Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/07

Help reviewing image uploads by one editor

Aladythatwrites has uploaded 2-3 dozen images. I've reviewed several of them and I have nominated them for deletion as they almost certainly have the wrong license attached to them e.g., college wordmarks are not likely to have been placed in the public domain, images downloaded from a school's website are not likely to be CC licensed. I do not have the time to review the remainder of their uploads but I strongly suspect they are all incorrectly licensed and should also be nominated for deletion. ElKevbo (talk) 03:05, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Strong warning sent. However, I believe that most of what you nominated for deletion are simple text logos, which can be kept. - Jmabel ! talk 05:50, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

thank you, all. I'm new to this, so I appreciate others' work on this. Aladythatwrites (talk) 15:04, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 02:42, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Reproductions of public domain images

I have an image of a Czech composer here. According to this source it seems like it's a reproduction of an image in 1894, which would be {{Pd-old-assumed}}. This reproduction is in 1996. Is it copyrighted or is it free to upload on Commons? WafflesInvasion (talk) 03:47, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Wait, I think this is supposed to belong in Villagepump/Copyright. Sorry! WafflesInvasion (talk) 03:49, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

I assume, that it would be eligible per {{Pd-old-assumed}} (or any similar license). Pinging @Gumruch, Harold, and Jklamo: — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 07:00, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

In the EU there is no copyright to mere reproductions of public domain works. Herbert Ortner (talk) 19:41, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2025-07

In June 2025, 1 sysop was elected. Currently, there are 180 sysops.

• User:ChemSim was elected sysop (25/5/1) on 6 June.

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Edited by RoyZuo.

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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) 11:06, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

wikimap tool is down

I’m getting a 504 error from https://wikimap.toolforge.org/ and it doesn’t seem it’s transient.

1. Any ideas on how to get it back to work?
2. Or is there are comparable tool that would show geolocated Commons files pages on a map?

-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 13:42, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Confirming down for me too. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:53, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing@Tuvalkin: Thankfully, appears to be back up. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:49, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Yay! -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 10:33, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 02:43, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/03/Category:Lebak

Kindly look into this possibly-uncontroversial CfD that I opened months ago. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 00:55, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

 Done. --Achim55 (talk) 20:36, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Now closing this thread.

This section was archived on a request by: 09:01, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

_ JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 09:01, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Category:HistoricImages

Category:HistoricImages I added a category for these watermarked press photos for sale from the company "HistoricImages", they are all watermarked and eventually there will be better software for removing the watermarks. They buy press images from defunct newspapers. If we find a better version without a watermark we usually overwrite the image. Any idea what the parent category should be? Or what a better category name would be to describe the images. We probably have 50 of these but no way to find them. RAN (talk) 16:09, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Should just be a hidden maintenance category, in any case, and I'd call it something more like Category:Images from HistoricImages. - Jmabel ! talk`

• How do I make it a maintenance category? --RAN (talk) 19:46, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
  • @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): Place it under Category:Maintenance categories or a descendant, and make sure you use __HIDDENCAT__. - Jmabel ! talk 21:16, 2 July 2025 (UTC)
• @Jmabel: Did you try and use any of the AI watermark removal programs on these images yet? I tried three of them a few years ago and none were very good. I am sure some are much better now. The best of the three produced this: File:Olive Jones, President Of National Education Association.webp, which wasn't worth pursuing. --RAN (talk) 00:01, 3 July 2025 (UTC)
  • @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): I'm not working on these, and have no particular intention of doing so.

  In the past, I've had some success removing watermarks using the clone tool (and some other similar tools) in GIMP. That's the only program I use for retouching in recent years. - Jmabel ! talk 01:43, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Proposed deletion

Would introducing something like en:Wikipedia:Proposed deletion on Commons be helpful?

For anyone who's not familiar, editors on enwiki add a template to a page (there an mainspace article, here a file) proposing it for deletion, with a reason for deletion. Anyone can remove the template if they disagree, and the page can't be re-proposed after that. If the template stays up for a period of time (there a week or so, here probably longer) an admin reviews the page and decides to delete it or not. Editors and admins also have the option of converting it into a regular deletion request if they feel that it needs discussion. This is generally intended for stuff that doesn't meet the speedy deletion criteria but opposition wouldn't be expected on a deletion requests.

One motivation for this is the large backlog of deletion requests, but I can think of other ways it could help. This isn't quite a proposal yet, I just want opinions. Apocheir (talk) 02:21, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Commons deletion requests generally default to "delete" so long as the nominator makes a valid policy-based argument for deletion and the file isn't in use, so I'm not sure how much of a difference a PROD-like process would make. Omphalographer (talk) 03:15, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

There's already speedy deletions anyway, which should work like PRODs in theory since they can be contested. Although I rarely see anyone convert them into regular deletion requests. But that's what they are in theory. I just don't think anyone usually cares about contesting the deletion of individual files on here as much as they do with Wikipedia articles on enwiki. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:01, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

I think adding that proposed deletions would increase the complexity of the process for no benefit.

The large backlog of deletions in Commons is not because of cases for which no oposition is expected but for more or less borderline causes where the need for deletion is unclear. The simple cases for which a proposed deletions process would be applied are simple enough that they are usually deleted within a week. Additionally, setting a deletion proposal for a single file is more automated in Commons than in most Wikipedias, and therefore there is no need so simplify it. Pere prlpz (talk) 10:24, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

A week? Commons:Deletion requests/File:!!!Basic strokes.jpg took two and a half months. That was a diagram of kanji stroke order that was so blurry you could barely tell what it was trying to show. Commons:Deletion requests/File:1 Без назви.xcf took a month and that was last year. Apocheir (talk) 22:03, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

How long it takes deletion requests to be closed is certainly inconsistent. That's improved some lately since two more administrators were approved though. A lot of this comes down to that. Not enough users working in the area because of how toxic and complicated it is or admins to close the discussions, Etc. Etc. That's not really helped with PRODs. If anything they would just exacerbate the issue because it would be yet another process people would have to be put the time into. I don't think PRODs are really that effective on Wikipedia anyway. It's not something that seems to scale well since anyone who does more then a couple of PRODs at a time just gets reverted, attacked, reported to ANU, Etc. Etc. Or at least that's how it was back when I use to contribute to Enwiki. Commons really just needs more contributors and admins period. Either that or AI to do everything instead (obviously I'm being sarcastic but that seems to be where things are going). --Adamant1 (talk) 22:28, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Keeping a Category redirect

I've modified Category:Edifici Gil-Tecles so now it's a category redirect. The name of the building is not all that popular; in fact I didn't knew it even after reading a whole 500-page paper on Valencian architecture of that period. But it seems that the name has some use by some people, so I would like to keep it. Option B is eliminating it and having to search any pictures uploaded to categories too general to be of any help.

It seems that what I have to do is nothing. But I'm not sure.

Thanks!

10:25, 2 July 2025 (UTC) B25es (talk) 10:25, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Convenience link Category:Edifici Gil-Tecles.

@B25es: this is not how you are supposed to move a category. It does not handle the history well. Please read Commons:Rename a category, which is policy. Also "Building at" is not normally part of a category name; much more normal to just use the address.

Commons (and Wikimedia broadly) is overdue for a complete overhaul — here’s why

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Hi all,

After years of contributing to Wikimedia Commons and other projects, I want to openly express a number of deep concerns and propose a direction for meaningful reform. Please read this not as an attack, but as a call to renewal.

1. The platform is stagnating. Commons — like Wikipedia — hasn’t aged well. From interface limitations to rigid community structures, the platform feels stuck in the late 2000s. There's been little visible progress toward modernization, and much of the system feels unwelcoming, overly complicated, and hard to engage with productively.

2. AI moderation must be implemented before uploads go live. Commons badly needs 24/7 AI-powered pre-screening of uploads. Copyvios, spam, or harmful files should never go live in the first place. We need to stop relying on burned-out humans to clean up messes that could be prevented entirely. Machine learning tools for filtering visual content, metadata quality, and licensing compliance are mature enough to handle this today.

3. The editing and review experience is hostile or thankless. It is often far more difficult and tedious to contribute in good faith than it is to vandalize. Newcomers face a dense wall of policies, unfriendly tooling, and inconsistent community support. The result? Editors leave, while vandals find loopholes.

4. Commons is flooded with low-value content. We should prioritize quality over quantity. Most uploads are marginal, unsourced, or redundant. A massive audit — ideally automated — should identify low-value content for merging, deprecation, or deletion. Let’s stop hoarding and start curating.

5. Disincentivize abuse through real accountability. Tying editing rights and upload privileges to verified accounts (e.g., through a secure third-party identity verification service) could deter sockpuppetry and long-term abusers. Most good-faith users would have no reason to object — and it would help reduce abuse, vote stacking, and endless reuploading of deleted material.

6. Mascots like Wikipe-tan need to be retired. Wikipe-tan has been around since 2007, and her design reflects a very specific (and exclusionary) subculture. It’s time for Commons and Wikimedia at large to project a more professional, inclusive identity that reflects a modern, global project. Mascots should unify, not alienate.

7. Merge all language editions into one Wikipedia — and one Commons. Right now, projects are fragmented and duplicated across languages, each with their own templates, policies, and standards. This makes translation and collaboration painful. We should aim for one global platform with multilingual support, not dozens of inconsistent forks. That includes Commons, which could benefit from being streamlined and deeply integrated with a unified multilingual backend.

8. Simplify and clean up everything. From templates to user rights to Village Pump categories — the entire system is overloaded with cruft. We need a deep cleanup: of unused templates, contradictory policies, broken workflows, and outdated assumptions.

9. The current governance model discourages reform. The “old guard” often resists change, enforcing policies more out of tradition than effectiveness. Meanwhile, real contributors burn out and potential editors bounce off. Reform needs to be baked into our governance model. Admins, ombudsmen, ArbComs — these structures need to be transparent, accountable, and re-evaluated regularly.

10. Donations must be anonymized. To prevent financial influence or bribery disguised as “support,” all donations should be routed through third-party anonymizers. This is vital for editorial independence and public trust.

In summary: Wikimedia Commons and its sibling projects must stop running on inertia. We need a full audit, a modern architecture, AI-first moderation, professional branding, and a governance model that respects contributors and adapts to change.

I say this not out of hostility, but because I care about what Wikimedia could still be.

Thank you for reading.

Grandmaster Huon (talk) 16:23, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Certain Commons editors are fond of constantly beating the "Commons is short on admins" drum. No, Commons is short on warm bodies, period. The few regulars have a bad habit of being exceedingly condescending towards those on the wrong side of the learning curve, while giving a pass to people with exclusively or overwhelmingly problematic contributions who have figured out how to game the system. That's at the top of my list. This and other things are the reason why I've put a pause on contributing my original intellectual property. If it keeps up, I just may throw it all on Flickr and mark it copyrighted instead of CC-licensed. The choice is in how others choose to conduct themselves, really. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 18:39, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Grandmaster Huon, as we are here at Commons, it might have been more goal-oriented to restrict your expose to really Commons-related issues. For example, #10, AFAIK, has no relation to Commons.

Anyway, from my own year-long experience, I can confirm the problems described in #2 and #4. It seems indeed to be absurd that the constantly growing number of uploads needs to be manually checked by (unpaid) volunteers for issues such as being a copyvio, which IMO could easily be taken over by a AI routines/bots. --Túrelio (talk) 19:01, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Hi Grandmaster Huon,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. While there are definitely some valid points in your post — particularly around modernization and contributor burnout — I think it’s important to address a few things for the sake of context and transparency.

First, it’s a bit misleading to frame this as coming from a longtime contributor. According to public user records, your editing history spans just under two years, during which you've been indefinitely blocked on two different Wikimedia projects — and, until very recently, were also indefinitely blocked here on Commons. You successfully appealed that block just yesterday, and now you’re presenting a sweeping reform manifesto as though you’ve been here for a long time. That dissonance undermines the credibility of the post.

Second, while there's nothing wrong with using tools to help write clearly, this reads very much like something generated (or heavily assisted) by ChatGPT or similar AI. Again, not a crime — but it's worth being transparent if you’re going to frame this as a deeply personal appeal.

Lastly, while critique is always welcome, reform is most credible when grounded in experience and mutual trust. Coming off a block and immediately calling for top-to-bottom change, including drastic measures like account verification, mascot retirements, and forced platform unification — all while dismissing the current community as stagnant or outdated — feels more like a provocation than a good-faith invitation to collaborate.

If you genuinely want to help Commons improve, I’d suggest a more constructive path: engage in active contribution, participate in discussions with humility, and propose incremental change where it’s grounded in actual experience here. That’s how real reform happens — not through sweeping manifestos from a just-unblocked account.

Respectfully, ReneeWrites (talk) 19:17, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Yes, this was written with the help of AI, as it helps me articulate my statements. Grandmaster Huon (talk) 19:28, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

It doesn't matter who wrote it, but how it resonates. Grandmaster Huon (talk) 19:29, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

OK, if AI writes it, AI can read it. No reason for humans to be involved at either end. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 19:54, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Wow! Honestly, my mind couldn't tell the difference between a well-written statement and... well, AI. All of this is more of an emotional appeal to those burned-out users, actually. George Ho (talk) 20:34, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

• If AI were to filter my uploads and make decisions to exclude content, I would leave the project.
• You refer to "low-value content" but give no examples. You do not even state criteria for such value
• I may be mistaken, but I haven't seen anyone here reference Wikipe-tan in about a decade. Can you give me an example from the past year?
• It is hard enough for Commons and Wikidata to coordinate across languages. Why would you want to impose our most difficult issue on the creation of articles that are inherently each monolingual?

- Jmabel ! talk 21:27, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

• Also, frankly, coming back from a well-deserved block to tell us we should all be doing things very differently shows a lot of gall. - Jmabel ! talk 21:32, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your candid feedback, Jmabel. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify and respond.

1. On AI filtering and content exclusion:

I understand your concern about AI making exclusion decisions. My intention is not to replace human judgment but to use AI as an assistant to flag potentially problematic or low-quality uploads before they go live, allowing human reviewers to make final calls. This would reduce the workload on volunteers, not remove their authority.

2. Defining “low-value content”:

By “low-value,” I mean media files that:

Lack clear educational, encyclopedic, or documentary purpose.

Are duplicates, blatant copyright violations, or trivial fan art without relevance.

Have poor or no sourcing or context.

The goal is not to censor creativity but to maintain Commons as a high-quality repository that serves global knowledge needs.

3. Regarding Wikipe-tan:

While it may be true that Wikipe-tan isn’t frequently referenced recently, she remains an emblematic mascot representing an older era and subculture within Wikimedia’s history that no longer reflects our current mission or broad community. The suggestion to retire her is symbolic of broader cultural modernization.

4. On language coordination and multilingual articles:

I recognize that articles are inherently monolingual. My vision is not to force projects to merge immediately, but to work towards a unified backend and AI-assisted translation tools to reduce duplication and inconsistencies over time. This is a long-term goal, not an overnight change.

5. On my history and “gall”:

I accept that coming back after a block and proposing sweeping changes is unusual. However, my motivation is to contribute constructively to Wikimedia’s future. I hope this can be judged on the merit of ideas rather than personal history.

Thank you again for engaging in this dialogue. I welcome continued discussion on how to improve Wikimedia sustainably. Grandmaster Huon (talk) 22:31, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

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Preemptively closing this before it becomes a complete circus. Throwing out a bunch of vague thoughts that are a mix of unrelated to Commons, non Commons-specific, utterly unworkable, exceedingly unlikely to be accepted by the community, and bereft of useful detail is not the way to start a productive conversation.

@Grandmaster Huon: , I suggest you carefully Jmabel and ReneeWrites told you. Immediately after an unblock is an exceptionally poor time to propose systemic change. That is not going to establish you as a trustable community member, and neither is posting LLM-generated drivel. If you want to eliminate "low-value uploads", you can start with some of your own. Just since your unblock, you're uploaded multiple uselessly-blurry files (1, 2, 3), multiple sets of duplicates (4a/4b, 5a/5b), and vacation photos with useless filename and description (6) - and none of the uploads are well-categorized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pi.1415926535 (talk • contribs) 22:42, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Renaming a Category

I read "Commons:Rename a category" and not sure how to accomplish this myself so here I am... I previously posted a query about this issue at ”Commons:Village pump/Technical“. To me the Commons "Category:Wilmington insurrection of 1898" is mis-named, it should be "Category:Wilmington massacre". There isn't more than one event of this type on more than one date that happened in Wilmington, NC and to call it an insurrection mischaracterizes the mass murders and toppling of a municipal government that happened there on November 10, 1898. See the Wikipedia article "Wilmington massacre". (And I really would do the linking thing but cannot figure out how to do it over here on Commons...) – Shearonink (talk) 14:32, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

For a potentially controversial rename like this, the right way to approach it is to start a CfD. - Jmabel ! talk 18:50, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Copyright of audio works that are only partially generated by AI

Hello! I found on Pixabay, this music that claims to be AI-generated. However, going to the artist's YouTube channel, it seems like the Roneat ek (which I would say is the main instrument in the music), is in fact not AI-generated.

If this is uploadable to Commons, what license would this go under? I know that {{Pixabay}} wouldn't be applicable since this was uploaded to Pixabay this year, way after Pixabay stopped licensing their media under CC0. COM:AI only mentions a case in which people modified AI work that was a visual work, which are treated differently than audio works in the US. TansoShoshen (talk) 19:13, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Probably avoid just to be safe Trade (talk) 21:10, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Category for files that were ripped from video games

Do we have a category for this? I am specifically talking about this icon--Trade (talk) 00:21, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps Category:Video game icons? Tvpuppy (talk) 00:44, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Problem is that the category is not limited to files that were ripped from games Trade (talk) 01:27, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

If we were to have a distinct cat for that (and I'm not at all sure we should), surely it would be a subcat of Category:Video game icons, no? - Jmabel ! talk 01:49, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Category:Icons ripped from video games is a thing now. Trade (talk) 02:19, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps I’m not understanding, what’s the difference between an icon ripped from video games and a regular video game icon? Tvpuppy (talk) 02:28, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Purpose it to indicate the source of the files Trade (talk) 02:34, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

I understand now, so isn’t simply “Icons from video games” a more suitable name for the category? Tvpuppy (talk) 02:46, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

No, that's ambiguous Trade (talk) 02:55, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

@Trade: what exactly is the definition for "ripped from"? Directly copied from game assets, taken from marketing resources, screenshots, something else? MKFI (talk) 06:49, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

1 Trade (talk) 07:15, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

@Trade: I suspect you typo'd here, or something. That is not in any way a reply to the question asked. - Jmabel ! talk 18:47, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

He asked me which definition. I said the first one? Trade (talk) 21:00, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Which makes them likely copyright violations. Indeed, both of the contents of that new category are almost certainly copyright violations. The James Bond "007 and gun" logo is copyrighted. - The Bushranger (talk) 01:20, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

That's called a trademark Trade (talk) 02:43, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

I'm aware of the difference, thanks. - The Bushranger (talk) 03:19, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

File:Marcellus Hartley Dodge Jr. (1908-1930) portrait.png

Can someone add File:Marcellus Hartley Dodge Jr. (1908-1930) portrait.png to his wikidata entry at Q6756466? I'm blocked at Wikidata and I find at least one a day where an image is missing from data but available at Commons, is there any way to flag an image so a bot can add it if none is at data? --RAN (talk) 16:26, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): you were recently warned by a Wikidata admin that you may not make proxy requests for edits to Wikidata, and that anyone who edits Wikidata on your behalf there is subject to having their account blocked. Please do not put other people at that risk.

I would truly hate to have to block you here for importing problems from another wiki and placing others at risk, but if you continue to use Commons as a forum to request proxy edits against the policy of a sister wiki, you would put us (Commons admins) in a position where we have no other reasonable choice. - Jmabel ! talk 19:03, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

• Just saw that now, that is why a bot should do it. Just as we have bots perform other routine maintenance. --RAN (talk) 20:34, 3 July 2025 (UTC)
  • @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): , bots are "other users". You may not request that other users proxy edit for you on Wikimedia projects on which you are blocked or banned, full stop. - The Bushranger (talk) 01:17, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

    Maybe he is suggesting that a bot should automatically add images to Wikidata items when an image has depicts set to that Wikidata item.

    Anyway, this is a truly brilliant situation where no one can add this image now. So if someone wants something to not ever be done on Wikidata all they have to do is get blocked and then ask other people to do it, then no one can ever do it.  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   02:02, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

    • There's no need to make such a hyperbolic reducio ad absurdium. People can absolutely do it. RAN cannot ask them to do it. - The Bushranger (talk) 03:17, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

I've added the image (applying the spirit of en.Wikipedia's "ignore all rules"), since Wikidata, the wider Wikimedia movement, and the open web at large are all better with it there than without.

In future since RAN still has access to his Wikidata talk page, I suggest he posts there the QID and filename of any such "missing" images, without additional commentary. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:26, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

More intense monitoring of copyvios

There must be stricter monitoring of potential copyvios. Many still got slipped through, like File:Southern Uptown Area Cebu.jpg. We should not rely on EXIF metadata claims in some instances, since some may have been added by the erring uploaders, to avoid being suspected of. Ping PhiliptheNumber1, who also detected a copyvio image that contained fabricated metadata (see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Line 2 Marikina–Pasig station exterior 2.jpg).

I'm also proposing to limit FileEx/Importer tool to "autopatrolled" users based on Wikimedia Commons user rights (not local Wikipedias' user rights). I had encountered at least one case of English Wikipedia media content that turned out to be a copyright violation: Commons:Office actions/DMCA notices/2024#2010 Winter Olympics Canada clebrating hockey gold medal. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 00:56, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

What exactly is this tool? Trade (talk) 00:59, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

FileExporter/FileImporter is a tool that easily transfers local files not tagged with "do not move to Commons" templates from Wikipedias to Commons. I have been using this to transfer eligible enwiki images of Patrickroque01 (that don't show recent public buildings and monuments). However, there is a tendency for inappropriate local wiki files to be transferred to Commons using this tool, and there has been some cases of supposedly "safe" enwiki files becoming tagged as problematic once on Commons (like copyrighted artworks), and at least there's one instance of an enwiki file that was flagged for DMCA take down (though it was transferred to Commons using different tool). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 01:43, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: "false and erring metadata" and "We should not rely on EXIF metadata claims in some instances, since some may have been added by the erring uploaders, to avoid being suspected of."? Well, while it's technically possible to fake EXIF, you would need some not-so-easily accessible tools for that (like EXIFTool and possibly a GUI for it, too, cf. Commons:EXIF). Your example looks different: it's more likely a photograph from a screen or print, where the uploader may have used a software to remove privacy-relevant data (GPS or the like), only somehow keeping the model and make of a smartphone. But that's still enough to raise suspicion: you don't have ISO values, no focal length, no exposure duration, no aperture value, no camera software... So, it's clearly a malformed dataset, which makes for a stark reduced value as evidence for being a legitimate photo. It's rather becoming the opposite. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 01:59, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

@Grand-Duc no, it is a straight copyvio - a photo grabbed from the Facebook page of Pinoy content creator The Island Nomad, and the uploader purposely removed FB metadata and added bogus Huawei exif metadata to remove suspicions on copyright status. The Island Nomad post predates the upload here. I'm not convinced that Marmar0222 (talk · contribs) is the same person behind the Pinoy content creator. Marmar0222 also grabbed an image from a w:en:Rappler contributor's Facebook post and did the same fabrication of metadata (see Marmar0222's talk page). The Huawei metadata in these low-resolution images (that are post-2020) are bogus and fabricated. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 03:08, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

Are we certain it was deliberately "purposely removed", or simply remvoed as an artifact of cutting and pasting the images? If they were lifted from FB, yeah, that's copyvio, but simply right-click-saving an image and then editing it in an editor can result in that editor's metadata overwriting any original ones. - The Bushranger (talk) 03:24, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

Problem with Template pages

Hmmm...

So, just noticed that whenever I'm on a "Template:" space page, the tabs at the top kind of...shift down when the page completely loads, so that they're half hidden by the bar at the top of the page. On Firefox, latest version, with Monobook. - The Bushranger (talk) 01:14, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

I can confirm the same problem. Also Monobook + Firefox. MKFI (talk) 07:22, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

I have cross-posted this also in en-wiki: en:Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#On_template_namespace_with_Monobook_skin_the_tabs_are_half-buried. MKFI (talk) 17:02, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

I confirm too, the Monobook theme is quite underrated. (Firefox Nightly). Sev6nWiki (talk) 13:59, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

Category:Files from 500px.com with bad file names

Category:Files from 500px.com with bad file names still has over 18,000 files, which means few people are working on the problem. A fair number of the files have enough information either in categories or descriptions that it should be fairly easy to propose reasonable file names. Obviously, help from people with filemover privileges would be especially useful, but even without that you can use {{Rename}} and someone else can follow up the actual move.

If moving:

• Please do not delete the redirect, these have been here for quite some time and someone may be relying on the link.
• If a file currently has a name like File:BLAH (41777424).jpeg, please leave the parenthesized number intact when you rename the file. - Jmabel ! talk 18:29, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

I added the above bullet points to the category page description, since I think they are quite helpful for people to know. Tvpuppy (talk) 20:02, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Why should we retain a meaningless serial number from an external site? It holds no value whatsoever to Commons or reusers. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:48, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

@Pi.1415926535: As I understand it, there are people here who seem to find those useful for detecting duplicates. Not my issue, but I was chewed out for not doing so in the past. - Jmabel ! talk 00:30, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

That was always a silly excuse - no one was actually using them to detect duplicates when uploading - and it's completely irrelevant here because all the files are already uploaded. I've removed it from the category. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 01:28, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't know how it works with 500px.com but at least Flickr2Commons checks for duplicates during imports using the numbers. So they serve a purpose there. It might be different with 500px.com but they aren't totally pointless in general. Probably it depends on the site and how the images are being uploaded. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:46, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

The 500px import was a one-time affair - the site no longer allows users to tag their images as Creative Commons, and now primarily focuses on stock photo licensing. So there's no need to support future duplicate detection. Omphalographer (talk) 02:12, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

OK. It makes sense why the numbers wouldn't be necessary in this instance then. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:19, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

LES LARMES D’ÉROS

http://www.leslarmesderos.com/

sell physical photographs and works of art whose copyright has expired and have digital images of them online

most of these are rare, and once sold, the images have succumbed to linkrot

some that have succumbed to linkrot have been archived at commons.wikimedia.org

is there a task force or project to save these ?

Piñanana (talk) 21:56, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Inflation calculator

Where can I bring up migrating the Wikipedia inflation calculator template to a WMF site so that it can be used universally by all projects? I tried migrating it to Commons but it was too difficult, it involved dozens of subroutines that have to be migrated for each currency. It would be awesome in Commons space so we can have a note where we know what $500 in 1880 is worth today from historical news articles. It would be helpful in Wikisource too. RAN (talk) 19:20, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

Maybe it’s easier to do this in Wikifunctions. Tvpuppy (talk) 19:30, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Let me try there. --RAN (talk) 03:35, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

See mw:Global_templates and pages linked from there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:49, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Image extraction request

Most, but not all, of the images in https://www.istoria-artei.ro/resources/files/SCIAAP_2013_Art_01_Serbanescu.pdf are in the public domain and would be worth having; the Iosif Iser works are 3-1/2 years from being in the public domain (a good reminder, by the way, that some 120-year old work is still copyrighted). Ideally, extraction & upload should be done by someone who knows enough Romanian to provide decent descriptions, etc. I'd do this myself, but I have way too much else on my plate. - Jmabel ! talk 18:49, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Extracting the images as such is pretty trivial, but the weird thing is that the images are cut apart into different files. E.g. that first image with soldiers walking is not a single image file but two: one that ends around their knees and a second that starts around the dogs' heads. Very bizarre. Plus, out of 139 images, almost all are JPEG, but a handful are PNG. Do you want me to reassemble the component files into a single image when they are split up like this? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:53, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Additionally, my understanding of Romanian is extremely limited. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:08, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Sounds like it might be disproportionate to the effort involved.

There are early works of a few important artists there, though, and quite a few interesting commentaries on Romanian politics. It would almost certainly be worth capturing the works by Nicolae Petrescu-Găină, which all should be PD. Some of the others of importance are still in copyright in Romania: Iosif Iser, probably the most important artist represented here, in 1958, so as noted above his early work will soon be out of copyright; Ary Murnu and Iosef Franz Steurer, the latter also a pretty important artist, in 1971. Nicolae Mantu is probably one step down; he died in 1957, so his work will be OK in 2028.) So maybe other than Nicolae Petrescu-Găină it's not worth doing at this time, but certainly 3-1/2 years from now those early works by Iser would be very worth having. (For a "Western" comparison, it would be as if someone like Andrew Wyeth had early work as a political cartoonist.) - Jmabel ! talk 18:49, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'll just respond if you have some kind of action for me. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:28, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Studio Biederer

Category:Biederer Studio refers to : w:Studio Biederer and w:Ostra Studio

can a Category be a redirect? such as:

Category:Ostra Studio

Category:Studio Biederer

Piñanana (talk) 22:13, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

@Piñanana: are you just asking to create a redirect from Category:Ostra Studio to Category:Biederer Studio? Yes, that would be OK. Don't create a "hard" redirect, though, use {{Cat redirect}}. And, if you are doing this, you should expand the hat note of Category:Biederer Studio to mention Ostra Studio. - Jmabel ! talk 18:54, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't know... Ostra Studio and Studio Biederer and Biederer Studio refer to the same set since there seems to be no way to definitively separate them, but some items have metadata that claims one of the three. So now I wonder if there could be a superset that would contain all three. I don't comprehend the full consequences of { {Cat redirect} }

Piñanana (talk) 19:35, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Merchandise giveaways nomination

This is to notify that I have nominated Lymantria for a merchandise giveaway (a T-shirt) at m:Merchandise giveaways/Nominations/Lymantria. Please give your support for a T-shirt for them. Thank you! 〈興華街〉📅❓ 15:46, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Request to sort out categories of railway images in Category:Upper Arley, etc..

I have been categorizing and sorting images of the UK for about a year and a half now. The continuing influx of new images from Geograph makes it too hard to keep up. Also, since the talk pages of Category:Rail transport in Great Britain and Category:Rail transport in the United Kingdom are more-or-less dormant (and not followed), I thought it was best to make a request here.

The images mainly concern heritage and preserved railway vehicles, stations and events on the Severn Valley Railway from 2023 and 2024. Categories that are affected and should be checked are:

• Category:Upper Arley
• Category:Kidderminster Foreign
• Category:Kidderminster
• Category:Bewdley

I rather want to concentrate on current railway photography, heritage railways are not as interesting to me. --Btrs (talk) 16:49, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

@Btrs: you are not clear here on what task(s) you want people to do on those four categories. - Jmabel ! talk 17:41, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

I think I recognise the problem, areas with a nearby heritage railway receive many images of said heritage railway, what I usually do is cat-a-lot those images over to the local heritage railway station Oxyman (talk) 21:47, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Lossless AV1: Yay or Nay?

So I've noticed that both SVT-AV1 and libaom, encoders for the AV1 video codec, support lossless encoding.

I encoded the first 10 seconds of the Sintel Trailer with SVT-AV1 with the lossless option enabled, and uploaded it to Commons on File:Example.webm, just to test how well Commons handles these types of files.

The output video is, as expected, large, although not as large as the trailer's collection of frames stored as PNGs (~900 MB compared to ~300 MB) Fortunately, this is still under the Commons maximum file size limit, however I can imagine this being an issue on longer run times/FPS.

My laptop (Intel Core i3-6006U CPU, no hardware AV1 decoding available) struggles to play back the video with libdav1d, and combine that with the streaming of a very large file with bad internet download speeds, and it's pretty much unwatchable. However, Commons automatically re-encodes the video under more simpler to play formats, like VP9.

For such big file sizes, I don't think it's really that big of a deal, since I've seen extremely large in dimensions PNG files before, which Commons also automatically downscales them.

I couldn't do FLAC for audio since it isn't supported in WebM for some reason, so I chose 320Kbps Opus as the next best thing.

What does anyone here think? Should lossless AV1 be preferred if available? I wanted to ask this since I've found the uncompressed frames of the Sintel trailer, and I wonder if a lossless version of the trailer could supercede File:Sintel trailer-1080p.ogv, especially considering that MDN Web Docs considers Theora as deprecated. SergioFLS (talk) 06:16, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

No, Lossless AV1 should not be preferred. The Wikimedia eco system is not mature enough to handle people uploading a large amount of video data in lossless, and then having to software decode it and re-encode it to lossy version. Doing so at scale, would likely result in lossless being forbidden as an ingestion format. Use it where it makes sense, but not all the time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:44, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Shouldn't we focus on solving that issue? Rather than forcing uploaders to limit themselves Trade (talk) 22:01, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Some may upload every PNG as single file, as alternative. But I don't know what the opinion of the community is about that --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:26, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Generally speaking .jpg is preferred for photographic work, and .png for graphics. See also the descriptions of these templates: {{BadJPEG}} and {{BadPNG}}. ReneeWrites (talk) 21:09, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

It would also be interesting to know how big the difference between lossless compressed AV1 and uncompressed AV1 is --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:53, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

What is best format for news articles continued on a second page?

I tried three methods, is one preferred or are all three acceptable?

• 
  column 1
• 
  column 2
• 
  combined columns into one image
• 
  two page pdf version

RAN (talk) 18:00, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't know what's acceptable and what's not (though the license text says that one can edit files as one pleases, so do as you want?), but I can say that the last method (=pdf) is hardest to read on mobile. (I'm accessing Commons via a browser app on mobile.) Personally, I'd prefer the second method because all the info is in one place, but method one and three are truer to the source which might be relevant if someone wants to quote the newspaper, for example, in a research paper where you also have to mention the page from which you are citing. Nakonana (talk) 18:43, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

• Maybe I should create all three for important documents. --RAN (talk) 19:17, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  My view, as a reader on desktop and phone, is that your example could have another format, the column 2 below column 1 for scrolling simplicity, clearly displaying that the image has two non-contiguous regions, so as to not obscure the documents provenance.

  Piñanana (talk) 20:08, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  I agree, combined into one image but with space around each segment seems like a good layout. Sam Wilson 00:59, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

+1. PDF files aren't great for something like this. Probably having the section combined into one image but with space around each segment is the best way to go. That's how I've seen a couple of archives do it. Although you could just do all three formats but that seems like pointless overkill. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:13, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

PDF files aren't great, but the (correct) actual text can be embedded (eventually), w:djvu is an option... Piñanana (talk) 08:21, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

• I am not a fan of the pdf version, but it keeps the two files together. We have several halves of news articles, and I cannot tell if we once hosted the second half. It may have been deleted or a name change made it no longer findable, or it was never added to the category. So many things can cause separation. Sometimes "pointless overkill" is worth it, if the document is important enough. Is there an easy one step software package for converting files to the djvu format? I would love to start using it. --RAN (talk) 01:21, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  read: w:djvu ... Piñanana (talk) 02:37, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  DjVu is, quite frankly, a pain to work with. I wouldn't recommend using it over PDF if you have a choice in the matter. Omphalographer (talk) 20:45, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  It's totally tangential but I'm always surprised that Commons supports either format. Neither one works great on here. There really isn't reallu any reason for using them over image files in most, if not all, instances I've seen either. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:57, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  PDF is very well suited for use cases like scanned books (with or without text layers) - uploading these as collections of single-page images is much less convenient. DjVu was at one point considered a more Free alternative to PDF, but they're both open standards nowadays. Omphalographer (talk) 21:03, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  What is the best layout for news articles with multiple clippings ? ... Piñanana (talk) 00:09, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  I don't think there are many reasons to recommend DjVu over PDF these days, other than some rarely-used features around text structure representation. And yeah, if all that's in a PDF is images, they could be uploaded separately (personally I more often do that, and then add a {{G}} in the |other versions= parameter to show all the parts if there are few, or add them all to a category if there are many). Sam Wilson 02:46, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

Categories that are vulnerable to selfie spam and self-advertisement

As you might have noticed there are certain categories that are receives an disproportionate amount of selfie spam and self-advertisement. Would it be useful to list these categories somewhere? That way it could encourage other editors to take a look at them from time to time to clean them up

A couple of examples here:

• Category:Celebrities
• Category:Freelancers
• Category:Graphic designers
• Category:Entrepreneurs

Trade (talk) 21:04, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

At least with Category:Celebrities, there was a discussion and attempts to get rid of it last year but the category was never fully emptied. So it's still around. That's probably the best way to do deal with it though. "Celebrities" is to ambagious to be useful anyway. Hence why it gets turned into a dump for random selfie spam. The same goes for the other categories IMO. Although I'm not going to advocate for getting rid of them without proper discussion first. But all of them are ambagious to the point of being meaningless. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:19, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Clearly someone are teaching people to advertise in that particular category. Otherwise so many people wouldn't do it Trade (talk) 08:03, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

A wrinkle is that usually it's not the people posting the spam doing the categorization, it's people coming along after them. Gnomingstuff (talk) 03:22, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

It's the exact same problem I've pointed out repeatedly: editors go through uncategorized files, tack on some random, inconsequential category and walk away, all for the sake of being able to claim the file has now been "categorized". More often than not, it makes spam and copyvios harder to catch. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 03:54, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

One idea I've had is a technical solution where certain categories can be designed as not for files. That could be done with an edit filter, but it would be clunky - we'd have to edit the filter for each individual category, and it would only be able to warn or disallow the edit entirely. More elegant solutions are possible but might require software changes.

On the other hand, these categories do make it easy to detect a lot of spam. Perhaps its best to keep them as honeypots until something else (like automated upload filtering) reduces the amount we get. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 05:28, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Do we have a maintenance category specific to categories which frequently attract selfies and self-promotion? If not: should we? It could be useful for coordinating periodic cleanup of these categories. Omphalographer (talk) 20:52, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

We cant even have a filter that stops people from reuploading the same selfie biweekly from different accounts Trade (talk) 06:52, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

@RadioKAOS Ennnhhh I don't know if I agree with this. The people who make this stuff hard to find are the people who put a lot of effort into categorization and track down the really granular and deeply nested categories that no one is checking. The people who just tack on something like Category:Business are actually doing copyvio hunters a favor. (The main exception is people-related categories like Category:People, but the problem there isn't that spam is hard to find, it's that there's so much of it.)

As with every single maintenance backlog (and old spam is a backlog), the thing that will improve matters more than anything is just having more people do it. Gnomingstuff (talk) 13:00, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

The problem isn't just categories related to commerce; creative categories get a lot of self-promotional content as well: Category:Artists; Category:Authors; Category:Disc jockeys, Category:Musicians; Category:Vocalists Category:Writers. Omphalographer (talk) 07:52, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Let's not forget Category:Social media influencers and Category:YouTubers.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 12:46, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

• Hm, some good observations. However, alternatively, rather than label them "Categories that are vulnerable to selfie spam and self-advertisement", perhaps think of them as "Categories where much selfie spam and self-advertisement can be found and deleted". The project is going to get spam regardless of the existence of such categories; having places where the glurge tends to gather thus can more easily be found and cleaned out would seem to be of some use. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 22:48, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

So, is emptying categories just untracable?

I've had times where i perfectly remember a category being full on images only to later discover it has been nominated (and deleted) for Speedy Deletion for being empty

Common sense would suggest to bring the issue up with the deleting admin and whoever moved the files out of the category. But as far as i can tell there is no way of seeing who moved the images out of the category unless you have memorized the name of the images in the category

So it seems like anyone can just empty categories whenever they please with little risk of anyone being able to find out they did it? Trade (talk) 00:39, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

You can still search for the images that used to be in that deleted category, and you will be able to see who removed the category in the file history. It is possible that all the images within the category were deleted, hence the category was empty and subsequently also deleted. Tvpuppy (talk) 00:59, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

And if i dont remember what the files were named? Trade (talk) 01:28, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

It's not the best solution but I follow a couple of main categories just so I can keep track of whats added or removed from them. That's the only way I can think of to do it though and there should be a better alternative if there isn't one I'm not aware of. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:37, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

I would encourage you to request a solution on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/

I dont feel too confident navigating the UI myself Trade (talk) 02:13, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

I would but I think they require a new account and that your email address be publicly viewable to create one. Totally agree about the UI to. It's not super user friendly to say the least. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:22, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

A lot of MediaWiki tools suffer from the same issue unfortunately Trade (talk) 02:37, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Yes, it's close to untraceable. Certainly it is usually good practice to build some sort of consensus or at least to make some sort of comment (e.g. on the category talk) that gives people a chance to work out who was doing this. Also, leave edit summaries that let people concerned with certain files see readily that categories are being removed. Also, when deleting a category because you've merged it's content elsewhere, it's a really good idea for the deletion comment to explain where the content has been moved.

Still: sometimes a category is so obviously bad that I couldn't blame anyone for skipping the usual processes. - Jmabel ! talk 01:56, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Do you believe there is any responsibility on the deleting admin to check if the category is actually empty? Or just emptied? Before any deletion Trade (talk) 02:11, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

The deleting admin should evaluate before deleting. Otherwise, we'd just let everyone make deletions themselves. But everybody is going to make occasional mistakes, because sometimes the diligence required is disproportionate to the effect. For example, there are certainly users who I trust enough to follow through on their requests without much checking of my own. If one of them screws up despite a long, good track record, I might not spot it. And I would have to guess that the admins who do the most deletions are most likely to fail to notice one that isn't correct, because they would not have time for as much diligence per deletion as those of us who are less confident of knowing what is likely to be abuse. - Jmabel ! talk 03:36, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Fully agreed. Trade, you may be encountering this because of your habit of creating excessively intricate category trees that are not useful. I just deleted a dozen categories you created which collectively contained exactly one file. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:40, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Try and avoid stating false reasons for deletion in the logs next time then Trade (talk) 23:12, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Try and avoid creating massive collections of near-useless categories. - Jmabel ! talk 01:07, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

We have been keeping video game screenshots seperate from the games they came from for more than a decade now. Lashing out at me for following the decade long precedent does little to change that Trade (talk) 19:34, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

"Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features"

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/27/deepfakes-denmark-copyright-law-artificial-intelligence

"The Danish government is to clamp down on the creation and dissemination of AI-generated deepfakes by changing copyright law to ensure that everybody has the right to their own body, facial features and voice."

"The changes to Danish copyright law will, once approved, theoretically give people in Denmark the right to demand that online platforms remove such content if it is shared without consent."

"It will also cover “realistic, digitally generated imitations” of an artist’s performance without consent. Violation of the proposed rules could result in compensation for those affected."

What would the consequences for Commons be for AI files that were generated by individuals residing in Denmark? Trade (talk) 17:52, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't know, but it's odd if they are handling this through copyright law rather than personality rights. The article is very vague on exactly what rights this would grant or limit. - Jmabel ! talk 19:07, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

The original article in Danish explicitly mentions that this would affect ophavsretsloven ("the copyright law"). From my limited understanding copyright law and personality rights law is treated as being interchangable

https://www-dr-dk.translate.goog/nyheder/indland/minister-oensker-ny-lov-mod-deepfakes-saa-alle-har-ret-over-egen-krop-stemme-og?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US

In short if someone makes a deepfake (image, video or voice) of a Dane without their consent and said Dane demands for it to be taken down Commons will (supposedly) be legally obligated to do so or risk facing legal consequences (more likely Wikimedia Denmark will be the victims but still) Trade (talk) 21:07, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Personality rights is already a thing in Denmark but some politicians feel like it does not offer sufficient protection against deepfakes. Hence this law proposal Trade (talk) 21:08, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

I assume they would have to prove its a deepfake in the first place. I wonder how they would do that, especially as AI images get more realistic or would it just apply to any image of a person that they don't like or want on the internet regardless? --Adamant1 (talk) 21:57, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

"Would a hypothetical person reasonable believe this photo to be a real photograph of X absence of any evidence to the contrary" It's not that complicated. Courts and lawyers have been doing hyphotheticals about how a reasonable person would act or believe for years.

"I assume they would have to prove its a deepfake in the first place." Deepfake is essentially just a synonym for the hypothetical i just described

"or would it just apply to any image of a person that they don't like or want on the internet regardless?" The whole point of the law is to make the personal rights of defendants equivalent to the way copyright works with audiovisual materials (my assumption). Trade (talk) 23:23, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

That's fair. I was thinking more about claims made to Commons then actual court cases but I guess it wouldn't be that different. It's at least hard for me to imagine anyone nominating a deep fake for deletion just because it depicts a celebrity or something. Like probably the project should wait until there's some actual court cases or the WMF takes a stance on it before nominating deepfakes for deletion based on copyright. Especially since they still aren't copyrighted in the United States anyway. That's all. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:35, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

It doesnt matter that they aren't copyrighted in the United States. All files have to be free in both the US AND the host country (Denmark)

"Like probably the project should wait until there's some actual court cases or the WMF takes a stance on it" The WMF likely wont take a stance unless the Commons community prompts them to do so. Hence this discussion Trade (talk) 01:50, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

Flagging that I started a discussion over at the Talk page for Denmark's copyright rules (didn't notice this discussion at first as I only checked the copyright VP, apologies for starting an additional thread). There were a few comments over there in response. 19h00s (talk) 19:52, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

Kurds or Assyrians?

Good day.

Today, @Surayeproject3: tagged the following file as a duplicate. Unfortunately, that's not so easy in this case, as it must first be clarified what exactly the image depicts. According to File:Kurdere - fo30141712180016 27.jpg, it's Kurds, and it's also used as such in language versions. In File:Nestorian (Assyrian) Christian family making butter, Mawana, Persia.jpg, you can see Assyrians in Persia making butter. Image one is by Category:Bodil Biørn, while image 2 doesn't name an author in this sense; it comes from the collection Category:Images from the Library of Congress. The question now is which statement is correct, and in that sense, an image may need to be renamed, depending on which version is keept. Regards. זיו「Ziv」 • For love letters and other notes 20:08, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for making the Village pump posting @Ziv. Like I mentioned on her talk page, I tagged a file as a duplicate of another depicting a group of people in Persia making butter. As an Assyrian, I typically categorize and upload Assyrian-related images here on Commons, so I'm familiar with the terminology and background of these topics. Based on the general use of the image, upload dates, and a version having the words "Christian family...", my instinct was to assume that the ethnic identity of these figures was Assyrian (in Persia and the Middle East, Assyrians are almost unanimously Christian while Kurds are Sunni Muslims). It's possible that as we move the discussion along, we could find many reliable sources pertaining to the image that prioritize a certain description over another, but this is just an idea. Surayeproject3 (talk) 20:24, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

Template:CIS minors

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

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

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

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

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

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 00:28, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Aloe suzannae

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bot deletion threat

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

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

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

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

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

Category:Official Journal of the European Union 2012, C Series

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

| date        = Published on 28 July 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

I see two images that clearly seem like they should have history merges

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

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

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

PD-India template

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GSAPPstudent, Columbia, Cameron Rowland

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

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

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

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

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

Two Vietnam-related issues that have come to my attention recently.

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

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

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

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

Some questions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vietnamese here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regarding the flag of Vietnam:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adiutor notices don't get signed

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

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

Need help with a Commons File <-> Wikidata link

Hello,

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

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

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

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

Remedy for erroneously identified images

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/User_problems#c-Yann-20250713093000-Eatcha

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

not xx

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

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

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

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

banned by the Wikimedia Foundation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AI training bots overwhelming GLAMs

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am Nikon ad campaign logo

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

https://jcubic.pl/nikon.svg

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

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

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

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Escritora Cora Coralina

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

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

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

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

Maps by Survey of India

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alternative for Glamorous file usage stats tool?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Riverina and the South West Slopes

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

Category talk:Heroes' Cemetery in the Philippines#RfC: Cemetery name

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

Voting on new proposed text for project scope policy for PDF and DjVu formats

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

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

Setup errors on Category:Monaco

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

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

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

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

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

Categories for discussion backlog

As I have mentioned a few times before. This categories for discussion Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/01/Category:Setsumatsusha has been running for a year and a half. Is there any backlog function for old non-closed categories for discussion? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 23:42, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Is there a limit as to how how much space custom licenses are allowed to take?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

@PantheraLeo1359531 I have already removed the FoP template. To the uploader @C.Suthorn: there is no reason to put {{FoP-Germany}} because there is no recent work of architecture or artwork (like monument or sculpture) intentionally included in the image. Be prudent in using FoP tags. Birds are not works of art (except if the "bird" is a sculpture permanently placed on public roads or squares). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 23:41, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

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

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

Would you support a ban against QR codes in the EXIF? Trade (talk) 23:28, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Probably unnecessary. C.Suthorn was blocked indefinitely a few months ago, and as far as I'm aware they're the only user who was doing that. Omphalographer (talk) 23:48, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Anti-social behavior

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

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

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

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

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

The worst part of that category is that it contains:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, no: That’s exactly how categories are meant to be used: Tidy cladograms in which any ancestor cat has a predictable linear connection with any of its offspring is but one subset of the much vaster kind of intercat relationships the whole of Commons harbours. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:45, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Yes and no.

Sometimes subcategories aren't a subset of parent categories, but when damage done by insects is a subcategory of antisocial behaviour or when industrial grain silos are a popular culture, some inclusion in the chain is wrong. In the first case, the wrong inclusion is that animal damage in Germany shouldn't be a subcategory of antisocial behaviour in Germany, and in the second case, none of the actual content of Category:Popular psychology in New South Wales is related to psychology because of several wrong inclusions. Pere prlpz (talk) 17:54, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

These particular cases may well be wrong, but there are definitely valid reasons why category inheritance (1) is not always an "is-a" relationship and (2) is not transitive. A simple example is that a category for a building is typically categorized under every use the building has had; a particular photo taken in that building is likely to be related to at most one of those uses. Things are often categorized under who they are named after or were formerly named after; sometimes this is direct inheritance, sometime via a Category:Things named after FOO; in almost no case will that eponym be relevant as we continue down the hierarchy of inheritance.

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

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

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

Flinfo not working

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

Looks like there’s a problem with this site

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

Error code: 500 Internal Server Error

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

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

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

Thanks for the ping. Should be fixed. My hoster forced me to update to php 8 and I didn't test Flinfo. --Flominator (talk) 06:20, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

@Flominator @Jeff G. working now, thanks! - MPF (talk) 13:16, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Australian pages

I know most of Comoms is done in the category space, but I am interested in the purpose of main space. My reason is that my focus is on documenting the South West of Sydney, and I have so far covered (I would estimate) about 75-85% of the City of Liverpool in terms of geotagged photos.

I would love to establish a main space page, but I don’t know what is appropriate content for the pages. I clearly don’t want to compete with Wikipedia but I would like to find a common ground that allows Commons users to navigate our content around this region.

Does anyone have any advise on what to do with main space pages? It seems a waste not to use them. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 04:25, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

@Chris.sherlock2: gallery pages are (or should be) about curated content. A gallery is most valuable when there are too many images or subcategories in a category to easily check. Select representative images you think are are best for various purposes (general, historical, aerial, selected sites/details/landmarks etc.). You might consider annotating some images. Keep text to minimum and concentrate on images. You can always improve it later.

While galleries are underused there are some and Sydney is quite good. You could use it as a model and start with some smaller town. MKFI (talk) 08:00, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Galleries provides fairly good guidance. The examples linked near the bottom of the page are quite varied and give a sense of what is appropriate. - Jmabel ! talk 16:32, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Jungian archetypes

Broad categories should not be placed under Category:Jungian archetypes, supposedly a concept in a specific school of thought? such listing is more appropriate for wikipedia or wikidata. do you agree? RoyZuo (talk) 16:34, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. If there were populated categories specific to the Jungian archetypes, e.g. Category:Mother (Jungian archetype), those would be appropriate subcategories. Broad categories like Category:Mothers are not appropriate subcategories, as they aren't specific to the parent category. Omphalographer (talk) 17:16, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

I removed some. RoyZuo (talk) 18:54, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

ImageNotes

Does anyone have any guesses why File:Streetcar on Stone Way Bridge, 1911 (2942061361).gif isn't giving me the "Add a note" tool to add an ImageNote? - Jmabel ! talk 00:17, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel: It works for me. I just added a test note to the street car. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:23, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

@Adamant1: still doesn't work for me, nor do I see your test note (which you should probably revert), though of course it is present if I go to edit. I'll see if I can get it to work in a different browser. - Jmabel ! talk 00:33, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Hhhmm weird. It's probably your browser or something. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:35, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

probably https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-ImageAnnotator.js#c-RoyZuo-20250326061000-Not_showing_when_browsing_zoomed_in . RoyZuo (talk) 06:10, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

I doubt it, at least not if the description of the causes there is accurate. - Jmabel ! talk 18:11, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Country-specific photography laws, and national borders

Imagine the hypothetical scenario where I'm at the China-North Korea border on the Chinese side at Dandong, I launch a drone, fly over to the North Korean city of Sinuiju, and start taking photographs. In terms of rules such as freedom of panorama, personality rights, et cetera, which country's rules would I be required to follow, if I were to upload the photographs to Commons? The drone would be physically located within North Korea, however the operator controlling the drone (and ultimately performing all photographic actions) would be physically located within China. --benlisquare_{Talk•Contribs} 05:35, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

I think in this case, it would be irrelevant, because both countries have a variant of FoP. In my opinion, it is important where the camera is located, when it comes to FoP, pers rights, etc. But you get the copyright protection of the country from which you shoot the photos (your physical location), IMO --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:21, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

The Choice of Law section of the FoP page talks about this, and funnily enough uses North Korea as an example:

The law used is likely to be one of the following: the country in which the object depicted is situated, the country from which the photograph was taken, or the country in which the photo is used (published/viewed/sold). Because of the international reach of Commons, ensuring compliance with the laws of all countries in which files are or might be reused is not realistic. Since the question of choice of law with regard to freedom of panorama cases is unsettled, current practice on Commons is to retain photos based on the more lenient law of the country in which the object is situated and the country in which the photo is taken. For example, North Korea has a suitable freedom of panorama law, while South Korea's law, limited to non-commercial uses, is not sufficient for Commons. As a result of the practice of applying the more lenient law, we would generally retain photos taken from North Korea of buildings in South Korea, as well as photos taken from South Korea of buildings in North Korea.

ReneeWrites (talk) 08:29, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

If I'm reading this section correctly, we'd pick the most lenient out of the two countries' rules? Going back to our hypothetical border scenario, China has FoP for buildings and 3D works (e.g. statues), but not 2D works (e.g. painted murals), while North Korea has FoP for buildings, 3D works, and 2D works. In other words, North Korea would have the more lenient FOP rules. With this in mind:

• Fly drone from China to North Korea, and while drone in North Korean airspace, photograph a 2D mural in North Korea: Permissible on Commons?
• Fly drone from China to North Korea, and while drone in North Korean airspace, but looking back towards the Chinese border, photograph a 2D mural in China: Still permissible on Commons, since the drone is physically in North Korea?

Based on the wording on Choice of Law, it seems like both cases would be permissible. Of course there are other laws to worry about, such as flying in restricted airspace (personally I'd consider any drone geofencing to fall under COM:HOUSERULES, i.e. a problem for the photographer to sort out with the country arresting them, and not a problem for whether or not an upload is permitted on Commons), but let's not overcomplicate this discussion for now, and just focus on copyright and non-copyright restrictions for Commons uploads only. --benlisquare_{Talk•Contribs} 10:04, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Any concerns related to security, privacy, COM:CSCR (consent of identifiable persons), etc. which aren't copyright related are not relevant for Commons. It is the uploader's decision to continue taking photos despite these non-copyright restrictions. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 10:14, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

I thought North Korea even does not have copyright protection for architectural works? Then, is wouldn't even fall under FoP --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:47, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

New train liveries in Italy

There does seem to be no corresponding livery category for these:

• 
• 

Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:48, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Expedite cfd

I'd like to invite more participation in Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/07/Category:Localities of the Novel "The judge and his hangman" (Dürrenmatt) so it can be closed asap. thx. RoyZuo (talk) 19:10, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

•  Comment I agree with deletion (and have voted there), but I don't see why this is an urgent matter that needs expedited closing asap. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 19:37, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

In scope?

I was wondering. Is the description of a place provided by a geographical dictionary that is in the public domain deemed to be in scope for the project? This would be an example. Thanks in advance, Alavense (talk) 01:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Borderline; since the file is in use, the question is moot for this particular file. - Jmabel ! talk 03:06, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

It could be even better if the whole dictionary could be uploaded, or maybe each full page rather than just some particular excerpts? I think it is in scope. Sam Wilson 03:13, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Jmabel: Thanks for the reply. I only provided that file to better illustrate what I was referring to. Anyway, leaving the fact that it is in use aside, what do you think about the idea of having those clippings? I think they are interesting and useful, but I have no idea whether they are in scope for the project. That is why I was asking. Alavense (talk) 03:55, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Samwilson: Yes, some editions of the dictionary have already been uploaded to Commons. I was just wondering about this format. Kind regards, Alavense (talk) 03:55, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, I would only upload a clip like that if I had use for it, otherwise I'd definitely upload at least a page, probably a book. I wouldn't want to see a separate file for every entry in a dictionary, for example. - Jmabel ! talk 04:10, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your opinion, Jmabel. Kind regards, Alavense (talk) 04:15, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

@Samwilson, see Category:Diccionario geográfico-estadístico-histórico de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar. MGeog2022 (talk) 11:41, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. It sounds like this comes down to "when is it appropriate to have a clipping as a separate file, when the full file is also available." Or something like that. I've sometimes also done details of scans (e.g.) for transcription purposes. Sam Wilson 12:37, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Does COM:INUSE always trump Commons:Project scope#Excluded educational content? This is indeed nothing more than raw text, and I no not see why it's used in gl:Curtis... Doesn't make a lot of sense, IMHO. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 13:25, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2025/02#c-維基小霸王-20250208152200-CSS_Image_Crop_tool

this tool could eliminate the need to upload clippings. RoyZuo (talk) 14:15, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't think you can effectively clip a DJVU, though.

Yes, COM:INUSE is a trump card for anything about scope. Got to fight it out on the other wiki first if you want to get rid of the file. In this particular case, I think the use is well within reason.

• The only tricky case about that I know is if things get "circular" between Wikidata including something only because there is a Commons cat and Commons keeping an image only because it is used to illustrate that Wikidata item. It's a bit hard to "break" procedurally, but usually the thing to do is a DR on Commons to agree that the only reason it is on Commons is the Wikidata item, then a DR on Wikidata citing the Commons DR and questioning whether there is any other justification on Wikidata beyond the Commons category. - Jmabel ! talk 18:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

- Jmabel ! talk 18:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Category Hotel stamps?

(file rename pending) And what of compagny stamps? In this case there is no licence problem as I am a heir. (hotel of my great grandparents) Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:19, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Wierd. I was just looking at that image or another one yesterday and could swear I created the category. What are the odds? --Adamant1 (talk) 13:28, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

They seems to be quite popular as poststamps. File:Stamp of Seychelles - 1988 - Colnect 655627 - Hotel cabanas.jpeg, File:Hotel Bloudon RS Stamp.jpg, File:Stamp of Peru - 1951 - Colnect 386552 - Tourist Hotel in Arequipa.jpeg. But not as ink stamps. There is the Category:Rubber stamp imprints. Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:14, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: There was a couple of hotels in Gibraltar that used handstamps like the Bristol Hotel and Grand Hotel. It's definitely a niche of a niche though. It would be cool to get a collection of them together on here. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:34, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I am thinking of creating two categories: Hotel poststamps and Hotel handstamps. Unfortunatly there is some confusion in the categories between a stamp (impression with ink) and a seal (a piece of paper affixed to the object). most of the time stamp is used for both. Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:51, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: There seems to be Category:Hotels on stamps for postage stamps with hotels on them. The second category sounds good, but I'd probably just go with "stamps" since there doesn't seem to be specific categories for handstamps on here and probably rightly since there's usually no way to know where the line is between a machine or handstamp. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:57, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

As both use ink, I suggest the Category:Hotel inkstamps. (d:Q644099). The first one (d:Q37930). In English both definitions use the word stamp. In Dutch it is handstempel / postzegel. rubber stamp is not always correct as it can be metal, see (d:Q2387838 / signet ring.Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:41, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

What is the difference between "Transparent roofs" and "Glass ceilings"

Here is an example of a glass ceiling that is definitely not a roof.

Yes, what is the difference between "Transparent roofs" and "Glass ceilings"? Since I doubt that all pictures from the second are showing ceilings made of glass (and not of any other transparent material), I feel like the categories should be merged. Thanks --A.Savin 09:36, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

In theory, there are other materials that can be transparent, e.g. plastic. For example, think of small-sized greenhouses with plastic foil roofs or acrylic roofs made of Plexiglas (which isn't actual glass despite its name). Nakonana (talk) 10:35, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Are you sure all photos from Category:Glass ceilings truly showing glass ceilings? Or was this category once created just to collect pictures of something that "more or less looks like a glass ceiling"? That is more my question, I didn't intend to ask about differences between glass and other transparent materials, thanks --A.Savin 11:00, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Personally, I'd just up-merge Category:Glass ceilings. There's some pretty convincing plastic (or other synthetic material) windows these days like faux stained glass and I doubt anyone can tell the difference from a photograph taken at the distances most of these ones are. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:39, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, most probably can't tell the difference between glass and plastic, however, there's still another difference between the categories: one is Category:Roofs by color while the other is Category:Ceilings by material (or Category:Roofs by material), so if you want to have glass/glass-like ceilings/roofs included in categories by color and by material, then we probably need both categories. Nakonana (talk) 15:46, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Roofs are seen from outside; ceilings are seen from inside. (And, at least in principle, you can have a glass ceiling between two stories of a building without the roof being transparent as well.) Omphalographer (talk) 17:15, 22 July 2025 (UTC)