Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/01

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Commons Gazette 2025-01

Happy New Year! Happy Public Domain Day!

Volunteer staff changes

In December 2024, 2 sysops were elected; 1 sysop was removed. Currently, there are 181 sysops.

Election:

Removal:

  1. ↑ en:Wikipedia:Deceased_Wikipedians/2024#JarrahTree

Edited by Abzeronow and RoyZuo.

Commons Gazette is a monthly newsletter of the latest important news about Wikimedia Commons, edited by volunteers. You can also help with editing!

--RoyZuo (talk) 23:35, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

How can Category:Gallery pages with a wrong format be removed from Help:Biology wikidata glossary?

How can Category:Gallery pages with a wrong format be removed from Help:Biology wikidata glossary as a parent? The format is OK now (User:Prototyperspective have moved it to the Help format) and he already removed this parent category, but it still is popping up. JopkeB (talk) 12:41, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

@JopkeB: it is presumably on one or more of the pages that are included there in their entirety, all of which are still in gallery space. - Jmabel ! talk 18:32, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks @Jmabel: . I renamed Biology wikidata glossary/Double Taxonomic Wikidata Items, and gave a Hard purge to Help:Biology wikidata glossary and now it is gone. Problem solved. JopkeB (talk) 05:50, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --JopkeB (talk) 05:51, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Mirroring request

See the billboard behind the U and the BBVA building to the right

Hi, where can I post a mirroring request for File:3D bUENOS aIRES - jUL 2019.jpg?

RotationBot offers no mirroring and I cant't find anything in Category:Gadget scripts → bertux 15:14, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

As the image is in use by two Wikipedias that might prefer the current version I´d rather recommend to keep it unmirrored and to upload a new version under a different file name. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 15:19, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! The question is still: where can I get the mirroring done? We are discouraged from rotating with a photo editor; is mirroring always lossless? → bertux 16:25, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
I'd just flip it with GIMP. It's not like this was some gem of high-res photography. - Jmabel ! talk 18:39, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
Isn't this what {{Flopped}} is for? Thuresson (talk) 12:14, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! Applied. Also removed the photo from article space in eswiki and nlwiki as there are plenty of better alternatives available for es:Letrero gigante de ciudad and nl:Lettermonument → bertux 22:11, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

I want to upload this photo of Dap Chhoun to Commons. It was taken at the Geneva Conventions in 1954, seems to be PD in Switzerland and Cambodia. I still don't really understand URAA, so a simple explanation won't hurt. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TansoShoshen (talk • contribs) 12:40, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

It is not clear where the image was published first. Ruslik (talk) 13:16, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Not sure what you meant here, if you meant where the image was sourced, reverse image search points to this image being used on this website and this random Facebook post.
If you meant the country where the image was first released to the public, then yeah, it's unclear. However, it's probably either France or Switzerland, but I can't find a definite answer. TansoShoshen (talk) 17:05, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Most likely, the URAA makes in unfree until 2050. Ymblanter (talk) 18:40, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

No thumbnail

Any idea why File:Vittore Carpaccio - la vie et l'uvre du peintre (1910) (14596474918).jpg won't generate a thumbnail? Underlying file looks fine. - Jmabel ! talk 00:41, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

File:Art Safari 2024 at the Dacia Building, Bucharest - 05.jpg, too, and I know that used to work. - Jmabel ! talk 02:11, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Both files work for me. I think there's currently a bug with thumbnail generation on Commons, though. I ran into a similar problem with a number of files I've uploaded which I requested a speedy deletion for. I suspect the files looked fine to The Squirrel Conspiracy, who left a message on my talk page about it. ReneeWrites (talk) 02:14, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Category:Deletion requests/pending

Is there a reason why we dont use a bot to automate the categorizing of the subcategories? Trade (talk) 03:47, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Probably as much as anything, no one having defined the rules by which a bot would know what is needed. If it can be simply described, and you can describe it, then a bot might be in order. - Jmabel ! talk 06:33, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Something as simple as "If the images in the category are deleted after the discussion have been closed, move the page to the /deleted category and remove it from the pending category. Trade (talk) 08:25, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
As everything in the deletion request is only in Wikitext a bot needs to parse the Wikitext and needs check for the deletion status of the linked pages. It is not that simple to build such a bot that does this without many errors. GPSLeo (talk) 10:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

License change at source

I've incidentally found this image (File:Mendebaldeko Sahararen aldeko Iruñeko elkarretaratzea 2020 2.jpg) with a license-review template. It was uploaded on 1 December 2020. I've checked the source and it says "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0". In Wayback-Machine, as of 3 December 2020 license was CC BY-SA 3.0 though (but I can not see every image there, only 2 of them). Is it reasonable assuming good practice, this image being properly uploaded? Do we have a templates in order to register this license incidents? Strakhov (talk) 12:38, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

If it's OK in Wayback Machine, you can approve it and link the Internet Archive page in the permissions and/or the edit summary. I'm not sure what to do about the pages that don't show up there, though. - Jmabel ! talk 18:30, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Magic word for SDC date of creation

Isn't there a magic word for SDC date of creation? If such thing exists, I don't have to input the date manually in an edit like this. In this case, I had to copy 2011-04 of the date field and paste it in {{Japanc|so|2011-04}}, which is quite tiresome. --トトト (talk) 13:42, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

@トトト: If "inception" property is present in SDC, and you leave the date blank, then {{Information}} will use the value in the "inception" property. However, that won't give you any Japan-related date category. - Jmabel ! talk 18:40, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Upcoming Commons conversation about tool investment priority on January 15

Hello everyone! The Wikimedia Foundation will be hosting the third round of a series of community calls to help prioritize support efforts from Wikimedia Foundation for the 2025-2026 Fiscal Year.

The purpose of these calls is to support community members in hearing more from one another - across uploaders, moderators, GLAM enthusiasts, tool and bot makers, etc. - about the future of Commons. There is so much to discuss about the general direction of the project, and we hope that people from different perspectives can think through some of the tradeoffs that will shape Commons going forward.

Our third call will focus on tool investment priority. There are constant calls from the community for the Foundation to adopt community-made tools in order to maintain workflows for the contributors that depend on them. The range of these tools varies widely, and includes media upload (e.g. Video2Commons), editing (e.g. CropTool), curation (e.g. Cat-a-lot) and metrics (e.g. BaGLAMa) tools. Batch upload and metrics tools are said to be critical for the affiliates and Wikimedians in Residence who partner with libraries and other cultural institutions to illustrate Wikipedia. They need to be able to contribute files efficiently at scale, and report on the impact of these contributions. However, community surveys have identified more than 30 different tools that are used for content partnerships.

More specifically the questions will be:

  1. Does it make sense for the Foundation to invest in supporting the wide range of community-developed tools that don’t have active maintainers, or should a smaller set of critical workflows be enabled through new or improved features in core products?
  2. Which tool would you recommend to prioritise? Something community-facing or GLAM-facing or video-related or something else?

The call will take place at two different time slots:

If you cannot attend the meeting, you are invited to express your point of view at any time you want on the Commons community calls talk page. We will also post the notes of the meeting on the project page, to give the possibility to read what was discussed also to those who couldn’t attend it.

If you want, you are invited to share this invitation with all the people you think might be interested in this call.

We hope to see you and/or read you very soon! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:56, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Until recently the logo used in the infobox of FIDE was en:File:Fidelogo.svg. This file has a lengthy discussion of licensing, the outcome of which is that it can be used at FIDE but nowhere else in Wikipedia.

With this edit an editor, Bildersindtoll, changed FIDE to use instead Logo FIDE International Chess Federation.svg. The new logo is/was apparently identical except that the silhouette is reversed, i.e. blue replaced by white and white replaced by blue. I do not know why the logo was replaced (no edit summary), but I note that the FIDE website, FIDE.com, is currently using the logo that Wikipedia changed to, rather than the logo that was changed from.

However, the new logo must not have had the same lengthy discussion of licensing as the old. As a result it was deleted from Commons, see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Logo FIDE International Chess Federation.svg. This doesn't seem right. I think licensing of both logs should have been identical.

As a temporary measure, I have restored FIDE to use the old logo. What I would like to see, however, is for the new logo to be undeleted, and the same licensing text added to it as is used in the old. Bruce leverett (talk) 20:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

The old logo was hosted on en.Wiki under fair use. The new logo was hosted on Commons which does not allow fair use. The new logo could be hosted on en.Wiki under fair use.
The only way the logos could be hosted on Commons is if they have a free license. The crux of that DR was whether the silhouette of the knight is public domain. That argument did not carry the day but it could be revisited.
Glrx (talk) 21:24, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata Infobox

Is there any way to control which statements shows up? On some categories the statements in the infobox are largely useless while excluding actual useful ones Trade (talk) 08:24, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

@Trade: Please see Template:Wikidata Infobox and be more specific on the talk page there.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 11:01, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Need of pictures

Dear all, is it possible for someone to take free pictures of the new building 7 Hudson Square building, aka Robert A. Iger Building in Manhattan ? I would illustrate the article i've created on french wikipedia. One of the adress is 310 Hudson St, New York, NY 10013. If possible it would be fine. For your information, the buidling is opened since December 4th 2024 accoridng to this article --GdGourou - °o° - Talk to me 10:31, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

@Gdgourou: You can request pictures at COM:PR. You can also leave a message at WikiProject New York City as NYC has a sizeable and highly active Wiki community. I did notice that on the Wikidata page for the building Q111600151 the address is listed as 137 Varick Street, and there is an image of that: File:137 Varick Street.jpg. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:29, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Dear Renee, This one is a previous building shamelessly razed in 2018. Thanks I will post on PR and NYC project page. --GdGourou - °o° - Talk to me 11:52, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:37, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Importing files from de-wikipedia

On the German-language Wikipedia there arfe two files (de:Datei:Boskop-Schädel.jpg and de:Datei:Boskop-Schädel (2).jpg) which the German page says should be checked before transfer. However, they were published in the US before 1918 and should therefore be free. But commons file importer does not want to do this, saying "This file cannot be imported to Wikimedia Commons because it is marked as Vorlage:NoCommons." Joostik (talk) 11:44, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

@Joostik: Good to know that the file importer works as designed. Why are you stating that here? Or do you have a question? Questions usually end with a question mark.
Oh great, a grammar nazi ... Joostik (talk) 13:40, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
The date of publication is 1918 so well before the URAA date (1930 now) and author died more than 70 years ago so should be ok to transfer. Multichill (talk) 12:32, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
@Gerbil: You tagged each file {{Bild-PD-alt}} using de:Vorlage:Bild-PD-alt, which indicates (translated from German): "Due to URAA problem(disk.) for the time being:", "This file may not with the policies of Wikimedia Commons.", "It should be checked individually whether it may be moved to Wikimedia Commons.", and "Do not transfer this file to Wikimedia Commons without an individual review!". Is there a more appropriate tag?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:14, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

The license I used is specified in the rules of the German-language Wikipedia for “old works”, see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bildrechte#Alte_Werke According to German law, both drawings are in the public domain 70 years after the death of the artist. However, I am not familiar with image licenses and will therefore not make any changes. Sorry. Gerbil (talk) 15:08, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

@Gerbil: Thanks. Perhaps other users of German Wikipedia will weigh in.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:01, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
I have transferred both files to Wikimedia Commons, same file names. You have to tweak the license tag at de.wp first (using the parameter Commons=Ja) to be able to do this. --Rosenzweig τ 04:55, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for that! I actually tried to modify the license tag, but could not because it did not show up when clicking on "modify". Joostik (talk) 13:39, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

help needed from Spanish speaker

Hi, Recently {{PD-AR-Photo}} was changed and the old translations are no longer valid. Can a Spanish speaker go to Template:PD-AR-Photo/i18n and help translate this template. Previous version which likely can be altered to match the current English text can be found at Template:PD-AR-Photo/es. Thanks in advance. Jarekt (talk) 18:34, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

To-do list created

Per a comment at phab:, I have created Commons:Very large files to upload (COM:2UPLOAD, COM:VLF) to keep a running list of files that could be uploaded here were it not for technical limitations on file sizes. I did search ahead of time but did not see any other such list. Pardon me if I duplicated efforts. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:02, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't think storing such large files for mundane things where resolution is not important even if it wasn't mundane makes much sense. Thus, I already oppose the large file-size of those videos without being merged and think their size should be reduced and people asked to upload smaller-sized videos for such things where the current file-size limit now seems more reasonable seeing what people would upload if the limit was larger. I'm not referring to the "The Black Watch" film but the other files linked on that page. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:58, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
Agreed. Especially for files like File:CSD Hamburg 2022 001 part 1 of 26.webm - the solution for these video files is to downscale them to a more reasonable resolution and upload that. Hardware which can play back and display 8k (at ~140 Mbps!) video is essentially nonexistent, and Wikimedia's video transcoding services would probably choke on a single file of that size. (As it stands, some of these segments consumed over 24 hours of CPU time to transcode to other formats - for less than five minutes of video which isn't even referenced from any content pages.) Omphalographer (talk) 23:32, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
140 Mbps for 8K is actually rather low (Video cameras can take 8K with 400 Mbps, 600 Mbps or more), and there are many hardware products which are able to play files with these bitrates (I tested back in 2019 with an RTX 2080; the bitrate alone is not enough; it also plays a role what type of chroma subsampling, bit-depth, frame rate, color space and more it uses (4:0:0 or 4:4:4)). Furthermore, I assume that the device that captured in 8K is not able to catch that much details 8K would be able to --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:25, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
What I mean is that almost nobody has an 8K display to watch it on - even if you have a 4K monitor and you're viewing this video full screen (which, realistically, most users won't do), it's still being scaled down by 50%. Omphalographer (talk) 21:52, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Not necessarily. The internal resolution can be set to be 8K, and an original 8K video is played as such (so the whole bitstream must be decoded), but only screen output itself would be in 4K. The rendering process is not smaller --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:01, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't see the point of uploading 8K for news type videos. I could find it useful for content where we can zoom in (i.e. scientific, etc.), but a street parade? Yann (talk) 17:35, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
It has the same utility as uncompressed TIFF images or WAV audio that has frequencies that literally can't be heard. 8K video is not really useful for my purposes, but if someone is projecting a video on the side of a building, that's handy. If we think the content of a piece of media is valid, then the highest quality of that file seems obviously useful to me, particularly since the servers create downgraded versions of thumbnails and videos that can be used in cases where extremely high quality is not needed. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:52, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
I think using modern codecs like AV01 could reduce 8K videos a lot in filesize and preserving the higher quality, but it could take some time until this is mainstream procedure --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:27, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
There aren't that many TIFF images on here to begin with. It would be interesting to see how many of those files are even being used anywhere, or at least how many are being used in a way that can't be done just as well with a JPEG image. If I we're to guess TIFF is a fairly niche format that's hardly utilized by anyone looking for images on Commons. I can't even get them to load properly half the time myself. But I don't really see the point in having 8k videos on here if TIFF files aren't even loadable or being used by anyone at this point. There should at least be support of, and valid uses for, basic image formats on here before supporting high definition videos. Otherwise it's just putting the horse before the cart. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:28, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Steps to getting three images undeleted

Hello, I was looking at the page User_talk:Xeroporcellio, and I noticed three images they uploaded have been deleted. I noticed this after believing that File:Armadillidium atticum mating.jpg was a copyright violation, because it's marked as 'Own work' by Xeroporcellio but in fact is also on iNaturalist by the user agapakisgeorgios under a CC BY-NC license. However, I got in touch with agapakisgeorgios, who confirmed: "Xeroporcellio is the username I have in various forums. As a result, all these photos are uploaded by myself and there is no need for flagging." They further elaborated that I could link them to this account on their user page (I have done so) and that "I had in mind that they are both by default CC BY 4.0, but now I see that iNaturalist uses CC BY-NC 4.0." Thus, while 100% understandable, I believe these removals were done in error and that, if possible, these three images should be reinstated. These are truly this user's own work and were only licensed off-site under a noncommercial license by accident. A link to a screenshot of our conversation (this image will expire after three days) can be found here as verification. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 05:44, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

@TheTechnician27: Commons:Undeletion requests. Otherwise you can ask a random admin. Doing an undeletion request is probably the better way to go about it though. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:31, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
And I would recommend that you copy that PNG to somewhere it won't disappear after three days. - Jmabel ! talk 18:08, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Problems with Double MetaCat template

I started a deletion request for Template:Double MetaCat a while ago at Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Double MetaCat and there seemed to be enough support to delete it at the time. @Bastique: subsequently decided to close the DR as keep because the template is involved in so many things and I supposedly didn't layout a clear enough way to deal with it.

There's many reasons why the template is clearly problematic though. Just to a name a few, it's placing a bunch of categories in Category:Countries by city by country that have nothing to do with "countries by city by country" for unclear reasons. Not to mention the whole idea of a category system based on "countries by country" is totally nonsensical to begin with. The same goes for similar categories that it's using like Category:Countries by color by country. There's also Category:Countries by city by year, which it seems to be populating with subcategories for states by year for some reason. It also populates non-exiting categories like Category:Buildings by function by condition for reasons that don't really make sense either.

Anyway, the template is clearly a problem. But I guess it can't be deleted without a clear way to do so and I'm not seeing a way to do it without a lot of work and creating a bunch of red links. The template is extremely complicated and the original creator doesn't seem to know how to fix it themselves. So I'm wondering what other options exist for dealing with it outside of just letting it continue causing issues. So is there someone on here who can rewrite the template to fix things or does anyone have another idea about how to deal with it? Adamant1 (talk) 07:34, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that template certainly looks more complicated than it needs to be. If we're going to keep it, it would be good to remove some of the functionality.
If we want to eliminate the template, maybe the effort could start by identifying the categories where the template causes problems and replacing the template with hardcoded things. Some of these cases might use {{AutoDMC}}. Category:AutoDMC double meta categories even has a note that says that template might give "wrong or garbage parameters to" to {{DMC}}. To me, that says that the template isn't ready to be used. Maybe we could start cleanup efforts with use of the auto template. -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:59, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Stepping back a bit, I think part of the problem here isn't just {{DMC}} itself, but also that most of the categories it's used in tend to fall into a couple of common, frequently overlapping, patterns:
This all feels like we're slicing the same files into dozens of different categories based on different combinations of properties it has. There's got to be some better way to handle this without this explosion of categories - the fact that DMC is needed at all is a symptom. Omphalographer (talk) 00:01, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't disagree with that. From what can tell all of these categories are multiple subcats deep before you get to anything meaningful. So at the end of the day most, if not all, of the top level categories as well as the subcats are meaningless trivia that aren't actually useful beyond being created by the template for whatever reason. Its questionable a lot of these categories would be created or retained to begin with if not for the template. I'm not sure how to deal with it outside of getting rid of template though. Since I think it will just recreate the categories. There's really no consensus to not have an explosion of categories either. People seem to be perfectly fine with this this type obtuse nonsense in general. So I'm not really sure how to deal with it outside of getting rid of the template and then fixing whatever issues that might cause afterwords. Its a screwed up situation without a simple solution either way though. I thought about doing a couple of thousand CfDs for every subcat but that's clearly a non-starter lol. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:32, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Is it possible to change/remove information in metadata?

Hi, I noticed by chance that some files I uploaded some years ago accidentally has my personal name in their meta data. I'm not very comfortable with that, and I cannot see that it actually adds anything of importance to the file, so I am wondering if it is possible to somehow change or remove this information? I've been trying to find the answer already by searching on my own but couldn't find an answer, but apologies beforehand if I am cluttering this forum with already well-known issues. Thanks beforehand anyway, Yakikaki (talk) 16:42, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

upload it to imgur and download and then upload here. very easy to do it and higher resolution compared to other solutions. @Yakikaki modern_primat ඞඞඞ ----TALK 17:06, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
☝️that was about removing, if you just remove your name or camera model you can do it on your OS. for example win 10. just check specifications and do it. i dont know too much about that so i suggest you to research about this solution. + with this way no loss for resolution. modern_primat ඞඞඞ ----TALK 17:08, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
@Yakikaki: Assuming it's a JPEG file and you're looking at the "Metadata" section on the image page, what you need to do is to upload a new version of the file with the Exif data suitably modified. See Commons:Exif for a list of potentially useful editing tools. Once you've uploaded the new version, you can ask for the old one to be deleted. Commons:Revision deletion might be relevant, but I'd just go for sticking a speedy deletion template at the top with a clear note that you only want the old version deleted. Something like {{SD|G7|Please delete ONLY the oldest version, which has inappropriate personal information in the metadata}}. If the data are so private that you don't want to draw attention like that, you might want to contact the Commons:Oversighters instead. --bjh21 (talk) 17:20, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Or if you have anything like a working relationship with some admin, provide that admin with a list of the files that need this.
You give no indication here whether this is, like, a dozen files or hundreds. If it's only a dozen or so, feel free to email me the list once you've uploaded the versions without the problematic metadata. - Jmabel ! talk 18:18, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, I'll do that. It's just a few files. Yakikaki (talk) 20:38, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Discussion about "cast members" categories

I started a CfD on this topic here. Considering the scope of the discussion (it would affect more than 300 subcats), and the fact that previous discussions on this topic went stale, I'd like to draw a bit more attention to it. ReneeWrites (talk) 21:00, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Old men wearing vests

Hi, I have found this strange category — Category:Old men wearing vests — which seems to be dedicated for photos of Modi. I'm no expert but I feel like this should contain other examples to be useful? Given that it is for one person I feel like it is redundant and could be deleted Carlinmack (talk) 14:16, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

1946 BBC programme

The oldest television programme on the BBC's iPlayer (possibly not available outside the UK, at least without a VPN) is First-year Flashbacks, a compilation of clips marking the anniversary of the resumption of transmissions after WWII.

Some questions:

  1. Can we determine which clips - if not the whole programme - are no longer in copyright in the UK?
  2. Would that include the sound, or just images?
  3. When does the content fall out of copyright in the US?
  4. Do we have someone with the video chops (not my forte!) to edit them into stand alone files? At the very least, the modern intro would need to be removed.

I'm happy to assist with metadata and descriptions, if someone can do the latter. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:07, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Out of copyright in the UK is complex; COM:UK is life+70, and the best I can find for film is Copyright law of the European Union: "For films and other audiovisual works, the 70-year period applies from the last death among the following people, whether or not they are considered to be authors of the work by the national law of the Member State: the principal director (who is always considered to be an author of the audiovisual work), the author of the screenplay, the author of the dialogue and the composer of music specifically created for use in the cinematographic or audiovisual work." That would include the whole video.
Out of copyright in the US is also complex, but for different reasons. It's 95 years from publication, and transmission is not publication. If they weren't first published before 2002, they could be life+70. Clearest form of publication would be by sale of physical copies, on 35mm, VHS, or DVD. CopyrightData lists several cases where broadcast programs were deemed not to be published, so I don't know what would exactly be publication before sale of actual copies.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:33, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Discrepancy

On File:CDGexpSchema.jpg, this message appeared "There is a discrepancy of 1815 meters between the above coordinates and the ones stored at SDC (49°0′36″N 2°32′53″E, precision: 11 m). Please reconcile them."

On this file the coodinates are the terminal of a train, perhaps the bot refers to the airport itself. How to reconcile that ? --Io Herodotus (talk) 20:19, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Both should use a point roughly at the centre of the line. SDC has separate properties for the coordinates of the end points. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:55, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
I'm not sure if I understand you. What line are you talking about ? At the moment there is no link between this file and the airport. Io Herodotus (talk) 23:04, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
@Io Herodotus: The railway line. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:07, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
We are talking about a railway line and an airport. I choose the terminal of the railway line which is different from the SDC of the airport. Anyway the SDC has been removed. Io Herodotus (talk) 21:23, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Revert the bot, it should come back and fix the SDC. In principle, there is interface for fixing the coordinates in SDC manually, but I did not figure out how to use it, for me the "save" button is not clickable. Reverting the bot is easier. Ymblanter (talk) 12:45, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
Apparently this bot is looking for airport data? Why and how is it doing this? Io Herodotus (talk) 14:14, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
To be honest, I do not understand which data the boot took. @Schlurcher and Multichill: can one of you explain this to us please? Ymblanter (talk) 16:11, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
A map with a camera location????
@Ymblanter: In this case the map seems to be using {{Location}} which seems quite incorrect. Multichill (talk) 21:20, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
I see, thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 21:35, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
Updating the coordinates manually in the Structured Data tab works for me, but depends on the internet browser: Firefox no, Edge yes. Has not been fixed for a very long time now... --HyperGaruda (talk) 11:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
I have indeed Firefox. Ymblanter (talk) 19:08, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Public Domain Image Archive launched

From our good friends at the Public Domain Review: https://pdimagearchive.org/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:28, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Well, good luck to them, but they claim "10,046 out-of-copyright works" We have more PD works from the UK alone. Do they have anything we don't? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:21, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by You for Me and Me for You

One user nominated the photos without explaining what rules they were breaking, I told him they what they were, he didn't respond, and now they get deleted? I don't understand this. The pictures were valid. There are hundreds of variations of the flags which are allowed on here, such as this one. But no, an altered hammer and sickle to be viewable from the size of a flagicon in an infobox is unacceptable. You for Me and Me for You (talk) 19:37, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

@You for Me and Me for You: the nominator referred to the "rules they were breaking" as "Out of scope". A courtesy link to Commons:Scope would have probably come in handy. Fictional flags (except notable/famous ones) tend to be seen as non-educational, hence probably the deletion. --HyperGaruda (talk) 21:48, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
Okay, but the Soviet flag was useful. You for Me and Me for You (talk) 22:41, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
@You for Me and Me for You: Then please see COM:REFUND.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:28, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Upload multiple files

Hello.

The upload form doesn't allow upload multiple files.

Please repair this bug.

Thanks.

--ComputerHotline (talk) 07:34, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

It's a known bug, see this topic and this page. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:13, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

St Marylebone and East Finchley cemeteries

Is Category:St Marylebone Cemetery the same cemetery as Category:East Finchley Cemetery? On OSM as far as I can tell, all the photos of the former (which is East Finchley Cemetery (Q1277838)) are located in the latter (which doesn't have a Wikidata item). Is St Marylebone Cemetery a part of East Finchley Cemetery, or is it an older/alternative name for the same place? Sam Wilson 12:55, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

de:East Finchley Cemetery and en:East Finchley Cemetery suggest that it is the same cemetery, opened in 1854/1855 as St Marylebone Cemetery, and that the name was changed to East Finchley Cemetery in 1965. --Rosenzweig τ 19:43, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
@Rosenzweig: Thanks! I'm not sure why I didn't go and check the Wikipedia articles. :-) I'll merge them to Category:East Finchley Cemetery. Sam Wilson 22:45, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

de:Datei:Stater Agathokles Wien-2.jpg

I'm wondering why this file can't be imported from de.wiki to commons. It is a photo of an ancient coin, which was published in 1903 (122 years ago) in a book by George Hill, who died in 1948 (77 years ago). But when I try to use the "import to commons" function, the import is denied. Furius (talk) 16:57, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

You'll have to tweak the license template a bit to be able to transfer it to Commons. I've transferred the file to Commons, same file name. --Rosenzweig τ 17:19, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Which station in France?

This is a French electric train of the Nord region (TER Nord-Pas-de-Calais logo), but I cant place the station. I looks very similar to Brussel South station (the modern westside with a roof, but this cant be it.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:24, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Is it possible that back then the TER network had trains running all the way into Belgium, meaning this is really a French train in Brussels? --HyperGaruda (talk) 22:13, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Very unlikely as this would have been big news in railhobby circles. Technicaly it is also a problem. These French trains run on 25 kV alternate current, While in Brussels it is 3000 V direct current. There are no known international bicurrent versions. The train control systems are also very different. Theoreticaly it could be an exposition or transfer train, not under its own power.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:48, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Possible loss of file meta information when deleting duplicate or redundant files

Just a question. When we look at the duplicate or redundant file deletion policy, here and here, it's said that the file must not be in use, and any existing usages can be replaced by the new file if the project’s policies are met. The best quality file is always the one to be preserved, but, what about the quality of the information in the file's pages? What if the file with lower resolution is the one with the best description page? The thing is even more serious for duplicates, since they can be speedy deleted. Very useful information about the file can be lost if a good description is replaced by a worse one. The problem is even worse if one of the files has poor references to the author, the source, its license, is missing an attribution or license review template, etc, since this could cause to eventually lose both versions of the file. Yes, I'm doing my paranoid job again, but it's also a needed job :-). Maybe before deletion of duplicate and redundant files, the administrator always carefully reviews the file page (and its history) and takes care to move the missing parts to the page of the file that is to remain, but perhaps some improvement would be convenient here. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:59, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

When I do a redirect like this, I always try to merge relevant Commons metadata first. That is certainly what I recommend, but not everyone is that careful. - Jmabel ! talk 18:11, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
@Jmabel, thanks for taking care of it. That sounds like something should probably be done to improve this. A policy to focus attention on that when this type of deletion is performed would be good. But the main issue here is to avoid losing publicly visible history. That is, if, for example, a vandal removes content of a description, that old content remains publicly accessible to power users who view the history, and could be easily restored even years later. When a file is deleted, all its history is gone from public view. Categorization and license information may be gone. Could the history of a file deleted as a duplicate or redundant be kept visible as a kind of “parallel history” from the file that is kept? I think this is highly convenient: deletion of duplicate and reduntant files should be more of a "merge" than a true deletion. Could this functionality be asked to WMF? MGeog2022 (talk) 19:07, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Or at least a clear notice of the type "this file once had a duplicate/redundant file under the name XYZ. Don't delete it as copyvio before checking the deleted duplicate file first", to make sure that a file with full attribution and license information cannot be lost due to a silly thing like someone uploading a slightly higher quality version, but not paying attention to those details, and that “increase in quality” resulting in the destruction of the file. I think it is very unfortunate that this could happen without being able to prevent it. MGeog2022 (talk) 19:21, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
@MGeog2022: I think it is very rare that anything like that arises. Do you have even two examples of where you think that might have happened? - Jmabel ! talk 19:27, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
@Jmabel, I don't have even one, but better to be safe than sorry. I'm not thinking about bad things that necessarily happened, but that the current operating mode allows to happen. Certainly we have very good things in place to prevent problems, but more can always be done. User 1 converts a SVG or PDF to PNG (the SVG or PDF is never uploaded to Commons). User 2 converts it to WebP, with less size and more quality, but doesn't cite source (for example, the typical case of selecting "own work" when it isn't). The PNG is deemed redundant and is deleted. Then, the WebP is nominated for deletion as "copyvio - not own work". That's a formidable way to potentially destroy a file that we were considering very safe to remain here. MGeog2022 (talk) 19:42, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
This concern is far from hypothetical. I've seen multiple cases where good metadata was carelessly discarded in the deletion of a duplicate file. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:15, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing, @Jmabel, at least, I think the point "If there are varying descriptions in the different image description pages, ensure all the relevant information is merged into the copy to be preserved" should also be included in the official policy for redundant files, not only duplicates, to ensure that it is always an official policy not to be breached. But I maintain that history of the "merged" (removed) duplicate or redundant files should remain visible. I'd have made a proposal for this, but, from past experiences, I have very low faith that it would succeed. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:32, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Well, trying to comfort me with what we have, PNG and JPEG files have very different purposes, and any good file in one of those formats is usually very unlikely to be replaced by one in the other. Any file taken at full resolution from the original source, will never be replaced by another better one in the same format. When reading the deletion policy, I had some kind of WebP paranoia, because it's a format that allows smaller files than both PNG and JPEG, with the same quality (it allows both lossy and lossless compression), but WebP files, at least for the moment, seem to be a very rarely chosen option in Commons (0.0339% of files). Even if they become more widespread, having a smaller WebP file with the same content as an existing PNG or JPEG, probably won't be enough to delete a years old file only because of that, and the file deemed to be redundant would be the newer, WebP file. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:35, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

After reading the title of this section, I thought it was about loosing the EXIF, XMP, IPTC metadata of a file. But reading through the section, this does not even seem to be considered at all. --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 17:34, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Tips on scanning books

Do we have a guide for people who want to scan and upload books, on how to do the former, well? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:06, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Hi Pigsonthewing, we have Help:Scanning and Help:Converting. --Ratekreel (talk) 10:39, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Useful but well hidden; thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:30, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Date of work

Am I the only one who hates having to spell out the date when a photo was taken when I upload it? Whose idea was this? We got on perfectly well without it, and I've been here 18 years. Sardaka (talk) 10:23, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

A lot of modern digital photographs will have the time and date in the metadata, in which case the date is already filled in when you upload it to Commons. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:42, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
There's also a calendar picker, so the date does not need to be "spelled out". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:32, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Your earliest upload, in October 2007, included the "spelled out" date (indeed, it did so twice, the second time completely unnecessarily). So "We got on perfectly well without it" seems to be false. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:35, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Plates

What is the distinction between Category:Decorative plates and Category:Plates? Is the former for plates that are purely decorative, or is it intended to include plates that are decorated, but serve a function as tableware? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:42, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

That's the impression I get based on the Wikidata infobox, etc.: a plate is a general device and decorative plates are a subset of them. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:05, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I asked "Is it A or B", you sad "yes". I can't make sense of that. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:08, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Excuse me: I misread what you wrote. I believe that "decorative plates" are ones that are purely decorative and not fit for use as serving plates. I do not believe they are plates which may be used for serving food. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:13, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I agree with Koavf about the intent of the categories, except that of course almost any plate can be used for serving, so the line isn't totally clear. If it's old enough, even a lead-based glaze isn't proof it was never intended for serving.
Often, but not always, decorative plates are made with a protrusion on the back with a pair of small holes to hold a wire or string for the specific purpose of attaching the plate to a wall. - Jmabel ! talk 02:54, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

crosspost from en-wiki: plans by the Heritage Foundation to "identify and target" wiki editors

Flagging this discussion on enwiki about some reporting by The Forward, with a leaked Powerpoint, indicating that the Heritage Foundation (a US-based conservative organization) plans to "identify and target" -- i.e., out/dox -- wiki editors active in certain political topics. (I'm sure you can guess which ones, this isn't meant to be a political discussion but an opsec one.)

The relevance to Commons is that some of those plans including cross-referencing usernames across platforms, and running facial recognition software against people's photos. Given that we host many meetup photos as well as photos of users, and other associated data, this is a potential ticking time bomb of a security risk.

Granted I have no idea what a concrete actionable solution here is -- besides adding any malicious/IP-grabbing links to the spam blacklist -- but I wanted to bring it to people's attention, maybe someone reading this could be affected, maybe someone can think of something I can't. Gnomingstuff (talk) 17:10, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't currently participate at en.wp but I am willing to help editors on any other WMF wiki who for some reason may want to post sensitive information or are afraid of being a target of these reactionary chuds. I welcome their hatred. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:23, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
I think the main message for now is that it is good that we are very careful with granting bureaucrat, checkuser and oversight rights. With the technical fingerprinting mentioned we might need to block known external domains from being linked. GPSLeo (talk) 19:35, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
If I was the heritage fooundation, I would start by downloading the MW archive at dumps.wikimedia.org. Therefore I see no point in blocking IPs. This may actually be counter productive. Wikipedia is written with a cc-by-sa license and this license says you are not allowed to use technical barriers to block people from downloading the licensed content. Doing it never the less would open a way to the Heritage foundation to sue WMF to get access to the information.
Starting from 20th the new president or his DOGE watchdog can effectivly force the WMF to give US government bureaucrat, checkuser and oversight rights. AFAIK US law allows this to be done in secret.
WMF could stop to record the IP numbers of people editing MW and they can move the WMF out of the US, but otherwise the identity of people editing MW (at least in the US but probably everywhere in five eyes territory) must be considered known to friends of US government. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 17:48, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
No, the president is limited in what they can force WMF to do. See McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U.S. 334 (1995) ("The freedom to publish anonymously is protected by the First Amendment, and, as Talley indicates, extends beyond the literary realm to the advocacy of political causes.") and NAACP v. Alabama (1958) ("We hold that the immunity from state scrutiny of membership lists which the Association claims on behalf of its members is here so related to the right of the members to pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others in so doing as to come within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment.") And the WMF will have the ACLU and EFF aggressively on their side. I have a hard time believing that this would push this button right off the top; courts are not going to be thrilled with such a hostile intrusion into privacy of random Americans.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:09, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Not just Americans, I think. They could collect data from non-American wiki editors, and, if they are really hostile, forward the data to non-democratic regimes. Imagine they'd send data about Saudi Arabian editors to the Saudi Arabian state: those wiki editors might end up in prison because of the heritage foundation (or face even more severe consequences for editing wikis). Nakonana (talk) 16:08, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Day categories hidden

Why are categories like Category:1936-01-28 hidden? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:35, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Probably because of this change. At least I guess so. --Rosenzweig τ 19:39, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank you. I know how they are hidden; my question was why. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:03, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: I added the hiddencat template to be consistent with Template:Photographs taken on navbox and Template:Country photographs taken on. There has been some discussion (and edit warring) about the hiddencat in the past in the first template, you can find a bit more about that in the template's edit history and on the talk page. A number of comments reference an even older discussion, but I don't know when or where that one was held. ReneeWrites (talk) 23:31, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Why on earth do you think the day categories need to be consistent with those templates? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:29, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
They're all templates that pertain to dates down to the specific day, one for each country and one for pictures that have a date but not a location. These were already hidden, so it made sense for me for the parent category to be hidden as well. ReneeWrites (talk) 17:35, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't agree. I don't agree that the categories emitted by the templates need to be hidden. Nor does the (scant) discussion you referred to show any consensus that they need to be hidden. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:40, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I was here to explain my reasoning. I saw a bunch of templates that do roughly the same thing, two of them were hidden, one was not, so I made the third one hidden too. I didn't make the original decision and I'm not here to argue about that. If you feel so strongly that the hiddencat should be removed then you can just do that.
I'm also not going to continue this conversation. You've taken on a condescending tone from the jump for no discernible reason. ReneeWrites (talk) 19:01, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I think it should be undone. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:56, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I concur. Date-categories have little to do with "photographs-by-date" categories.
Dates are used to categorize all sorts of events besides "I took a photo at that time": Dates are used to document festivals, demonstrations, battles, treaties, elections... I still hope that we will eventually use them to sort newspapers that were published on given dates.
Hiding these categories will make people think that nobody should categorize stuff by dates. --Enyavar (talk) 08:19, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I have reverted the edit. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:23, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Broken file link on Anna Karenina title page

File:AnnaKareninaTitle.jpg

I'm hoping someone can fix this as I don't know how to. The largest file size (1994x3200) for this Anna Karenina title page has a broken link that prevents the file from loading. The correct file link is https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/AnnaKareninaTitle.jpg/1994px-AnnaKareninaTitle.jpg

--ThePinkShoes (talk) 22:13, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence

Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:38, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

We seem to have two categories:

Is there any reason for there being two categories, or is this just a mistake? I'm unsure what the difference between them is supposed to be. --Stefan2 (talk) 11:48, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

They're duplicate categories. Sometimes people make a second category by accident. Are you okay with them being merged, with Category:Chapelle du Rosaire (Vence) being the main one (as it's more than a decade older) and the newer one being turned in a category redirect? ReneeWrites (talk) 16:20, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
@Stefan2: Forgot to ping. ReneeWrites (talk) 16:25, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
To me it looks as if the categories are dupes which should be merged. I have no opinion on which title to use. Just make sure that Wikidata points at the correct one. --Stefan2 (talk) 20:06, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
✓ Done ReneeWrites (talk) 13:38, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Censored by lack of FOP / blacked out relying on FOP categories

I suggest major harmonization of the categories that related to censoring or blurring of copyrighted works in public spaces (due to no-FoP rules of those countries), since categorizations are becoming inconsistent. My proposal:

Some discussion is needed. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 03:41, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary or useful to have separate categories for different styles of redaction (blacking-out, blurring, pixelation, cropping, strategically placed fingers, etc). The redaction isn't the subject of the image; the specific techniques used are entirely incidental to the image.
Having country-specific subcategories for FoP redactions is potentially useful for advocacy reasons. But let's not overdo it; these are basically maintenance categories, so we shouldn't be spending too much time setting up or maintaining them. Omphalographer (talk) 05:37, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
@Omphalographer perhaps limit to two categories per censored image (if the method used is blurring)? For example, one for Category:Censored by lack of FoP in Romania and the other for Category:Gaussian blurs by lack of FoP. No coutry-specific subcategories under Gaussian blur by lack of FoP to avoid overdoing and potential COM:SCOPE issues. We already have Category:Images with Gaussian blurs in Japan, though. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 06:01, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Or, since countries like Germany and China have FoP, but we have images of blurred/blacked-out images from these countries, suggest to rename "Censored by lack of FoP" to "Censored versions of images relying on FoP" (and "Censored versions of images relying on FoP in Germany/in China/in France et cetera). Then, abolish category instances of "blacked-out versions of images...". JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 06:10, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Closing this thread now. All discussion will continue at Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/11/Category:Censored by lack of FOP.
This section was archived on a request by: 06:07, 21 January 2025 (UTC) JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 06:07, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Printing photographs on ceramics

For File:Bucharest - 9 Strada Colței storefronts.jpg I was looking for (and failing to find) a category about printing photographs on ceramics. I'm guessing it would belong somewhere under Category:Photographic processes, but looking at the categories there I can't readily find even an appropriate place to add such a thing. - Jmabel ! talk 04:27, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Given that in Central Europe this is something of an industry, I'm really surprised not to find anything. - Jmabel ! talk 04:27, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Category:De minimis

Category:De minimis

Files are automatically placed into this category by placing a template. Is there any process used to determine these files actually "de minimis" or can any user tag a file as de minimis? Also, are these files subject to a deletion request, if they appear not to be de minimis? Thanks, -- Ooligan (talk) 22:37, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

@Ooligan: There's no process, as with any other user-applied template, it's based on the user's best judgment - which can be lacking. Yes, you can start a deletion request if you find de minimis doesn't apply to some of these files. ReneeWrites (talk) 23:14, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank for your prompt response. Best regards, -- Ooligan (talk) 23:52, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Launching! Join Us for Wiki Loves Ramadan 2025!

Dear All,

We’re happy to announce the launch of Wiki Loves Ramadan 2025, an annual international campaign dedicated to celebrating and preserving Islamic cultures and history through the power of Wikipedia. As an active contributor to the Local Wikipedia, you are specially invited to participate in the launch.

This year’s campaign will be launched for you to join us write, edit, and improve articles that showcase the richness and diversity of Islamic traditions, history, and culture.

To get started, visit the campaign page for details, resources, and guidelines: Wiki Loves Ramadan 2025.

Add your community here, and organized Wiki Loves Ramadan 2025 in your local language.

Whether you’re a first-time editor or an experienced Wikipedian, your contributions matter. Together, we can ensure Islamic cultures and traditions are well-represented and accessible to all.

Feel free to invite your community and friends too. Kindly reach out if you have any questions or need support as you prepare to participate.

Let’s make Wiki Loves Ramadan 2025 a success!

For the International Team 12:08, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

How do I create a playlist

I have a few audio files that I liked. How do I save them as a playlist under my account, without needing to download them to my computer and setup playlist locally? Gryllida (talk) 22:32, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I am not aware that the repository Commons offer such a capability. Is is not Spotify or YouTube, which are dedicated streaming services - a repository is more akin to a warehouse and not comparable to a radio station. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 22:38, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
You can create a Wikiradio playlist. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:32, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
@Gryllida: It's not ideal but you can create a personal gallery in your user space with links to the files and organize it as a playlist. The files should be playable directory in the gallery without having to open them individually in separate browser windows or something. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:11, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
Another question: how can I download multiple files from search results? Gryllida (talk) 07:45, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Commons:Download tools. RoyZuo (talk) 16:40, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Do we have tool that will run OCR on pdf files and store the text in the PDF

Do we have access to a tool that will run OCR on pdf files and store the text in the PDF. Adobe Acrobat does it but only in the paid version. --RAN (talk) 00:23, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): Not that I know of, but we do have https://ocr.wmcloud.org/ which can OCR individual pages and is integrated into Wikisource. Is there a reason you want the text to be added to the PDF, rather than transcribing it on Wikisource? Sam Wilson 01:30, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
ia-upload.wmcloud.org OCRs the works it uploads from the Internet Archive to Commons.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:01, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
ia-upload doesn't actually do the OCR, it relies on IA doing that and then copies over the PDF or DjVu with the text layer. But yeah, that's a good way to get a PDF here with a text layer! Sam Wilson 05:38, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
  • I want both, I transcribe at Wikisource, but I like the embedded text. That's why there are more djvu files at Commons, they also embed ASCII text. --RAN (talk) 03:38, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
    @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): The issue is that the embedded text will never be corrected. Won't that be annoying? I know there are ideas (e.g. phab:T59807) to make it easier to write Wikisource text back into DjVu (or PDF) files, but nothing currently exists for that. I think the main reason there are more DjVu files on Commons (because the text-embedding capabilities of PDF are similar, as far as we use them) is that the IA used to generate them and so it was easy to copy them there. Sam Wilson 05:48, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
The reason there's more DjVu files on Commons is that they're a little less cranky than PDFs at Wikisource. I can't speak to any specific problems, and it's not impossible they're fixed, but by legend and lore, DjVu is better, so when I'm using ia-upload, I go for DjVu. I don't know exactly what ia-upload is doing, but it's not simply copying the files from IA, since IA doesn't produce DjVu anymore. It may be taking the IA OCR data and using that instead of OCRing the images itself.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:18, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
@Prosfilaes: It takes the IA's JPEG2000 files, and the DjVu XML (that they still produce) and combines them to make a DjVu for uploading here. Sam Wilson 13:48, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Wrong coordinates

Is there a template to tag photos that have the wrong coordinates? Or should I just delete them? File:Peace Keeping (133376943).jpeg thinks it's located inside a cinema. Of course, it might just be that it's overly precise. Should I add e.g. |prec=1000? Sam Wilson 13:47, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I couldn't find a template for incorrect locations, the closest thing I could find was a category to put them in (though this is a category that automatically adds media if there's an error in the location template, files aren't typically added manually). You could maybe use Template:Location rounded to indicate it's an estimated location rather than a precise one. ReneeWrites (talk) 16:46, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
There is also {{Location estimated}}
If the coords are blatantly wrong (e.g. probably not with 100km), just delete them.
We probably should create a template for "I don't believe the location here."
We could also work out a way to better use the precision already theoretically supported by the geocoding templates, but poorly used. - Jmabel ! talk 22:05, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
@Jmabel and ReneeWrites: Thanks both of you, those are good suggestions. I think a specific template could be useful (I've come across others like this). I'm always slightly wary of just deleting the coords as it is likely that they're at least within the right city or region (and probably relating to a GPS not getting a new fix after being driven to a new location or something — although the same applies to arrival photos at airports that can sometimes get the coords from the place of departure…). For this one, I've moved the wrong coords to a comment about them being wrong. Sam Wilson 01:44, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Category:Bioregions 2023

I was looking through categories for geographical locations a while ago and happen to come across Category:Bioregions 2023. Apparently it's an attempt by a single user to categories things related to the earth based on some NGOs classification system for bioregions or something. Of course by putting "One Earth" in the name of every category. Honestly, I'm not really sure what the deal is outside of it looking like a weird attempt to replace exiting categories with ones containing the name "One Earth" to advertise the organization. At least that's my guess. Whatever the case, it looks like there's 3150 categories related to One Earth on here at this point. People can look through Category:Ecoregions by country (One Earth) to find plenty of examples. I'm not really sure what to do about it considering the scale. I feel like something should be done about it though. Anyone have any ideas or opinions? Adamant1 (talk) 19:45, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I brought this up with one of the users last year; you may want to review that discussion at User talk:Z3lvs#Regarding Category:One Earth and its subcategories. The use of "One Earth" in the category names is a legitimate way of distinguishing the categories from similar names which aren't part of this category system; that being said, I agree that it's a little unclear how (or if) this system is meant to integrate with other Commons categories. Omphalographer (talk) 20:20, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
@Omphalographer: The name "One Earth" clearly has to do with the organization of the same name (Category:One Earth). I really don't see how that's a legitimate way of disambiguating thousands of categories that at the end of the day have absolutely nothing to do with the organization. Categories that don't even seem to need disambiguating to begin with BTW. There's absolutely no reason what-so-ever that Category:List of Biomes (One Earth) needs to have "One Earth" in it. Category:Red Sea Mangroves Ecoregion was specifically deleted when it already exited just to add "One Earth" to the name. That's clearly not a legitimate reason to rename an exiting category. It serves no other purpose then advertising the organization. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:35, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Category:Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, Peralta de Alcofea

Good evening. On October 20th I created the category "Category:Church of Nuestra Sinyora de l'Asumpción, Peralta d'Alcofea" (actually Category:Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, Peralta de Alcofea) linked to article an:Ilesia de Nuestra Sinyora de l'Asumpción de Peralta d'Alcofeya, which does not exist in any other project. Today the name has been changed to Spanish "Category:Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, Peralta de Alcofea" (with advocating error included already solved) and when asking the author of the change the reason I have received inappropriate answers. I ask here for an explanation of the reason for changing the name of the category of an Aragonese church with an article only in the Aragonese Biquipedia to a name in Spanish. Greetings, RenatoGar (talk) 22:39, 14 January 2025 (UTC) P.S.: Given what has happened, this consultation will be my last contribution to Commons. RenatoGar (talk) 22:48, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

No particular opinion other than that it is completely irrelevant to Commons which language Wikipedias currently have an article. - Jmabel ! talk 04:15, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Now I understand why there are calls from Aragonese speakers on Twitter to boycott Wikimedia projects. Of course, I will never contribute to Commons, where I see my language being persecuted and blocked. It is clear that there is hatred against my language here. RenatoGar (talk) 08:25, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
@RenatoGar: I thought of just leaving that alone, but: could you (or anyone else) explain to me what in that policy you believe embodies "hatred" for Aragonese, or any other language? - Jmabel ! talk 20:42, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Aragonese is a language spoken in some regions in Spain where the Spanish have historically made attempts to exterminate it (by declaring Spanish to be the official language, and making it illegal to speak or teach Aragonese in schools). The Aragonese Biquipedia is, among other things, a language and culture preservation project. But Commons is an international project, and having the Aragonese name of an Aragonese church changed to Spanish (a colonizer language, in this context) and having seemingly no recourse to change it back might come across as Commons favoring Spanish over Aragonese. ReneeWrites (talk) 21:20, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, @ReneeWrites. You explain the role of Biquipedia very well.
@Jmabel It's simple. Can you explain why the category of an Aragonese church cannot be in Aragonese but in Spanish?. Why not in German, Russian, French or Portuguese? It seems obvious that in a multilingual project if an Aragonese creates an article about an Aragonese church in the Biquipedia in Aragonese and takes the trouble to create in Commons (multilingual project) the category of that church, he does it in Aragonese and does not find that it is changed to another language (and in the process wrongly naming the church as "Nuestra Señora de los Dolores"). The conclusion is obvious: the aim is to erase the presence of the Aragonese language in a project that is falsely advertised as multilingual. Only English and Spanish are accepted. Aragonese is erased. It always happens the same.
RenatoGar (talk) 21:55, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
@ReneeWrites: Yes, I fully understand that, but Pinging @ReneeWrites, RenatoGar, my remark specifically did not comment on the merits of the case, or say what Commons should do: I merely remarked that which Wikipedias have articles is not relevant to Commons in deciding category names. Are you somehow suggesting that when we made that decision a couple of decades ago we were targeting the Aragonese language? Or even that the policy advantages any particular language over another? That's absurd.
For the record: I would not have made this particular move of the category. Potentially controversial moves should not be made without a CfD. That is not what my remark was addressing, and in fact I hadn't even though that far when I made it. I specifically said I was expressing an opinion on only one aspect of it: that this particular criterion (which Wikipedias currently have articles on a given topic) is not relevant to naming categories.
If anyone including RenatoGar seriously sees my remarks as reflecting hate, please, bring it to COM:AN/U. I promise not to comment further (here or there) unless directly addressed and asked for a response. - Jmabel ! talk 22:04, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I did not mean to imply any hate or bias on your part, or even that of Commons itself, I only tried to explain the context of where RenatoGar was coming from, both with the original problem, why it's a problem, and why he got the impression Commons has a bias against minority languages. In any case, do you have any ideas for a sustainable solution? ReneeWrites (talk) 22:11, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
@Jmabel I don't consider your comments to be hate speech. I'm just stating a fact: a single category named in Aragonese in a multimedia project disappears to be replaced by a Spanish name. Would it be correct for me to rename the category "Madrid" in Spanish to "Madrit" in Aragonese? How would that behavior be classified?. If I did that, it would immediately be reverted and I would receive warnings for vandalism. But if it happens the other way around, it seems to be correct. The deduction is obvious: Aragonese is banned in Wikimedia Foundation projects. And I have publicized this on social networks. RenatoGar (talk) 22:23, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Category:Església de Sant Pere de Figueres in catalan, Category:Igreja e Convento de Santa Teresa in portuguese, Category:Église Saint-Pierre de Port-Saint-Père in french.... But the only one in Aragonese disappears. What message is being given to Aragonese speakers? That we will also disappear? Not long from now, our language is considered the language in Europe most in danger of disappearing. And facts like this explain why. I will do everything possible to spread these facts and to make them known to our small community of speakers. And to point out the de facto complicity of the Wikimedia Foundation in tolerating the erasure of my language. This is not a multilingual project since some languages ​​have rights and others are denied them. RenatoGar (talk) 22:35, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
I'm going to keep my response minimal, and would not be making it unless I had been directly addressed. I have already said (in my immediately previous round of remarks here) that I think the move was not correct, at least not without a discussion. In my first remark, I was simply stating, and will reiterate: in naming Commons categories, it does not matter which Wikipedias do or do not have an articles on a particular topic, so that particular line of argument is not relevant to the case.
No "message" is being sent, but I have no means to stop you from construing one. - Jmabel ! talk 22:59, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
It will also be brief: there is a clear and evident message and that is how the Aragonese-speaking community on Twitter is interpreting it. RenatoGar (talk) 23:12, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
To which the main loser seems to be the Aragonese-speaking community. They can work with us or not, but the only way to improve Wikimedia Aragonese support is to have a little patience and work with other people.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:10, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Patience? We receive insults, harassment, complaints, deletions and even death threats. All for editing in the Aragonese Biquipedia. And the answer is always: shut up and don't bother. Patience, they say?..... RenatoGar (talk) 00:28, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I've received much of the same for editing in certain areas on here. That's just how it goes with these types of projects. Their usually extremely good at policing mundane non-issues but actual, real problems are just ignored or handwaved and the user who complains about it is the one who usually ends up getting sanctioned. A lot of the non-English language Wikis are extremely niche and being used purely by neo-Nazis to spread nationalist propaganda anyway. The best thing to do is just move on to other things and not work in that area or on the same project again. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:00, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Are you saying that those of us who work on projects in languages ​​other than English are neo-Nazis? Have I understood correctly?... I see that with the answers I receive, I will have to look for other solutions outside the projects of this foundation. Accusing speakers of languages ​​other than English of being neo-Nazis is mind-boggling... Look, at Biquipedia we are dedicated to creating content in our Aragonese language. With very good results, since we are the Wikipedia with the best ratio of articles per speaker. In my case, dedicated especially to writing articles about architectural buildings from around the world and about cinema, I don't see how that can be used to talk about "nationalist propaganda" or "neo-Nazism". RenatoGar (talk) 07:46, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
@RenatoGar: It was just a general comment based on my own experience. Don't take it personally. Have you read many articles on the Russian language Wikipedia though? It's clearly being used to spread nationalist propaganda. Not with all articles of course, but I'm not going to act like it isn't an issue. I'm sure plenty of non-English language Wikis are totally fine though. Which is why I didn't say "every" non-English Wiki is being used for propaganda. So don't misconstrue my comment. The more important and on topic thing here is that it's probably not worth worrying about how your being treated for editing in the Aragonese Biquipedia since it's just par for the course with a lot of Wikimedia projects. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:07, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I understand your point of view and I share it in part. But what I am saying in this thread is not that I have been mistreated in Biquipedia (on the contrary, there is a magnificent and productive work environment) but that what is being pursued is the use of the Aragonese language in Commons, transferring a category created in the Aragonese language about an Aragonese church to the Spanish language. And when I ask the author why, he tells me not to bother. The result is the suppression of Aragonese in this project, in which there are languages ​​with rights and languages ​​without rights, such as Aragonese. And all this with the silent endorsement of the community of Commons users and of the Wikimedia Foundation itself. RenatoGar (talk) 14:44, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
People just like to fiddle with things on here sometimes. At least in this case it looks like the rename was based on a source. Although probably not the best one, but I wouldn't anymore into it then that. You could probably just rename the category back to Aragonese though since it likes there's agreement that it should have at least been discussed first. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:50, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Understood. Well, if no one objects, I will soon transfer the category to its name in Aragonese. Thanks, RenatoGar (talk) 17:36, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
You're not going to change nothing unless you take sources that prove that the official name is in the Aragonese language. You can tease people not familiar with Aragon, but the funny thing is that even the local sources that you yourself gave me don't prove that the real name is in the Aragonese language. Even the Aragonese official board of heritage it does not mention that the name is in Aragonese language. That's enough. CFA1877 (talk) 18:59, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Whatever the specific details are you shouldn't have unilaterally changed it without discussion before hand since it looks like both names are used about equally by reliable sources. So at least IMO the edit needs to be reverted and you should start a CfD. Not to speak for other users, but that seems to be the consensus here. I don't see why you'd care if your version is actually the "correct" one anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:12, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
What you are saying is not true. The name in the Aragonese language is an adhoc translation made by RenatoGar, it is not officially used. As I have already said, not even the local sources that he provided reflect the name in the Aragonese language. Some are official Aragonese sources. If you are going to take part for someone, at least inform yourself about the matter and don't just believe what one party says. I corrected my own [original] name change and put the one reflected in the sources that Renato gave me, which do not reflect it in the Aragonese language. It is not my version, you can check it at the heritage office of the government of Aragon (here), at the Ministry of Culture of Spain (here) or at the local tourist office (here). Or even on this website specialized in Aragonese Romanesque architecture (here). CFA1877 (talk) 19:32, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
@Adamant1, @Jmabel, @Prosfilaes, @ReneeWrites: Please see the kind of comments that we Aragonese speakers constantly receive. Do you understand why we say that there is hatred for our language? The three links that this user publishes were provided by me and correspond to pages written in Spanish, not in Aragonese (if I provide him with texts in Aragonese I know perfectly well that he will refuse to read them, we all know each other here, outside of Spain they don't know them yet), therefore the place names are in Spanish. If they were pages in English, the place name would be in English. And if they were in Chinese, in Chinese. But anyway, the answer is always: shut up and let your language not exist in Commons or anywhere else, we already know that the existence of a small language of 10,000 speakers is highly offensive to Spanish ultranationalists who want to erase the existence of that tiny language even in the places where it is spoken. Anyway, I thank you for reading all this and I am sorry for wasting your time, you and I have wasted it, and of course, the Aragonese language always loses. Obviously, I will never upload an image to Commons, where my language is treated like this. Greetings, RenatoGar (talk) 20:00, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Wow, he even reported me. Incredible! RenatoGar (talk) 20:06, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
This is not about the official name but, for subjects without a traditional name in English, it's about the local name as used by the available sources. Official names are interesting because they often follow reliable sources, but Wikimedia projects are not official registers.
The original name of the category in Aragonese is fine and it shouldn't have been changed - and even less without previous discussion. Pere prlpz (talk) 13:30, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
There is a Wikipedia in Aragonese, and in this one, logically, there is the only article that exists about the church we are talking about. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Commons Category is also in Aragonese. And it is correct, as it would be if it were in Spanish or English! And, if it were correct, the change should not have been made. It should be returned to the original category.
CFA1877 I beg you to avoid these types of edits. Show a little more empathy and tolerance towards minority languages ​​and respect for the work done by the editors who have preceded us. We are all working for the same thing.--Isidre blanc (talk) 08:14, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Massive upload problems

Are other users also experiencing a massive amount of 503 errors or error messages like "lockmanager-fail-conflict" during upload? GPSLeo (talk) 09:52, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

There are several types of critical upload/publish errors. Afaik it is planned to be resolved until Wednesday --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:30, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Whisky ABV

I have begin to put images of whiskies and whisky bottles into subcategories of Category:Whiskies by alcohol by volume, like we do for beers.

Some of the values have one or even two decimal places; would it be best to keep these, or categorise by bands (e.g "42–42.99%")?

Either way, please help with the task. Sláinte! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:38, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Is the alcohol content of a whisk(e)y a property which is commonly used to differentiate between different types, like it is for beer, or is it primarily included on labels for regulatory reasons? Having separate categories for every distinct value certainly seems excessive, especially for something like 50% vs. 50.05%. Omphalographer (talk) 00:16, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
I seriously doubt the usefulness of this for Commons; it it is useful at all, I'd expect much wider bands than a single percent. - Jmabel ! talk 00:40, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

File:RotaryIncrementalEncoder.jpg appears as broken link in wp article

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T384128

File:RotaryIncrementalEncoder.jpg appears as a broken link in wp article Incremental_encoder, and on its commons page there is an "open in media viewer" button instead of the image. This used to appear normally in the article, but something has changed that broke it. Lambtron (talk) 18:56, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Update: On the image's commons page, where it says "Size of this preview: 800 × 583 pixels. Other resolutions: ...", when I click any size except the last option (largest) the server gives me a web page that says "Unauthorized | This server could not verify that you are authorized to access the document you requested." Lambtron (talk) 19:25, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

That's weird, I can't reproduce this issue, can you give the URL which produces this error? The domain should be upload.wikimedia.org. Dylsss (talk) 19:45, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Kinda looks like phab:T383053 but they aren't in f8. Dylsss (talk) 20:01, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/RotaryIncrementalEncoder.jpg/320px-RotaryIncrementalEncoder.jpg
Lambtron (talk) 20:16, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
@Lambtron Can you access https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Solar_time_vs_standard_time.png/1200px-Solar_time_vs_standard_time.png? Dylsss (talk) 20:18, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
No. Same unauthorized message. Lambtron (talk) 20:26, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
I reported it on Phabricator: phab:T384128. Once the Swift container is recreated it should fix itself. Dylsss (talk) 20:32, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! Lambtron (talk) 20:33, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Same issue at Village pump/Technical. Glrx (talk) 13:54, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

UI for data files

I was just looking at Data:Fitchburg Railroad.map, which I know is used by en:Fitchburg Railroad. But nothing on the data page shows if the file is being used on any wikis, and "What links here" doesn't show the railroad article, either. Is something broken? I'm also looking for where metadata could be stored, such as a description or citation to a source, and I don't see one, unlike images and other files. -- Beland (talk) 03:58, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

One of the multiple issues with the data space is that theoretically anyone can put whatever they want into a data file since it doesn't have specific fields for sources or descriptions. Let alone are data files easy to find or work with to begin with. So there isn't as much review or verification of them compared to normal files to begin with regardless. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:15, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
There is some verification. Saving mapdata that is not correctly formatted geojson or has no license is not possible. GPSLeo (talk) 06:38, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
Interesting. I wasn't aware. At least it's something. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:43, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
It's planned: phab:T383446. Dylsss (talk) 07:51, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
Oh, yay! Is there a ticket for storing user-editable metadata about Data: pages? I couldn't find one in the Phabricator search engine. -- Beland (talk) 08:18, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
What do you mean? The page content with the metadata can be edited like on every other page. GPSLeo (talk) 10:56, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
That's not what I'm seeing. When I'm on Data:Fitchburg Railroad.map, if I click the "Edit" tab, instead of being able to edit the description and other metadata as I would for an image, I get taken to a page where I'm editing the contents of the JSON. -- Beland (talk) 11:02, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
The metadata and description are entirely stored in the same json file as the geometry data. GPSLeo (talk) 11:12, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
That does not seem like a great place to put wikitext, nor would editors be able to use the visual wikitext editor there. If it's going to stay that way, it would be helpful to somehow indicate that on the page, since it's different from other, much more common file types. -- Beland (talk) 11:18, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
Also wondering if that's even allowed by all the formats that might use the Data: namespace. -- Beland (talk) 11:18, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
The only supported data formats are JSON and CSV. - Jmabel ! talk 17:30, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
There is some discussion in the tasks listed at phab:maniphest/graph/242596/ about using MCR to store Wikitext separately or adding a Structured data slot, but it looks like it is likely to all stay in Json to avoid creating an overcomplicated solution. Dylsss (talk) 17:55, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer! Making a note to myself...looks like on phab:T155290 they are taking similar use cases into account, though maybe putting in a cheap and easy solution that wouldn't support the visual editor for now. (And if it's in JSON it would be in a special field that's removed by a parser before export to an API.) -- Beland (talk) 23:54, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

UK to require age verification for adult content

"The UK announces that, as of July, any site that allows adult content — including social media sites — will have to age/identity verify all users, or face enforcement action by the British government." - [1]

Pass the popcorn... Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:11, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

  • Will this work in the same way as with South Korean websites in that it will be impossible for foreigners to provide evidence that you are old enough? --Stefan2 (talk) 11:51, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
To the UK I say "Bollocks!"   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 12:23, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

There has been something similar announced in France, including a decision by Paris Appeal Court to block some porn websites on October 17th, 2024. This comes from a new law voted on May 17th, 2024. But I don't think social media are concerned. Yann (talk) 12:32, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Line art

drawing of a tree

The header of Category:Line art says "Line art is any image that consists of distinct straight and curved lines placed against a (usually plain) background, without gradations in shade (darkness) or hue (color) to represent two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects."

However, the category and its subcats include many images with gradations in shade (example above).

Which interpretation is correct?

If the example is correctly categorised, can someone show an example of a monochrome pencil drawing that would not be included? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:24, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

I note that the same user had identified File:CHE Hofstetten-Flüh Flag.svg as an instance of "line art" as well, though I cannot see how this image would qualify as such. The image consists principally of large regions of color not separated by lines. The only line surrounds the star shape near the top. I do not think this is sufficient to consider the image to be "line art". --EncycloPetey (talk) 12:24, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Hi! I just wanna ask if the logo of new company of Donald Trump the $Trump of known as "Trump Meme" can fall to public domain or in fair use? Royiswariii Talk! 08:50, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

@Royiswariii: Before he is sworn in, definitely not.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 09:23, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
What difference would swearing-in make? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:55, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: Anything he or his staff posts after he is sworn in will be a part of his second term and thus subject to {{PD-USGov-POTUS}}.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 11:10, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't believe that to be true. But we are talking about something posted before swearing-in; its copyright status won't change once that happens. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:58, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
As far as I know "Fight Fight Fight LLC" isn't owned by the American government. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 12:00, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
@Royiswariii: If by logo you mean this file, then it is {{PD-text}}. If you mean something else, please specify. Note that Commons does not host "fair use" material. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:57, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing yeah, that's logo i'm talking. I'm just making sure if it's a pass on PD-text Royiswariii Talk! 11:21, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
It literally is just text Trade (talk) 18:22, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Dispute resolution on whether images are AI upscaled

Paper9oll's 2,218 × 2,160 still
Per later comments in this thread, Paper9oll has now replaced this image with a lower-resolution version. Their original 2,218 × 2,160 still is here.
My 1,103 × 1,080 attempt to capture the same

(I raised a thread at the help desk for this last week, but only got a couple of short responses and realise that this may have been the wrong forum for it.)

I recently flagged many of User:Paper9oll's uploaded YouTube video stills as looking to me like obvious AI upscales, but in a subsequent discussion on their talk page they said that they were simply downloading the original videos and capturing frames from them, and don't believe the images to be upscaled, or agree with me that they even look upscaled, and don't know what else to say.

An example upload is shown. To the left is the image Paper9oll uploaded, to the right is my own attempt to capture the same still from the same video.

Paper9oll's image is twice the resolution (larger even than the highest resolution of the original video that YouTube will serve me) and does seem to show clear signs of AI upscaling which aren't discernable in the original. In general, the face has a much higher resolution than her hand and clothes, which are about the same in each image - this is typical of AI upscalers like MyHeritage that are designed for use on portrait photos. Across the subject's forehead, individual hairs are visible (with an unusual pinstripe pattern on the rest of the hair), but below the level of her chin the hair instantly drops to the same low resolution blur as in my image.

Would other users agree that these look AI upscaled, and should be flagged as such? (Such a decision is significant because it means that the images couldn't be used on the English Wikipedia.) My best faith assumption is that Paper9oll is obliviously using some software that's automatically upscaling the extracted stills. Belbury (talk) 09:39, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

This is 100% upscaled with AI. If the image was an ultra-high resolution still of the original video, it would be consistently sharp across the board, but it isn't. The eyes, eye wrinkles. lips and strands of hair are incredibly sharp but details outside of that specific area turn wobbly. The right eye of the upscaled image looks in a slightly different direction, and has a slightly different color from the original. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:15, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
I'm not too thrilled with having the same discussion a second time, but since the OP is repeating everything they said before, I'll do the same, albeit more briefly. Looks AI to me: highlights on three fingers of her right hand made to look more like fingernails on the wrong side of the finger; skin looks like it has been through some sort of "cosmetic" filter; I could list more, but I think that is enough. - Jmabel ! talk 20:46, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
It's entirely possible that you're both right - that whatever tools they used to download the video and display it on their computer are doing some sort of "smart" upscaling without their knowledge. But if that's the case, the proper solution will be to use a video player which can capture a frame directly (like VLC - "Video" menu → "Snapshot") rather than going through the intermediate step of a screenshot. Omphalographer (talk) 21:28, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
This appears to be AI. There is a waffle- like pattern around the lips and it also affects the margins of the lips. Also, the hair has artificially larger strands with a diffent color tone, roughly equally spaced. I think, this is what you call "an unusual pinstripe pattern." Please, flag this altered image appropriately. Also, the uploader stated that there was a higher quality video on YouTube that they originally had access to, but is no longer available. As with other files sources, it should be verifiable. -- Ooligan (talk) 23:46, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Just to needlessly reiterate what other people have already said, these images are clearly AI. The main tell for me is how the hair is smoothed out in Paper9oll's image but not the second one. Just taking a screenshot of a video wouldn't do that. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:58, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
The distortions are easily visible on images such as File:Jung Yoo-min at 2019 KBS Drama Awards on 311219 (1).png as well. CMD (talk) 09:49, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Paper9oll has now put the 68 images that I initially tagged as upscaled into a DR at Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by User:Paper9oll, referencing this pump discussion. --Belbury (talk) 09:08, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

According to Paper9oll we're just en:WP:casting aspersions. Go figure. I've said it before, but the project really needs to stop pandering to uploaders so much. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:25, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Paper9oll has now said on their DR that they will reupload some of these images with "the current available resolution" (they have said that some of their images were taken from 4K versions of videos which no longer exist on YouTube), and is in the process of doing so "over the coming days". This includes the image at the top of this thread, which now looks the same as my version, without any of the issues discussed above. So fair enough, whatever their current export process is, it is not upscaling the images.

It's unclear whether they intend to do this to all of their upscaled-looking uploads: the strikethroughs on the DR suggest that where an image came from a 4K source they don't consider it to be upscaled, even though a still like File:Yoona at 2nd Blue Dragon Series Awards on 190723 (6).png very much appears to be (and does not match the detail of the 4K video, when I view it; it's twice the resolution, has the same wispy hair thing going on, and the background banner text is blobby).

I'll see where things are when Paper9oll has finished overwriting files. --Belbury (talk) 16:29, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Given the clear consensus above (and only a mild "not obviously AI-y to me" on the original help desk thread), I've now reviewed this user's upload history and flagged 118 of their files as AI-upscaled under the discussed criteria above (eg. the pinstripe hair going blurry below the face again on File:Jessica Jung for Vogue Taiwan on 20032021 (4).png, compared to an unprocessed still File:Jessica Jung for Vogue Taiwan on 20032021 (6).png from the same video).
Paper9oll has asked not to be notified of further discussions about this issue, so I have not pinged them. Belbury (talk) 10:15, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

New photos of Donald Trump

For some reason the software that catches the same file being uploaded multiple times isn't working in the specific case.

we can assume there's others and crop version of many of these

Moxy (talk) 23:27, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Duplicate detection only works for files which are completely identical. These images are all slightly different (different resolutions, file formats, adjusted colors, etc) - MediaWiki doesn't attempt to detect that kind of duplication. Omphalographer (talk) 23:34, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
Wow.... I guess there's a lot of manual cleanup for you guys.... I see two more just uploaded. Moxy (talk) 23:42, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
They need proper guidelines at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Donald Trump 2025 inaugural potrait.png Moxy (talk) 05:18, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Template:Cities of Ukraine

I propose to leave in Template:Cities of Ukraine only cities that are regional centers and cities with a population of over 100 thousand people. In total, there are over 400 cities in Ukraine and adding all the cities of Ukraine is too expensive for the template. The criterion of importance of cities is too subjective and is not found in any other similar template on Wikimedia Commons or English Wikipedia (Template:Cities of Turkey, Template:Cities of North Macedonia, Template:US cities, Template:Cities in Slovenia, Template:Cities of Estonia, Template:Cities of Iraq). Mitte27 (talk) 23:04, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @Микола Василечко. Well very well (talk) 11:47, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
See also Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/05/Template:US cities#Template:US cities for a somewhat similar discussion. Well very well (talk) 11:48, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
I think there could be these types of criteria:
  1. Regional centers — we definitely include all of them in any case,
  2. Cities with population more than XX/YY most populous cities — the same but just with different cutoffs, currently "city with population more than 100 thousands/47 most populous cities". We could try a bit expanding it for "50 most populous cities" or even "100 most populous cities" as done in US template (but probably... there are significantly less categories on Commons for Ukraine cities than US ones).
  3. "Important"/notable cities. I'm not sure whether this is a good criterion — probably the template should include cities, for which there is a high probability of categories existing — and I doubt that for Chornobyl/Pripyat, despite how notable they are, there are many categories on Commons. Also, we have many categories for cities of Ternopil Oblast despite probably most of them aren't very notable — but probably be better on the template because of having many categories.
  4. Cities having more than XX categories on Commons. Probably there wouldn't be many problems with cutoff here (I think that for most cities there are either <5 categories or >10-15 of them). And probably every Ternopil Oblast city will satisfy this criterion.
We should discuss which of these criteria should be used for the template and with what cutoffs.
(Also I would like to suggest that after the discussion will be finished I will conduct a bot run "fixing" inclusions of Cities and Regions of Ukraine templates — i.e. placing them where they weren't placed and removing where they shouldn't be placed.) Well very well (talk) 11:59, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
I think navigation templates with something like cities as geographic objects are not a good idea. Such templates should better use administrative regions like districts or municipalities without splitting between urban and rural. GPSLeo (talk) 13:18, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
+1. There's a lot of situations where they are impossible to use as a navigational aid due to how their designed and they usually take up way to much room on the top of the page anyway. At the end of the day their just pointless extra noise. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:35, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
-1. No, they are used frequently. For example, in categories like Category:Sports clubs in Kharkiv. Well very well (talk) 16:56, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
They're often a symptom of overwrought category structures. If a small set of closely related categories are so widely separated in the category tree that you need a template to navigate between them, that category tree might need to be redesigned. Omphalographer (talk) 21:35, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
I disagree with that last. It's a much smoother navigation than the category tree, especially for people who are not particularly into Commons. - Jmabel ! talk 03:28, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Odd CropTool behavior

Lately (consistently, well over a dozen times today) each time I try to crop an image, when I click "Upload" the first time, the crop fails with the message, "Upload failed! undefined". If I click "Upload" again, it works fine. Jmabel ! talk 04:12, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Just got much worse. Might be coincidence, but I just updated to the latest Firefox (134.0.2, 64-bit) and now it simply fails, no longer working on the second try. - Jmabel ! talk 22:05, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
Oh, it's much weirder than I thought: it actually worked (who knows on which of several sequential trial) but kept giving me an error message rather than a chance to click through to the cropped file. - Jmabel ! talk 22:08, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Personality rights tag for deceased people

Per previous discussion at Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2012/01#Adjustment proposals for Personality rights, what's the purpose for removing {{Personality rights}} for deceased people? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Absolutiva (talk • contribs) 04:45, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

@Absolutiva: In some jurisdictions, personality rights are extinguished by laws, various times after death, and we want to make sure that keeping files relating to those rights complies with those laws, and have them tagged (or not tagged) appropriately. In other jurisdictions, those rights may last forever, so the tagging should last forever too. The proper section link for that 13 year old discussion is the ugly Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2012/01#Adjustment_proposals_for_.7B.7BPersonality_rights.7D.7D, so George Ho please keep live templates out of section headings. Pinging @99of9 for input.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 05:46, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
I'm here but I'm not sure there is much I can add to this. The template is unchanged since that edit in 2012 where I just implemented the new consensus. Yes it refers to the general situation (living or deceased), but guidelines on when to add or remove that template are a different question. 99of9 (talk) 09:43, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
So what are the current guidelines on when to add or remove that template, who wants to change them, exactly how, and why?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:59, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
We also want to undelete those files for which the abovementioned law is no longer applicable, on the appropriate day or COM:PDD.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:02, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

That boot is stubborn

Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:55, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Look what that boot is doing to File:Carte postale du cèdre du Liban planté à Torcy en 1834.JPG Why does it rotate it ? I wrote to User talk:Steinsplitter, he didn't reply. Io Herodotus (talk) 09:47, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

That's weird. Did someone request rotation or does the bot just randomly rotate images on it's own sometimes? --Adamant1 (talk) 11:00, 24 January 2025 (UTC)
@Io Herodotus: You had reverted the bot's edit (which re-added the order to rotate the image) before reverting the file. I reverted the file again, but right now it's not tagged with the template to rotate it again, so it should be fine. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:09, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Upload wizard issues?

Was there a recent update to the Upload Wizard? Starting this morning or last night, when I try to upload a batch of files, it takes me through the upload and rights steps as expected, but the describe step only includes one file. I've tried this with different size batches and different photos. Mentioning this issue on Discord, it sounds like I may not be the only one affected? — Rhododendrites talk |  21:37, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

I too am having difficulties with Upload Wizard. After filling out the first page (including adding a specific public-domain tag) the process does not continue to the next page. Instead a moving stripe pattern is added to the field I filled out to add a specific public-domain tag. It goes no further. This has happened today on both an iPhone and Windows computer, Safari and Chrome. Jacqke (talk) 02:49, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Pinging @Sannita (WMF). - Jmabel ! talk 02:54, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Yes, I already mentioned it at Commons:Upload Wizard feedback --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:34, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites @Jacqke Hi, thanks for reporting. No, AFAIK we didn't do any change to UploadWizard in the last three weeks, due to code freeze for the holidays. There is one patch incoming on the known bug about missing information about error, but again AFAIK it has not been merged yet, and should go up next week. Can you please open a bug on Phabricator and put me as a subscriber? Let me know. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:41, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
I have also encountered the same bug as @Rhododendrites, filed it as phab:T383508. And the custom license tags issue is already at phab:T383415 (although perhaps they have the same underlying cause). the wub "?!" 00:23, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
I am still unable to load using the Wizard, from Chrome on Windows and on iOS 17.5. Still having the "Add a specific public domain tag" field filled with stripe pattern. Jacqke (talk) 00:51, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
When I switched to "author has been dead for 70 years", it advanced to the next page. Jacqke (talk) 00:55, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Found that removing the "Description" field from the Exif data allowed me to upload multiple files at once again. the wub "?!" 12:15, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites @PantheraLeo1359531 @Jacqke @The wub @Jmabel A patch for this is incoming. It should be on the next deployment train, which means it will be up by Wednesday. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 16:07, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Sounds good. Thanks! — Rhododendrites talk |  16:09, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, that's good :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:11, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank you! Jacqke (talk) 21:52, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, -- Ooligan (talk) 21:55, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Resolved
Huzzah! — Rhododendrites talk |  23:59, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

video2commons

Why is being logged into YouTube suddenly a requirement now?--Trade (talk) 03:36, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

@Trade: What makes you ask?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 05:47, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
Just wanted to know what happened to warrant this Trade (talk) 05:55, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
@Trade: What are you seeing on your screen, exactly?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 05:56, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
An exception occurred: TaskError: b"b'pywikibot.Error: APIError: titleblacklist-custom-space: \\xe2\\xa7\\xbctitleblacklist-custom-space\\xe2\\xa7\\xbd\\n[filekey: 1bitu27hsqjc.cbj298.6438344.webm;\\n sessionkey: 1bitu27hsqjc.cbj298.6438344.webm;\\n invalidparameter: filename;\\n servedby: mw-api-ext.codfw.main-6f9dc9ff74-kvkhq;\\n help: See https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php for API usage. Subscribe to the mediawiki-api-announce mailing list at <https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/mediawiki-api-announce.lists.wikimedia.org/> for notice of API deprecations and breaking changes.]'" Trade (talk) 11:28, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
@Trade: So what title / filename were you trying to use, in importing what Youtube file?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:05, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
i forgot. not i just get Error: An exception occurred: DownloadError: b'ERROR: [youtube] D0dslTanUKc: Sign in to confirm you\xe2\x80\x99re not a bot. This helps protect our community. Learn more' Trade (talk) 16:18, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
That's an error being generated by YouTube itself, not by video2commons. Users of standalone video downloaders like yt-dlp have run into the same message, e.g. [2]. There's unlikely to be anything we can do about it. Omphalographer (talk) 19:02, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
Is it permanent_ Trade (talk) 22:56, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
No official statement that I'm aware of, but probably. YouTube been hostile to video downloading tools for quite a while; this is the latest in a long series of moves they've made to obstruct the use of those tools. Omphalographer (talk) 01:50, 24 January 2025 (UTC)
I got the same message as well when I tried uploading a video through Video2Commons. There error I got was, "Error: An exception occurred: DownloadError: b'ERROR: [youtube] X5gMiDnYEds: Sign in to confirm you\xe2\x80\x99re not a bot. This helps protect our community. Learn more'". RandomUserGuy1738 (talk) 16:30, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the cause but it seems like YouTube recently blocked some VPN IP ranges. To use yt-dlp one may need to use --cookies-from-browser firefox or something similar. If that is now indeed required maybe a video2commons YouTube account could be used for the cookies. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:32, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
YouTube rate-limits downloads on an account-by-account basis, and will block accounts which download too many videos (with no prior warning). A shared account would almost certainly get blocked very quickly. Omphalographer (talk) 19:03, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
Sigh, time to activate the YT sockpuppets i guess Trade (talk) 22:57, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
I got the same message before, but still after several tries it worked. But today it completely stopped working no matter how many tries and whatever videos I put. Same message as above again and again. Is it just me or is video2commons not working with YouTube videos for everyone? Tvpuppy (talk) 10:47, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Need explanation of feature

What is <code></code>> for? SergeWoodzing (talk) 10:09, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

@SergeWoodzing It is a text formatting tag, it makes the text within the tags to appear like computer code. For example, typing <code>Hello World!</code> in the source will make the text look like this Hello World!. Tvpuppy (talk) 11:06, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
Straight HTML, by the way, and dating clear back to HTML 1.0. - Jmabel ! talk 16:49, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank you! So if there is no text between the two halves, the entry is useless? Found that at the very beginning of a gallery intro. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 17:45, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
@SergeWoodzing Yes, you are correct. Tvpuppy (talk) 19:47, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Permission to overwrite files not uploaded by me

I "currently do not have sufficient permissions to do this." How would I go about receiving such? Thank you for your advice. Oalexander (talk) 10:28, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

@Oalexander See COM:OWR, only users with autopatrol rights can overwrite these files. However, you can put a overwrite request in COM:OWR to overwrite a specific file. Tvpuppy (talk) 10:53, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. My issue is, that I do not want to spend a lot of time overwriting by going through processes, I might as well upload a separate file with the same, but higher quality content. How does one get "autopatrol rights". I have been around for more than one-and-a-half decades. Oalexander (talk) 13:24, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
@Oalexander You may request autopatrol rights at Commons:Requests for rights#Autopatrol, in your request you will have to explain your reason for autopatrol right, see COM:AP for more details. Tvpuppy (talk) 13:35, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
But, really, if you've been around here for ages and are a user in good standing, all you'll really need to say is "I've been around here for ages & I want to be able to overwirte files with higher quality versions." The phrase "higher quality" does give me some pause, though. I hope you are completely familiar with COM:OVERWRITE. A very high percentage of what people think are "better versions" really ought to be uploaded under a different file name, because it is disputable whether they are improvements. - Jmabel ! talk 16:54, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Preventing non-confirmed users from uploading files as "free"

Have we already prevented or blocked non-confirmed users from uploading files as "free" to use and distribute? Based on the community favoring restrictions on crosswiki uploading, I created a Phabrication task (phab:T370598) and then attempted a Community Wish (page), which was then rejected (or "archived") by the WMF.

There have been suggestions on implementing this, seen at a Meta-wiki RFC I made (RFC discussion). Well, an abuse filter against crosswiki uploading was already made; so was hiding the "Export to Wikimedia Commons" button from certain users. One of suggestions there was hiding Upload dialogs (i.e. both old classic upload and Wizard) from new users or blocking certain users from using the dialogs. Any other suggestions? George Ho (talk) 11:11, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Photo challenge November results

Sidewalk: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Rientro al tramonto Gently sloping sidewalk
in central Stockholm		 Sidewalk on Smolnaya Embankment
Author Repuli Slottsviken51 Inforested
Score 21 8 8
Intentional Camera Movement: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Flying on the swing White Equinne 1961 Cooper T53
Author Vsatinet Herbertkikoy Julian Herzog
Score 18 11 11

Congratulations to Repuli, Slottsviken51, Inforested, Vsatinet, Herbertkikoy and Julian Herzog. -- Jarekt (talk) 19:33, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct annual review: provide your comments on the UCoC and Enforcement Guidelines

Please help translate to your language.

I am writing to you to let you know the annual review period for the Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines is open now. You can make suggestions for changes through 3 February 2025. This is the first step of several to be taken for the annual review. Read more information and find a conversation to join on the UCoC page on Meta.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

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

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 01:10, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Polar Bear on Wrangel Island

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the Wikimedia Foundation office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Polar Bear on Wrangel Island. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 01:17, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Category Photographs taken on ۲۰۲۱-۱۰-۱۲

What is the point of automatically creating categories such as “Photographs taken on ۲۰۲۱-۱۰-۱۲” as in File:Qopuz.jpg? This way, lots of such categories will be created. Wouter (talk) 11:02, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

It looks like the category was automatically added by the "According to Exif data" template. I changed it to the correct category. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:05, 24 January 2025 (UTC)
The template automatically adds photographs to the main category for the date these were taken in. Usually the date uses standard numerals, but in this case the author (or the system he uses, rather) had them written in the Arabic writing system. It also doesn't automatically create these categories, the old category was a red link because it hadn't been created yet. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:23, 24 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. Wouter (talk) 11:28, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Greenland

The games have begun. In advance of the ground invasion, the softening up of the landscape is currently underway. By this I mean the de-legitimisation of Greenland as a constituent country of Denmark. The excuse is that Greenland is not a part of Denmark, it's a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. I noticed it first at Category:Churches in Greenland. No doubt further sapping is taking place elsewhere. Predictably, the discussion with the editor (@Hjart: ) got nowhere. Can someone say "Stop!" please? Laurel Lodged (talk) 15:43, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I understand the reasoning here: Greenland being a constituent country in the larger Kingdom of Denmark and co-equal to metropolitan Denmark is more legitimate (or whatever) than Greenland just being a part of Denmark. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:01, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Technically, you're correct. But practically speaking, it would be a nightmare to implement. Every category of Denmark would have to have a parallel category for Kingdom of Denmark. Massive duplication for no practical benefit. To most readers, they would not understand the difference. The same would then have to be done for the Kingdom of the Netherlands and others. At the very least, it merits a discussion, not unilateral action that smacks of vandalism or POV-pushing. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:21, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Denmark and Kingdom of Denmark definitely needs to be split. Another reason is that Faeroe and Greenland are no members of the EU but making them part of Denmark and not the Kingdom of Denmark makes them part of the EU. The category tree Category:Kingdom of Denmark already exists. GPSLeo (talk) 17:12, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
That's all true. But who's going to do the work of creating many thousands or near-duplicate categories? Simply unilaterally breaking the parentage by deleting Denmark from all Greenland categories is not a solution; it's closer to vandalism IMHO. Laurel Lodged (talk) 18:00, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Why do you think that this affects many thousand categories? This change only affects the higher level categories which are at most 2000 for a depth of 3. GPSLeo (talk) 20:16, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks to @MB-one: for fixing Category:Churches in the Kingdom of Denmark. One down, 1999 to go. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

@@MB-one and Laurel Lodged: But is that really a fix? When Category:Churches in the Kingdom of Denmark is a subcategory of Category:Buildings in North America it means all buildings in Denmark (the part in Europe) is now a placed under North America. And if you want Category:Kingdom of Denmark to be a part of North America then perhaps start by fixing the category. And should Category:Buildings in the United Kingdom also not be a part of North America? --MGA73 (talk) 06:31, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

What's the alternative? That Greenland should have neither Denmark nor the Kingdom of Denmark as its parent? Laurel Lodged (talk) 20:26, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
The multiple continent problem occurs with many countries and we have many similar inaccuracies at many places. This is something our category system can not handle. GPSLeo (talk) 20:44, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
If we really wanted to model this cleanly we'd have a hierarchy something like:
       Europe          Kingdom of Denmark     North America
           \                   |                   /
            \                  |                  /
             \                / \                /
              \______________/   \______________/
                     |                  |
                     |                  |
                  Denmark,           Greenland
                Faroe Islands
Then handle the Kingdom of Denmark would be treated as an institution rather than a geographical entity. This one is actually a lot easier than (for example) Russia, because there are uncontroversial names for the entities in question. - Jmabel ! talk 21:53, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Also, FWIW: many of our category inheritance relations are not simply "is-a" or "is part of" relationships. This is especially obvious when we go through metacats along the way, which are essentially a way to label the relationship between their parent category and their child category. - Jmabel ! talk 21:57, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
@GPSLeo I agree that it will be almost impossible to fix all these inaccuracies with the current category system. But blatant errors like these can and should be fixed. Greenland is clearly a part of the Kingdom of Denmark and in North America but also Denmark (the country) is clearly not in North America. The solution IMO should be that "x in the Kingdom of Denmark wont be categorized neither as x in North America nor as x in Europe, as the continental categorization will be handled on the constituent country level. MB-one (talk) 09:20, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
@MGA73 Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Churches in the Kingdom of Denmark should clearly NOT be a subcategory of Buildings in North America. The problem seems to be {{Topic in country}}, which should be fixed asap. MB-one (talk) 09:06, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
See also Template_talk:Topic_in_country#Kingdom_of_Denmark --MB-one (talk) 09:11, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
@MGA73 The problem has magically disappeared. MB-one (talk) 17:11, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

FlickreviewR 2 user talk redirect

User:FlickreviewR 2 is an essential service, but its developer has retired since 2020. I took the liberty to watch his user talk for over 4 years now and answer questions as much as i could, but now i stop. perhaps the bot user talk should redirect to a community page so that future questions posted will be noticed by more users? RoyZuo (talk) 16:44, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I think it will make sense to redirect to somewhere else. The question is where. And its great that you watched and answered questions. Thanks. --MGA73 (talk) 07:42, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
Maybe COM:HD? --Stefan2 (talk) 17:03, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
Looks good to me. --MGA73 (talk) 08:51, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Would like to start a new catagory

How do you start a new catagory here? i'd like to start one for topless male humans wearing waistcoats.

Thankks

OGWFP (talk) 22:15, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Categories#Creating a new category
I have to say, though, that does not sound to me like a particularly useful category. - Jmabel ! talk 03:13, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Licensing different than Structured data

Hi, I came across File:Abubakar Shehu Idris.jpg and the Licensing is different than the structured data. On the main tab, it says CC BY-SA 4.0 but in the Structured data tab it says public domain. How do I fix this, as there doesn't seem to be the option for CC BY-SA 4.0? Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 01:16, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

@Myrealnamm I have corrected the license in the structured data. Tvpuppy (talk) 03:00, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
licence was changed after @Multichill's bot added sdc. RoyZuo (talk) 23:09, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Feedback needed on our new proposed changes to UploadWizard

Hi everyone! As part of improving the way users can add metadata to uploaded media in UploadWizard, we are suggesting a way to improve the way users can select the appropriate category. You can look at the proposed mockups at the landing page.

In case a category has one or more subcategories, users will be able to click on an arrow that will open the subcategories in the form, and will let them choose the correct one. The parent category name will be always shown on top, and it will be possible at all times to come back to it.

We think exposing more clearly the category structure can also help users understand the difference between “depicts” and “category” fields in UploadWizard. We also expect it would be easier for people to add the correct category, and so we expect a decrease in the amount of work for volunteers in fixing/creating new categories.

If you have comments or questions, please feel free to reply on the project's talk page.

Thank you in advance for your consideration! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

The golden rule is: don't complicate things unnecessarily. Sardaka (talk) 10:48, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Suggest cc-zero instead of PD-self

Hello everyone! Todays special offer is a link to Template talk:File license. It has a suggestion to change PD-self to cc-zero instead because PD-self is not acctually a formal license. Feel free to comment :-) MGA73 (talk) 08:55, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

You can well have both tags. Ruslik (talk) 19:57, 26 January 2025 (UTC)
For many years we had two suggestions in the template. Why make it three? --MGA73 (talk) 13:27, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
{{self|cc-zero}} might be even clearer. - Jmabel ! talk 19:04, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
Yes thats the plan. --MGA73 (talk) 19:14, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
Agreed. should also do the same for many of these https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:PD-self&namespace=10&limit=500&hidetrans=1 . RoyZuo (talk) 23:01, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Uploads

I just uploaded two images without complications, then I upload another image and get the message that I have to provide the date of creation of the image etc. Why do I get this message with the third upload but not the first two? Sardaka (talk) 09:53, 26 January 2025 (UTC) Sardaka (talk) 09:51, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

@Sardaka I wonder if the date is in the metadata of the first two uploads but not on the third? It seems you only uploaded two photos today so I can't see the third photo. --MGA73 (talk) 10:38, 26 January 2025 (UTC)
if your photo went thru some apps (such as telegram, whatsapp, or any image editing app), which wiped all date info in exif, then uploadwizard wont have the date. RoyZuo (talk) 22:50, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
wizard wont know the date when you wiped File:Dead flying fox Kensington 001.jpg's exif. RoyZuo (talk) 22:52, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

DIY copystand design

This may interest some of you:

"Open source plans for a motorized camera column [using] 3D Printed parts and other open source hardware. The 3D Printing and aluminum cutting can be outsourced. The assembly only requires the skills of a highly motivated 3D Printing hobbyist.

"The CAD designs, 3D printable files, Bill of Materials, and Assembly Instructions for how to build the Qirab Digitisation Column QDC100 are available on the Qirab Github."

https://qirab.org/en/docs/hardware/digitisationcolumn/

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:55, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, I indeed need something like this :D --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:57, 26 January 2025 (UTC)
I did something similar a while back based on the DIY Book Scanner. Fun project but I never could get it to work. This looks a lot easier. I might have to give it a try sometime. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:38, 26 January 2025 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing thx a lot for sharing! very useful tech! RoyZuo (talk) 22:47, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Best practices for adding civility to Commons policies?

Based on this comment from an ongoing U4C discussion on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Coordinating_Committee/Cases/A.Savin#c-Ghilt-20250125175900-Barkeep49-20250124161800, what would be the best way to incorporate civility and other aspects of the UCoC locally here? Should Commons have its own civility policy? I figured Village Pump would be the best place for a more general discussion on UcoC incorporation. Abzeronow (talk) 19:34, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

One helpful step would be getting Commons:Civility and Commons:Harassment made into policies. I think part of the hold up was that those pages need to be more tailored for Commons. Nosferattus (talk) 22:26, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Duration of playing MIDI-Files at Wikimedia Commons

I found MIDI-Files at Wikimedia Commons like the following file with no duration mentioned. If I press on the play button in the embedded Mediaplayer I see how long it needs. From my point of view the informations needed to show the duration are included in the file. What is used to enable the Mediaplayer embededd at Pages in Wikimedia Commons to play MIDI-Files. I am interested in some technical background to understand why the duration is not shown at the page. Hogü-456 (talk) 20:02, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

See the code issue.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T376137
Prototyperspective (talk) 13:59, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Closed captions language categories

Hi, I have noticed that some files have a category for Closed captions in a particular language, i.e. File:Steamboat Willie (1928) by Walt Disney.webm and File:Elephants Dream (2006).webm among others. There is indeed TimedText:Steamboat Willie (1928) by Walt Disney.webm.ki.srt, but this category seems weird. See also Category:Files with closed captioning in Gikuyu which contains 2 files, and Category:Files with closed captioning in Afrikaans which contains 8 files. Any idea? Yann (talk) 12:47, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

What do you mean? Those are redcategories, meaning the pages have not yet been created but could and maybe should be created. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:43, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
For Steamboat Willie, there are closed captions in many languages, but only this category. Yann (talk) 16:20, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
It's categorized for the other languages as well. They're hidden categories, but redcats show up (until someone either removes them, or creates them and makes them hidden, too). E.g. Steamboat Willie is also in Category:Files with closed captioning in Serbian and Category:Files with closed captioning in Norwegian Bokmål. ReneeWrites (talk) 17:46, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folklore starts soon!

Please help translate to your language

Dear Wiki Community, You are humbly invited to participate in the Wiki Loves Folklore 2025 an international media contest organized on Wikimedia Commons to document folklore and intangible cultural heritage from different regions, including, folk creative activities and many more. It is held every year from the 1st till the 31st of March.

You can help in enriching the folklore documentation on Commons from your region by taking photos, audios, videos, and submitting them in this commons contest.

You can also organize a local contest in your country and support us in translating the project pages to help us spread the word in your native language.

Feel free to contact us on our project Talk page if you need any assistance.

Kind regards,

Wiki loves Folklore International Team

--✝iѵɛɳ२२४०†ลℓк †๏ мэ 02:39, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Template search category by

I just made some templates which integrate into Template:Category search by. They let users search a category by month, filetype or filemime. Try it out at a large category Category:CC-BY-SA-4.0.

"Search by month" actually renders most by month cats redundant. RoyZuo (talk) 02:29, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, it's a cool idea and I'd love to see people cut back on the "by month" categories on here but don't you think it kind of clutters up the top of the category page a little to much? Having 8 different navigational boxes with different sizes and formats in that small of a space is ridiculously obtuse and anti-user. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:23, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
At least two of which duplicate each other... Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:02, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
Great idea and well-executed. Maybe it needs to be collapsible? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:02, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Category for tree branches cut

thumb| the bit left behind on the tree after the branch was cut? RoyZuo (talk) 16:18, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

or a tree with such "bald" branches? sometimes it may occur not because of human pruning practice but natural damage. RoyZuo (talk) 16:26, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
@RoyZuo: new Category:Pruned trees under Category:Trees?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:32, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Line art

drawing of a tree

The header of Category:Line art says "Line art is any image that consists of distinct straight and curved lines placed against a (usually plain) background, without gradations in shade (darkness) or hue (color) to represent two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects."

However, the category and its subcats include many images with gradations in shade (example above).

Which interpretation is correct?

If the example is correctly categorised, can someone show an example of a monochrome pencil drawing that would not be included? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:24, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

I note that the same user had identified File:CHE Hofstetten-Flüh Flag.svg as an instance of "line art" as well, though I cannot see how this image would qualify as such. The image consists principally of large regions of color not separated by lines. The only line surrounds the star shape near the top. I do not think this is sufficient to consider the image to be "line art". --EncycloPetey (talk) 12:24, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

[restored from archive]

What is to be done about this? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:34, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

I agree with your original point. The drawing you used as an example is what I would consider a sketch, and I would apply that to most (almost all) pencil drawings. Lineart would either be a finished drawing by itself or the in-between stage between a sketch and a finished, fully colored illustration or comic page. It shouldn't apply to any image that contains some lines. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:30, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
I've found this massive amount of edits adding "P31 -> line art" pretty weird. At the very least we could say the idea of "line art" in Wikimedia Commons is far more liberal than the one in Google images (for the better or, probably, for the worse). Honestly, I don't find this useful at all, but... Strakhov (talk) 20:51, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
The image at line art (Q365552) is, itself, an etching I personally wouldn't characterize as "line art". The moment you get into significant cross-hatching it seems to me it's not line art. Gradations in line width, sure. But that's about it. - Jmabel ! talk 23:06, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Template problem (Cdw)

It looks like there is something wrong with Template:Cdw/layout; probably the problem results from subst'ing {{Cdw}} or some even higher-level template. The resulting link to the category for discussion is fine, but recently the link to the CfD discussion has consistently been broken. You can find an example at User talk:Infrogmation. - Jmabel ! talk 19:43, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Yep. The same happened to me. I mentioned it both here and here. Kind regards, Alavense (talk) 17:06, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Now that the Taliban is back in power should Afghanistan still be considered part of Berne-World?

When I first started contributing here there were about half a dozen countries that, because they weren't part of the international agreements on copyright, images taken there weren't protected by copyright.

At least that is how I understood it at the time.

War-torn Afghanistan was one of those countries. And, for many years, images taken in Afghanistan were considered public domain here. At least that is how I remembered it.

Then someone noticed a press release, from the office of the President of Afghanistan, saying there were plans to get Afghanistan on-board Berne-World. That press release was more than six months old. It was argued that all WMF projects should anticipate Afghanistan joining Berne-World, and immediately treat images from Afghanistan as if they were protected by International Intellectual Property Agreements.

My understanding was this was premature. My understanding was two of the three steps Afghanistan would have to take were legislative steps:

  1. The Afghan legislature had to pass a law providing intellectual property rights to creators, within Afghanistan, that was consistent with the intellectual property rights in all other nations that were part of Berne-World.
  2. The Afghan legislature had to pass another law indicating it agreed to abide by those international property rights agreements, so that all the intellectual property rights of content creators from other nations were protected by Afghan law.
  3. And finally, Afghan officials would have to enforce the rights of intellectual property rights holders, including foreigners. Afghan newspapers would no longer be allowed to use any old international images they wanted with bothering with licensing, credit and payments to rights holder.

It took about five years, but the legislature did, eventually, pass those laws. My personal opinion was that we should not have started treating Afghan images as if they were protected by copyright until the legislature passed those laws.

Well, what about the status of Afghan images in 2025?

The Afghan legislature did pass those laws, about fifteen years ago.

IANAL, but I think that, legally, Afghan images are no longer protected by copyright if Afghan law enforcement officials are ignoring those laws.

I thought the policy to treat Afghan images as if they were protected by copyright as soon as there was an indication Afghanistan might join Berne-World was, frankly, disrespectful.

The Taliban would never have signed on to Berne-World, as they did not believe in Progress.

But there are other groups who don't believe in Progress. Old order Mennonites, Amish and Hutterites, for instance. Old order Mennonites and Amish wear the same kind of clothing people wore when their churches were founded. If they had their own country there would be no copyright protection there, either. Geo Swan (talk) 12:41, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Afghanistan is currently a member of the convention [3]. GPSLeo (talk) 12:50, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
Please do not conflate irrelevant things: Mennonites and Amish, peaceful out of modern society cultures with violent Taliban repression. Also what is the law, and how it is applied are two different things. There are a lot of places where copyright laws are seldom or poorly applied. Should we start hosting content from these places because the culture and the judiciary system do not work as in the Western world? Yann (talk) 12:58, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
Rules are rules. But maybe the Berne convention will be repealed within the next 20 years. Things become discarded so fast these days --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:40, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
Until Afghanistan takes steps to withdraw from Berne, it should be considered as under that treaty. URAA date would not be changed regardless. Abzeronow (talk) 19:36, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
Well, until they are allowed to withdrawn from Berne would be more accurate Trade (talk) 16:57, 1 February 2025 (UTC)
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