC-license templates oftentimes have a quite lengthy text, and as simple as that text sounds to us, it may still sound like complex legalese to a re-user (or at least it did sound like that to me in the beginning). Clear instructions might be more useful than listing license terms. The file description infobox has a "permission" field where one could insert such instructions in a very short and very clear statement, e.g., "To reuse this image on your website or anywhere else you are legally obliged to add the following text underneath or near the image: 'Image by [information from author field]. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0'. Not doing so might lead to legal consequences." Nakonana (talk) 09:01, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I made my position on this issue clear at the time. Copyleft trolling involves uploading images under ostensibly free licenses for the express purpose of trying to make money by fleecing others for minor attribution errors (often in deliberately complex licenses so that correct attribution is made hard). There's no evidence that Diliff did this, what he did do was hire a rather aggressive enforcement agency to chase up offenders because he was fed up of seeing his pictures being used with no attribution. I'm not too keen on what Pixsy seems to do as a company, but all copyright enforcement companies seem to operate fairly similarly, so our content creators don't have much other recourse than to use companies like this if they are interested in preserving rights over their images. (Edit: they could individually try to hunt down license violations themselves and get in contact with offenders, but we are a site of hobbyists and non-professionals who have other jobs and virtually no one has the time or expertise to do this!) If we are basically asking users to entirely give up their rights to enforce proper use of license agreements, then there's no real reason why we should allow licenses that require attribution at all, since we're basically saying the licenses don't really matter and there are no actual consequences for users who don't abide by them properly - we're just making an unprincipled exception so that Commons can still exist at all.

I don't buy the excuse about 'protecting reusers' - reusers have the responsibility to protect themselves by attributing images correctly! Actions have consequences, and where's the consideration about protecting the rights of our content creators, something that I think is just as important if not more important than protecting reusers who cannot be bothered to abide by a simple license agreement.

On the Diliff case, one has to remember that users like Diliff joined Commons very early when its main purpose was to provide images for use on Wikipedia. I can completely understand why it's upsetting to have uploaded a lot of pictures for the reason of trying to support an encyclopaedia project years ago, only to see them all over the internet with no, or even false, attribution. And I absolutely do think he, and people like him, have the right to try to enforce proper use of their images. Otherwise there's zero point in the license. We're basically doing a bait-and-switch on our own uploaders by saying yes you have the right to specify the use of a license, but you don't have the right to do anything about it. So basically you've released your pictures into the public domain, even though we lied about this by telling you that you could reserve some rights.

I thought we'd had this discussion months ago, and yet it keeps coming up - all I can say is that if Commons's policy shifts to deleting or forced-watermarking the uploads of content creators who have produced hundreds of featured pictures for the simple 'crime' of trying to make sure their pictures are not used illegally, then something has gone very, very wrong. Cmao20 (talk) 21:39, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, something has gone very, very wrong. Commons is part of the dream of creating an open-source, free-to-use encyclopedia. Hundreds of thousands of people donated text for Wikipedia, and also media files. And eventually, a few of those people found a loophole to charge people large lump sums of money, with no prior warning. Those few people are the ones which we have dubbed "trolls". And my suggestion was to stop calling all of them "trolls", and to stop vilifying them. While still maintaining our intended policy to mark those images so that re-users can be safe. Again: Copyleft Enforcing is not a crime, the Enforcers are not villains; and neither are Commons and Wikimedia the vehicles to make the big money. And this discussion will keep coming up until we can make sure that we find a balance between the various interests at play here. --Enyavar (talk) 21:52, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Sure, but ‘free to use’ means ‘can be used without paying money for the privilege’, it doesn’t mean ‘you can do absolutely anything you like with it and the original author has no right to stop you.’ Our job is not to keep re-users safe who are illegally using other people’s work. I think it’d be reasonable to punish content creators who are uploading content with deliberately incomprehensible licenses in the hope of shaking money out of violators, but this obviously isn’t what happened here, and yet extreme solutions such as deletion or forced watermarking keep being brought up. Mission creep at its finest.Cmao20 (talk) 22:01, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Example watermark

Example image, cropped with CSS, so the watermark is not visible.

Why are you talking about "punishing content creators"? As far as I'm aware, over at Flickr people have been getting banned for years already... while we were busy doing endless debate loops. Being talked about is not a punishment, and neither is the suggested watermarking. Please note the example images, the watermarks are benign and you can even still use the images in WP, without average readers noticing anything. The content is still there, it is fully accessible. It just got an extra extension so that people stop and think before uploading the cute birdie onto their school's biology class's project website and getting the shock of their lives a few weeks later. Naive re-users are not criminals either. The single one thing that the watermarking policy would change in the long run, is to stem the guaranteed money stream for content creators. --Enyavar (talk) 22:23, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I am talking about punishing content creators because this is simply what the proposals to watermark or delete photos do. And yes, naive re-users have broken the law. Just because Flickr takes a different stance than Commons is not an argument of any worth. The fact that other sites have an expansive definition of ‘copyleft trolling’ doesn’t mean that they are right or we should copy them. What if another photographer decides tomorrow that they are going to hire Pixsy’s services? Are we then going to spend lots of volunteer effort and time watermarking all their uploads too? Rather than just trust reusers to…read the image page and abide by the very simple licensing rules it literally states in bold text!

Commons should be trying to encourage more contributors to upload excellent content, not putting them off. I agree that this watermark is not hugely intrusive, unlike the previous watermark proposals last time we had this discussion. But it still sends a message that we disapprove of uploaders attempting to enforce their rights over their own pictures, which will rightly put people off from uploading at all. By all means punish actual copyleft trolling but this case only counts as ‘trolling’ if we stretch the term to the point of meaninglessness.

As an aside I note that Diliff’s pictures are currently illegally available on stock photo websites under false attributions at the time of writing. Malicious copyright theft of CC-by-SA images is rife on the internet and for someone as prolific as Diliff in contributing to the project I don’t blame him for a single second in trying to stem the tide. If Commons doesn’t want people to resort to companies like Pixsy then the site should do more to try to defend its content creators’ rights against this kind of illegal behaviour. Instead, we’re debating making it more difficult to preserve those rights. Hence, this proposal does indeed punish content creators, I won’t withdraw that statement. Cmao20 (talk) 22:41, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

The irony is, if the duck had been watermarked, the (supposedly illegal) uploaders would have to crop the image again before stock photo websites (or any other websites) are able to use it; and it would actually make Diliff's case against that kind of re-use much more valid. By including his preferred attribution right into the image, we would strengthen Diliff's case, not curtail it.

I'm fully unconcerned with my own (much less professional) uploads - so if a stock photo website illegaly profits off them I don't care. But yes, that kind of illegal use rightly concerns professional creators. It should. I support Diliff in combatting large faceless firms who profitteer off of him.

At the same time, the existence of a huge stock photo websites doesn't make it right for him to profiteer off of actual naive re-users who made honest mistakes. The ones that Jmabel calls "some guy with a blog" below. Or school projects and charities. While I can't claim that Diliff ever bankrupted charities: Verch did while boasting to give "free lessons in media awareness". Free lessons costing thousands for those naive re-users, and also costing reputation for Wikipedia where he spammed the predatory content into the articles. Again, to my knowledge, Diliff did not do that. But for sure, he goes after "some guy with a blog". In his defense, Diliff said he punishes the small guys because he couldn't get hold of big business. That doesn't render him criminal, but the morals? Ugh. Ughh.

A little watermark in less than 1‰ of our content makes us more trustworthy, not less. --Enyavar (talk) 23:19, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Maybe we can move past the renaming of the guideline, which seems like a good faith effort to tweak some language rather than to radically change the guideline. I think it would change the guideline, and is still a bad idea, but I understand now that wasn't the point. I hope this can be more of a discussion about the process of forming consensus that something falls short of community expectations, and thus how to pursue a remedy. I think we've seen a couple cases that we know are egregious, and Diliff is a case where opinions seem pretty well split, so how do we articulate the ways in which Diliff does or does not fall short of community expectations such that we can then decide whether or not a remedy is necessary? — Rhododendrites ^talk |  22:00, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

If you think there is a correct standard process (for verification, I assume), I'm happy to learn about it. You have started a collection of previous debates about this topic before. I too was against quickly doing a rogue action and just watermark away. That was why I started the thread at VP/Copyright. --Enyavar (talk) 22:34, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

No one asked me, but my take: when someone clearly has made a good faith effort to attribute a free-licensed photo, and has not done it quite right, it's pretty trollish to start with a threat of a lawsuit. We certainly would not tolerate someone within the Commons community who threatened a lawsuit every time another Commons contributor got confused as to just how to attribute a derivative work.

