We are currently categorizing all media needing categories as of 2020. Progress is good so far, as shown on Category talk:All media needing categories as of 2020, but the task is getting increasingly more difficult, because the 'low hanging fruit' have been harvested by now. Do you want to help us? If so, please leave a comment about your approach or your achievement either here or on the discussion page.--NearEMPTiness (talk) 08:21, 30 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

One way is to categorize the trees in the pictures. Example File:954I8789 نمایی از زن و مرد گردشگر در درکه - تهران.jpg and File:954I8790 زن و مرد گردشگر در درکه - تهران.jpg. However I cannot read Arabic, so I dare not place it in a country category.Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:44, 30 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

But, please, if all you can do with an image that is clearly supposed to depict a place is to categorize a tree, don't remove it from Category:All media needing categories as of 2020! - Jmabel ! talk 19:22, 30 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

A few months ago I went there, categorized a few images (spent quite some time geolocating them), provided some ideas at the talk page which were fully, totally ignored by that community as if I do not exist. Not going to do it again. Ymblanter (talk) 19:33, 30 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't think that you should feel ignored, keeping in mind that "no criticism is praise enough." Implementing procedures to fight the backlog will take some time. It's a task for unsung heroes, who are sufficiently self-motivated to categorise files or to motivate uploaders to to it themselves. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 20:15, 30 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Jmabel: I completely agree with the comment “don't remove it from Category:All media needing categories as of 2020!“, but the problem is that when using Cat-a-lot it automatically removes it. Wouter (talk) 07:54, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

This is false – in the preferences there is the setting "Remove {{Check categories}} and other minor cleanup" which one could uncheck. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:33, 12 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Nice to have that preference (although hard to notice) but Hot-cat doesn't have it and it would be useful. Pere prlpz (talk) 15:26, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Because with HotCat a message displays that asks whether or not you would like to remove this template. Simply click No there. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:48, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Cat-a-lot makes it easy to add the category Unidentified people to all photos of people, for example. The user can be proud because now so many images have a category added. Another user has then to solve the problem with "Unidentified people" with over 31,000 images. I've personally noticed that there are images with the person's full name in the description and that also have a Wikipedia article. Wouter (talk) 10:10, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

This is a very good comment, indeed. I have subsequently categorized some of these people and found that this is easier than categorizing those grouped by dates. Thus, I think it is helpful, to put them temporarily into this category. You may skip the mass uploads starting with a number, if you want to categorize them manually. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 03:50, 5 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

You can combine the research of several people and get a result: File:Bakkikayam.jpg The description is in the Malayalam language. This limits the picture to the Indian state of Kerala, or the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district). This is a dam on some river. But I dont want to speculate.Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:58, 9 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Sometime the research is incomplete. File:Bernard Becker & wife Janet.jpg, There is an Wikipedia article about Bernard Becker. One problem is that he died in 2013, so this picture cannot have been taken in 2017.Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:20, 9 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Based on the metadata and image quality, I have the impression that the photo was not taken in 2017, but that a scan of a photo was made in 2017. Wouter (talk) 19:25, 9 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I have added a before date.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:54, 11 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for this effort. However, I think it's not nearly as useful and needed as for example categorizing files in Category:2020s maps of the world in unidentified languages (complete) or Category:Renewable energy charts with unspecified year of latest data (under construction) or Category:Diagrams in unspecified languages (under construction) or Category:Renewable energy charts in unspecified languages (complete) for example or any of the requested tasks in Commons:Categorization requests.

There also is the issue that most of the files in these needing-categories cats are of low quality and/or low usefulness/relevance so what categorizing them does is

• cluttering categories
• creating work for those contributors who keep these categories clean and well-subcategorized

Prototyperspective (talk) 18:41, 12 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

We are making good progress: 7,747 media needing categories as of 2020, but we need more volunteers, to clean the backlog by reviewing these files one-by-one or by semi-automated procedures. NearEMPTiness (talk) 10:04, 11 January 2026 (UTC) (count was updated on 18 Feb)Reply

Does someone know what the Italian phrase 'Coletti Gino' means? I categorized the first one, but maybe better if some Italian works on this.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:46, 18 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

It seems to be some Italian person: it:Gino Coletti Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:50, 18 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Warning: These four images are modern pictures taken with an i-phone, so the actual location is incorrect and all of the same place.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:45, 19 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I hope not to many files land in broad unknown categories. There are stil some frustrating files without location: example: File:Italy- handbook for travellers. First Part, Northern Italy and Corsica (1869) (14597135680).jpg. It could be in France (Corsica or Massilia? (in Provence?)).Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:12, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Would it be useful to start with the 5,951 images that are currently used in Wikipedia? -- Vysotsky (talk) 22:28, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Vysotsky: Thanks, this is a very useful link, indeed. It is relatively easy to categorize these files, especially those of people. However, I am also interested in finding high-quality photos that are not being used, because they cannot be found, unless they are better described. NearEMPTiness (talk) 08:54, 1 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Completely agree. Even more: categorizing photos not being used might be more important. At the same time, I think it is good to also look at the ones heavily used. Your call has worked fine so far: 34,000 uncategorized images brought back to 19,139 within one month. Thanks. Vysotsky (talk) 14:24, 1 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Is there any idea what the backlog is for the following years of 2011, 2012 etc?Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

The number of these backlog items is 0 – those are all solved. The number of such files used to be far smaller which is why addressing this at the source is needed. The number of files for 2025 is essentially unmanageable already. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:32, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, I meant the years 2021, 2022 etc. Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:21, 15 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Question: When you clear these backlogs, do you attempt to provide meaningful categorization or do you just stick any old category on it and call it good? For years now, continuing to the present day, I've come across copyvios that have lingered on the site for years. This occurred mainly because the file contained a random, irrelevant category which effectively hid it from anyone knowledgeable about the subject. Oftentimes, they were originally uploaded by bad actors or just plain clueless contributors. Another phenomenon I've observed is with my own uploads where I didn't have time to add categories. The revision history shows an entire series of categorization edits which amount to kicking the can down the road. It's as if to suggest it's my responsibility to come back and properly categorize the files, while it's perfectly okay for them to fuck around incessantly. If you think I'm being unnecessarily mean, go read what COM:CAT says about including the most appropriate category in the tree. I believe that also applies to those editors. Taking an uncategorized file, adding Category:Men or similar, and walking away patting yourself on the back for what a great job you did is utterly ridiculous. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 02:54, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I, for one, would never remove the "uncategorized" template unless I had provided one or more quite relevant categories, and when I'm going through a list like this I often am nominating files for deletion (or speedying them) when I see problems. Hence my remark above about if all you can do with an image that is clearly supposed to depict a place is to categorize a tree, don't remove it from Category:All media needing categories as of 2020!. - Jmabel ! talk 05:02, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I fully agree that applying non-sense categories such as Category:Men or just their first name does not fulfill the objective of this exercise. I think, we should focus on enabling authors or readers of Wikipedia articles, to find relevant photos more easily. Currently, we are working on the 2020 files. Thus "anyone knowledgeable about the subject" had sufficient time to request the deletion of files. Requesting deletions can also more effectively be done in parallel to categorization. If we do not start from A to Z by alphabet, but if start by categorizing high-quality photos, for instance the uncategorized photos uploaded via Flickr. On some occasions it might be helpful, to add temporary categories such as Category:Unidentified cities or Category:Unidentified automobiles, because these are being looked after by motivated specialists. NearEMPTiness (talk) 05:18, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

A lesser problem than copyvios are the duplicates wich become visible, when placed next to each other. Sorting the category by date makes them even more visible.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:55, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

More Information: Useful tools and some guidelines are currently collated at Commons:WikiProject Minimum One Category. We are looking forward to your contributions to this page. NearEMPTiness (talk) 06:14, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! Also added to this page. For the category here, I think now for the files left there is a large fraction of files for which SDs, DRs, and permission needed tags would be good to add or at least probably would be good to consider using more often. In part for the sake of making it more feasible to complete this, probably the cutoff for quality/usefulness expectations may be good to raise so that eg this file and this fall beneath it (these don't add much but clutter really). Prototyperspective (talk) 23:04, 9 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

In addition to requesting deletion, it might be useful to split some very populated categories into two parts, by using or setting-up a subcategory such as Category:Cats (low quality) or Category:Sunsets (low quality). NearEMPTiness (talk) 10:08, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Agree. This info would also be good to add to that page. Also similar ways to separate types of images, e.g. Category:Moon from Earth instead of dumping further low-quality photos where the Moon is somewhere in the image directly into high-level Category:Moon. There's probably more similar ways that would be good for categorizers to be aware of. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:26, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

There are still approx 13682 uncategorized files, which are used on Wikipedia and related projects, as shown on Glam-Tools. Some of them can be easily categorised by using the lemma of the English Wikipedia. NearEMPTiness (talk) 21:03, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

(13682 uncategorized files overall of which 4518 are used anywhere in the wikiverse of which 3584 are used in mainspace of any Wikimedia project) Prototyperspective (talk) 23:40, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I don't like "low quality" categories. For one thing, we have no systematic way to make such a judgement. For another, it unnecessarily insults users who may not agree with that description of their work. - Jmabel ! talk 00:45, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Would scale better and draw in less time resources if more was done to address this issue at the source; e.g. via what's suggested at Commons_talk:WMF support for Commons/Upload Wizard Improvements#Guidance/facilitation of categorization. Then we could worry about undercategorized files (example) and other tasks. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:54, 12 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Location is the most important part in most cases an often frustrating: I have found three basic categories for File:Humans Being - Flickr - simiant.jpg (aquariums, Children and Pinnipedia), but the most important is where? Luckely I found the place in the flicker comments. From there I found alot more precise categories. Taken pictures from Flickr without correct descriptions is asking for problems. Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:34, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

In terms of usefulness / likely applications, unique value and where people would look for a file like this, I think more useful than location in many and this cases is some category about 'people standing in front of large aquariums'. Theoretically one could have a tool try to suggest categories based on flickr tags, flickr comments, and the albums the file is in so one doesn't have to go to the flickr page or it could load these things directly on the file page. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:48, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

It is tricky to have meaningful categories. In this case I dont think aquarium is correct. This is probably a water basin where aquatic air breathing mammals and birds swim around in, with an underwater window. No temperatur control and limited water treatment. In general I prefer using structured data to search for special combinations, instead of creating very specialized categories. SD is more flexibel and can be used by AI, scripts and search engines. Some users dont understand this and want to link combination categories to new dataitems, please dont. Dont import al the quirks and combination Common categories into wikidata. Each search system has its purpose. I would like the Common file to have at least a link to one content data item. (not the technical properties such as image size, its a picture, f-number, focal length, etc). Its easy work scanning the categories and using the SDC script. Find the correct data item by going to the upper categories until one finds a category linked to a data item.Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:07, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Please set fitting categories and don't ask users to not set fitting categories, thanks.

And one can't even get to 'people standing in front of large aquariums' via the set SD. SD are only set on less than 2% of files and even there often missing the key thing shown or having something super broad set. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:51, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I think the proportion is much larger than 2%, but that maybe that the subjects where I am interested, have a much larger part of SD filled. I certainly add a lot of SD to files (from categories from with data item). Have you any source for this 2%? Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:59, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

No, it's just anecdotal from a) seeing changes to many files in the Watchlist and b) checking the SD of many files. Maybe SDs are set substantially more often, but when SD is set, they 1) are often missing at least one of the key things shown (eg 'microphone' is in the depicts but not the actual point of the picture which is the person holding it) 2) aren't nearly as comprehensive as the categories. SD could be written eventually from the categories of files (afaik that's also the most common way they are set along with during upload in the UW).

Regarding 2), the SD 'Aquariums' and 'Children' on a file wouldn't imply (or only show) children standing in front of aquarium windows. Additionally, querying for this would be intuitive and overly difficult to do, assuming it works at all because one would query if anything for 'Aquariums' and 'People' where it would then have to resolve the latter to also include items tagged only with 'Children' (and countless other items).

Either way, categorization itself is already more than enough work so instead of worrying also about setting SD, imo it would make more sense to see if some things could be encouraged to be done by uploaders at upload and whether some tools could help with all of this. Prototyperspective (talk) 01:01, 20 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congratulations to Donvikro, Mensch01, Lusi Lindwurm, Ger Hagens, Pierre André Leclercq and Gannu03 Jarekt (talk) 16:42, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Jarekt Thank you for the encouraging scores. Sincerely Pierre André ^(talk) 16:50, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Congrats! I like these results. (I just wished there would have been more photos of modern active industrial factories in the Factor interiors challenge.)

Could a template with a category or just a category be added to the Photo challenge winner photos? I think the info that the file won (place 1-3 at least) a photo challenge would be interesting to the visitor on the file information page. Additionally, I'd like to add it to Category:Community-based media evaluation and the top x files could maybe at some point be upranked somewhat in search results are to being more likely relevant and of good quality. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:20, 7 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

There is already {{Photo challenge winner}} and Category:Photo challenge winners. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 20:33, 7 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. This hasn't been added to the winning pictures here and neither to those of the prior challenge posted about further up this page. Is it just missing for these or was it not added for files of earlier challenges too? I check some files of the latest challenges in the archives and the template was not set on this, this and this. Maybe there is a way to query for all PC-winner files without the template somehow. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:10, 7 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

It seems like it would need a way to see files used on Commons on pages like "Commons:Photo challenge/[some changing text here]/Winners" or "Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/Archives/year". Other than that, there doesn't seem to be anything consistent for these files and I couldn't find a way to query for pages linking to even just a particular Commons page under File usage on Commons. Is there a way to do this with petscan? I tried entering "Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/Archives/2025" into Templates&links linked from (linked to also didn't work). Prototyperspective (talk) 18:45, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Prototyperspective, I agree, we should be adding winning images to Category:Photo challenge winners. I will work on it and see if we can do that automatically in the future. Thanks for suggestion. --Jarekt (talk) 00:39, 9 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for categorizing the files into there!

What do people think about creating a second category for files voted far up but not in the top 3 (3 is an arbitrary number), probably place 4-10 or 4-15 or 4-20? Is it feasible to categorize the files into a new category for such, e.g. Category:Photo challenge runner-up (places 4–15)? (probably using the scores pages like this) These are not called winners, for why this would be useful, please read on.

I think we probably better use all the community quality assessments that we can get on Commons because this would raise the chance that for any given search on Commons there's at least a few files that we could slightly uprank so as to increase the quality of files in the top search results and there aren't so many indicators available.
When searching for "herd" for example, it would be best if the search results showed on the first (first few) pages high-quality results (with herd in title or description or category etc) based on quality indicators like number of uses in Wikipedia, whether it's a featured pictured, and whether it's a photo challenge winner.
However, for many searches – especially for more niche or specific things – there probably aren't any or many files that have any of these indicators.
So I think a category for files from the challenges that are more likely to be of good quality but not necessarily very high-quality or 'winning' – as defined by reaching spot 1-3 – could still be useful. For these second-class category files either only another template would be added or not template at all but just the category. It's not just about the search results though, one may want to browse these files or work on them to make sure they're well categorized, this gets me to the next point which is also another way this categorization can be practically useful:

• This query on Quarry (thanks to Bawolff again) shows the photo challenge winner files sorted by number of set categories. Even when just considering the top 3 winning files of each photo challenge (currently 887 files overall), many files only have a single nonhidden category set. For some files that's probably fine but for maybe circa ⅔ there are categories missing like a topical category for what's actually shown. I've created a report page at Commons:Photo challenge/Undercategorized files table 1 for the files containing just 1 or 2 nonhidden categories (this is the case for 376 files). If anybody would like to, you could use this report to help add categories to undercategorized winning files. As suggested above, if a new category for runner-up files is created, an additional report could be created where I suspect some good-quality files don't have any topical set at all.

Prototyperspective (talk) 18:37, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Jarekt: Do you think adding a category to e.g. files places 4-15 is feasible to you? Having them in a category can e.g. be used to categorize these files better via the mentioned reports. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:24, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Prototyperspective: I would have to write custom python code for that to read and parse /result pages. It is feasible but a lot of work. I do have a code to parse /Winner files, but it would be useless. If we want to do that we should create new template based on Template:Photo challenge winner for runner-ups. Also I am not sure what we would call it. English term "runner ups" is usually used for 2nd and 3rd place and we do not have a term for others other than "participants". It might be easier to categorize all participants, but not all are good. Jarekt (talk) 16:08, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for clarifying. Finding the name shouldn't be the difficult part and one could change the category's name later; maybe Category:Photo challenge files (places 4–15)?. I asked an LLM 'there is a challenge with places 1-3 but how to call files that reach place 4-15? (of 100 files only few get there)' and suggested terms include Honorable Mentions, Notable Entries, Spotlight Files but I guess one would keep it more neutral and short by not choosing any such term and just have it in the title that those are places x to y. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:17, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

More properly pluralized as "runners-up". And it can refer to something pretty far down the scale. I've heard phrases like "9th runner-up."

It would be nice if the category sorted in order, insofar as there is an order. If nothing beyond the first 3 are specifically ranked, the sort key could still be 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, etc. and the 4s would sort alphabetically. - Jmabel ! talk 19:33, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

It sounds like a gallery is a better solution for this than a category. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:31, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

One can create the gallery from the category as done with Commons:Photo challenge/Undercategorized files table 1 and a gallery can't be used for searching, filtering, and sorting and also does not add the info to the file. I wonder what the use of a gallery of hundreds of these files would be.

Ideally, there would be both: and if a category exists, a gallery can be easily created. Regardless of how it's created, having subheaders for the topics – eg the title of the photo challenge – would make it much more useful. A gallery containing all of the files however would load only slowly and (unused) galleries of the photo challenge files (one per challenge) already exist. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:41, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I mean a gallery of the top 10 images. Also you can add text to galleries. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:50, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

(Basically I'd make the same comment as earlier.) The existing galleries do show the files sorted – it's a the wikilink "Scores" in the post. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:53, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I misunderstood the initial proposal, but I understand now what you're going for and what the goal is with this category. As for what to call it, I like "runners-up" as well. The name isn't as explicit about its inclusion criteria as "places 4–15", though I'm unsure if that's ever going to be a problem. ReneeWrites (talk) 15:06, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

The description at the top of Category:Photo challenge pictures and several of its subcategories note that these categories are no longer being used, though I can't find a discussion where this was decided. I think it would be a good idea to "un-retire" these categories. I quite like the way content is categorized under Category:Photo challenge/2014 and I think we could apply this structure to the other years as well. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:54, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

The discussion was made here: Commons talk:Photo challenge/Archives/2014#Proposal re challenge categories. It appears until August 2014, users are require to add their images to both the challenge page and category. Back then, there was a problem where users only added them to one location, so in the discussion they decided to stop using the categories.

So, I don't think there are any problems with these categories themselves, hence I agree it is a good idea to reuse these categories again. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 11:24, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

The titular question is only half in joke. When I'm using our search function for the combination of "<country> maps logos", the first entry is File:Burger King Princess Street Kingston.jpg (image of a BK restaurant in Canada), followed by dozens of other files showing BK products, BK logos, BK restaurants and BK merchandise. This works only for some selected countries, the ones I have noticed so far are: Albania, Bahrain, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, Guatemala, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Maldives, Malta, Morocco, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela. So far, I have only seen this with nation-countries, not with regions or continents like "Extremadura", "Wales" or "Asia"
When trying to reproduce this bug for as many countries as possible, I found out that "Argentina maps logos" does not result in Burger King spam. But "Argentina maps Lanka" (a mistake) yields the spam again. I stumbled over this because the bug appears less reliable when searching for two-word country names: "maps Sri Lanka logos" has the offending image as the 10th and not the 1st result. "logos maps Lanka" (but also "logos maps Sri") fixes the issue and the Canadian restaurant is number one again. *squint* *headscratch* Anyway, the following images are generally in the same order, regardless of the country, sometimes interrupted by a singular more relevant result: #2: restaurant in Wisconsin, #3: Crown stack, #4: restaurant in Belgium, #5: restaurant in Puerto Rico, #6: products in Guangdong, #7: restaurant in Russia... and so on.

