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# 💭 Title 💬 👥 🙋 Last editor 🕒 (UTC)
1 Respect and non-disturbance for long-term prolific contributor 54 19 RoyZuo 2025-03-23 08:35
2 software generated information 10 5 Enyavar 2025-03-21 09:46
3 March 2025 update from WMF Legal on "Vogue Taiwan and possible Copyright Washing" discussion 50 23 PHShanghai 2025-03-25 15:23
4 PD license template maintenance task 2 2 RoyZuo 2025-03-21 11:30
5 Commons:Statistics of uploads vs deletions 5 4 PantheraLeo1359531 2025-03-19 17:24
6 Category:Erotic paintings of the Qing dynasty 11 2 RoyZuo 2025-03-24 19:45
7 Syrian Flag, the third time around 3 2 Abzeronow 2025-03-19 17:25
8 VFC dark mode fixes 5 2 Jeff G. 2025-03-23 23:05
9 Excluded educational content 6 5 Adamant1 2025-03-22 16:44
10 how to undelete all my files which was deleted? 1 1 PantheraLeo1359531 2025-03-19 14:42
11 Display bug with the Help icons on upload page 1 1 The Bushranger 2025-03-19 22:36
12 DESI releases the DR1 dataset 1 1 PantheraLeo1359531 2025-03-20 11:52
13 User pages 3 2 RoyZuo 2025-03-22 08:41
14 which peugeot model is this? 4 2 PantheraLeo1359531 2025-03-22 16:30
15 Many study-specific short videos in category 6 3 Prototyperspective 2025-03-25 00:53
16 Priority licence review - VOA 7 4 Prototyperspective 2025-03-23 11:39
17 Category for technology / software in public administration? 1 1 Prototyperspective 2025-03-22 19:41
18 Flickr - possible change of licensing? 12 8 MPF 2025-03-24 00:10
19 19th century documents with no specific licensing - OK to upload? 11 7 Peter G Werner 2025-03-26 00:10
20 Documenting levels of rights 7 3 Jmabel 2025-03-25 04:51
21 Czech collections 2 2 Tuvalkin 2025-03-25 01:02
22 How do we handle imaginary flags that have been uploaded as real? 8 6 Adamant1 2025-03-25 03:45
23 Grouping fallas by Sector Faller 4 2 Jmabel 2025-03-25 04:55
24 Category:Stamps 5 3 Adamant1 2025-03-25 18:20
25 Currency of Portugal 1 1 Yann 2025-03-24 17:23
26 Source of source 2 2 Jmabel 2025-03-25 04:56
27 Can anyone fix File:Winsor McCay (1914)Gertie the Dinosaur.webm? 2 1 Nosferattus 2025-03-24 21:04
28 In which category? 6 4 HyperGaruda 2025-03-26 04:20
29 Low-quality structured data 13 6 Trade 2025-03-26 17:33
30 Galleries without {{Gallery page}} 7 4 Jmabel 2025-03-26 16:16
31 Rotating video 4 3 Jmabel 2025-03-26 16:36
32 Wiki Photo competition 1 1 Bantuarab 2025-03-26 07:10
33 Mirror of destroyed USGOV websites 1 1 PantheraLeo1359531 2025-03-26 14:52
34 VOA likely to be shut down, help copying information 3 3 PantheraLeo1359531 2025-03-26 18:48
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March 07

Respect and non-disturbance for long-term prolific contributor

A user has been contributing to Commons tirelessly for nearly 20 years now. His/her at least 110k photos can be seen at Category:Photographs by Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1.

A recent example of his/her prolific contribution can be seen at wikimap stats. S/he uploaded at least 7000 (6435 of them geo-tagged) photos of Okinawa this year (it's been only 2 months) alone. In comparison, /w/index.php?search=deepcategory:%222024_in_Okinawa_prefecture%22 "2024 in Okinawa prefecture" has less than 400 files in total. 7k uploads are already quite a lot for any user, but just a fraction of his/her decade-long commitment. As far as I can tell, s/he has been doing so without much attention since 2006.

However, certain users have been targeting this long-term contributor in recent years because of this contributor's unusual habits. Actions they have demanded include but are not limited to: blocking, banning, locking all accounts; deleting all uploads.

As such, I would like to ask the community to help stop such harassment against the long-term contributor. In my humble opinion, anything, other than reasonable inspection of his/her uploads based on com:l, should be stopped. RoyZuo (talk) 07:30, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

+1 --Achim55 (talk) 07:34, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
+1 -- C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 12:58, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Shouldn't respect and non-disturbance be self-evident for every long-term prolific contributor on Commons? --A.Savin 07:54, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@RoyZuo: But there is abuse. LuciferianThomas wrote in this Edit Summary: "Intentional wrong-naming files and incorrectly categorising files is clearly abusive behaviour; in scale it is even clearly vandalism". See also m:Requests for comment/Blatant sockpuppetry in good faith.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:09, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I recognize Anonymous HK Photographer 1 made a lot of good contributions here, but the problems extends beyond “unusual habits”, many of their uploads have copyright issues. Although this problem only concerns a small proportion of their overall uploads, but since they upload hundreds of images weekly, the problematic uploads pile up to a lot.
I agree with you that the actions demanded above are not suitable, but at the same time I don’t think it is harassment to demand when there are valid concerns. It would be better if you can suggest examples of which specific actions by specific users you think constitutes as harassment. Tvpuppy (talk) 16:05, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I salute the anonymous HK user, this can't have been easy. Everyone can make errors, and there are many other ano- and pseudonymous contributors who can eventually fix them. Where there are valid concerns with some of the uploads, we should of course adress that, but overly punitive reactions seem like overkill imo. --Enyavar (talk) 17:14, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Cosigning the original post. We do not need yet another case of prolific users being scapegoated and insulted until all eternity, like has happened several times on enwiki. Gnomingstuff (talk) 05:07, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
+1. I don't see any bad picture in Category:Photographs by Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1. As long as they don't name files incorrectly on purpose (some visitors may not even recognizing Chinese characters), we can consider them as different good-faith one-time newbie users trying to hide their public IP addresses for whatever reason (e.g. overdue stay without a permit). We don't deprive their rights on Wikidata by criticizing them hiding IP addresses, unless it's confirmed via CheckUser that all accounts were signed in and contributing on a single IP address in a short time, which seems inpossible as I see different camera models used by them, which may be in the hands of different people. XsLiDian (talk) 15:12, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging @Donald Trung, @Solomon203, @A1Cafel, and admins @Yann, @Bastique and @Taivo. 📅 17:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Donald Trung, Solomon203, A1Cafel, Yann, Bastique, Taivo, and The Squirrel Conspiracy: Please give opinions regarding this issue. 📅 11:50, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't shotgun ping. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 14:45, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@The Squirrel Conspiracy Sorry for that. 📅 14:54, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Communicating with other users, and changing problematic behavior (like uploading copvios) when notified, are non-optional parts of participating in Commons. Not only does this user not respond on their talk page, nor in DRs and CfDs, it is not even possible to communicate with them because they are constantly changing accounts. They are also violating multiple account policy by failing to link the accounts: Where a user has multiple accounts it is an expectation that they publicly disclose those accounts, usually on each of the relevant user pages providing links to each other. The use of numerous accounts also makes it extremely difficult to track issues like copyvios and improperly named files; however, it is clear that these amount to a non-insignificant proportion of their uploads, and thus add a great deal of work for the community.

I believe a good first step would be a one-account restriction, enforced by technical means as necessary. If the user cannot abide by that extremely basic standard to enable communication and tracking of their behavior, then they are a net negative and do not belong on Commons. No amount of being prolific justifies a user ignoring basic community norms and uploading significant numbers of copyvios. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:24, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Pi.1415926535: I agree.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:02, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
+1 Longterm users shouldn't get a free pass from following the same standards on here everyone else has to just because of how long they have had their account. Its super easy for newish contributors to be sanctioned or blocked over minor non-issues but there's zero consequences for longterm users who don't follow the rules or act abusively. The same goed for admins. Things like repeatedly uploading COPYVIO should be dealt with accordingly regardless of how long the user has been on here or what privileges they have though. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:27, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do not understand how a blatant long-term violator of the Commons:File naming guidelines (Correct – The name should describe the file's content and convey what the subject is actually called. Inaccurate names for the file subject, although they may be common, should be avoided.) is considered a "long-term contributor" by some users above, so apparently people can just upload tons of images and name them incorrectly just to make a mess of Commons to be called a contributor and not an abuser? The large number of files uploaded actually made a heck of a lot more abuse and disturbance to Commons than any other normal user naming files inappropriately. I am very certain that mass contributions does not allow mass disruption and guidelines-breaking in the same scale.
I agree that the upload images are contributions, but the naming of files to an extent of requiring lots of file renamings is definitely abusive editing behaviour, which shall lead to a damning sanction. If RoyZuo insists on calling this abusive user a "contributor" without considering the harm to Commons and unnecessary work to fix all those issues, then I would say they probably did not care about the negatives the abusive user brings, and does not respect the naming guidelines, to a point that they can flat out intentionally cover the intended accused violations and point fingers at the accusers for accusations that we did not make. LuciferianThomas 23:59, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I could (but will not) name quite a number of long-term contributors whose work here routinely falls short in one or another respect. I don't see a reason to single out this one. Yes, technically you can communicate with most of the others, but in practice? If they ignore all comments, or brush them off, the result is the same as if there were no channel of communication. - Jmabel ! talk 00:44, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I personally do think we need to be more strict about that sort of editor in general. In this specific case, the use of multiple accounts makes it easier for this editor to avoid scrutiny - it would require a great deal of work to determine how many of their uploads have been deleted, or if they have ever been blocked, because the contributions are spread over dozens of accounts. (If any of the accounts have ever been blocked, then this is block evasion, pure and simple.) It also means that the editor likely has not even seen DR and CfD notices because they abandon accounts after using them once, so they may not be aware of the hundreds of copyvios they have uploaded. Forcing them to use a single account would put them on the same footing as every other editor and allow the community to address their issues with file naming and copyvios. Right now, the community has no ability to even address their behavior because of the account-hopping. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 01:14, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Could you be more clear as to your issues regarding HKTA's problems with filenames? DS (talk) 14:35, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's never the actual issue that's the problem. It's pointing out the issue that's the problem. someone can harass you on here all day and no one will bat an eye about it. But then you can be blocked for intimidation if you dare to point out that's what they are doing. The priorities on here are just screwed and it's always an endless exercise in pandering to seniority. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:12, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would say both are problems as important as the other. The long-term disruption pattern shows the inability of the Commons administration to "see what the problem is" and to enforce the very rules of Commons, and the counter-accusation of harassment or intimidation by those who think such abuser is a contributor shows the inability of such users and the Commons administration to care about the actual issue instead of pointing fingers at those who raise a problem. LuciferianThomas 02:14, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're allowed to call this person something other than an "abuser," you know. It will not kill you to treat them like a human being. Gnomingstuff (talk) 03:25, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can keep on ignoring the abuse. It's clearly within my right to call this anonymous user an abuser for his blatant violation described below. LuciferianThomas 11:00, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And in return, "it will not kill you to actually care about what is actually happening and not just blaming the one who points out a real issue, whether you like it or not." LuciferianThomas 11:08, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Link to evidence of "blatant long-term violator of the Commons:File naming guidelines".
Otherwise, I consider the accusation as invalid and personal attack against the long term anonymous contributor. RoyZuo (talk) 21:54, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For the fact that I had only gone through 5 of 98 MTR stations in Hong Kong to move over 50 instances of incorrectly named files and incorrect categorisation for MTR stations? At this rate, there's probably thousands of files misnamed and miscategorised from this user just for the files uploaded for MTR. This is blatant violations and circumventing anti-abuse. LuciferianThomas 10:59, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"the fact that I... move over 50 instances"
  1. /w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=move&user=LuciferianThomas&wpFormIdentifier=logeventslist&wpfilters%5B0%5D=newusers 22 move logs.
  2. /w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributions&target=LuciferianThomas&namespace=all&tagfilter=RenameLink&limit=50 7 edits
As of 17:08, 11 March 2025 (UTC), you have a total of 22+7=29 edits related to renaming any files by the long term contributor.
Is 29 even close to 50?
So you are making up "fact" and misleading the entire Commons community with exaggerated accusation against the long term contributor. It should be noted that you have repeatedly exaggerated this accusation since early 2024. In your own words, such repeated misleading actions are abusive and should lead to blocking of your account.
And this is only 1 single problem of your many similar accusations. RoyZuo (talk) 17:08, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I definitely said "incorrect files and incorrect categorisation", but I guess you are just blindsided to the side of the fact you believe in. I might have miscounted moved files, but I have definitely removed hundreds of miscategorised images – pictures of shops (within the station) in the focus, or even their products, instead of the actual station. You tell me this is an image of Po Lam Station? Yes the picture might be taken in Po Lam Station, but it's absolutely nonsense to say it's a picture of Po Lam Station.
Heck, even 29 misnamed instances of say 600 images is a 5% mistake rate, not to mention all the other images that are miscategorised to the level of nonsense. If any editor makes so much mistakes in their editing, how is that not even disruptive? I won't call 22 images of cakes, Mrs Fields cookie products, convenience store products to be "contribution to a station category" – it tells nothing about the actual station.
Your repeated negligence to the actual happenings of the case, making up what I say when you just didn't read, and making up "facts" to mislead the entire Commons community with exaggerated accusation of harassment without caring for the actual disruption is clearly abusive behaviour and should lead to the blocking of your account here on Commons, just like you have been in three other wikis. LuciferianThomas 00:31, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh btw, the linked image is geotagged in LOHAS Park station. Guess that's an extra count of misnaming images, heh? LuciferianThomas 00:33, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"At this rate, there's probably thousands of files misnamed and miscategorised from this user just for the files uploaded for MTR"
there are roughly 3600 files related to MTR /w/index.php?sort=create_timestamp_desc&search=MTR+incategory%3A%22Photographs+by+Anonymous+Hong+Kong+Photographer+1%22 .
Either you can prove your extrapolation, or it should be considered as nothing more than just another exaggeration and personal attack. RoyZuo (talk) 01:16, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And you now admitted that you had removed photos taken in a train station from a category under that train station: that is definitely violation of policy Commons:Categories#Types_of_reflected_relations.
Here is 1 such violation of policy by LuciferianThomas /w/index.php?diff=952770572&oldid=715233481 which removed the file from anywhere under Category:LOHAS Park Station, its location of creation (P1071).
Then you made the false accusation of incorrect categorisation against the original uploader and also exaggerated your accusation. RoyZuo (talk) 02:18, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And also Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2024/01#Problematic_file_names_and_irrelevant_categorization_by_sockpuppet_group, issue has been detailed before. You can keep pretending that this has not been talked about before, and dismiss my accusations against the abuse, but you will not change the fact that there is indeed abuse, and that the abuse causing widespread inaccuracies in Commons. Heck, you can even keep promoting this behaviour as contribution or "not a serious problem", but this will only show that you don't really care about the truth. LuciferianThomas 11:05, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And whether you like it or not, sockpuppetry is clearly a violation anywhere on Wikimedia. From the start, you are supporting sockpuppetry, and it doesn't really matter who was abusing socks. I personally never asked for files to be deleted, I would only ask for a block on sockpuppetry to prevent further disruption, and if they are willing to contribute by the rules (especially for content accuracy and sockpuppetry), I'm more than happy to see further contributions from the user. However before then, sockpuppetry and disruption by inaccuracy is a big fat no from my stance. LuciferianThomas 11:13, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, one supports like. Not to paint a bad picture on RoyZuo, but being blocked in two wikis for uncivil behaviour and IDHT respectively doesn't seem to have stopped them from failing to actually get the point yet again. I won't dismiss what they say by their past history, but I will dismiss it for the fact that it is negligent the truth and accusative against the ones who actually care about accuracy and compliance. LuciferianThomas 11:23, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/User_problems/Archive_110#RZuo, and it clearly isn't this user's first time defending the disruptive anonymous photographer with actions that do not comply to rules. Why would they now be caring about the truth? They won't. LuciferianThomas 12:00, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just quickly skimming through Category:Yau Tong Station: I have already spotted 3 more files that are mislabeled, and are in fact taken in Tiu Keng Leng station. I guess here's your evidence? LuciferianThomas 11:57, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If anyone tries to argue that Yau Tong and Tiu Keng Leng stations are easily mistaken for their similar livery, this is one example of the anonymous photographer labeling things completely and impossibly wrong. LuciferianThomas 12:03, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
+1 I don't think this contributor is a "net negative" for the project, but the issues he's causing are difficult to track because they are spread over literally hundreds of different (non-disclosed) accounts, and he is impossible to communicate with, and those are both problems. Enforcing a one-account policy restriction (with small carve-outs for things like disclosed alts or pseudonyms maintained for safety reasons) seems more than reasonable to me. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:13, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do not understand at all why RoyZuo brought up this issue as an alleged supporter of the anonymous photographer. This was debated almost everywhere because someone was really busy to get the anonymous photographer blocked or globally locked for socking by whatever means possible. There were two unsuccessful attempts on Commons to have the photographer blocked. The latest ate issue was also ported to Meta, meta:Requests for comment/Blatant sockpuppetry in good faith, where the request was recently denied. I really think that this should stop now, unless someone thinks that yet another attempt at Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems might have a different outcome. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 11:19, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Robert Flogaus-Faust the hostile actions against the user are succeeding and files are blindly massively deleted Commons:Requests for checkuser/Case/Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1.
It takes 1 sysop to give in to the relentless harassment and delete all the files, but it will take many more users' collective effort to fend for the contributor and their contribution, because they never dispute the attempts at deletion or defend themselves.--RoyZuo (talk) 22:03, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Then so be it. It is obvious that the anonymous photographer's socking without disclosure of the other accounts is not according to the rules, even though this had been tolerated for some time. The reason for the mass deletion is that there are FoP issues with many of the files. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 11:47, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Pi.1415926535 "They are also violating multiple account policy..."
that's not a policy, but merely an article, a write-up https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sock_puppetry&action=history .
all the policies (on meta) are here meta:Category:Policies. that page you quote is not part of them. RoyZuo (talk) 19:30, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Those alledged issues with "massive uploading of copyvios" etc seem to be massively overstated. First of all, these issues are not "these photos have been stolen from some photo agency and are falsely claimed own work" as it appears to being framed, but only FOP, where the uploading does not violate any copyright laws, only Commons policy which does not allow restrictions on commercial use. Then, the people who regularly nominate massive amounts of images uploaded by this person seem to be unwilling to use VFC for their mass nominations, which makes proper review of those DRs an incredible pain. Just a week ago I spend over AN HOUR copy-pasting keep under over 250 DRs, where the nominator apparently carelessly misinterpreted some FOP law (while reviewing them even longer before, and this is a pain when the files are in 200 seperate DRs instead of one or a handful). Those +250 (!!!) DRs have all been kept. The people witchhunting this anonymous guy keep creating massive numbers of questionable DRs, where commenters are unable to keep up with - most of the DRs have no comments as it is de facto impossible to properly review and comment on all of them. Also, many of the "issues" claimed at Commons:Requests for checkuser/Case/Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1 like "Using strange names in accounts.", "User pages only created as galleries." or "Indirect disclosure of personal information." are such non-issues to the point that they are laughable. Points such as a single instance of "Intentionally removing sockpuppetry tags." where it is zero indication that this was intentional, or "Systematic, but inconsistent categorization." with zero source, feels like "I just don't like that" instead of being based on any policy whatsoever. ~TheImaCow (talk) 00:46, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@User:Krd has aparrently just casually deleted thousands of files uploaded by this anonymous person with the reason "created by abuser", without any consideration for anything. Where exactly is this mentioned as a valid reason at Commons:Deletion policy and how isn't this an act of massive vandalism? ~TheImaCow (talk) 00:58, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I browsed through a good percentage of their files laat night and a lot of them had FOP issues. Its pretty clear that isn't something they know or care or about. Regardless, its super unrealistic to expect other users to sift through and nominate their uploads for deletion. Especially given the sheer amount of socks. That's on them for using so many alts and not following the guidelines on a basic level. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:14, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
okay, and I just browsed to some random of their galleries at User:Gindcheoutarkoadf_OK, User:GISTZIS rAhsueLLS pxwomc, User:GEEHAWUMENKIN 106, User:GAUAI Shfj 992833 --- +1000 images, maybe five where I'd say "not FOP compatible", ~15 redlinked images, none of the DR's I checked had any comments. Perfectly acceptable rate. ~TheImaCow (talk) 02:04, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd keep the images of food myself. All the ones of store signs, packaging and the like are probably copyrighted though. Not to mention there's SCOPE issues with a lot of their photographs. I really don't see how most of the images don't go against the whole "must be realistically useful for an educational purpose" thing.
I forget where it is right now, but one of the policies says something about someone's personal vacation photos not being educational. That's essentially what these photographs are. 25 random, mundane shots of a hotel room the guy was staying at. Realistically how many photographs of a slept in hotel bed do we need on here? They are just using Commons as a personal file hosting site at that point. It would be a super pedantic time waster to separately nominate all of those images for deletion. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:19, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, there are also a ton of photos of items in shops in MTR stations. I have absolutely no idea what the photos are even trying to express for some of them, not to mention the other disruptive bad naming and categorisations. LuciferianThomas 13:30, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One problem about interacting with HKTA ("Hong Kong Throwaway Account") is that, because they only use an account for three to five days, it's impossible to tell them that what they're doing is inappropriate. If you leave HKTA a message after an account's activity period, it won't get seen. I wouldn't call this "socking", per se, since there's no attempt to pretend that this isn't yet another HKTA account. I've spent hours analyzing HKTA's thousands and thousands of photos from art galleries and auction houses, identifying paintings and hunting biodata so as to ascertain whether a given photo is copyvio, and I do not feel that there is anything abusive going on here. DS (talk) 14:20, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Another very important question: do you believe that all the HKTA accounts are the same person? Because there's really only three options, and they all strike me as wildly implausible (even though one of them has to be true): that one person is doing all this, that multiple people are doing this independently, or that there's an organized effort to do this but it's been kept secret. DS (talk) 14:43, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we can determine this with the camera model used in the EXIF data. If it is the same, the images are most likely taken by the same person. However, HKTA do uses multiple camera models throughout the years, but generally they use the same model at one time period. Tvpuppy (talk) 14:58, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's weird but plenty of people use multiple throwaway accounts on these projects. Maybe the person works for the government or is otherwise in a position that requires anonymity. Looking through their photos they clearly stay in a lot of hotels and eat out a lot. So it wouldn't surprise me. It's not my area of expertise, but IP hopping doesn't seem like an effective way to stay under the radar on here. So it makes sense to do it this way if they are trying to stay anonymous because of a job or something. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:05, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

tldr: chatgpt summary:

A prolific contributor has uploaded over 110k photos to Wikimedia Commons for nearly 20 years but faces harassment due to unusual habits, including using multiple accounts and inconsistent file naming. Some demand bans, while others defend their contributions. Concerns include copyright violations and difficulty in communication. A one-account restriction is proposed to improve tracking, but opinions remain divided.