The more you are dealing with repeat offenders, professional media organizations that should know better, and/or media that cannot be dynamically corrected (books, movies), the more appropriate it is to reach for the legal hammer. But when "some guy with a blog" accurately attributes your photo to you (or to Wikimedia Commons), and doesn't understand that he is supposed to indicate the license in question (or your name), and there is no reason to think he's been down this road before? It seems to me that the appropriate thing to do is to ask him politely to fix the attribution, not to threaten a lawsuit. - Jmabel ! talk 22:50, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree that companies that ask for money for incorrect licensing such as Pixsy are quite authoritarian in their behaviour but I think in practice, given how rife copyright violation is on the internet (note above that Diliff’s pictures are currently illegally available under false attribution on stock image sites), most creators have a choice between: a) do nothing and give up any hope of enforcing their rights, b) spend a lot of time and energy on chasing up copyright violations on the internet and politely asking them to desist, with a low chance of much success and c) farm it out to a company like Pixsy. This is a volunteer site and people don’t have the time or expertise to chase up every copyright violation or to know what to do when they don’t get a productive reply, it’s entirely understandable to me that they would want to get a company to do that work on their behalf. I don’t think it’s fair to call that trolling, even if Pixsy is heavy-handed.

I won’t comment further for fear of being accused of bludgeoning the process but I’ll just add that if Commons is really serious about improving this situation it should provide an option d): have its own portal/mechanism by which uploaders can report copyright violations and Commons chases them up. That would remove companies like Pixsy from the equation. But I am sure people will invent a million reasons why we can’t do that… Cmao20 (talk) 23:04, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I don’t think Commons as an organization can do anything like Cmao20 suggests, but it can help photographers and set up examples of how copyright violations should be handled. Perhaps a warning could also be added to the license templates, about what legal action can be taken if an image isn’t credited properly according to the CC license. Something like “Failure to credit the photo properly, may result in the author contacting you and ask you to correct this. If the credit still isn’t made, the author could have grounds to bill you for the use of the image.” Sorry my “legalese” is very bad, but you get the idea.

When I see one of my photos used without the proper credit, I sometimes take action if it is used in a commercial context. I never bother with educational, small bloggers, charity or things I can support, only with large companies. I contact them, explain the situation and give them the choice to credit me properly or pay me a small sum, usually about what I would get for a photo if posted on Shutterstock or similar sites, for the one-time use of my photo. I don’t need to threaten with lawsuits or anything, we always come to an amicable agreement, the company is happy to be able to use the photo and I get a small compensation. This is the sort of things that Commons could help set up guidelines for if it wants to help photographers and “cut out” firms like Pixsy. It might also give some photo poachers a second thought if they see that there may be consequences. Btw, I don't think watermarking works at all, it's too easy to remove. --Cart (talk) 23:54, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Again, irony. I don’t think it’s fair to call that trolling was my original take that spawned this whole debate today. Sorry for spilling so many words on the topic, on a single day. --Enyavar (talk) 23:35, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

[undent] I don't believe in using special watermarks for Diliff's photos. If we decide to go down that road, every CC-licensed photo needs to have a watermark. Instead, the idea of putting the license on the top of every file page - and as I have suggested several times, in oversized red letters - is IMO a good idea. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:52, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that it matters where on the page the license is. To a photo snatcher they just look like invitations to "borrow" the photo. They only thing that could be of interest to them, is what the consequences might be if they don't follow the rules of the license. That should be made clear on the file page. Today there are no visible consequences. See my suggestion above. --Cart (talk) 00:05, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Your suggestion is good. Put a warning of legal action for not attributing photos to their authors in big red letters, then. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:08, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Agree with both Ikan and Cart's suggestions here, this would be great at combating this issue in future by giving uploaders more confidence and providing a deterrent factor. Cmao20 (talk) 00:14, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

You'd just be scaring off re-users that way. I've always been of the opinion that people on here bend over backwards to accommodate uploaders while treating everyone else like they don't matter and should just piss off. This whole thing is a perfect example. Don't put off uploaders by putting something at the bottom of a single users images, but then it's totally cool to warn re-users in big red letters about potential legal action if they don't reuse the image in a 100% perfect way. Right. Screw everyone but uploaders. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:16, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

That's like saying that people would be scared to park their cars for the threat of parking tickets, instead of learning how to park the right way. --Cart (talk) 00:27, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

That's a good analogy. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:30, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

@W.carter: You could say the same exact thing for putting a notice on the bottom of a couple of uploaders images. "That's like saying uploaders would be scared to park their car if there's an address on the curb." It's not an argument. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:39, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, as I said before, I'm not for water marking, it's too easy to remove. Second, I don't think we should be discussing this to solve the problems with just one or two users' photos. We need a more overall solution that will work in the long run for many more uploaders. I have never before seen Commons and Wikimedia make rules for just one or two users, changes in policy should be something that works for all users and re-users. --Cart (talk) 00:46, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

What's your solution, or would you rather just keep things exactly as they are? My main concern is not to deface photos, but I'm fine with clearer warnings. On Wikivoyage, when we have to upload otherwise free images of copyrighted stuff that lacks commercial FoP, I like to put warnings on the file pages to the effect of: "Not to be used commercially. If you nevertheless choose to use this file commercially, you do so at your own sole risk." I wish Commons had a large category of such photos that could be used non-commercially only, with such warnings, but the Wikimedia Foundation will probably never agree to that. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:29, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

1. Ban uploaders from creating their own licenses 2. Do what you suggested but maybe as a link to the license section next to the "From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository" at the top of a file 3. Move towards depreciating older CC licenses and consolidate some of the more obtuse ones having to do with public domain. Like there's 18 PD templates for works of the United States government.

At the end of the day there should be one or two PD licenses per country, one general purpose CC license, and that's essentially it. To use an analogy, you get the class you teach. This is just the natural outcome of the substantial amount of licensing options and "old west" mentality towards the whole thing on here. It's totally unrealistic to expect anyone who just wants to use an image for their personal blog, scrapbook, or whatever to sort through or understand it all. You have to design things for regular people though or there's just going to be problems. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:47, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Of course it would be great to have "license plates for Dummies" like you suggest. That would be heaven, but I don't think Commons has any say over the the 18 different PD licenses used by the United States government. And good luck with getting this administration to consolidate them. We need to work with realistic goals, things we can actually change. --Cart (talk) 00:57, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

@W.carter: From what I remember a good portion of those licenses were created by users on Commons purely for tracking purposes and aren't actually necessary. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:15, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

My view on this hasn't changed since last year. If there is a problem with reusers being sloppy about attribution, the solution isn't to punish the creators who notice the fact and do something about it. Making the license information more prominent might help, but it's not as though it's hidden. Mackensen (talk) 00:42, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

+1 - no idea why we should prioritise 'protecting reusers' who are using pictures illegally. No one who used these pictures legally has had any issues - people need to realise that not everything on the internet is free for them to use with zero consequences or requirements. There wouldn't be a Wikimedia Commons without the generosity of our uploaders and as long as the reuse requirements are not ridiculous and don't violate Commons licensing policy, we should support their right to seek to enforce proper attribution. Cmao20 (talk) 01:09, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

For those arguing that this is 100% on the side of reusers, a reminder that one of the only clear findings of consensus we have is to establish Commons:Copyleft trolling at a guideline. There is a point at which the behavior of copyright owners can go too far. This is about figuring out how to better draw lines and/or a process to figure out when someone "goes too far" (to use the most general possible language). — Rhododendrites ^talk |  01:10, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

That is why, while I made my suggestion about warnings above, I also hinted about some general guidelines for how authors should behave if their work was used in an improper way. I don't think we have any such help right now. Photographers are usually not trained in legal matters and they often have trouble writing good letters about the situation to companies using their work, so they turn to services like Pixsy that enforce too much. Even a simple message to copy would be a start. Both parties need some help with this and clear guidelines. --Cart (talk) 01:20, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Agree with Cmao. If ever "copyleft trolls" are a problem for Commons, it's surely one of the lesser problems with users. Unlike harassment, hatespeech, and, more generally, human stupidity.

I also oppose any watermarking of Diliff's images, and if we have "copyleft tolls" here on Commons I still don't think Diliff is one of those. For me, he is just a formerly active Wikipedian with lots of useful contributions, who meanwhile ceased to contribute actively. If he is enforcing his copyright via Pixsy, it's still his right to do. As for me, true "copyleft trolling" is some kind of a "business model" including single-purpose account(s) with careless uploads and aggressive pushing of pictures in Wikipedia aricles + Wikidata items -- Livio & socks would be a good example for that, if we had straight evidence that he takes money from re-users (I don't know if he does, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if he does).

But: if that's an existent "business model", I doubt it's a really profitable one, and apart from a few real trolls who are easy to reveal (such as Livio) that's lesser a problem for Commons. The community should appreciate real contributors and acknowledge that they have a copyright and the rght to enforce it if necessary. --A.Savin 04:06, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree with this. I'd add that people who post blatantly stolen images either maliciously or because they have no understanding of copyright and think it's OK to just grab everything they saw on a website and others who request deletion of images for nonsensical reasons (or worse, improperly speedily delete images for meritless reasons after they were duly kept in discussions) are also much bigger problems than people who aggressively enforce their copyrights. If you violate someone's copyright and they go after you, that's unfortunate for you, but they have the right to do it. I remember back in the 1990s Usenet days, there was a user who went by Muad_Dib who posted thousands of photos stolen from Penthouse.com and was sued and had to settle for some $100,000 in damages plus an online apology. That was a very expensive lesson for him. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:54, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree with getting Commons:Copyleft trolling renamed. I find it a misguided term that is embarrassing to link to. Why use neologisms? Call the page Commons:Copyright enforcement and discuss trolls/copyleft/uploader's rights/reusers abuse of license terms there.

A concern seems to about protecting unaware reusers. Education is important for that:

• Redesigning the file page so that licensing is clear
• I don't mind a prominent template on the file page ("This creator aggressively enforces licensing terms")
• Getting Wikipedias to put a credit/license line in file captions - why would an oblivious reuser do that if Wikipedia itself doesn't obviously credit anyone for anything (text or files).

I don't agree with watermarking Diliff's photos. Although providing an on-the-fly watermarking service for reusers would be useful, picking and choosing which images to watermark may be counter-productive. If A.Savin gets annoyed with Commons can they send out a few $900 demands to infringers to get their 1000s (?) of high quality files watermarked? Commander Keane (talk) 07:46, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

As an example: Norwegian Wikipedia is already crediting photographers in most of their captions, this is what it looks like. They use a template, byline. --Cart (talk) 11:25, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I checked the files of mine that they use. None of the uses had that template. In the articles where I found my images, only some historic images were attributed. –LPfi (talk) 18:26, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Everything above tldr. i just have one question:

is there an agreement on where the line is, between "acceptable copyright enforcement" and "unacceptable copyright enforcement"? RoyZuo (talk) 07:56, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Sure. Acceptable enforcement means appropriate response to the infringement: "some guy eith a blog", charities, and even small-scale private business websites shouldn't get 900-1500 $€₤ bills out of the blue, but a fair warning first. (Sure, big publishers are a different matter.)

Inacceptable behaviour: systematically enforce CC licenses with no warning; usually by abusing loopholes of outdated CC licenses.

Also @A.Savin: yes this is actually a very profitable business model to the point that several agencies/law firms are specialized in enforcement, notably Pixsy. Not addressing this very real problem makes it worse because more people will begin to participate in it, upload photos on Commons just for the money. --Enyavar (talk) 12:32, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

If you upload 100 photos on Commons and do nothing else, then after 5 years and running Google search for all 100 the likelihood of finding ONE of that photos being used somewhere on the Web w/o attribution is ... pretty low. If you upload 10,000 and do nothing else and wait 10 years before the search, then yes perhaps this likelihood is a tiny little bit higher. --A.Savin 13:39, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Sure, the 10k approach you describe was what Marco Verch did: pay volunteers to take and upload as many photos as possible, then use those stock images as bait on Commons.

However, we are not talking about any random photos of odd potatoes or nice sunsets... We are talking technically flawless images of popular places/objects. Keyword SEO and used in as many language versions as possible, too. That is actually what Commons expects the perfect contributors to do.

With that in mind, please re-calculate the odds of images finding re-use. And again, the authors of the two images should reserve all rights to bill malicious moneygrabbers who steal the images for posters. Yet they also bill innocent naive re-users in a manner we wish to prevent from happening. --Enyavar (talk) 21:47, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi, Here is my experience in copyright enforcement. I rarely check or try to correct uses of my pictures, but when I have done, I usually got attribution fixed within a day. The exception was a French political party using of my picture for their election material, online and printed, and not doing anything even after 3 mails. So I hired a lawyer who got some money from them. I was quite pissed off in this case, as the they are not a poor blogger, but a professional organization which can even bother to hire a photographer for their business. So I disagree with "copyright enforcement is difficult". It is quite easy and straightforward. However I don't know the solution for copyleft trolling. Yann (talk) 10:48, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

The solution to copyright trolling is to have fair legislation, which doesn't allow it, or at least doesn't make it profitable, The problem is that the big commercial players want to be able to hit hard on anybody who uses their material, and they have quite some lobbying power. –LPfi (talk) 18:34, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

•  Oppose watermarking any of images on Commons. So-called "copyleft trolls" is not a problem for Commons. Hence, we shouldn't delete/damage useful content. So-called "copyleft trolls" is a problem only for goofy/irresponsible "reusers" Юрий Д.К 13:17, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

  And naïve users, i.e. most of the people out there. People in general don't learn even the basics of copyright law, except those who make an effort for professional reasons, or out of interest such as many here. –LPfi (talk) 18:37, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

• I would also like to add that having author's name and/or license in the image caption on Wikipedia's pages is simply a waste of time and space. Every time someone has used one of my images in a less than good fashion, I have got the comment: "But I didn't take it from Wikipedia, I just found it online." Those looking for images to use, do so online and they end up at the Commons file page, or they search directly on Commons for good photos. Our QI and FP categories are like catnip for images poachers. We are literally telling them where the best images to steal are. In any case, they always need to go to the file page to download the image, so any info, licenses or warnings should go on those pages. Those grabbing the image usually also need to download it by clicking on the image or one of the size links below it. A first step could be to place a warning at the top of the page that opens then. That way the warning is not too visible/intrusive for those who just click on the image from an article, but will appear only when you open it larger. Just an idea. --Cart (talk) 13:46, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Part 2

• This thread is all over the place now. One of the things we do have consensus for is that uploading images with the intention of exploiting free licenses to sue people who use our media is not acceptable on Commons. We also seem to have consensus that this is a very difficult and even divisive issue. What we don't have consensus for is a one-size-fits-all solution and especially what to do in edge cases that we can call something like "aggressive copyright enforcement". There's also pretty clear consensus that we could do more to explain/present terms of a CC license better. IMO I don't think the opinions that "it's all the reusers fault" or "everyone has to agree not to take legal action/give people a chance to fix the error" are that helpful as they're extremely unlikely to gain consensus and thus fill these discussions with emotion rather than working towards a realistic compromise/solution. For anyone who thinks Diliff is exemplary of what people are talking about when they say "copyleft trolling is a problem", you could read something like this piece in Computer Weekly that involves Commons (or any of a number of posts by Cory Doctorow on the same subject, or the statement Creative Commons put out itself condemning "[CC] license enforcement as business model"). This is all to say, the reason the conversation about Diliff is so difficult is because his case is not "copyleft trolling" but a form of "aggressive copyright enforcement" that in some ways looks the same as copyleft trolling. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  14:19, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

  Well, this is the Commons so you can't expect a clear streamlined debate. But if we are to use Diliff's photos as a first case trial, why don't we start with putting a template on his file pages, stating something like "This photographer uses aggressive copyright enforcement, please read the terms of the CC license carefully and follow them." --Cart (talk) 14:37, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

  All of his files ARE using a template, stating very clearly how Diliff wants his images being attributed upon re-use. This very clear template hasn't stopped people from misunderstanding or overlooking those directions, not the least because Commons doesn't allow license texts at the top of pages. About a dozen times upon receiving bills from Diliff's lawyer without prior warning, people went to Diliffs talk page on Wikipedia and asked questions: That they were sorry; that they honestly didn't know; that they would fix the attribution (actually legally impossible: you have to pay up AND remove the image that was "violated"); and if Pixsy was even authorized by Diliff; and yes also that they couldn't afford the payment.

  Those were not the image poachers who blatantly steal images, those were naive re-users who (rightly) expected to find "free" images on Commons and just didn't realize the catch that they had to exactly reproduce Diliff's licence text including the links. Forgotten the attribution? Minor errors, or creative solutions like maybe alt-text? Nope: PAY UP.

  We also have not a clue how many cases Diliff pursued and settled off-site. The idea of tools to help Diliff* with managing re-users? He has no need for tools, help-pages or guidance to settle his cases. He has efficient and automated workflows, off-site. And so do the other copyleft-enforcers we're talking about. I have read from your statements that you (@W.carter: ) have a much more mindful approach, and as a result there probably won't be distressed calls for help towards the Commons community. Content whose copyrights are gently enforced, with warnings? That won't bear forced watermarks.

  And that is where the watermark comes in: Within Wikimedia projects, we have templates to hide it. Outside of Wikimedia, the naive re-user can simply place it in their social media post or wherever, and be sure that they fully reproduced the correct license. While the malicious re-user who crops the watermark on purpose? Yeah, that last one must fully deal with the consequences on their own. --Enyavar (talk) 21:11, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, Diliff's files do contain a template about the license, but it's totally lame and information-wise a disaster. To call something "Summary" in very big letters is misleading and makes you just skip that part thinking that it's a summary of the text about the image. The big letters should say: "How to use this file", there should be colors and at least some frame, perhaps a picture. As mentioned above, the warnings about use needs to be so well designed that even the dumbest re-user will notice and understand it. Take a look at some more intimidating pages created by people who are more experienced at layout: Example 1 (heck, even I would think twice before doing anything with that file!) and Example 2. If you redesign the licenses, please let it be done by people who know about such designs. --Cart (talk) 12:33, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

•  Comment And by the way, since Diliff's files and behavior is causing so much trouble for Commons, can't we simply upgrade the design of his template per above to make it stand out more on the page? I mean that text is under the usual CC here on the site, and even if we are very polite and don't edit each other's things more than necessary, we have after all discussed everything from deleting his files to adding watermarks. Just making that template more noticeable/"legal-looking"/(frightening?) isn't really such a big infringement on his rights, since it is forcing us to have these long discussions. --Cart (talk) 12:55, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

One particularly nasty detail of Diliff's license text is the Suggested attribution: "Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0" - which is technically insufficient as attribution because it only names the license without linking to it. That feels very close to a deliberate trap. If Pixsy is going after users for that deficiency, we have every reason to take action to disarm that trap. Omphalographer (talk) 18:31, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@Omphalographer: I  Support disarming that trap.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:29, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Omphalographer and Jeff G., I went ahead and made a bold move and upgraded User:Diliff/Licensing a bit. Not so much (hopefully) I risk getting blocked or something, it's all very revertable if people think I went too far. It stands out a bit better now. --Cart (talk) 19:38, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I like the idea, but it's incompatible with the way the template is used in some of Diliff's image descriptions, e.g. File:Skylark 1, Lake District, England - June 2009.jpg. I've rolled back these changes and replaced "CC BY-SA 3.0" with a URL to the license to make it maximally clear that the URL needs to be included. (The name of the license is not required.) Omphalographer (talk) 23:26, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I think a lot of the above is very unrealistic. Have a look at what I've put in Category:Images by Joe Mabel as a media source. I believe all of the uses mentioned here correctly mentioned my name (I might be wrong about one or two); I would be surprised if more than a dozen or two got the licensing entirely correct.

People—even well-intentioned people—simply do not understand how to properly indicate a CC license. This should not result in hundreds of threatened lawsuits. - Jmabel ! talk 17:29, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I believe the key is to find a fair balance protecting creators’ rights to enforce proper attribution while not discouraging users or complicating legitimate image use. A clear, agreed-upon process should be established to determine when license enforcement crosses the line providing users with a warning and the chance to correct mistakes before taking drastic actions like deletion or watermarking. The issue also lies in the lack of visibility for license information. Previously, clicking an image on Wikipedia would lead directly to the Commons page where author and license details were prominently displayed. Now, the image opens in a popup for a larger view, which significantly reduces that visibility. This change was made without community consultation, and actions taken outside Commons are beyond our control. Limiting uploads or adding watermarks is not a valid solution; instead, we should work to restore or improve the visibility of license information on Commons Wilfredor (talk) 01:13, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

•  Comment It was discussed above by User:Ikan Kekek, User:Adamant1, User:Rhododendrites and other to put the license template at the top. I think it would be better to edit the layout of the license templates instead so there is a more clear warning for example mark the words in {{Cc-by-sa-4.0}} so it says "YOU MUST..." in bold and red text or a text saying "To meet the requirements you usually need a line like: "Photo/work by <insert author>. License: <link to license added by template>". Perhaps someone could make a suggestion so we can see how it could look? --MGA73 (talk) 10:30, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I just noticed that such a suggestion have been made at Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Extra_clear_instructions_for_attribution. --MGA73 (talk) 13:36, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

•  Comment It should be made clear that copyleft trolling and copyleft enforcement are fundamentally different. Copyleft trolling is actually copyright enforcement following a copyleft trap. Copyleft enforcement could very well be encouraged - we could even have a page for reporting wrong attribution and templates in place for easier notification by the community. Note that Pixsy only pursues compensation for CC 4.0 files if the user shows they've reached out to the transgressor to no avail. To be honest, if you've reached out to someone and they ignored you for 30 days, really, it's hard to believe that said transgressor is acting in good faith. Release the Pixsy hounds, for all I care.

Beyond that, I'd also support implementing a much clearer warning on file pages stating that correct attribution is a condition of reuse and that failing to meet this requirement may constitute a copyright violation. This would help ensure that reusers are aware of their obligations up front and reduce unintentional misuse. Rkieferbaum (talk) 17:26, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

May constitute a copyright violation and could incur legal penalties to the reuser, including heavy fines. That or other words to that effect should be in the warning text. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:20, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@Cart, Rkieferbaum, and Wilfredor: Putting more warning text on the file pages won't solve copyleft trolling. Many of the people who have been targeted by copyleft trolling were actually trying to follow the rules, but made a mistake. For example, the most recent victim of Diliff apparently did credit him, but the credit was accidentally hidden under the border of the website so it couldn't be seen. Many other victims have credited images to "Wikipedia" or "Wikimedia Commons" because they didn't understand how attribution is supposed to work. I myself have incorrectly attributed images by accidentally listing the wrong license. I strongly support enforcing copyrights, but none of those conditions should result in someone facing demands for thousands of dollars without any opportunity to fix the error. Nosferattus (talk) 02:23, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

We have no control over what happens outside the Commons Wilfredor (talk) 02:57, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

If we watermark an image, the attribution stays with it outside of Commons, thus preventing copyleft trolling. Nosferattus (talk) 04:57, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Watermarking photos undermines the core principle that images should remain freely accessible. For years, I have personally removed watermarks from images in our commons collection because they introduce distracting visual noise and diminish the photos' natural appeal, encourage self-promotion over genuine sharing, and ultimately contradict our foundational philosophy Wilfredor (talk) 11:15, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

distracting visual noise is no problem: together with the watermarking, we can add a link users to provide the template that removes the white attribution line (when used in a wiki, see the example image above). remain freely accessible: well, the photos will still be freely accessible. However, once watermarked, they are no longer an instant free money generator for those uploaders who violate our foundational philosophy. --Enyavar (talk) 12:46, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@Wilfredor: If people stop using Commons because it has a reputation for being a trap (which is already the reputation it has on Reddit), what good are our founding principles? Free images that no one wants to use are worthless. Do you ever wonder why people are willing to pay $50 to use a public domain image from Alamy or Getty instead of getting it for free from us? This is why. I have also removed lots of watermarks from photos and am not a fan of watermarking. In this situation, however, it is the least bad solution. Nosferattus (talk) 22:18, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

We’re everyday people who donate our time without expecting any compensation, we aren’t employees, and comparing us to large corporations isn’t fair. Everyone here gives what they can. IMHO every project has a lifecycle, and the mismanagement of WMF has contributed to a decline in its user base factors that are ultimately beyond our control Wilfredor (talk) 22:46, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Also: the type of watermarks that are being proposed here are a strip along the bottom of the image, not an overlay like some stock image sites use on their previews - see File:Skylark 1, Lake District, England - June 2009.jpg for an example. They don't intrude on the image content, and are trivial to remove if you're attributing the image in another way. Omphalographer (talk) 23:19, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Here's my 2 cents:

1. make a policy or guideline that requires commons users who attempt copyright enforcement to:
   1. first warn or request copyright offenders to rectify the mistakes by any non-monetary methods (re-adding attribution, making public announcements / addenda...) within a reasonable time frame (such as 2 weeks or more?)
   2. only after #1.1 fails can commons users start monetary / legal threats.
2. set up a group of users, who will be tasked with reviewing complaints against commons users who fail to follow #1 (issuing threats without first serving warnings / requests). if the complaints are deemed true, then submit the case for the community to decide whether those commons users should be banned.
3. if banned, delete all uploads.

RoyZuo (talk) 08:48, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

A problem with (3) is that it would provide a way around an otherwise perpetual licence: courtesy deletion declined → start copyleft trolling → image deleted. –LPfi (talk) 06:52, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Without my proposal, they can still start copyleft trolling and get images deleted, no? RoyZuo (talk) 14:19, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

• I got pinged. I've read through the above discussion and am pleased it seems more reasonable than the previous one. But then I see Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Copyleft trolling - proceeding to watermark images and despair what a few hot heads can do. Watermarking is a dumb ass solution. Go ask WMF to help you with a better UI for images on Wikipedia/Commons that informs our readers and potential image users of what they need to do. That solution works for all of us with CC licenced images. And you need to stop with the "copyleft troll" immaturity real soon before someone ends up on the wrong side of a libel action and finds out how much being stupid and hot headed on the internet can cost. Trolling is the deliberate posting of supposedly free images in order ensnare those who use them and fail to follow the licence conditions to the letter and dot and crossed tee. Diliff did not do that and we have no evidence (actual evidence, not random posts on the internet) that anyone making a licence attribution mistake has been perused. Diliff created thousands of professional-class images that are very widely used on Wikipedia and elsewhere according to the licence conditions. The previous big discussion involved someone who admitted they thought the images were free to use without attribution. Which had all the intellectual weight of me assuming that since the cookies are free at the church fair, they are also free at my local Tesco.

Wrt Flickr comparisons, Flickr is a community project that exists as long as photographers want to belong and pay. Commons is an image repository. That many of the images were created by people who are users here is a bonus but on Flickr licenced images can only be uploaded by the creator. That isn't the case here. It makes our ability to sanction the image creator harder. Many of the suggestions made are off the cut off your nose to spite your face variety and ignore the many tens of thousands of re-uses of Diliff's images elsewhere that are licence-compliant. The copyleft-zealot-hotheads are only going to end up ruining things for all those users (and potential users) because, what, a mere handful of people were Stupid On The Internet and went to Diliff's user page to complain.

And I repeat that if Commons does something stupid with Diliff's images like watermarking -- the above linked post has the idiocy of a watermark saying this attribution must be retained, and then immediately below, an example of using it on Wikipedia with the attribution cropped off. I thought that level of stupidity was restricted to US presidents -- then all that will happen is Wikipedia will fork the images without watermark and Commons is no longer being used as a repository for them. It might even provoke English Wikipedia to decide to dispense with Commons, who clearly can't be trusted to host an image repository without vandalising the images that don't belong to them.

Please move on with some of the more productive ideas on this page, about informing users of all our licenced images. Rants and vandalism belong on Twitter. Commons is an image repository of images with a valid licence. Those licenced images are still copyright. Users who have a problem with that are welcome to start their own CC0/PD project. -- Colin (talk) 13:54, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

The copyleft-zealot-hotheads are only going to end up ruining things for all those users @Colin: Realistically what's the actual effect of putting a watermark at the bottom of an image going to be? It's not like whomever uses the reuses an image can't just crop the watermark out. Big whoop-de-doo. Your the one acting like people are being "zealot-hotheads" by supporting watermarking. Are you seriously going to act like someone having to edit an image to use it is that much of an issue? Come on. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:14, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Watermarking photos is a really stupid idea to force people to give attribution. It dirties the image, alters the original, and introduces the risk of invisible modifications (such as changes in color space, image quality, compression, or even invisible metadata alterations that can damage the file). What are we supposed to do with TIFF images, for example? It also contradicts the principle of preserving works in their pure, unaltered statesomething that is especially important in archives and museums. Nobody wants to use images with added text. What happens if someone wants to create a derivative work? Does the watermark stay and an additional attribution gets added on top of it? Technically, adding a watermark can be seen as an additional restriction, which is not allowed under licenses like CC BY or CC BY-SA. Wilfredor (talk) 10:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons offers to download an image in different resolutions... what if one could add an additional download option labeled "image with examplary license conforming attribution" which would download a watermarked image? Nakonana (talk) 12:09, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

{{[ping|Nakonana}} "examplary" is not a word, so I'm not sure what you mean here. "exemplary"? "example of"? Something else? - Jmabel ! talk 17:59, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I assume "exemplary" is what was meant. I don't agree. A watermarked image is not exemplary – if it were, why isn't Wikipedia attributing authors in bylines? Rather, the way we do it here, with file description pages, is exemplary. WMF has added the functionality of showing an attribution line, which is the crucial thing. The issues are whether people understand in the first place that they must attribute properly and that attributing Commons isn't enough, and our user interface constructing licence-compliant attribution lines. –LPfi (talk) 07:04, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I meant "exemplary". I don't mean the image to be exemplary but the attribution text. Such an option would make it easy to attribute an image correctly even to people who otherwise can't be bothered to educate themselves about correct licensing. Like an "idiot-safe" method: if you don't know how to re-use the image, just download this version of the image and use that, 'cause it already has all the required information. Nakonana (talk) 10:55, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Content of users who act against Commons guidelines

I think before we can decide how to handle uploads of users who aggressively and with monetary interest enforce their copyright we need a general guideline how to proceed with uploads of users who violate our guidelines in cases where the content itself does not violate any guideline. For new contributions it is clear that a blocked user can not upload new files, but what do we do with existing uploads? GPSLeo (talk) 07:00, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

"For new contributions it is clear that a blocked user can not upload new files." If that's clear, why did a proposal to delete photos by Livio Andronico and socks get voted down in flames? I don't think it's clear, because the fact that a user is blocked doesn't make the photo violate any policy or guideline inherently, especially if it's COM:INUSE, as many of Livio's photos are. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:40, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

GPSLeo, sorry: I don't understand the whole question. We have a guideline about Copyleft trolling. We do not usually block copyleft trolls. Nor do we usually take down their uploads. That is the exact reason in the first place, why we should watermark those uploads that are effectively Copyright traps. If that little can be agreed upon, I have no problem with even known Copyleft trolls continue to upload images - we'd just watermark them. --Enyavar (talk) 13:00, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@Enyavar: Livio Andronico is User:Livioandronico2013. This user was blocked, and then globally locked for harassment and abuse mainly in the featured pictures contest. Nothing to do with copyleft trolling. However we should block and ban copyleft trolls, i.e. people who create content under a free license for the sole purpose of suing reusers. While I don't like people who use Pixsy or similar companies to enforce their copyright, they are not all copyleft trolls. Specifically Diliff didn't upload pictures on Commons for the sole purpose of suing reusers. Yann (talk) 13:42, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Not for the sole purpose, no. Yet acting that way, now. And if we want those pictures on Commons, we cannot just ignore that behaviour that harms our users and our reputation. --Enyavar (talk) 14:00, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

If a user acts against Commons in a way that we decide that we forcibly alter all uploads of this user (by adding a watermark) I can not imagine a case where we do not block this user. GPSLeo (talk) 14:32, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

There is a problem with the watermark solution: CC-BY(-SA) requires attribution as prominent as for other similar contributions. Deliberately attributing copyright trolls more prominently than other contributors seems very much backwards. –LPfi (talk) 07:08, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

The license requires the other content not covered by the license, to be similarly attributed? I don't think that is meant that way; this is a provision to not skimp down on the required attribution of the licensed material.

But even if that is the case, attributing the non-CC-licensed material would still depend on the discretion of the re-user. Meanwhile within Wikimedia projects, we need to promote the usage of the soft-crop method via the CSS template, as shown in the example above. --Enyavar (talk) 21:24, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Files uploaded by user URRS Soviet Union

URRS Soviet Union (talk · contribs) has numerous logos sourcing from Logopedia, a fandom wiki that especially hosts logos. I'm questioning if the files, like File:Nelvana 2001.svg and File:Toys R Us 1998 Outlined Star.svg, would be under WP:TOO? Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 23:29, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

I think the polar bear is surely copyrightable. But the Toys R Us logos are probably fine as File:Toys "R" Us logo.svg has been here a while  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   00:32, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

The US have a rather high TOO for text logos. Nakonana (talk) 15:13, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Check COM:TOO US for examples of what's considered OK in terms of logos. Nakonana (talk) 15:17, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

U4C case

Hello. This is to notify the community that there is an ongoing U4C case for user(s) who has been active on this wiki. You are invited to participate. RoyZuo (talk) 14:23, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

File:The Artist - Maurits Cornelis Escher - working at his Atelier (50385403156).jpg

Photo of an artist with his artwork that is probably copyrighted. Work of Escher are no in public domain. A lot of usage, but I think that this violates the copyright. Didn't want to request deleting because of usage of this image. What you think? Jakub T. Jankiewicz (talk) 21:54, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Its just a part of something clearly larger. In case of doubt one may crop a bit on the top and on the left and the rest should count as de minimis. Herbert Ortner (talk) 08:02, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jcubic, I agree with @Herbert Ortner. Crop the image to keep the artist and his brush and support stick. Thanks for bringing your concerns here for comment. After cropping, please ask an Administrator to revision delete (rev del) the original photo here: Commons:Administrators' noticeboard. Thank you, -- Ooligan (talk) 15:50, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jcubic: , I share your concern. It does look like a case of flickr-washing. See Commons:Deletion requests/File:The Artist - Maurits Cornelis Escher - working at his Atelier (50385403156).jpg --Jarekt (talk) 20:14, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Permission to single instance of a drawing of a comic book character

I have this issue, I was asking on Discord and Grok (Twitter AI). If there is a way to publish this photo:

• Drawing Chninkel (Grzegorz Rosiński drawing one of his comic book characters)

On Discord, they said that I can't publish this photo on Commons because the character on a Photo will need to be released on Creative Commons. But Grok said that I can get permission just for this specific drawing without giving away the rights to the whole character in every instance. I know that this is just AI and can hallucinate, but consider this image: File:Stripmuur Thorgal.jpg this is a Mural of a character by Rosiński released because of FOP. And obviously, Rosiński (or publisher and screenwriters) still hold the copyright to that character, even that the photo is on Commons.

So this brings the question can you just publish a drawing when the author agrees to publish that specific drawing on Creative Commons License? Without the permission of the character itself. I can try to get permission for this drawing, I know a guy that is in contact with Rosiński. Jakub T. Jankiewicz (talk) 21:30, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jcubic: The flickr photo has 2 authors: There is the photographer (presumably you) who released the photograph under CC-by license and then there is the artist (Mr. Rosiński). Commons should accept this photo if the artist would agree to release the drawing in the photo under a license compatible with Commons. The artist can release the rights to this single image without releasing copyrights to the character itself. The process outlined in Commons:Volunteer Response Team page would require him to send an email with the permission. --Jarekt (talk) 21:49, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Relevant: Template:Free depiction  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   21:57, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@999real Awesome, thanks. I will try to arrange that. Are there any templates on Commons that specify that only this single drawing is released on CC license, similar to {{Personality rights}}, or is it not needed at all? On File:Stripmuur Thorgal.jpg there is a disclaimer in form of {{FoP-Belgium}}. Jakub T. Jankiewicz (talk) 22:09, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jcubic You can use {{Free depiction}} for that, see other similar images in Category:Free depictions of non-free works. Tvpuppy (talk) 00:06, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Vote now on the revised UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter

The voting period for the revisions to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines ("UCoC EG") and the UCoC's Coordinating Committee Charter is open now through the end of 1 May (UTC) (find in your time zone). Read the information on how to participate and read over the proposal before voting on the UCoC page on Meta-wiki.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review of the EG and Charter was planned and implemented by the U4C. Further information will be provided in the coming months about the review of the UCoC itself. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:34, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Photo challenge February results

Absence: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Absence of essence	Automatic river lighthouse. Yenisei River, Krasnoyarsk	Linden alley at Kalevankangas Cemetery in Tampere, Finland
Author	Tn.kuvat	VSerebrenikov	Xannima
Score	18	17	12

Healthy living: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Heal thy life.	Sun salutation for healthy living	Young athletic girl
Author	Tn.kuvat	Sneha G Gupta	VSerebrenikov
Score	12	11	10

Congratulations to Tn.kuvat, VSerebrenikov, Xannima and Sneha G Gupta. -- Jarekt (talk) 02:59, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Easy collage

Whats the easiest way to go about it if i need a collage comsisting of three photos to use on another project--Trade (talk) 14:15, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

@Trade: Depends what you mean by "collage". Obviously, the general case would require something like GIMP or Photoshop, but if you mean all aligned in the normal fashion and with no overlaps, there are a lot of possibilities that can be done with just the capabilities of HTML tables. A modern version of something like File:Seattle and the Orient 58.jpg could probably be achieved with some very complicated CSS, but I'd suggest it was easier to build it in GIMP. - Jmabel ! talk 18:38, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Most languages have Template:Photo montage (enwiki example). That nicely handles alt text for each individual image, so it's probably better than a custom collage for most simple cases. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 19:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Doesnt work for Wikidata Trade (talk) 21:24, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Some projects, such as Wikipedia in Swedish, don't want collages as default illustrations, so you might want not to add such collages as image (P18) (but perhaps as montage image (P2716)). –LPfi (talk) 19:47, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I haven't checked but most likely it's some website among the results when searching for "collage maker" or sth similar. (Things to consider is whether it reduces the resolution and whether there is any watermark.) Prototyperspective (talk) 21:30, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Photopea ReneeWrites (talk) 19:21, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Templates that always generate a warning.

Template:PD-Japan-oldphoto takes no parameters and emits "Please provide the source and publication date." I noticed it at File:リタ１９３８年.png. What is the solution for this template, and what is the solution for this kind of error in general? I don't recall the others, but I have come across a few copyright templates that either always generate an error or at least default to generating an error. Rjjiii (talk) 02:13, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

I have checked the source code at Template:PD-Japan-oldphoto/en, and I don’t think it is intended to be an error message, it appears just to be a reminder for uploader to include the source and date in the file description. Maybe the wording can be changed so it appears less like an error message. Tvpuppy (talk) 16:17, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

@Rjjiii: The template just reiterates the COM:EVID policy that we need source and publication date.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 06:53, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

That policy makes sense, but the template output looks like an error or warning message, Rjjiii (talk) 21:47, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Move Claim tool

Some of you might be familiar with MoveClaim tool on Wikidata, which is widely used for copying statements between wikidata items. Now the tool's author Matěj Suchánek, ported the tool to Commons to allow copying SDC statements between files. Please see Commons:MoveClaim Tool for more info and help us test it. Jarekt (talk) 21:33, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Nice.

Is it planned to add that tool to users preferences in Commons as it is in Wikidata? Pere prlpz (talk) 14:35, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Mass nomination of image of Azerbaijani people

There have previously been multiple attempts on- and off-wiki (I received several unsolicited emails asking me to delete them or withdraw my objection to their deletion) to delete images of Rza Talıbov (e.g. File:Rza Talıbov (şəxsi foto).jpg, which is currently in use on multiple projects). Those images have again been nominated for deletion, individually, along with many others of individuals from Azerbaijan, all with the rationale "COM:ADVERT". There is no evidence - nor even any attempt to make a case - that they are advertising.

Because there are so many nominations, it is too time-consuming to respond to each individually,

It may be that the former images have been caught up by chance, but that is not certain. Perhaps User:Yousiphh, who nominated them all, can explain what is happening? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:45, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I didn't find any previous nominations. I've just been nominating the files I assume have problems with the Wikimedia Commons rules (i.e. COM:ADVERT). You can find all my previous nominations with the same problems. All these photo files were specifically uploaded for the reason to promote and to advertise. They were uploaded to be in use in personal Wikipedia articles in several languages. For now all Wikipedia articles got deleted. Now these photo files (which (again) were specifically uploaded for the reason to promote and to advertise.) were nominated by me for the deletion. Best regards. Yousiphh (talk) 14:54, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Again: File:Rza Talıbov (şəxsi foto).jpg is currently in use on multiple projects. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:16, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

It's only in English Wikipedia. His Wikidata is also nominated by me for the deletion. Yousiphh (talk) 15:31, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Although uploaded for advertisement (if that's the case), the images may be useful in other contexts, especially when categorised appropriately. Please don't nominate for deletion without considering such other uses. –LPfi (talk) 20:09, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Updating needed ––– outdated files

There are many files that need an update, including many that are used a lot across mainspace Wikipedias.

Could there be some coordinated / routine efforts to update outdated things like outdated charts that are used?

I think this is really important, posting about it already even though there could be more info and guidance. Comment if you have an ideas or more queries / tools that could be useful for this.

Priority things to update (examples):

• Scan for images requiring an update that are in use in mainspace (cat Files that need updating has over 1000 files directly in it)
• Scan for charts showing data only up to 2013 that are in use in mainspace (you can change the year)

See the somewhat-new Category:Wikipedia updating.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 12:28, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

• Scan for 2000s maps of the world in use (many of those outdated datagraphics with newer version available; note that currently in v2 of GLAMorous only the first 10 images are loaded – see phab:T391827)

Prototyperspective (talk) 13:05, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

• New WikiProject proposal for things like this on Wikipedia: Proposing a new WikiProject Data Visualization. I've linked to here from there and if you're interested in participating in this WikiProject, you could leave a comment there.

Prototyperspective (talk) 14:36, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Bulk upload of Swisstopo images

Since 2021, all data (including images) from Swisstopo (Swiss Federal Office of Topography) are freely accessible, and thus can be published on Wimikedia commons. See COM:SWISSTOPO. However, looking at Template:Attribution-Swisstopo it seems like only a few hundred images were uploaded to Commons.

Swisstopo has hundreds of thousands of high quality images with rich metadata, for example terrestrial images, historical images, technical images. These could be highly valuable in general (as they are not so easily discoverable in search engines) but also for the broader Wikimedia communities, e.g., to illustrate articles, thanks to the rich metadata.

I didn't find any previous discussions on this, so I was wondering: is there any concern with a bulk upload to Commons? I don't have any experience with bulk uploads, but this is something I'd be happy to look into. 7804j (talk) 19:55, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@7804j: https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/legal-framework says, "Copyright and any other rights relating to texts, illustrations, photos or any other data available on the websites of swisstopo are the exclusive property of swisstopo or of any other expressly mentioned owners. Any reproduction requires the prior written consent of the copyright holder." That would seem to make the matter at least ambiguous. - Jmabel ! talk 20:20, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

The license in the template is only for geodata including orthophotos but not for other photos. GPSLeo (talk) 20:32, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@GPSLeo: I'm completely inclined to believe you, but if you are correct then I believe Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/Switzerland#Data_published_by_the_Swiss_Federal_Office_of_Topography_swisstopo is currently misleading, if not downright inaccurate. - Jmabel ! talk 02:30, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

The description is totally correct. The term data in this context means geodata which does not include regular photos. This is a very common differentiation in European license and data usage policies. GPSLeo (talk) 05:56, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I believe the geodata terms of use also apply to the images.

For example, the terrestrial images page's terms of use section links directly to the "Terms of use for free geodata and geoservices (OGD) from swisstopo", not the broader legal framework. Also this press release lists a lot of geoservices that are also included in the framework, including orthophotos.

I don't see any statement that would suggest images are excluded, and I agree with Jmabel that the current wording of the policy in Commons strongly suggests that it also applies to images 7804j (talk) 10:04, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Update: I have reached out to Swisstopo, who confirmed that my interpretation is correct. All images are free to use with attribution.

Pasting their response below (in French):

Nous vous remercions de votre demande et de votre intérêt pour les images historiques.

Depuis le 1^er mars 2021, nos données peuvent être utilisées et publiées librement.

Géodonnées de base gratuites (OGD) (admin.ch)

Pour la publication des prises de vue terrestres, techniques, et des images historiques vous n’avez donc pas besoin d’autorisation de reproduction et aucun émolument n’est perçu.

Nous vous prions seulement de mentionner la source suivante :

Source : Office fédéral de topographie swisstopo

ou

© swisstopo

De plus amples informations et l'accès aux géodonnées gratuites sont disponibles à l’adresse

Géodonnées et applications (admin.ch)

Informations générales sur l'obtention de géodonnées (admin.ch)

Nous avons prix connaissance de votre remarque.

Nous restons à votre entière disposition pour tout autre renseignement. 7804j (talk) 12:31, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@7804j: FYI, I already uploaded all maps in 2023. Please see Category:Swisstopo map sheets. Yann (talk) 13:54, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@7804j: I have looked at these images. They are indeed interesting and of high resolution, e.g. File:Handhabung, Doppeldecker Häfeli DH-5 (Militär) für Aerofotogrammetrie Aufnahmen, 000398822, edit.jpg. What general category do you suggest for these (Category:Images from the Swiss Federal Office of Topography?) Is there an API to retrieve all the information? You could start a request at Commons:Batch uploading if you can't upload these yourself. Regards, Yann (talk) 19:56, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

They have csv files with the metadata and download links, which would work. But for some reason this metadata is missing the most important attribute, which is the description... I've reached out to Swisstopo to find out if there's another way to get the description programmatically, or if I missed something. For the category, I was thinking of Category:Swisstopo historic. 7804j (talk) 07:37, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I saw this. This is not really meaningful. We can do better. Yann (talk) 07:59, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Uploading many JPG files from Internet Archive

Hi, is there any easy way to upload a lot of JPG files (different titles/URLs) from IA to Commons? Similar to IA-upload tool, but that tool only for PDF/DJVUs. I need something like that, but for JPGs. (I have many things to import, so downloading/manual import is out of the question). Bennylin (yes?) 13:58, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

For this I will probably use https://url2commons.toolforge.org and use JavaScript on the pages to get the titles file links and desciptions somehow from IA  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   14:18, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Uploading works by a third party

We get a lot of relatively new users who either stumble when trying to upload third-party work or who ask very similar questions either here or on the help desk. I've written Commons:Uploading works by a third party as a general guide that I think covers almost all cases and pitfalls that I've seen. (Yes, there are some really weird edge cases that are not covered there, but I've tried to cover everything that I've seen come up more than a couple of times.) I'm hoping that a lot of the time we can just link this rather than need to write a bespoke help-page answer or user-talk-page comment.

Besides the possibility of linking to the document as a whole, there will be times when it is useful to link Commons:Uploading works by a third party#Is the content you want to upload already free-licensed or in the public domain? or (especially) Commons:Uploading works by a third party#If you need to obtain a license for copyrighted work, which starts with a "What not to do" section that might help head off a problem we see almost daily. - Jmabel ! talk 15:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

I might just by cynical but i feel like most issues from uploading works from third parties comes from the uploader neither replying to nor reading any of the templates on their talk page only to get upset when their inactivity backfires at them with the files getting deleted or a block after an complaint to AN Trade (talk) 00:18, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

The templates on their talk page are not nearly sufficient to explain how to do it right. In the process of writing this, I even turned up one issue that was major enough that it is going to result in a change to the Upload Wizard because the developers of that tool hadn't properly thought through one significant scenario. If they are confused, where does that leave the average user? - Jmabel ! talk 00:45, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Files from studies

New meta page describing how to upload files from studies and about science media on Commons.

Scientific media (mainly datagraphics and scientific illustrations/diagrams) is probably some of the most educational and most useful and often used in Wikipedia articles. However, still nearly nobody else uploads many of these so more participation would be good.

Maybe users here have some further info to add to this page. It details the current procedure in ca 17 steps which also is relevant if people would like to improve it, e.g. to make it smoother and quicker. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:11, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Relevant: Commons:Requests for comment/Technical needs survey/Upload tool poll#Study2Commons. Such a tool could make it easier to upload such images but it seems unfeasible there will be one such in the near future. This the page linked above has some info how to find and upload them. If you know of further ways to find CCBY images in studies than the ones listed there, please add them. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:52, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Flickr limiting filesize downloads from free accounts

I just received an email from Flickr, saying:

Starting May 15, 2025, Flickr will restrict the downloading of original and large (larger than 1024px) sizes of photos owned by free accounts. If you use a free account, this update applies to both your own content and to content shared by other free members. In addition, videos stored on free accounts will no longer be downloadable once the change takes effect.

...

This restriction won't apply to Creative Commons licensed photos.

Flickr Commons members are exempt from this change and will retain access to all download sizes.

Obviously this will have an impact on us when we want to use PD images or videos from such accounts, incorrectly tagged as being in copyright. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:52, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing, yes, I noticed this too today. This will have some important impact indeed (for example I'm uploading some hundreds of photos shot by the Romanov family and stored on their albums scanned just on Flickr by one user... and now I shall hurry up!).

What do you suggest to do?

Thanks. -- LucaLindholm (talk) 09:44, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@LucaLindholm I'd recommend uploading using Commons:OpenRefine or other such tools to speed up the process -- DaxServer (talk) 09:50, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

"This restriction won't apply to Creative Commons licensed photos." That's oddly specific. Is there any context behind this change?--Trade (talk) 02:39, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Flickr have a few times given special status to open licensed photos, I think. When they first started deleting extra photos (after being bought by Smugmug) I'm pretty sure they didn't delete CC ones (at least, that was my experience). I think they might just care about open content (c.f. flickr.org), or figure that they can at least start with harsher measures for closed stuff and see if that gets things as far as they need to. Sam Wilson 03:21, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

request for bot

Is there a bot that can insert the date/time from the exif metadata into the image? In question about 140 images from user Category:Photographs by Mark Ahsmann taken in Sintra here --JotaCartas (talk) 21:59, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

No, nor do I think such a bot would be accepted. Visible timestamps in images are discouraged, and considered redundant if that information is already in the EXIF data. Images with visible timestamps can be tagged with a template to have them removed, but the reverse never happens. You can read up a bit on the policy at COM:WM#What_are_not_watermarks, see also the description of Template:Watermark with the "timestamp" parameter. ReneeWrites (talk) 20:54, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Ok, you may be wright .. but .. It is not possible to use EXIF data in tools like PetScan and/or AWB (at least I don't know how to use it), thanks JotaCartas (talk) 21:02, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@JotaCartas: that seems like a non-sequitur to what you originally wrote, so maybe your initial question (which ReneeWrites answered) was not quite what you meant to asked. She presumed (as did I) that you wanted a visible timestamp overwritten onto the image, like a watermark. Did you mean something else? If so, could you clarify? - Jmabel ! talk 00:49, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi, actually what I want is to transfer the complete EXIF ​​data to the "|data=" field of the "Information" template. The reason is to be able to obtain a list of images of a of a certain user sorted by "date/hour/min" to determine their +- exact location. JotaCartas (talk) 01:43, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@JotaCartas: That sounds like something that could be automated. You could ask at COM:BR to see if this is possible. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:16, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Ok, thanks I will try there JotaCartas (talk) 23:12, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

PDF thumbnail not rendering

Just checked the file File:BBC_Charter_2017.pdf and found the PDF thumbnail is not rendered, why???

Pinging @999real DinhHuy2010 (talk) 04:54, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@DinhHuy2010: It is rendering for me, 5 hours later.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 09:55, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jeff G. THE THUMBNAIL RENDERED ON MY SIDE, LET'S GOOO!!!!!! DinhHuy2010 (talk) 10:09, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Also just add structured data too... DinhHuy2010 (talk) 10:24, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I've had this problem with a number of files myself. Some started working again, but File:Meccano Magazine 1929-07.pdf hasn't rendered a thumbnail in months. Does anyone know why this happens or how it can be fixed? ReneeWrites (talk) 20:56, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Idk, but pdf not rendering in initial upload (usually tied to metadata extraction failure) but then working fine after a purge, seems quite common. I've seen many reports of it. It needs someone to investigate more fully. Its probably something easy to fix once the root cause is identified, but its not clear right now what that cause is. You could try asking the WMF to investgate (ping @Sannita (WMF)) Bawolff (talk) 01:23, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Could someone report this to phab? DinhHuy2010 (talk) 03:27, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

It was actually the opposite case here. The thumbnail rendered after the upload, but then broke after a few days. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:06, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Turrets

BEGIN moved from Commons talk:Village pump - Jmabel ! talk 21:18, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
In this wiki "category:turrets (architecture)" seems to describe "Corbelled turrets" in some cases it describes "Ridge turret" which is something different.

I would propose "category:turrets (architecture)" to be replaced by "Category:Corbelled turrets" (a bot can do that).

Some items would have to be recategorised by hand Io Herodotus (talk) 10:22, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
END moved from Commons talk:Village pump - Jmabel ! talk 21:18, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

What is the actual incentive for admins to refrain from out-of-process deletions?

Apparently this isnt an valid reason for undeletion. Which means people can just delete files if they are scared that the DR will fail considering you cant make DR for delete files --Trade (talk) 12:42, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

The incentive is that if someone gets things wrong a lot, they lose the community's confidence as a admin.

you cant make DR for delete files doesn't make a lot of sense, but you can always make a UDR for a deleted file, if that is what you meant. - Jmabel ! talk 15:16, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

I'd ask myself instead what is the actual incentive for admins to delete files?. Apparently you see administrators as people in constant need of deleting files, and never get satisfied with that. Strakhov (talk) 15:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

...As i already said i was told that an file getting deleted for an invalid reason isn't enough reason to get an UDR accepted Trade (talk) 17:17, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

It was deleted for a valid reason- namely, privacy. It was not deleted for the reason that was mentioned in the DR- it would only be the case of an invalid deletion if it was based on the DR. Out-of-process deletions might not be good in themself, but it's still a valid way to delete files when something as serious as subject consent is present. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:07, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Several of the deleted photos were voted to be kept after being undeleted. Trade (talk) 18:21, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Which photos are you talking about, because this is the only one I saw in your recent contributions. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

If files are deleted for privacy reasons this is not mentioned in the deletion comment to avoid scraping of such files form caches. GPSLeo (talk) 18:43, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

If was several photos of women playing sports Trade (talk) 22:22, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

@DoctorWhoFan91 well, the file should have been DR-ed instead of speedy-ed, since anything related to privacy without an actual complaint from the subject/s is subjective and best resolved through a deletion request. We do have thousands of images by the infamous Filipino judge w:en:Florentino Floro (who goes by his now-blocked account Judgefloro (talk · contribs) and his socks like FBenjr123 (talk · contribs) and Valenzuela400 (talk · contribs)) that show people (esp. children). A couple of the subjects he took aren't apparently aware that they are being taken (e.g. File:09977jfBuga Sapang Mandili Roads San Miguel Bulacan Pampangafvf 11.JPG and File:09977jfBuga Sapang Mandili Roads San Miguel Bulacan Pampangafvf 15.JPG, as well as a couple of images under Category:Cycling men in the Philippines). Any way, these cases are best resolved through DRs. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 23:39, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, the image being talked about(the one I saw in trade's undeletion requests)- had a woman giving a blowjob, so I think that's a bigger violation of privacy than these are. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 05:59, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

If you looked at the talk page of the file you could see that the community voted to keep twice it because they found the complaint to be unfounded

Again, is this really what we want to be the new norm on Commons? Besides if there was any complaint from the subject it should go through VRT, not DR Trade (talk) 00:08, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Trade: the prior proposed deletions were not on the basis of the privacy issue. This is just like we could have a file kept after a discussion as to whether it is in scope, but still delete it later over a copyright issue. - Jmabel ! talk 00:43, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Guess i was thinking on another image? Either way it's difficult to argue on reasoning when the community was never allowed to be involved Trade (talk) 01:04, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

It was a woman giving a blowjob- the community does not need to be involved for that, pretty clear cut case. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 08:35, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I used to think so but it increansingly seems like you can just put a SD template on any file for any reasoning and 9/10 times it will get deleted anyways.--Trade (talk) 01:06, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

It depends on the area, but I don't see why that shouldn't be the standard if it's something like a logo where there's hundreds of thousands of them on here and most of them are unused SPAM uploaded by SPA accounts. It's impossible to deal with the large amount of SPAM garbage on here through normal DRs. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:42, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Coordinate and Categories

Hi! I think I saw a bot on Wikimedia Commons that could categorize files based on their coordinates. Could you tell me if such a bot actually existed, or am I mistaken? Mitte27 (talk) 15:34, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

We have bots that copy coordinates from a photo's metadata to the structured data, but as far as I know they don't add categories based on that information (except for maintenance categories sometimes, if the coordinates are 0,0 for instance). ReneeWrites (talk) 16:53, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Few categories can be added solely on the basis of coordinates, and those few are usually ones that are too general. A city or district category might be of help for those categorising the file further, but if the subject is an author, a car or a photo in a family album, we probably don't want the file hidden away there. A bot can be helpful in suggesting such categories, but there needs to be a human who determines whether the category is useful and whether additional categories are needed for the file to be findable. –LPfi (talk) 10:49, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Cultural heritage sites could be added by coordinates. For example, {{Cultural Heritage Russia}} usually has the cultural heritage site number as a hyperlink to a website that has the coordinates of the heritage site in question. That website also often has a link to the relevant Commons category. And the template can also be added to the Commons category itself. So, in such a case, it would be possible to just add the heritage template and leave the categories to a bot? (Check out Category:Cathedral of the Epiphany in Tula Kremlin and File:71 Богоявленский собор Тульского кремля 2.jpg for an example of how the above template works and what info it provides. It actually adds several (hidden) categories, such as Category:Cultural heritage monuments in Russia with known IDs and Category:WLM/7110014001 — the heritage site's registration number.) Nakonana (talk) 12:55, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Should every location have it's own "by year" subcategory?

I take a lot of pictures in Iceland and have noticed that many of my pictures have been moved to a subcategory of when it was taken. I feel this is not very usefull information since it's already in the description. These changes are mostly done by user Hornstrandir1. I quickly found a few examples Category:Raufarhólshellir by year, Category:Snæfell by year, Category:Esjufjöll by year, Category:Bárðarbunga by year, Category:Kambabrún by year. You can see that many of the categories within them only have 1 or 2 files. What are the guidelines regarding putting images in categories regarding their year? I have found them useful when looking for pictures of individuals, because you want the most recent image of the person. But places rarely change that much over the years. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Steinninn (talk • contribs) 21:38 , 19 April 2025 (UTC)

”But places rarely change that much over the years.” I disagree, some places may not change a lot but other places do. Could be some sort of natural disaster, natural progress (new development, become abandoned ect.). Bidgee (talk) 22:07, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I didn't say they don't change. I said they rarely change that much. That is still true. But you are right, over centuries you can see changes. And sometimes (rarely), there are big changes within just a few months. But my question is, should Raufarhólshellir, Snæfell, Esjufjöll and so on have a category for every year? Steinninn ♨ 23:26, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

The guidelines are mostly "do what makes sense". For a major city, that may be a category per month. If this is resulting in categories with one or two files, though, then this is too granular; decade or even century may be more appropriate than year. For somewhere like Kambabrún where we have a grand total of two photos, date categories at this level of locality are an outright liability. - Jmabel ! talk 00:54, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Id say no. "By year" is way to granular in most instances and just leds to images not being categorized by more meaningful criteria like "by subject." There's been of ton CfDs in the past where there was clear consensus to get rid of "by year" categories in instances where they have little or no files to. So there's clearly a consensus against them in instances like this. I'd say its not an either or thing though. If there's enough images to justify it, cool. Create or keep the categories. Otherwise don't. But one or two images in a category clearly isn't enough to justify it. People just like navigation templates to have blue links. They don't care if the categories actually makes sense or not. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:12, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Adamant1 So should I start removing the images from the categories or contact the person that created them? Steinninn ♨ 03:54, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I'd just up-merge the images to "by decade" categories or something. You can cite this conversation if they say anything. I created a list of CfDs and Village Pump discussions for "by year" categories on User talk:G.dallorto in the second to last section. You can always cite some of them if you have to. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:03, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. Steinninn ♨ 05:41, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

"By year" categories should be treated like any other, in that there needs to be enough media to justify the split. One or two files per category is too granular. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:12, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

• Agree what seems emerging consensus - no everywhere does not need year categories, but they are often useful for places which regularly generate large numbers of files. (I don't think we need a hard rule for exact number of files, but when there are more than 200 (default page view) files in a category I often look if there is are easy and useful ways to make subcategories.) -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 15:15, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

  Often, those large numbers of files should get categorised according to other criteria. For the cave, e.g., there are probably a number of features that often get photographed, and one of them might get photographed one year and another another year, based on the interests and routes of the photographers visiting. Years, or even decades, are seldom the most important criterium when searching for images – and as the original poster notes, dates are noted separately, so can be searched for regardless of categorisation. –LPfi (talk) 11:05, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

  Agree with all you said except that sadly dates can't be searched well regardless of categorization. See phab:T329961 (and the links in the latest comment there). They're already in the file information template but there is no way to a) search and b) date-range-filter them. Often, files belong into multiple subcategories of a category so I think they would best not be removed from the top level when put into a by year cat so they can be put into a by subject cat by others more easily/likely. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:08, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Unidentified Baden-Württemberg stations

Two unidentified stations in Baden-Württemberg:

• 
• 
• 

I placed the first image in Baden-Württemberg because of the Eppingen destination and the previous slides where in the general area. Category:2003 in tram transport in Mannheim and Category:2003 in tram transport in Heidelberg (I probably started from Heidelberg).Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:21, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

The second station is an unidentified dead-end station, with the destination board displaying Meckesheim.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:48, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

This is almost certainly Aglasterhausen. The first could then be Meckesheim, where the railcar would return to.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:25, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I think the first one is indeed Meckesheim, the level crossing immediately south of the train station. There are just three tracks now, but there used to be more. The platform (where the people are standing) looks similar to the one in this 1985 photo. --Rosenzweig τ 12:17, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

The third image confirms the conclusions.  DoneSmiley.toerist (talk) 10:34, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Garba and Dandiya Raas

Someone on Flickr uploaded 156 photos of a "Garba and Dandiya Raas" (Category:Garba and Category:Dandiya Raas) in Trinidad university, but I am not sure these really have anything to do with Garba and Dandiya Raas besides the name...does anyone know  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   16:28, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

999real, well, the images where they are dancing is definitely Garba and/or Dandiya Raas. The ones where they are holding sticks can sort of come under the category of Dandiya Raas, though it would be better not to use them; the images where they are just standing taking pictures are not really usable, as that is just people standing around. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 16:46, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Central Notice

Hi!
For the second edition of the Wikidata contest Coordinate Me (May 2025) we, that is the organizing team at Wikimedia Österreich, would like to deliver central notices - request page - on several Wikimedia projects in the 27 participating countries and regions to invite people to join in. The CN shall be delivered, not permanently of course, from April 28 to May 11. --Manfred Werner (WMAT) (talk) 18:15, 21 April 2025 (UTC)