Paradoxically, when searching for "Canada maps logos" (but also France and India), the first three search results are for Starbucks instead of Burger King. For other countries again (Australia, Austria, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland, Romania, ...) the first results are indeed what I would expect: logos or maps of the respective country. But even so, at some point after the 25th or 53rd search result and then downwards, images of MacDonalds restaurants, merchandise and chickenwings are suddenly supremely dominant again. And finally, there are those countries for which the search tapers off into satellite images of the requested region - which I can accept as tolerable results.

I understand this might be partially because "logo" is part of my search term, and global brands like BK, McD and Starbucks obviously have logos. The "maps" part of my search term might lead to misleading results because there is a camera location indicated in the restaurant images? (If that causes it, it needs to be fixed, because camera locations are not maps). Notably the country names like "Pakistan" or "Guatemala" are not even occuring in the false search results! So how does this keep happening, and most importantly, why do these images always appear in this order in search results for something completely different?

This is not a new bug, I stumbled across this weird circumstance before; at least six months ago if not much earlier. --Enyavar (talk) 11:21, 9 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Enyavar: This may be partially because "B" comes before 92.3% of the letters in the Latin character set, plus all of the letters of the other character sets, and we don't have enough competing "A" logos.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 19:41, 9 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

You don't say which search you were using; I use Special:Search I get nothing of the sort for United States maps logos, though what I get is equally irrelevant (File:Martian Dust Devil Trails.jpg). I think this is all mostly because the combination of "maps" and "logos" in wikitext/SDC for any given file is an unlikely one. - Jmabel ! talk 20:12, 9 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Re Jeff G.: What are "A" logos vs. "B" logos and why would they boost MacDonalds products? Among the first 200 search result images (for my search of "Austria maps logo") were 119 MacDonalds images.

I did another test, without logos this time: The same experiment with just "Austria food" yielded results of probably 60-80% Austrian cuisine images, just as I would expect, Not a single fast food image in sight, and even a single map. Yes, that search worked brilliant. Next I tried "Austria food maps". Wow. As far as I counted my search results, this one yielded a ratio of 206 MD-images vs 32 non-MD-images (and notably not a single map). I know that MacDonalds is pervasive, but that is a bit over the top.

Re Jmabel: The search I am using is Special:Search on what I believe is the default setting. Please tell me where I can access different search functions in Commons. I would give them a try. Also, are you telling me that when you searched for these specifically stated 34 country names (that for given reasons did not include the US/UK), in combination with the words "logo maps", you are getting Martian Dust Devil Trails as the first image hit, but no fast food chains? That now makes me believe that Commons is employing user-adaptive search patterns, similar to Google. If that is so, I would like to ask how I can reset my individual search adaptation. --Enyavar (talk) 00:21, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Enyavar: I just tried the U.S. first because that is where I live. But if I try "Austria maps logos" the first three things I get are File:Austria_satellite-map.jpg, File:Austria satellite unannotated.jpg, and File:Logo MAP Jet.jpg, all very reasonable. None of the next few I get are way off, either.

If you want to switch between the two searches, look near the top of the search page for "Switch to MediaSearch" or (if you are in MediaSearch) "Switch to Special:Search". - Jmabel ! talk 02:09, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I got the aforementioned Burger King images for searching Kazakhstan maps logos. I simply entered the three words in the search bar at the top of the page. I know that Commons search algorithm isn't the best one (I usually just search by category), but those Burger King search results are really strange. They are neither located in Kazakhstan, nor are they maps or logos. It's as if the search algorithm is just returning images, except that they are apparently not random at all because I get the exact same images as Enyavar mentioned, and in the exact same order, too. Jeff G.'s suggestion about it having to do with alphabetical order makes sense at first, but on second thought numbers usually come before letters, and we have plenty of categories which start with the number 1, and we also have a lot of categories starting with the letter A, so why would the search results start with the letter B? And not even "B1" or "Ba" but instead with "Bu"? Nakonana (talk) 17:03, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

What a strange bug. Trying similar search terms, I can also get the same results by replacing maps logo with just the word burger: eg. a search for "Luxembourg burger" or "Kazakhstan burger" returns the same range of Burger King photos from around the world that Enyavar reports above. Some other country names (eg. "England burger") correctly return only burger images related to that place.

There are about 59,000 images returned by all of these searches, the same number that you get (in what looks like largely the same order) if you just search for "burger king". I have no idea how MediaWiki's search works, but could it be some cached lookup index (maybe where some supercategory like Category:Burger King was briefly and erroneously added to a lot of country categories in the past, and reverted, but not before the search functionality had indexed it) that we'd be able to purge? Belbury (talk) 18:06, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@EBernhardson (WMF) any thoughts what could be causing this ? I tried looking at cirrus dump, but I couldn't figure out if there was a specific cause for this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:01, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Personally, I think WMF projects should turn down all frivolous requests for courtesy deletion.

I noticed something alarming just now. There is a discussion at as to whether to delete a headshot of Randy Lennox. That image was kept in October 2025. During that discussion I counted 17 images of Mr Lennox in his category. I think I checked, in the last week or so, and we still had 17 images. But now? There are only 12. What happened to the other five images?