The conversation revolves around an anonymous Hong Kong photographer using multiple accounts on Wikimedia Commons. Some users believe this violates policies, while others argue the issues, like sockpuppetry claims and mass deletions, are overstated. The contributor's anonymity complicates communication, and their images often face deletion due to copyright and educational use concerns. There are debates about whether multiple people are behind these accounts and whether the community's reaction is fair or overly pedantic. The discussion highlights challenges in balancing policy enforcement and contributor rights.

thx.--RoyZuo (talk) 08:35, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

March 12

software generated information

Screenshots are generaly treated as copyvio. However, there are cases the content, grafics, departure times, weather patterns, tracking information, etc, are automaticaly generated, with no human creative input. If company logo's and advertisements are avoided, I see no copyvio case. Excluded are maps extracts like Google maps, where the information and layout is protected. (database issue)

Example: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Schermafdruk treinpad test ECD naar Brussel.jpg Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:19, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot tell for this case, but we have to assume that more and more digital content will be generated by non-human actors (graphics and pictures, but also schemes and graphs or concepts) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:07, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What you see on your screen is only partially a computer-generated database query output. Someone had to program the thing, design how all the software elements had to be constructed, decide on the positioning, what color scheme to use, etc. As you can see at COM:SCREENSHOTS, unless the software is freely licensed (which it is not according section 7) or as simple as en:Command-line interfaces, this is rightly considered a copyvio. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:06, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure I agree with HyperGaruda. Test case: someone working for another railway created a screen that looked just like that except for the (obviously not copyrightable) information about what particular train was going where when. Could NS possibly sue them for a copyright violation? - Jmabel ! talk 02:15, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The software license is irrelevant. If I use Photoshop to edit or create images, the user (me) has the copyrigths, except of course if I use any copyrigthed material as input. This dynamic timetable information is publicaly available information. The train companies and infrastructure providers are legaly obliged to make this information available to all travel planners. There are no database rigths (such as by Google Maps). (Database rigths are different from the creative rigths)Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:24, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The proper comparison with your Photoshop case would be: a screenshot of the Photoshop window with your image opened in there. That screenshot would be copyvio, as it includes the Photoshop interface around your image. Cropped to just your image without elements of the Photoshop interface would be fine. To extend this analogy to File:Schermafdruk treinpad test ECD naar Brussel.jpg, you would have to get rid of all the interface's creative visual elements like icons and color schemes, meaning you would be left with barebones {{PD-Text}} material. --HyperGaruda (talk) 11:15, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@HyperGaruda: which icons here do you believe to be above TOO? - Jmabel ! talk 17:09, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Individually, none. Together in this arrangement and coloring, however, is a different story. --HyperGaruda (talk) 04:38, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Coloring certainly won't take them above TOO, and the arrangement is just putting them evenly spaced in a line.
Again, as I asked above: if someone working for another railway created a screen that looked just like that except for the (obviously not copyrightable) information about what particular train was going where when, could NS possibly sue them for a copyright violation? If not, then nothing here is copyrightable. - Jmabel ! talk 16:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would say yes, if someone (another rail company itself or just a freelancer programmer) creates an app with the same UI look-and-feel, the owner of the original app may sue for Copyright infringement. Design and layout matter. With just a different color scheme and different icons the infringement would be less obvious, but still noticeable to experts. I am using two different public transit apps than the one depicted here, and while the basic functionality is pretty much the same, there are also distinct design differences. --Enyavar (talk) 09:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

March 13

Hi, I’m LRGoncalves-WMF, from Wikimedia Foundation’s legal department, and I just wanted to provide an update to the Vogue Taiwan situation discussed here: /wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright/Archive/2025/02#Vogue_Taiwan_and_possible_copyright_washing. We reached out to Condé Nast to give them a heads-up about the CC license in their Vogue Taiwan videos and specifically asked them if the content posted on their YouTube Channel is in fact CC-licensed. A couple of days ago they replied confirming that all videos on their Vogue Taiwan youtube channel were not available for reuse. In their words: “All copyrights are owned by the Condé Nast global network. The CC license was applied due to an unknown error. We have immediately fixed it and updated all videos and settings on the Vogue YouTube channel back to the "Standard YouTube License.”

Based on their answer, the Legal Department can’t confirm that the stills of Vogue Taiwan videos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons are openly licensed. As Condé Nast’s counsel and some commentators above pointed out, the attribution of the CC-license was made in error, and not a deliberate choice to freely license these videos. LRGoncalves-WMF (talk) 12:09, 13 March 2025 (GMT-3)

@LRGoncalves-WMF: Thanks, I started Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/03/Category:Screenshot images from VOGUE Taiwan YouTube account.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:59, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@LRGoncalves-WMF: Thanks a lot. I am deleting these files. Hopefully, they will be more careful about their license in the future. Yann (talk) 16:37, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, there are still videos on the Vogue Taiwan channel with the CC license as of today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJmSD03kJ0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir8ALM3zIs4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq37b2GZzGQ  REAL 💬   16:41, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Given that they had mistakenly included CC license in their videos for many years, it isn’t far fetch for them to also missed removing the license for some videos. Maybe we can include a note somewhere for uploaders in the future, so they don’t mistakenly upload the copyrighted images here? Tvpuppy (talk) 16:56, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Side note, can some edit (or delete) {{Vogue Taiwan}}, since the license template is not valid anymore? Tvpuppy (talk) 17:11, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please see Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Vogue Taiwan. Yann (talk) 20:37, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Since we forgive licensing mistakes by Condé Nast it may be worthwhile revisting other cases like this Auckland Museum marked cultural permissions deletion case that was closed as "Kept: no valid reason for deletion -- CC licenses are irrevocable". Maybe it was a different scenario though? Commander Keane (talk) 20:56, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
IMO the opinion of WMF Legal here is quite equivalent of a DMCA by the copyright holder. It means to me that WMF Legal would accept such a request if ever they would send one. Unless we have a similar legal opinion about other cases, I don't see any reason to change our decision. However I very much like to know the answer to PHShanghai's question below. Yann (talk) 21:28, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As would I. Are Creative Commons licenses non-revocable or are they revocable when the licensor is a giant corporation with a team of expensive lawyers? I agree with Yann that WMF Legal seems to be saying they'd agree to a DMCA and thus I believe Yann's actions to be correct in terms of protecting our site and protecting our reusers (although we should also alert our reusers to this situation with Conde Nast). Abzeronow (talk) 19:10, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I second this. Not protecting the copyright on Night of the Living Dead was also a mistake (and a far easier one to make than positively choosing a CC-BY license!) and we don't just all agree "Whoopsies: we'll just take this out of the public domain for you". It's disappointing to see us taking free use media down that is clearly valuable for our mission. —Justin (koavf)TCM 22:52, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf: IMO there is a big difference between Night of the Living Dead or similar cases, and Vogue Taiwan. There should have been a copyright notice for the film, as it was the distributor's duty to add one. While as Vogue Taiwan is not the copyright holder of these videos, the license was never valid. These licenses were not more valid than the ones added by license washing people we often see on Commons. I would not accept Condé Nast argument (We made a mistake.) if the free licenses were added by them. The whole point is to determine who is the copyright holder. Yann (talk) 19:53, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's a valid concern and I'm not suggesting that you did the wrong thing as such. I respect your decision-making, in case that was not clear. —Justin (koavf)TCM 05:52, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really buy this "mistake". Unfortunate mistake, true, but these were under a CC license and if we are now deleting these it means CC licenses are revokable, which would set a dangerous precedent. On the basis of good faith I would support prohibiting uploading new Vogue Taiwan files from now on (even if CC licensed on YouTube), but those already uploaded on Commons or still CC licensed on YouTube as of 13 March should unmistakably be kept. Bedivere (talk) 22:26, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The question to me is whether Vogue Taiwan actually had the legal authority to release the videos under a CC license. If the copyrights are owned by some other part of Condé Nast, and there was never internal authorization for Vogue Taiwan to release the files under a CC license, then the license wouldn't even be valid in the first place. To me, it's equivalent to the situation where a PR employee of a company uploads the company's logo to Commons without their company's legal department authorizing them to do so. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 23:22, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's always the possibility that someone went rogue on his last day of work and slapped "we license everything CC-BY" on a bunch of media, but if the holding company that owns them is just so big or mismanaged that the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing, that's not something anyone else should have to adjudicate. —Justin (koavf)TCM 23:34, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf It shouldn't have anything to do with anyone going rogue. If Condé Nast owns the copyright and does not share ownership rights with VT, then VT putting a CC license on it may be invalid, period. VT could even have a good faith belief that they fully own the video--doesn't matter. If that belief isn't actually true, then any licenses they issue are likely invalid. I do not believe that this is a case of joint-ownership, but look at this family of cases for an idea of how a court would treat a situation like this, unless VT clearly had sole ownership rights over the video. You said above "It's disappointing to see us taking free use media down", but I don't think this was ever free use media. Alyo (chat·edits) 21:52, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"If" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. We can make some perfectly reasonable assumptions here. —Justin (koavf)TCM 22:42, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What are those assumptions? I see no one in this thread putting forth legally reasonable assumptions that result in a world in which VT had the authority to publish those videos under a CC license. Is is theoretically possible? Sure. But it makes no sense legally, it makes no sense given the IP policies on all CN sites, it makes no sense from a business structure standpoint, and we have a direct statement from the copyright owner saying otherwise. And for what, screenshots from youtube videos? I don't think this is a fight worth fighting. Alyo (chat·edits) 23:16, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But these are big companies, not a single individual, who left videos with a CC license for years. It's technically possible Condé Nast doesn't even own footage from their photographers (just example), but we assume big companies know what they are doing when they create, publish and license content.  REAL 💬   05:40, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Bedivere that this is setting a dangerous precedent. I believe the WMF legal department's communication with Condé Nast has helped clarify the situation. We can be confident that, moving forward, even if their videos are mistakenly CC-licensed again, these will be considered errors and should not be used. However, CC licenses are supposedly non-revocable, meaning that videos licensed as such within that timeframe should remain free to use, regardless of the reasons Condé Nast published them this way. 👑PRINCE of EREBOR📜 09:38, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Bedivere and Prince of Erebor: It doesn't matter if the CC licenses are revokable or not. The files should be deleted so that we aren't endangering our reusers with lawsuits (meritless or not). This is the same reason we shouldn't be hosting images by copyleft trolls. "Welcome to Commons! The repository of technically free-license images you'll probably get sued for trying to use!" Is it any wonder that people prefer paying $40 for public domain images on Alamy rather than getting them here? Nosferattus (talk) 01:11, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the update. For the record; just want to clarify how the non-revocable part of Creative Commons licenses work in this case? What is the official statement of WMF Legal regarding that? Thanks. @LRGoncalves-WMF: PHShanghai (talk) 20:43, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I will reply to @Yann's DMCA comment down here. Looking at the original post WMF Legal doesn't say to delete all photos, just that an error has been made. Rewarding companies that have hypothetical DMCA capabilities and disadvantaging organisations (and regular people) that don't is weird to me. Commander Keane (talk) 22:59, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd +1 to the PHShanghai's question in a personal capacity, although I do wonder if the Foundation's Legal folks would even be able to offer an opiniongiven that this isn't an attorney/client situation. Associated with that question, I'd opine that Yann's administrative decision to delete all of these images without additional discussion of this new viewpoint was made too hastily. As I've done previously, I'd encourage Yann to be much more careful when taking unilateral administrative actions—especially in a case like this, where deletion means that images have been removed from probably dozens of Wikimedia projects and cannot easily be restored. Ed [talk] [OMT] 01:44, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Dozens if not hundreds of articles are now imageless because the Vogue Taiwan images were hastily deleted, with A list articles such as Adele and Billie Eilish. May I remind you that this decision to delete hundreds of images was done without any consensus of the community and was just a broad action applied. I also don't like how Yann is going about this, they templated me on my talk page for uploading some of those Vogue Taiwan images despite knowing WHY those pages were deleted. Quite rude. PHShanghai (talk) 04:57, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's just the automatic behavior in VisualFileChange  REAL 💬   05:32, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Editors are responsible for the edits made by the tools they choose to use. If the tool is wrongly templating people in such cases, it shouldn't be used for them. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:18, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I still agree with the argument Yann made previously; what court or judge will accept "Sorry, but the license which was published by our subsidiary company there for years is wrong."?  REAL 💬   05:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If the license is actually invalid/VT didn't have the authority to publish it? All of them. Good faith belief/reliance isn't a defense to copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is a strict liability tort. You either did it or you didn't. Alyo (talk) 21:18, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Come on, these videos were up with a free license, by a company with apparent authority to do so, for years during which anyone could find them on YouTube and use without knowing about whatever internal situation Condé Nast had. No judge is going to tolerate a claim of copyright infringement against users for using the media under the terms of the license.  REAL 💬   15:49, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@999real: Do you really want to expose yourself to that risk?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:58, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@999real, I have limited experience in copyright law, but do not agree with this assessment of the situation. More importantly, even if I did agree with your assessment, I have no idea how that supports keeping the files, rather than just being thankful that users wouldn't be on the hook for damages accrued before the WMF/CN statement.
Regardless, predicting that a judge will decide that a 50/50 error leans to your favor is very much "we can get away with it", and so we must delete these files per the precautionary principle. Alyo (chat·edits) 13:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@999real: I think most judges would have no problem following Restatement (Second) of Agency to find there is no apparent authority. Agents have a scope of employment, and VT's scope does not include licensing the content of other CN entities. If you had a reasonable and honest belief that VT could grant a free license (e.g., you did not know other CN websites did not use free licenses) a few months ago, you might escape liability. Given the current discussion about VT and CN's actions, your and Common's apparent authority defense has evaporated. Glrx (talk) 01:50, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest you refrain from playing copyright lawyer -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 08:55, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
 Comment Opinions seem versatile. Previously, a number of people argue for deletion of these files. Now that we have an opinion from WMF Legal department, people want to keep them... Yann (talk) 09:24, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There was obviously a mixed consensus on the actual previous discussion. It was not a broad consensus to delete the files unless we heard from CN themselves. PHShanghai (talk) 12:58, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we did heard from CN now. Yann (talk) 13:48, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Yann. And I say this as someone who uploaded 46 images for probably as many articles that were deleted due to this, and that makes me very sad. Yes, technically we could argue that the license was there on the files for many years, that we had every right to take the license as good, that many different articles are visibly the worse for losing these images, all that. But we're here to do a good deed, to make the single largest source of knowledge in human history, and not to be copyright trolls. If there is a reasonable chance that a good faith error was made - and that is what Conde Nast is asserting to WMF - then I can understand us forgiving the error, and letting the images go. So it goes. --GRuban (talk) 19:00, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Don't forget about downstream reuse, either. Displaying these images on Commons with a CC license is an assertion that "yes, you can use these images freely given these conditions" - if we have reason to believe that the images may not actually be CC licensed, and that reusing them may actually pose risks, we shouldn't offer them. Omphalographer (talk) 19:17, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I made a list of files, just in case: Commons:Deletion requests/File:陸弈靜.png. Yann (talk) 19:02, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
 Comment there's also Commons:Deletion requests/Files found with Vogue Taiwan Diddykong1130 (talk) 19:24, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

DMCA suggestion

@LRGoncalves-WMF: hello. Can you also inquire Condé Nast if the revocation of CC license applies to Vogue Taiwan content hosted here before March 13, 2025? If so, can Wikimedia suggest them to file a single take down notice vs. all of the said files through COM:DMCA? Without a DMCA notice, there is uncertainty whether those files should be deleted too or not. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 16:38, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I believe WMF Legal messaged it this way so we would understand that they would agree to a DMCA request if it was ever issued, and they would rather have us deal with it so a DMCA notice would be unnecessary. Abzeronow (talk) 19:58, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think us and everyone who's been through this whole debacle deserve a clear cut explicit answer from WMF Legal instead of doing guesswork. I will be very disappointed if we do not get clarification because all of us have been busting ourb butts off here trying to get a proper consensus on this issue. PHShanghai (talk) 23:43, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it, WMF's lawyers cannot provide legal advice as such to the Commons community. We are not their client. What they can do, and have done, is to communicate a legal position on behalf of WMF. - Jmabel ! talk 01:00, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We are not asking for *legal advice*, we are asking for a comment regarding how Creative Commons Licenses worked in this context. We can't actually do anything anymore but I feel the community is at least owned a little more in depth explanation, *especially* regarding irrevocability of Creative Commons licenses and how it would work in this context. PHShanghai (talk) 04:41, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@PHShanghai The application of legal principles/rules to a specific fact pattern is legal advice. CN is going to say "the CC license was a mistake, we retain all rights to the videos and any derivative stills"--repeating their previous statement. What you are asking for is for the WMF's opinion on whether or not that argument would hold up in court in a situation where we keep the files and CN issues a DMCA, which is legal advice. Again, licenses are only "irrevocable" if they are properly granted. In this case, those of us arguing for deletion believe no valid license was actually granted. If we are correct, then this situation never reached the question of irrevocability.
If I'm misstating your position, then please say exactly what question you think the WMF should provide an answer to. Alyo (chat·edits) 17:38, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do hope that WMF Legal does answer your question, but as Jmabel says, they cannot provide legal advice to us. Abzeronow (talk) 01:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Bumping this as we still have no answer from WMF Legal. PHShanghai (talk) 15:23, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

March 14

PD license template maintenance task

I discovered a strange pattern as I'm working through PD-Art license maintenance: files that don't have any PD templates, but are placed in categories that PD templates would place them in. These need to be reviewed and have the correct PD templates applied to them, and the manual categories removed. If you have some time and that sounds up your alley, I put them all into Category:Files placed manually in PD-Art categories. – BMacZero (🗩)

Good catch. A category alone isn't a substitute for a license statement, even if it's PD. At a glance I think most of these will be {{PD-old-assumed}} at a minimum. Omphalographer (talk) 04:20, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@BMacZero, to Category:PD Art i added Template:Image template notice which now also provides an extra search link to find such files (which was just added). RoyZuo (talk) 11:30, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

March 16

Hi, I updated this page. Curiously, I got slightly higher numbers for uploads. Also why did the uploads drop in 2022 and 2024? Any idea? Yann (talk) 19:11, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just a guess, but how do this numbers relate to the active user base? Grunpfnul (talk) 19:41, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
's departure alone would have made a statistically noticeable difference. - Jmabel ! talk 01:09, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Would make sense. Fæ dropped out in 2021 --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:21, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Around September 2022 was a sudden increase of uploads, but the increase was deleted later. Maybe this lays heavy --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:24, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

March 18

Hi, Many of these files do not a proper date and/or license. {{PD-Art}} should be replaced. At least {{PD-Art-two|PD-China|PD-US-expired}} should be OK for most of them. Also some English description would be useful. Help needed. Thanks, Yann (talk) 11:56, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I tried one but couldn't find info. All are quite definitely made before 1911. This specific genre is called Category:Chungongtu. RoyZuo (talk) 15:38, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@RoyZuo: Thanks for your answer. I think these need renaming, and knowledge of Chinese is required for that. What is the approximate date of these? Yann (talk) 11:32, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I tried to decipher the names and descriptions but failed. the paintings are chinese, no question. but these uploads were attributed to a vietnamese blog. the titles are vietnamese. i couldnt figure out what the original chinese titles might be. i also didnt find other versions in google reverse image search. RoyZuo (talk) 11:56, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, i only tried a single file File:02 Bon mua vui xuan 2.jpg. i got exhausted and gave up. it's possible that some others can be found by google image reverse search, such as File:11 xuancunghoa (1).jpg. but now i fall into another rabbit hole of trying to sieve thru all sorts of content farms and unreliable web articles. especially problematic are web pages published after commons upload. they probably got the files from commons and then invented descriptions... RoyZuo (talk) 12:18, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@RoyZuo: OK thanks. So for now, I am changing the date to "Qing dynasty 1644–1911". Is it OK, can it be more precise? Yann (talk) 12:20, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Yann i think only if the original book is found, can they be more accurately dated.
it's also possible that some might be produced in ming dynasty.
btw, "xuancunghoa" (vietnamese) = "xuan cung hoa" = "春宮畫" (zh-hant), alternative name of "春宮圖" "chungongtu". RoyZuo (talk) 12:31, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
also some might be japanese works, which has another cat Category:Shunga. RoyZuo (talk) 12:33, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK. I will let someone else looks into this. I only want to fix the date and the licensing. It would certainly be interesting to compare these to Indian artworks from the Kama Sutra. Yann (talk) 12:36, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Yann if you want to compare, here are a ton more chinese and japanese works: https://old.shuge.org/ebook/yanben/ https://lapis.nichibun.ac.jp/enp/UserMenu . :) RoyZuo (talk) 19:45, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I give up about File:11 xuancunghoa (1).jpg as well.
i think this one and the other ones of the same style and quality in the category might have been scanned or captured from a 2002 book with ISBN 9787204062874 , which itself is a compilation of chungongtu from who knows where. (the descriptions in the book might not be accurate. the book seems to be published for making money by collecting all such porn the editor could find.) the real originals are probably in The Palace Museum (Q2047427) or some chinese museums or lost. RoyZuo (talk) 12:51, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Syrian Flag, the third time around

Once again, the question of what to do with File:Flag of Syria.svg has come up in File talk:Flag of the Syrian revolution.svg#Move. I have changed the redirect target since the Revolution flag is now the official flag of Syria. As previously discussed it seemed as if the consensus was that we should try to future proof changes to flags in making "Flag of Example" a redirect. For some reason, templates love using Flag of... in them so adjustments tend to have to be made anyway. But the question that came up is that now Syria is treated differently from other countries in that their "Flag of..." is a redirect as opposed to a file page and so what would be our best practices in handling changes to flags of nations. As Jmabel points out, the flag of the United States had been changed twice in his lifetime, and it is possible that within our lifetime, that flag could change again.

So the reason for this thread is to ask what would be our best practices in future proofing flags and what steps should be taken in the future when flags do need to be changed. Since this is a question that would affect a lot of communities in Wikimedia, I felt the Village Pump is the best place to ask, and I would be willing to post about this thread in various Wikipedias if needed. Abzeronow (talk) 19:50, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Files should be identified and reused with a unique number like [[File:M56856129|thumb|example]]. This would eliminate 1 of 3 things doing roughly the same thing: filename, caption, description; and all the rules and maintenance tasks about filename like Category:Media requiring renaming. RoyZuo (talk) 17:07, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll also mention in the interest of transparency that there is a proposal by User:Freedoxm to move the revolution flag to File:Independence flag of Syria.svg. Now that the revolution flag is the official flag of Syria, we probably should figure out what the permanent name for this flag should be where its usage would depend on a permanent name that doesn't change (unlike template that only care about what the current flag of Syria is). Abzeronow (talk) 17:25, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

VFC dark mode fixes

Hi, I've made several dark mode fixes to VFC, if you guys could try adding importScript('User:Matrix/vfc.js') to your common.js, then changing to dark mode, which is on the sidebar if you are using Vector 2022, that would be very useful. Please report any bugs here or on my user talk page. —Matrix(!) ping onewhen replying {user - talk? - uselesscontributions} 20:16, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Matrix: It looks good so far, but I haven't done any action with it yet but simple prepending.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 21:06, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Matrix: {{SharedIPEDU}} could use some love, too.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 21:10, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
✓ Done will upload VFC changes soon. —Matrix(!) ping onewhen replying {user - talk? - uselesscontributions} 21:44, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Matrix: Thanks! Creation of Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Edujab7 went well.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:05, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

March 19

Excluded educational content

A certain user uploads a few raw text lists onto Commons and then places them in an article in some wiki project. Is this enough to ignore the Commons:Project scope#Excluded educational content policy? Please see Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by BlackStar1991 and User:Infrogmation's closure rationale. --Komarof (talk) 10:51, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it is. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:33, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I think it'S in scope but I am not happy about the file format. SVG would be much better --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:19, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • That "excluded educational content" paragraph is poorly written and should be reworded. As written now it is used as a bludgeon in deletion arguments to delete historic news articles. There is a paragraph saying we do not want images of text, those should be hosted by other projects like Wikisource. Then we have another paragraph saying that we do want images of text, that they are actually demanded by Wikisource. Just combine the two into one well written paragraph instead of two contradictions. --RAN (talk) 22:13, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it is also important how text is depicted. Text uploaded as Commons file can be okay when it is a specimen of a font, a typologo or another special style of text presented (e.g. a glyph of a popular font or a unique glyph) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:32, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's obviously a huge difference between an image of a historical document and one of a modern spreadsheet some user put together in Excel. The former is (or at least should be) educational. Whereas the later IMO has no business being on Commons. Otherwise it should be as a proper table in the data namespace. That's what it exists for. Uploading images of self-created spreadsheets just seems like a way to get around the rules though. I can't create a page of text because it's OOS, but if I upload an image of the same text then somehow that's in scope? OK. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:44, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think we are trying to exclude original text/data that is previously unpublished, not historic text/data already published. Also get rid of the phrase "Excluded educational content", it sounds like it was written by a lawyer.

how to undelete all my files which was deleted?

i'm new on commons i mistakenly claimed old pics as own work. those pics are free from copyright — Preceding unsigned comment added by RyanRai11 (talk • contribs) 07:00, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Display bug with the Help icons on upload page

Hmm...

Just noticed this. I don't think these icons were like this previously, but instead fit the "display" box with perfectly round icons? (Firefox 136.0.2 here, have NoScript with nothing blocked on Commons and uBlock Origin). - The Bushranger (talk) 22:36, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

March 20

DESI releases the DR1 dataset

Hi!

DESI announced that they released a free dataset recently. It may have useful data to be uploaded here.

Greetings --11:52, 20 March 2025 (UTC) PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:52, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

User pages

I'd like to seek clarification from the community for questions about user pages, i.e. pages in the "user" namespace.

  1. can other users make major edits/changes to a certain user page without that user's permission?
  2. can a user put galleries of their uploaded files or other users' files on their user page?

Thx. RoyZuo (talk) 12:43, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't a simple "yes" or "no" to either of these.
The second question is the easier one to answer: generally yes, though if it becomes disproportionate to their other activity here, then that's not OK.
On the first question: usually not, but there are times when it is allowed, and I'd really want a more specific question. The most obvious cases are a deceased user or an indef-blocked user. - Jmabel ! talk 23:15, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thx for answers.
obviously most of these questions were quite commonsensical. most users have basic etiquette and dont even need to be told a set of rules to behave. i merely wanted to generate a newer discussion for future reference.
otherwise, i could also quote something from 20 years ago such as Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2005/10#c-Ranveig-2005-10-27T12:02:00.000Z-Mark_Dingemanse-2005-10-27T10:48:00.000Z. RoyZuo (talk) 08:41, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

which peugeot model is this?

File:Ankara'da Üzeri İmzalanmış Pejo - 2025.jpg i uploaded this and cannot find exact model. please help me out. i suspect it is Category:Peugeot 207 Compact , but im not expert. please ping me when you find answer, thank you so much! modern_primat ඞඞඞ ----TALK 23:10, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Modern primat ChatGPT also says it's a Peugeot 207 --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:26, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
 Thank you. modern_primat ඞඞඞ ----TALK 20:20, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Kein Ding :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:30, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

March 21

Many study-specific short videos in category

What do you think of the many videos in Category:Experimental psychology?

Please first take a look. Another example is Category:Videos of biology.

Category:Videos of anatomy is a case where they have been moved to subcategory "Videos of biological studies relating to anatomy".

These clips were uploaded by the User:Open Access Media Importer Bot years ago.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 00:09, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Prototyperspective: when you say "the many videos in Category:Experimental psychology" do you mean the videos in Category:Videos of experimental psychology or something else? And when you ask "what do you think" are you asking are they in scope, are there copyright problems, are there personality rights issues, do we personally like them, or what? - Jmabel ! talk 00:52, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User Allforous just moved these there. So the other category is now a better example. Note that in the former cat there is this video File:Harm Aversion video explanation.webm which is not study-specific short clip. In other categories there are more videos like it, here there seems to be one exception. Below are some examples.
  • Prototyperspective (talk) 01:13, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    IMO, many of the videos imported by the Open Access bot - especially the ones used as experimental stimuli in neuroscience papers - are out of scope for Commons, as they have essentially no meaning outside the context of the papers they accompanied. I appreciate the intent of that import job, but it was perhaps overly broad. Omphalographer (talk) 03:51, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree. There are over 10,000 of these clips and the problems are:
    • that they flood categories where it's then hard to see the actually useful videos / media and
      • (another example cat is Category:Videos of science which before I subcategorized a bit had 10 k files directly within it and even a category only containing subcategories is better than it being flooded with these clips)
    • that they are a time sink for contributors who categorize these or deal with files that drown under these clips and
    • that They can also substantially degrade the quality of search results, making this site significantly less useful
    I also appreciate the intent and agree that they "have essentially no meaning outside the context of the papers they accompanied". I think something should be done:
    1. Either deleting all of the clips from studies uploaded by the bot except for the very few clips that are in use (and any clip with more than e.g. 50 views per month if one can query for that) or
    2. removing all their categories except for an Open Access Media Importer Bot-specific one like Category:Videos from studies uploaded with Open Access Media Importer which is removed from cats not specific to the bot since it screws up deepcategory search results (this doesn't address the search results but one could maybe add a deboost template) or
    3. moving all of these to some separate Wikimedia project / related site like https://mdwiki.org/ or
    4. something quite similar to any of the above to the same effect
    I think option 1 would likely be the best (easiest to implement, most effective) option. If this isn't the right place to discuss this (and I think it is), maybe somebody or I should make a request for comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:55, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think file deletion discussions for singular files are the right approach – there's over 10 k of these, and that's the reason they're a problem to begin with as they make so many categories unusable.
    However, there are 2 deletion requests now: one and two (latter is a 1 second audio). I wonder whether other users have come across categories containing many of these clips. Prototyperspective (talk) 00:53, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Priority licence review - VOA

    Since voa funding will be or is cut soon, their websites and youtube channels might soon shut down. as such, licence reviewers might wanna prioritise these files:

    1. /w/index.php?search=VOA+deepcategory:US_government_images_review_needed
    2. /w/index.php?search=VOA+deepcategory:US_government_videos_review_needed
    3. /w/index.php?search=VOA+deepcategory:License_review_needed_(audio)
    4. /w/index.php?search=VOA+deepcategory:License_review_needed_(video)
    5. /w/index.php?search=VOA+incategory:License_review_needed
    6. /w/index.php?search=VOA+deepcategory:YouTube_review_needed

    in total about 1000 files. RoyZuo (talk) 09:49, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    It's also important to have Wayback Machine snapshots of the source webpages --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:24, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it would be good if some bot(s) made sure all external links in the references on Wikidata and in file descriptions are archived (may be a problem if always archives the media as well – I think for Commons it only needs to make sure the website is archived without its video as well). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:39, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Aren't all VoA files public domain? Thus, license review is not needed and the tag should be removed from all files in that cat. Instead what would be good to prioritize is uploading all remaining VoA videos not yet on Commons in case these can't be found elsewhere anymore soon. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:39, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Arent all usa govt files pd? why review for them then?
    The problem is, until a reviewer verifies that the file is indeed sourced from and produced by voa, its copyright cannot be confirmed. RoyZuo (talk) 13:52, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    For instance, i just uploaded File:美國陪審團的否決權 VOA.mp3 from https://voa-audio.voanews.eu/cant/2013/12/11/b9173473-1903-43bf-9fd4-c8ccdc20e763.mp3 , but i cant record the source evidence because Special:Upload doesnt allow imports from voanews.eu yet, and url2commons doesnt allow mp3, so i have no choice but to add the licencereview template. RoyZuo (talk) 15:04, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
     Comment Content created by VOA are in the public domain, but VOA also uses content from 3rd party sources. These are not automatically in the public domain. Yann (talk) 11:27, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    March 22

    Category for technology / software in public administration?

    Are there any categories on that subject? I was looking to categorize File:Migration to LibreOffice and ODF for 30,000 clients in government of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.webm but I couldn't find such a category. Seems like a large subject with quite a few potential files here that would be contained in it.

    --Prototyperspective (talk) 19:41, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    March 23

    Flickr - possible change of licensing?

    Went to Flickr's search to look for suitably licensed photos of a topic. Seems it is no longer possible to search on Flickr: I got a splash screen requiring signing in to Flickr, with the search results blurred out and unclickable, so I couldn't search for photos. I suspect this may contravene Creative Commons licensing, and thus mean that Flickr is no longer a legitimate source, like when 500px stopped being a legit source in 2018? - MPF (talk) 00:44, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    The licenses for photos have not changed, nor has the ability to view the license of an individual file, so this does not change anything about copyright or our ability to transfer files here. The logged-in restriction on the search function doesn't have anything to do with copyright. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 00:53, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    For me Flickr works normally. You need first search something and after that one can filter results using licence. I am not logged in to Flickr (and I am accessing it from EU if location matters) --Zache (talk) 01:09, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Same for me. Weird change even if it doesn't effect copyright. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:02, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Same for me as Zache said. try https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-posted-asc&license=4%2C5%2C7%2C8%2C9%2C10&view_all=1&text=love . RoyZuo (talk) 07:03, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    i clicked the link and did a search. everything works? RoyZuo (talk) 08:38, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    i also get the popup registration wall now.--RoyZuo (talk) 11:16, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    btw, i made User:RoyZuo/SearchFreeMedia.js that makes it easy to "look for suitably licensed photos of a topic". RoyZuo (talk) 08:41, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hello. I got the same popup while visiting this (which I saved in my mobile browser's bookmarks). BTW, I'm accessing it from the Philippines. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 11:46, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    For what it's worth, the popup goes away if you press the Esc key. But no - if photographers have licensed their photos under a Creative Commons license, that license is valid regardless of any requirements the web site places on access to those photos. Omphalographer (talk) 21:19, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not getting anything, though sometimes on a public network the search just doesn't load but doesn't prompt me to log in. Weird. Maybe there's too many people using flickr on your connection? Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 21:22, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks all! Pressing 'Esc' worked, though I had to do so multiple times in the search – thanks for that tip-off! - MPF (talk) 00:10, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    19th century documents with no specific licensing - OK to upload?

    I thought I'd check before I did this. If I wanted to take an image from this document, a scan of a page from 1874 San Francisco city directory on Archive.org (here: [1]), would that be allowed? There's no specific Creative Commons or other copyright info on the website, but the image is 150 years old and should be in the public domain. Peter G Werner (talk) 04:45, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    It should be fine. Any chance you could upload the whole book though? --Adamant1 (talk) 05:34, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I suppose I could. As with any Archive.org source, it's simply a matter of downloading from there and uploading it on Wikimedia. I'm not sure what multipage document formats Wikimedia accepts, though. Peter G Werner (talk) 16:32, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Peter G Werner: For a full book, PDF or DJVU are appropriate. You probably don't have enough edits here yet to be allowed to upload those, though. I think for that you need autopatrol, but I'm not certain. Does someone know what level of rights are required to upload PDFs? Really annoying that it is not documented in several likely places I looked. In any case, if I'm right that it's just autopatrolled, we can probably grant you that. I don't want to go off half-cocked requesting that if it's not sufficient, though. - Jmabel ! talk 17:00, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The edit filter which blocks PDF uploads from new users only requires autoconfirmed - not autopatrol. Omphalographer (talk) 19:28, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    DJVU? Never heard of that format. More like déja vu. Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 21:20, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    DjVu. - Jmabel ! talk 01:10, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Peter G Werner: I imagine you are already autoconfirmed, but if not you can request the "confirmed" right at Commons:Requests for rights. Do the upload with either Commons:UploadWizard or Commons:Upload (don't try to do it as a cross-wiki upload from en-wiki). - Jmabel ! talk 01:13, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Alright, uploaded: /wiki/File:San_Francisco_Directory_for_the_Year_commencing_April,_1874.pdf
    BTW, Internet Archive has many years of this old directory series, scanned and uploaded by San Francisco Public Library. Peter G Werner (talk) 00:10, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Old enough for {{PD-old-assumed-expired}}. --HyperGaruda (talk) 05:57, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The IA Upload tool can copy PDFs and DjVus from IA to Commons, along with most metadata. (Just don't try to tell it to convert PDF to DjVu, it can't do that any more.) Sam Wilson 01:20, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    March 24

    Documenting levels of rights

    We seem to be lacking documentation of several aspects of the rights associated with "autoconfirmed"/"confirmed", and quite possibly other levels of user rights.

    As far as I can tell, neither Commons:Autoconfirmed users nor Special:ListGroupRights says anything about needing "autoconfirmed"/"confirmed" to upload a PDF (this limitation is implemented through a filter, so I suspect it cannot be reflected in Special:ListGroupRights, but all the more reason it should be in Commons:Autoconfirmed users). Conversely, both of these assert that an "autoconfirmed"/"confirmed" user can overwrite an existing file; I'm pretty sure that they no longer can, except for their own uploads.

    Would someone who works more in this area than me please update documentation? I suspect there are other similar cases. - Jmabel ! talk 01:27, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @Jmabel: PDF uploads are monitored by Special:AbuseFilter/281. Mediawiki:Abusefilter-disallowed-pdf-new-user-upload has the untranslated disallow message for that. Technically, that filter requires any user wanting to upload a PDF file to have '"confirmed" in user_rights'. That equates to "autoconfirmed" user group membership (conferred automatically four days after registration) or "confirmed" user group membership (granted earlier by an Admin; currently at three members). New users (less than 180 days old or with editcount < 50 and not "confirmed" or "autopatrolled") may have also triggered Special:AbuseFilter/153 by trying to cross-wiki upload a PDF image. Mediawiki:Abusefilter-warning-cwuploads has the untranslated disallow message for that. See COM:Confirmed for more info. Users that try to overwrite files for which their username was not the first editor trigger Special:AbuseFilter/290. The proposal to "Limit file overwriting to users with autopatrol rights" was accepted with many supports and one weak oppose 15:19, 23 September 2023 (UTC). After an implementation problem in phab:T345896 and testing, Special:AbuseFilter/290 went live with the Disallow action 09:35, 28 October 2023 (UTC). MediaWiki:abusefilter-warning-file-overwriting has the untranslated disallow message for that. I advise users that they may request COM:AP at COM:RFR when they think they are ready (once they have made more than 500 useful non-botlike edits); having that should allow them to overwrite. They may also request an exception for a particular file at COM:OWR.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 05:53, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That's all well and good, but Commons:Autoconfirmed users states that autoconfirmed users can overwrite files, and that appears not to be true. When I [Commons_talk:Autoconfirmed_users#"overwrite_an_existing_file" raised this issue several months ago] on the corresponding talk page, I was effectively told I was wrong. A rule implemented through a filter is still a rule, and I think our documentation should reflect reality. - Jmabel ! talk 16:13, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with Jmabel, we should adjust that information to fit the current state of things where autoconfirmed users can overwrite their own files but not those of others. Putting this information in more places might help avoid extra work for Jeff G. in the AbuseFilter Reports and might slightly increase my workload at COM:OWR and COM:RFR (which I do not mind). Abzeronow (talk) 20:13, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Jmabel: Please go ahead, I don't have the bandwidth for that right now.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:26, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I fixed the couple of things I'm sure of, but I suspect that there are other issues that should be documented and that I don't know about. - Jmabel ! talk 04:51, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Czech collections

    Close to 100 digitised art collections in Czechia now available online. A large portion of this should be public domain material. Someone may want to look into the most efficient way to upload what is PD. - Jmabel ! talk 05:07, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Anyone with enough skills and drive, please have a look at User:Fæ. -- Tuválkin 01:02, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    How do we handle imaginary flags that have been uploaded as real?

    Tfjbhugdw has uploaded a number of flags that purport to being flags for localities, mainly in Hawaii. However,

    • A cursory Google search for flags for these localities turned up no matching images, except for the flags for Bristol, Rhode Island & Burrillville, Rhode Island.
    • In Hawaii, localities are unincorporated as incorporation is only at the county level. Therefore, I know of no means by which these localities could choose such flags.
    • Tfjbhugdw has cited no sources. Each images source is listed as Own work.
    • None of the Hawaiian locality flags have any Hawaiian themes.

    I do not know if there is a contingency for deleting fictional images that masquerade as something real. They certainly must be at least renamed, as I believe they give a false impression that they are actual flags for these localities. Peaceray (talk) 05:37, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    At least this image looks like AI upscaled slop regardless of if it's a real flag or not. Personally, I'd nominate all of them for deletion as OOS. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:54, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Peaceray and Adamant1 I warned them to stop uploading oos content for both of you. See also Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Tfjbhugdw.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 06:23, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    For flags that are still in use or cannot be deleted right away for some other reason, there is also Category:Fictional flags of historical entities (to be replaced and deleted). These are (afaik) all OoS. --Enyavar (talk) 06:46, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Just want to remark: the issue here should be flags that are truly imaginary, not flags that are unofficial. For example, the Cascadia flag is unofficial but widely used, and certainly belongs on Commons, while File:Potentional flag of Cascadia.png appears to be made up by a user, and I have no idea why we are hosting it.

    I have no idea which is the case for these ostensible Hawaiian flags. - Jmabel ! talk 16:21, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I could not find the flags that Tfjbhugdw posted for Hawaii through a Google search. For instance, Tfjbhugdw uploaded File:Flag of Waimānalo, Hawaii.svg, & doing a Google source on (waimanalo OR Waimānalo) flag simply fails to retrieve the image from anywhere else. Its not even that these files are unofficial. Nobody, aside from Tfjbhugdw, seems to use these images.
    Tfjbhugdw added the images for the fictional flags to Wikipedia articles. I have deleted these images in enwiki except for the flags for Bristol, Rhode Island & Burrillville, Rhode Island, which do seem to be versions of real flags. Peaceray (talk) 17:16, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    These uploads are part of a pattern of recent abuse; see also Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Dksbucyxn917, Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Dinttjurfjg15, etc. Omphalographer (talk) 18:58, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The all seem to be socks of User:Jurisdrew or at least this user is. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:45, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Grouping fallas by Sector Faller

    @Coentor @Simon Burchell @Ponscor @Joanbanjo @Dorieo @Rafesmar

    Junta Central Fallera web here/aquí/ací.

    • English (valencià & castellano a continuació(n))

    I've recently been working with the categories of fallas, in a more strict sense, those of the commissions falleres that are part of the Junta Central Fallera.

    First, I should point out that the Junta Central Fallera integrates the fallas of five municipalities: València, Burjassot, Mislata, Quart de Poblet, and Xirivella. It extends beyond València municipality but doesn't include all the fallas from everywhere.

    Second, the Junta Central Fallera organizes these commissions falleres into "sectors." There are 26 sectors into which the more than 300 commissions are integrated.

    These sectors have names similar to neighborhoods or municipal districts of Valencia, and in some cases, the fallas are actually all located in that neighborhood or district. But most often this isn't the case.

    In the case of Russafa, the neighborhood is divided into two sectors, Russafa A and Russafa B. In the case of Quart de Poblet-Xirivella, the sector extends entirely outside the municipality of València. In the case of Rascanya, it includes fallas from the municipal district of Pobles del Nord. There are other similar cases.

    The idea I'm planning to implement is to group the commissions falleres into categories by Sectors Fallers. Each sector has between 11 and 19 commissions, which is a reasonable number to work with, without being absurdly small. It reflects an "administrative division" that is used (for prizes or in the Ofrena, for example) and is practical for organizing Wikimedia activities.

    Furthermore, adding these categories does not mean stopping the use of others in parallel. For example, the Falla Plaça del Poble-Sant Roc category, a falla in Carpesa for which we don't yet have any images, would be in both the Carpesa category (for the neighborhood) and the Faller Sector Rascanya category (for the sector). There's no problem with that.

    I'm sharing all this to clarify what I'm trying to do and in case there are any additional comments or anything I might have missed.

    • Valencià

    Recentment he estat treballant amb les categories de les falles, en un sentit més estricte, les de les comissions falleres que formen part de la Junta Central Fallera.

    En primer lloc, he d'assenyalar que la Junta Central Fallera integra les falles de cinc municipis: València, Burjassot, Mislata, Quart de Poblet i Xirivella. Va més enllà del terme de València però no inclou totes les falles de tot arreu (no hi són les de Sagunt o Gandia, per exemple).

    En segon lloc, la Junta Central Fallera organitza aquestes comissions falleres en “sectors”. Hi ha 26 sectors on s'integren les més de tres-centes comissions.

    Aquests sectors tenen noms similars a barris o districtes municipals de València, i en algun cas passa que les falles realment estan totes en aquest barri o districte. Però no sempre és així.

    En el cas de Russafa, el barri es reparteix a dos sectors, Russafa A i Russafa B. En el cas de Quart de Poblet-Xirivella, el sector s'estén totalment fora del municipi de València. En el cas de Rascanya, inclou falles del districte municipal de Pobles del Nord. Hi ha més casos semblants.

    La idea que pense executar és agrupar les comissions falleres en categories per sector faller. Cada sector té entre 11 i 19 comissions, que és un volum raonable per treballar-hi, sense ser absurdament reduït. Reflecteix una “divisió administrativa” que es fa servir (per a premis o a l'Ofrena, per exemple) i que resulta pràctica per organitzar activitats wikimèdiques.

    A més, afegir aquestes categories no implica deixar d'usar-ne d'altres en paral·lel. Per exemple, la categoria Falla Plaça del Poble-Sant Roc, una falla de Carpesa de la qual encara no tenim imatges, estaria tant a la categoria Carpesa (pel barri) com a la de Sector Faller Rascanya (pel sector). No hi ha cap problema.

    Us comunique tot això per deixar clar el que intente fer i per si hi ha algun comentari addicional o alguna cosa que em puga haver deixat fora.

    • Castellano

    Recientemente he estado trabajando con las categorías de las fallas, en un sentido más estricto, las de las comisiones falleras que forman parte de la Junta Central Fallera.

    En primer lugar he de señalar que la Junta Central Fallera integra las fallas de cinco municipios: València, Burjassot, Mislata, Quart de Poblet y Xirivella. Va más allá de València pero no incluye todas las fallas de todas partes.

    En segundo lugar, la Junta Central Fallera organiza dichas comisiones falleras en “sectores”. Hay 26 sectores en los que se integran las más de trescientas comisiones.

    Dichos sectores tiene nombres similares a barrios o distritos municipales de València, y en algún caso sucede que las fallas realmente están todas en ese barrio o distrito. Pero no siempre es así.

    En el caso de Russafa, el barrio se reparte en dos sectores, Russafa A y Russafa B. En el caso de Quart de Poblet-Xirivella, el sector se extiende totalmente fuera del municipio de València. En el caso de Rascanya, incluye fallas del distrito municipal de Pobles del Nord. Hay más casos similares.

    La idea que pienso ejecutar es agrupar las comisiones falleras en categorías por sector fallero. Cada sector tiene entre 11 y 19 comisiones, que es un volumen razonable para trabajar con ellos, sin ser absurdamente reducido. Refleja una “división administrativa” que se usa (para premios o en la Ofrenda, por ejemplo) y que resulta práctica para organizar actividades wikimédicas.

    Además añadir esas categorías no implica dejar de usar otras en paralelo. Por ejemplo, la categoria Falla Plaça del Poble-Sant Roc, una falla de Carpesa de la que aún no tenemos imágenes, estaría tanto en la categoría Carpesa (por el barrio) como en la de Sector Faller Rascanya (por el sector). No hay problema en ello.

    Os comunico todo esto para dejar claro qué intento hacer y por si hay algún comentario adicional o algo que me pueda haber saltado.

    B25es (talk) 07:31, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @B25es: May I ask: what content do you plan to categorize by Sectors Fallers? I would hope this won't become an additional category on every single image of Catalonia or Valencia. - Jmabel ! talk 16:26, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    These categories are for falla related stuff only. It would be used for categories such us Category:Falla Jesús Morante i Borrás-Caminot. That category is included in two categories:
    1. Falles de València (which includes all commissions falleres in València municipality). This category should include many commissions, but those in Xirivella, Burjassot, Quart de Poblet and Mislata. That means about 340 included commissions.
    2. La Punta (which is the municipal neighborhood). València municipality is divided into 19 municipal districts, each one composed of several neighborhoods. In this case, the neighborhood where the falla commission is placed belongs to the municipal district of Quatre Carreres, but the commission is "falleraly" adscribed to Poblats al Sud sector. Of course, all other things in La Punta not related to fallas are not subject to Sector Faller categories.
    By adding category Falla Commissions of Poblats al Sud sector we are clearly grouping fallas within their sectors. And the other categories would not be removed.
    Of course, individual files do not need to be categorized in such way, as they are often included in Falla categories or are not relatable to a particular falla group.
    Another advantage is that fallas in the Benimàmet-Burjassot-Beniferri sector can be grouped together. This sector includes two different neiborghoods in València plus those in the municipality of Burjassot. Something similar happens with Quart de Poblet-Xirivella.
    B25es (talk) 17:21, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    So, in short, handle this parallel to how we handle Catholic dioceses. - Jmabel ! talk 04:55, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Large majority of the files are postage stamps, but there is no real integration of the subcategories. Rathfelder (talk) 11:50, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I tried to move image over to "postage stamp" categories as much as I could a few years ago but a couple of users edit warred me over it and continued creating "stamp" categories for images of postage stamps in mass. So I just gave up. Now its just a huge mess. I don't see that changing when the one or two main users active in the area don't care though. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:18, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Adamant1: Can you provide some links related to your edit wara and their category creations? Then we can see exactly who and what you are talking about. 11:27, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Ww2censor: It wasn't "my" edit war and it's been awhile so I don't have links to the exact edits at this point. That said, User:אוריאל כ was (and still is) one of the main people creating "stamp" categories, mainly for stamps by subject. If you look at their talk page there's multiple messages about it and creating "by year" categories for years where the stamps are copyrighted. Anyway, they just don't care about either one and I got tired leaving them messages about it. So they have been creating "stamps by subject" categories in mass for the last couple of years. A.Savin also edit wared me a couple of times when I tried to move some stamps of Germany to ones specifically for postage stamps. File:Sonderbriefmarke Leuchtturm Helgoland asv2023-07 Ausschnitt2.jpg being one example where he reverted me with the message "no improvement." So I dropped it. The continued mass creation of "stamp" categories by User:אוריאל כ is the main hold up to things being organized better though. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:42, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    1. It should be noted that many categories of stamps also include stamps that are not postage stamps, such as telegraph stamps, and more (especially stamps from fifty years ago or more). According to the proposal, we will have to split a large portion of the categories into several for no good reason.
    2. There are so many categories of stamps, and far fewer of postage stamps. It's impractical to change so many categories.
    3. Most people, when they say stamps, mean postage stamps, so I don't think this change is particularly helpful. אוריאל כ (talk) 17:50, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As far as I'm aware this isn't a proposal. Although there was kind of one already in Commons:Categories_for_discussion/Archive/2022/06#Category:Philately where it was decided to create separate categories for postage and Cinderella stamps. Outside of that, Category:Stamps should be a top level category for adhesive stamps in general. Whereas, Category:Postage stamps and Category:Cinderella stamps exist for specific types of adhesive stamps. There's nothing abnormal about postage stamps and Cinderella stamps being mixed in a general category for stamps though. The problem comes in when you create "stamp" categories for images just of postage stamps.
    On your third point, to most people the term "stamp" is used in reference to ink stamps, not postage stamps. Also, if you look at Wikidata or Wikipedia most of the items and articles use "postage stamp." So your simply wrong there. And as to how having categories specifically for "postage stamps" is helpful, it allows us to separate images of them from ones of Cinderella stamps. Which usually have a different purpose and licenses. As well at makes it clear that the categories aren't for ink stamps. It's actually not that much work to fix the problem either. Except that people like you refuse to stop creating stamp categories. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:20, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Currency of Portugal

    Hi, What is the copyright status of Portugal currency before euros? No information at Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Portugal and Commons:Currency. This concerns File:Banknote 20 escudos de 1940 - Joaquim Mouzinho de Albuquerque.jpg and Category:Portuguese escudo banknotes. Thanks, Yann (talk) 17:23, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Source of source

    I got a pdf from a website, which had made the pdf from jpegs from another website.

    Is there a standard for recording such "source of source"? or should i just make a bulleted list? and sdc model? RoyZuo (talk) 19:28, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    File:Winsor McCay (1914)Gertie the Dinosaur.webm is the subject of today's featured article on English Wikipedia. The file was clearly ripped from a DVD without any deinterlacing though. It shows really bad combing wherever there is motion. Could someone with a video editing program run it through a deinterlacing filter and fix it? Thanks! Nosferattus (talk) 21:02, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @Curly Turkey: ^ Nosferattus (talk) 21:04, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    March 25

    In which category?

    I occasionally come across images like File:Ahmad ibn Abd Allah.png. In which category should they be put? Wouter (talk) 16:03, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    That would be Category:Names in Arabic calligraphy, though I sometimes find the designation "calligraphy" questionable (for example). --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:54, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Is there any more specific term for these circular renditions? Omphalographer (talk) 00:01, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I've seen them being called medallions here and roundels elsewhere. They seem to have originated in the Ottoman Empire. --HyperGaruda (talk) 03:58, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It's kind of tangential, but I've been wondering what the educational value of these things are for awhile now since a lot of them are unused and have no descriptions. Does anyone have an answer to that? --Adamant1 (talk) 04:00, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    My hypothesis: depictions of people are rare in the pre-modern Islamic world, so editors came up with derivatives of these roundels to have at least some visual decoration on Wikipedia articles of Muslims. There is a very lengthy discussion going on related to them at en:Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles. --HyperGaruda (talk) 04:20, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Low-quality structured data

    I continually find people having added low-quality structured data, mainly depicts (P180), to content I've uploaded. It's not exactly wrong, it's just beside the point. For example, File:Solvej Schou, Michelle Threadgould, & Lucretia Tye Jasmine.jpg is a photo of three reasonably notable writer-musicians, but it is described as depicting blond hair (Q202466), name (Q82799) (presumably because of name tags), microphone (Q46384) (two microphones are visible in the picture, but not in a way that would make this useful as a picture of a microphone), and laptop (Q3962) (twice; there is a barely visible laptop near the lower right corner of the photo).

    Is this actually considered desirable, and I'm just out of step? If not, would it be appropriate for me to remove this cruft? - Jmabel ! talk 16:44, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    After a quick glance in the history: these additions look like a perverted usage of Commons:ISA Tool. It may be kind of a game here, with a high score going towards those who put in the most SDC data, even when the sense of using a particular claim is marginal at best. Remove it, I'say, it does not advance our projects. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 17:14, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Lots of just plain wrong structured data too: e.g. some ignorant user uploads a public domain photograph from 1875, listing themselves as the author, and the "date" as upload date (May 5, 2021, ha!), and faithfully stupid bots dutifully transcribe such incorrect metadata into the structured data. And unfortunately it takes several more steps to correct or remove false metadata than to create it. --Animalparty (talk) 00:48, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Again, is it appropriate for me to remove this cruft when it shows up on content I uploaded? Does it have to be outright false (rather than merely useless) for me to remove it (e.g. laptop (Q3962) in the above example)? - Jmabel ! talk 01:31, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd remove it. On Wikidata's end they usually stick to having one best value for something like that. I don't see why Commons shouldn't take the same approach. Otherwise structured data is kind of useless. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:09, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I would strongly advocate to remove it, too. Knowingly or negligently using not suitable structured datasets is against Commons' aims, as far as I understand them, as it degrades the value of the repositories, making them somewhat less usable. It's comparable to introducing typographic errors in Wikipedia articles; both are behaviours that should be avoided to the best of one's abilities. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 03:11, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Jmabel removed the depicts which I agree is best. There is Commons:Depicts and depicts modeling documentation but they aren't really fleshed out and explicit; the project is in documentation and development limbo. I hope things like Commons:ISA Tool are no longer being used like this today.
    In this case I guess Solvej Schou (Q133530638), Pop Conference (Q125552983): 2019 and location of creation (P1071): Museum of Pop Culture (Q1384356) could be applied. I was going to add these but the interface fails when I try to add value 2019 to a point in time (P585) qualifyer for the conference. So I gave up [shrug]. Commander Keane (talk) 05:42, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Commander Keane: "I hope things like Commons:ISA Tool are no longer being used like this today." I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying something may have changed since yesterday when these were added using ISA? - Jmabel ! talk 05:58, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh dear. For some reason I thought you were discovering 2019 additions closer to upload time. Someone needs to look into this then. Commander Keane (talk) 06:23, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I was going to say something about that myself. Structured data shouldn't be added by inexperienced users and/or through semi-automated tools like this. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:38, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Donia (WIA) organises campaign377 that involved Jmabel's file. There are gift card prizes associated. I will leave a talk page message and hopefully they can drop by and comment.
    The wider issue of semi-automated tools needs evaluation. Commander Keane (talk) 08:37, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It should be no surprise that the person who added this cruft is "winning" the contest. - Jmabel ! talk 16:14, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Depicted statements can refer to objects that only takes up a small amount of space on the photo
    That doesnt make the data bad in and of itself Trade (talk) 17:33, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Trade: True. Are you saying that it is useful to add the particular values that were added to this particular photo, or are you just saying that, like categories, something can be worth adding without it being a large portion of the photo? If someone added Category:Microphones or Category:Laptops to this photo, that would also be cruft, no? - Jmabel ! talk 00:42, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think a category like "People sitting in front of microphones" would be appropriate if it exists but none of those two. This isn't a very rare incident, lots of files have SD like that and this case just shows how SD is not the panacea it's sometimes thought of by some and has quite some issues even if it was used widely – Trade makes a valid note, those depicts statements aren't even wrong which just shows how many items miss how many depicts statements OR how the ones set aren't necessarily helpful. If one was looking for a representative or good image of a microphone one would be better helped by going to the category. One could make a good case for keeping these depicts statements. I think categories are best for file contents and SD is mostly useful for keeping things out of the categories that aren't really helpful there. With that I'd think of metadata like captured-with:NikonD5000 or "Videos without audio" which could eventually be used by filters in the search, but one could also argue SD could be used to describe each and every thing in files. Prototyperspective (talk) 01:04, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    March 26

    Galleries without {{Gallery page}}

    Is there some way to see all galleries without the {{Gallery page}} template at the top?

    I think one way to do that would be to have the template add a category and then use a search like deepcategory:"Gallery pages" -deepcategory:"Galleries with gallery page template" after a day or so or is there another way?

    I think with maybe few exceptions if at all, galleries that have a corresponding category should have that template at the top so even people new to this site and not yet familiar with the categories at the bottom of the page can find more images of the subject instead of assuming the – usually few – files in the gallery is all media on the subject that exists on Commons.

    Many galleries are very outdated and contain just few images (e.g. found galleries about software linked from the Wikipedia article about the software have screenshots of the software up to a decade ago) and I found out that currently if a Wikidata item has both Commons gallery (P935) and Commons category (P373) set and no value in the multilingual links for Commons (a very common case), then the linked Wikipedia articles with a template usually in the External links section at the bottom link to the gallery. Sometimes the category is linked without a template which is not as visible and does not explain visitors that this a gallery page etc, example: Special:Diff/1013381391. I'd like to add this template to galleries that don't have it set if nobody else does it. Hopefully, it's not that many galleries though since if it's many probably a bot doing this would be best.

    --Prototyperspective (talk) 01:34, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    First I've heard of this one. I've always used {{Maincat}}. Is there a significant difference between them and a reason this one should be preferred? - Jmabel ! talk 03:40, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think I read a comment by you about the Gallery page template so I wonder why you'd use the Maincat template instead. Yes there is a very significant difference, see Sometimes the category is linked without a template which is not as visible and does not explain visitors that this a gallery page etc; also the Gallery page is the template specifically for this, not Maincat. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:20, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll go try to find mine & fix them. - Jmabel ! talk 16:16, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Using Special:Search, limit "Search in" to just "(Gallery)" and then search for -insource:"Gallery page", though for me, it opens a can of 127k worms; not sure if that is what you had in mind. I've noticed some results are maintenance galleries... --HyperGaruda (talk) 04:08, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    1. -hastemplate:"Gallery page" might be neater.
    2. if that template were to be applied to every single page, then it should become part of mediawiki software and automatically displayed on all gallery namespace pages?
    RoyZuo (talk) 09:59, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks you two, so this search query shows 127 k results which is far too many to edit manually by hand. I also could not get the VisualFileChange tool to work on that query result. I'll probably make a bot work request about this. Re 2: yes, I think that would be best but that may be difficult to implement and not feasible in the near future. If you know of a way to make it happen please comment – one difficulty is determining the category. As can be seen in the diff example, the category is sometimes named differently than the gallery so for these instead of {{Gallery page}} one has to add {{Gallery page|cat name}}. If categories are set, that is the category not starting with (Category:) "Gallery pages " (with very few exceptions that's just one category). Prototyperspective (talk) 15:34, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Rotating video

    I have a video I'd like to upload to Commons. Unfortunately, my camera messed up the orientation. Right now I have two versions of it: https://vimeo.com/1069462147 would need to be rotated 90 degrees clockwise; https://vimeo.com/1069466797 is correctly oriented but is watermarked by the tool I used to rotate it.

    Does someone have a way to do a rotation like this without getting a watermark slapped on the video? Obviously, correct orientation is more important than the lack of watermark, but I'd really rather have both. - Jmabel ! talk 06:08, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Best is to use ffmpeg for this https://stackoverflow.com/a/9570992TheDJ (talkcontribs) 08:45, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @TheDJ: is there a particular build of ffmpeg for Windows that you would recommend? I don't recognize the names of anything offering one, and am hesitant to trust a random build on my machine. - Jmabel ! talk 16:36, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    https://stackoverflow.com/a/27768317
    com:videocuttool (not sure if still working). RoyZuo (talk) 09:57, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Wiki Photo competition

    I would like to use the images for the wiki photo competition but its showing them as duplicates or already uploaded so i am failing to have them uploaded. Would like to reupload them. MohsenTaha (talk) 07:10, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Check those files that it says are duplicates – looks like they were already uploaded then. If that's not the case, refresh the page with ctrl+R and try again. If that doesn't work try the alternative upload form at Special:Upload. Prototyperspective (talk) 01:08, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Mirror of destroyed USGOV websites

    As websites like usaid.gov were perished, some people built a mirror of US government websites. More info here

    Enjoy! --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:52, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Added it to the Wikidata items about the organizations (and in one case a new item for that NOAA Climate website). Prototyperspective (talk) 01:06, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    VOA likely to be shut down, help copying information

    With the very likely shutdown of the Voice of America, I've begun copying what I can to Wikimedia Commons, before they start deleting their various websites. I'd encourage anyone who has a few moments to go to the VOA websites and copy anything that is copyright-free for use here. Especially if you speak another language, there's a trove of good information there that will likely be of interest in the future. I doubt much is getting archived by the current US administration either, making this even more important. Oaktree b (talk) 15:26, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I was just going to find people together for this, too.
    Does anybody know of any coordinated effort anywhere? reddit?
    If not, I'd start a telegram group chat for people to share updates real-time. RoyZuo (talk) 18:06, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I already asked on Reddit, let's see --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:48, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    March 27

    Informasiya Melumat Axtar