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

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: 24,000 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)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 7,700 images that are currently used in Wikipedia? -- Vysotsky (talk) 22:28, 25 January 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

Hi all. I've stumbled upon a photograph that was uploaded from geograph.org.uk File:Side of the Angel, Midhurst - geograph.org.uk - 3891742.jpg - the problem with this photo is that it is not as described in the title or description due to an error on the part of the photographer - it is actually the side of the next building along. The description etc. is pulled from a template (Template:Geograph from structured data), so can't be changed - I've added a correct summary of the subject below, so there are now two conflicting descriptions, also the title of the file remains incorrect - what would normally happen in cases like this? Is there an established way to correct photo descriptions of files imported via the geograph.org.uk project? Many thanks, Simon Burchell (talk) 09:53, 16 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Change the structured data. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:43, 16 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

If the file name needs to be changed, use the template {{Rename}}. Nakonana (talk) 17:32, 16 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

And if you want to preserve the old name for reference, you can use {{Original caption}}. - Jmabel ! talk 21:52, 16 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I've recently created {{Corrected metadata}} with the intent to better document factual problems in the original metadata, and document why we corrected it. I think we should be clearer about what we change from the sourced metadata than we do now, and provide links to our reasoning for doing so. Hadn't completely finished it yet, but it's out there. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:38, 19 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! Simon Burchell (talk) 10:02, 19 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

The file still has two {{Information}} when there should be only one. As far as I understood it, the solution is pointed out here in the first comment: changing the SD (this does not seem to be about the exif metadata). Prototyperspective (talk) 12:51, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Moved by Prototyperspective on 11:46, 24 January 2026 (UTC) –Consigned (talk) 18:43, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I am writing to you to let you know the annual review period for the Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines is open now. You can make suggestions for changes through 9 February 2026. This is the first step of several to be taken for the annual review. Read more information and find a conversation to join on the UCoC page on Meta.

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Please share this information with other members in your community wherever else might be appropriate.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk)

21:01, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

(This message was sent to Commons:Txokoa and is being posted here due to a redirect.)

Hi all,

I often see titles such as "DSCF1234" or "qwerthjkl" on Commons.

I also happen to develop an upload tool for Commons.

What do you think about the opt-in experiment below?

• Detect such titles using a local-only (thus privacy-friendly) small LLM.
• If it is such a title, show a tooltip such as "Make sure to write descriptive names, see Commons:File_naming".
• This would be a separate version of the app, that only people who really want to try this experiment would download.
• If the experiment goes well, I would consult the community again and possibly let more people use it.

I know the community feels strongly about AI, which is why I am consulting here. To be clear, the LLM resides on the local device, and never uses the Internet, nor reports query content to anywhere.

Any feedback welcome, thanks! :-) Syced (talk) 08:36, 20 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I like the idea, but wouldn't a local LLM (or a SLM/small language model) use up significant amount of RAM/CPU? Leaderboard (talk) 08:46, 20 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it does take RAM! CPU, not so much: less than a second for this detection, possibly doable while the user does something else like picking depictions. This project is focused on the long-term horizon, and in the future an embedded LLM will probably sit in memory of the OS, ready to use by any program, so using it will not take more RAM. :-) Syced (talk) 08:27, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

i think people who care enough to use such apps dont write gibberish captions in the first place? RoyZuo (talk) 13:13, 20 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

The app in question actually does get some gibberish (sigh). I try to monitor all uploads and warn such users, but I believe that explaining in realtime (before the upload) is more efficient. Also, realtime explanation increases chances of turning a "silly" newcomer into a long-term contributor. Banning them or admonishing them after the upload(s) decreases chances of them becoming a long-term contributor. Syced (talk) 10:37, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

no i dont mean the app you are already using, but "separate version of the app, that only people who really want to try this experiment would download". those who would enter the experiment dont write gibberish in the first place.

i agree with you about being nice and helpful to new users. i have also made several proposals in this direction over the years. RoyZuo (talk) 15:56, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Ah yes, true. This is a kind of proof-of-concept. Syced (talk) 13:34, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

The Upload Wizard is actually already catching some of those generic filenames, especially the "DSC_" or similarly styled ones, and warns about their use. That may only be a reminder, not a prohibition, which could explain that some uploads still sport such names. The other, more probable, reason is found in imports from Flickr et al., where the names aren't really filtered. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 13:56, 20 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I think reminder is the best way to go, because some common names from my region may look like gibberish to an English speaker haha. By the way, an LLM would probably be able to tell the difference (further testing will be needed to confirm this). Syced (talk) 10:44, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Sounds like sth for Commons talk:WMF support for Commons/Upload Wizard Improvements. I don't know if your proposal is about file titles or captions or both (the latter would probably make most sense). Prototyperspective (talk) 17:11, 20 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

file titles or captions: both :-) Syced (talk) 10:38, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Do we have a page like en:Wikipedia:Link rot/URL change requests fr reporting usurped URLs that are linked from multiple Commons pages?? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:58, 21 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Do we track this with a category? It is an intersection of two categories, but one that is being actively tracked by other organizations because of the connection between concussive brain damage and suicides. RAN (talk) 16:07, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I don't think so. I agree that it's a potentially interesting intersection from an encyclopedic perspective, but it's not relevant to the media we host of these people. Omphalographer (talk) 19:07, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

We have images of news articles on American football players who died by suicide, I think that is what people may be looking for. We also have images of people where too little is known about them to create a Wikipedia article, it would just be a few sentences, and be a perma-stub. --RAN (talk) 20:05, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Technically it's not relevant for the media we host to categorize people by when or how they died in general, unless the category contains media related to that death (very few of them ever do). But seeing as the parent category exists and is used in this manner, I wouldn't be opposed to an intersecting category about this being made. ReneeWrites (talk) 20:36, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't be opposed to this category (I've definitely found examples of this while doing my uploads of 1920s photographs). Abzeronow (talk) 01:10, 23 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

If we do this, we need to define what level of playing football qualifies someone to belong in the category. I wouldn't want to see this include, for example, someone who played high school football for a year and then killed themself in their 70s. - Jmabel ! talk 01:40, 23 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Could be wrong but I think the American football players already is just for professional-level American football players. At most, at the top-level there could be some photos of amateur players too but these wouldn't be moved to any subcat (unless there is eg a cat for this type of photos) or at least not this one. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:18, 23 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Such categories should not exist. They only create edit wars on cases where the cause of death is unclear. This is a job for Wikidata and Wikipedia, not for Commons where we are not able to add references to categories. GPSLeo (talk) 12:05, 23 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

• We already have Category:People who died by suicide, so not controversial. --RAN (talk) 19:25, 23 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

  You can search categories with e.g "cat:football players suicide" so I don't know why you asked this here: if you can't find a category, then it's not being tracked. If one such exists I very much doubt there would be any controversy or edit wars relating to it but instead it could be fairly incomplete and probably not very useful as in not worth the time populating. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:09, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Should disambiguation categories also contain images of the people listed? When looking for the correct person, sometimes it is easier to visually identify the correct person, rather than just looking at occupations and birth and death dates. Disambiguation categories currently read: "This category page should not hold any files." I think they should contain a single image of each person being disambiguated, preferably a close crop of the face. RAN (talk) 18:56, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Neutral, but if we do this it should be a <gallery> element after the text. Absolutely opposed to categorizing images in a disambiguation category, almost guaranteed to be a maintenance nightmare. - Jmabel ! talk 19:54, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Do we already have a bot that removes all images from the disambiguation categories? If so, your solution would be perfect. I find uncategorized images of people, where the name of the person in the title or description, and have been trying to assign them to the correct person. Visually this is a lot easier. Think of how many John Smiths we have. As we grow, the number of uncategorized people with similar names grows. Anyone that does category maintenance on people, knowns the problem of people assigned to the wrong category, because they have a similar/same name. --RAN (talk) 20:07, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

There isn't a bot that removes images from disambiguation categories as it's uncertain which category they belong to, but disambig categories with media do get put in a maintenance category for manual (human) review (Category:Non-empty disambiguation categories). There are bots that move content from redirects, though. ReneeWrites (talk) 20:21, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

To categorize people, I first search Wikipedia for their name. If the description is in Spanish, I search the Spanish Wikipedia page. Based on the estimated age of the person in the image, I can select the most likely candidates and view the corresponding pages. If there's an image, it's easy. Otherwise, the sources can provide a clue. Wouter (talk) 20:39, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Galleries for visual identification for subcategories aren't uncommon - see Category:Categories with a gallery for a better choice of sub-categories. I don't see any reason why we couldn't extend it to disambig pages, though I'm not sure how useful it would be. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:08, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

There are no pages or files in this category is superfluous. Can the mediawiki software recognize Template:Disambig? --Henrydat (talk) 18:22, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Should people be even indentified, if the identity is irrelevant in the image? For example: the toddler in File:Baby Andrea met grootouders op strand 1933.jpg is my mother with her grandparents. The picture itself tells a story of grandparents (born 1878, 1882) being outside their comfort zone on the beach.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:51, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I think that's a different case than the one that is being asked about here. The case here is about individuals who share the same name. One could create a disambiguation category with the text "Alexander Popov" is the name of the following individuals:, then follows a list of individuals: Category:Alexander Popov (ice hockey), Category:Alexander Popov (Moskovskiy), Category:Alexander Popov (musician), Category:Alexander Popov (painter). RAN is asking whether the disambiguation category should not just list the names of the individuals but also contain an image of each individual by the name "Alexander Popov", so that someone, who is trying to find the correct category for an uncategorized image "Alexander Popov.jpg" but does not know any of the listed individuals, could easily identify whether the depicted "Alexander Popov" is the ice hockey player, musician, or painter, etc. Nakonana (talk) 16:31, 27 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I think this has been proposed in the past (including sort of one time by me a decade ago), I wanted to try and bring it up again. Part of the reason to bring it up now is that WMF is working on a lot of image stuff right now, so its a good time to ask for a change if we want it. (I have no idea if WMF would allow this change as in the past there was concerns about changing the size of so many images at once. However with changes going on with how images are rendered, i suspect that may be less of an issue now. In any case, can't hurt to ask). I also think expectations on the internet have changed and people expect larger images now a days then they did a decade ago.

Currently category pages display images quite small. I am of the opinion they are displayed too small, especially when taking into account how much whitespace there is between images. I think it would be better to make them larger so that people can see the images better.

I made a comparison of options at User:Bawolff/different_gallery. I think if we are sticking to the traditional gallery, then a size of 180px would make more sense then the current 120px

Alternatively, I think the "packed" gallery mode actually looks nicer, so my actual proposal would be to change the mode type and keep the current size. You can see what that looks like here. This would also look somewhat more similar to the output of Special:MediaSearch. The main downside to this is that for very narrow images, the caption containing the file name might get cut-off due to lack of room.

As a note, currently MediaWiki only has an option to change the default gallery settings everywhere. This would affect everything: categories, Special:NewFiles, the <gallery> tag (if other options aren't specified), etc. If there is consensus to change it just for categories and not other places, that would require additional changes to MediaWiki, but I suspect would not be difficult to get added.

Thoughts? Bawolff (talk) 08:05, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Please see (and vote on if you agree) Wish413: Larger thumbnails in category views.

Even worse is the current display of categories on mobile Web; I intend to make a separate wish about that soon. Agree with what you said; you may want to add some of that to the talk page of the wish. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:49, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

It would be helpful to have consensus here (assuming people agree with the idea) as that would allow me to push this through non-wishlust processes. Bawolff (talk) 16:29, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

The 180px packed gallery mode looks very nice. Long captions should be collapsed. All of them should be optional. Less frequently used options will be removed. We don't need to think too much about them. What do you think? --Henrydat (talk) 19:49, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Maybe then it would be better to post/move this to Commons:Village pump/Proposals and making the questions and their options more clear than they already are.

I like the display of the 220px or 320px but with the packed mode and for all of these options I don't like how the file-titles are displayed: they take up too much height so maybe it would be good to trim the title and display the full only at hover or some solution like that (but still enabling ctrl+f searching the parts of titles that are not shown).

Basically, I like how the search results in the MediaViewer are displaying except that there the file-titles are missing and I like how the categories are shown in the Commons app except that the app still only shows captions when both title and caption(s) exist instead of both or just the title.

In any case, I think it should be made possible for the user to easily adjust the size which kind of negates the need to agree on any size and which can cover more use-cases. For example, I may generally prefer smaller thumbnails but enlarge them when categorizing lots of files in a category based on the language of the labels on the map images. Such a size adjustment option is proposed in the wish linked above. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:18, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

My main gripe with the standard gallery isn't the default thumbnail size, as it can manually be adjusted, but the lack of mobile-friendly (or even mobile-compatible) options. ReneeWrites (talk) 16:43, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

To be clear, I am talking about the galleries that are automatically added at the bottom of categories. It is not possible for a user to manually adjust the thumbnail size of those galleries. Bawolff (talk) 16:01, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'd love to see packed height:160px —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:39, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Would someone be able to add translation functions for Chinese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Japanese, German, French, Korean, Russian, etc., at the bottom of the "Template:De minimis", similar to the "Template:FoP-China" template?--Huangdan2060 (talk) 05:10, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Help needed at File:Acerenza Panorama BNPZ.tif to work out the full name and birth and death dates for "Cav. V. Simone". RAN (talk) 19:26, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Maybe Cavaliere (=a title, "knight") Vincenzo Simone, see [1]. Nakonana (talk) 20:00, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

These[2][3] websites seem to confirm it. Born 1892, died 1968. Nakonana (talk) 20:08, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

• Amazing detective work, the "Cav." had me stumped! Do we have a Wikidata entry for them? --RAN (talk) 20:53, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

  Doesn't look like it. Nakonana (talk) 22:46, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

  I have created a Wikidata item for him and have added the Wikidata template to his Commons category. Nakonana (talk) 07:11, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I am not sure what the category was intended for. It has a few photos of people where the photographer has not been identified. There are also categories with people in them, they look like they are identified, I am confused. Are the people pictured photographers that we are looking for more info on them, or are they more images where we do not know the name of the photographer? I can see having images where we have the photographer's name and need more info, like the case above with "Cav. V. Simone". --RAN (talk) 02:41, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

It seems to originally be about photos of unidentified photographers. Either way: could you start a category for discussion thread (CfD)? Prototyperspective (talk) 09:15, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

After creating the category, the user did edits like these: [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], on photos of identified photographers. It doesn't seem to make much sense. Unless the user was challenging the gender identification of the photographers. -- Asclepias (talk) 12:13, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

The diffs support that this was intended as a category for photos showing photographers. The photographer of the first diff is not identified: whether or not the person is identified refers to the categories set on the file, not e.g. the file title. An issue with the gender identification could have been a motivation for the user; in the first diff I think the cat should only have been added in addition instead of replacing Category:Male photographers from Italy. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:39, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

What? A person who is clearly identified in the description (and/or the title) is not unidentified. Commons has a lot of portraits of identified persons who do not have a specific category to the name of the person. Does that justify categorizing them as unidentified persons? I could understand if, by removing the gender category, the user wanted to make a sort of statement against categorization by gender, but even then they should leave the files in the parent category, not categorize the persons as "unidentified" when actually they are identified. -- Asclepias (talk) 18:25, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I think it's about the categories but this may need broader discussion and may vary per case/type. For example, the language of files in Category:Unidentified language is often clear from the file description and at least via the file contents but it's not identified via a category. Category:Drone videos from unidentified countries contains the files that are not yet in any country category of Category:Drone videos by country even when the country name is in the file description. One topic here is whether to have such Unidentified categories when it's not wanted and/or not feasible to categorize the subjects. We generally like to have things categorized by the city depicted or the country located in so it makes sense there to set such a category but here we probably don't want categories for photographers or do we? (And it's not unlikely we usually would like to have categories about photographers as these can be used to sort/find their photos with; that's probably just different for photographers with essentially no photos on Commons which makes this not so simple.)

if, by removing the[…] I don't disagree with you. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:17, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Could the technical staff add "|author1=|author2=" to the "Template:FoP-China", similar to the "|deathyear=" in "Template:PD-Art" ?--Huangdan2060 (talk) 08:38, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Note: better fit for Commons:Template requests than this global general Commons board. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:14, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. Huangdan2060 (talk) 15:04, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

This is from a family album with no description of the picture. I suspect Marseille.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:32, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Please do not post to this board just to identify categories of an arbitrary unimportant file out of tens of thousand of files that lack categories / location-identification. There are other places for this such as Category:Ports and harbours (unidentified). This board isn't really for lots of extremely narrow-topic requests like this. The linked cat contains over 130 files and nothing is even special about the one you asked about. Thanks, Prototyperspective (talk) 12:17, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it is probably the Old Port of Marseille. @Smiley.toerist: You may get a better answer on Commons:Bistro. @Prototyperspective: Please do not be so antagonistic. Thanks, Yann (talk) 12:29, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I agree and found the church tower. I have asked for a rename.Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:39, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I care about Commons even when it sounds unfriendly (sorry if it does, it's not meant to be unfriendly). The user has been cluttering this board with many of these threads already. There are hundreds of these files and nothing is special about this one that warrants creating a thread about it but not any of the hundreds of the other files. I have hundreds of files, categories, and topics that would be more important but I don't spam them here because I have more respect for people's attention, time, and productivity. If this kind of posting is accepted here, users may just as well post about each and every image in Category:Drone videos from unidentified countries, Category:Unidentified caves and whatnot. Somebody has to say it imo. Please do not create these kinds of threads here. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:42, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I should have used the French Bistro. There is enough local knowledge there.Smiley.toerist (talk) 17:12, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I agree there need to be a balance, between endless threads about search puzzles and only business and efficiency. People can always skip them and not spend any time on them. But other people are curious and find a satisfaction solving puzzles and often learning new things doing it. Just dont tel people how to spend their time. By the way: In the background I also categorise, sort, correct, update and do many other usefull things, beside uploading files (more than 28000 uploads from 2008, without mass Glam uploads).Smiley.toerist (talk) 17:12, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Further above there is a thread about 34,000 media files needing categories as of 2020. You want a thread here about every 10th of these files? Please reflect on your practices. This is not okay, and I won't post threads here about dozens of files and categories I consider important either. I could and I'm sure many other users have lots of files and categories they'd like to talk about but they use the established ways for this such as adding the file to the respective Unidentified category. Please have some respect for people's time and attention and the value of the community being able to focus on genuine large-scale subjects such as "34,000 media needing categories as of 2020" which is a scope far above individual files. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:30, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Also it's unfair; e.g. to the contributors who populate the Category:Unidentified subjects categories without repeatedly asking about specific individual files thereof here. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:36, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