CJMiller71, the person who initiated the first discussion over the first image, re-initiated a second discussion, where they said, "We have emailed permissions-commons and several other addresses. Are those five missing images gone because CJMiller71 wrote to several othre addresses, and reached someone who quietly deleted those images, out of process? Geo Swan (talk) 01:47, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Geo Swan, I haven't seen them. I checked the category page on archive.org and found a copy from January 2025. There was nothing in the category in January that's not there now. So those five images would have to have been uploaded and/or categorized between January and October.
Do you remember anything, anything at all about any of the images that were in there? Partial filename, where they were taken, rough date, what he was wearing, anything? Could they have been re-categorized or deleted as copyvio? Could you have made a mistake? All I found was odd stuff:

• Randy Lennox (Diff ~1327227745) "He has appointed senior VP/GM in 1993 amid company growth". Amid company growth? That doesn't sound like wikivoice
• w:en:User talk:74.12.179.86 ( Randy Lennox (Diff ~1186138900) )
• w:en:User talk:64.229.18.146 ( Randy Lennox (Diff ~1189223532) )
• w:en:User talk:209.226.237.163#Randy Lennox ( Randy Lennox (Diff ~1161711012) )

But nothing on Commons. You could technically find out by downloading 90GB of file page text from https://dumps.wikimedia.org/commonswiki/20251001/ (be quick, it'll expire soon!) which will unpack to, dunno, a terabyte maybe, and $ cat FILENAME | grep -E 'ategory:Randy[_ ]Lennox'. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 04:36, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I searched the page titles from 1 October 2025:
$ cat commonswiki-20251001-all-titles | grep -E 'andy_[Ll]ennox'
4 Deletion_requests/File:Randy_Lennox_and_the_Launch.jpg
6 Randy_Lennox_2020.jpg
6 Randy_Lennox_at_the_2017_CFC_Annual_Gala_&_Auction_(32687750515).jpg
6 Randy_Lennox_at_the_2018_CFC_Annual_Gala_&_Auction_(25432943657).jpg
14 Randy_Lennox
If there were five more images, they were either added to the category between 1 and 16 October, or they didn't have "Randy Lennox" in their filenames, or you made a mistake. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 05:25, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

This might be one of those paid editing bullshit where people think they own the wikipedia page of theirs, don't know how many cases like this i fought, some even on enwiki back then. Its a shame the Canadian Film Centre people stop posting their images on Flickr after Flickr became greedy and enforced image limits for non-paying users, i was the one who got them to change their licence so we could use it on wikipedia 12 years back. If you say there was 17 images then someone could use the excuse that some of those images because the flickr pages no longer exists are copyright infringements, then admins might delete them by mistake if its tagged as speedy..also trying to force an image on enwiki where they tagged the year as 2020, but date on form says 2019 and exif says 2018 just reeks of Bad intentions.. Stemoc 05:15, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

"then admins might delete them by mistake if its tagged as speedy" It's pretty well known you can get almost any file deleted by using the deletion template Trade (talk) 19:04, 14 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Geo Swan, also, could we somehow nudge vanity deletion requests towards noindex requests? Often what they really care about is Google. This probably only works for unused images though. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 07:26, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I checked the category count dump from oct 5, 2025 (curl 'https://dumps.wikimedia.org/commonswiki/20251001/commonswiki-20251001-category.sql.gz' | zgrep -o 'Randy_Lennox[^)]*') I also checked oct 24. There was only 12 items in the category on those dates. Bawolff (talk) 06:38, 12 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

On the talk page of Category:Greater Morocco, a user doubts the accuracy of the map. However, they seem to have been inactive since December 2024. Is it possible for someone to verify the accuracy of the map (I put two references for the map) so the tag can be removed? Thanks in advance (I only just realised I initially put this in VillagePump Copyright. My bad!) Mayouhm (talk) 14:12, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

The C.R. Pennell book cited looks pretty readily available. It can be bought in paperback for about $25, and it is is in a lot of academic libraries. A Worldcat search shows me one at pretty much every major academic library in my area, you'll probably find the same. If that doesn't help you directly (no access to an academic library, and unable or disinclined to shll out for a copy) you still should be able to turn it up through interlibrary loan. - Jmabel ! talk 19:53, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

See: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Witold Trąmpczyński.jpg and a total of about 25 others. Part of the argument is that "© 2015 Ex Libris" at the archive website restarts the copyright clock from 2015. RAN (talk) 22:41, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): I don't see any mention of "© 2015 Ex Libris" in that DR by anyone but you. Where is the claim about that restarting the clock?

It is possible to combine existing DRs, but once they have some comments, unless those comments are verbatim identical, it is a pain in the butt. Also, when combining, it is important that the facts of the cases (not just the deletion rationale) be very clearly parallel. - Jmabel ! talk 00:53, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

• They wrote: "Photos from the Sejm archives are still protected by copyright." which I assume comes from "© 2015 Ex Libris" at the Sejm archive website. {{PD-Poland}} states that "all photographs by Polish photographers (or published for the first time in Poland or simultaneously in Poland and abroad) published without a clear copyright notice before the law was changed on May 23, 1994 [are in the public domain]. --RAN (talk) 02:06, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • If 2015 is the first known publication, that's where the copyright clock starts. The burden is on you to prove that it was A.) published before 1994 (really March 1989) AND B.) without a copyright notice. We should not assume that these were published without a copyright notice. Abzeronow (talk) 03:55, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
• You are ignoring the question: "Can we aggregate deletion nominations by the same person that is using the same rote deletion rationale?" You are arguing the outcome of the debate, not whether the debates can be aggregated. --RAN (talk) 21:49, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): I've done this where the files obviously stand or fall together, that is where material facts are the same across all the files. My usual technique is to pick a single "lead" DR and to list all the files there, turn the other DRs into redirects to the lead one, and remove those others from the various places they get transcluded (so the daily page doesn't end up with 25 copies of the same DR. --bjh21 (talk) 23:13, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

• Thanks! --RAN (talk) 23:31, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
• I wonder what the point of including by @RAN: in discussions about deletions the clichéd statement that we know when a photo was taken because it happened during their lifetime, and then sarcastically claiming it wasn't taken after their death. With such a trivial statement, you could claim we know when practically every photo in the world was taken. --Uniminomumm (talk) 00:26, 12 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
• Unless it is an image of a rotting corpse, we generally know that an image was taken during someone's lifetime. And since we know what people look like at various ages, we can generally estimate that age to about a 5 year range. Does this work for "every photo in the world", no, not landscapes and not with images of people where we do not know their birth and death year. --RAN (talk) 00:21, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • It's still guessing though, and creation is not publication which matters a lot more than when a work was created. Europe has more stringent requirements for publication than the US due to the Berne Convention (which the US didn't fully implement). Abzeronow (talk) 04:18, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
• You seriously think an image of a person may have been taken post-mortem, and that we are "guessing" that they were living? If you are thinking of a number between 1 and 100 and I choose a random number, I am "guessing". When we look at a photograph or use AI, we are "estimating" their age. And of course the WMF has ruled that USA case law is used in disputes over copyrights in Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp and National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute and Monkey selfie copyright dispute. --RAN (talk) 16:45, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • It certainly tells us about creation date, but nothing about publication date (except an earliest possible date). For U.S. copyright, for anything prior to 1978 publication date is all that matters; even after that it matters if the author is unknown (or their death date is unknown) and we can't show that the content was at least 35 years old at time of publication (120 - 95). - Jmabel ! talk 19:58, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

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:

• File:Little Daddy (1931).webm (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Little Daddy (1931). Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I get the message outlined below when trying to update a page even when I am logged in. Being logged in should override the IP address block and allow the update.

You do not have the permissions needed to carry out this action. Your IP address is in a range that has been blocked on all Wikimedia Foundation wikis.

The block was made by ‪JJMC89‬. The reason given is Open proxy/Webhost: See the help page if you are affected.

Start of block: 00:51, 3 July 2024 Expiry of block: 00:51, 3 July 2027 Your current IP address is 52.94.133.131. The blocked range is 52.94.128.0/20.

Please include all above details in any queries you make. If you believe you were blocked by mistake, you can find additional information and instructions in the Stewards Block Wizard.

My-wiki-photos (talk) 21:05, 15 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@My-wiki-photos: Hi. That is a global block of an Open proxy/Webhost. Please read m:WikiProject on open proxies/Help:blocked.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:39, 15 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I know. However, if you are logged in, the fact that you are no longer an anonymous user should override the block. By logging in you are assuming all the consequences of your actions. If a user does something wrong, such a user can be blocked. My-wiki-photos (talk) 22:54, 15 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

It appears you need IPBE (IP Block Exempt) right.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:59, 15 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

No, I don’t really need it personally. I was just thinking it would make more sense for the IP address block to be overridden when a user is logged in and their credentials are known. My-wiki-photos (talk) 04:49, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

It is intentional that IP blocks apply to logged-in users by default. This prevents certain types of abuse. Omphalographer (talk) 05:30, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

No, the default is that they only apply to anon users. They only apply to logged in users and account registration if multiple abuse accounts used the IP. GPSLeo (talk) 06:33, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Registering an account doesn't make you not anonymous, it just gives you a username. Open proxy users are anonymous by default and due to their ease of abuse blocked from editing, as they should be. You can ask for an IP block exemption as Jeff recommended, or disable your VPN. ReneeWrites (talk) 08:25, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Maybe people with roles demonstrating that the community has trust in them (e.g. file mover, patroller, rollbacker, template editor) should be IP exempt? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:34, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

This would not be useful as one would need a whole lot of editing before that occurs and request extra permissions and just quite few users have any such. 'demonstrating that the community has trust in them' would better be done via something like account age + fraction & count of unreverted edits. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:50, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Well, if you reason like that, any IP address is anonymous. Internet Service Providers won't reveal their clients' information due to privacy reasons. My-wiki-photos (talk) 18:42, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

No, that specific argument only addressed your point on why registering doesn't make someone not anonymous anymore. It is also besides the point, as the issue is not about anonymity inherently. Jeff G. linked the Meta-Wiki page about open proxies, have you read it? What is the reasoning stated on that page for why open proxies are blocked? ReneeWrites (talk) 23:03, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@ReneeWrites Yes, I have read the explanation provided for open proxies. That does not change my opinion. As I have already stated, if a user is logged in using their account, there is no valid reason to block an edit simply because they are connected through an open proxy. Any abuse on their part can be addressed through their account. Furthermore, please prevent the registration of new accounts through open or residential proxies. My-wiki-photos (talk) 08:07, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@My-wiki-photos: Are you using a VPN? If so, which one?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 08:33, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Jeff G. I don’t use a VPN at home. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t really need an IP block exemption. I simply wanted to perform a quick update from my workplace, which uses an open proxy. After logging in, I discovered the update had been blocked, which was quite inconvenient at the time. It occurred to me then that many others likely face this same issue. As I’ve said before, if a logged-in user abuses their account, they can be blocked before causing further damage. Therefore, it doesn't seem reasonable to me that open proxies are blocked by default. My-wiki-photos (talk) 18:56, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I support allowing the use of VPNs for registered editors without requiring any extra "IP Block Exempt" permissions or similar. Maybe only users of a certain age and/or minimum count/fraction of unreverted edits. This would better protect privacy and safety. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:44, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

yeah it's becoming a bit ridiculous. half the internet is on an open proxy and we will have fewer and fewer people NOT in that situation. We need to find different ways. Maybe with like dynamic blocking and unblocking of ranges whenever there is abuse or something. This overblocking is costing us editors. I hear people wanting to try editing complain about it all the time. We mostly don't hear that, because we don't see those people, which is convenient... I guess. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:59, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Mass uploaders who fail to categorize or have appropriate filenames seems to be a perennial problem, and end up creating a ton of work for other users. I just stumbled upon a user who uploaded 125 uncategorized photos from Flickr2Commons in the span of 7 minutes, and I am giving up for the night and just dumping all the photos into a further-categorization-needed category.

Would it be possible to rate limit mass uploading from Flickr for non-autopatrolled users to something reasonable (say, maybe 10 to 30 uploads per 24-hour period) to combat this? There's probably some reasonable number which holds back badly-done mass uploading without preventing users from properly contributing useful content. From my personal observation complaints over poorly-curated mass uploading stems pretty much entirely from Flickr transfers; there seems to be little to no issue with people directly uploading their own media, so rate limiting Flickr2Commons seems reasonable. If an uploader has proven themselves to be trustworthy and want to say, transfer more than 30 files a day from Flickr they can go for the autopatrolled right.

Thoughts? 4300streetcar (talk) 13:36, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Presumably this user: KMB1933 (talk · contributions · Move log · block log · uploads · Abuse filter log) block user

I don't think rate-limiting is a fix here. A slower problem is still a problem. I'd be interested to hear @KMB1933: 's side of this. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:16, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I personally think a slower problem is better than a faster problem; a slower problem gives editors more time to catch up on new uploads (e.g. I don’t have the time to categorize 125 photos every night, but I can do 10), gives more time for problematic mass uploaders to be identified and dealt with, and reduces the mess that problematic mass uploaders generate. 4300streetcar (talk) 16:21, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Also want to add that another potential benefit of rate limiting is to slow uploaders down to the rate where they can actually be expected to properly curate their photos. 125 photos in 7 minutes (about 18 files per minute, or 3 seconds per file) is way faster than anyone can reasonably curate their files. Rate-limiting doesn't have to be per-day; it could be per-hour (e.g. 30 files per hour would mean 2 minutes per file, which is a reasonable rate for someone to properly curate their files). If you rate limit to even 30 files per hour, people aren't transferring files faster than what's possible to curate, and it might encourage them to actually curate their files while waiting for the rate limit to expire. 4300streetcar (talk) 04:02, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

These are both sound arguments imo. There isn't anything we can do to fully solve the issue of people uploading poorly curated images (or images that are out of scope, or violate copyright etc.) to Commons, but fixing it partially is still a solution worth pursuing. In other words, in this particular case a slow problem is indeed preferable to a fast problem. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:34, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I think mass imports by humans should be treated as bots requests (i.e. thins should be right) and requester should be hold accountable for initial filtering, proper naming, describing,categorization, adding Structured data. EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:15, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'm fully in support of autopatrolled and/or bot request being required for mass uploads (and being yanked for misuse). The vast majority of mass uploads have substantial issues with file content (copyvios, scope, duplicates, etc) and/or curation (lacking useful filenames, descriptions, and/or categories), and the uploaders simply do not care about fixing that. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:38, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

If we make this a right, I wouldn't want to just tie it to auto-patrolled; there would need to be a way to petition for it separately. It would prevent at least one completely valid workflow it would prevent, and it's one I've used for some batches of photos: (1) upload all of your content to Flickr; (2) selectively or otherwise (depending on the nature of the content), transfer it to Commons via Flickr2Commons or a similar tool.

Since there is no sane way to transfer in the other direction, anyone without a super-fast connection who wants to upload their own content to both sites has to do something along these lines. - Jmabel ! talk 21:03, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

How often are you transferring more than say, 30 of your own files per day though? Properly curating 30 uploads (categorization, descriptions, geotagging, etc.) is probably 1-3 hours of work. I'm also proposing only rate-limiting Flickr2Commons and not UploadWizard. 4300streetcar (talk) 03:50, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@4300streetcar: Almost any time I'm using this workflow for my own photos, I'm tremendously exceeding 30 files in a day. I've already written on Flickr the same descriptions that are needed on Commons. I don't generally do geotagging (my camera doesn't geotag, so any that I do is manual estimates; if I'm doing it at all, I've already done it explicitly on Flickr and it is a minor reformatting edit after uploading to Commons). Categorization is a bit of an issue, but often not much, certainly not 1-3 hours for 30 photos. When I'm doing this, it usually includes multiple photos of the same subject(s), so I bring them over in appropriate batches that can be tagged at once, on upload. - Jmabel ! talk 03:21, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

For the relatively small number of users who have both the number of files and the trustworthiness to do this, and who aren't already autopatrolled, it seems like it would be not difficult for us to make exceptions (or grant autopatrolled) upon request. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:43, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'd be on board with some form of this. I've seen way too many situations where a user saw a couple of good topical photos on Flickr and eagerly imported the user's entire feed - leaving Commons with a bunch of uncategorized vacation selfies, DW / FOP copyvios, and unusable vintage-filtered "art" photos. Anything that encourages users (especially less experienced users) to think twice before importing large batches of photos will help. Omphalographer (talk) 22:02, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

A while ago it was decided not to delete "Category:Burials at ... Cemetery". Since they are going to be kept, is there any way to automate the creation based on the info at Wikidata? We tend to have categories already created for larger, more famous cemeteries, populated with the people buried there. See, for instance: Category:Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery. --RAN (talk) 18:03, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/12#Category:Burials

as users said, it's not a good idea to use commons categories for the relation between the category of a person and the category of the cemetery.

leave that data on wikidata. RoyZuo (talk) 20:02, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

There was a strong consensus at CfD to keep these categories as they are. ReneeWrites (talk) 22:45, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

exactly, users should not use bots to create these categories that have no files related to the actual graves more often than not. RoyZuo (talk) 23:46, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Category:Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery seems to me to be an example of the approach that was rejected in the recent discussions. - Jmabel ! talk 21:05, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

"is there any way to automate the creation based on the info at Wikidata?"—Yes: ask at Template talk:Wikidata Infobox. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:28, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Unfortunately I have been parmabanned by a new admin with just a month's experience, without even a debate at Wikidata, you can follow the drama at my user page there. --RAN (talk) 20:47, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Consider this your final warning to stop using Commons as a soapbox to complain about your Wikidata block. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:13, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

The page I linked to is on Wikimedia Commons. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:14, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hello. I am wondering if there is something like a geographic search for pictures. I am thinking of a map on which the Wikimedia photos are located as icones so that you can select them with a click of the mouse, for example. I'm sure I'm not the first person to look for something like this but couldn't find a related discussion yet. --Alfrejg (talk) 07:18, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

You could try Wikishootme. It might take a while for the site to load, but if the uploader has taken the trouble to add the geographic oordinates correctly, it should do the job. Kind regards, MartinD (talk) 07:56, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi MartinD. That's just what I needed, thanks a lot. Alfrejg (talk) 17:36, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

There is a map in Commons app that shows files but I haven't used it sufficiently to tell whether it can be used for this.

There also is https://wikimap.toolforge.org/ but I think it has the same problem as the map for Wikipedia articles in the Wikipedia Android app that I described at phab:T360213 (An option to show all article-dots directly on the Nearby places map (instead of having to tap on clusters)). One has to zoom in super close to be able to click on individual files.

Additionally, I think it only shows files with geocoordinates which are probably less than 3% of photos. Regarding this, see Template talk:Geogroup#Also include files geolocated to countries/places via subcategories but not coordinates (1 reply so far, stale, maybe not the best place to ask).

In practice, it's best to use categories to search/see files by location. You can browse the category branch such as Category:cityname via its subcategories or (at the most relevant category) use the deepcategory search operator to browse the files in a wall-of-images where you can just scroll through the files– for this put deepcategory:category name into the search bar. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:14, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

As other answers say, Wikishootme is the place to go for geolocated images and categories for all of them. However, other more sofisticated tools exist like Commons:SPARQL query service and even PetScan with some combination of categories and queries. Pere prlpz (talk) 15:30, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'm wondering whether a new help page about geographic maps should be created that lists the tools, has info on how to use them, and mainly makes them discoverable to users on Commons or on Web search engines. "Wikishootme" is not a descriptive self-explanatory name that users interested in this are likely to find and go to. It also doesn't load some map by default – one first has to enter a specific place.

In its options in the top right, one can disable the display of Wikidata items with no image and of Commons images with geocoordinates. Most useful I think is the display of Wikidata items when they have a Commons category where one can then the Commons category link in the popup when clicking on the item (bottom left). May be best if all of this was included in OpenStreetMaps maps, and possibly it is – I think the app OsmAnd does it (I don't use it because one has to download maps in advance rather than just browse around with things loading ondemand as with Google Maps etc). The main issue with wikishootme is that it's not part of an app and many (me included) would use this feature only or mostly while on the go (especially if it was integrated in map apps that one already uses anyway). One also can't see which items have Commons categories and the symbols are all just dots without eg symbols in them making it easier to see which kind of items they are. Here I requested/proposed that items that have a Commons category are colored differently: m:Talk:WikiShootMe#Media in existing Commons categories. Which things are useful and which tool is right depends how one is using that; eg if for search then some very specific search or search in the sense of 'all media around this area'? I'd probably use it more for discovery such as for checking which routes would be interesting.

I've created this category where one can find more or less all the relevant pages, categories, and files about this subject so far so far: c:Category:Wikimedia projects and maps. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:04, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Coloring the dots according to whether they have a Commons category or the kind of item they are (that is, instance of (P31)) isn't hard to do with Commons:SPARQL query service. The problem is that it's less user-friendly than Wikishootme and you might need a custom query for your needs or your area.

And I don't urderstand "It also doesn't load some map by default – one first has to enter a specific place" about Wikishootme. Wikishootme opens by default at your location but you can zoom and scroll the map to wherever you want - not different from Google Maps and most app aplications. Pere prlpz (talk) 11:21, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

One could add queries like this to the envisioned page then assuming it doesn't already exist.

When opening up Wikishootme, it does not load some map – it's just large whitespace and one has to figure out what it is and that one has to first enter a place in the search in the top left to make it load a/the map. I don't give any websites permission to my location and if I did it would be an inaccurate one. That's on desktop where many and maybe most people first find this site, not on mobile indeed. Btw, integrating this map into the Commons app would be great. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:36, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Well, that can be solved by allowing permissions to location but it's a personal choice.

Anyway, it would be good that Wikishootme assumed a default location in case the actual one is not available. Pere prlpz (talk) 12:46, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/#zoom=10&q=Q220

i always open it this way. with zoom and wd item values of your choice, open it once then the browser remembers.

the author should really solve this problem, but i dont wanna set up a bitbucket account so i leave most problems of his tools to others. RoyZuo (talk) 15:37, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

nearcoord is pretty nice too. see mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Geo_Search. RoyZuo (talk) 17:38, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I use WikiShootMe for all geotagged photos of an arbitrary area. More often I add {{Geogroup}} to a category that I'll often be looking into. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:59, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

It makes little sense that we allow (in SVG uploads) as an XML namespace the URI for Dublin Core 1.1 (http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/) but not DC Terms (http://purl.org/dc/terms/). Desaccointier (talk) 04:38, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

While we’re at it I would also advocate allowing all the common RDF namespaces as defined in the canonical RDFa Core Initial Context. At the very least we should also permit Schema.org, seeing as how prevalent it is online. Desaccointier (talk) 04:40, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Desaccointier File a request in Phabricator. The current list of accepted namespaces is here btw: https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/HEAD/includes/Upload/UploadVerification.php#L543 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:40, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

.see Phab:T283316.

.see also User:Glrx#MediaWiki_whitelisted_namespaces.

Glrx (talk) 22:47, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi, is it possible to find images with only red categories. - When I work for Commons:WikiProject Minimum One Category and add a misspelled category to one uncategorized image then the Template:uncategorized was delete from this image and the image had only one red misspelled category. - Is there a way too find other images with only red categories? --sk (talk) 19:19, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Maybe one can adjust the query used for the report Commons:Report UncategorizedCategories with redcats to show files instead of categories. This query which does show files and has an output one could add to a report page with thumbnails could be used to build it I think. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:48, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi, Please see Template talk:Artwork#Dimensions. Thanks, Yann (talk) 20:12, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi all,

I believe the guidelines in Commons:First steps/Quality and description, specifically the sentence "Generally speaking, image quality and resolution should be as high as possible so images can be used in high-quality printouts", should be modified to discourage upscaling beyond the native resolution of the original media. The file upload page also encourages users "Upload the highest resolution file that is possible", which can also be problematic.

I have run into a user who is upscaling their 5568x3712 images from their 20 megapixel Nikon D7500 camera to as large as 30893×17377 (537 megapixels) before uploading, in some cases ballooning an otherwise 5-10 megabyte file to over 100 megabytes for absolutely no benefit and significant detriment. I've notified their talk page about this, but this should be more clearly discouraged in policy. EDIT - the user responded and said this was a mistake with their export settings, and was not intentional.

I also think we should have clearer policies against upscaling (except for media explicitly illustrating upscaling as a technique), as use of AI and other tools to invent detail seems to run counter to the project's scope in hosting educational media. The only policy I've found against upscaling is on Commons:Overwriting existing files, which discourages overwriting existing files with upscaled ones. 4300streetcar (talk) 05:44, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Commons:AI-generated media used to require AI-upscaled images to be tagged and categorised, but this was dropped in June 2024 as this concerns images modified by AI, not images generated by AI. We should create separate guidelines to handle the former. I'm not sure what the per Rhododendrites refers to in that edit summary; if there was a connected discussion I can't find it.

Commons:AI images of identifiable people#Altered images requires upscaled photographs of people to be tagged as such, and to include a link to the original source photo for comparison, but it takes no view on aircraft or other non-human subjects. It doesn't rule that such images shouldn't be hosted here. Belbury (talk) 09:21, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

•  Strong oppose upscaling. It should be prohibited. I've checked File:Gridiron Air’ Boeing 777-232ER ‘N866DA’ @IND.jpg and failed to find where 537 MP file is better that original (~8 MP). More, I even think that giant photo became more blurry than sharp and detailed original. Plus upscaling is just a useless waste of space. Юрий Д.К. 20:30, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

in english, if Commons:File captions are not full sentences and start with words that arent proper nouns, should the first letter be capitalised?

or should it be like wikidata item labels and descriptions that do not want the 1st word capitalised?

or it doesnt matter?

e.g. for File:Apple splitting 01.ogv, if any of these is preferred?

1. splitting an apple by hand
2. Splitting an apple by hand

RoyZuo (talk) 16:29, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I, personally, prefer capitalisation and no dot at the end. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 17:30, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Same here. Sometimes caption can be two sentences where there are dots but these are rare. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:10, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

•  Support Prefer capitalisation, dots aren't mandatory Юрий Д.К. 20:39, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

A closer has taken their own view to delete a file against all other opinions. Can this be appealed on Commons, or is that how it works on Commons. Thanks Aszx5000 (talk) 21:14, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

See COM:UNDEL for instructions. --Geohakkeri (talk) 21:28, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

On Commons, admins are not bound by majority consensus, especially in matters involving copyright policy or legal compliance. They cannot disregard applicable Commons rules or copyright law just because most commenters prefer to keep the files. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 21:59, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply