This page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/12.
Please note:
If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias.
Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer).
Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam.
Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page:
SpBotarchives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 1 day and sections whose most recent comment is older than 7 days.
November 13
Long-term disputes on various wikis involving a cross-wiki IP author
There are numerous disputes involving an IP user indulging in cross-wiki spam, particularly articles on West Germanic varieties. I am hounded for a while.
From what I can see, he's a user who upload much about mapping and cartography, for which is great, but to engage in further conversation with German Low, or etztes with or without a s, Low Saxon with Low German to Low German only, for me all this and the on-going conversation, does not contribute to anything positive. Germanic lang have much variation, as well as French or Latin, especially from those area. You could simply add a variant, or suggest that it might be spelled with a different phonetic sounds. I did review quite a few contribution he made, and this could be solve quickly. In my opinion he is contributing for which is great, if you are trying to bring post back from 2003... It seems like he is using the same account, and he will keep using it since he's in love with the appreciation of contribution... I suggest to close this topic for now and simply add a watch alert.
@Sarcelles: Is this some sort of request for administrative action? If so, it belongs on the appropriate Administrators' noticeboard, not on the Village pump. Conversely, if it is something you are just bringing up for general discussion, I don't know what you want discussed. - Jmabel ! talk18:37, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
None of these accounts have edited in recent weeks, some not in as long as half a year, so it is hard to imagine what anyone can do about this at this point. - Jmabel ! talk18:40, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It can be anticipated, that this author continues to be active on several wikis including Commons. I think this is a good place to discuss this cross-wiki spam. On en.wiktionary I have been removing numerous typical edits by this user. Sarcelles (talk) 14:29, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
File:Niederfränkisch.png is a file of this kind. It attempts to picture Low Franconian varieties in Europe. It has the following threefold-division:
A minor transitional area to Low Saxon, in the Netherlands
East Bergish running from near the city centre of Essen to Westphalia, also quite small#
A somehow larger area cutting through all of the following: an arrondissement bordering to Brussels, Antwerp province, Dutch Limburg, Belgian Limburg, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Wuppertal, German-speaking Belgium and French-speaking Belgium.
This is called Nordniederfränkisch (North Low Franconian) and running from France to Holland, Friesland province, Brussels and Westphalia. Sarcelles (talk) 11:45, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Dialects of Dutch and German This is a typical German map of some of the dialects from Italy to Denmark. The author is MicBy67, User:Postmann Michael (The discussion creator's blatant and deliberate lie has been corrected! The map creator was not the Commons accounts mentioned, but the account User:Et Mikkel~commonswiki! Let's stick to the truth for once! --MicBy67 (talk) 02:34, 7 December 2024 (UTC)). There should be a further discussion of this issue. Sarcelles (talk) 20:07, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yawn!
Cook up a fresh idea! ;)
Hey, did you happen to catch the latest post on the discussion page? Just checking!
@MicBy67: consider yourself formally warned that the wording of your posts here has been unnecessarily uncivil, and continuing in this vein will probably result in me (or someone else) blocking you. - Jmabel ! talk17:53, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Jmabel: I take note of that. And I'm aware that the discussion creator (or his mentor) will bring up the old story again with the original account (Postmann Michael) was blocked on the German-speaking Wikipedia because of POV from dubious sources, trivialization of National Socialism. Harmful to Wikipedia on the one hand, and with the successor account (Et Mikkel) was permanently blocked on the German-speaking Wikipedia as a way to circumvent the blocking on the other hand.
Nobody really cares about the past two decades anymore!
What is striking, however, is the fact that the discussion creator is trying to construct a connection between the IP's and me. And is cross-wiki hounding actually allowed on Wikimedia Commons? I am asking now for an interested friend … --MicBy67 (talk) 02:55, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I hope these templates are more mobile friendly than text based TOC, which often is not auto adjusted to page width. The TOC should also be new on top and old on bottom, since more recent archives are more relevant for current users.
Dear ALL it seems that since few days ago (independent) iOS Commons app Wiki Uploader is no more (has not been maintained since a while, but now gone from Apple's App Store).
As F/L/OSS advocate I am always favoring open hardware/software/services/standards (understand communal preference to focus on Android as platform), but this is second time that we do not have any mobile app for iPhone (in the time when iPhone is literary celebrated by professionals for its lens quality and software).
Is there a way to do something about cross-plaform portability of the Commons App code so that iOS can have at least basic app supported by WMF or establish a minimal support for indy developers to have one maintained in sustainable way?
As a former app developer (and one of the developers working on the first versions of mobile Wikipedia)... Cross platform development is not really a golden ticket. Or rather.. that is what the web is for.
If you want a cross platform app, there are some solutions, but it should not be underestimated how much time you will still have to spend working on very platform specific things, that now have to fit into a multiplatform straightjacket.
What you are seeing here is the cost of quality. Development (esp mobile) is expensive. And the few very good floss mobile apps you see, are essentially built on the backs of a lot of available time and dedication by singular very skilled developers. These are the exceptions, most apps lack either the time, the skill or the interest of people. The point here being, that i would not focus on the technology too much. The right people tend to be a bigger differentiator here (or money, but that isn't going to happen). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:28, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@TheDJ not sure I understand your arguments. We had several unofficial but non-terrible iOS apps for Commons photo uploads, but it seems none were given any support in any way. Zblace (talk) 15:48, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@GPSLeo easy to agree to extend Wikipedia app with photo upload, but I kind of doubt that will be done unless there is huge preassure from contributing and developer communities to extend the app in that direction. Zblace (talk) 10:58, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Zblace, perhaps adding {{Support}} for the wish was a bit misleading (WMF employees don't want that action for some unknown reason) but still I think the wishlist is the main way to get attention for an iOS app, with adding a love token on Phabricator and directly approaching WMF board members the only other ways I can think of. Anecdotally I have noticed a WMF product manager participating, hence my assumption that the WMF is watching the wishlist. Take a look at the status column at m:Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Results to see examples of wishes from a previous year that were taken on. Dark mode would be another example of something implemented. Having said all that I am also cynical about the situation, but you can only try and stranger things have happened. Commander Keane (talk) 05:30, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with what you said Keane. As for adding things to the Wikipedia app (which has an iOS version) I don't know if it's feasible to make the WP app extendable – one could install a plugin for iOS Commons features or even Commons to the much better known more popular iOS-compatible Wikipedia app (but it would require a lot of development to match the Commons app functionality so I think it's probably easier to convert the app to iOS which may be readily possible with some effort despite that it's not been developed with some cross-platform framework with which it would have been very easy.) Prototyperspective (talk) 11:45, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Heya, I cannot answering your question about cross-platform portability of the Android App. But regarding the topic of an iOS Commons App in general, I am currently developing a new native iOS app for Commons, to make uploads and search/explore images and categories. It will be open source and licensed under A FOSS license. There is currently no public test version though, but I plan to have a first semi-public test version around March, 2025. Nylki (talk) 15:30, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, so I wanted to share some proposed changes to Tmbox that would harmonise it with mbox. This would be useful when we decide to migrate Mbox to Module:Message box. Due to the unfortunate way templatestlyes works, I can't show changes side-by-side, but here's the changes with old Tmbox and my version. With the old version, there is quite a bad contrast with mbox since one has an inline border but one doesn't, which is especially noticed on talk pages, but my version fixes that. Also, it synchronises the colours with mbox with design tokens. —Matrix(!)ping onewhen replying {user - talk? - uselesscontributions} 19:17, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Cooked food in supermarkets is now used for a concept in Chinese supermarkets. I'm not sure how applicable this is for other countries.
The concept is, food that is sold like those sold in food shops/restaurants. They are ready for consumption. They can be consumed on site; or within a few days, usually not more than a week. Factory-packaged cooked food like canned food, frozen pizzas, frozen nuggets, biscuits, chips, tiramisu, ice cream etc. is not the scope of this category. For cooked food for sale similar to this concept but in other countries, I've only seen "siu mei" and roast chicken sold in Singapore NTUC fairprice, and sushi and baked goods sold in German supermarkets. In very rare cases I saw a German supermarket with a few food shops inside selling sandwiches, pastry and drinks.
There's the potential ambiguity of the current cat title (which can refer to all packaged non-raw food). What's your suggestion? Should we keep this title, or do you have an alternative proposal? RoyZuo (talk) 22:52, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PS: these counters are behind the cashiers, like raw meat/seafood/cheese counters commonly found in western supermarkets. Not the shops that share the same building with the supermarket but outside its cashiers.--RoyZuo (talk) 11:20, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of US supermarkets have onsite delis with cooked food like this. Actual seating is more rare, but I recall seeing it. Complicating it some is places like Walmart and Target often have Subways or McDonalds or Pizza Huts or Starbucks inside them.--Prosfilaes (talk) — Preceding undated comment was added at 00:04, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Onsite seating is more common in co-op markets than the big U.S. chains, but not that unusual. I think pretty much every Whole Foods has it.
In Germany this concept is called Mittagstisch as it is mostly used for lunch. If in other regions this is also primarily for lunch and not for dinner „Lunch in supermarkets“ could be a good and not that ambiguous category name. GPSLeo (talk) 07:09, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any connection in the delis I've been familiar with. I'm sure there's a lot of lunch, but there's some breakfast foods in the morning, and they sell a lot of rotisserie chicken for dinners. When I worked the job 20 years ago, we sold a decent amount of dinner food.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:36, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Prosfilaes: I have seen US supermarkets with seating, hot rotisserie chickens (available in preparation for dinnertime, with the remains resold the next day cold and packaged at a discount), and a hot chicken wing bar (available around lunchtime) that doesn't just serve wings (again, with the remains resold the next day cold and packaged at a discount). The ready-to-eat food is very popular with employees who have very short breaks. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:04, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Commonly used terms for this in US supermarkets are "ready-to-eat" or "grab and go". Sometimes also "prepared meals", although that's ambiguous with packaged items that need to be heated before consumption. Omphalographer (talk) 03:59, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
December 04
Commons:What is this? (Get help with file categorization)
This is a new page intended to become a place where users can ask about what is shown in an image/video so that fitting categories can be added or for people knowledgable about a subject to add requested fitting categories:
I created it due to recurring posts on this page asking about what individual pictures show where having a separate page could make this page here more focused on project-wide issues and all of the remaining discussions. It could become more overseeable (shorter) as well as to enable users (only or especially) interested in such requests to have a separate dedicated page they can watch.
Requests that for some time remain unsolved there could be asked about here in a brief post that bundles several requests. These could look like the photo challenge results posts.
If you're interested in these kinds of requests, please watch that page. It probably won't work well early on for some time but that may change over time. If you have any media files where you think a category is missing and you'd like to know which, just create a new section on that page. There also probably is a better name for that page, I'll try to think of a better one and if you have any suggestions please name them. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:59, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1 The lack of such a place. 2 This place being overcrowded. 3 Insufficient resources for the large backlog & open VP issues/discussions. 4 Files missing categories and missing categories for files. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:57, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The main problem of Village Pump, as I see it is that Proto closes threads they don't seem to fully understand while hiding in edit summaries that they are closing such threads and then complain when knowledgeable people reopen them, bloating these threads with meta discussions about the threads. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 08:23, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea, but it needs to be properly advertised. Perhaps the MediaWiki Upload Wizard could include a line like "If you don't know what categories you should use you can ask experienced users" or something like that. The main issue is that a lot of power users don't even know where things are, for example I know a good map maker who didn't know about the Maps Workshop. Another example is how the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) "hides" are their projects and places by not putting it in a highly visible navigational template. For this page to be successful, it should be advertised in the help desk, community navigational templates, and the MediaWiki Upload Wizard. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:04, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Makes sense but linking it anywhere at the Upload Wizard would be a wrong place for this. It's meant for experienced editors who would like to find out a fitting category for some media, particularly:
if they think it's too important to identify what is shown and categorize it than to just dump it somewhere into Category:Unidentified subjects
It's best to describe what is unidentified as that there may not be an unindentifed xyz category for it or because it's briefly described somewhat unclear what is unidentified
It's best to describe what is unidentified as one can use multiple examples and can use some text to describe it
for example I know a good map maker who didn't know about the Maps Workshop I find aggreggating everything into a category useful for such purposes (at best also an overview page using that) and I've created Category:Wikimedia projects and maps regarding that example.
I uploaded two pictures of sculptures, you can find the images here and here. The relevant article on the Dutch Wiki states that the figure on the right is Hannibal Barkas, and the figure on the left is Philip II of Macedon, however a small number of files in the category for these sculptures (Category:Bearers of memorial tomb of Engelbert II of Nassau) are named/categorized the other way around. Can someone help me figure out which is accurate? ReneeWrites (talk) 22:15, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Renee. It appears that the identity of these two figures is uncertain; there's no way to know for sure who they represent, much less which one is "Hannibal" and which one is "Philip". The figures of Caesar and Regulus on the other side of the tomb are identified by inscriptions, but the inscriptions for the two in your photographs are lost, and the tradition that they represent Hannibal and Philip, although frequently repeated, does not seem to have any contemporary (i.e, 16th-century) evidence to support it. See, e.g., E. M. Kavaler, Actors Carved and Cast: Netherlandish Sculpture of the Sixteenth Century, p. 84. This is the reason for the confusion in your sources: no one really knows who these guys are, and they may not be Hannibal and Philip at all. A quick Google Books search turned up several different suggested identifications in 19th- and 20th-century sources: Hannibal and Alexander the Great, Hannibal and Scipio (which Scipio is not stated, but presumably Africanus), Achilles and Ulysses, or simply "two Grecian heroes". Like the traditional attribution to Michelangelo, which was common in the 19th century but is unanimously rejected today, this is just a story that has become attached to the tomb: maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but without more evidence, you're never going to be able to put definitive names to your photos. – Cheers, Crawdad Blues (talk) 14:09, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
What's the correct approach to resolve an issue with an admin, who I feel systematically misapplies our deletion policy? See discussion at User_talk:The_Squirrel_Conspiracy#CfD_closure.
While I often disagree with TSC, the closure was according to policies, perfectly fine and clearly clarifies that it can be recreated if photos are taken already in the CfD and again in a well-written response on the talk page that addresses your point. What you linked to was some talk page discussion, I just didn't address the good points in that comment because I thought it was best to rest the case for now and there is no reasonable chance that the categories will be re-populated again here anyway. Either way that's just a user's comment on a talk page. I wonder what makes you think that overrides well-reasonable established policies. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:24, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What well-reasoned policies are you referring to? (a policy at Commons is a written page with a policy tag, not what an admin writes in their explanation). ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 12:27, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, thanks for clarifying your POV. This even if it's unrelated to a regular deletion not being handled appropriately (see applicable policy in the linked discussion). ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 12:37, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What was the deal with the category to begin with? Like was there an image in it that got deleted at some point or was it always empty? --Adamant1 (talk) 12:54, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Besides there being no consensus for its deletion, it was well-defined and "obviously usable for the future" (so not eligible for speedy deletion either). ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:13, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, I get that's your argument. It's not what I asked though. Regardless, there's only one Lamborghini Invencible in existence and I just spent 20 minutes looking for a freely licensed photograph of it with no luck. Really, there's barely any photographs of the car to begin with. So I don't think the whole "obviously usable for the future" thing is met here and it's your standard. But that's why I was asking if there was an image in the category at some point. If there was then maybe it would be possible to find another one somewhere, upload it, and just recreate the category that way instead of trying to Wikilawyer. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:20, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It happens that we have well defined categories and then all content gets deleted and at some point users upload other pictures. Nothing really particular about this one. That's why we check such things at CfD and some admins handle the requests with the necessary care. Otherwise we could just use a bot instead. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:46, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All content gets deleted and at some point users upload other pictures Or they don't. It doesn't matter what the guideline says anyway. All that matters is that multiple people say your wrong. So you are. That's it. Citing policy only works when there's people on your side and no one agrees with you. It's totally pointless to discuss this beyond that. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:55, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You are complaining about missing care when handling deletion requests on categories but the example you are referring to is perfectly aligned with the current guidelines. It is nearly impossible to get a photo of this car. GPSLeo (talk) 18:28, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
For most photos that are flipped at the source (ex. File:Mystic river drawbridge no. 7.jpg), I think it's best to flip to the correct orientation and note that in the file description. For selfies, given how common flipping is (and how difficult it can be to tell lacking a telltale background clue), I'm not sure. I'd certainly welcome a discussion.
It can be really tricky to decide which version is preferable when it was a mirror image in the first place. You can always upload the "corrected" version as a separate file. - Jmabel ! talk17:57, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support I don't know why, but from what I've seen there's some pretty obtuse category trees on here having to do with Germany. Way more so then with other countries for some reason. This category structure being an especially horrible example of the wider problem. So I say delete it. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:10, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately this happens not only for forests, but for any object that may be categorized by several variables. For example, in football matches we have at least something like this for only THREE variables (one of which is a "children" (club of country) of another, so closer to 2.5). It is even worse in reality, as e.g. cities or stadiums aren't counted here.
Matches by year by country Matches by country by year Matches by year by club Matches by club by year Matches by club by country Matches in N [year] Matches in N [year] by country Matches in N [year] by club Matches in N [year] by date ("shallow" category — i.e. one that is used to view all of recursive items of a category) Matches in N [country] Matches in N [country] by year Matches in N [country] by club Matches in N [country] by date ("shallow") Matches in N [country] in N [year] Matches in N [country] in N [year] by club Matches in N [country] in N [year] by date ("shallow") Matches of N club Matches of N club by year Matches of N club by date ("shallow") Matches of N club in N year Matches of N club in N year by date ("shallow")
That's largely due to the whole "Double meta categories" thing. Although like everything on here there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it. This being an example of the wrong way. but ultimately "Double meta categories" should just be axed if people don't want weird category trees like these ones to be created in the first place. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:15, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Double meta categories or "three subject categories" I guess. If I'm correct all the categories you listed would be double meta cats. The same goes for something like Category:Forests by city by season and it's subcats. Forests=subject 1, city=subject 2, season=subject 3. Or one main category and 2 meta cats? I don't know but I'm sure you get it. Either way cross sectional categories should only have two subjects at most. Really, even that can be over kill sometimes. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:24, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So, do you think it should ideally be closer to something like this?
Matches by year by country Matches by country by year Matches by year by club Matches by club by year Matches by club by country Matches in N [year] (functioning as both normal category and shallow) Matches in N [year] by country Matches in N [year] by club Matches in N [country] (normal & shallow) Matches in N [country] by year Matches in N [country] by club Matches in N [country] in N [year] (normal & shallow) Matches of N club (normal & shallow) Matches of N club by year Matches of N club in N year (normal & shallow)
Myself I don't really see a difference between "Association football matches by club" and "Matches of association football clubs" so I'd remove the second in favor of the first (and the unification). I agree though that there is no need of a category when there is just one item and categorization by club is in most cases an example of this. So maybe something like this?
Matches by year by country Matches by country by year Matches by year by club Matches by club by year Matches by club by country Matches in N [year] (functioning as both normal category and shallow) Matches in N [year] by country Matches in N [year] by club Matches in N [country] (normal & shallow) Matches in N [country] by year Matches in N [country] by club Matches in N [country] in N [year] (normal & shallow) Matches of N club
I'm not sure why I am being pinged here; I am not involved nor interested in this, and the creator who agreed above is an administrator themself, so I don't think there would be an issue for them to delete their own creations if there is consensus for that. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 10:49, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Appeals of decisions in Commons:Categories for discussion
We don't have a formal process, but here's how I see it. First, communicate with the closing admin. If that doesn't yield satisfaction, bring it here. (In some cases it may be appropriate to start another CfD, but that's a judgement call.) And, please, if there was a strong consensus that you just don't like, let go. - Jmabel ! talk18:03, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not in this case, I think. The categories in question have not been deleted. It was a discussion about renaming categories. The closing admin concluded to not rename the categories. Nakonana (talk) 21:52, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I'll follow the process that you've outlined. I really don't hold out much hope of obtaining a different decision though. Do Admins often self-revert their decisions after such an intervention? I doubt it. But I'll give it a whirl. And no, I don't think that I'm guilty of failing to drop the stick; I think that I have reasonable grounds for requesting an investigation into, and the overturning of, a bad decision. It would be remiss of me not to do so. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:39, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like gaming with system. No one user support your request but you disagree with this desicion. It may be discussed if 50/50 opinions but here is 100% oppose, so there may not be other decision.--Anatoliy 🇺🇦 (talk) 14:50, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given the above comment by the closing Admin @Ahonc: , may I take it that the first part of the process ("communicate with the closing admin") has failed and proceed to the second part of the process (bringing it back to the pump)? Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:46, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Laurel Lodged: that is a lot more complicated than we normally make a disambiguation page. In particular, it has an awful lot of links (apparently into en-wiki) esides the links to the categories someone might have meant, which distracts from the purpose of a disambiguation page. - Jmabel ! talk06:38, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They are just located in the city. The city name serves as a disambiguator here because there are several churches of Virgin Mary in Ukraine (and other countries). The church belongs in Category:Virgin Mary churches, but not on the I-F disambiguation page, I'd say. Nakonana (talk) 13:05, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I created a mass deletion request but I haven't submitted it yet. I feel bad for the author and their efforts. I'd appreciate any feedback. -Slevinski (talk) 19:21, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. It's a large number, but I don't see the benefit and I see actual harm. In the least, the facial diacritic section needs fixed for characters U+1DA00 to U+1DA6C. I provided feedback on one of the facial diacritic images talk page. Either include the head anchor character U+1D9FF, or include the dotted head placeholder in the image. The Noto SignWriting font is still in development and not production ready. The images in the category are not final, but a work in progress that will need to be updated later or left in a unfinished state. The shaping reports from GitHub shows 50% for Noto SignWriting. Why use static images of a development snapshot?
@Slevinski: I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. Are you simply saying that this isn't a good enough font, and we shouldn't document it? Or that these files do not accurately document the font? Or something else? - Jmabel ! talk22:17, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Jeff for pinging. I see notability in the following two reasons: 1. The Noto font family is a widely used one created by Google. It is notable because of the huge amount of glyphs and the goal to provide a glyph for every Unicode character. 2. The Sign Writing language is one of the main communication techniques, especially in the non-verbal purposes. The SVG file makes it freely scalable and the extraction easier to only get the desired sign. I wonder if the glyphs are that wrong in total. In case the glyphs here get outdated, we either have the option to import the newer ones and delete the old ones or move the old ones in a cat for deprecated glyphs. But I think at least the fact it is part of the Noto font family which has its own Wikipedia article should be relevant. If we have really big problems in accuracy or other issues, then this could be put in a broader discussion. Generally I try to cover fonts that are significant enough to have its own article or illustrate a special art of style like ornamented fonts, isometric fonts or 3D style fonts to illustrate the possible amount of variants that can be put into the styling. Greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:38, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed these last days a substantial editor activity on my watchlist (26,186 entries). Maybe it the dark season where many people are at home and closing the year with to do list. Are there any statistics of editor activity?Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:35, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Smiley.toerist and @RoyZuo: The ten-year trend is consistent with what I've been hearing anecdotally: "Everything's online now." Not everyone, though; some older folks eschew computers, smartphones, even "dumb" flip-phones. One couple didn't even have a touch-tone landline phone. However, pretending not to have a touch-tone phone can in some cases get one around an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system (the key being "don't touch anything"). — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:33, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Copyright?
I wanted to load the work on the left side of this page. It dates to the 10th to 11th centuries A.D., and I would tag it PD-Art|PD-old-100. However, the Vatican Library has stamped it with a copyright watermark.
My two questions are:
Does the addition of the watermark change it to a copyrighted status?
Does the watermark make it undesirable for Wikipedia. It is an image used in books about musicology and useful in discussing history of early harps in Europe, but not indispensable.
I hate when archives add obtrusive watermarks, at least when Google scans the watermarks are unobtrusive. This is an example of copyfraud, where you stamp everything as copyrighted, the New York Times does the same thing. --RAN (talk) 19:30, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Combo cats
Or as commons users usually call them, intersection cats.
As I was checking some users' contributions, it seems to me that in recent years some users are creating more complicated cat trees. In the past if a photo of a tree is uploaded, it would go straight into the tree species cat and a few rather generic cats like "trees in london", "december 2011 in london".
The cause for this is that we do not have an integrated tool to search for the intersection of two or more categories. Then one person generates one for a case with many photos and later someone else comes and is scared of the category having so much files in it. So they start splitting the category even more. Then there is a scheme for a category which was useful for one case and is then used to place all photos from the parent categories in the subcategories created in these scheme which creates many categories with only one file. GPSLeo (talk) 18:14, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
so instead of building things like "Trees in autumn 2023 in Berlin", a file could have just been in 4 cats: trees, autumn, 2023-11-11, berlin, and then do a search "incategory:trees incategory:autumn deepcategory:2023 incategory:berlin".
actually, even "autumn" is not needed, because users could go with "incategory:trees insource:/2023\-[01][01289]/ incategory:berlin". this is a bit complicated, but tools can be made to simplify setting a duration range, which is a rather common and essential feature on other image sites like flickr. RoyZuo (talk) 10:27, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I also think this would probably be the best option for many of these cases (except for cats where many are looking for exactly that intersection etc or when sortingcould beused instead). However,
it doesn't work if the category trees are many layers deep and cat-trees trees and autumn may be that long. (Maybe there is a phab issue about increasing the limit for many cases or in some way or even overall.)
manually intersecting categories like that using deepcategory and incategory (or alternatively petscan) is not intuitive and not accessible to users including users new to the site. It would need to be made more accessible, e.g. via some button "Combine/intersect with other categories" on category pages.
There is a constant battle here between lumpers and splitters. I'm a lumper, myself. It might be a bias because of that, but I think the field is tilted toward the splitters. Why? Because anyone can come along and split up a category without consulting anyone else, but to put them back together and get rid of the more specific intersection category generally requires a CfD or even a Village pump discussion. - Jmabel ! talk18:55, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not to mention the outcomes of CfDs or Village Pump discussions can always just be ignored since people are usually to busy policing minor non-issues instead of stuff that actually matters. but it's impossible to follow and deal with the creation of new categories anyway. Like with categories for "historical images." There was a CfD a year ago with a clear consensus to delete the categories, yet people are still creating them at a much faster rate then they are being deleted. And at least in my experience anyone who's told not to create the categories anymore will just ignore the message outright or obfuscate and continue doing it.
There's really nothing that can be done about it outside of admitting that CfDs are totally worthless and no one cares about enforcing any kind of standards on here. It's way more important to pander to the whims of a bunch neurotics so they aren't discouraged from contributing to the project then it is to have a system that actually allows people to find images. Screw that I have to click through 25 increasingly obtuse empty categories just to find a single image of a car. The more important thing is that the person who categorized the image that way isn't turned off from contributing to the project by someone asking them to use some standards. Adamant1 (talk) 02:30, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To try to steer this to a more productive direction: I think part of what you're complaining about here could be summed up as "categories which focus on trivial properties of images like what colors, words, or letters appear in them, what objects incidentally appear in them, the number of those objects they contain, etc". I'm inclined to agree. Category systems like Category:Categories by quantity provide little value relative to the effort that's put into them, and frequently devolve into absurdities like Category:1 bridge in Australia (there are no categories for other numbers of bridges in Australia) or Category:Text with 34 letters (containing exactly one category for a phrase which appears in a single image). Extensive branches of these systems get created by individual users with no discussion, but removing them takes much more effort and tends to be a bureaucratic hassle. I don't know how to fix this, but something needs to change. Omphalographer (talk) 06:54, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How much do you want to bet the dates for a lot of those photographs aren't accurate anyway? Like is anyone seriously going to argue that most of the dates for photographs taken in the 1800s are actually correct? Maybe years or months, but I find it extremely hard to believe exact days would be. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:15, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the 1800s dates are a misused template - they're scans of old letters tagged with {{Photograph}}. Someone ought to go through those and update the template to something more appropriate - possibly {{Information}}? Note that some of the template parameters will need to be updated. Omphalographer (talk) 22:45, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I dont understand these people's mindsets. Isnt it beautiful to see a collage of photos of a place in a month/year together? But instead they are broken down into date categories, which often contain only a handful of photos. Then how do they have an overview of everything???
Thanks for the ping. It was an attempt to help navigate a big corpus. Done by bot so it would be self contained and wouldn't require much maintenance. But now we have structured data, so there may be a much better solution available. I'm travelling at the moment, so may not be attentive to the discussion. 99of9 (talk) 00:03, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When you're back from your travels, is there any chance you can upload a list of these images, and what data sets they were based on, somewhere? I'd like to brainstorm better ways to organize these graphics than the current category structure, and knowing how they're structured would help. Omphalographer (talk) 23:05, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, swetrails.com has many images uploaded by a particular user with CC-BY 4.0 (example)- so far so nice and good. On the page, the license is shown as a text overlay on each image but not embedded in the image. I uploaded several of those images with appropriate license information etc. to wikimedia commons. Per chance, over last weekend, the swetrails.com server was not accessible, which made me think, what actually would happend if the server were taken down for good and the copyright owner then denied they ever granted the CC-BY 4.0 license? There is also no contact information anywhere on the site, neither as Imprint nor for the particular contributor. Since nothing is embedded in the original image, it would not be possible to prove that the license was indeed granted at some point in time. How would Wikimedia handle such a case?
--Uli@wiki (talk) 12:10, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not really clear to me how you could do it on swetrails.com, but sometimes people will save a copy of the page to the Wayback Machine and use it as the source. Otherwise you can just ignore it since they don't really care about dead links on here to begin with. We aren't as dependent on external sources as a project like Wikipedia would be and their pretty lax about them to. So it's probably a none issue as long as you provide a source to begin with. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:19, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All Rights Reserved statement in content published under CC-BY 3.0 license
Hello, I have a question regarding a video published on Youtube as CC-BY 3.0, but which contains an "all rights reserved" statement in the description. Given that "all rights reserved" is a statement of copyright (a statement which remains true even under CC-BY 3.0, since the license states that THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW.) and not a license, and given that CC licenses are irrevocable, is uploading screenshots from that video permissible? To my understanding, choosing to publish as CC-BY instead of the standard Youtube agreement constitutes a legally binding agreement and would override a statement like "all rights reserved" (which is, anyway, fully compatible with CC-BY 3.0). Thanks! --Sarah fides (talk) 13:48, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It just means the uploader has the rights to license the video under CCBY basically. Of course you can upload screenshots of it if you credit the uploader / video. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:53, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, I just wanted it clarified so I don't mess up. I am assuming that making collages / panoramas based on frames from the footage is also allowed etc. Sarah fides (talk) 13:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"All rights reserved" is like a always used phrase. Microsoft uses it even for its free software, which is technically not true (it's rather like some rights reserved). --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 09:45, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
CC material is still copyrighted. However they have licensed some rights to you (and thus to others) to do certain things with it, despite this copyright remaining in place. In particular it's still theirs, they still retain certain rights to it (such as being identified as its author, i.e. the moral rights).
Can you screenshot it? Well that's generally regarded as making a derivative work from it. CC can either permit or deny that, and there is the specific CC-nd clause for this denial. If they didn't use then, then you're good. Also there are many jurisdictions where screenshotting video will either fall under basic use of the video (a '0th freedom' right in the GPL sense, seen as part of the process of watching it, assumed implicit in them having made a video and distributed it for people to 'watch the video'); or else it may even fall under the trivial technical processes viewpoint, where screenshotting is such a simple rote task that it doesn't attract any additional issues.
Reminder: upcoming Commons conversation about new media and new contributors on December 12
Hello everyone! The Wikimedia Foundation will be hosting the second round of a series of community calls to help prioritize support efforts from Wikimedia Foundation for the 2025-2026 Fiscal Year.
The purpose of these calls is to support community members in hearing more from one another - across uploaders, moderators, GLAM enthusiasts, tool and bot makers, etc. - about the future of Commons. There is so much to discuss about the general direction of the project, and we hope that people from different perspectives can think through some of the tradeoffs that will shape Commons going forward.
Our second call will focus on new media and new contributors. More specifically the questions will be:
There are periodic requests from the community for more support to contribute and edit audio and video files. At the same time, the community seems to be struggling under the current weight of uncategorized images and various patrolling backlogs. Does the community have the capacity to respond to substantially increased uploads of this media?
What is the right level of friction for new content uploads? Should we prioritize support for easier contribution or continue to introduce friction that reduces moderator burden?
The call will take place at two different time slots:
If you cannot attend the meeting, you are invited to express your point of view at any time you want on the Commons community calls talk page. We will also post the notes of the meeting on the project page, to give the possibility to read what was discussed also to those who couldn’t attend it.
If you want, you are invited to share this invitation with all the people you think might be interested in this call.
Can I advise people to NOT plan every single thing on a Thursday ? Thursdays are already very busy workdays, as well as busy extra curricular evenings for me (for the same reason as Commons/WMF people, other people ALSO plan everything on Thursdays and Tuesdays). At the very least VARY the days you plan stuff on, to give people a chance to participate every now and then. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:04, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, There was a discussion recently (I can't find it back) about links in Wikidata to Commons categories. In the huge majority of cases, Wikidata links the Commons category. But in some cases, when there is a WD item for a category somewhere, Wikidata links instead the Commons category to this item (e.g. Joseph Bonaparte (Q7726) and Category:Joseph Bonaparte (Q31993664)). IMO this WD item is a dead end, and doesn't serve Commons. The categories being the main namespace for describing content here, they should be linked to the main WD item. It seems that this could be changed in Wikidata if there is a consensus on Commons for that. Opinions? Yann (talk) 19:23, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Normally, if there is both a WD item and a corresponding WS "category item" it is because there are corresponding categories on some sister project other than Commons. (That's the case for what you link.) So I'm not actually sure this is a bad thing.
Rather than try to ping a bunch of users to ask about how the various big Wikipedias are deciding the issue of changing the flag of Syria due to recent regime change, I've opened a thread here. I know on English Wikipedia that the discussion is ongoing at en:Talk:Syria#RfC: Flag? but it looks like the revolutionary flag is gaining momentum. I'd like to know what discussions at Arabic, French, German and Spanish Wikipedias among others is looking like. Abzeronow (talk) 00:11, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As you may know, OpenRefine lets users upload media files to Commons in batch. Because some of the uploads done in this way add too little metadata to the uploaded files, we are considering introducing more pre-upload checks to prevent that. We need your help to determine which metadata fields should be required for any file uploaded via OpenRefine. Are these guidelines still up to date and accurate? Based on this information, we would require the users to provide:
We would not require copyright license (P275) as this statement is not required for works in the public domain, and we don't anticipate being able to be able to express this conditional dependency.
We also looked into adding constraints on the wikitext associated to the media files but this is likely too complicated to implement reliably, as some required parts could be added via different sorts of templates, which OpenRefine isn't able to expand before upload.
What do you think of this plan? Can you think of any case where it would be fine to upload a file without one of the 5 fields mentioned above? Do you think OpenRefine should only warn the user about those missing fields, or even prevent the upload entirely if those fields are not provided? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SunilNOpenRefine (talk • contribs) 04:33, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not so sure requiring a date of inception is a good idea. Most of the time people don't have that information anyway and it wouldn't be good if the date of upload or some other random date was used instead. We already have that issue a lot with scans and its just causes extra work on our end end to deal with. Plus "inception" is kind of meant for real world objects. I wouldn't consider the date someone took a photograph to be the inception date and how would know if its the data for the photo and not what's being depicted in it anyway? Is there not a better property? --Adamant1 (talk) 08:59, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I personally don't think inception and caption are required. Sure it would be good if all media had that, but to gate uploads on that seems harsh. I do however think that there is often a pattern where available information is not ingested, often due to uninformed, bad or lazy data prep. Simply giving suggestions and examples during the setup, might already help to combat that particular issue. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:00, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
White nose syndrome scientifically Pseudogymnoascus destructans previously geomyces destructans is still under Category:Geomyces destructans but the infobox is up to date with the current naming. The English Wikipedia pages are also up to date. Should it be renamed or should it remain a redirect. It caused me some confusion in my researchCyberwolf (talk) 15:12, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This would seem more a question for COM:CFD (and pinging people who've worked in the area) than for the Village pump. I'll leave it here for now but, @Cyberwolf, you should ping the people you think are likely to have worked in this area, because the chance that one of them is a VP regular is slim. - Jmabel ! talk19:26, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Leaving a note in case anyone is interested. WordPress.org now has a photo directory of CC0 1.0 licensed images that anyone can contribute to. It might be worth importing those images here for reuse within our projects. Ckoerner (talk) 23:02, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very interesting, thanks for letting people know. Seems like they have many files and also lots of metadata per file. Thus, I think some kind of importer tool or import-programme would be best similar to the bots that import from flickr. Would be good if somebody could set it up, it would need to check whether the file has already been uploaded here. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:40, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
December 12
Bot job request
I don't know where I can request a bot job on Commons, so I'm writing here. I have my own bot, but I need to manage WD statements linked with files, they aren't stored in wikitext, so standard bots can't change them. I need, for several categories, to do this job: remove one WD property and add another, with a different value for different categories. Could someine do that, or where should I request this? MBH06:09, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:37, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
Category "Glass sarcophagi"
Some time ago I created the Glass sarcophagi category, but it doesn't seem very correct to me.
Perhaps one of the terms is more correct, like: "reliquary tombs", "funerary urns", "Christ's tombs" "encased effigies", all under the category "glass coffins".
Of course, it can be differentiate through content, namely:
1- Contains Incorruptible bodies.
2- Contains relics.
3- Contains statues of people or saints.
4- Contains statues of Jesus Christ.
Any help is welcome --JotaCartas (talk) 10:20, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support I don't know why, but from what I've seen there's some pretty obtuse category trees on here having to do with Germany. Way more so then with other countries for some reason. This category structure being an especially horrible example of the wider problem. So I say delete it. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:10, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Oppose). Multichill (talk) 20:34, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:37, 12 December 2024 (UTC)