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— Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 11:26, 3 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 22:58, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

Two different but important Vietnam-related issues have come to my attention recently.

The first is Vietnam's recent provincial reorganization which had 63 provinces reorganized so that there are now only 34 provinces. Obviously location maps will have to be moved so it's known that these are now historic maps. And the new location maps will have be organized in such a way that these reflect the provincial reorganization. And so I raise the issue here rather than at the thread in COM:OWR /wiki/Commons:Overwriting_existing_files/Requests#c-Chemistry(NuTech)-20250708060800-Abzeronow-20250707233500 because this should not be done on an ad hoc basis. Apparently Viwiki has been notified, but enwiki and other wikis should be notified of this as well.

The second matter is File:Flag of Vietnam.svg as there is apparently some debate about what the official color scheme of the flag is (and whether or not there is a standardization of the flag or not) File talk:Flag of Vietnam.svg. I have per consensus on Talk Page reverted to the previous version, but since there was a source raised in the discussion that points to a revision being "official", I thought bringing that up here might get more knowledgeable people about Vietnam to settle this matter or to at least provide more insight into the matter. Abzeronow (talk) 23:53, 8 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Re: point 1. Not only provincial reorganization but a massive overhaul of all local government units. The entire district-level division has been nuked, but that also means majority of Vietnam's cities as well as all of their towns are officially no more (or at least, the likes of Nha Trang, Vinh, and Dienbienphua now exist as nominal, geographical features since they no longer have valid city governments). All of Vietnam's towns and provincial cities lie within this recently-abolished level. Additionally, massive mergers of Vietnam's communes (which I treat as equivalent to Philippine barangays or administrative villages that serve as divisions of Philippine cities and towns).

Some questions:

Should the categories of recently-abolished Vietnamese cities and towns continue to exist?

Should a massive recategorization of Vietnamese communes take place, too?

_ JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 00:06, 9 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Categories for longstanding historical stuff should continue to exist, but should have parent cats that make it clear they are historical. - Jmabel ! talk 03:25, 9 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps like, Category:Former cities in Vietnam, following the convention of the likes of Category:Former cities in New Zealand and Category:Former cities in Nova Scotia. The last cities of Nova Scotia province (Canada) – Dartmouth, Halifax, and Sydney – ended up the same fate as Vietnamese cities (except six "special" ones that are independent of any Vietnamese province), but in different ways. The three Canadian cities were abolished and replaced with higher-tier regional municipalities, making them permanently nominal and geographical. In the case of Vietnam's provincial cities, all were axed and their functions distributed to either the provinces or the enlarged communes (or Vietnam's version of Philippine administrative villages or w:en:Barangays). "Enlarged" in the sense, like Vietnam's provinces, mergers to reduce 10,000+ communes to slightly over 3,000+.

This may need opinions from Vietnamese Wikimedians, though, since according to w:en:Plan to arrange and merge administrative units in Vietnam 2024–2025 the reorganization (which I consider to be the most radical reorganization of local governments the recent world has witnessed, as of this comment of mine) has generated some controversy, both within Vietnam and outside the country. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 04:07, 9 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I definitely want to have Vietnamese Wikimedians give us some input. I'd ask someone to post about these issues in Commons:Thảo luận but I don't know how effective that would be. Abzeronow (talk) 21:35, 9 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Abzeronow I think we don't need the opinion of Vietnamese Wikimedians. This article by Vietnam.net clearly states that all provincial cities have been nuked and wiped off of the world map. No legacy titles will be retained too, because it "would lead to inconsistency in the administrative structure and cause public confusion - questioning why district names persist if the level is officially removed." We must treat the 85 cities of Vietnam in the same manner as we treat the three former cities of Canada's Nova Scotia province.

The likes of Category:Ba Ria and Category:Bien Hoa must be recategorized to Category:Former cities in Vietnam (same pattern as Category:Former cities in Nova Scotia), which in turn must be a subcategory of both Category:Cities in Vietnam and Category:Former subdivisions of Vietnam (as Sbb1413 suggested for category "Districts of Vietnam"). Only 6 of the main members of "Cities in Vietnam" category will remain: Category:Can Tho, Category:Da Nang, Category:Haiphong, Category:Hanoi, Category:Ho Chi Minh City, and Category:Huế. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 23:49, 10 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Vietnamese here:

• Yes, no more provincial cities or municipal cities. No more Thủ Đức City, no more Nha Trang City, and Phú Quốc is now also a commune-level "special zone". The territories of the old Thủ Đức district, the old Thủ Đức City and the today's Thủ Đức ward are all different, same thing with Nha Trang and most other cases
• Yes, only communes or wards below cities/provinces
• Yes, the only cities existing in Vietnam at the moment are the Municipalities of Vietnam, which are enough for me asking to rename "Municipalities of Vietnam" into "Cities of Vietnam" for better transparency

So yes, I strongly support the recatogization of Vietnamese entities, especially placing many of them into the "former" categories. Please be distinguish between existing subjects and the abolished ones.
And it would be even better if the new categories would follow a standardized naming convention, as I tried to discuss in WikiProject VN. Hwi.padam (talk) 22:54, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

There is a CfD below relating to the now abolished districts. I would definitely also support a standardized naming convention for the new categories. (And yes, we'd want to make sure that the difference between the existing and the abolished subjects is very clear). Abzeronow (talk) 23:49, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Hwi.padam@Abzeronow overhaul of Vietnam-related content here will not end at simply recategorizations of the now-abolished cities and towns of Vietnam (the district level). Images of legitimate sites and places within those former settlements — like File:Bùng binh Hùng Vương-Hoàng Diệu - panoramio.jpg of the former city of Ba Ria and File:Mô hình cột mốc chủ quyền ở Viện Hải dương học.jpg of the former city of Nha Trang — will end up in the "former" categories, making them not readily accessible for most common users.

This means the categories of new wards and communes must be created, so the images of legitimate sites will be transferred from those of former cities and towns to those of the current communes and wards. The categories of former cities and towns must be cleaned up to only focus on media related to their former statuses, like their flags, locator maps, and government icons or insignia. The categories of wards and communes may be categorized under the former cities and towns "if" their communal jurisdictions lie within the boundaries of the former cities and towns.

The creation the categories of the new 3K+ communes and wards needs guidance in the form of a list of all commune-level divisions of Vietnam, which is the job of English and Vietnamese Wikipedias. I have already did my part on enwiki by tagging w:en:List of cities in Vietnam with an "update" template, which should imply the need to create a "List of communes and wards in Vietnam" article. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 01:01, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Back to the original questions re: Vietnam, I'd only comment on the first one.

 Support moving the impacted map files (of Vietnamese provinces) to their new file names that reflect on their historical statuses. Original names (base names) should reflect the maps that show the current provincial boundaries (since 2025). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 04:24, 9 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Regarding the flag of Vietnam:

• Only the dimensional designs of the flag are codified, not the colors
• A majority of Vietnamese governmental website has been using Wikipedia's illustration as the existing standard file for the Vietnamese flag, with some messing around with the colors due to cosmetic reasons (to make it sensical to the website's design, for example).
• The "official" renders coming from the Government of Vietnam and/or Communist Party of Vietnam are largely unreliable due to poor file quality (.gif) or resulting from scanning physical images that do not present the accurate colors. Some of them even nominate renders that violate the codified dimensions and ratios of the flags, so as I've written in the Flag of Vietnam, the Vietnamese people largely don't care about this as along as the overall symbolism is maintained and recognized.
• After all, there was never a codified shades of colors for the Vietnamese flag, having them only described as "fresh red" (màu đỏ tươi) and yellow/gold (vàng), and most specific formal requirements that I could find is "the color of the threads being used should be consistent with the cloth", according to the Vietnamese Standards (TCVN), and this detail most certainly confirms that they know there's no codified colors for the Vietnamese flag.
  Again, most Vietnamese official narratives are using our Wikipedia's version as the standard flag of Vietnam, which is not helpful.
  Talking about real life representations, the Vietnamese government has produced flags having the same shades of colors with the red in Russian flag, the red in US flag, as well as the red/yellow with the flag of PRC and flag of Germany, even though none of those foreign flags are nominated in the same color shades. So, it's your choice talking about the Vietnamese flag colors ;)

Hwi.padam (talk) 23:23, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Related CfD Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/07/Category:Districts of Vietnam. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:30, 9 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also related: Commons:Overwriting_existing_files/Requests#Allow_overwriting_for_the_following_files. Jmabel ! talk 20:02, 9 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

That request got archived. Didn't see a comprehensive plan as we requested so I couldn't start the file moving process. Abzeronow (talk) 18:39, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Now at Commons:Overwriting existing files/Requests/Archive 18#Allow overwriting for the following files 2. Still relevant so that someone does not go off half-cocked the way the user there was ready to. - Jmabel ! talk 23:51, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I noticed this oddly named templates inside Category:Non-copyright restriction templates. Is there any consensus that we have to follow this law? Otherwise it should be deleted--Trade (talk) 22:29, 10 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Unused, and the creator's only edits were to create the template. Bizarre. I'd support deletion unless someone can confirm that these alleged laws exist and would apply to Commons. Omphalographer (talk) 00:19, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

+1 to Omphalographer's comment. Admittedly I didn't look into it that extensively but from what I can tell the template is totally pointless and should be deleted as such. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:55, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

So start a noincluded DR.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 05:09, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I started a DR: Commons:Deletion requests/Template:CIS minors. Tvpuppy (talk) 15:40, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi guys! I am very active on the Afrikaans Wikipedia but not too familiar with Commons. Please take note that the species Aloe suzannae has been renamed to Aloestrela suzannae. See POWO. Can somebody fix it please and update Wikidata as well?

Regards. Oesjaar (talk) 19:24, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Oesjaar: mind providing relevant links? Is there a category or at least one or several examples as files? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 19:31, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Grand-Duc: See Aloe Suzanne. Regards.Oesjaar (talk) 20:02, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Oesjaar: I processed your renaming request as far as I could (and I hope without mistakes), there were some Wiki editions that didn't allow me moving the relevant page. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 22:24, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Grand-Duc: Vielen dank! Oesjaar (talk) 06:32, 12 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

There are 11,045 files here. 9,621 of them appear in Category:2012 texts, which doesnt seem helpful. This because they all contain something like

| date        = Published on 28 July 2012

which generates this. Is there any way of changing this? Rathfelder (talk) 09:39, 12 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

It can be changed via appropriate subcatting. - Jmabel ! talk 18:06, 12 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

It comes from the template. {{Published on}}.

They can only be subcategorised by editting each individual file - about 100,000 in all. Rathfelder (talk) 08:46, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

We could do this with Help:VisualFileChange.js  ${\displaystyle 999}$REAL 💬 ⬆   15:07, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oof. Topical categories that are liable to have subcats should not be coming that way from a template. - Jmabel ! talk 21:59, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I followed instructions for this photo, and the 3rd party has 30 days, so the license is pending. I marked in the instructions what license I needed. The upload program should tag what I check. If it doesn't, that is a problem with the program. Bots should not be checking this and threatening deletion. I think the tag is {{Cc-by-4.0}}, but I have no idea how to insert it except under the picture, which I just did, but I think this tag needs the approval as it is 3rd party, which will come with the submission of the letter by the author of the photo. It already has this tag for {{Permission pending}} under the photo, which should be good for 30 days.

I worked two hours getting this up and requesting permissions. This is the frustation of Wikicommons. RosPost (talk) 13:18, 12 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

• @RosPost: You don't link the file, so I have no easy way to check your work, but normally licenses go near the bottom of the file page, just above categories, directly under the {{Permission pending}} tag. If you look at Commons:Uploading works by a third party#How they can grant a license (and how you upload), step 12, this is spelled out. Yes, the Upload Wizard should ask you this question and do it as part of the Wizard process, but only the Foundation's developers can fix that. They've said a fix is forthcoming. I'm not holding my breath. - Jmabel ! talk 18:12, 12 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

  Very Kind of you to help me. I can also go into the 9 photos and put the code {{Cc-by-4.0}} under {{Permission pending}} in the edit section perhaps? I will read the link, but once uploaded the Wizard disappears. RosPost (talk) 20:31, 12 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

  • @RosPost: Yes, please do (1) read the link and (2) add {{Cc-by-4.0}} to the file pages in question. - Jmabel ! talk 00:48, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

As can be seen here notices using this tool aren't signed. This must be fixed ASAP in my opinion. Jonteemil (talk) 14:14, 12 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

/wiki/Commons_talk:Adiutor#c-RoyZuo-20241117143500-No_sign . RoyZuo (talk) 10:33, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

This File:Motoise-gegu01.png and this File:Motoise-gegu02.png seem like they are clearly just the first one has an error so the second one was uploaded. I think they should be history merged with the first version being treated as an older version of the file.

Also moved to a more accurate name like File:Fukuchiyama Toyuke-daijinja map.png Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 00:58, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Immanuelle: Please post at COM:MERGE instead.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:36, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

{{PD-India}} opens with "This work is in the public domain in India because its term of copyright has expired.", but is used on works that are not copyright expired, but which meet the criterion in the template's final bullet point, "Text of laws, judicial opinions, and other government reports are free from copyright."

The former wording therefore needs to be improved, perhaps to "This work is in the public domain in India because its term of copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright."

I cannot figure out where this wording is held, and in any case the template is protected. Can someone make the necessary change, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:13, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

It is in Template:PD-India/en, I added it  ${\displaystyle 999}$REAL 💬 ⬆   15:19, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Yann it is wrong to include this?  ${\displaystyle 999}$REAL 💬 ⬆   18:40, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think that "Text of laws, judicial opinions, and other government reports" should be under {{EdictGov-India}}. Yann (talk) 19:05, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

That text has been in {{PD-India/en}} since its creation in 2010; and you did not comment on it when you edited the template in September 2012, September 2014 and July 2018. To revert User:999real's edit (which I requested) now, with no edit summary, is unacceptable. I have restored it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:40, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Being wrong in the past doesn't make right now. Yann (talk) 20:07, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi all - I posted about this here a while back, but I have an unfortunate follow up. You can read that old post for more context, but: several users requested images (1, 2, 3) of a public figure, artist Cameron Rowland, be removed, saying they violated an agreement between Rowland and the host of the event, Columbia University; the images were kept because they did not seem to be sourced from the event host but made by an attendee (at an event with no photo restrictions, open to the public in the U.S.). I wanted to get to the bottom of it after I posted the previous thread, so I sent an email to Rowland's gallery (Maxwell Graham Gallery in New York) asking if there was something we were missing. They got back to me a little while ago to clarify.

Turns out the account that uploaded the images (@GSAPPstudent) is not a student or member of the public, but was run by one or several Columbia administrators or faculty. Columbia did indeed sign an agreement with Rowland saying they would not release photos, the user(s) behind that account were both representatives of Columbia and aware of the agreement; they violated the agreement, Rowland called their attention to it, they deleted the image from other platforms. But GSAPPstudent never clarified that they were actually a Columbia rep, so the images have been kept on Commons after every request.

I directed Rowland's rep to the info-commons@wikimedia.org help email, this seems like a different issue than licensing/copyright. But obviously it seems these images need to be deleted now, they do in fact violate an agreement between Rowland and the institution that released the image.

But this would also seem to call into question other images published here by the GSAPPstudent account. As far as I know, it's not appropriate for an institution (in this case Columbia's GSAPP) to use an account in this way. All of their images are "own work", credited to "GSAPPstudent", which could also be wildly inaccurate/incomplete (correct me if that's a reach). Any ideas on how to handle this/what needs to happen here? Thanks! 19h00s (talk) 00:45, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Started a deletion request as seems necessary here. 19h00s (talk) 02:35, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

It does feel a bit extreme sometimes--Trade (talk) 01:01, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Trade: Do you have an example of one you feel is too long? I would draw the line at "diatribe" or "rant".   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 04:18, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Not that it's an ongoing issue, but I'd point to File:Berlin Bridge Bird 27.jpg as an example of excessive user licensing templates - there's a couple pages of templates, including some confusing additional requests in EXIF tags (!). Omphalographer (talk) 19:10, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

It looks like there are some redundant elements and not applicable terms. I hope the bird is not dependent on freedom of panorama :( --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:40, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's to bad there's no way to edit EXIF information on here. Otherwise I'd totally axe most of that. Really, I'm kind of tempted to nominate the images for deletion just because of how needlessly obtuse the whole thing is but I doubt anyone would vote delete purely because of the walls of nonsense. Or alternatively someone could download the images, edit the EXIF information, and reupload without any of the garbage. Then have the old files redirected or something. I don't know but something should be done to clean them up. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:41, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I believe it's possible to do this by reuploading a version of the file where the excess EXIF information has been removed, without needing to delete the original. I could try this with File:Berlin Bridge Bird 27.jpg if there are no objections. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:36, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

No objections here. I'll probably do it for more files if it works. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:34, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

This appears to work. You can edit or remove most fields by right-clicking and going to properties, but the "JPEG file comment" field specifically required specialized software (I used ExifTool). ReneeWrites (talk) 18:42, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cool. I'll have to go through his files at some point. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:36, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Nominate the templates for deletion instead Trade (talk) 07:10, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

He's talking specifically about the file's EXIF data, not the templates. For File:Berlin Bridge Bird 27.jpg it's been trimmed to a more manageable size, here's a file that shows how it looked before: File:"Unteilbar" 009.jpg. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:12, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/User_problems#c-Yann-20250713093000-Eatcha

This recently exposed hoax makes me wonder how to remedy the harm caused by such commons uploads. even though those files may be deleted or their descriptions may be rectified, they have often spread to other websites due to wikipedia and will continue to pollute the information and knowledge of the world. worse still, they may get reposted and end up on commons again after some years.

i can think of an idea. someone should run a blog that publishes those images crossed out and with detailed explanation that "this image doesnt show xx. it shows yy. it was uploaded to <commons url> and misidentified." RoyZuo (talk) 10:50, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

• @RoyZuo: Take a look at File:1st Ave. S. looking north from S. Washington St., ca. 1876 - DPLA - 571301e7640245dfce8110b0e1b41c2c.jpg for how I typically approach this. - Jmabel ! talk 17:58, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

There is also {{Fact disputed}} and {{Factual accuracy}} that can more prominently mark, describe, and categorize images with potential errors. --Animalparty (talk) 18:16, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Those methods dont work when the commons files are deleted. RoyZuo (talk) 20:17, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Tulsi (talk · contributions · Statistics · Recent activity · block log · User rights log · uploads · Global account information) (assign permissions)

sysop banned. anyone knows why? RoyZuo (talk) 11:25, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

His last Diff blog was in 2021. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 11:34, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Apparently undisclosed paid editing. [1] and [2]. Yann (talk) 11:39, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

We need to sysban half of the newly created accounts then Trade (talk) 14:48, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Trade: You will need proof to make such an allegation stick.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:14, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

but those links are more than one year old? RoyZuo (talk) 20:19, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Man that sucks. I didn't interact with Tulsi much but he seemed nice from what little I had to do with with him. It's never good to lose admins on here. Especially over something like that. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:56, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sometimes you come across remarkable things in rail travel. Do any extra categories come to mind? I dont seem to find one for painted toenails. I did not speak to the (unidentified) person. The person sitting in the chair did not notice what happened behind him. I did not warn him, as this certainly would have caused a disturbance.

Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:55, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

No additional category ideas but I've gotta say, "Anti-social behaviour in Germany" is one of the funniest categories I've come across in a while. Hats off to you. 19h00s (talk) 13:42, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

(To be clear, I was chiming in that it was funny not out of support for the category but because it's a funny find. Not a category wonk so I wasn't that familiar with the guidelines.) 19h00s (talk) 19:21, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Don't be surprised if the category gets deleted. There was a CfD for a similarly subjective category a while ago that ended with the same result. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:44, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

The worst part of that category is that it contains:

• A photo and a video - that could be deemed subjective, as warned.
• A long chain of small nested categories (Animal aggression in Germany (1 C), Animal damage in Germany (1 C), Insect damage in Germany (1 C), Diseases and disorders of plants due to insects in Germany (1 C), Coleoptera (damage) in Germany (1 C), Curculionidae (damage) in Germany (1 C), Scolytinae (damage) in Germany (1 C, 1 F), Forests damaged by bark beetles in Germany (94 F)) that only contains the category:Forests damaged by bark beetles in Germany, which can hardly be considered anti-social behaviour.

Pere prlpz (talk) 14:51, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah it's totally ridiculous. I have better things to do but someone should deal with it somehow. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:13, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Well, the problem is that somebody seems to have a confusion between "animals causing damage" and "people damaging animals". Pere prlpz (talk) 16:06, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

There are a whole bunch of problematic, mostly-empty categories upthread of it, too: Tactics in Germany (1 C), Revolutionary tactics in Germany (1 C), Terrorism tactics in Germany (1 C), Threats in Germany (1 C), Animal aggression in Germany (1 C) etc. And so we end up with the forests damaged by bark beetles, which have nothing to do with anti-social behaviour, or revolutionary tactics, or terrorism. This is not how categories are meant to be used. ReneeWrites (talk) 17:52, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yep. This is, unfortunately, a somewhat common pattern I've seen where users will create deep trees of categories through a process of free association; one notable instance is detailed at Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/05/Category:Cultural history of New South Wales, where photos of grain silos ended up categorized as "popular culture". (For whatever reason, this problem seems particularly common in categories by location.) Omphalographer (talk) 21:21, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

This case is clearly anti-social. However what is anti-social? This is often depends on the local context and has to do with unwritten rules and conventions. The most broad definition is: Do not do, what you not like others to do to you. Example: When is being bare feet tolerated and accepted? We could write whole books about it and stil not have every unwritten rule and convention defined.

We sometimes need categories, wich are more than objects, events, etc. How would you for example illustrate transience? (File:De tijdelijkheid van sporen.jpg).Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:17, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

PS: I did use a bit of humor is using the category Footrests. Not everything has to be serious.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:17, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hello,

I would like to correct an error in this file. This is a print by Charles Albert Waltner (Q749982) after a painting by Jan Daemen Cool (Q6148748) (see for example this file). Hence this modification.

But the information describing it is that of the painting (Portrait of a Lady with a Fan (Q105870209)). I'm assuming it's from structured data, but I haven't mastered that part at all, and I think one of the first two attributes needs to be removed.

Could anyone help me on the best way to do this, please?

Thank you, --Daehan (talk) 13:10, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I started upload maps by Survey of India. Since there are quite a lot of them, better to do categories right from the start. I have had difficulties finding the right administrative divisions in some cases, as they have changed over the years. Then I noticed that they exist in 3 scales (for the ones in the public domain): 1/253,440 (1 inch for 4 miles), 1/126,720 (1 inch for 2 miles) and 1/63,360 (1 inch for 1 mile), sometimes mixed up between them. I added categories year by country, local administrative division. What other categories do you suggest? More generally what category tree should we have for them? Yann (talk) 16:29, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

• Category:Maps by the Surveyor General of India (1/126,720)
• Category:Survey of India map sheets (1/253,440)

Thanks for your link on my talk page, unfortunately I am not a big fan of the category system and I think it is more important that people are able to find what they want and I like the find maps feature at https://warper.wmflabs.org - also the mosaics - example https://warper.wmflabs.org/mosaics/15 - more useful and important for users. Some of these maps were made as parts of (time-bound) projects so there is Category:Atlas_of_India_(1827-1906) Shyamal L. 01:06, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Shyamal: Interesting. How is the mosaic created? I understand that coordinates of each file is needed, but after that? Yann (talk) 14:25, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Yann: - creating the mosaics involve some personal intervention from the folks behind wikimaps - I was assisted by User:Susannaanas. Shyamal L. 15:05, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Shyamal and Chaipau: I have dispatched all the files in subcategories according to the scale in Category:Survey of India map sheets. I removed some redundant categories, including Category:Old maps by the Survey of India (we can't have recent maps by the Survey of India for copyright reasons). All maps by the Survey of India we have are necessarily old. Yann (talk) 20:06, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Yann, I think using the provinces/districts, as available in 1918 or so, would be the most natural category tree. We could get the history groups from other Wikipedias involved as well to help us here - since they will most benefit from these maps. Chaipau (talk) 02:20, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Chaipau: OK, let's try a practical example: File:Survey of India, 42 D SW Dir (1931).jpg. How do you find the proper categories for this file? This is now in Pakistan, but Pakistan didn't even exist at that time. Yann (talk) 14:25, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've done some of these, but it's not really my thing. I recently was cruising around Seattle's Lake Union and the Lake Washington Ship Canal, and I can see that I photographed a fair number of ships that doubtless deserve categories of their own and don't have one. I did a few myself (including extracting a couple of images of particular ships), but I don't think I'm going to get around to doing all of what deserves to be done.

Some of the pictures where this would be worth doing for one or more ships (& as of this writing I'm still uploading more):

Jmabel ! talk 22:14, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Is there some better place I should post this, or some relevant maintenance category to add? - Jmabel ! talk 19:36, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Piece of possible interest from National Information Standards Organization (NISO). Forwarded to me by a GLAM I coordinate with for uploads, in the context of some serious difficulties they've been having with keeping their content available. I wonder how much of this traffic hits our site? My guess is that we are used to enough traffic that it is not as (relatively) heavy for us. https://www.niso.org/niso-io/2025/06/ai-training-bots-and-cultural-heritage - Jmabel ! talk 01:11, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

It is quite heavy for Wikimedia. See this blog post from the WMF in April. "Since January 2024, we have seen the bandwidth used for downloading multimedia content grow by 50%." and "65% of our most expensive traffic comes from bots". When people think of wikis in the context of LLMs they often think of Wikipedia, but it's moreso the mass-scraping of our media files that is expensive and causing issue (or at least enough of a concern so far for the WMF to put out this blog post). ~Kevin Payravi (talk) 01:22, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

This is a very interesting aspect. In addition, the growth in media files (quantity) this year is already as high as the growth in 2024 as a whole (approx. 11.1 million files), and the additional data volume in 2025 already reaches 75% of 2024. This is therefore a remarkable increase on both sides. PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:28, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Can confirm this issue is massively impacting GLAM institutions with open online collections, many of which are nowhere near large enough/well-resourced enough to handle this kind of thing. Coming on the heels of the Gallery Systems hack that took down ~50% of U.S. museum collection databases for an extended period, this is starting to spark conversations among some GLAM leaders about the long term viability of open collections (which imo is the wrong takeaway from what's happening and has already earned substantial internal pushback in most cases). 19h00s (talk) 01:32, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Something I noticed recently is that views to my talk page have gone up by an insane amount since the middle of last year. Apparently it got 5000 views last month. Either it's bots or someone is mass posting about me on some forums somewhere. But I doubt that many views is organic. Anyway, I don't see how it couldn't impact the sites performance.

As a side to that, Flickr has been totally unusable for me recently. Probably for the same reason. They recently implemented a thing where you can't see search results unless your logged in and you can't mass download images without a paid account anymore either. My state university website has also been crashing a lot recently. Really, I wouldn't be surprised if more sites don't do the same thing as Flickr. I'm not sure how it would work on here but that seems like the only sustainable, long-term solution. There should at least be restrictions on mass downloading by bots if nothing else. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:33, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Can this be uploaded as {{PD-logo}}

https://jcubic.pl/nikon.svg

I used Liberation font to recreate the original logo. Does it meet Commons:TOO Japan? Can I upload it to Commons?

Jakub T. Jankiewicz (talk) 12:04, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

• I think that is safely below TOO pretty much anywhere. I'd use {{PD-textlogo}}. - Jmabel ! talk 18:35, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I used to check my file usage with Glamorous (glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous/?), but for some time now it doesn't seem to work. It works on smaller users, like up to 300 files. For my account (1068 files) and similar big galleries it seems to be loading forever. Are there any alternatives, other than clicking each and every file in my uploads? Tupungato (talk) 14:07, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've uploaded around 18000 files and was having the same issue a few weeks ago. It seems to be fine now though. So it might be something with how they index files or something. Anyway, you might give it a few weeks without uploading anything so the database has time to catch up and then try again. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:14, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I haven't uploaded anything in 5 weeks. The issue seems to persist for, i don't know, maybe 8 months. I had a period of 5 months with no uploads, and it didn't help. Tupungato (talk) 10:47, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Tupungato: It just worked for me at https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous.php?doit=1&username=Jeff_G. and for you at https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous.php?doit=1&username=Tupungato .   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 20:03, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

This works, yes. But I was also using the one I linked to (https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous/ or https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous/? - supposedly two different versions). It has additional useful stats, for example File Usage Details: this is list of your files from most popular to least popular, with all instances of usage listed under each file. It was really neat. Normally you input a username, click Run, and depending on size of portfolio it took 3-60 seconds to load everything. Now for many portfolios it runs endlessly and never loads. Tupungato (talk) 10:53, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

When I run it it's getting lots of "429 Too Many Requests" responses from calls to the action=query&prop=info&titles=File%3AFoo.jpg API. It looks like it's sending requests for individual files rather than batching them into groups. Sam Wilson 11:47, 17 July 2025 (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(s):

• File:Escritora Cora Coralina.jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Escritora Cora Coralina. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 22:11, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Can I invite people to review Category talk:Riverina - is the Riverina part of the South West Slopes in NSW. I believe it is as parts of the South West Slopes seem to encompass the Riverina, this is disputed. Happy with whatever outcome so long as it's clear. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 03:43, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Interested users may participate in this "Requests for comment" discussion. All comments and opinions should be posted there, not here on Village Pump. Regards, JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 06:15, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Now that (I think) the proposed text is growing mature, thanks to feedback from other users, I invite everyone who wants to vote or comment on the new proposed text for the project scope policy for PDF and DjVu formats. No change in the policy is intended, the change is only about making objectively determinable when a PDF or DjVu file is in scope and when not.

Please carefully read the full proposed text before voting or commenting. MGeog2022 (talk) 10:04, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

If you look at Category:Monaco, you can see the following issues:

• Stray characters after the "Selected maps" hatnote
• Categorized in Category:Categories by country, which it shouldn't be

It's caused by something in the processing of Template:Country category. I tried tracing through that processing, but I couldn't make sense of it. Would someone else like to try? Thanks muchly. --Auntof6 (talk) 11:42, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Probably some category for Monaco does not exist. Ruslik (talk) 20:28, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Ruslik0: Maybe that's it. I did a little more checking, and it seems that {{Country category}} doesn't work for city-states. I removed it from the Monaco category and it seems OK now. Thanks for your reply. -- Auntof6 (talk) 23:29, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wanted to add some cc-by licensed pics from Flickr, but the Flinfo uploading tool has stopped working; when I enter the flickr pic number, it throws up this error message:

Looks like there’s a problem with this site

https://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/flinfo.php?id=5742671475&repo=flickr&user_lang=en might have a temporary problem or it could have moved.

Error code: 500 Internal Server Error

The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.

It's been like this for a few days now. Anyone know if/when it'll get repaired? Thanks! - MPF (talk) 22:08, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Pinging @Flominator as author and presumed maintainer.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:39, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply