This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
P.S. I'll make my own maps and upload them under the same names in the near future. (Just a heads up so someone seeing this doesn't also delete those. Ashune (talk) 20:34, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Meet with the Structured Content team at Wikimania!
Hi all! CParle (WMF) and I will be attending Wikimania 2024 in Katowice, Poland. Despite not having any presentation in the program, we wanted to let you know that, if you're attending Wikimania too, you can come meet us at all time during the conference and discuss with us about UploadWizard improvements or about the logo detection tool or just Commons issues. We'll be around during the whole conference, so from August 7 to 10, don't be shy and come to say hi! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:38, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
Can we now have a final consensus on the problematic issue of using the said talk pages as discussion areas of deletion requests instead of deletion requests pages themselves? Another case, by @Estrellato: (this one), which I have now moved to the main discussion page where it should be.
Support this change. There are, so far, over seven thousand deletion requests with talk pages (alphabetical list); at a glance, most of them were created by inexperienced or logged-out users in an attempt to respond to a deletion request, and many of them were never acknowledged by other editors. Blocking the creation of these pages, at least by non-autoconfirmed users, will do a lot to help these users get back on the right track. Omphalographer (talk) 05:17, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Ideally, yes! Any level of restriction we can add to creating these pages is a step in the right direction; my point was that even a very slight restriction (like requiring autoconfirmed) would help. Omphalographer (talk) 00:15, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks @Matrix for the upgraded filter. Thanks also to all Wikimedia Commons users who participated in the old and current discussions. If there are no opposing users, this thread may now be requested for immediate archival. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)08:39, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --—Matrix(!) {user - talk? - uselesscontributions} 08:45, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
If you know specifically what the plant in the photo is, a rename to a more specific name would be in order (under criterion 2 - "meaningless or ambiguous name"). But renaming just to remove the emoji is harder to justify, especially when the filename is still meaningless without them. Omphalographer (talk) 04:02, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
@Omphalographer: Hhmmm. The Emoji seem to show up as different flowers depending on the platform. So I'm not even sure how I'd figure that out to begin with. Maybe they could just be replaced with "flowers" though since it doesn't seem to be a specific plant. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:22, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I mean the budding flowers seen in the photo, not the ones represented by emoji in the filename. As you've astutely observed, the exact appearance of emoji is font-dependent. Omphalographer (talk) 05:13, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
The emoji is the same on every platform, but the rendering can change depending on which device/browser/etc. you view it with. ReneeWrites (talk) 07:09, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: I don't think emoji are themselves objectionable in file names. Indeed in this case they're the only part of the filename that actually describes what's in the picture. They might be difficult to type, but I think we accept that people might have to copy and paste filenames that are in unfamiliar scripts. So unless there's actually some problem that they're causing, I think they can stay. --bjh21 (talk) 11:55, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Commons:File naming advises "Avoid abusing Unicode...symbols such as "♥" are often more natural when spelled out ("heart"), also increasing visibility in search. Furthermore some characters do not render correctly at all in certain operating systems and browsers. It is a good idea to stick to letters, numbers, underscore (space), ASCII hyphen/minus/dash, plus, and period (dot), as these do not have any MediaWiki restrictions." DMacks (talk) 15:16, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't want to see emojis completely banned from file names -- in the most obvious case, they'd be appropriate in a file showing how a particular font renders that emoji -- but this seems like an inappropriate file name. - Jmabel ! talk19:44, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
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@RZuo: I would expect that including an empty {{Location}} template in the file's description would be enough. The template will automatically use the co-ordinates from structured data if it doesn't have any parameters, so there's no need to copy the co-ordinates. Have you tries that? --bjh21 (talk) 15:04, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
@Shkuru Afshar: may I strongly suggest that you take at least a few hours to seriously familiarize yourself with what permissions are needed to get images onto Commons before going out and seeking permissions on Commons behalf? When you ask the "wrong" question in seeking permissions, it sort of "poisons the well" for anyone (including yourself) who then goes to ask the same party the right question(s). - Jmabel ! talk15:15, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
@Trade: Consider it from the point of view of the person who is asked. Wikimedian: "Hey, can we have permission to use your images on Wikipedia?" Person who answers email (PWAE): "Sounds good. Let me check with my boss." … later … "My boss says that would be fine, as long as it isn't used commercially." Wikimedian then checks what is needed, has to get back to them: "Actually, we can't do that. We need a specific license (like CC-BY 4.0) that allows commercial use and derivative works." PWAE: "Huh, let me see if my boss would agree to that." … later … "My boss says he guesses that's OK. Sure, you can upload them with CC-BY 4.0." Wikimedian then checks what is needed, has to get back to them: "Well, actually, just emailing that to me doesn't count as permission. What we need you to do is either to put that license on your site, or your public-facing social media, or you can go through this VRT thing…" So PWAE has to go to their boss a third time, and the boss is a lot more likely to say "F--k it" than if they had been asked the right questions in the first place. And even worse if the original Wikimedian drops it at some point in this process, and someone else goes through something like this with them again. - Jmabel ! talk19:29, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
It might be better to rework the VRT guide instead of blaming other editors for asking the "wrong" way Trade (talk) 20:16, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
@Trade we already have the list of FAQs on top of the Village pump, and this question by @Shkuru Afshar has been answered by the number 1 question: "If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: 'Only free content is allowed.' This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias."JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)19:49, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
UI of Special:UncategorizedCategories has just changed, and in my opinion not for the better. Typeface is larger so less information on screen at once; hovering no longer tells you anything about whether the category has members (just repeats the obvious link, in a popup). I might have been willing to trade off the prior hover behavior for getting red links for categories that are already deleted, but we don't get that, worst of both worlds. [This seems to have been a temporary glitch. Weird. - Jmabel ! talk20:51, 9 August 2024 (UTC)]
Also, the report is now 34 days old, which is an awfully long time between reports on something where certainly hundreds of the 1500 or so categories listed have already been dealt with. Makes it hard to spot which ones still have work to be done.
Does anyone know what is going on here, and whether there was a reason for these changes, or the now infrequent running of the report? - Jmabel ! talk19:39, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Phab:T369024 it was changed to once a month. However i think part of the change was missing so it might have accidentally been changed to never (its been a long time since i have looked at the system, so i might be mistaken about that and maybe the cron job is just no longer needed or something) Bawolff (talk) 22:23, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
If this is used regularly to take care of these categories, I think it should run daily or at least every other day.
Maybe @Marostegui can explain why he had it deactivated how he plans to replace it.
Performance concerns are not something the community generally gets a say in. Keeping the site running in a healthy matter trumps individual Special pages. The special pages get more costly to run the larger the site gets. Enwiki already has a bunch of these on a delayed schedule, commons just got big enough that it has now become neccesary to switch some of them to once a month. Price of being big. Bawolff (talk) 11:36, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't think it was live before either. There is a big difference between something running daily and monthly.
Well, it's a substantial change to the site. One would expect that this is communicated, properly assessed and then a decision is made.
I think it was updated every 6 or 7 days before, which isn't that long between updates but running it four times a month instead of once really couldn't have been that costly. Once a month is kind of worthless regardless though. There should really be a middle ground between not running something like this to much while also not making the time between updates so long that it's unhelpful to doing the task. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:49, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
I think it was every 3 days previously. I'm not sure where Enhancing999 got 6 minutes from, the query is a lot longer than that according to the phab task. Potentially devs might be open to some compromise (e.g. twice a month) if this is really causing problems, i don't know how they would feel about it but it never hurts to ask. In regards to Jmabel's concern about it being hard to see what has already been done, it would probably be pretty easy to strike out entries that dont fit the criteria the same way some other special pages do. Bawolff (talk) 11:57, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
It was three days previously. I use it extensively. I've probably fixed several thousand of these in the last 12 months. When the data is over a month out of date, it makes the task much more difficult. Early this year we had this down to 100 or so files. It has now swelled back to over 1500. - Jmabel ! talk19:23, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Dating Monaco postcard
This is certainly not own work, but a scanned old postcard. The railway line was electrified in 1969, but there are other clues. The uploader mentions that this is the 'first' church implying that there is a later church. Unfortunatly there is no French article on the 'Couvent des Carmes' in Monaco.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:09, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Per the same article, construction of the original church (which is the one we see here I guess) was finished in 1913. --Rosenzweigτ11:25, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
If I were to guess the postcard was probably published in the twenties or thirties. Publishers didn't really publish sepia postcards of that quality before then and they were pretty much phased out by the 40s in favor of black and white RPPCs. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:08, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Okay, let me rephrase. Are files that have been deleted in lack of permission eligible for speedy deletion once they are reuploaded? And if so, under what CSD parameter? Or, alternatively, should they just be retagged with {{No permission since}}? Jonteemil (talk) 16:44, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
No, there is no need to tag them with "No permission". Please tag them as G4, and they will be speedy deleted. Yann (talk) 16:52, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Okay, then COM:CSD#G4 needs to be rephrased. As it is phrased atm it seems it only encompasses files that have been deleted after a DR, not after a PROD (no permission/license/source since), or maybe it's just me who interprets it like so. Jonteemil (talk) 17:38, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
G4 doesn't apply by its terms, IMO. If we think these should be deleted, I think COM:CSD#F5 is a better way to do it than G4. (Indeed, looking again at F5, it might actually not need any changes: "may be given a grace period" does not mean "must", and it was already given one...) —Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 19:04, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
You put files in there that track statistical trends and are meant to be used in general Wikipedia articles (vs. articles covering a specific moment in time). A cursory glance tells me lots of files in that category don't belong there, though, like maps tracking hurricane paths that took place years ago. ReneeWrites (talk) 17:28, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
I made a subcategory for the Australian stuff and cleared out some of the hurricane maps. Updating still takes some time, but the content seems much more reasonable now. Thanks for your input. Enhancing999 (talk) 14:10, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
The bulk of the Australian ones are now in a subcategory. To look at files after the remaining ones, use filefrom=ABS1.
[[:Category:Files that need updating (drugs)|Drugstats] seems to be another group (ca. 1000 files). Then COVID-19 (maybe this could be removed entirely).
Would it be useful to create a new subcategory for "files which should be kept updated as the facts change" (provisional name)? An example would be File:Metrication by year map.svg - it's possible that one of the three remaining countries will go metric, requiring an update to the map, but the map doesn't "need updating" other than that. There's a lot of other files, particularly maps, which are in a similar position. Omphalographer (talk) 20:54, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
I notice that the parameters that are defined in Template:Current/doc fail to show up in the resulting documentation and that parameter "subset" is undocumented. Normally I'd try to fix the latter, but the former tells me things are broken here and this should be taken on by someone more experienced with wiki templating than I am. Jmabel ! talk23:22, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
While categorizing the files related to Category:Bangladesh and Category:West Bengal, I found that Beauty of my second home.jpg was categorized under WB. Upon closer inspection, I found that the college ("second home") is in Rajshahi, Bangladesh. I had also seen some Bangladesh files in WB categories before, and I had moved them to appropriate Bangladesh categories. So why do Bangladesh files get categorized under WB categories? Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 12:33, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
It's hard to give a general answer with just a single file. Possibly it's something similar that happens at Germany: anything in German might end up there. Enhancing999 (talk) 13:29, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
It's worth to note that Bangladesh was known as East Bengal from 1947 until 1955, when it was renamed East Pakistan, and then in 1971 (year of independence) to Bangladesh. Perhaps this may have some connection to it. MGeog2022 (talk) 11:23, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, the British-era province of Bengal was split into West Bengal and East Bengal in 1947. According to my analysis, the main reason of such miscategorization is probably the fact that the Bengali language is used in both Bangladesh and West Bengal. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 12:45, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I know nothing about military history but could it make sense for the acronym to refer to Enlisted Reserve Corps (which I guess is a term of art of some sort)? --Geohakkeri (talk) 21:27, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! I think you got it, it makes sense. I'll add it and if someone finds something more fitting, we can change it. --RAN (talk) 00:02, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Parameters are not being correctly displayed on template pages using the {{Documentation}} template (in turn using the {{TemplateBox}} template). This means all templates are showing just "The template takes no parameters." under the Usage section, instead of the table showing the parameters (see {{TemplateBox}} itself for this, as this template has several parameters). I have had multiple users ask about how to use templates I've worked on, due to this missing information. Does anyone know what is going on with this? Josh (talk) 01:48, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
@Geohakkeri and Joshbaumgartner: Thank you for reporting and diagnosing this. I reverted my edit. I do not like Module:Languages's autolang function as it is using different language fallback rules than most of the other pages on Commons, but I do not have time at the moment to debug it. --Jarekt (talk) 15:22, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Resolving Potential Copyright, Educational Value, and Scope Problems with Media for a Wikibooks Project
Hi there,
I've been building a project for a month on Wikibooks that introduces high school leveled physics explained through a video game. To explain, I have been uploading media from the multiplayer physics browser game Bonk.io to explain real world physical concepts. On Bonk.io, users can publicly create user-generated content, called "maps." This allows for other players to play and modify each other's works freely within the game via a database structure, called the "level select."
As recently brought to my attention by @Adamant1 (on my talk page), Bonk.io does not currently have a copyright policy for maps. As such, regardless of the fact that the physics engine of the game, BOX2D is freely licensed via a MIT License, many of my uploads for the project potentially violate Wikimedia's copyright policy. With this understanding, I have immediately contacted the developer of the game to see if user-generated content can explicitly be released under the public domain.
With much of the media that I have uploaded for this project, they are partially derived from user-generated content on Bonk.io that was created by another user. Because of the lack of a formal licensing policy for maps, I have notified the other users of whom I had used maps for their permission for others to modify and use their work freely. At this time, I have had confirmation on Discord (messaging website) from several users, comprising the majority of the uploaded content, that they are okay with their work being in the public domain (specifically Creative Commons 0).
However, I am unsure of whether if another individual claims that their work is in the public domain, provided that the database lacks a formal copyright policy, that this is acceptable under Wikimedia's copyright policy as freely licensed content. Secondly, I am unsure of how these individuals can be independently verified by others on Wikimedia such that it is clear that the original publisher of the map on the Bonk.io database has claimed that their work is in the public domain. As such, this alternative method may be problematic.
To note, my goal is to reach a resolution with the existing copyright concerns that exist with my uploads. Ideally, I want to resolve this problem such that my project on Wikibooks remains functional and can grow, even if such a resolution will be time-extensive on my part.
Educational Value Concerns
In addition, I was informed that my existing project may fail to meet the educational value requirement for uploaded media on articles. This is because of concerns on how well the a video game engine can model real world physics and whether it can be realistically used as an educational resource.
To note, I strongly feel that my uploaded media does adequately function as an educational resource for explaining topics in elementary mechanical physics. However, I acknowledge there are limitations of the Bonk.io game and the BOX2D physics engine, including that:
The content is displayed in a two-dimensional environment.
Shapes in user-created maps are only solidly colored.
Automatic lightning and shading is unavailable.
A limited number of physical concepts are presentable. For example, fluids cannot exist in the game.
As such, this may make the uploaded media as a lower quality resource for general usage on Wikimedia, especially compared to media that exists from more powerful physics simulators, such as Unity or Algodoo. However, it does not impair the ability to use this resource for explaining elementary mechanical physics, in my opinion. This is particularly the case if high quality maps that are specifically designed to model real world situations are used.
Scope Concerns
Finally, I understand that there presently is not a clear policy on Wikibooks on whether video game content can be used to discuss real-world concepts. To note, content that wholly concerns video games, specifically strategy guides, were approved by a consensus on Wikibooks back in 2021.
To my understanding, there has not yet been a discussion on whether video game content can be used to talk about real-world concepts on Wikibooks. Also, I am unaware about any other projects on Wikibooks that have or had existed specifically in this topic area. If needed, I would be more than willing to encourage community discussion on Wikibooks to decide if my project, in regards to its topic, is appropriate on the site.
Questions
Would the approval of the developer of Bonk.io that uploaded content is under the public domain resolve copyright concerns for using any uploaded media on the database?
Would approval from individual players that their maps are under the public domain alternatively resolve these concerns?
If "yes" to Question 2, how can this be done to assure the authenticity of each of these players such that others on Wikimedia Commons can independently verify this?
Does the current state of some or all of my uploads for the above-mentioned project fall under "Low-quality content that does not add value beyond our existing coverage of the same topic" on Wikimedia Commons, thereby not being realistically useful for an educational purpose?
Should there be a community discussion on Wikibooks concerning whether my project's topic is appropriate for Wikibooks?
@TheMonkeyEatsBananas: where you say users have released their content to the public domain on Discord (which I don't use): is that public-facing, and if so can their comments be referenced via a URL? If so, you can cite that in the permission section of the {{Information}} template or other similar template. - Jmabel ! talk02:39, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
It would be kind of pointless if content from Bonk.io can't be used in this way to begin with. That would probably be the best way to deal with it if or when the developer ever gets backs to the TheMonkeyEatsBananas and says content from the game is PD or whatever though. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:50, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I have already acknowledged to you that it was a misunderstanding of mine that Bonk.io is inherently public domain content. I had made this assumption because its physics engine is under an MIT license. Also, because I have been building this project with others in the Bonk.io community, I uploaded the files in the public domain because I was in regular communication and discussion with each of these users about the project and my intention concerning it.
Beforehand, I was merely asking for their approval to use their work and/or modify it. I now understand that this is not enough for declaring another person's work under a CC0 - Public Domain license. As such, after you mentioned your concerns to me yesterday, I have contacted all of these users individually to confirm that they are okay with having their work specifically be under a CC0 license.
With @Jmabel's recommendation, I will provide a citation in the permission section of each file. This will provide a public link such that members of Wikimedia can access and independently verify that each of these players have released their work under a CC0 license. TheMonkeyEatsBananas (talk) 03:17, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for your response. The messages on Discord are public facing and linkable. However, this would require for users to have a Discord account to be able to independently verify. I can include the Information template that you've mentioned and include it on each of the files. TheMonkeyEatsBananas (talk) 03:06, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
It's a common issue but that's not really how it works with derivatives. The game itself needs to be PD for us to host images or video of content from it. Either that or we need explicit permission to do so from the developer. Its not enough to simply get permission from whomever posted the original images on Discord. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:53, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
To note, I don't experience with copyright law. As such, I do want to know more about whether the game necessarily needs to be in the Public Domain for any user-generated work to be freely licensed. Could you elaborate on how a person may lose their intellectual property rights if the service they created their user-generated content on lacked any written or implied claim for their work? If they do keep their intellectual property rights, does this instead violate Wikimedia's policy for file uploading?
To clarify, these are not the people who have posted images of other people's work on Discord. They are the people who have created the user-generated content themselves. Then, these people are confirming that they are publishing this content under a CC0 license (proposed process provided below).
Proposed independent confirmation process:
Every user whose work is in the project confirms on a public Discord server (https://discord.gg/QKrdE45y6h), accessible for anyone with the link and a free Discord account.
Their confirmation includes:
A list of their Bonk.io accounts.
The statement (directly adapted from the CC0 Commons Deed): "I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license: This media is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission."
Videos of the player visibly logged in on each account that they own. All videos include them creating a custom game room and manually scrolling through all of their personally published material on Bonk.io.
Videos of the player visibly logged in on each account that they own. See, that's the issue right there. Just because they log into the game as a player doesn't mean they can post images of it here on Commons, let alone that you can, even if those images are released by them or you under a free license. Please read Commons:Screenshots. I'll cite the relevant part of it for you in the next paragraph.
"if you do not own the copyright to a piece of software, you may publish a screenshot under a free license only if all the content shown itself has a free license. If a screenshot contains icons or content that is non-free, it is normally also not free...If all content shown is in the public domain, then the screenshot is also, because there is no creative contribution added when creating a screenshot. This may not be true in all jurisdictions, but holds at least in the U.S.....If the copyright holder(s) (usually the programmers, software company, producer, or broadcaster) do not agree to publish the program under a free license, then screenshots are normally only free if they explicitly license the screenshot (or all screenshots) under a free license."
I understand your concerns with my uploaded contributions. As I've stated when we began discussing a few days ago, you and anyone else have my support with requesting a mass deletion discussion if you feel that it is needed.
However, I still want to be able to continue my project either on a Wikimedia project or on another community. What options would I have if a consensus is meant where some or all of the media for my project does not follow a freely licensed policy? TheMonkeyEatsBananas (talk) 21:40, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
You could look for actually freely licensed media that illustrates the same concepts as are in the files that get deleted if any do. That's really your only option. I haven't looked into it but it shouldn't be that hard if your just trying to illustrate basic ideas. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:06, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Should galleries use the translate extension?
I think it would be useful for galleries to use the translate extension, as otherwise translators would have to manually edit all the mld tags first. It would also allow for translation of the page title. Thoughts? —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - uselesscontributions} 10:52, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Message in AutoWikiBrowser - "doesn’t have enough privileges"
I have been using AutoWikiBrowser for years in Portuguese wikipedia an Commons, but today I was not enable to use it. Message said "This user doesn’t have enough privileges to make automatic edits on this wiki" . What's wrong?
One‑off Creative Commons license on East Side Gallery photograph
The East Side Gallery is located in Berlin. And I am currently contributing to a project that includes one of the graffiti artworks and will be talking to the artist in due course. I recently took a photograph of their artwork and am happy to license it CC‑BY‑4.0 or similar and/or assign copyright to another party. But my photograph is merely a record of that artwork, albeit with the perspective tweaked, barrel distortion removed, and other similar edits. The underlying artwork would remain copyright of the artist. So here is my question.
Should I approach the artist, offer to transfer my copyright in the photograph to them, and then get them to issue that one photograph under CC‑BY‑SA‑4.0 for just that one photograph. That is why I headed my inquiry "one‑off Creative Commons license".
Is this suggestion legally feasible? Or would this one‑time license just leak to all subsequent photographs by all others? (And the East Side Gallery is widely photographed by tourists.) The German copyright act would apply I guess? The artist in question is resident in New Zealand, but I doubt if that is material?
Isn't the East Side Gallery a public space, outdoors, in Germany? If so, I'm pretty sure German laws on Freedom of Panorama would mean you don't even need the artist's permission.
@Jmabel: Many thanks as always! I know a couple of copyright lawyers in Germany and may take this question up with them. Regarding the subcategory for copyright, I did not realize the little hints on the tab at the top of this page were actually hyperlinks. Sorry. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 05:07, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
And some dedicated case law: Bundesgerichtshof 19 January 2017, case I ZR 242/15 East Side Gallery, (2017) 119 GRUR 390apparently protected work of art on a remaining section of the Berlin Wall. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 07:10, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
And to point out that the East Side Gallery is under heritage protection (or Denkmalschutz) for some time. The reason I mention this is that the 2017 judgement seems to be related to an absence of permanence (but I am looking into this question further). RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 15:31, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
"Mauerspringer" by Gabriel Heimler, East Side Gallery, Berlin
Here is an example ("Mauerspringer") that claims a permitted use under article §59 of the German copyright law. I would not bet on that being a correct assessment. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 16:33, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Comment: I will have an opportunity to talk to Gabriel Heimler (see thumbnail image) in the coming weeks. So I need an answer to my original question and will therefore migrate to the copyright track to seek help there. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 12:09, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
I keep getting a "fatal exception of type Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError" error every time I do an edit. Anyone else having the same problem or know what's causing it? Adamant1 (talk) 08:50, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I was unable to access my Watchlist just now and it gave the same error (copy-pasted below), but now it works again. Seems to be something that happens occasionally with any action you take on Commons? Something's definitely up though.
But it says that title is blacklisted and invalid? I checked and it should not be (no unsupported characters) so I tried just "Photograph of Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib, by Dhanna Singh Chahal 'Patialvi' " and it said that name is blacklisted too. I do not know why it is not letting me rename this file. Any fix? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MaplesyrupSushi (talk • contribs) 00:53, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Enhancing999 (talk) 09:24, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Cat-a-lot failure
There is some problem with Cat-a-lot. It was working normally until a few hours ago. However, the control interface stopped appearing on the pages and the tool is thus unusable. --ŠJů (talk) 23:48, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Enhancing999 (talk) 09:22, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
With mobile phones it is often not clear what people are doing, but in this case it clearly photographing. There are other functions than camera. Thanks anyway, I have recategorised to Men taking photographs in Japan.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:12, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I believe these two categories deal with the same game. fr:Jeu de l'assiette quotes a source from the 17th century, putting it in a similar timeframe to Belltafel = de:Pielkentafel. In England the game was called shovel board (related to but different from shuffleboard). Can the two categories be merged? Should they be kept separate, but both be put into (new) category:shovelboard that collects the cultural/regional variants? --Jonas kork (talk) 08:05, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Reason for Change: I would like to change my username to TheCoolPinata22 for personal preference reasons. The new username aligns better with my online identity and interests.
Please let me know if any additional information is required.
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Prototyperspective (talk) 20:13, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Origin of locations in infoboxes
Does anyone know where the infoboxes get their information for the location of a place from? As an example, Category:Ranský rybník has an infobox that says it's located in "Czechia." Although looking at everything related to it the country seems to be called "the Czech Republic." Even on Wikidata's end. So it's not clear to me where exactly "Czechia" is coming from in the infobox. Any ideas? Adamant1 (talk) 10:11, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Taylor 49 (talk) 20:24, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Semi-protection on the Village Pump?
I see that the Village Pump is now semi-protected, which strikes me as quite inappropriate. Yes, vandalism is a pain, but this is the Village Pump, where users, including new users and IPs, should be able to come to start or participate in a discussion.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:40, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
I recall that I had the bad idea to revert vandalism here myself .. rather than wait for an admin to do so and apply semi-protection. Agree that it could have been done for a shorter period, but most newbie questions are better on Help Desk. Maybe we should just add a notice for that. Enhancing999 (talk) 13:26, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't even call it "vandalism" here. This is not an article, but a talk page: there is nothing to vandalize. Inappropriate comments that are out of place should be removed, but they are written in his/her own name by the person who writes them: there is no visible wrong information. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:07, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps new or unregistered users could be restricted to adding comments and editing their own comments, if that's possible. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:27, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Is it possible to add page protection so only logged-in users can edit, even if the account is new? This seems like the most reasonable course of action to me as well. ReneeWrites (talk) 20:27, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
This is the new normal, instead of doing their job they'll just ban everybody from editing, like they did with overwriting files. Yilku1 (talk) 18:51, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
I've tried repeatedly to upload a pic, it sits doing nothing for ages, then throws up this error message:
Request from 82.41.2.30 via cp3069 cp3069, Varnish XID 90145027
Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Tue, 13 Aug 2024 21:11:42 GMT
Uploads were working fine earlier this evening, it is just in the last half hour or so. Thanks for any insight! - MPF (talk) 21:16, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Apparently there was some kind of hamster strike at the WMF servers. I also got messages that because of high database load I couldn't see the edits of the last 720 seconds or so on my watch list. --Rosenzweigτ22:54, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, I ran into this yesterday and then again today. Whenever it's down for long enough, it means the upload jobs I'm running (which can take up to an hour) give up after several retries and I have to restart the process from scratch. hinnk (talk) 21:08, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
I have made some lists at m:User:MGA73/GFDL files/Categories of the number of files licensed GFDL on all the wikis I could locate (updated since this). The lists look like this example for Wikinews:
I would like to find out how many files that can't be moved to Commons because Commons do not accept files licensed GFDL only after 15 October 2018.
There are many wikis and many languages I do not understand. So if you speak "Foo language" you are very welcome to check "Foo wikis". If the files are licensed correctly etc. you can Export them to Commons. If you need help setting up FileImporter just let me know.
The four files of pl.wikinews would probably not be deleted for that reason, or at least it's not obvious.
"Plik:1-7326 g.jpg" was licensed with GFDL at its source. The related pl.wikinews story gives it as an example of a montage on an external website that reused a GFDL-licensed Commons image. The external reuse initially did not comply with the GFDL requirements for reuses, but that was corrected after Wikimedians contacted the website. There are archived copies of the external website where the GFDL is seen.
"Plik:SG hack1.png" is a screen capture of a webpage of pl.wikipedia from April Fool's day in 2008, claiming to be created by hackers. it contains 2 photographs
"Plik:Konferencja zachlebem03.jpg" says that the permission was given by the photographer. It could probably be kept per "Grandfathered old files".
"Plik:Kupony Lotto wykorzystane przez tvn24.png" may be a more complex case. It is an example of a modified version on an external website that did not comply with the reuse requirements of a CC BY-SA 2.5 licensed Commons image. The pl.wikinews article says that the image was removed from the external website. The pl.wikinews file description page says that the external website accepted to publish the modified version under the GFDL, which is strange. There does not seem to be an archived copy of that, so that could be difficult to verify 14 years later. However, the change in the modified version looks rather non creative and it could be uncopyrightable. An argument could be made that it could be used with the CC license of the original Commons image.
n:pl:Plik:1-7326 g.jpg claims to be licensed in 2007 with GFDL at its source, but there is no VRTS ticket related to it, no link to Wayback Machine page, and no {{LicenseReview}} template
Those last 2 files likely comply with standards at a time of the upload, but I do not think are suitable for transfer to Commons as they do not comply with current standards. --Jarekt (talk) 02:47, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
"Plik:1-7326 g.jpg": We cannot require that a file have a Commons LicenseReview template when the file is on another Wikimedia website and not on Commons. The report on pl.wikinews was done by a user who was a pl.wikipedia administrator and that is very much a good license review, and even better because it is more detailed. Also, an archived copy of the source shows the mention that the image is under the GFDL. The web.archive copy apparently did not capture the image itself, but the text leaves no doubt that it is the image in question. The explicit review on pl.wikinews is already sufficient IMHO, and the archived webpage adds more confirmation. -- Asclepias (talk) 14:06, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
@Asclepias I guess the issue is that the process of "file transfer" is download from one site and new upload to Commons with my name as uploader. Since it is a new upload, I apply today's standards to files uploaded 15 years ago. I do not know if {{Grandfathered old file}} applies to new (re)uploads. Plenty of files I uploaded or transferred over the years got deleted and I hate wasting time on cleaning up wikicode, categorizing and sometimes adding files to other projects that eventually get deleted. --Jarekt (talk) 15:13, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
Jarekt and Asclepias thnk you for checking. We have {{Grandfathered old file}} that should be fine for a file/permission from 2005. So unless the uploader is known to upload copyvios etc. then I do not think we should require a VRT now. If you would like to help check more files there are other pl.wikis listed at m:User:MGA73/GFDL files/Categories.
Where I can let other Wikipedia users know they can use photos on Wikipedia articles if they find it good idea? Of course I can use photos in articles myself too.
Also, is there any quality check? If some photos will not be sufficient for Wikipedia, will I be asked to remove them to not flood Wiki with trash content?
To add to the above, I think one method is to categorize them well. Then the challenge would be to make these well-findable to editors via adequate WMC search engine sorting/functioning and increased awareness and use of article's corresponding WMC cat links which even editors relatively rarely visit. Editors may for example read an article and then think of an image that may be useful illustrating it and/or think it has too few images and subsequently go to WMC to check if there is a suitable image. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:25, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
I’m surprised you say that «article's corresponding WMC cat links »« even editors relatively rarely visit». In pt.wp all train station articles (and most of the others) link to the caregory here by means of pt:Template:Commonscat and I know I use it a lot to improve articles (because of course) but I also have proof that other editeors do it too, even editors with scarce or null past history of editing transport-related articles. Not saying is cannot be improved, but it’s no so bad. -- Tuválkin✉✇11:08, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
It's not specific to public transport categories but most WMC categories have very few pageviews which was mostly what I was referring to. For example the major and important category Category:Sustainable transport, including many potentially useful illustrative or informative media, got a mere 7 pageviews the last 30 days which is so low it's hard to believe. There are probably many causes for this including:
bad indexing by search engines like DuckDuckGo and Google (they rarely show WMC cats and do not show videos on WMC in their Videos tab or most images in their Images tab)
no facilitation of users to explore the corresponding categories for example by enabling showing more related media for an article in the Wikipedia app or having a tile in its Explore feed for media related to current news items' articles
the currently common practice of burying the link to the corresponding WMC category into the External links section put below, an often large, section of references that barely anyone clicks even if they scroll below the References section at all
If an image is categorized, you could always visit the corresponding WP articles and check if it's worth adding suitable ones from the category in these articles.
if the language uses an infobox and that one doesn't have an image, I'd try to add a suitable one.
if the article is already illustrated, I wouldn't touch it unless the images are clearly not particularly useful and better ones are available. Sometimes an article's images reflect what was available when the article was written 15 years ago and Commons has much more to offer since.
bear in mind that different Wikipedia versions have different standards on how to illustrate articles (and views of contributors differ as well).
obviously: avoid adding "your" image to every to conceivable article
it can be worth mentioning a suitable image on an article's talk page, especially if you don't know the language or aren't confortable with it.
specifically for vehicles, some languages have lists of those: check if these can be completed.
@Penguin9: I wouldn't worry about the quality issue; your pictures are very good. That said, it would be nice to have them at higher resolution. Can you do that? You can make your images more findable by adding English descriptions (some have them, but others, such as File:Ostrava, Solaris Trollino II 12 AC č. 3728 a Škoda 36Tr TEMSA č. 3744.jpg do not. Consider adding categories by date and for the camera used; as well as more descriptive categories such as "Blue trolleybuses" and "Buses at night" (Ive categorised the above image, by way of an example). You could create and apply Category:Images by Penguin9 (or use your real name if you prefer, like I do). You might also nominate some of your pics for good picture status. And, while it is correct to say you should not "add 'your' image to every to conceivable article", you can look for relevant articles with no image and add them there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits12:35, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Most of photos have about 4000px on bigger size, you just have to open the picture.
About using real name - I would like to, but photos have already nick there and I do not want to edit it for every photo separately. Penguin9 (talk) 17:22, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
For Wikipedia, it can be more important that a picture includes one or the other feature than the general photographic qualities of the picture. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:29, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Showing wrong text for {{Diffusion by condition}} and {{CatDiffuse}}
At least in Dutch the wrong text is shown when {{Diffusion by condition}} and {{CatDiffuse}} is used, see for instance Category:Aba (clothing) for the first and an earlier version for the second. This category should not have no files at all, it is just that over 500 is too many. This text looks to be meant for main or "by" categories. I have no idea where I can find the text or how to solve this problem. Perhaps someone whith knowledge of templates?--JopkeB (talk) 10:10, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks ReneeWrites, that is indeed the text. And it has not been changed for 15 years and the English text is the same. So either I had other expectations of the text or something else is going on. JopkeB (talk) 15:34, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
You could post it here, or COM:AN, but if you want to keep it confidential and it's not more than 10 or so files, feel free to email me the list and I will take care of it. - Jmabel ! talk22:15, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
I've seen at least a few files where the person inserted their descriptions into the metadata for some bizarre reason. We should at least be able to edit the metadata in cases like that. Otherwise it would be to easy for someone to insert add copy or other pointless garbage into into it that we can't edit later. At least IMO we should be able to edit and change everything that's uploaded here regardless though. So the idea of us not being able to edit metadata just seems antithetical to this. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:48, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
Metadata (like that) is an integral part of the file. No matter the online tools provided, it essentially would still boil down to "download file, modify file, re upload file", just with a bit more of automation surrounding it (and a whole lot of expensive engineering required). I don't see it as a priority whatsoever. Nice to have definitely, but not critical. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:32, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
Which Stena line ship?
Unfortunatly I did not keep the boarding tickets and I cant remember the ships name. Frederikshavn to Goteburg. I can look up the ships name when you book, but is there a website to look up the ships sailing on 12 july?Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:48, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
@Smiley.toerist: Per https://www.stenalinetravel.com/routes/frederikshavn-gothenburg , Stena Lina has only three ferrys on the Frederikshavn-Gothenburg route: Stena Danica, Stena Jutlandica, and Stena Vinga. Luckily, for identification purposes, the three are very different ships, so you should be able to identify your ship by comparing to other photos of the stern area. Did you travel by foot / did the ship accept foot passengers? If yes, then it can't be the Stena Vinga, as per the Stena information page, it is "only for passengers traveling by vehicle". So you would be left with either the Stena Danica or Stena Jutlandica. Gestumblindi (talk) 08:51, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
After some inspection, I think you're right that it must be the Stena Danica. This is the stern of the Stena Jutlandica - completely different. Gestumblindi (talk) 08:54, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
It could not be Stena Jutlandica as I took this picture of this ship going in the other direction. Theoreticaly it could be stil another ship before jul 21, but it is unlikely they would change the ships used for the ferry line. (they only use two ships).Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:52, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
Improvements to "Use this file" facility
A change I requested a year ago has just been deployed. Now, when a user viewing a file description page selects "Use this image", the markup is pre-populated to use the image's caption, rather than the filename, as the displayed text.
I think when there is no caption it should use the file description in some way (e.g. only in most cases when the description is not very long and/or only the first paragraph)
Instead of spending lots of time translating captions of any of the 100 million files into 300 languages (100 M × 300 and the number of files in use is also not small), I think that should be done using machine translation which works very well at this point for many languages for short phrases like those in captions (which if necessary could still be adjusted and get automatically updated if and once the source caption gets changed).
No error message for same file names in Upload Wizard
The Upload Wizard is not displaying any useful warning message for same file names, instead throws an error message and not letting the user publish files.
"There is one error with the forms above. Correct the error, and try submitting again."
Most flag maps on Wikimedia Commons follow the naming format 'Flag_map_of_Country.' These maps have been created by various contributors, each using different base maps with varying levels of accuracy. Typically, they feature thicker border strokes in the colors of the respective flags. However, I found the inconsistencies across these maps unsatisfactory, so I created my own set of flag maps using OpenStreetMap as the base. My maps are highly accurate and consistent, with all borders depicted using black, slightly thinner strokes. So far, I have completed maps for European and Asian countries and plan to expand to other continents. My flag maps follow the naming format 'Country-Flagmap.' I'm writing this to prevent renaming conflicts and to foster consensus among users. Thank you. Kamran.nef (talk) 13:24, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
(As someone who loves both flags and maps, I’d like to see this kind of hybrid monstrosity relegated to the trashbin of bad ideas. -- Tuválkin✉✇18:15, 14 August 2024 (UTC))
Not in topic but, i wanted to thank you for making these types of Flag maps, as a notable Flag maps lover, i used more times your basemaps (mostly Russia and Greenland), though i never understood how you manage to do these with Openstreetmap, they are still usefull, so, thanks again ;) OttavianoUrsu (talk) 07:35, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Comment I really do wonder how exactly "flagmaps" are educational and/or don't qualify as OOS personal artwork. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:21, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
That whole category tree only hides the files, instead of making them findable, although I still suspect that some people think that is the goal of categories. Multichill (talk) 16:37, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Please don't do this. This is typical overcategorization. This is not how categories should be used, and part of the reason the category system is going to eventually fail for Commons. We have way too many categories already. Categories should not be used as a short description of the file. It’s not supposed to be a query language. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:14, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Please stop using the reserved term "overcategorization" for anything that is not defined in COM:OVERCAT. And «more categories per file than I’m somehow comfortable with» is not there, nor «categories more detailed than I think they should be», nor even «categories I don’t like». -- Tuválkin✉✇11:11, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
I agree with DJ and Multichill that this category tree structure should not be used. "How many files do we allow before we diffuse the category?" None, the category should not exist. ReneeWrites (talk) 23:18, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
If the intersection has near-null content, then it is usually not useful to add the intersection to the category tree, just use both categories on the file in question. All the more so if intersecting means a long chain of near-empty categories. - Jmabel ! talk16:55, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Well, intersection as a way of building it bottom up rather than (as done in the samples mentioned above, top down). If one creates a category "Joe Biden in the White House" below "Joe Biden", there is no need to start that with a category tree "Joe Biden in the Milky Way". Enhancing999 (talk) 09:32, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
@Enhancing999: not sure I see your point. You seem to be stating the obvious about not doing something ridiculous; is someone doing something you consider analogous to that? - Jmabel ! talk18:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Anyways, I looked into this after my initial comment and I mostly agree with other people here that these categories shouldn't be created unless there's enough images to justify it. For instance ones like Category:LeBron James in Texas are probably totally pointless. Categories names aren't meant to be stores of mundane, meaningless facts and that's all a category like that seems to represent. It would be totally ridiculous to similar categories for every sports person out there based on the country, state, city, or other location where they have played a random game. It's tangential, but the same goes for the accompanying Wikidata entry. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:35, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
I see no sense in which the lower-res image has more detail, and at any given resolution that the lower-res one can provide, they should download at the same speed. - Jmabel ! talk17:45, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
The seemingly bigger image (higher x, higher y, higher pixel area) has substantially less data. When loading the 5'616 × 3'744 pixels image, your computer has to hog memory (ca 60 MiO) for the huge pixelmap, decompress the data generating mostly noise (JPG is lossy), and subsequently zooom down the huge pixel area (assuming that your screen does not provide a height over 5'616 pixels). The seemingly bigger image has absurdly many pixels that however do NOT hold any image information. You could zooom up the 5'616 × 3'744 image by factor 10 getting a 56'160 × 37'440 image, would it be even better? Try it! Taylor 49 (talk) 21:53, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Unless you specifically click through to the full-res image, you don't download the full resolution to your computer. The bulk of the downscaling is done server-side, making a thumbnail of one or another size. - Jmabel ! talk23:00, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Hello. I added all files with a source from Telegram to this category. A bunch of images are copyright violations and I can't review them all. If somebody wants to help cleaning up, you're more than welcome to! Cryptic-waveform (talk) 21:46, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
Thigh-high boots are a subcategory of over-the-knee boots. Both cover roughly the same area (physically) but thigh-highs are a more modern type fashion boot that's usually worn by women and commonly associated with fashion and fetishism, whereas over-the-knee boots (a much older term, originating in the 15th century to describe riding boots worn by men) cover all kinds of boots including e.g. working boots worn by farmers.
{{See also cat}} used to be a very adoptable template, allowing the right end of itself to be overlapped by {{Geogroup}}. With this elasticity it enables a flexible layout of pages. But I've found recently that it became too rigid not to allow other templates overlaying it. Who did this change, and why? I'm now being forced to do this kind of tedious edits. Or is it because of recent edits of {{Geogroup}} ? --トトト (talk) 06:18, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Does nobody know why this happened or have the ability to find out? It's not just the Geogroup and See also cat templates, for example it also affects Category:Music in 2019 which has neither of these cats. This needs quick fixing as lots of category pages are broken now with lots of whitespace and files+subcats being pushed far down. Maybe a phabricator issue should be created as no template change or alike on WMC causing this has been identified so far. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:07, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing the first problem and looking into it! Didn't check if there was a {{Clear}} in the Musiccat template because there was no problem earlier iirc and the problem appeared the same time this problem started to occur. Removing it solved the problem.
However, for the second problem that doesn't seem to be the cause: I found it strange that it's Template:Cat see also/i18n and not Template:Cat see also which is what I checked and indeed the i18n page seems to be only about the manual translations; readding this part there and purging some example category does not solve the problem. Does one need to wait until this part is also restored in translations? If so, why doesn't this change show up in the Template:Cat see also revision history? Prototyperspective (talk) 23:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
This was error on my part. I assumed {{See also}} and {{Cat see also}} had identical styles, and simply missed the clear:none part at the bottom, in the process breaking the template. Lesson learnt to check testcases a bit more carefully before updating such a commonly used template. —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - uselesscontributions} 14:05, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Thanks a lot for fixing this problem TheDJ and also for investigating this! The catlinks class was removed and Template:See also/styles.css edited. --Prototyperspective (talk) 17:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm kind of surprised Category:Stop pull cords doesn't exist. I'd probably create it if we're me though since these cords aren't technically used for emergencies. @Smiley.toerist: BTW, your documentation of the more minor things related to public transportation like these cords is really interesting. I'd probably work on a similar project if I traveled more and wasn't worried about being doxed. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:22, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
@Geohakkeri: Yes, bus bells makes more sense for those photos, but the purpose of the bells on buses (stopping the bus at the next stop) should be in the topic, right? I've seen similar cords for declaring an emergency (necessitating a stop) on trains, and similarly-purposed touch-sensitive yellow tape and red stop buttons on more modern buses (the latter at rear exits). — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 10:59, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Not always a stop signal: On the Belgian vicinal railways the conductor pulled on the cord twice (ding ding) to signal that the tram is ready to leave. By the way: on small boats there is a safety cord to the outboard motor, so if the person with the cord falls in the water, the outboard motor automaticaly switches off.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:10, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
I recently suggested to an anon ip editor that they log in and get an account. I was going to link to a page about that, but looking around I failed to find such. I see Commons:First_steps/Account which is for someone who has already decided to start an account and takes them through setting one up step by step. I see Commons:Welcome which says "Our first steps help file and our FAQ will help you a lot after registration." The issue is we have many editors who have never gotten as far as registering. I was looking for something with basic explanation of what an account is, and why one might wish to start one, similar to en:w:Wikipedia:Why create an account?. Do we have anything like that here? If we do, it needs to be more easily found. If not, I rather think we should; is there any counter-argument that we shouldn't? -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 15:00, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
@Enhancing999: Most things other than uploading new files can be done here without an account. A large number of edits are done by ips, some of which seem fairly regular and active editors. Do you advocate for or against something, or is this just a random comment? -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 20:00, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
In Wikipedia, (dynamic) ips generally just edit articles, each with its talk page where matter can easily be discussed. At Commons, it's hard to discuss anything with IPs as it stretches dozens of files. So IPs just end up on AN/B. Enhancing999 (talk) 20:14, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
I am continually dealing with dubious "depicts" added to files I've uploaded. I've repeatedly remarked on them at Commons talk:Depicts, but really no one has engaged my remarks there, so I'm here pointing to that page.
When one of these dubious edits has an edit summary that says, "#suggestededit-add-tag 1.0", does that mean there is a bot out there somewhere actively suggesting these bad edits? Does anyone know what bot? - Jmabel ! talk00:29, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Do you know where to find the interface the users get for this specific task? On Commons the extension is not enabled and on dewiki where I tested it a bit I do not get these image tagging task. GPSLeo (talk) 05:55, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Am I correct in understanding that no one systematically reviews the results of these "growth tasks" to see whether they have been done productively, and that it is entirely appropriate for me to revert things like this, or replace them with better choices? - Jmabel ! talk18:29, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Sign up for the language community meeting on August 30th, 15:00 UTC
Hi all,
The next language community meeting is scheduled in a few weeks—on August 30th at 15:00 UTC. If you're interested in joining, you can sign up on this wiki page.
This participant-driven meeting will focus on sharing language-specific updates related to various projects, discussing technical issues related to language wikis, and working together to find possible solutions. For example, in the last meeting, topics included the Language Converter, the state of language research, updates on the Incubator conversations, and technical challenges around external links not working with special characters on Bengali sites.
Do you have any ideas for topics to share technical updates or discuss challenges? Please add agenda items to the document here and reach out to ssethi(__AT__)wikimedia.org. We look forward to your participation!
Reasons to prefer JPEG over TIFF for our purposes:
Easier to view, download & use for people with slower internet connection
JPEG is generally much easier to use for average people without specialized programs/knowledge about file types
Often significantly smaller file size while preserving the image quality (often over 1000% smaller (sometimes over 10000% (TIF|JPG))
TIF has issues with displaying correctly as thumbnail
raw .tif files cannot be displayed in browsers (URL ending .tif (TIF example, JPG example) - this means properly zooming is not possible without downloading a large file to your PC (or even better your phone)
TIF is not indexed by Google and presumably other image search engines (as the format is unsuitable for web purposes, see above)
Proposed solution is to convert the TIF file to JPG and upload as such, copy all information, and make both files cross reference each other. This has been done already with ~250,000 NARA/LOC files (see e.g. here)
TIFF is the world's most featureful image format, so not all TIFFs are good candidates for conversion to JPEG. Multipage TIFFs might be converted to PDF, and non-photographic TIFFs would be better off as PNGs.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:38, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
We don't need to align 100%. Anything that goes "we do this here, so we should do it everywhere" is flawed. We shouldn't waste resources on this. Targeted approaches might make sense sometimes, but most of this material isn't even in use, nor will it ever be. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:40, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Oppose convert master images (ie. the file what Wikimedia Commons uses as source when scaling jpg) from lossless format to lossy ones. It just means lower image quality. If user needs smaller files user can already download the jpeg versions of the files from Wikimedia Commons instead of original file. --Zache (talk) 19:23, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Comment Nothing prevents you from converting a tif into a jpg and uploading it alongside the original tif. Ruslik (talk) 19:41, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Comment: I have been thru this issue here in the case of an archived TIFF and subsequent JPEG with suitable cross‑linking. So please consider this use case given an original high‑quality TIFF scan and a downstream usable JPEG image. And please add some nuance to the algorithm that goes thru converting everything "in general" and explicitly identify and exclude this corner case. TIA RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 22:06, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Of course, converting of all images from lossless to lossy format is unacceptable. This can be discussed only for some particular cases. In the general case TIFFs can be converted to PNGs, they will become smaller (but not as small as JPGs). Sneeuwschaap (talk) 23:27, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Oppose I can see the benefit of this, but then it would also create needless duplicates that just screw with search results and take extra curation. I'd probably support it if there was a way to hide or suppress TIFF images though, but it's hard enough dealing with multiple images formats as it is. Some TIFF files probably aren't worth converting to JPEG in the first place either. One thing I'd like to see fixed is how TIFF images display in thumb nails though. I think that would solve a large part of the problem with them. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:32, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Comment How many edits were already done on the 250,000 existing duplicates? How much time was wasted in duplicated curation somebody uploaded two formats of the same photo? Enhancing999 (talk) 05:12, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Oppose I think tiff files are higher-quality aren't they? So if they are converted then to something that is lossless and I don't know if there is such a filetype. More useful would be converting gifs that are not animated to another filetype. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:18, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
if a bot has the ability to automatically convert tiff to jpeg (upload as new file), i think obviously the sensible option is
make a template that users can use to tag files for automatic conversion. something similar to rotation requests.
because as users have explained, most tiff files are not actively in use. there's no urgency to convert them. maybe when they do become needed in future, web technology has developed to being able to display tiff properly.
so for now, if any tiff is to be used somewhere, and the user thinks it's beneficial to have a jpeg version instead, only then convert that specific tiff. otherwise most files dont need a duplicate jpeg. RZuo (talk) 12:42, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Oppose, original-quality and file type of the TIFF files must be maintained, especially if these were directly imported from GLAMs that various Wikimedians partnered with. If there is a need for JPEG, then upload under a new file name. We can't be sure if forced conversion of TIFFs to JPEGs may lead to discouragement of some GLAMs to continue partnering with Wikimedian volunteers. And by the way, TIFF is a lossless file type, whereas JPEG is a lossy file type. I've read somewhere above that this proposal may be of benefit for Wikipedia articles (this is solved by uploading a JPEG version under a new file name), but as per some of our voices at Commons talk:Media knowledge beyond Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons does not only aim to be a central media repository for all Wikimedia projects like enwiki; it aims to be a reliable partner of external institutions like GLAMs and non-profit orgs for their freely-licensed media content to be hosted and reused globally. To be a reliable partner, IMO, we should not alter the original, raw TIFF files that the GLAMs donate to us; instead, it is best to convert to JPEG and upload as a new file. I can recall a template for LoC files that states raw files directly donated by LoC should not be altered in any way so that those represent the exact-quality files from LoC, and any modification/s must be uploaded as a/as new file/s. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)23:55, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
@JWilz12345: You seem to be opposing some proposal other than the one being made. To quote from the original post, "Proposed solution is to convert the TIF file to JPG and upload as such, copy all information, and make both files cross reference each other." Your objection seems to presume that the TIFF would be delete, but nothing of the sort is being proposed. - Jmabel ! talk03:16, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel: ah, then that's better. I have striked my comment and vote. As long as the original raw TIFF files that GLAMs and other NGOs donated to us are kept intact and not deleted (whether JPEG versions as separate files are mandated), then any proposal is fine for me. The raw TIFF files should be kept in perpetuity as we are supposed to be reliable partners of various GLAMs that Wikimedians partnered for many years. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)03:40, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
As long the original files are not being deleted, I am not against it but. But the question is if it is necessary in every case, and some already have JPEG copies :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:04, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
The next question is that we currently have automatic conversion from tiff to jpg for every tiffs. What benefit would manual duplication do? (cost for manual duplication is that there would be huge number of duplicate files which metadata would be needed to updated, keep in sync etc. It also multiplies the edits done to the files which user are seeing etc. --Zache (talk) 07:12, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Another comment: I spend a lot of time, as a human in the loop, adding sensible metadata to image files. Any bot'ed activity can only do this badly and vary probably contribute to at least some misleading information. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 11:25, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Oppose TIFF is the better, lossless format, and usually, the automated JPEG thumbnail generation from TIFF works. You can download any TIFF file in various sizes as JPEG from Commons. There are some issues with the thumbnail generator, but these mean that the thumbnail generator should be fixed. I don't see a need to flood Commons with JPEG duplicates of TIFF files. Gestumblindi (talk) 12:32, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Comment One thing that is unclear to me is why the current thumbnail links are not enough? Is there some technical aspect that needs to be fixed, or are the current links too hard to find or understand what they do? From a technical perspective, it should be a server-side task to generate jpeg versions or download links to jpegs automatically instead of duplicating photos manually. Mediawiki already does that, so I am asking what you think is currently failing and what should be done to fix it. --Zache (talk) 16:53, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Agree. If mass-conversion is thought to generate better quality jpeg, it's a sign that there is a problem with the current sever configuration. (That one should have uploaded jpegs to start with is another issue.) Enhancing999 (talk) 11:20, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
And also if the problem is that people wont find a way to download image as good quality jpeg, we could just add a button "Download as full-resolution JPEG" which would link to jpeg version. --Zache (talk) 07:14, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Comment There are different cases:
single-page TIFF files already using JPG compression internally: Support lossless conversion to JPG outer container, unless there are special reasons against
single-page 8-bpp uncompressed TIFF files: Support lossless conversion to 8-bpp PNG, unless there are special reasons against
single-page 16-bpp uncompressed TIFF files: Support lossless conversion to 16-bpp PNG, unless there are special reasons against
multi-page TIFF files: Oppose any conversion since no viable alternative exists
So I Oppose lossy conversion of whatever types of TIFF into JPG.
TIFF is NOT the great lossless format. The cool lossless format is PNG (except for animations and multi-page images). Taylor 49 (talk) 14:56, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
What we desperately need is straightforward guidance on what formats to use for uploaded files, I’m yet to see it.
If I have, for example, the opportunity to upload a historical, and or “art” image in jpg, png, or webp, which should I use? _Broichmore (talk) 17:25, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Where does the image come from?
preferably keep it in the format it already is (no conversion is better than conversion, unless you are sure that the opposite applies in the given case)
if the image is a diagram, use always PNG
if the image is small (say up to 2 Mpixel), use PNG
Some more nuanced guidance is also needed. In some corner cases, uncompressed TIFF plus suitably converted JPG, duly linked across the two uploads, is the optimal answer. But to my knowledge, you will not find that advice provided. Keep it simple stupid (KISS), as a communications philosophy, has its limitations too. (Sorry, but I am not offering to write documentation — my list of images to process and upload is already too long.) RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 19:14, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Just to continue, there may be occasions when uploading the RAW file from the camera in parallel would also be indicated. Not often though, but should still be covered in the documentation as an option. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 17:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
POTY new rules
Dear users,
As you all know some featured pictures eventually end up being a Picture of the Year finalist. POTY scripts have been completely rewritten and I think a vote should be held to know it the rule stays "top 30 overall + top 2 of each category becomes finalist" or if, as proposed on POTY talk page by Ingenuity, it becomes "top 30 overall + top 5% of each category becomes finalist". Please vote on this page only.
Fascinating, but the whole thing is a mystery to me. I guess for everybody else it's clear what the categories are and how many entries they have each. BTW I don't plan to vote there. Enhancing999 (talk) 06:52, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
On this webpage there is a painting, rendered in black-and-white, attributed to Jan van der Straet. But is it really by him and painted in his time (16th century)? The style looks different, more modern. His 16th century paintings are typically filled with detail without much perspective, but here only the lower half of the painting contains people and detail, and the upper half is sky, trees and distant landscape. So who painted this? Can we find the painting (in colour)? --LA2 (talk) 13:31, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
This etching, looks like a later copy of an original work, or even a detail from one. Perhaps Bert Dewilde's book gives attribution. Failing that, you could contact the Kortrijk Museum at texture at kortrijk.be. It's highly possible that Dewilde saw this in the Rijksmuseum, but it's not been put online by them. What would be useful, is the "original title and or caption of the piece. Broichmore (talk) 12:38, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Should be removed, and has been removed. That text was imported from the Flickr description, and neither its formatting nor its content were appropriate for Commons. Omphalographer (talk) 16:15, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
I would like to do a little test so I'm looking for a smaller wiki where someone would like to know if there are files with a duplicate on Commons. It would be best if there is known to be at least 1 file that is on Commons so I know that it works. --MGA73 (talk) 17:11, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you Sciking. It is a perfect wiki to test on. Sadly the test did not go as well as I planned. I made this list lmo:Utent:MGA73/Sandbox but it involves a few manual steps. But perhaps it is faster just to do the manual step than to spend lots of time to try to get around :-D --MGA73 (talk) 13:25, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
It's an interesting idea even with the manual steps being involved. If you don't mind me asking, what's the ultimate goal here though? Not to say there has to be one, but I'm kind of interested in how the tool can be used as part of someone's workflow or whatever once you get the kinks ironed out. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
The goal is just to make it easy to make a list of files that is also on Commons. Sometimes the local file can just be deleted. Sometimes the local file is the source and the file on Commons needs to be fixed to attribute the original author. And sometimes the local file shows that the file on Commons is actually a copyvio. --MGA73 (talk) 14:15, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
If anyone would like to test a bigger wiki thats okay too now. But I prefer wikis with less than ~50k files. --MGA73 (talk) 13:25, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Uncategorized categories again
As of 11:11, 22 August 2024 we have a new report at Special:UncategorizedCategories (for the first time in 6 weeks). Again there are about 1500 categories here. I'll do my best to delete the ones that have neither parents nor content (files, subcats); most other work needed here is not admin work, just basic categorization work, and any competent help would be welcome. If someone reads Chinese or Japanese, there are a fair number of at the end of the list. Also, throughout the list, quite a number of categories for people from Hungary, which would be easiest for someone who can read Hungarian. But there is plenty there for those who know English or any of the Western European languages. - Jmabel ! talk04:20, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm unsure what the deal is with the former, but the latter didn't have categories at the time the list was updated. Those were added about an hour later. ReneeWrites (talk) 07:37, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
Category:April 2023 Kaliningrad Oblast photographs Seems to be because the category was added via a template, and i guess there never was a linksupdate (If you went to any of the categories the page was allegedly in, you would have found that it was present in them [until just now when i null edited it]. In any case, cases like that can usually be fixed with a null edit. Bawolff (talk) 09:23, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
There are always a few false positives, usually because of template-added categories where something didn't propagate correctly, but not enough to make the task significantly more difficult. - Jmabel ! talk18:49, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
I believe Túrelio and I have now deleted all of the several hundred parentless, memberless categories except for a few that look likely to be useful soon, where I've asked their respective creators to either use the category or request deletion. There are also, as remarked above, a dozen or two false positives.
So: the remaining work here is mostly the usual categorization work, on somewhere around 1000 to 1200 categories, and help from anyone who is decent at categorization would be greatly appreciated. - Jmabel ! talk19:01, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: very unlikely. Last time they left us hanging six weeks between reports, even after I repeatedly asked once it had passed the 1 month that is supposedly how often they run it. They used to run it every three days, but apparently it involves some monster JOIN that they consider to heavily burden the servers. - Jmabel ! talk04:55, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
It seems to be the opposite with your example of Spain for some weird reason but wouldn't "floor plans" inherently be a sub-category of "plans"? I guess I'm not seeing what needs to be standardized here beyond that though. Its not like they are mutually exclusive. You can have both a plan and a floor plan for some things. It's not really that clear what makes something the former versus the later in a lot of cases either. If anything I'd say "floor plans" is probably pointless, but there no reason not to both as long as the "floor plans" is a child of "plans", instead of the other way around. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:30, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Admittedly I didn't look through every single category or image related to this but there are "plans" for churches and other buildings that include the courtyards, parking lots, and other elements that aren't specifically part of the buildings floor. If you want some examples check out this link. I guess you could maybe call them "architectural drawings" but it's not just about the architecture in those cases and most (if not) architectural drawings are more technical anyway. Usually they include exact measurements, angles, and similar elements. whereas floor plans tend to be pretty basic. So I'd say more general plans should go in categories for plans. Floor plans that don't other elements should be in categories specifically for floor plans, and more complicated building plans that involve measurements, angles and the like should go in something akin to a category for architectural plans. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:45, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1 - sounds good, I agree: we distinguish between plans, floor plans and architectural plans. But now we have reached the starting point again: the category subtree of Category:Floor plans of churches by country contains categories named "Plans..." where floor plans are collected (other types of plans are available only in very rare cases - almost all "plans" in that subtree are floor plans). If we distinguish, the category names should reflect the distinction - so: is it OK to standardize the naming of the subcategories to "Floor plans of..."? Fl.schmitt (talk) 16:35, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
FWIW, I worked in architectural CAD for some years, and anything horizontal is likely to be called a "plan". "View from above" in this context does not mean only what could be seen from the air: a "floor plan" is, indeed, the floor as it would be seen from above if the rest of the building weren't in the way. Another common drawing type besides those mentioned above is an "inverted ceiling plan" ("inverted" because of course you never see the ceiling from above, so it is inverted from how you could ever see it). - Jmabel ! talk18:45, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
How to deal with an svg image that has rendering problems
I recently uploaded the image File:Great Mandala (大曼荼羅) of Nichiren Buddhism.svg and it really has trouble rendering here. How can it be fixed to render properly as the screencap I posted from inkscape demonstrates it rendering as? Also anyone who knows this better feel free to edit the svg to get rid of cruft. There is a decent amount in the file. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me)18:11, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Then "ERR_NETWORK_IO_SUSPENDED" when I put my laptop into hibernation for transport, and again not connecting via Optimum Online. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 12:28, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
@Ooligan: You're welcome. Then, I got "Wikimedia Toolforge Error" and "Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again later." from tools-proxy-8.tools.eqiad1.wikimedia.cloud and a page titled "504 Gateway Time-out" with "Webservice request timed out". I updated that issue. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 12:57, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
I wanted to host a copy, but I am constantly get barricaded at finding all the dependencies required. I hope to get it working in case the tool isn't back up soon -- DaxServer (talk) 20:08, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
tl;dr: I was on vacation with no ssh access. Webservice restarted (which could/should be done by Toolforge automatically but isn't), seems to work again. --Magnus Manske (talk) 10:25, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Not sure any of those fit. Category:Conscientious objectors generally have to be opposed to all wars, and its a rare status to be given to someone who is already in the military; Category:Counter-recruitment doesn't seem to fit at all; Category:Deserters fits part of the bill, so I may add it (though technically he may have been just AWOL; I'm not sure he was even charged with desertion, I'll try to work that out), but "desertion" does not carry any connotation of open resistance to a war as against just of saving one's own ass. - Jmabel ! talk04:00, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
The German language seems to have a bit more nuance for conscientious-objection: it differentiates between de:w:Kriegsdienstverweigerung (literally: war service refusal) and de:w:Totalverweigerung literally: total refusal), where in the latter people also refuse to do any alternative service. The terminology itself also doesn't make a link to conscience as a reason for refusal (though in practice it's probably the assumed cause for service refusal). So, the terminology here might (in theory) be applied to one particular War rather than all wars in general as conscience (or general beliefs) is/are not necessarily the root for the refusal.
What might be worth considering is Category:Anti-war activists maybe? Though, his level of active resistance might not meet the threshold of activism (at least he might not have consciously chosen to be seen as an "activist" but might have just incidentally found himself in the role of a role model or something?). Furthermore, an anti-war activist might once again refer to a general opposition to all wars.
Another one that might fit the bill even better is something like Category:Resistance fighters (how is that not a category yet?). But that might be also an activity level above his. So, maybe "Resistance activist"?
The most common term in English for what he did is "war resister", but I don't know how well known that term is outside of activist circles. - Jmabel ! talk18:45, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
@Una tantum: a completely different matter, almost a complete coincidence of the word "resistance". Resistance fighters / partisans use guerrilla tactics to violently oppose a regime, usually one they consider entirely illegitimate; war resisters use (usually) non-violent tactics—often no more than withdrawing their own active support—to try to prevent a government from carrying out a war. War resisters, especially in a democracy, don't necessarily question the basic legitimacy of the government, they just strongly oppose its policy in pursuing a war. - Jmabel ! talk17:34, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
It might just be me but "Videos of subject" seems more fitting for the vast majority of subcategories considering most of the categories are about abstract and intangible concepts--Trade (talk) 21:17, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
"Videos by subject" is basically shorthand for "Video categories, sorted by subject", analogous to "Houses by country" or "Music by year". - Jmabel ! talk04:12, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
I was just going to say that. "Videos of culture" doesn't make any sense. It probably depends on the subject of the categories though. Like "videos of cats" would be perfectly fine. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:07, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
This seems like just guessing what Trade means here, couldn't you make it clearer? Is this thread about that several subcats like "Videos about culture" should be moved to "Videos of culture" or that they should be moved to "Videos of subject culture" or that subcategories of subcategories should be in that cat directly or something else? "the vast majority of subcategories" is already called "Videos of XYZ" so this post is quite unintelligible. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:11, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
If you're arguing there should be more cats called "Videos about XYZ" I agree and noticed this issue as well. Many videos in "Videos of XYZ" cats do not actually depict XYZ or only animations thereof. I think "Videos of XYZ" cats should be split with some files being moved to a parent cat "Videos about XYZ". If you're pro renaming/moving the cats I'd disagree for most cases – the standardized "Videos of" naming is useful for finding things and when it comes to cases where the videos actually show XYZ. There are many "Videos of" cats that contain files that better fit into "Videos about…" and in some cases the two cats exist in parallel like with Category:Videos of music and Category:Videos about music. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:09, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm again a bit unsure what exactly you're asking about. That wouldn't change how the subcategories are named. One could move the current category to this title but it wouldn't change much and is more clumsy than the current one which I think is better. Maybe you're asking what a parent category to videos of and other categories would be called but the current one linked in the thread title works for that just fine. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:52, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Rename ship
I researched the ship and I could not find the ship under the AKKO name. The ship is registered as IMO 9217230, and known as Nils Holgersson, also a TT-line ship. Should I create a duplicate AKKA (ship, 2001) category?
AKKA ship. Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:49, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I would name the cat AKKA (ship, 2001), on the basis that an Engish Wikipedia article would almost certainy use Akka, in a title. Broichmore (talk) 16:19, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Can I upload bt2020nc/bt2020/smpte2084(PQ) HDR AVIF images to commons and use them in wikipedia articles?
Sometimes in articles concerning HDR technologies there is a need to present a truly HDR image.
I want to create a (public domain) rendition of ITU-R Rec. BT.2111 (an HDR&WCG color bars test signal image) to be used in article SMPTE_color_bars. It has to be presented with full PQ HDR and BT.2020 WCG to be able to illustrate properly. The VUI information would be bt2020nc/bt2020/smpte2084 (in ffmpeg style).
I am considering AVIF since it seems to have better support and overall easier to understand if you know ffmpeg well.
But considering that not all devices support HDR and/or WCG, do I need to also create a SDR version? maybe also a SDR & sRGB version?
For what it's worth, this test signal can be seen in some recent large scale high end television broadcasts (& the studios they are produced in) like the Paris Olympics. Hym3242 (talk) 14:23, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for your response. I guess I would use a BT.2020 or at least P3D65 SDR image. Or seek other HDR image formats... I have some additional questions though. Do TIFF HDR images need that high bit depth to avoid quantization artifacts because it does not support the Perceptual Quantizer transfer characteristics? Is the new ISO HDR (JPG with gain map) accepted on Commons? Hym3242 (talk) 17:23, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
I am afraid that I cannot answer your first question. If the ISO HDR attribute can be saved in a *.JPG file, it should be possible, but it sounds like an addition in a later format like JPEG 2000 oder JPEG XL to me --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 06:07, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
For anyone interested, I uploaded a rotated and cropped version of the logo here and ran it through the WikimediaOCR tool using Google Cloud Vision OCR. Although it doesn't seem to have Chinese or I just missed it. But in Japanese it seems to translate to WWW. There was something about someone reaching up to the clouds for a ride when I did it once to, but I'd take both with a grain of salt. Regardless, probably it's either Japanese or some other Asian language. It doesn't really look like Chinese. It could be though. Maybe someone else can find another OCR tool to try it with or get better results using the WikimediaOCR tool then I did. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:03, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
It seems like the character “雅” to me. Probably a part of the first name of the creator of this artwork. Masashi (“雅”), Masaya (“雅也”), Masayuki (“雅行”), Masami (“雅美”), etc. --トトト (talk) 16:46, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Not to say it isn't seal script, but there's some logos of Japanese Woodblock publishers here that look like they have a similar style. Although it's possible Chinese woodblock artists worked in Japan or visa versa and it's still seal script. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:16, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
JPEGs versus PDFs for multipage scans
I have a couple of books and magazines I'd like to scan and upload at some point. I can't decide if I want to upload them as PDFs or JPEGs though. I suppose I could always upload both. Just uploading PDFs would probably be easier though. But I'm wondering what the pros and cons of both formats are and/or if there's a preference on here. Clearly people upload more JPEGs then anything else but its hard to conclude anything from it except that photographs are more popular then books on here. Adamant1 (talk) 18:50, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
One .pdf to have the complete work in one place in a convenient, readable format, and illustrations exported individually so they can be used on Wikisource or wherever else. I also personally like linking back to a .pdf hosted here on Commons for those extracted/exported images, as opposed to linking to a file hosted externally. Wikisource also uses .pdf (and .djvu) files as source files when transcribing books. This is personal preference though, not necessarily what other people prefer doing. ReneeWrites (talk) 19:10, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Upload them to the Internet Archive as TIFFs or PNGs (as a ZIP file named whatever_images.zip with the files numbered in the order they should appear), and then upload a PDF to here. Internet Archive will autogenerate many formats, and is better at handling full-size original scans than we are. Any images should be uploaded here as PNGs or JPEGs, appropriately cropped, but that can be done from the original scans by anyone if you uploaded them to the Internet Archive; there's also no reason to ever upload full-page scans instead crops to the image if you've already uploaded a PDF.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:21, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
One reason to upload per page could be file size. If the scans have a high resolution and if there are many pages uncompressed PDF files could hit the file size limit. GPSLeo (talk) 05:49, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I agree that uploading to IA is often the easiest way to go for books. You can create a zip file that's named like foo_images.zip and it'll turn that into a PDF and give it a nice browsing interface, then you can use toolforge:ia-upload to transfer the book to Commons. The main reason I'd upload individual files to Commons is if lots of them could do with being cropped to extract illustrations — if they're on IA that'll be a bit of a long-winded process. SamWilson11:34, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Toilet type
This type of toilet I have only recently seen. I looks like a vandalresistant toilet. The two places where I have seen it where in Austria and Luxembourg. Both in places without payment and Surveillance staff. How should we classify these toilets? Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:40, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
What comes to mind for me is Sanisettes. Unless I missed it there doesn't seem to be a general category for self cleaning bathrooms though, which I'm kind of supprised about. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:52, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
The file is tagged with {{PD-USGov-POTUS}} but that seems at odds with the copyright statement in the exif data:
This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
I don't see how this can be PD. If the photographer is an employee of the federal government there may be no copyright on their contribution to the photo, but clearly it is a derivative work, and I can't see why the sculptor would lose their rights just because a federal employee photographed the sculpture. - Jmabel ! talk00:41, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Hello friends. Today at a conference I was helping an iOS user debug a poor quality app he was using to upload files to Commons. The app was bad enough that we started looking for alternative ways to upload files, and I had him try uploading files through his iOS Safari browser instead. He opened Commons in his browser and there was no upload link, which surprised me. So I created phab:T372078 and wrote a patch to add "Upload file" to the left menu of the Minerva (mobile) skin. Clicking on it takes you to Special:UploadWizard.
When I went to go get this patch merged, someone told me that this "Upload file" link might not be wanted because it would increase uploads of unwanted images. The implication was that mobile editors have a tendency to upload images that are inappropriate for Commons. So I'd like to check with the community and see how y'all feel about adding an "Upload file" link for mobile editors. Thoughts? If this is a bad idea I will abandon my patch. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:28, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
We live in an age where almost everyone surfs the internet on a mobile device most of the time, almost every website is very specifically designed around mobile devices, and most of the time online services request people to download their apps in Google Play or similar marketplaces. Yet, for whatever reason Wikimedia websites aren't just mobile unfriendly, they are mobile hostile. What's worse is that this laptop-centric and desktop-centric thinking actively excludes the vast majority of people from developing countries, I've met plenty of rural Filipino men and women in their 20's this year that have never even seen a laptop. How can we expect these people to contribute free educational media if their browser specifically tells them that this website is only for consuming and not producing? It's time to get rid of these antiquated restrictions on mobile users. I think that we might have to lobby the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) to force their developers to edit and contribute at least two (2) whole weeks a year exclusively on mobile devices or hire engineers that only use mobile devices to contribute so they can get some valuable feedback, because they have been ignoring mobile users for years. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:51, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Oppose It seems like a lot of COPYVIO comes from screenshots on mobile. Do we really want to make it worse by allowing people to upload directly from their phones? Probably not. It looks like we're already going to block cross project uploads for the same reason and I don't see why we should allow mobile users to upload junk in mass while not allowing people from Wikipedia to do the same. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:39, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
@Ooligan: Check out Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Deactivate_cross-wiki_uploads_for_new_users. Technically it's to block uploads from people who don't have special rights but I don't think that negates my point. As it's still a restriction on making it easier for random people from uploading images to Commons in an area that leads to a massive amount of COPYVIO. Although we could restrict this to certain users or something but I'd still be against it because at the end of the day "confirmed" is a pretty low bar and it would kind of defeat the purpose anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:33, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
I feel like a big part of the problem with cross-wiki uploads was that the tool encouraged users to do the wrong thing, and thus they did indeed do the wrong thing. That is, the real issue was not that it was "mobile" it was that that was a bad tool with bad UX. I suspect having an upload link on mobile linking to Special:UploadWizard would not have the same type of problems as the cross-wiki upload tool did. Or at least not to the same degree. Bawolff (talk) 08:58, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
I do wonder how easy UploadWizard would be to work with on mobile. It's not the most intuitive UI even on desktop. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:59, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: I could try it if you're curious. I usually edit from my phone and I've uploaded files that way too (but I usually edit on desktop mode and on enwiki). Clovermoss (talk) 10:45, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1 it works quite well as far as I can tell. The UI i even user friendlier than that of the Commons app and it adapts better to the screen size of a mobile phone than that of the Commons app (at least that's how it is when using Firefox mobile browser). However, the crux is to find the UploadWizard on mobile in the first place. You either have to find a Wikidata Infobox with an Upload media link (which is a new feature), or you have to switch to desktop view and in addition you need to edit the URL to remove the "m" for "mobile" from the URL, because even after switching to "desktop view" you'll still be on https://commons.m.wikimedia.org (mobile website) instead of the regular desktop version at https://commons.wikimedia.org. As long as you are on the mobile website, you won't see the Upload link in the menu. The other big issue with this is that you can only upload one file at a time, which is fine if you only upload 1-2 images, but I usually switch to the Commons app for batch uploads. The Commons app, unfortunately, also offers less options to edit file name, file caption, and file description than the desktop / mobile browser UploadWizard. On the app, you only have the option to enter one file "description" which will actually end up being the file name and file caption at the same time (and also the file description?). Nakonana (talk) 12:36, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Sure, please add it. I don't think this has anything to do with cross-wiki uploads. Mobile view of Commons is known to be broken. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:33, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Cross-wiki uploads is just another example of where people not uploading images directly through the website on desktop can lead to problems. I'm not claiming they are 100% exactly the same though, but there is some is (or would be) similar issues with both IMO. At the end of the day anything other then directly uploading images through Special:UploadWizard on desktop will just lead to more errors and COPYVIO. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:59, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
This is much needed. The vast majority of original photos today are from phone cameras. We should make it easy to upload. The question about copyright is not really relevant, it is not linked to the skin used. GerakiTLG12:28, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
@Geraki: "The vast majority of original photos today are from phone cameras." Are you saying this about photos in the world at large (in which case I agree) or about Commons uploads (in which case my own impression is that you are wrong, and I'd like to see some sort of evidence for that statement). - Jmabel ! talk15:12, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Without neglecting the need to control COPYVIO and not overburden administrators, not allowing uploads from mobile is a discrimination against people with lower income (and it could even be viewed as racial discrimination, since, for example, black South Africans are much less likely to own a computer than white South Africans), and also against older people in most countries (who are much less likely to use a computer, but they usually use a smartphone), so it should be addressed, provided that it is possible to monitor the profile of each new user and easily detect if he/she is going to make inappropriate use. MGeog2022 (talk) 11:10, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Alright, I only see one objection so far, and several supports. Should this stay open for a bit longer or can the patch move forward? –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:29, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I think we should try this first limited to autopatrolled users, if there are no problems also for autoconfirmed users and if this also works we can open it for all users. If there are problems we step back to the previous limitation. GPSLeo (talk) 12:42, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Any patch I make to the Minerva skin needs to be wiki-agnostic. If we are going to add some logic that only applies to Commons, such as checking for permissions before displaying the link, then we might need to look into MediaWiki:minerva.js or a default gadget or something instead of a Minerva patch. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:26, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
As long as we no inter wiki user rights checking we can only do this by blocking after clicking on upload what of course is not a really good solution. GPSLeo (talk) 13:41, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I didn't realize that anything on VP would constitute a proposal with voting. I expected that this was some people discussing something they would then propose at COM:Village pump/Proposals. I am objecting to this being a mandate to go ahead. There was no one specific proposal here I felt I could vote on. - Jmabel ! talk16:56, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I have to agree with Jmabel here. This should be an actual proposal with voting and last for the normal time frame of one. This being open for three days regardless of where isn't nearly enough to call it approved regardless though. But this is still the wrong venue and format for it either way. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:39, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
One thing I've recently noticed (and that I have not seen before): lately when you use a mobile browser (Firefox) to access Commons and when you visit a Category page that has a Wikidata Infobox, then you'll find an "upload file" link in said Wikidata Infobox. The link leads to the Upload Wizard. I was really pleasantly surprised to discover this seemingly new feature. I think it's a good approach: the link is not too big, so that it probably won't invite any misuse because you probably will only notice it if you look for it because you intend to upload something. At the same time, uploading via that link automatically adds the Category to the uploaded file from which you are accessing the link, so that there are no newly uploaded files that end up being uncategorized. One big minus in the current solution, however, is, that you can only upload only one image at a time. But maybe that also prevents misuse of the feature. I had to download the Commons app for a batch upload. Nakonana (talk) 18:17, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: Given that the problem is that the person who was responsible for it abandoned it, and no one has properly taken it over, I don't think anyone could make a meaningful estimate unless they were inclined to take responsibility for it themself. - Jmabel ! talk04:57, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Hello! Some time ago I've uploaded a bunch of screenshots that served to debug a Wikipedia script. I was wondering what is the stance Wikimedia Commons has for such cases? They have served their purpose now and I was thinking to mark them all for deletion (even though this would create some "holes" in the discussions they were used). — Klein Muçi (talk) 09:27, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Deleting the screenshots can make past issues and code changes less understandable so if they're used they probably should or need to be kept even if the likelihood of being useful is usually low. I don't see why screenshots of other bugs should be deleted either. They just should all be in some screenshots of bugs category for example (currently at least Category:Wikipedia screenshots which does have a subcat for bugs) so that they can be easily excluded or shown only at the bottom of WMC search engine search results (this is what could be constructive, not deletions). Prototyperspective (talk) 10:17, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
I answered your question then I noted that I don't find it a constructive question since the user did very well to specify exactly what you asked about. Sorry if it sounded not nice to you that wasn't intentional. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
You answered a question that was asked to a different person, so that seemed rude to me. Thanks for your apology and giving your perspective. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯12:37, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
@Prototyperspective, Koavf, thank you both for your answers! To provide some context for the discussion, these are the some of the screenshots that I was referring to:
As you will see, they may appear to be very "buggy" (by "nature") and pretty random as they've only served as, what I can call, "temporary" illustrations between me and the script developer which requested them to understand better what problem I was describing to them. It is my belief that we actually should have a way to upload temporary images for such cases which get autodeleted and a way to handle the deletions in the discussions that use them in a more graceful manner. They provide no value other than serving their temporary purpose of showing what am I seeing at that moment in my screen to another interested person for on-wiki work reasons. Until we have such a tool, I think we can just do the process manually, uploading and deleting them later when they have served their purpose. — Klein Muçi (talk) 08:56, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
That makes sense, but note also that having pictures of bugs that have been fixed can be very useful for future debugging as well or simply illustrative of what "bugs" are (e.g.) at Wikiversity. There is still a plausible purpose for these to exist and while we could in principle have too many such screenshots and the marginal utility of each one decreases, I think there's value in keeping them for these potential uses as well as referring to them in existing historical discussions. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯11:21, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Go ahead and tag these for deletion ({{SDG7}}). No need to overthink it. You uploaded these files as part of a technical discussion, not as educational materials; we don't need to imagine educational uses for these images after the fact.
Re. temporary images - I think there's a larger use case for a process on Commons for tagging images which should be deleted if a "parent" page is deleted - e.g. decorative images, charts and diagrams, photos of questionably notable topics, etc. Basically, some lightweight way of marking images which should be considered for deletion once they're no longer in use. Omphalographer (talk) 23:15, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I think the user is (at least also) asking about the general issue at scale, see stance Wikimedia Commons has for such cases. The cases uploaded by the user were examples of Debugging screenshots. Screenshots of bugs would usually remain in use or not be in use on a Wikimedia project in the first place (also is linking to a file but not embedding it a file-use?) so I don't think temporary files would solve that even if they would used often which I doubt. I guess currently the best way to deal with this issue is to either not categorize the screenshots or categorize them into cats like "Screenshots of Wikipedia problems and bugs" which may first need to be created which then could e.g. be easily excluded from searches via deepcategory search operator or downranked in the search results and less well indexed in Web search engines (which however still don't seem to index most media on WMC anyway). Prototyperspective (talk) 23:34, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I believe I'll tag them for deletion and let the involved parties in the deletion discussions decide for further action.
As for the "temporary uploads" system, I really think that's something that we need. Many technical discussions will at some point require screenshots of what the other user is seeing. This is especially useful in help desks with new users which lack the ability to best describe what their issue is. Having the ability to quickly showcase your screen view if needed can be greatly beneficial in such scenarios. This could also be handled locally on projects but not all of them have that enabled (my homewiki - sqwiki - doesn't, for example). I'm thinking for something as simple as a tick box with "Autodelete after XX time". (And possibly a way to gracefully handle these discussions later on.) - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:18, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Category for "buses in" and "buses of"
We have for example category for "Buses in Warszawa" and "Buses of ZTM Warszawa" included in "Buses in Warszawa", but "Buses of ZTM Warszawa" can go further than just Warszawa, or it can go for exhibition in Berlin etc. so I think we should create category for "Buses of ZTM Warszawa in Warszawa" and later if we have pictures of buses outside Waraszawa we could create also category for "Buses of ZTM Warszawa in Berlin". Note: I replaced word "Warsaw" with "Warszawa" for simplification and example is hypothetical but is quite common in case of other operators. What do you think? Eurohunter (talk) 17:02, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't have an issue with something like that in theory when its clearly justified by how images we have of subject. There just isn't enough images on here to make lot of these types of categories worth creating though and the whole category structure for images related to transportation is convoluted enough as it is. If anything we should be cutting down on the number of intersectional categories related to transportation. Not increasing them. I don't think categories based on the brand or operator of the bus by location are that useful anyway. No one finds images of buses based on what town they happen to be driving through once. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:17, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: You can probably find buses of PKS Poznań in Gdańsk and Warsaw so that's more transparent example, but if we don't have "base category" for "Buses of PKS Poznań in Poznań" people will be adding pictures of buses of PKS Poznań all over Poland for "Buses of PKS Poznań", so in case of city buses we can lose this if there are a few photos outside of "main city" with "buses in Poznań" as parent category. Eurohunter (talk) 17:32, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't see how we'd be losing that if there are normal "buses in location X" categories with the operator being involved that the images can be put in. Someone not adding appropriate categories to files is a different issue then if a specific category for "buses of X operator in Y location" should exist or not though. Regardless, at the end of the day categories shouldn't exist purely act as stores of mundane facts and I'd say that's how they would be used in this case if PKS Poznań operators buses in other places in Poland outside of Poznań as part of their normal routes. Like if you were to have a couple of image of PKS Poznań bus in the Antarctic cool. Maybe create a category for that because it's not where they usually operate.
But if route 2 regularly goes to Warsaw as part of their daily operating schedule then there's nothing unique, notable, or subject defining about that. We have file names and descriptions for a reason. You can't just take everything from either one and make a 1/1 recreation of them in short hand with category names. There's no reason there can't just be a category for the route, "buses by location X", and then images be put in both categories depending on the circumstances and without the operator being involved since it's kind of a given that they operate the specific route. Then if someone wants to know the exact street address of where the bus was at the second the image was taken they can find out by reading the file name or description. It's kind of a given that any bus on "X route" will be going to "Y location though. So I don't think there needs to be any more categorization beyond that. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:47, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: I think if we would have technically at least two photos of each city during whole route of PKS Poznań to Gdańsk we could create category for "PKS Poznań route to Gdańsk" with "PKS buses in..." for each city. There are even categories for colour of buses, so I think location would be more important, especially if in many cases it has a parental category "Buses in...". Eurohunter (talk) 18:09, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Two photos of buses operated by PKS Poznań in different cities isn't enough to justify it. How many total photos of buses operated by PKS Poznań by city are there? Like how many images of buses in Gdańsk operated by PKS Poznań are there on here and really why waste people's time asking about it on the Village Pump to begin with if your just going to stick your fingers in your ears and ignore people's opinions about it? --Adamant1 (talk) 18:14, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: If there are two photos for location then category is eligible. We categorise files by date, location and other possible solutions (using common sense). Location is quite important and it's helpfull. I don't think it's waste of time. It's just certain way of working and yours is different - the more voices we have here the more opinions we have. Eurohunter (talk) 20:37, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't think that's the standard. There's other things involved in deciding in if its OK to create a cateogry for something or not. We'll have to agree to disagree though. Its clear you don't really care about other opinions.
the more voices we have here the more opinions we have. Sure and I'm just sharing mine. The last time I checked I can do that. Maybe don't ask a question the Village Pump next time if all your doing it for is agreement about your position though. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:46, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
"In" specifically means location. "Of" is broader, but can be place of origin. So for example a bus made in Country A by Manufacturer B, photographed in Country C, would be a bus "in" C, but could be "of" A or B. There can be times when both constructions can be useful. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 20:52, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Further dissemination of Wikimedia Commons Atlas of the World needed
I have the feeling that Wikimedia Commons Atlas of the World is barely known among Wikipedia or even Commons regular visitors. Its quality can certainly be improved, but the first step to achieve that is that it is known enough. If it was an independent project (Wikiatlas), no doubt it would be much more known and used (and improved). There's no need to create a new independent project, but I think it should be given more own character, and find a way to make Wikimedia and Commons users who are looking for maps, aware of its existence. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:17, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Maybe it would work better as a separate project. I'm not really convinced of the usefulness of gallery namespace in general. Enhancing999 (talk) 14:25, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, but it would need a lot of WMF involvement and devote resources to it. I'm not too optimistic about it. I am convinced that there can be other ways to give it visibility.
I'm not really convinced of the usefulness of gallery namespace in general: I don't agree with that, unless gallery namespace is split in several ones, for different types of galleries. Surely there are lots of galleries that do not add anything, but others, for example, galleries about cities, allow you to see things you could not see in Wikipedia or other wikis, including the hypothetical future atlas. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:36, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I wonder how many galleries of locations consist of less than 10 pictures all taken more than 10 years ago. This despite there being dozens of other images available. Enhancing999 (talk) 14:39, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Many galleries about sufficiently important cities are not bad (photos being some years old does not have to be a problem):
Of course, there are also examples of not so good city galleries (perhaps the perception depends on the size and country of the cities in which one places the focus):
The lack of scope or a point to a lot of galleries is the main problem with them IMO. They don't really well as dump for random images of a large subject area, but then the reverse is also true if the gallery just exists to recreate a couple of images from a near empty category. So there really needs to be a clear purpose, direction, and theme for them to work. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:54, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Old isn't a problem as such, but it just makes it likely that the gallery isn't representative any more.: to see city landmarks, perhaps any 21st Century photo is good enough. But it is a symptom that nobody cares about the gallery, and obviously this lack of interest is a very bad sign. See my comment below: what I propose for the Atlas may be a solution for other gallery pages as well. MGeog2022 (talk) 09:50, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
I totally agree. For example, I created this gallery page to show the map sheets organized in a comprehensive way. Looking at the category to which they belong doesn't provide a good general view of the map series.
Returning to the problem with some galleries, perhaps some of them are not necessary at all, but others just need more dissemination, which is the same problem Wikimedia Commons Atlas of the World has. If there was an easy way to navigate galleries, with a clear hierarchy, things would be better. Galleries are to be seen as a means, not an end in themselves. Perhaps a solution would be that Commons main page linked some special important galleries (such as Atlas of the World, and others, let's say paintings, galleries of cities, etc), that serve as a starting point to continue navigating gallery pages. MGeog2022 (talk) 09:44, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
In Commons main page: "If you are browsing Commons for the first time, you may want to start with Featured pictures, Quality images, Valued images or Featured media.". Why not also some special root galleries? Content section below that links to some root categories, perhaps there could be more of them there, and also some important galleries that allow navigating to many other gallery pages. MGeog2022 (talk) 09:54, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Returning to the true subject of this discussion, I think that Atlas of the World (perhaps also more galleries) should be linked from Commons main page. Can this be done? What do you think about it? MGeog2022 (talk) 08:40, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Even in Wikipedia articles not edited on a daily basis, it can be worth comparing the current illustrations with what's available here. Sometimes all illustrations date back from the time the article was created. Enhancing999 (talk) 10:05, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, that's a problem even with text content in Wikipedia: once the subject is well covered, not much care is taken to update it. On the other hand, this probably is a lesser problem than the opposite: the tendency to replace all existing content by a new one created from scratch, in cases where it is no needed at all. In any case, as you said, the problem is not unique to Commons galleries (but the more dissemination they have, the lower the risk of this occurring). MGeog2022 (talk) 10:18, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, galleries that only exist to replicate a category make no sense. But many others, even if they only have a subset of the images in the category, help to present them in a structured way, or to focus in the most important ones (if the category has many hundreds of elements, or many subcategories, nobody would view all of them, or be easily able to find the most important ones; good galleries fulfill this, but the matter is to have good galleries and keep them updated). MGeog2022 (talk) 10:30, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
I like gallery pages, use them often. I also made some gallery pages, see an overview on my user page. My remarks for this discussion:
Indeed, they need to have a clear purpose, direction, and theme. The purpose of gallery pages can be found on Commons:Galleries: "to present readers with a structured and meaningful collection of the media found here on Wikimedia Commons." Themes can be endlessly: navigating within a big category, with links to subcategories like Headgear; an impression of how something looks like, like a populated place or a landscape; an overview of the works of an artist; an overview of the live of a famous person.
If the images in a gallery page are old or otherwise not good enough, you can always replace them with more recent or better ones. This is a wiki, so everybody may contribute, also to existing gallery pages. Can we mark a gallery page with something like: This gallery page needs some TLC (and give the reason why it should have TLC)?
Navigation: see Category:Gallery pages. The problem is, that gallery pages often lack at least one of its subcategories. Cause may be: in the past the rule was to add either a topic OR a gallery category. Even the current text in Commons:Galleries only says that you should add the category with the same name (so a topic category) and does not say anything about Category:Gallery pages. I would like to make it a rule that a gallery page always has to be put into at least two categories: one topic and one gallery category.
Agree: galleries that only exist to replicate a category make no sense, or only contain a few files. I see too many gallery pages that are disappointing, and where the focus of the creator certainly was not to show a meaningful collection of media. Can we make it a rule, one way or another, that a gallery page should either be about a very large category (200+ files) or about at least a couple of categories (subcategories included)? Because I see too many categories with only a few (1-3) files, but I have no good tool to address that.
Perhaps a reward system for good quality gallery pages, just like for photos? Perhaps revive Commons:Featured galleries? That would also make it easier to choose from if links to galleries are placed on the main page of Commons.
I don't think that "a gallery page should either be about a very large category (200+ files) or about at least a couple of categories" is a particularly good rule. One of the examples I gave above (Pioneer Square Park) would be useful even if those were the only images in that category. Similarly, I think, for Seattle and the Orient: even if that book were a little smaller, it's a good way to handle a book. - Jmabel ! talk21:39, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
We can discuss the numbers, my proposal is just a starting point. I want to get rid of all those disappointing gallery pages, that do not have any added value, and to have a tool to address that. Category:Pioneer Square Park (Seattle) has also seven subcategories, that is enough for me. JopkeB (talk) 07:13, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
I think that any rule should be applied to the gallery itself, not to the category or categories to which the included files belong. If a gallery presents a number of files in a structured way, including good descriptions, etc., there is no reason to remove it. If a gallery shows all or almost all of the files of a category that includes not many files, and doesn't show any information that isn't in the file names of the shown files, or doesn't present them in any particular structured way, or if the gallery includes, let's say, only 1 or 2 files and there isn't a special reason to have it, the gallery could well be deleted. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:02, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
For example, just showing the names/descriptions of all the files in a category in more than 1 language (file name can only be in one language), can be a good reason to have a gallery in some cases. The existence of barely viewed galleries, by itself, causes no harm to anyone. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:09, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
That is a good point, I did not think of that. But then there should be a note in the gallery page with this reason, to prevent misunderstanding. JopkeB (talk) 14:29, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
The existence of barely viewed galleries, by itself, causes no harm to anyone.@MGeog2022: As far as I know there are no metrics for how many views certain galleries get. Assuming there's some that have either no or extremely low views it's still a time suck maintaining them and just makes it that much harder for people to finding good galleries. Look at it like a museum with near infinite space that we are custodians of. To many niche, half thought out exhibits just detracts from educating our costumers and puts us in a position where we are wasting more time on dusting off or organizing things our costumers don't care about to begin with. Instead of building exhibits that people are actually interesting in and get educational value out of.
At least for me 99% of my time on here is acting as a glorified janitor. I much rather be uploading images and creating eductional exhibits for people. But there's just to much cleaning and reorganizing that needs to be done in most areas to even get to that point. Be it galleries, categories, or whatever, but the issue is particularly bad with galleries. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:14, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1, in any gallery page, you can be how many views per day it has at "History -> Pageviews Analysis".
I'm not saying that having galleries with few/almost none views is good, what I wanted to say is that content in Commons or any other Wikimedia project is not valued according to how many views it has. If for whatever reason people do not usually look at a well-done wiki page, it isn't a reason at all to propose its deletion. MGeog2022 (talk) 10:03, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
@MGeog2022: Thanks for the info. I wasn't aware that was an option. You make a good point, but I do think we are ultimately here to create things other people will see and get value out of. Not to say we should delete everything that has a low view count either. I think there's a line with galleries in particular where deletion is justified if it both has extremely low views and is badly designed without a chance of salvaging it though. But I have no issue with an extremely well designed gallery that also happens to have low viewer numbers for whatever reason either. Something like reviving Commons:Featured galleries would certainly help with that. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:45, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, and is badly designed is the point I was referring to. If it has low views, it may not be worth improving the gallery in those cases. MGeog2022 (talk) 10:51, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Reviving Commons:Featured galleries would be a good thing, as it would encourage improving galleries in general. But, aside from that, I think that special galleries, or rather, systems of galleries, such as the Atlas of the World (perhaps even there are no more than this, but others such as city galleries could be organized in a similar way), that are like a project in themselves, deserve a direct link from Commons main page. MGeog2022 (talk) 11:49, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
It's kind of a side thing but we should really create a guideline beyond Commons:Galleries (which at least IMO is to focused on the technical) that lays out what makes a "good" gallery and provides some standard for them. I'm not sure it's possible to, or worth, encouraging people to improve galleries in general without clear standards for what makes one good to begin with though. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:23, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Atlas of the World deserves a direct link from Commons main page: what do you think about that? If this view is shared by others, how is Commons main page updated (for example, I can't edit it, even having more than 1,000 edits in Commons, and obviously there is a good reason for it)? MGeog2022 (talk) 11:16, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
As a lover of maps in Commons, I stumbled regularly across these gallery pages, but the lack of curation let me ignore them completely, and I don't think I will change my attitude. It takes so much effort to categories maps properly (and the category system is may more dynamic than galleries), and we have so many ten thousand maps that are uncategorized (so not even linked to their subject), that picking a the nicest maps to showcase the subject in a dedicated Atlas-gallery-page seems like wasted effort to me. Sorry. --Enyavar (talk) 12:31, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
@Enyavar, thanks for your work categorizing maps, I wasn't aware of this category. I'm struck by the fact that people upload maps without any information at all (it's more likely to happen with photos, but with maps or other publications it's really striking).
If the Atlas was more known, it would be in a better state for sure. But in any case, I agree that many maps aren't and won't never be in a gallery, so perhaps Category:Maps itself could be linked from Commons main page, as the best "atlas" that we can offer to users. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:53, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
To be more precise, both maps category and Atlas of the World are already linked from main page, but they are hidden by default inside "By type -> Images". I think this should be restructured to make them more visible. They are at the same level as photos, diagrams or drawings, but an Atlas (and we could consider Maps category also as such) isn't the same as millions of photos without a defined subject, it's something whose presence should be more visible. I think they (Atlas of the World and maps category) should be directly in "Content - by topic", probably as a new entire topic to be added to Nature, Science etc. How could this change be achieved? MGeog2022 (talk) 15:02, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
I created this proposal for the change, to be voted. On the other side, I added a link to the Atlas of the World at Atlas English Wikipedia article, in the section External links -> Online atlases, in an effort to make it a bit better known MGeog2022 (talk) 12:07, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
If anyone knows of a way, of ignoring galleries and excluding them from search results, I would be very interested.
At the moment when "search is employed" they have precedence over Cat folders.
I detest galleries, and see them as irrelevant to the project. This is a databank, not a presentational social media platform. I want to look at all the images for a subject, and choose items for using on remote websites. Galleries get in the way of that. I don’t want being spoon fed images, I want to make my own choice. If I never see another one. I’ll be happy. Broichmore (talk) 11:18, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
I've used them pretty effectively as a way to track what I've uploaded and/or organized related to a specific topic. Kind of like an on going catalog of images related to a particular project I'm working on at the time. For instance Category:Postcards published by Frank Patterson. They seem totally pointless in a lot of other cases though. Like there's a ton of galleries for flags where they are essentially empty except for a couple of images and a bunch of "no image" thumbnails because the flags either haven't been uploaded to Commons yet or aren't PD to begin with. Really, in those cases galleries are just being used as superficial Wikipedia articles, which I'd agree isn't the point in the project. What we need is some clear standards about when it's appropriate to create a category or not and a few people to put the time into cutting out the cruft. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:59, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: There is already a section dedicated to galleries vs. categories at COM:GAL. It says, Categories should contain all files related to the subject while galleries should contain a sample of files related to the subject. Ideally, galleries should contain the best of what we have. All files should be in at least one category, but not all files should be in a gallery.Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 13:43, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm aware. I didn't think anyone is aware of or applying it properly though. The word "ideally" probably doesn't help either. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:31, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
There's a strong case for making a gallery for flags, where one of each is represented for identification purposes. However, if we have a category, filled with only 50 items (or even less than 100), I see no reason for them.
Making categories for any other reason than identification of the particular subject is pointless on this particular platform.
I'm going to point again at something where I built a gallery that could not possibly be usefully substituted by a category: Romanian Orthodox churches in Bucharest. There are an enormous number of such churches, many of them very similar in appearance but with subtle differences. If you have a photo of something that you know is a Romanian Orthodox church in Bucharest, without a gallery page like this it would be very time-consuming to determine exactly what church it is; with this gallery, it is rather straightforward. I frankly think we need hundreds, maybe thousands, of analogous pages on different topics, if only for our own internal use for people who add categories to inadequately described third-party images (or their own images where they failed to take decent notes). - Jmabel ! talk17:40, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
@Broichmore: Sure, I think you could make a strong case for having galleries about flags. My comment was less about the merits of galleries for flags then pointing out multiple people made galleries for flags where most of the images didn't exist to begin with and were simply a "no image" thumbnail with a title, which I think you'd agree isn't really the point in galleries. The question (or at least it's the question to me) is what part of the guidelines or consensus led to multiple people creating galleries for flags that contained no or very little images to begin with. Who knows, but that's why I say we need clearer guidelines and people to clean up the cruft. Clearly it's not helpful to have a large amount of galleries that only have a few or no images and can't be expanded because most of source material isn't on here to begin with and probably never will be due to being copyrighted or whatever. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:04, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Reading back, I've not been too clear. Apologies.
Galleries, should exist for identification of a particular subject’s components. A gallery should show a single representational picture of item. Certain items may demand two or more. Aeroplanes, a side and top view. A building may have to be represented by as many as 4, if the sides are radically different from each other. Jmabel's Places of worship in Seattle, Romanian Orthodox churches in Bucharest is a good exemplar of what’s required.
Where and on what basis should we not? I'm thinking, if Wikipedia has one already, then we don’t need to duplicate it. In any event, I'm inclined to think Wikipedia is a better place for this kind of thing, and ot does have a bigger audience, which makes the effort of making one, more worthwhile. Not forgetting these pages require maintenance, and there are more willing hands there.
What I'd like to see is more links on Wikipedia to commons, after all we are liberal in providing links to Wikipedia here, whereas the reverse could be vastly improved on. Broichmore (talk) 12:32, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
The Question was: Can the gallery page Wikimedia Commons Atlas of the World get more attention, for example on the Main page? The links to important (root) galleries can serve as a starting point to continue navigating gallery pages, just like Featured and other good pictures are mentioned under "Highlight" on the Main page. Another possibility is to restructure the "hidden" categories on the main page, under Content/By type, to make them more visible.
Though the main focus of this discussion was on gallery pages in general:
A gallery page can show more than Wikipedia or other wikis can do and so gallery pages are potentially very valuable, but they are tremendously underutilized. They can help to present images in a category in a structured way, or to focus in the most important ones.
But too many galleries:
are poorly developped (have only one or a few images or only replicates a category) and/or
need an update (solution: perhaps we can mark such a gallery page with something like: This gallery page needs some TLC) and/or
lack scope, a clear purpose, direction, and/or a theme.
Perhaps we can revive Commons:Featured galleries, to encourage improving gallery pages. Still to be discussed: what are criteria for a good gallery page?
Another suggestion: create a guideline beyond Commons:Galleries that lays out what makes a "good" gallery and provides some standard for them. But then again: what are good standards?
What are good standards for galleries in general? They might be added to Commons:Galleries (after a discussion on its Talk page) or included in a new guideline.
1. I think having a "featured galleries" thing on the main page would help make them more useful. Having a list of galleries on the side of the page is perfectly fine, but I suspect most people don't use it or find things that way on here to begin with.
2. I'm not a big fan of so called "navigational galleries" because they come off to much like half baked Wikipedia articles or something. I'm not really sure, but it kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing when 99% of a gallery is text so people move to other galleries. It's just overly convoluted and galleries aren't meant to be navigational pages anyway. Galleries should just be categorized better.
3. Good standards for galleries should really be figured out in it's own separate discussion. I totally support figuring it out and creating another page outside of Commons:Galleries that lays things out related to the proper creation of galleries though. One of the ways that good galleries can and will be become useful/visible is by getting rid of or improving the bad ones. It's kind of pointless to list or feature galleries on the main page when most of them are junk though. So say like 4 or 5 of us should get together, go through the current galleries to categorize them and nominate the clearly bad ones for deletion. Then we can go from there? I'm not sure it would be good or doable to create a standard for good galleries without knowing what currently exists more broadly or having them properly organized though. It's kind of putting the cart before the horse to a degree. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:06, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: @3. Good ideas. I would like to join that discussion. Where can we have such a discussion? For me it would be OK to have it on Commons talk:Galleries and finally put the conclusions on Commons:Galleries; then everything you want to know about galleries, is on one page. Do you have a better idea? JopkeB (talk) 09:19, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1, @JopkeB, I agree that having "featured galleries" linked from main page would be a good thing. In addition, root pages of "systems of galleries" for maps (Atlas of the World), for any kind of media about places (the existing galleries about countries, and then country subdivisions or cities in them, with some home page providing access to all of them through links in one form or another), art (galleries about paintings, sculpture etc, again with a home gallery page linking to the others).
Those "systems of galleries" would be linked from main page, not because of their high quality (while it is desirable they have high quality, though), but because they are some kind of "project" themselves: an Atlas, an "art museum" (let's call it so), etc.
Galleries with an exceptional quality would be included in Featured galleries, and a link to a page that links to each one of them would be included in Commons main page (all in exactly the same way it's done for featured pictures). For example, Chronologic old maps of Paris could probably be a featured gallery, but it would never be the root page of a "system of galleries" (but it could pontentially be part of one of such systems). MGeog2022 (talk) 18:04, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I don't necessarily have an issue with root pages of a "system of galleries" per se. But if they are going to be in the gallery space, then they should be also be galleries themselves. Otherwise it just goes against their purpose. At the end of the day we should probably have a special sub-domain or something for pages that purely or mainly serve a navigational purpose though. As I don't think it's good idea or practice to use sub-domains or pages in an ad-hoc way that isn't what they were originally designed for. It's just not user friendly, takes extra maintenance, and tends to cause issues further down the line. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:14, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, Atlas of the World main page (the only main page of a "system of galleries" as such that I'm aware that exists) is a gallery (in fact, any Commons wiki page without a namespace, is a gallery, and so must include media). MGeog2022 (talk) 18:23, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
How can the Main page be restructured to make useful galleries like Wikimedia Commons Atlas of the World more visible? Please make a proposal and discuss it on Talk:Main Page.: added here. MGeog2022 (talk) 18:31, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
How to handle poorly-created gallery pages that are the main target of the interwiki links?
I nominated Carl Johan Adlercreutz for deletion because this gallery page has only one image, which in my opinion is not enough to meet the criterium "to present readers with a structured and meaningful collection of the media found here on Wikimedia Commons" (see Commons:Galleries). But it turned out that deleting this page would break the interwiki links to Commons. So the administrator on duty did not want to delete it and asked me to discuss this issue here (see User talk:AFBorchert#About Commons:Deletion requests/Carl Johan Adlercreutz).
My solution is simple: just change the interwiki links to Commons in the Wikidata item (in this case: w:Q958784), to the Commons category and the problem is solved. Question Is this indeed a good solution? Do you have a better solution? And do you know other cases like this? JopkeB (talk) 05:30, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I never got why galleries would be used as interwiki links instead of categories or what the benefit to doing it that way is. So I don't see why just changing interwiki links wouldn't be an option here. Although I'm interested to know what AFBorchert's opinion is about it. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:49, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
We, as Commons editors, may indeed prefer a link to the category, as I do.
End users, looking for images for a Wikipedia page or for their own presentations and papers, it might be better to have a link to the gallery page, where they can more easily find good images (when it is a good gallery).
@JopkeB: I forget what it is right now, but isn't there already a property for linking to galleries on Wikidata's end? What's wrong with that assuming there is one? --Adamant1 (talk) 15:21, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: What exactly do you mean with "Wikidata's end"? In Wikidata you can add a link to a Commons gallery with d:P373 and at the bottom. The one at the bottom is the real one, the other one is just information (as far as I figured out). Each Wikidata item can only have one link at the bottom to Commons: either a gallery page or a category. Is this an answer to your question? JopkeB (talk) 03:12, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
@JopkeB: You can get to Commons through either one. So I don't think there is a "real one" per se. It's just different ways of showing the same information. I use links attached to properties to get to things on Commons all the time myself. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:24, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
I always use the property and not the site link when using Wikidata for a tool for exactly that reason that I do not know if the site link is what I need. GPSLeo (talk) 05:48, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
I wanted to have some community input before we are going to replace single-image galleries that serve as target of interwiki links in greater numbers by their respective categories. This would require not just changes here at Commons but also at Wikidata. Personally, I prefer to have categories as the main target of interwiki links. But my personal preference cannot be the guideline for administrative decisions. --AFBorchert (talk) 06:17, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
For single-image gallery pages I don't see how that would ever be an issue, especially if they don't even link to any other pages or categories on Commons. As a result, rather than providing a curated overview of a topic, they just hide information instead. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:58, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
It seems that 1-image-galleries are not valid content and are speedy deleted. Nothing is lost as the category has an infobox too.
For ill-kept galleries, I think the usual practice is to redirect them to categories.
A more general solution would be to link categories directly. Categories then can include one or several galleries providing selections thereof. → Enhancing999 (talk) 11:13, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, it is a good solution and I think it should be done more often e.g. by people scanning for gallery pages set on Wikidata items. Usually having the category page there is much more useful and appropriate and gallery pages often have only very few images or are outdated. I think the concept of galleries isn't working well on WMC and shouldn't drown out category pages in the Search when clicking on "Categories and Pages" (that is a separate issue however).
A better solution would be to not allow gallery pages to be set on Wikidata items. The problem with that is that there still are often no good ways to browse categories in ways that highlight/sort high-quality and/or likely-highly-relevant files somehow, with one way for that proposed here (two code issues that prevent a similar solution to work using Help:FastCCI or Deepcat gadget are phab:T369808 and phab:T367652). Gallery pages can do that and for example pick good-quality examples of major concepts relating to the category/subject which could be useful in large categories with many files/subcats. Even when considering that, many people don't (wouldn't) know that there's more files relating to the subject and think the files included in the gallery is all there is so interlinking Wikipedia/Wikidata with gallery pages is more a problem than anything else and the aforementioned issue relates more to how they would be best replaced. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:40, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
The user reading a Wikipedia article would in most cases find a linked WMC category page more useful as is usually the case. They shouldn't be buried linked only on Wikipedia categories which nearly nobody looks at and your comment essentially ignores all the points / issues raised in this thread without providing any reasoning (except noting that these are different namespaces which probably all users in this thread already know). Prototyperspective (talk) 12:19, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
You probably meant to say they don't display categories at the bottom (or at the top if you configured that in the prefs which I think is useful). That is not specific to galleries but also affects file pages and category pages on WMC. Related change requests include this, this, and this and there is no good reason to hide them on mobile (aka the way by now probably most readers access the site). Prototyperspective (talk) 12:57, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Again, you come to me with some needlessly provocative and rude language. What is your solution to the problem of the fact that there are two separate Wikidata items and how four pieces of content across just these two wikis (never mind other sister projects or languages) would be handled? I've had this exact same conversation multiple times and many users in fact did not understand the semantic differences between different namespaces or how Wikidata works. Since you evidently do, I'mm very interested in knowing your trenchant solution. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯14:54, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Prototyperspective that it isn't clear what solution you are suggesting to the 1-image-dead-end-gallery for mobile users Jopke tries to fix.
That galleries are somewhat different, I think everybody knows. Your sample shows that even well kept galleries are more of a dead-end to mobile users than I thought. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 15:16, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Even if galleries weren't a dead end on mobile they aren't well developed in most (if not all) cases and therefore (at least IMO) are inferior to categories. So they shouldn't be the main thing being linked on Wikidata's data end. Arguing otherwise just denies the reality of the thing. I think it would be totally valid to revisit the question of which one to link to if or when galleries on here stop being mostly worthless though. But them being dead ends on mobile is the least of the issue with them at this point. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Agree but to add to that: galleries are linked from category pages in well-visible ways (often the only item in the pages or in a subcat that is sorted at the very top) so I wouldn't say it's the least of the issue with galleries. Afaik there is no Wikidata property for galleries but only one value for WMC that can be reached from the respective Wikipedia article when clicking on Tools->Wikimedia Commons or clicking the link in the Commons category template which usually is a category but sometimes is a gallery page with afaik no query that shows all wikidata items with a gallery instead of a category set... Prototyperspective (talk) 17:00, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Afaik there is no Wikidata property for galleries@Prototyperspective: apparently it's P935 and there's over 100,000 uses of it. Although I've only ran into it a couple of times in like 7 years of editing on both projects. So I don't blame anyone for not knowing it exists. Clearly it's under used. Maybe adding it and other properties related to Commons on Wikidata can and/or should be a project for editors on here who care about that at some point. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:58, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
The conclusion is that it is OK for gallery pages with just one photo, or otherwise do not meet the criteria of gallery pages, to change the interwiki links to Commons in the Wikidata item, from the gallery page to the Commons category. @AFBorchert: Do you agree? How can this conclusion get known to other administrators who delete gallery pages?
Just saw this --- I would say, more specifically, that P935 should never point to a gallery with one image. If you remove those from Wikidata, I think the problem is solved (even if the gallery doesn't get cleaned up at Commons).
I think someone else mentioned it originally, but using {{Gallery page}} sounds like a fine solution in absence of something better. I actually haven't seen it used in galleries much when it probably should be anyway regardless of the issue with them being dead ends on mobile. So there's clearly things we can and should to improve galleries on here. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:35, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
It would be very useful if somebody created a query that shows all Wikidata items that have a gallery page set for "Commons" in "Multilingual sites".
A query that lists all gallery pages without {{Gallery page}} would also be useful.
I don't think it's to accurate but if you search for "P373 -P935" (which is the property for "Commons category" minus the one for "Commons gallery") on Wikidata it gives 5,577,195 results. Although the exact number is probably much lower then that because not every topic on Commons with a category will have a corresponding gallery to begin with. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:16, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
(Out of scope of this discussion) Now we are spouting wishes for queries with galleries: I would like to have one for gallery pages that have no gallery category (that is: without at least one subcategory of Category:Gallery pages), to reduce gallery pages without such a category. I now use Petscan, but Petscan is rather new for me and I only know how to search for gallery pages WITH {{Gallery page}}, but I guess there are far more without this template. (For me the problem is, that on the tab "Page properties" is no checkbox for galleries or pages, so you have to make a workaround.)
To search for gallery pages after I have created a new gallery category, Gallery search is great for finding galleries about a subject. But I do not know how to search there for gallery pages without a gallery category. (For me the problem here is, that I do not know a way to exclude subcategories of Category:Gallery pages, what is possible in Petscan.)
I found out that you can search for gallery pages without a gallery page via the advanced Gallery search and use -pages -taxon as search terms, see search query (52.300 to go, so help is very welcome). --JopkeB (talk) 09:43, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
The gallery page discussed here, has been deleted.
@AFBorchert: Still one Question: How can the conclusion (It is OK for gallery pages with just one photo, or otherwise do not meet the criteria of gallery pages, that is nominated for deletion: to change the interwiki links to Commons in the Wikidata item, from the gallery page to the Commons category) get known to other administrators who delete gallery pages? Could you please tell us?
@JopkeB: Quote from COM:G: Galleries with only a single image are permitted if they highlight an image which has been elected by the community as a featured picture, quality image, or valued image. From this I conclude that in cases where we have just one random image, we delete it. But care should be taken to update the Interwiki links where necessary. In cases with no media at all, speedy deletion criteria COM:GA1 applies. --AFBorchert (talk) 12:40, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Nevertheless, a gallery of one is ridiculous. Perhaps if galleries are to be used they should feature the best examples of all the pictures in the category.
I personally don’t want them, I want the category, they just get in the way. I want immediate access to parent categories.
Thanks. But there I only see gallery pages WITH gallery categories and I need the ones without such a category. To solve that I moved "Gallery pages" from Categories to Negative categories, but then I get an error message. How to solve that? JopkeB (talk) 03:50, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Petscan cannot do an exhaustive search over all galleries: it requires some root category and depth to scan. In addition, it gives an error message if you try to scan more than 500,000 categories. The best I can do is this, which searches the 3 layers below Category:Topics which is a reasonable place to start. That give 430 galleries that have not yet been categorized under Category:Gallery pages. — hike395 (talk) 04:16, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
There may be a way of performing the search that JopkeB desires using Quarry. The SQL required is a bit intricate. If any other editor wants to help Jopke with their search, please feel free! — hike395 (talk) 13:41, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
@Hike395: Thanks for the explanation, your research and your suggestion to use Quarry. But this tool is indeed too complicated for me. If anyone would like to help me: please do. The request is: A list of gallery pages that have not at least one subcategory of Category:Gallery pages (all the way down). JopkeB (talk) 14:52, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Two-sided image
What is the best way to upload images of the obverse and reverse of a single, double-sided work (like a postcard or trading card, for example)? I've uploaded entire pdfs before (see here, for example) but that seems excessive for something with just two halves. I suppose I could upload them as separate files but that seems strange. It seems like if I wanted to upload the reverse of this baseball card, for example, they should be part of the same File, no? I guess I could try and use one of these templates but I'm not sure. Please let me know your thoughts/advice. --Denniscabrams (talk) 14:12, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't think there is an "ideal" way of doing this currently. One thing I've seen people do is upload the images as separate files, and in the "other versions" field link the other image. You could also upload it as a single image with the front and back op top of/besides each other, though those versions rarely get used in Wikiprojects as most people are only interested in the front of such cards. ReneeWrites (talk) 14:44, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
These are children travelling to summer camp in organized fashion. The parents drop of the children at the station. Are there any categories for children traveling in groups?Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:31, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Organized children's trips? Trip, in the UK, would include the equivalent of summer camp. The original question was about a Summer camp, which is a destination, so travel, in this case. It's still a school trip, unless there is more background to change it. Broichmore (talk) 16:32, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
A school trip in the middle of the summer holidays? Sounds unlikely to me. Also, requiring the children to wear a piece of clothing that makes them easily recognizable in a crowd is something I have for more often encountered with summer camps than with school trips (the teacher being "expected" to be able to recognize their students). So, for me, this would rather be a category under Category:Summer camps in France. (Kudos for taking pictures of people actually using the Lorraine-TGV train station, especially with it being as remote as it is!) Poslovitch (talk) 19:50, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
When I was in the station, the guides where calling out the names from a list for the children to present themselves. So not school teachers. I asked the station staff and this station is often used for groups. Very accessible by road (highways) (And they dont have to drive to a centre of a congested town) There are public transportation buses going to the station, but these are little used. I myself travelled with a bus from Luxembourg city (minibus with 8 places and obligatory reservation) By the way the SNCF has a guided travel service for children travelling alone. They are dropped of by a parent/relative and on the destination picked up by another parent/relative (whose identity is checked). A service appreciated by parents.Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:02, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
The children are waiting for the TGV5470 (10:40 departure) to Rennes. This train stops at every station on the high speed line from Strasbourg to Massy TGV and then only stops at Mans and Rennes. The final destination is probably somewhere along the Atlantic coast. I put the pictures into Category:Summer camps in France. In the category there are no pictures of playing children, but only old buildings. I suspect that the European privacy rules and protection of children rules make pictures unavailable for the commons. Parents have to give permission to take group pictures of their child. There are more pictures of child activity in Category:Summer camps in the United States.Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:11, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Google gives only 17,200 hits for "reredoses" vs. 221,000 for "reredos". For Spanish it is 166 vs. 12,900 (which suggests that plural is very uncommon in its native Spanish; for English 23,000 vs. 321,000, so apparently it is actually more common for English-speakers to pluralize it this way.
Make of that what you will. I suspect that a prescriptivist would favor reredoses; I am not sure I've ever actually heard anyone say that rather than just use the singular form when they mean the plural. Then again, every time I need to distinguish reredos and retablo, I need to look it up. - Jmabel ! talk00:36, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Thats two of us that think reredos is both singular, and plural, if that's the case then wikitionary needs updating. The OED doesn't specifically give a plural. A few examples imply it is both. The billets were heaped against the reredos, or plate of iron fixed against the back of the chimneys. In practicality there is only one for every item, be it an altar, a brazier, backing of a fireplace, a rood screen, or rear of an army. I've queried it with the OED. Regarding useage for in the 1600s it gives a variant of reredoes. I would leave it as reredos.Broichmore (talk) 12:26, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
No way to work that out. But I think the Spanish-language result is more revealing: only 166 uses of this supposed plural in the native language of the word. - Jmabel ! talk18:46, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
But I think the Spanish-language result is more revealing: only 166 uses of this supposed plural in the native language of the word: Reredos isn't a Spanish word: the Spanish word is always retablo. Being a native Spanish speaker, I've never heard or read it in Spanish. All mentions to reredos in retablo Spanish Wikipedia article are English words (citations or etymology). Multilingual English Wiktionary only includes reredos for English language. As for retablo, the plural is retablos and is very commonly used. MGeog2022 (talk) 19:06, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
@MGeog2022: Ah, you are right: reredos is originally French (and originally had an a in front of it); I always mis-assumed it to be of Spanish origin. And I do see now that Spanish doesn't make the reredos/retablo distinction. Not a word that I have much day-to-day use for, not being a Catholic (or even a Christian), and I guess if I ever used it in Spanish no one corrected me. So my Google counts above are irrelevant, my apologies. (I still say reredoses doesn't exactly slip off the tongue, but I guess I won't object if there is a consensus to use it.) - Jmabel ! talk19:26, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
And I do see now that Spanish doesn't make the reredos/retablo distinction: that's just why I was so surprised when I learned that English made this distinction :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 12:28, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you to all the 2024 Summer Olympics photographers!
Why bring it to our attention? Both images are uploaded separately, and correctly per COM:OVERWRITE, they are both catted in Category:Midi E 4100 → SNCF BB 4100. The uploader had uploaded both in 2011, but initially had overwritten the other in error, and re-uploaded both in 2011 to correct that. Since then catting has varied, because they have been treated separately, they were never linked, which I just did. So there's nothing to do here.
Meanwhile, I have found an established and prolific uploader who has violated :COM:OVERWRITE., probably 100's, perhaps a 1000 times, unchecked since early 2019. What to do about that? Broichmore (talk) 12:12, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Deletion category update as a step in closing DRs?
I recently had cause to look for all DRs about a given topic and was glad to find our deletion sorting categories. I started to try to add DRs to categories but there was no easy way to choose from a list or quickly cross-reference what options are available, so I made a script which is far from perfect but works well enough for me.
What I'm surprised by are the number of DRs that are closed but still in the /pending subcategory. Why isn't changing /pending to /kept or /deleted a standard part of closing a DR? — Rhododendritestalk | 03:02, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
It seems like administrators don't change the categories much when they close DRs. So I'll usually do it myself if it's one that I started or was otherwise involved in. Probably their time better spent doing other things anyway and I kind of feel like it's part of the process of completing circle so to speak for whomever opened it. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:32, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
The main problem is that it puts a bunch of action tags on any file that gets mentioned in a DR and I doubt that can be changed. - Jmabel ! talk23:57, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
I guess much of it has to do with the fact that when you're working with the daily DR pages (which are presenting all DRs from a given day), you don't see these categories. You'd have to load the DR as an individual page to see them and change them. Some admins do that, some don't. You can close DRs really fast when working with the daily pages and using DelReqHandler, but the categories stay untouched then. --Rosenzweigτ12:30, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
Ohhh that's a good point. Maybe what we need is (a) demonstrated consensus that these sorting categories are indeed worth maintaining, and if so then (b) update deletion nomination scripts/gadgets to incorporate categorization, plus (c) a bot which can automatically update closed DRs... — Rhododendritestalk | 20:59, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
[SOLVED] Upload via OpenRefine: how to include the "description" for the Information-Template
Hello! Please excuse, if this is the wrong place for this question. I am preparing the upload of ca. 1900 images via OpenRefine, and this is my first ever upload of images on Commons (and use of OpenRefine). See my User:CalRis25 for more about these uploads. I have read quite a bit on Commons and been working through the course OpenRefine for Wikimedia Commons: the basics (WMF_GLAM001) and have solved (or so I think) most problems. However, I am still somewhat at a loss as to how to supply the description for the Template:Information. According to Commons:File captions this description is not part of the structured data. But how can I tell OpenRefine (or Commons) to use a certain column of the CSV-file, which contains the respective text, as the description for the Information-template? Can anyone help me? Thank you in advance, CalRis25 (talk) 10:06, 31 August 2024 (UTC).
you should make test runs of small batches (10-30) to check if there will be errors/problems.
you might need to consider applying for a bot account.
if what you mean is you have prepared most or all data into com:sdc except the description, you could just do this {{Information|description={{en|1=...}}}} ?
Thank you for the quick answer! I am going to make a test-run with only two images, once I got this problem solved. I actually thought about including the description in the Wikitext. However, according to this Commons-page this is actively discouraged. Or do I misunderstand this page? I use a Python-script to generate the CSV-file, so changing things is not a big problem. Is there really no way to tell OpenRefine to use the content of one of the columns as the description for the Information-template? Or do you mean with {{Information|description={{en|1=...}}}} that there should be a column (separate from that with the simple wikitext) containing that bit of information? CalRis25 (talk) 10:48, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
I made a test-upload of 1 image (see its page). The file was uploaded, but none (!) of the data I supplied (including various structured data items reconciled with Wikidata) was added. And I still don't know how to supply the Commons-description of the Information-template in OpenRefine. CalRis25 (talk) 09:07, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
After quite a few trials I was able to create several test images. Including the description was only possible by directly editing the Wikitext. I am going to head over to the Help Desk and ask someone to have a look at the page of the test file. CalRis25 (talk) 17:56, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
This is a good question... Some years ago, files with 50 megapixels were considered large. Today, I would see large images as images with higher resolutions than the common ones (70 megapixels and more), of course with respective level of details. AFAIK "large" refers to the amount of pixels, not to the file sizes in MB, GB or whatever --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:42, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
Would that advice apply, anywhere in the world? This is the image that raised the question. It's less than 21 megapixels. I find it, just a tad slow if you fully open it up, where I am (UK). However it presents no problems on wikipedia, or the front end of commons. Broichmore (talk) 10:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
I would say, yes. When we compare this 21 MP image to the largest 5 or 1 %, then this image is of course not large (I would not consider it as large), and the largest 5 % are. As it is a JPEG, the filesize is also not large. If it is a TIFF with 32 bits per channel, then it may qualify as large image. Of course, having a low internet connection, it may take long to load, but the larger ones take longer of course. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
I'd put the line on photographs at over 50 MP or over 65 MP. Modern phones, even cheap ones, frequently have 50 MP cameras, and 100 or 200 MP sensors in smartphones seem to work best when taking 50 MP or smaller pictures.. Even professional cameras top out at 60 MP, with the exception of $4K Fujifilm cameras or $35K Hassleblads. So that's the line between normal photo and multi-shot merges or extremely high end equipment, IMO.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:19, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't take the 50MP thing at face value. My phone has a 50MP camera and it's impossible to take sharp pictures with. I suspect they're basically just upscaled versions of the default 12MP camera, which does take sharp pictures. ReneeWrites (talk) 18:17, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Isn't this about browsers freezing not actually image size? I dont think it should matter what the average image size is, only what does or does not freeze a browser. I guess someone should test various sizes and see. Bawolff (talk) 17:15, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Ok, the behaviour is caused by {{Location}}. And it's usual, that the cache invalidation will happen within 4 months when changing templates. But it didn't. I prefer a solution over an explanation. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 11:33, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
I can also write a phab-ticket to the database admins, not sure, whether this will help. Jeff G., thanks for your try but even with AWB this will take days for all categories that Enhancing999 mentioned. I will try touch.py. Herzi Pinki (talk) 16:06, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
@Herzi Pinki: Done, finally. Along the way, Windows decided to reboot and AWB displayed "stopped" and had to be killed. I finished with VFC, but the 100 limit is painful to get around and it no longer displays a visual indication while it is processing and no longer auto-activates "more" at the bottom. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:10, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
one touch per second works, even two jobs in parallel (meaning 2 touches / sec). We have about 1390000 entries in categories listed in Special:WantedCategories. Root cause is the change by User:Multichill on 8 May 2024 [12]. Touching all the 1.4 millions files will take 1400000/60/60/24 = ~16.2 days (1 per sec). --Herzi Pinki (talk) 21:49, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: yes I know all that, but if we don't fix problems, because of such performance guidelines, we are doomed. btw, I think something is wrong with the statement of the category, that SDC location is missing. I made a few samples, and all had SDC coordinates. So maybe there is just a flaw in the implementation of these maintenance categories. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 07:27, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
No, never heard of locality of creation (P1071). What is the difference between the location of creation (of a photo) and the camera location? Ah, it is not just coordinates. So it only makes sense, if this means the location of creation of the depicted object, a property for the vast majority of depicted objects we don't know (think of persons, where they have been created in most cases not even the parents know for sure; a work of art was created in some atelier, but not on the location of final placement). Just another maintenance category that wise men have created and nobody will do the necessary maintenance for. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 08:56, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
AFaik P1071 is most specific item of place where image has been taken (ie. position of photographer). Ie. it can be administrative area, island, building etc. It is useful expecialy when there is no known coordinates. --Zache (talk) 12:49, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
@Herzi Pinki: usually it takes a while for cache to pick up, but this is quite extreme. I'll have a bot flush it out. That will be fairly quick.
@Multichill: thanks for caring - it seems to me that your quota is much better than mine. Thanks for the explanation, was expecting something like this. As for AGF, I'll try to trust everybody here (without much individual difference in weigth btw.), but if things get contradicting, I'm lost. For me still it is not clear, that locality of creation (P1071) (I also trust the property description) is about the photo itself and not the object depicted on the photo. Maybe you can make that clearer in the description of the categories {{Missing SDC location of creation}} mentioned here and maybe we should add something to locality of creation (P1071) like most accurate place a photo was taken. May I mention, that openstreetmap nominatim can do this mapping of coordinates to place names out of the box. best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 12:59, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
From what I've seen there appears to be two or three main ways that categories are disambiguated at this point. Usually it's done by using brackets or a comma, but I've also seen them disambiguated using other symbols. For instance the Russia symbol for "<" and "<." Having multiple ways of doing it seems to go against the universality principle. Plus at least with commas they aren't super intuitive since plenty of normal names contain commas. Nor are they that easy to see in the first place. "John Malkovich (actor)" makes way more sense and is much easier to see then "John Malkovich, actor", "John Malkovich <<actor>>", or any of the other alternatives I've seen. So at least IMO round brackets should be the de-facto way to name disambiguated categories. Thoughts? Adamant1 (talk) 01:21, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
Round brackets (parentheses) are the normal way to do this, but U.S. and Canadian place names (and, I suspect, some others) are rather universally written with commas when including the state/province. I think anyone from those countries would find it very odd to see, for example, "Columbus (Ohio)" or "Stratford (Ontario)" rather than "Columbus, Ohio" and "Stratford, Ontario". - Jmabel ! talk01:54, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel: That's probably one the few places where a comma is fine, if not expected. There's a lot of categories for streets in Germany its like "X street name, Y location" Which I don't think is a good way to do it. I don't have a problem with a comma being used for something like "city, state" as long as its the norm for similar categories. Its annoying to see a common in cases where the norm is circular brackets, visa versa, or no disambiguating of similar categories to begin with though (Its tangential, but a lot of disambiguation seems to be totally pointless in the first place). --Adamant1 (talk) 02:22, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel: What do you think about something like the subcategories for streets in Category:Streets in Lutsk? Would you disambiguate them using a comma, circular brackets, not disambiguate them at all, or just leave them as is with "in Lutsk" at the end of the street names? --Adamant1 (talk) 05:11, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
I'd certainly want to see them consistent with one another, whatever is chosen. "in Lutsk" seems awkward, but it's also apparently what the most active categorizer here has chosen. I don't much care between comma and parentheses (circular brackets) as long as it's consistent. I'd have no objection to a site-wide standard, but we should at least be consistent within a city. Without a site-wide standard, if you really wanted to work on this for a particular city, I'd make sure to have consensus from the (presumably few) people who most work on images of that city. - Jmabel ! talk16:18, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
I changed my mind from ()-notation to comma-notation for Category:Streets in Vienna for two reasons: 1) to make names uniform and 2) acc. to Commons:Language policy category names (except proper names) have to be in English. In English for me does not only mean to translate words, but also to use the structure as it is used in :en:WP. Which is for geographical names (I consider street names as such) "Columbus, Ohio" or "Stratford, Ontario". But uniform name schemes are prior to that, and I try to follow naming schemes already found, sometimes change to the more widely used scheme. best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 13:49, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
How about {{No source since}}? An obviously invalid claim of own work fits the description of "...appears to have an invalid source listed". I agree that a more specific template would be helpful, though - something along the lines of "please update with the correct source/license, or send permission to VRT if it's really your own work". Omphalographer (talk) 01:03, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
I view {{No source since}} as having more or less the same problem (though per the phrase you cite, a bit less so). I still think a more specific template would be better, since this particular situation comes up so often. - Jmabel ! talk04:52, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps some template like "dubious source" could be even better, since there could also be misattributed files to other sources (source present in the file page, but it isn't the true source), not only for own works. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:24, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
The semi-speedy deletion templates should only be used for obvious cases that are recent uploads. For the "I don't believe this is 'own work'.", a regular deletion request should be used. Multichill (talk) 12:03, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
@Multichill: you are probably right, which makes my original proposal moot. So do you think the answer is simply that {{No permission since}} should never be used this way if "own work" is claimed? Presumably it can still be a speedy if you actually have the original source to reference (or we'd be bogged down enormously), but lacking that, if you doubt "own work" you should always need a DR. Is that correctly understood? - Jmabel ! talk14:08, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
All the semi-speedy deletion templates are things that can either be fixed by the uploader or just end up being deleted. These are not suitable at all for cases where discussion might happen. I would be conservative. Multichill (talk) 18:45, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
Awesome! This is very useful. It implements one part of the two I requested here. Could you also create a report for categories with only redcategories? Then all categories practically without categorization would show up on some report. A next step thereafter I think would be to have some bot identify cats missing cats and making e.g. Suggested Edits category suggestions, for example using data of the corresponding WP article in a way that makes these suggestions constructive. Such bots would be especially useful for experienced users adding categories to the categories on these reports and greatly reduce the time required for that and the backlog size.
Some change proposals:
could you rename "top users" to something like "users creating most uncategorized categories"? (this feature also ties in somewhat with the gamification-like feedback mechanisms discussed here)
it would be good to link to these reports from here and other places where Special:UncategorizedCategories is linked from
it would be good to link to these reports from Special:UncategorizedCategories itself
For actual implementation of additional reports, you might want to use Commons:Bots/Work_requests. Special:WantedCategories exists and seems to be long (5000 categories wanted 14 and more times). It also has the advantage that it gets updated when a category is created.
Briefly, as for Special:WantedCategories those only show the redcats but not categories with only redcats. This is very different and doesn't really address the same problem but if it did then in a very different way. For example, many of these cats only have a nonexisting category that is used only once (namely in that category) while this shows the top XYZ by number of use and currently only shows categories with at least 14 items. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:14, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
It's categories that have nothing but nonexisting categories. I don't have an example now but could add one if I find one but I'd suggest simply categorizing a category missing categories in such a way for a test-case. There's many of these. Also note that categories having nothing but nonexisting categories and Wikidata infobox meta categories should also show up in some report. The two examples I listed here (this and this) apparently are not included in your report so I think it still needs further work so it also includes these. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:34, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Oh, it seems with "nonexisting categories" you mean categories that have the "hidden category" attribute set (visible on the second line). Generally all categories that are not topical categories. Category:Sinauli has four such categories (Uses of Wikidata Infobox, Uses of Wikidata Infobox with no image, Uses of Wikidata Infobox with maps, Pages with coordinates). The infobox sets 3 of them, MediaWiki the last one. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:40, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the info, all the samples I looked at didn't have any normal categories so can this report also be used for that and if not the title of the report is flawed and doesn't match what the report is about. It could be named "Report UncategorizedCategories with empty infobox" but I'd suggest changing it so it also shows items with non-empty infoboxes or creating and additional report "Report UncategorizedCategories with non-empty infobox". Prototyperspective (talk) 13:54, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
The intro defines the exact scope. For your request, maybe the infobox itself can determine if there are any other categories available. It's conceivable that a category with an infobox is correctly only in "hidden cats", so checking those isn't sufficient. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 14:00, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
What do you mean with "isn't sufficient"? There simply are many cases like the two examples that are practically without categories / missing categories but don't show up in reports because they have a few meta-categories set by the Wikidata Infobox. If there are cases where this is fine these are very rare and one could think about what to there once there are some examples of that where one can see how such can occur and maybe how they could be excluded from the report. The infobox itself can't determine that, it can at most add or suggest a few more categories but that's basically a separate subject and doesn't solve anything. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:37, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
BTW the "last user who edited the category" may not be the one who created it. Also, for the second report, it may have been disconnected from Wikidata since the last edit.
I'd say that the report is quite useful. Few (if any) false positives, so pretty much anything that shows up there needs some work. - Jmabel ! talk18:48, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. Updates are a bit complicated as infoboxes don't necessarily update when a category is connected to an item.
Special:UncategorizedCategories is now at 8, including 5 categories that can be deleted once all files in it are (likely) deleted. Interestingly, it gets new entries every day. either by people who omit parent categories, people who don't know how to request speedy deletion or people who create categories that need (English) descriptions to be of any use to a more general public.
Is renaming categories with an English name to local language names a good idea?
Category:Heroes' Cemetery in the Philippines has been renamed to Category:Libingan ng mga Bayani, to "match Wikipedia and Wikidata", see history of this category. Though there are exceptions for English category names: "some proper names, ... and names for which the non-English name is most commonly used in the English language" (see Commons:Categories#Category names), I wonder whether such an exception applies to this category and whether this would be a good development for other category names that are now in English but might have other names in Wikipedia and Wikidata. Because I can understand the English name without a translation program, but not the name in Philippine (or the majority of other languages). @Seav: Can you give your opinion as well? JopkeB (talk) 05:43, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
If there is a Category Redirect, I see no problem. There is a problem with English names that are meaningless to local people. Like Our Lady of the Forsaken, that is a very common thing to find around my place, that means absolutely nothing to the Valencian local people, who are enterly familiar with either la Virgen de los Desamparados or la Mare de Déu dels Desemparats. I do use English category names, but I have to explain my wife once and again what is Our Lady of Good Health (la Virgen de la Salud) or Saint Anthony the Great (Sant Antoni del Porquet). I think a more multilingual approach is required. B25es (talk) 05:55, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Then I would prefer to have the redirect the other way around: let the English name be the category name and let the local name have the redirect. JopkeB (talk) 06:11, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Category names should generally be in English (see Commons:Language policy). However, there are exceptions such as some proper names, biological taxa and names for which the non-English name is most commonly used in the English language (or there is no evidence of usage of an English-language version).
I think my rename follows the "proper names [...] for which the non-English name is most commonly used in the English language". The English Wikipedia article title, Libingan ng mga Bayani, had been discussed and renamed a few times since 2009 between the English-translated name and the official native-language name (see the header on Talk:Libingan ng mga Bayani), with the latest move request in 2020 resolving to the native-language title. There is plenty of evidence that the native-language name is used in English-language sources (albeit sources in the Philippines, but then again, English is an official language of the country). Some examples of English reliable sources within the past year that use the native-language name: [13][14][15][16].
"Taoisigh" is apparently not a proper name of a person, like Mary Johnson, but the name of a function, in the rest of the world known as "Prime minister". So this is not part of the exception. AND it is clearly not conform the Universiality principle, which says that "Identical items should have identical names for all countries and at all levels of categorization." So, please make the redirect the other way around. JopkeB (talk) 08:43, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
"Taoisigh" seems a bit odd to me, I don't recall seeing that spelling (or hearing a pronunciation that matches that spelling), but as a native English-speaker, I'd consider "Taoiseach" entirely appropriate. The BBC, for example, pretty consistently use "Taoiseach". FWIW, Google gives 239,000 results for "Taoisigh", 5,820,000 for "Taoiseach", 545,000 for the phrase "prime minister of Ireland" and 419,000 for "Irish prime minister", which seems to confirm my instinct. - Jmabel ! talk18:41, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Interesting, I guess I'd never heard it in the plural, and certainly have no idea how to form Gaelic plurals. - Jmabel ! talk04:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
So it is also OK to rename Category:Prime ministers of France to Category:Premiers ministres? And for all other countries alike? Then we might delete the Universiality principle as well. I am not a native English-speaker and I consider "Taoisigh" not appropriate because I have never heard it before, I am familiar with the name "Prime ministers" and I guess the same applies to the best part of non-native English-speakers. Why would there be an exception for Gaelic? JopkeB (talk) 04:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Is that true for other English-speaking countries as well, like the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand? And the word "tsar" is well known, also in other languages, and is about heads of state, not prime ministers. So I think this is not a good comparison. JopkeB (talk) 04:08, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Definitely true for UK; for U.S. I've usually heard radio news reporters first use the word "Taoiseach", then define it once (e.g. "equivalent of a prime minister"), then use "Taoiseach". Again, I think that Google count speaks volumes: over ten times as many hits for "Taoiseach" as for "prime minister of Ireland". - Jmabel ! talk04:51, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
So, it looks a little bit like a mess, for Germany even more than for Ireland (for Ireland there is at least a redirect, for Germany you have to figure out yourself what the category for federal prime ministers is). But luckily prime ministers of Japan are still in Category:Prime ministers of Japan (I could not find teno and japanese "king"). My concern are about (1) non-native English (and German) speakers AND (2) creators of templates and other technical solutions. Both groups need clear category names, with the same category name throughout the category tree. I think the Universiality principle is made for both groups. How can we apply this principle to categories for prime ministers of Ireland and the federal state of Germany (and perhaps other countries?)? JopkeB (talk) 16:27, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Head of state is not the same as prime minister. Germany and Ireland both have a president as well as a prime minister of the (federal) government. JopkeB (talk) 05:02, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Agreed that a prime minister is normally "head of government" but not "head of state". I can't think of a country with a prime ministerial system where the prime minister is considered head of state. - Jmabel ! talk00:25, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Oppose Changing the name to the "native-language" for two reasons
1. The idea that it's in the "native-language" now is totally ridiculous to begin with. According to Google 22.5 million people in the Philippines speak Tagalog. While 39.4 million speak English. Further the place being discussed here is a national cemetery within Fort Bonifacio. The national headquarters of the Philippine Army. So it's just more likely due to how many speak English then Tagalog nationally that they will speak English. Meaning the change will clearly reduce the number of people who will be able to find the category. I don't think it's simply enough to simply have a redirect in this case either. Otherwise you could justify renaming every category to the "native language" simply because redirects exists. That's not their purpose. Per the guidelines we have to go with the name whatever language has the most chance of being searched for and it's pretty clear that's English in this case.
2. There's been multiple CfDs having to do with this exact issue in the last couple years and there was clearly no consensus from them to change the names of the categories to the "native-language" at the time. I highly doubt if Seav had pf started a CfD for this before changing the name that it would have gone anywhere. That's what they should have done instead of just unliterally changing the name based purely on how the place is named on Wikipedia. Regardless, it's pretty clear that there is no consensus to use "native-language" names for categories in cases like this one. I'm not sure what the circumstances around Category:Taoisigh versus Category:Prime ministers of Ireland, but "other stuff" isn't really a valid reason to make the change. Again, especially considering the outcome of prior CfDs, guideline, and fact that clearly more people speak English in the Philippines then Tagalog and this is the national headquarters of Philippine Army. It would be ridiculous to say that shouldn't matter "because Wikipedia article." --Adamant1 (talk) 06:37, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
To be fair, your first argument only works for this special case of a country where a lot of people speak English. It doesn't work for other categories. For example, sometimes I go through the Category:Media needing categories (Cyrillic names), and there I find a decent number of files that actually are properly categorized, except that all the categories are written in Russian. The Russian community has a bot that addresses the issue to some degree but automatically searching and replacing Russian-language categories for their English counterparts, but the process is not perfect and you still find a lot of "uncategorized" Russian media. The other issue with translated categories is that there are various ways to translate one and the same thing, and it's a pain to figure out what the English name of an already existing category is. Oftentimes I go to Ru Wiki, find the subject there, follow the link to the Wikidata item from the article, and then look up the Commons category on Wikidata. There are just too many ways to "translate" even something as simple as "площадь мира" (transc.: ploshad mira, lit.: square [of] peace). You can go by Category:Peace square, Kazan or Category:Peace Square, Krasnoyarsk with a capital S, or Category:Mira Square (Kaluga) (like Google does), or Category:Mir Square (the word "peace" = "mir" without the genetive suffix "-a"; Mira Square is actually equivalent to "Peace's Square", and if you want to have "Peace Square", you need to drop the genetive in Russian too "Mir Square"*), or you could translate it as Category:Square of Peace, or you use the Russian word order Category:Square Mira, which is a construction that you can find in translations of "проспект мира" (prospekt mira / Peace Avenue), such as Category:Prospekt Mira (Kaliningrad) — why even bother translating when you can transcribe instead? (Now we only have to agree whether it's prospekt or prospect — k vs. c, see Category:Prospect Mira in Lipetsk.) Or you can just translate it like in Category:Peace Avenue, Krasnoyarsk, or you can be like Moscow and create a grammatical language monster by keeping the Russian words while using English word order: Category:Mira Prospekt in Moscow — this one raises eye brows in English speakers and Russian speakers alike.
It is a fine balance line between translating native names into English ones or keeping them in the original language (or as a transcription for languages that have other scripts than Latin). For me names of streets and squares may be kept in the original language, except perhaps for very well known ones, like Red Square in Moscow. So the same rule as for place names (where only names known in English should be in English in Commons categories). JopkeB (talk) 09:22, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
In English the name literally translates to "Cemetery of (the) Heroes" (libingan = cemetery; mga bayani = heroes). I've seen that translation (with or without the definite article) and I've seen the variation "Heroes' Cemetery" as well. A couple more points: the official website of the cemetery is [17], which is in English but still uses the native-language name, and the law that established the cemetery is Proclamation No. 208, s. 1967, also in English, but the name is again the native-language name. —seav (talk) 07:03, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
I think in this case the Tagalog name is appropriate, with soft redirects from the maybe two most likely English-language names.
I'd also add: in practice, this varies a lot from country to country, and sometimes by region within a country. For example, for Catalonia, we pretty consistently favor Catalan names; for Romania, I've seen English-language names for things that it is hard to imagine anyone referring to that way, e.g. "Roman Square" for Piața Romană; it's like a Spanish-speaker calling New York's Times Square "La Plaza del Tiempo" or (even worse) "La Plaza de los Tiempos". - Jmabel ! talk18:50, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
There is zero possibility that category name should be changed to something fully English. I'm a native English-speaker; I've been aware of that statue for over 60 years, and literally never heard it referred to in a fully translated mode (usually just "the Cristo" or if context is unclear "the Cristo in Rio", but of course "Cristo Redentor" is more correct). You would as well translate "Rio de Janeiro" to "January River" (or "Las Vegas, Nevada" to "the low places, snowy"). - Jmabel ! talk04:02, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
@MGA73 the statue is "Christ the Redeemer", many know that. Unsure if using English language as the precedence will lead to the category being moved to "Category:Christ the Redeemer (Rio de Janeiro)". JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)07:39, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
JWilz12345 I think that if there is no clear name for something then just leave the name as it is and make some redirects if needed. I would just hate to see if someone get the idea to rename hundreds of thousands of categories just to use local names in categories. --MGA73 (talk) 07:52, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
@Enhancing999@MGA73 we are talking about the statue's name in English. Everyone in English-speaking world calls it "Christ the Redeemer". Little to none use "Cristo Redentor". It is understood, but I am surprised about claims here that there is no clear name of the statue in English. It is crystal clear: Christ the Redeemer. Of course, English-speaking world calls the city "Rio de Janeiro"! So: "Category:Christ the Redeemer (Rio de Janeiro)" is the most-fitting name. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)09:04, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
The concern is not so much this statue, but that people use the equivalent of "River of January" as it occasionally happens. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:09, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Should that also be renamed to Category:Mga sementeryo ng militar sa Pilipinas? I think this is a strawman argument. That category name is not the official name or proper name of an actual entity unlike "Libingan ng mga Bayani" and so would run afoul of Commons:Language policy. —seav (talk) 08:47, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
The argument from MGA73 seems strange, but it's true that "Heroes' Cemetery in the Philippines" could suggest that it isn't a specific cemetery, but a class.
The question was "Is renaming categories with an English name to local language names a good idea?" And I think not. I think in general it is best to use English names if there is one. For example "Denmark" not "Danmark" and "Statue of the Little Mermaid (Copenhagen)" not "Statuen af Den Lille Havfrue (København)". You can always find cases where the name can be discussed and in these cases just leave the name the creator have chosen. --MGA73 (talk) 09:14, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
(1) The problem was the sample didn't quite match the question. If there is an actual name that can be referenced and that is in use, not a "river of january"-thing. (2) Your argument is about classes of objects, not specific objects. (3) there are casses where we don't use English names even for classes: Category:Betula pendula etc. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:23, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Oppose The default language for Commons is English for good reasons, some of them well outlined by others here. The best idea, is to put alternative names, in however many languages into Wikidata. Broichmore (talk) 11:07, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Oppose There are many situations where the "local language" may not reflect the majority of people talking about it. Take Category:Vatican City for instance. We could call it Category:Città del Vaticano or Category:Civitas Vaticana but the problem is that the Vatican city is a location with many international visitors and discussion. This would add a lot to confusion without adding much. We don't need to translate the name, but in more international locations this could cause major issues. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me)16:38, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Conclusions + proposals + questions
The question is: Is it allowed to rename categories with an English name to local language names?
Answers:
Local language names are OK for category names if:
there is no English name, or
there is a redirect from the local language name to the English name or
it meets the criteria of Commons:Categories#Category names (names for which the non-English name is most commonly used in the English language).
Categories with local language names are doubtful if:
it is not about a proper name, but about something else, like a function: Category:Taoisigh (prime ministers of Ireland) and Category:Chancellors of Germany (prime ministers of Germany) are in the rest of the world known as prime ministers. Though these local words may be well known in the UK, they are not in most of the rest of the world and they certainly do not meet the Universiality principle, which says that "Identical items should have identical names for all countries and at all levels of categorization."
names are hard to translate into English (then they should at least be transcribed to Latin script).
It is not OK if:
there was no CfD for (there was no CfD for this case)
the name is not in the language that has the most chance of being searched for (in this case that is English)
the name is not in Latin script.
Another solution is to put alternative names, in however many languages, into Wikidata.
I thought we don't want "River of January" type of translations (easy to do)? The question for a reference for the past name of the category seems still unanswered. We do have it for the current category name (even in the category). We do seem to agree the "Category:Cemeteries in the Philippines"-category should remain in English. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 15:35, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
I think there is a big difference between "allowed" to rename and "a good idea" to rename. I understand "a good idea" as "we should" rename. I'm from Denmark and we have Category:Copenhagen and I think it should be left alone because there are more readers that know the city as Copenhagen than København. But if someone had named the category "Buy a harbour" then I would ofcourse agree that the original name was better just like I think "River of January" should be renamed.
I think both the conclusions and the proposals are fine. But I also live happily with the new name. Just don't start a mass rename of thousands and thousands of categories just to get local names. --MGA73 (talk) 16:01, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Both conclusions and proposals make sense. Some understanding has to be used regarding those of us that not being proficient enough in English ignore how to say some things in English. Some categories written the best we can will pop up. Also when things may have an English name but it is not widely known even among native English speakers themselves, category names may be not as perfect as desired. I do appreciate when categories I have created are properly Anglisized, but category redirects from other languages are of great help. A long term plan/idea/intention to have something like Wikidata's Qs, where somebody writes iron, my wife reads hierro, and someone in Dodoma reads chuma, would be great. B25es (talk) 17:25, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
I certainly disagree with the conclusion that we should call the Chancellor of Germany the "prime minister of Germany". The term "Chancellor" dates back at least to the 1870s (and may have been used in Prussia before that, I'm not sure). It is simply the correct word in English (the German being Kanzler). The Germans do not use the word Kanzler to refer to comparable positions in other countries (e.g. they would not refer to the Prime Minister of the UK as a Kanzler, they would use Premierminister. It is simply not the same title, even if the role is similar. - 19:11, 30 August 2024 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmabel (talk • contribs) (UTC)
Maybe chancellor would be an appropriate term for historical figures who traditionally called that, but I don't anyone outside of Germany uses the term these days. Like I know Hitler was called a Chancellor in Germany during World War 2 but if I do a search for him Google there's plenty of sources, including Google's information panel that calls him a Prime Minister. But then conversely the Wikipedia article for the role is called "Chancellor of Germany." So...There should be some standard and at least IMO Prime Minister makes more sense for our purposes if for no other reason then universality. I don't think it would make sense or work if he had diifferent terms for political appointees based purely what they are called locally regardless of if there's a universally recognized term for the role or not. Categories mainly (if not completely) exist as a way to organize images and naming them based on universality is clearly the best to do that regardless of if its 100% acccurate in every single instance. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:41, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
"Chancellor Angela Merkel" (in quotes) gets 1,880,000 Google hits. "Prime Minister Angela Merkel" gets a mere 5,940. Rather more recent than Adolph Hitler (also held the office rather longer), I'd say a 30:1 ratio suggests that the term is quite current. And since both "Chancellor" and "Prime minister" are specifically English-language, this should be specific to English. - Jmabel ! talk21:59, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel: With Hitler it's 60,600 results for "Chancellor Hitler" versus 6,550,000 for "Prime Minister Hitler" and as I've already said that's even with him being called Chancellor in Germany at the time. So it clearly depends. You'd have to agree it would be pointless to argue about which term should be used used based on who the particular head of state was at the time. "Well, my German head of state has 6 million results on Google for Chancellor and yours only has 60 thousand for Prime Minister. So clearly the category should be named 'Chancellor'!" Not to say you'd do that, but I do think it's a case where it would just be better to go with the university principle instead of trying to determine how to name the category based on a game of one upmanship over who's favorite term for a head of state gets more results on Google Search. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:47, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: I'm pretty sure you didn't use the quotation marks in doing that Google search. Obviously, Hitler would often be mentioned on the same page as some prime minister. But with quotation marks I get and 59,700 for "Chancellor Hitler" and only 9,440 for "prime minister Hitler", and even the latter include some more-or-less false positives: right near the top I see things like, "To the British Prime Minister, Hitler complained…" or "On May 13, 1940, Churchill gave his first speech as. Prime Minister. Hitler invaded France…" - Jmabel ! talk23:23, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
(Reaction to the disagreement of Jmabel, 19:11, 30 August 2024) The point is not "that we should call the Chancellor of Germany the "prime minister of Germany""; of coarse you may call anyone the way you or the other person likes it. Nor whether what has more hits in Google or any other search machine. The point is: how do we name (sub)categories in a structural and consistent way. The real question here may be: What is more important: the consistancy of the category structure (like the Universality principle prescribes) or the titles of the prime ministers of Germany and Ireland? And if you choose the latter: what other exceptions exist to the Universality principle? --JopkeB (talk) 09:12, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be better the other way around? Have Category:Prime ministers of Germany redirect to Category:Chancellors of Germany? The former category, to ensure that templates and categories like "Prime ministers of Europe" will work, and the latter, for the actual name. Nakonana (talk) 15:14, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
If we are insisting that we use strict English for the cemetery in question (despite the Tagalog name being extensively used in English sources [see above]), then there is still the question of which English translation should be used. Should it be the original "Heroes' Cemetery", or "Cemetery of Heroes" or "Cemetery of the Heroes"? All three are acceptable English translations of the official name, but I prefer any of the two latter names as these more closely resemble the official name (this is like preferring "River of January" instead of "January River" for Rio de Janeiro). As for disambiguation, do we append "in the Philippines" as with the original category name, or use a parenthetical "(Philippines)" which seems to be the convention? —seav (talk) 22:32, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
At least in regards to the first part of your message, probably the best way forward at this point would be to revert the edit that changed the name and then someone can open a CfD to figure out what the best option is from there. It's pretty clear from this that the name shouldn't have been changed without there being a CfD first though and at least IMO figuring out what is to go with instead is probably out of scope of this conversation. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:55, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
I agree with Adamant1 about reverting. And, @seav, I intended "River of January" as a reductio ad absurdum, not a serious proposal. In English, the city in question is universally called either "Rio de Janeiro" or just "Rio". This is never turned into English words. - Jmabel ! talk23:29, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I know that "River of January" wasn't a serious suggestion, but I simply used it as an example of which of several possible English translations ought to be used if we are translating a name. — seav (talk) 00:39, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't think anybody tried to do a literal translation of "Rio do J.", but occasionally I come across similar ones, where it's likely that Commons is the sole source for that name. I could name one or the other, but I don't want to embarrass the user who did try to do so. If you find a bad translation of mine, feel free to cite is as a negative example.
Obviously, I don't think there is an issue to provide a literal translations in the description.
For the cemetery, I agree we should have a proper discussion on CfD, especially as the previous name was the result of one. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:51, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
@Enhancing999 I've seen countless literal "translations" to English of Brazilian buildings - generally produced by Brazilian editors themselves - which come out as nothing but butchered English names with no existence out of Commons. Every time I find one of those I move it to the building proper name in Portuguese, without leaving any redirect - there's already a lot of UG crap around, we don't need more. DarwinAhoy!11:10, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
I wonder if the same should be done with other languages, too, like translating the names of churches (e.g. in Eastern Europe) that are only known regionally but unknown on an international level. I've been translating them, too, but it's a pain to come up with translations of partially old-Slavonic (or church-Slavonic) names, which is sort of a different language from the modern Eastern Slavic languages. And ones the category name is translated, it becomes a pain to categorize files that don't have categories yet but mention the name of the church in the native language; so you go to the "Category:Churches of City X" and find 20 sub-categories and now have to click through all of them to figure out the right one because the English name does not ring a bell, so to speak. Nakonana (talk) 12:50, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
In the UK, the German prime minister is always referred to as the chancellor, as is his Irish equivalent the Taoiseach. Broichmore (talk) 13:18, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
In passing, I've just looked at Category:General Wali Kothi, who would believe this is actually a building aka Star house, Tara Khothe, Tara Khothee, andd Lucknow Observatory. There will be other names and spellings too. Never mind the Hindi variants, and counting. You can bet your bottom dollar, that the locals call it Star House, or the old Observatory, terms not officially used since 1947.
Comment, personally, I think that the solution is really simple, we need to reform the way category redirects and title displays work on a technical level. We simply change Wikidata's notability guidelines to include any and all Wikimedia Commons categories, then integrate each and every Commonswiki category with Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons (SDC), then have a robot automatically create redirects based on alternative names in different languages based on what is listed in Wikidata, then make title display names based on the settings of the viewer. Congratulations, now the Wikimedia Commons is truly a multilingual project rather than an Anglocentric one.
How do we prevent vandals from deliberately adding wrong terms and / or insulting words and phrases in translations? Simple, we limit who can add these translations, it's a special but very easily acquired new right at Wikidata that any administrator could bestow upon someone based on either a local (at Wikidata) or Commonswiki endorsement.
How do we integrate this at every level? Simply upgrade the MediaWiki Upload Wizard to properly integrate category redirects like Cat-a-lot already does, this way redirects become useful and someone can theoretically only ever contribute using French or Japanese without ever seeing a single word in English and not even notice that the Wikimedia Commons is in a language that they don't understand.
These changes would solve a lot of issues overnight, all we need is for Wikidata to slightly adjust its notability guidelines (something user "Mike Peel" and I have been advocating for for years), then the rest can be 90% (ninety percent) done by robots, and humans can simply do quality checks and focus on more important things like finding educational content and checking if that educational content is licensed in a free way. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:40, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
This is probably a hot take but I've been a fan of how people use redirects for essentially everything on here. There's a point where it just kind of defeats their purpose and usefulness if everything is redirected multiple times and with multiple different variations of the word, concept, or whatever. Like create a redirect for something that clearly needs one, but do we really need redirects for every random misspelling of a name or redirects for every name in every niche language on the planet? Probably not. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:58, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
Every misspelling rather not, but "reasonable" alternative yes. That would definitely solve most category issues with "Lenin Street", "Lenina Street", "Ulitsa Lenina" and "улица Ленина". Wikidata entries don't usually have all that many alternative spellings listed. Even if we would just use an English category name and one native language name for a category, that would already help a lot. Nakonana (talk) 18:47, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
After the reverting, whoever wants a different name for this category can start a CfD (discussion).
(For future cases:) Whoever wants to rename an English category name to a local name should start a CfD before the renaming.
The proposal of Donald Trung to solve the problem with category names in different languages with a technical solution, like in Wikidata. Action Donald Trung (to bring it to the Community Wishlist)
We do not agree on: Whether it is allowed to have exceptions to the Universality principle, for example: Should category names of the German and Irish prime ministers (now in German and Irish) be renamed to the general (English) name for categories about prime ministers? I suggest to move this discussion to Commons talk:Categories. If you agree: Action (perhaps Jmabel?)
--JopkeB (talk) 09:44, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
I would differentiate between category names for object classes and for individual objects. Class names, descriptive names and categories for universal concepts should always be in English. Category names for specific things (persons, official titles, places, institutions, etc.), on the other hand, should be permitted in the local language. There may be exceptions where the English names are well established and immediately understood in the language area concerned, but as a rule, arbitrary translations bring few advantages for international users and significant disadvantages not only for local users: For example, unambiguity is often lost in the case of political parties or parliamentary names; in the case of buildings the alphabetical sorting may change; in the case of squares, streets or churches, the assignment in the city map becomes a guessing game. And the systematic information is provided in English by the parent categories anyway, so this does not need to be repeated in the individual object category. Rudolph Buch (talk) 16:27, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
IMO (and that is for years my guideline) is to name institutions, place names (including all othe geographic features and building names) as far as possible accourding to their local name, the so called endemic name. It does not make sense to name München Munich becaus in Czech it is Mnichov, in Italian it's Monaco, and so on. So why an Italian should look/search for an English name? So it's the White House, the Tour Eiffel, the Karlsplatz, the Hlavní třída.
Off course, they're conflicts, as in Burj Khalifa, which is transcripted following English rules; following German rules it would be Burdsch Khalifa, or there are cases in which the original language uses English names, 101 Tower, or there exists an international name as in Japan Meteorological Organization.
@Matthiasb: So you'd be totally cool with someone creating a category name for something having to do with Guangdong, China in Kejia instead of Mandarin because Kejia is the "local language" there? Of course I'm being a little sarcastic, but people seem to take issue with category names being translated into English when whatever language they prefer to instead isn't the "local language" to begin with either. I don't see anyone on here complaining about how this isn't a Mandarin language project though. It only comes up with English for some reason. As if there's something uniquely bad about it compared to other languages that people aren't speaking locally anyway. Chinese, English, or whatever. Your still putting out locals regardless, but there's a point where it's necessary to go with the next language up for the project to be usable. Whatever language that might be. Again though, in a lot of cases it isn't "local" either. But let's all complain about English like it's unique. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:11, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
People are complaining about English because it's the language that is being used here, not because it's a bad language or something. If most category names were in Chinese, then people would complain about the names being in Chinese instead of the local name. Translating things always comes with problems and some things being lost in translation. Nakonana (talk) 12:31, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
To be more specific, yes, as a matter of lingua franca, categorie names are expected to be in English. But we're talking also n proper names or proper nouns. So churches in München is okay, but its Hofbräuhaus (München). Its Staromĕstské namĕsti (Praha). It's not about translating. No we do not translate names. It's George Walker Bush not Georg Geher Busch And yes, I am aware, that before and even with Elizabeth II. it was common in Germany and the German press to use the German name variants. It is not anymore. It's Charles III. (or simply Charles) in any news outlet, even in the yellow press. In the German WP thera are some prominent exceptions, f.ex. Weißes Haus instead of White House (but it is Flat Iron Building or Chrysler Building (and not "Bügeleisengebäude" or "Chryslergebäude"). There are some intriguing rules to that which are not needed to be discussed here. I don't know about the differences between Mandarin and other chinese dialects but the issue here is another: we need the common romanization which certainly is Guangdong. As I wrote above, there are languages in which romanization into German texts differs from romanization in English or French texts, for example Arab or Ivrit, and there are languages where are no differences. Matthiasb (talk) 21:38, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Massive backlogs are now the norm
Looking at Commons:Deletion requests, there are currently nearly three thousand deletion discussions that are past due for closure. Commons is teetering on being a failed project due in part to the lack of administrators. There simply is too much work for the available pool of administrators. This problem isn't getting better. It's getting worse.
So, why are we allowing new uploads to the project from anyone which just exacerbates this problem? The status quo is failing. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
This is a real problem. Aside from more administrators, what do you propose? What should be done to limit bad uploads (for copyrights or other reasons)? JopkeB (talk) 15:37, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Then almost every other Wikiproject should have the same high rejection rate. Except they dont. Its just Commons Trade (talk) 20:44, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I haven't participated in Wikipedia for at least a few years but from what I remember they have pretty high standards to. But then they also have way more users and bad actors because of that. Plus it's just seems easier to come up with evidence of socking on there. So it just makes sense that they would have a higher CheckUser rate. I know from my own experience that there's been at least a couple of times where I wanted to file a CheckUser report on here but ended up not doing one because there just wasn't enough of a paper trail in both cases to justify it. I feel like there probably would have been if it had happened on Wikipedia either time though. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:50, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
There's been at least a couple of discussions lately about expanding and/or improving the criteria for speedy deletion. It seemed like none of them went anywhere at the time, but I think that would a lot with the backlog. As would making it easier for people to nominate images for speedy deletion to begin. As I guess its not an option on the side panel right now outside of clear copyright violations when it really should be. We could also use more admins, but I the standards are currently to high and I doubt they would work in that area anyway. Really you could argue current admins not dealing with deletion request is as much of or more of an issue then us just not having enough of them. There's no point in having more admins if they aren't going to work in the areas where they are most needed to begin with though. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:54, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
The backlog was much lager some month ago. If we need an urgent action we should block IP edits to prevent their spam and get time to work on deletion requests. GPSLeo (talk) 15:56, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I had thought about that but it doesn't seem like there's any support to block IP edits on here. I totally agree that they should be blocked though. IP editors are a massive time suck in general. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:23, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
How exactly is blocking IP's supposed to help in any way? The issue is with people uploading copyvio. IP's obviously cannot upload anything in the first place Trade (talk) 17:16, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
But if we need 6 admin hours per day to check and clean up IP edits we can not use these 6 hours to handle deletion requests. It is simply a question of admin time availability. GPSLeo (talk) 17:50, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Aside from what GPSLeo says I work in the area a lot and IP editors tend to either create a lot of meritless deletion requests or troll DR discussions. Obviously it would be a lot easier to deal with the back log if there weren't as many clearly pointless deletion requests being created to begin with. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:53, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Most of the time their comments amount to something along the lines of "not own work?" Otherwise I'd agree with you. There are some times where there's clearly socking involved or the IP editor is probably a previously blocked user though. Both of which is all the more reason to block them IMO. It's purely conjecture on my part, but I highly doubt most IP editors on here are participating in the project that way for legitimate reasons. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:13, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Agree with Adamant1. I also see too often violation and other non-constructive contributions by IP adresses, also in discussions. It takes a lot of time to fix them. Why do IP's have nearly the same rights on Commons as accounts have? My proposal: Restrict their rights. They should just be allowed to read things on Commons and have no possibility for violation. They are already excluded from uploading, why not from editing as well? If they want to start or join discussions, nominate files for deletion and so on, then they should use an account, like the rest of us. JopkeB (talk) 06:36, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Is the problem really getting worse? As in, are the various backlogs growing faster than they're shrinking? This argument came up on enwiki with regard to unsourced articles recently and it turns out that though there are an enormous number of those, they are being taken care of faster than new ones are being created.
I suspect something similar is going on here, especially since there is over a decade's worth of files to go through. To use another backlog as a comparison point, there are roughly 128,000 uncategorized files uploaded in 2024. Which is bad, but more than 128,000 files have been removed from the uncategorized backlog from 2021 and 2023 alone. Gnomingstuff (talk) 00:24, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
" Commons is teetering on being a failed project" if backlogs mean a project is teetering on the edge of failure, the virtually all Wikimedia projects have been teetering on the edge of failure since their inception. Yes, it would be good to do better. No, this is not a crisis, let alone a death knell.
Do not forget you need a native English speaker who is at the same time a railway fan (not necessarily a railway expert, but has knowledge above the average) to close this discussion. I just looked at it and I can not close it. I can not say a difference between "close" and "closed" in this case. Ymblanter (talk) 21:02, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
A CFD is not a Deletion request, so I think it is out of scope of this discussion. CFD's cannot be closed just by administrators, but every experienced editor can do so. JopkeB (talk) 06:07, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
When deletion discussions remain open essentially forever, when backlogs remain in the thousands across a number of types, when copyright violations are allowed to sit on the project indefinitely, then yes I would call this a failed project. We are not able to effectively police ourselves, and the incoming level of problematic files overwhelms existing ability to deal with it. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:36, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
Frankly, I'm not active enough. I've seen various requests here, and noted concerns about activity levels. I doubt I'd meet expectations. Regardless, adding another administrator to the mix, especially at my activity levels, isn't going to help. I have other reasons as well, but this is really getting out of the scope of this discussion. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:18, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't think we're teetering on anything, but we should all be able to agree the backlog is too big. Here's another reason it exists: DRs are often hard. Most admins aren't IP lawyers in one country, let alone every country, and there are a lot of really rough calls. Scope-based and people-based debates are also often hotly contested and difficult to assess. Beyond that, AfD on enwp is contentious and results in a lot of grief for closers, especially from newer users who don't understand the process. On commons, even many of the experienced users (or experienced users from other projects) routinely misunderstand the basics and make life sadder for commons admins. Back to the main point, however, there are definitely a lot of DRs that aren't that complicated which wait a long time to be closed, too, so more admins would help, at least. — Rhododendritestalk | 17:59, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
The same thing applies to CfDs. It just took me 2 days to deal with 4 of them because they all involved moving thousands of files and deleting hundreds of categories. Then there's ones that are extremely simple and can be closed in a couple of minutes. But its near impossible to deal with the later to any meaningful degree because of the time it takes deal with the former. Then there's a bunch that are clearly just complex to deal with for whatever reason. But its such a big mishmosh. Anyway, these things don't really scale. For them to be managable you'd need to have everyone on here participate and inforce clear time limits on how long the discussions can be open for. As well as cnsistantly keep the back logs down to a week or two. Otherwise its just going to be an unworkable mess. Its hard to say something should be closed a certain way after a week or two when it has a low turn out and an unclear outcome though. Sometimes it takes years just for someone to comment. So I don't know. There really is no single, easy solution. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:46, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
Just adding an example to go with my "DRs are often hard" comment above. I started looking through the oldest DRs and saw Commons:Deletion requests/Files in public domain featuring various Indian film artists post-1945. Taking action on that DR would involve a few dozen images and an understanding not just Indian copyright or US copyright but the interplay between the two. Even if we get more admins, the number of people who would feel confident weighing in on something like that are very few. Let's not have a discussion here about the correct outcome, though -- I'm just highlighting that these are hard, and while the act of closing a discussion may not take much time, attaining the level of understanding required to parse such a case would be very time consuming. It's no wonder nobody wants to do it. I wonder if there's a potential project for the WMF to undertake that would effectively create charts like COM:HIRTLE for media published outside the US and uploaded to Commons. Maybe even an interactive tool. — Rhododendritestalk | 20:56, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
I think for reusers and uploaders the open request signals there is a complex issue. Highly problematic uploads get nuked within hours. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 22:15, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites I know no response was required, but I figured it would be nice to do it anyway. :) I'm not entirely sure the Legal department can help with this, because it would take quite some time to do research, but I can try to make the case for it. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 17:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Oppose as well, would create just another backlog. On the more general question, as Rosenzweig points out, there were times when the DR backlog was even considerably larger, so I don't see a dramatic issue right now. Of course it's not great that some discussions are open for months, and I think we need more admins, but this hardly makes Commons "teetering on being a failed project". Regarding the categories for discussion, which sometimes are open for years, this IMHO just shows that there isn't that much interest in specialist topics such as the mentioned example of Commons:Categories for discussion/2019/03/Category:Store railway wagons. I'd suggest that the few people that are interested in such a category just do what they think is best. Gestumblindi (talk) 08:10, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
IMO this request is not decideable. That is not a question of backlog but of three different opinions by two users in the discussion. On what base an sysop should close this (or any user). BUt I will another opinion which won't make it easier either. Matthiasb (talk) 21:45, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I often encounter uploads from new users and tag them with our various tags - speedy deletion, DR, No-source, No-permission, among others. How I decide [at the moment] if I want to tag: If the uploads have no Exif data and no Resolution data, and if the uploader, may or may not be new, has very few uploads. From my experience so far, I observed that these files are usually copyright violations, for various reasons. If I can find which violation, I'd tag speedy deletion. If not I'd probably tag with the other tags depending on the file. Does it help if there's a tool that can list out exactly these files: "have no Exif data, no Resolution data, uploader has very few uploads". This could narrow the effort to track files further down rather than to patrol a broad range of files? -- DaxServer (talk) 08:38, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Category descriptions
I'd like to establish some community consensus on what constitutes an appropriate amount/use of category descriptions. Categories that have to do with North Brabant often have large, self-referential descriptions with all manner of interwiki linking and use of external linkage that is not appropriate, for example Category:Geertruidenberg or Category:Heusden, North Brabant, or any of the places linked in the template above. Compare that to famous cities like Category:London or Category:Chicago, which have minimal descriptions by comparison.
Then there's subcategories. Category:Van Goghkerkje mentions it's at the Vincent van Goghplein 1, 4881 DG Zundert in the municipality of Zundert in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands. This information is then repeated in almost every single subcategory, including the metacat Category:Van Goghkerkje by year.
Category:Streets in Geertruidenberg mentions in the category description that this subcategory is for pictures of streets in the municipality Geertruidenberg in the province of North Brabant in the south of in the Netherlands. Category:Nature of Bergen op Zoom mentions in the category description that this subcategory is for pictures of nature and nature reserves in and around Bergen op Zoom in the province of North Brabant in the south of in the Netherlands. The category Category:Geography of Moerdijk mentions in the category description that this subcategory is for pictures of the geography in de gemeente Moerdijk in the province of North Brabant in the south of in the Netherlands.
Thousands of categories are like this, almost exclusively those in North Brabant. I'd like to start cleaning these up, but before I do I want to establish community consensus on where the line is drawn when something turns excessive so I know what to trim and what to keep.
My opinion is this:
No repeating of information that can be found in the category name ("The category "Streets of Geertruidenberg" is for pictures of streets of the municipality of Geertruidenberg...")
No repeating of information that can be found in an infobox
No repeating of information that can be found in a parent category
No external linking to personal websites, or other sites that would not be considered reliable sources on other Wikiprojects
Maybe we miss something, but both Category:London and Category:Chicago currently have tons of category description, most can be found elsewhere, compared to Category:Van Goghkerkje. The later mentions an essential point that seems odd to mention without including a basic description before including stating the category name in the description itself.
Not sure how Category:Geography of Moerdijk can be compared negatively to Category:Chicago except when there is some bias involved. Stating the topic in local language(s) is fairly important.
Category:Chicago seems relatively bad as it has a large seal image in the center. It mentions "largest city in Illinois," which is marginally helpful.
I was comparing the categories of Geertruidenberg and Heusden with those of London and Chicago, the latter of which have very succinct descriptions. London's is just one line of text. This is not about the navigation templates.
I think that at least the street description makes sense, because I often treat subcategories of streets as "address-like" categories, so if there's an image of a house at "Peace Avenue 24" I might put the image of that into the "Category:Peace Avenue". But the description makes it sound as if only images of the actual road would belong into that category. Nakonana (talk) 20:55, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
@Nakonana: Buildings on a street definitely belong in the category for the street. Keep in mind: this is not about ontology, it is about helping users find things. - Jmabel ! talk19:26, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
It is possible that "24 Peace Avenue" is a protected (historic) building and therefor in many WP languager versions notable enough to get its own article. Therefor photographer might put pictures of this buulding in its own subcategory for users to enable viewing more pictures on the bulding that might be in the article. It would be unfriendly to lead them into a category in which also pictures of other buildings-not-24-Peace-Avenue are contained. Matthiasb (talk) 12:40, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
@Matthiasb: of course if there is a reason to create a subcat, we should, and photos of that building belong in the subcat. But Nakaona was suggesting that perhaps images of buildings on a street would not to in any category related to the street at all, and that the street category should just be for pictures of the street as such, which is certainly not how it should work. - Jmabel ! talk21:29, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
There seem to be two types of descriptions (maybe one more popular than others), for a sample Category: "ABC":
1. "ABC" is a ..
2. This category is about media/photos/images related to/about "ABC", a ..
Personally, I prefer (1.), but 2. is not uncommon.
Content-wise, there are three types of descriptions about "ABC":
I agree with Ymblanter, wikidata supplies this info.
In the case, of all things North Brabant wikidata may be insufficient. I more than suspect, what you have here is an editor set in their ways since 2008, who finds Wikidata impenetrable, or even superfluous and persists without it. The cats are cluttered, I agree, and few (if any), will use these links. However, there’s no harm done here.
After all, this is supposed to be a project that anyone can edit.
I've beaten this drum about over complication, before, and I contribute to Wikidata (4000 edits), and it falls on deaf ears.
There's too much of high tech people here, making subject matter complicated and difficult to edit. I'm still waiting for Category:Gartenlaube (Magazine)'s open architecture to be restored. All new uploads there, are incompatible with the established closed off format.
Even today I discovered a source template for a major library that is no longer viable, because the library changed its catalog system rendering our source template into a link to an enormous pile of link rot. I fail to understand how people, make templates or such, then not put in place the mechanisms for continuous maintenance, or just walk away from them. Broichmore (talk) 13:21, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
I think I disagree with some premises here. Respectively, to the bullet list of opinions given by User:ReneeWrites:
Don't forget the multilingual aspect of this. Repeating the category name in other languages can be very useful.
I get what you say about the infobox, but sometimes a tight piece of prose is easier to skim quickly.
Not everyone will be navigating down the hierarchy. I think it would be ridiculous, for example, for someone navigating up from a village to have to navigate many, many layers up the hierarchy to find out what country it is in.
I could perfectly well accept the last point, with one possible exception: on topics where there is a serious limitation on commercially available material, it can be useful to have a link to a trove of NC content on (for example) Flickr. Not sure whether that is even an exception, maybe more of a clarification.
I'd also add: I think somewhat longer than usual descriptions are often useful for topics not likely to get a Wikipedia article. Example: Category:Court in the Square.
Further: the main problem with the subcats of Category:Van Goghkerkje is that there are this big batch of "by year" categories, mostly with one or two photos, and with little or no differences from year to year to suggest that is a useful way to subcat this. - Jmabel ! talk14:03, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Re. "the multilingual aspect" - surely that should be handled by Wikidata? Wikidata already has extensive support for multilingual desriptions of entities, and those descriptions should get pulled in by the Wikidata infobox. Writing those descriptions locally on Commons shouldn't be necessary. Omphalographer (talk) 19:16, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Regarding 4, I think this is a good point and a good way to add nuance to the topic. I'm not against removing all external links, though I didn't really clarify what I meant with "personal websites", and I think the exception you mention is reasonable. The website in particular I was thinking of was https://breda-en-omgeving.nl/ which you can find linked numerous times in the categories above (6 times in Geertruidenberg, 7 times in Heusden, as well as many other categories linked in the navigation template at the top). I'll also ping @Prototyperspective: because this is relevant to a thread below. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:45, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Support ReneeWrites opinion about it. Although I think Jmabel makes some good points, but I don't see them as mutually exclusive or applicable in every situation. Just to give an example from Jmabel's comment, don't forget the multilingual aspect of this, I'd say it depends on the topic of the category and what level down it is. For instance if we're talking about shoes and the person is browsing through Category:Shoes to find images of them then I don't think it's necessary or helpful to have the word "shoes" translated into every single language possible just because this is a multilingual project or whatever. It's a pretty good bet that most users know what a shoe looks like and has heard the word in English before. So there's zero reason to translate it or to have a description, in English or any other language. "Shoes are things you wear on your feet." No really? We don't need that in English, let alone 10 other languages.
Maybe you'll say that's a bad example since the category for shoes doesn't have a description to begin with though. But there's plenty of categories for extremely obvious universally known subjects out there that have totally pointless descriptions in multiple languages. So essentially I agree with ReneeWrites opinion about it. Although I think Jmabel makes a few good points, but multilingual thing shouldn't be a free pass to create descriptions that are otherwise totally pointless for whatever reason. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:22, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: Again, though, you are assuming they got there by following the category tree from a more abstract category. They could just as easily have arrived from a category on an individual photo. - Jmabel ! talk18:51, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Sure, but if someone gets to Category:Shoes from an individual photo of something that's not a shoe then there's other problems involved that categories having descriptions or not has nothing to do with. The only way to deal with people confused about where they are in the category structure at any given time is to categorize images properly. You can't make up for or fix that by putting "chaussure" at the top of a category. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:59, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: "other problems involved" Well, yes. And if they are, for example, a Chinese-speaking editor, it would be useful if they don't have to to running way up the category hierarchy to work out that it was an error.
Some of this can be solved if there is a corresponding Wikidata item, but the more narrow the category, the less likely to have a Wikidata item, so the more important mere translation of the category name may be. - Jmabel ! talk19:53, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I don't even disagree with that, which is why the used an extremely general topic like shoes as an exmple. It's certainly a different thing altogether the further down in the categories some goes. I'm not sure what the solution to that is but I still think ReneeWrites' proposal still makes sense with broader topics. Maybe there could be a cavit to it about how to handle categories for more obscure topics though. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:00, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
More so, they could be a logged-out user who doesn't see any categories displayed at the bottom of the page, because the display of categories is something you need to activate in your settings after you've created an account. Or they could be inexperienced in navigation the Wikimedias. They might not know how to access Wikidata for more information on the subject (because how would a non-Wikipedian know that you need to click that number that starts with the letter Q to get to a page from which you can access the relevant Wiki article in different languages?). Or the non-Wikipedia is someone who's accessing Commons via mobile browser where the Wikidata Infobox is almost completely useless because it only lists the information that is in Wikidata's parameter "instance of" or "occupation" but is otherwise just empty. Nakonana (talk) 21:07, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Comment Generally agree except for the point 4. For example a link to a github repo may not be a reliable source at WP but still relevant and useful in a category about the software without a Wikidata infobox. Another problem is that several links in the Wikidata item don't show up in the infobox and something should be done about it there instead of adding a link also to official website (example: links to mediawiki.org in the "Multilingual sites"). Another caveat is that I don't know how Web search engine indexing works and that "No repeating of information that can be found in a parent category" is ambiguous – if you mean useful info that is not self-explanatory should be excluded in a category just because it's already in the parent category then I disagree (e.g. people may have gone directly to that cat from search results or a file instead of having seen the parent cat earlier). Prototyperspective (talk) 19:46, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't think Github is a very good example. A Github page isn't a personal website, and it's perfectly acceptable to use as a source on Wikipedia (there's even a template for it: Template:GitHub). Github can't be used as a source to establish notability however. ReneeWrites (talk) 08:03, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
I think it's a good example because it illustrates well how websites considered nonreliable can be very appropriate and useful to have there. You agree that it can be appropriate so it's evidently a good example. That Wikipedia template is about external links, not references. I think it's used sometimes as a reference when the article subject is the software but it's not generally considered reliable. There are more possible examples like a category about some small organization linking to the organization's website and so on. There are many more cases where some website that would be considered unreliable would be very useful so at a minimum one would need to change that part, especially be considered reliable sources on other Wikiprojects, but I think it may be best if this point was removed or turned into a recommendation about what is usually (instead of always) the case. I'm still unsure what is meant with repeating info already in parent cat. However, I haven't seen any cases of such anyway but it doesn't seem like a good requirement. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:22, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Support Most of what has been said before. Thanks for starting this discussion. Maybe the four points of ReneeWrites just need some nuance. My remarks:
This does not concern only categories about the province of North Brabant, but for many location categories of the Netherlands. I have seen many of those descriptions elsewhere too.
For me they are redundant and annoying, but I am not the target group: perhaps to occasional visitors they might give useful information, especially if they are foreigners.
To limit obvious redundant information: No repeating of information that can be found in an infobox. But then there should be a Wikidata infobox. For subcategories like "in" categories (for countries, "streets in" and so on) and years, there usually are no, and should not be either (except for when there is a Wikipedia article).
I prefer "ABC" is a .. as well. The shorter, the better.
I agree with Jmabel: Repeating the category name in other languages can be very useful. Ever since I discovered in an English discussion about a Dutch subject that a Dutch participant had trouble discussing in English, I translate categories about the Netherlands into Dutch (unless there is a Wikidata item or it is a "by" category). And sometimes there is more explaning to do because the English word has no equivalent in Dutch (see for instance Category:Estates in the Netherlands) or the English word looks like a Dutch one, but means something else.
So in general:
Every topic category should have either a Wikidata item or a description. Exceptions: if the category name is about a universally known subject (like "shoes"). In case of doubt: add a description in English, other languages are allowed too.
No repeating of information that can be found in a corresponding Wikidata infobox.
If there is no Wikidata item: Add descriptions to categories for countries that are not native-English speaking countries, preferably in their native language.
Keep descriptions as short as possible. Add a link to the corresponding Wikipedia article in the native language if that is appropriate (especially in case of country categories). You may add links to other relevant websites that you trust if there is no Wikidata item and the website is within the scope of Commons (no avertising, and so on).
Repeating of information that can be found in the category name ("The category "Streets of Geertruidenberg" is for pictures of streets of the municipality of Geertruidenberg...") should be avoided as much as possible. But sometimes it can be useful, even in this case: Geertruidenberg is a municipality AND a populated place. It is good to know for which one the category is (though it would be better to have it in the category name).
BTW, if anyone wants to see a good example of major overkill when it comes to a category description check out Category:Louvre Museum - Room 185 and scroll down past the infobox. I assume everyone here would agree that something like that is way to excessive. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:49, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
Not only is that wildly excessive, it seems like an unreliable basis for categorization. The museum can reorganize their collection; Commons shouldn't have to shuffle a bunch of categories around (or argue about what objects used to be where) when that happens. Omphalographer (talk) 06:15, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
Category instructions
There are descriptions, but sometimes instructions are also usefull. Examples: Category:Rail vehicle doors: Please place images of closed train doors only if they are prominent. All passenger trains photografed from the side have train doors. There are subcategories for open doors. Other example: Category:Rail vehicle sliding-plug doors: The door slides outside the vehicle by closing is pulled in at the last moment inside (plug). There is no supporting structure outside the dooropening and a closed door is flush with the vehicle surface. animation and rail door systems. This category is sorted by country. (Spain and Sweden under the letter 'S'). Train material door types can be determined as soon as there are enough good examples of 'open' doors to classify. In the Commons the definition of train doors is broader than in the NL article nl:Treindeur. Outside doors not used by passengers are excluded (for example drivers or loading doors) or aisle doors.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:45, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Coordinates
I just want to add one aspect or make it clear as it is already contained in No repeating of information that can be found in an infobox. Object coordinates should not be added to categories / should be consolidated and removed, if any. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 22:32, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
@Herzi Pinki: can you point me to anywhere that was decided as policy? Last I remember this being discussed (a few years ago) the opposite conclusion was reached: that it was useful to have Commons and Wikidata both contain location information, because the duplication was very useful in identifying possible vandalism, since a bot would notice the discrepancy, allowing for easy review. There could well have been a change, but if so I missed it. - Jmabel ! talk14:04, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
No, nothing has changed. We don't trust. But I just wanted to point out that as a consequence of the above No repeating of information that can be found in an infobox, this will also affect the policy on coordinates. best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 14:40, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
The above is discussion is a bit odd, because it says that and people agree that including samples that do exactly the opposite. Go figure. Except when it's translated into Dutch. So local languages are ok, except Dutch.
Actually, it's a mistaken assumption about coordinates that the infobox offers the same. Some users might find some parts of it, most don't that see that. I think we discussed it before. Obviously, we could integrate coordinates better in the interface. ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 20:03, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
The Wikidata Infobox information is not visible to mobile users. The coordinates from an object location template, however, are visible in mobile browser. The whole Wikidata Infobox things just doesn't work for mobile users, and if I remember correctly, most users are mobile users? So we shouldn't rely too much on that infobox. Nakonana (talk) 21:17, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
If indeed Wikidata Infobox doesn't work for mobile users, that would be a clincher to keep the geocoordinates explicitly on the category page. - Jmabel ! talk19:28, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
If you want to check it out, here is a category that has the object location template in addition to the Wikidata Infobox template with coordinates. I checked with Firefox mobile browser and a Chromium based mobile browser, and the only visible coordinates are the one of the object location template. Nakonana (talk) 21:37, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
It looks as though this is a deliberate behavior - Module:Wikidata Infobox#L-218--L-220 intentionally hides infobox rows on mobile devices unless it's specifically directed to show them. Want to start a discussion on its talk page about changing that?
As an aside, the combination of the Wikidata infobox and the object location template is really unpleasant on desktop. The object location creates a horizontal "wall" across the page which pushes all of the category contents below the infobox, which can make the page look empty if the infobox is large. Omphalographer (talk) 23:35, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
How does one specifically direct it to show the rows as a user? The infobox only has a "collapse" button, but no "expand" button. It would certainly be helpful if one would at least have the option to expand the infobox on mobile. Nakonana (talk) 00:22, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
I would appreciate a typical sample image for each subcategory to ease correct assignment to subcategories. Of course not for standard subcategories like 'Views of', 'Nature of', 'Buildings in', etc. This should be done by marking an image of the subcategory in a suitable way (by a dedicated cat, by QI?) and done automatically when generating the category pages. best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 18:13, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Maybe there could be a gadget that shows an image when hovering the subcat (for longer than 0.2 s). However, I think showing four images instead of just one would be best. For categories that are linked to a Wikidata item, selecting a typical representative fairly high-quality is simple: the one(s) that are set in the image property of the item. However there are many categories without Wikidata item (or with item but no image set there). In regards to your use-case however, the category title should be fairly self-explanatory so I think the use of that would be quite limited (but this and other potential usecases could still be useful enough for having some gadget that enables that). Prototyperspective (talk) 20:25, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Don't take this the wrong way, but what's the ultimate end game here and how exactly does it relate to the topic of the discussion, "category descriptions"? Because I really fail to see the connection between that and your suggestion for a gadget that shows an image when hovering the subcat. I don't think anything ReneeWrites said in their original comment would be negated or effected by your idea. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:58, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
Open the category in a mobile browser and see the difference between how helpful the Creator template is in contrast to the quite useless Wikidata Infobox. Nakonana (talk) 21:22, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
That seems like something that should be resolved regardless of if there's creator templates in categories or not, but at least IMO creator templates are totally pointless and just get in the way when they are being used in categories. I don't think that's what they were created for either. So should really just be gotten rid of. Sucks for mobile users sure, but if I were to guess most mobile users don't find images through categories anyway since they don't show up on mobile to begin with. There's no point in having a feature for a non-exiting costumer. Especially if its screwing up everyone else's experiences in the meantime. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:40, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Categories do show up for mobile users who are logged in. And the Creator templates does show up for mobile users who are not logged in, too. The infobox doesn't show up no matter whether logged in or not. Ultimately, it's just that the Wikidata Infobox template should be adjusted to work for mobile users. That would definitely render the Creator template redundant, and also solve other problems. Nakonana (talk) 22:14, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
No, I haven't, I'm not familiar with Wikimedia venues to report stuff. But I think that they are already aware of the issue because the infobox you currently see is actually the improved one. IIrc, a few months ago, there was no infobox at all when using mobile browser. Now there's at least an incomplete one. Nakonana (talk) 23:31, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Well at least it sounds like their working on it then. It would suck if we decided something now based on the infoboxes not showing up if their just going to fix it at some point. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:50, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --—Matrix(!) {user - talk? - 
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Support this change. There are, so far, over seven thousand deletion requests with talk pages (alphabetical list); at a glance, most of them were created by inexperienced or logged-out users in an attempt to respond to a deletion request, and many of them were never acknowledged by other editors. Blocking the creation of these pages, at least by non-autoconfirmed users, will do a lot to help these users get back on the right track. Omphalographer (talk) 05:17, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Done see Special:AbuseFilter/307 —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - 
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Comment One file had recently got renamed from File:Brittany-Flagmap.svg to File:Flag map of Brittany.svg in accordance with Category:Flag maps of regions of France and Category:Flag maps of Europe. There are gazillions of such files around. Files by "Kamran.nef", highly accurate and consistent, with all borders depicted using black slightly thinner strokes. How many of such files do we need? Taylor 49 (talk) 15:44, 18 August 2024 (UTC).jpg)
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Oppose. Let sleeping dogs lie. (BTW, I have some old LoC code that will read TIFF but not JPEG.) Glrx (talk) 18:26, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Delete YES please delete nonsense. Taylor 49 (talk) 05:38, 23 August 2024 (UTC)_of_Nichiren_Buddhism.svg)
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may be influence from the regular script form of 牙. Fish bowl (talk) 21:08, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Question Is this indeed a good solution? Do you have a better solution? And do you know other cases like this? JopkeB (talk) 05:30, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
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Working on 50,796 files with COM:AWB applying {{subst:void}} at ~15-30/min (with time off for RL)... — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:31, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Action JopkeB 
Strong oppose there is at least 5000(five thousand) new files every day, we cannot handle it. modern_primat ඞඞඞ ----TALK 21:41, 18 September 2024 (UTC)