i concur with yann. there's nothing wrong asking any question here, the general discussion page for any topic. RoyZuo (talk) 19:36, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Then don't complain when I come here asking about random 434 individual files that are missing categories. In separate threads that clutter the page. What's the place to discuss topics concerning the Commons project? There's > 500,000 files missing categories, I'll just be making individual threads about one random file of these that I think looks nice /s Also 6,215 categories for discussion, I'll just make a new thread about one arbitrary individual case once a day.

If the community doesn't want to have a place where there's focused attention on unsolved tasks of which there are hundreds of highly-important ones that affect whole branches of categories and things of that scale that aren't even posted here then so be it. The value of not wasting community attention and focus and having such a place is pretty clear. Just saying "there's nothing wrong" without addressing anything that has been said and without any reason other than that this place is in your view for any topic isn't convincing and I don't see how it can be convincing. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:48, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

If there is certain pattern to the individual files, you can certainly use some examples to demonstrate and see if some general solution can be applied or tips found. I am afraid that in practice it is individualy resolved and the easy ones are resolved first, so it will get progressively harder. I am working on the files without categories, where I use my knowledge to resolve. I know a lot of trains/trams etc and using the geografic location some files have, one can give the rigth local categories (countries, region etc). However I dont think that some magical wand or procedure will come up from the discussions. It is just hard work. I just dont see why individual discussions over files, interfere with project discussions. Why not have both and let people contribute as they see fit and feel is the best use of their time. I have no problem with contributing to both types of discussions. Maybe I will spend more time in total to the Commons. Volonteers need to have satisfaction and pleasure in there work. Some fun elements contribute to that. This is not a compagny workplace where everything needs to work exclusively for the compagny defined targets. We dont get paid for that.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:19, 27 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

To be fair, they are not asking about all the files in the Universe, or about all the files someone uploaded on Commons and did not know about the existence of the categories.They are asking about their own recent uploads. Nobody arguing here that this approach is scalable, and this noticeboard is certainly not for asking to categorize every single file. But I guess if people sometimes ask about their own uploads - well, this also will not scale well, but I think we are still in a situation where this is so far manageable. If you want to bring your own uploads, after making an effort to figure out what was the object 30 years ago when you took the picture - why not? I personally do not mind doing some OSINT once in a while, as soon as it is not overburdening and it is not compulsory for me to deliver. Ymblanter (talk) 06:34, 27 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Basically, all I was saying is that the user is by now doing this too often, almost routinely.

Pointing out the issues with this – such as using up community attention of the many users watching this place that's needed much more for other issues – and trying to inhibit it at least somewhat wasn't really done before so I brought it up after the user made like 20 posts here of that kind and I think it would be great if users are generally expected to ask such things at other dedicated places if adding an Unidentified category isn't enough such as at least just the Help desk. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:51, 27 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I previously suggested moving files from 560+ categories into 560+ new categories and leaving the previous categories 'permanently empty' of files. The motivation for the change is well-grounded and I think has reasonable consensus.

However I've noticed other people, including the original creator of these categories, have been moving the categories themselves (rather than the files) to newly created categories, with the old name providing a redirection link (basically renaming them). There are as many as 24 such categories.

This alternative seems much simpler than my earlier suggestion, and given that it's already begun I think my earlier suggestion would only complicate everything further. The only benefit to my solution was to preserve the index from that particular book to the matching commons category. We can preserve that use case by linking to the original category from this pre-existing gallery page, which I've now done.

As such I'll follow what others have been doing, and I'll link to this discussion in the changelog when moving the categories.

BeakheadIntrados (talk) 16:21, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply