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COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES (index) Commons Help desk Village pump (general discussion) Copyright Proposals Technical Graphics and photography discussion Photography critiques Image improvement Illustration workshop Map workshop Photography workshop Video and sound workshop Categories for discussion Undeletion requests Deletion requests Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard Translators' noticeboard Work requests for bots Contact administrators Vandalism User problems (Dispute resolution) Blocks and protections Bureaucrats' noticeboard CheckUser requests Oversight requests Telegram IRC webchat Commons mailing list (archive) Commons' bugs on Phabricator Welcome to the Village pump This page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2023/03. Please note: 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. Have you read our FAQ? For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming. Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer). Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam. Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page: Please do not make deletion requests here: use the relevant process for it instead. For technical support and graphics talks (PNG, SVG, GIF, etc.), please post on the Graphics village pump. To ask for image improvement, see: Graphic Lab/Photography workshop for photographs. Graphic Lab/Map workshop for maps. Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop for other illustrations. To ask for video or audio improvement, see Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop. For translation requests, please post at Commons:Requests for translation. For media requests, please post at Commons:File requests. Search archives:       Start a new discussion

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Water pump next to the church in the town center of Doel. Doel, Beveren, East Flanders, Belgium. [add]

Centralized discussion See also: Village pump/Proposals   ■ Archive Merging all history from imported files (12 December 2022) Overhaul of categories by period (5 December 2022) Tolerate users to upload pre-1949 Chinese books (13 November 2022) Version of Saudi flag to use (11 July 2022) Concern regarding revocability of KOGL licenses (22 December 2021) Should deleting content from your own talk page be forbidden? (11 November 2021) Revise the COM:FOP Sweden section (1 February 2021) Indonesian laws on copyright (21 August 2020) Template: View   ■ Discuss    ■ Edit   ■ Watch

	SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 1 day and sections whose most recent comment is older than 7 days.

January 07

Slight issue with template acting up in image caption

See this discussion on the file page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noliscient (talk • contribs) 14:34, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

February 05

Category pages that look like quasi-Wikipedia articles

I'm not very familiar with how category pages work on Commons. One of the bullet points in COM:CAT#Creating a new category states A short description text that explains what should be in the category, if the title is not clear or unambiguous enough on its own. is acceptable, but I'm wondering about a category like Category:Midway Theater, Allentown, Pennsylvania which seems to be an attempt to create a quasi-Wikipedia article on Commons. The content on that category page seems, in my opinion, to go beyond what would be considered a "short-description" and basically seems to be someone's own original research. I don't know about the licensing of all of files populating the category, but most if not all of them seem to be licensed as {{PD-US-no notice}}. The files include newspaper advertisements and newspaper articles about the theater, these all appear to be cut-outs or clippings and there's no way of knowing whether they were covered under the copyright of the entire paper. None of the files seems to be used in any Wikipedia articles, which is another reason why I think the category page was created to be a de-facto article so to speak. My understanding is that print advertisements were required to have separate visible copyright notifications on a per ad basis, but newspaper articles (text and photos) were not required to do so and instead were covered by the copyright notice for the entire newspaper as whole. If my understanding is incorrect, then perhaps the files are OK as licensed; however, I'm not sure about the stub-like article content at the top of the page and hoping others can clarify whether it's OK for Commons. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:50, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Putting aside the whole copyright question and whatnot, I'll usually either shorten long descriptions to a few sentences or just delete it whole cloth depending on if it's clearly OR or not since this isn't Wikipedia. Especially if the information is only tangentially related to the category. That said, I don't think it necessarily hurts to have a basic description if it helps people understand better what the images are about. Even in cases where it's not referenced (at least if it's uncontroversial). Like if it's a category for a historic building that burned down and was rebuilt several times, cool. Have a short description about it since the information provides context for the images. Three huge paragraphs going into mostly pointless historical minutia is clearly overkill though. There's no reason that stuff can't just be added to Wikidata or the descriptions for the individual files. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:04, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

The description is a bit much; if it were sourced, I'd suggest turning it into a Wikipedia article, but without that, we can't. @Atwngirl: this is basically your work. I assume you had sources. Could you consider adding appropriate citation and moving the bulk of this to en-wiki? I assume some of this can be cited from exactly the newspaper stories that are among the uploaded clippings.

Also, Atwngirl: the uploads are at least mostly yours (I didn't go through them all). U.S. newspaper content from 1936 can very well still be copyrighted until 2031 (etc. for later dates). The ads are probably good, lacking copyright notices of their own, but of course clippings of individual articles don't have "copyright markings". There is usually a single copyright notice for an entire daily newspaper. Certainly the newspaper would have been copyrighted. We'd need a specific reason to believe that copyright was not renewed. Do you have a basis for that? You appear to know what newspaper they were from. If you need some assistance if figuring that out (I'd like to keep these if we can), you can probably get that at Commons:Village pump/Copyright, but please in the future sort out that sort of thing before uploading. You presumably don't want to go through this amount of effort just to have your work deleted as copyright violations. - Jmabel ! talk 04:39, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

• The paper is The Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania, which did not renew any copyrights. I think the history is good, since we do not have an article. It provides search terms for someone looking for images. If it was on Wikipedia, we would just need the lede, the first few sentences, from a Wikipedia article. --RAN (talk) 06:04, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Personally I'd be all for it if the length was chopped down to one reasonably sized paragraph like in Jmabel's example. It's way to long as it is though. People shouldn't have to scroll through almost half a page before they get to the actual images. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:53, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

@Atwngirl has been around a long time and more or less single-mindedly has been contributing memorabilia related to Allentown, PA. She is either an enthusiastic private historian of the town, or more likely has some official connection to a historical society, library, or museum in that town with privileged access to many of these items. I have not seen any declaration to that effect, but it would be nice to know the background here, because considering the extensive history of that one building in question, there may be much more where that came from. Elizium23 (talk) 08:01, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

This is interesting to me because many of the photos of the South West Sydney that I’m taking are significant for their area, but may not be significant enough to entail an article in Wikipedia. However, I have found quite a lot of information on the subject of the photo. I would like to add detailed information, but I’m wondering if I might need to create a seperate resource off-wiki using a CC license as this sort of data won’t be allowed here?

I’d love some clarification in this. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:40, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

@Chris.sherlock2: I wonder if Wikispore could be useful for this sort of project? I certainly think that more small wikis would be a good thing! :-) (I've got an idea for a local wiki at https://freo.wiki ). — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 09:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if a local history spore might be worthwhile? Lots of local history just cannot get onto en.wiki, but is still very important. It would still need to ensure that NOR and citations are used, but it would be pretty interesting! I know many local historians would likely love it. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 13:29, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Just as an example of what I think is entirely within reason for a category about a building: Category:1012 First Avenue, Seattle. A lot of what is here is name changes, when stories were added, what was in the building, when the facade changed, all of which are likely to be useful in categorizing photos, including whether they refer to this building. guess we could have a proper en-wiki for this building, because it has Seattle Landmark status (so we'd have the notability), but what is here would still be pretty stubby for Wikipedia, and it doesn't seem likely that a non-stub about this will be written, at least in the foreseeable future. - Jmabel ! talk 04:48, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate all of the responses my OP has received so far. Category:Melody Circle, Allentown, Pennsylvania is a similar page to the one about the Midway Theater that was also created by the same user. Again, a few sentences or even a short paragraph would seem to be OK as an introduction to the images found on the page, but these two category pages (there might be more) do, at least in my opinion, go beyond that and seem to be more of an attempt to create an English Wikipedia article about these buildings on Commons, without necessarily having to deal with all of the policies and guidelines of English Wikipedia. If the content can be reliably sourced per en:WP:NOR or if the buildings are English Wikipedia notable in their own right per en:WP:NBUILDING, then there's probably a way to incorporate all or some of this content into a newly created or already existing English Wikipedia articles. I'm not sure, however, it's such a great idea to allow it on Commons just because no such articles about these buildings may currently exist. I don't think Commons was ever intended to be a en:WP:ALTERNATIVEOUTLET for English Wikipedia as a place for others to what might be considered their own "original research". If these category pages are the result of efforts on behalf of a local historical society or similar group, then perhaps the content would be best hosted on said group's own website or own wiki-site than Commons if it's not appropriate for English Wikipedia. — Marchjuly (talk) 15:42, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I mean, at the very least it's not in a discoverable place. Who among us, seeking encyclopedic information on an item, visits its category page on Commons? Furthermore, the polyglot nature of Commons militates against it becoming an alternate enwiki repository of this stuff. Elizium23 (talk) 15:53, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, but at the same time this does seem to be sort of related to COM:PS#Excluded educational content, at least it seems that way to me. Would similar text content be allowed, for example, on a Commons user page per COM:PSP? I get that Commons isn't English Wikipedia and thus the latter's policies and guidelines don't apply per COM:NOTWP; however, it doesn't seem as if Commons should be the place for posting or hosting an individual's or group's original research per COM:NOT#Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, guide, or book. — Marchjuly (talk) 17:42, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I'd put the information in Category:Cinemas in Allentown, Pennsylvania in the same category. It's useful and interesting sure, but still better served by cited somewhere else. For instance Wikidata. I'm not sure most of those cinemas would qualify for individual Wikipedia articles, but that's the kicks sometimes. That said, I'm pretty sure the bar for inclusion is a lot lower for articles about geographical locations then other subjects. So I don't see why it couldn't be included in [1]. It looks like there's already a lot of overly detailed, unreferenced material in the article already. So really what's the difference at this point? There's no reason Atwngirl can't cut the article back and include whatever she wants to there instead of putting it on Commons where no one is going to see it. BTW, it looks like she hasn't even edited the article before and it's been edited thousands of times by a single user in the meantime, which is interesting. Either way, the article could definitely use more people editing it and a more diverse range of information about Allentown. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:48, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Category:Betzs Restaurant, Category:Allentown Trust Company and Category:Cigar Manufacturing and Marketing in Allentown, Pennsylvania are yet some other examples of this. This user has created more than a thousand new category pages since 2016. Many seem like a typical Commons category page that has mainly files and very little if any textual content. Others start out that way but then textual content is subsequently added to them through "minor" edits until they start looking like articles with image galleries. Whatever the reason for creating them, a pattern has been established and more of these category pages will probably be created in the future. — Marchjuly (talk) 19:13, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I believe we've indicated enough of a consensus that this stuff is (1) OR and (2) out of scope for Commons, so shall we officially discourage this user from continuing? It's been 3 days since her last edit, so I assume she's on a bit of a break and hasn't had opportunity to notice, or participate in, our discussion here. Elizium23 (talk) 19:16, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

They could just be busy and haven't logged in recently. I've added a {{Please see}} to their user talk page (I should've done that sooner and my apologies for not doing so) to let them know about this discussion. — Marchjuly (talk) 19:30, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

It's been more than a week since Atwngirl was pinged/notified of this discussion, but they still haven't responded. Their last Commons edit was on February 4. It's quite possible they just are busy with other things, but Commons still marches on; so, perhaps it's time to figure out what if anything needs to be done here. Should these category pages just be blanked of text completely? Should only a short paragraph remain? Is only an infobox really needed for those pages that have them? -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:30, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

• Should these category pages just be blanked of text completely? Certainly not, though it may make sense to edit them down considerably. I think the example I gave above shows about what is appropriate. Also: where there is no equivalent en-wiki content, it would be good to save any content (beyond what is effectively covered by the remaining text or infobox) on the respective talk pages (on Common or, if there is a relevant article, on en-wiki) as potential material to flesh out for en-wiki in the future. - Jmabel ! talk 16:06, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not so sure that we should take it upon ourselves to preserve much of this at all; if it is unsourced and original research, no Wikipedia project would accept it anyway, certainly not enwiki. If it can't be sourced and doesn't meet WP:V, then it must be removed outright. The WP:ONUS, burden of proof, is on the person adding material, so if Atwngirl is unable to do so within a short time frame here, we should absolutely, completely, remove unsourced material. Elizium23 (talk) 17:15, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

  Those are all Wikipedia policies, aren’t they? Do we have commons policies that she is violating? I’m not a fan of citing Wikipedia shortcuts on commons. Commons is not Wikipedia (thank god). - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:35, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

  Since the text which Atwngirl has contributed would only be appropriate for inclusion on enwiki, that's the only wiki whose policies should be considered when deciding whether to retain or delete this text, right? Commons policies would dictate that we remove it all, completely, immediately; we have no use whatsoever for it here. Elizium23 (talk) 21:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Elizium23: I disagree, and in fact here is an edit that you recently made along these lines (unrelated to User:Atwngirl) that I think is dead wrong. The person whose material you removed, User:Publichall, has consistently shown themself to be very knowledgable on Seattle architectural history, and while I wish they had provided a citation, the material you removed could be very useful to date specific photos of the building (or simply to identify them as this building) and/or to help someone find this building in a search for any of several businesses that were based there. Removing information about architects seems particularly odd: Commons routinely indicates information about architects of buildings, and almost no one her provides a citation when (for example) adding an architect category as a parent category for a building category. - Jmabel ! talk 23:57, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  I think sourcing and verifiability here on Commons is more than a little bit bonkers, considering what people can get away with in terms of depicting things in images that they would never, never in a million years be able to write in prose on any Wikipedia project without a reliable source. But, you do you, I guess. Elizium23 (talk) 00:05, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

  I think having at least one paragraph helps cover subjects that might never meet the main wiki's notability requirements but I'll admit to getting a bit long winded for some, since the coverage of these subjects on the wiki is so severely lacking, I'm trying to link as many of these photographs together as possible for future researchers to benefit from. In most cases here it seems that linking to a Wikipedia article is the only form of citation, so it gets messy when there is nothing in the Wiki to even reference, especially when trying to justify parent categories. I'm currently putting together a full article for the building in Jmabel's linked category, and when I get around to publishing it and making a wikidata entry for it, the description can be be chopped down as needed. In the meantime It's more or less a memo for further research. Publichall (talk) 06:10, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

  I'd suggest that when removing material that is uncited but plausible, it's best to move it to the talk page. Very few people will ever find it in the history. Similarly, the talk page may often be a better place to put "a memo for further research" in the first place. (Statements about living or recently dead people are, of course, a different matter: anything the least bit controversial should be well-sourced.) - Jmabel ! talk 16:30, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

@Atwngirl She can start a Fandom wiki called Allentown, Pennsylvania and link to it from Wikidata, even if she starts an English Wikipedia article on a topic, it can be backed up at Fandom, in which she would have admin rights. We can also enclose the category text in a box and have it closed by default, so it doesn't push down the images, but it would still have the text available to provide keywords. --RAN (talk) 00:08, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

That may make sense. Having dealt with Atwngirl before, I doubt we will get much of a response and a lot of the edits will be steathily reverted a few months from now under the excuse that it wasn't perfectly done. I spent months and months breaking Category:Newspaper advertising in Allentown, Pennsylvania all from crazy decade categories into Category:The Morning Call (Allentown, PA) by year but they all got reverted back without any discussion and are stored in the decades structure which has thousands of images at a time. It is clear someone wants to create their own universe of articles and stories and categories but very few of these things are going to be used because they are organized in overly broad categories and someone will fight to keep them that way. If someone does clean up the category descriptions, have the pages kept on your watchlist. You will go nuts. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:20, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

If Atwngirl is too busy with real world stuff at the moment to respond, then I don't believe there's any need to wait any longer to try and resolve this. If at some later date, Atwngirl disagrees with whatever turns out to be the consensus here, they can ask for clarification at that time. Whatever text content is removed from the category pages will still be in the page history if Atwgirl wants to retrieve it at some later date to use somewhere else. I'm not sure that storing the content on the category talk pages is really a good thing; however, if that's the consensus, then so be it. Finally, Atwngirl has been a pretty prolific uploader over the years, but many of their uploads have ended up deleted via DR or some other reason. Going through all those that remain and assessing their licensing is probably going to take a fair amount of time as well. Perhaps in the process of doing that, the category pages can be cleaned up a bit too. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:21, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Have we come to any firm conclusions as to what to do though? The material doesn’t appear to be causing any harm. Why would we remove it? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 09:05, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

There's probably lots of things uploaded to Commons that don't appear to be causing any harm depending upon how one defines the word "harm". Will the continued hosting of this content be the straw that breaks the back of Commons? Almost certainly not. The question is whether this content fits within the purpose of a Commons category page, isn't it? COM:NOTWP states that Commons isn't a local Wikipedia in the sense that local Wikipedia policies and guidelines need not be applied; however, implied in that "Commons is not Wikipedia" thinking is that Commons is also not a free web host where one should be able to post whatever they please per COM:SCOPE#Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, guide, or book and COM:HOST. A pattern seems to have been established by Atwngirl to create extensively detailed category pages that appear to be pseudo-articles. Perhaps, they have a reason for doing this, but they should explain how they believe these pages comply with SCOPE. If nothing is done and the categories are simply left as is, then similar category pages probably will be created at some point in the future, which means potentially more things to clean up. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:56, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

I don’t necessarily disagree with your concerns, but it doesn’t seem like similar categories are being created. I do think your concern is valid, but in this situation perhaps it might be better to actually wait to see if problems occur. One thing that might be helpful is if we drafted an actual guidance page for category descriptions - unless I’m very much mistaken we don’t have any real documentation that goes into real depth in this. I know that for heritage-listed properties of New South Wales I include a copy of the CC-BY-4.0 descriptions provided by the NSW State Heritage office and these are quite detailed.

I would love to see a guidance page and I’d be happy to discuss it, start one (or update an existing one!) as a draft and we nut this out formally. It would give a lot more certainty to everyone and reduce argument and division. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 01:06, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I think this is already a problem. There are a number of category pages like this one which have already been created by this user. Many were created years ago and the gradually expanded over time; for example, Category:Hippodrome Theater, Allentown, Pennsylvania. There’s seems to be no need to wait see what they might do next because it's already quite clear what they've been doing; in other words, a pattern has already been established. It's not only creating category pages, but also file uploads that this user has been quite prolific at doing. Many of the files uploaded aren't being used by any projects. Some of these may potentially have educational value, but many seem as if they were uploaded for personal storage purposes more than anything else. Many have also been already deleted or are currently nominated for deletion due to questionable licensing. In addition, this user doesn't seem to be very active on English Wikipedia. If they were uploading files and immediately adding them to articles, then that would one thing. That, however, doesn't seem to be why they are uploading most of these files or creating most of these category pages. — Marchjuly (talk) 02:14, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Copyright issues are, of course, a problem and need to be dealt with, but if someone is uploading content that would be useful for a local historian, that's fine. It doesn't have to be useful to a WMF project. I've uploaded (or in some cases just curated) a ton of images about Seattle that are probably of limited interest to anyone not from here, but have already proved really useful to local historians, especially architectural historians. I was actually given an award by the local chapter of Docomomo mainly because of how many of my photos were showing up in landmark applications, especially when they were looking for images of comparable buildings. I hadn't even been aware of it until they approached me. I'm sure that very few of those images ever made it into Wikipedia. - Jmabel ! talk 06:40, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I understand this and have no problem with this when it comes to files. I guess the point I was trying to make is that if Atwngirl was incorporating their uploads into Wikipedia articles or creating Wikipedia articles, then perhaps the very detailed content added to the category pages would also be something eventually intended for Wikipedia. That doesn't seem to be the case though, at least not to me. It probably doesn't matter for files as long as their licensing is OK, but it seems wrong and outside SCOPE (at least in my opinion) for extensive text content that's pretty much unsourced and written in Commons' voice. Since September 2016, it looks like Atwngirl has created somewhere between 1000 and 1500 category pages. Some like Category:Wert's Cafe, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Category:937 Hamilton Building, Allentown, Pennsylvania and Category:Pennsylvania Power and Light Building seem OK, but others like Category:Crocodile Rock, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Category:YMCA of Allentown, Pennsylvania, Category:Ralston's Flowers, Allentown, Pennsylvania and Category:Fountain Park Pool, Allentown, Pennsylvania seem like pseudo-Wikipedia articles based on someone's original research. If the consensus is that types are category pages are OK for Commons, then that's good enough for me and nothing further needs to be done. On the other hand, if they're not really OK, then that's a lot of category pages to go through and check; so, it would probably be a good idea to at least advise Atwngirl not to create any more such pages until those already created can be assessed. -- Marchjuly (talk) 09:02, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

That's awesome Jmabel! Well done, a reward well deserved :-) Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 10:55, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Whether the files are or are not used by Wikipedia should not have any baring at all on whether they are valid. I am personally unable to use my CC images on Wikipedia, but I don't see why I shouldn't upload them. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 10:54, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I've already clarified my first post about files not being used by any local Wikipedias, but once again I have no problem with files being hosted by Commons as long as they satisfy COM:HOST and COM:PCP; so, if you upload your work to Commons and it meets HOST, then fine; if not, maybe it should be deleted since Commons isn't intended to be someone's personal photo album per se. The issue with the category pages is the extensively detailed text that some of them contain. Files with questionable licensing or SCOPE issues can be dealt with as such files are usually dealt with. -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:38, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, just wanted to clarify :-) - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 11:59, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

• if the pseudo-articles have a lede paragraph, keep the lede, and hide the rest using the hide html code, that way they can be search, but not displayed. --RAN (talk) 02:49, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
•  Comment I still don't see why a lot of this couldn't be transferred over to Wikidata. A lot of these categories don't have Wikidata entries associated with them anyway and it would be great if they had infoboxes. Plus, Wikidata is perfect for storing local historical facts that probably lack enough references to qualify for Wikipedia articles. Dumping it all on Commons is completely backwards though, and there's zero indication that Atwngirl even tried other options before adding the information to the categories. From what I can tell she isn't even active on Wikidata. That's not on us and it isn't our responsibility to deal with just because she doesn't want to do it.
  Although, I'm more then willing to transfer some of it over to Wikidata myself if we can all agree about how to deal with it. There should also be some kind of acknowledgment on Atwngirl's side that she just use Wikidata in the future. I'm not going to take the time to make sure the information is preserved and stored in a more appropriate way if she's just going to continue doing it though. Also, I like @Chris.sherlock2: 's idea of "nutting" this out more formally. It should really be in the guidelines somewhere not to use categories as pseudo Wikipedia articles or Wikidata entries. That said though, I think we can separate the (likely) need for a broader discussion about it from this specific incident and deal with it regardless of if there's nothing formally in the guidelines. Most things on here are informal and we still deal with them.
  As a side to that, I don't think moving the information to talk pages is the best way forward either because the information is still available in the edit history and it just passes the problem up one more level in the chain without actually resolving it. There's fundamentally zero difference between a category and a talk page when it comes to what the purpose of the project is, which isn't to be an alternative to Wikipedia. So Category talk pages shouldn't be used as pseudo Wikipedia articles anymore then the categories themselves should be. Which means there's only two options here. Transfer it to Wikidata or delete it. Period. Let's also "nut" it out in the long-term though. But again that doesn't mean we can't deal with this now on it's own merits. The information in the categories is clearly excessive and needs to be cleaned up. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:03, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  I think the commenting out is the best of the ideas I've seen: preserves what is potentially useful (albeit unsourced and in the wrong place), keeps it out of users' collective face. Wikidata might be a good idea, but someone should first check there (wikidata:Wikidata:Project chat) about whether they'd want this given the lack of citeable sources.

  @Atwngirl: it would be very helpful if you would participate in this conversation. I'd hate to do something this large to your work without your participation, but by ignoring us you are leaving us very little choice. - Jmabel ! talk 17:34, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  If the consensus is to "hide" content on the category pages, then that's fine as long doing so doesn't create some "new" problem that's going to be sorted out at some point down the road. It should be explained to Atwngirl as to why this was done so as to possibly avoid any wholesale reverting on their part which puts everything back where it was. Some editorial judgement might be needed in some case if the "first paragraph" is insufficient on its own to provide an acceptable description of a particular category. I tend to agree with Adamant1 about moving stuff to the talk page since that seems not too different from hosting on the category page itself. I don't know very much about Wikidata. If the consensus is that Wikidata is a more suitable place to host the content, then that's fine.

  I added a {{Please see}} template to Atwngirl's user talk page on February 6 and you (=Jmabel) have just added another one. Atwngirl posted the following in September 2022, I do not post much to commons right now, as I have a newborn to take care of here. The real world affects us all and perhaps they're just too busy to currently devote any of their time or energy to this matter. If the consensus is to wait a bit longer, then so be it; however, this should be resolved in some way at some point.

  Maybe while waiting a bit longer to hear from Atwngirl, it would be better to split off into a new discussion to discuss either enhancing what already exists or developing something new to address category pages or pages in general that seem to be pushing the boundary of COM:SCOPE#Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, guide, or book. If the place to do that is here or at COM:VPP, then cool. If it's better to do so at Commons talk:Project scope, then cool too. Since it seems like a big change that could affect lots of existing pages, maybe a COM:RFC would be the best way to discuss such a thing like this. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:00, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  Wikidata might be a good idea, but someone should first check there (wikidata:Wikidata:Project chat) about whether they'd want this given the lack of citeable sources. I can guarantee that most of this can be sourced and fairly easily. Maybe not up the standards of Wikipedia, but Wikidata has a much lower notability bar. Just to pick a random example, Category:Lehigh Valley Trust Company (there's a totally ridiculous and unnecessary amount of detail in the category BTW), it took me literally two seconds to find this source that has their funding date. So there's really no excuse for the information not to be in Wikidata. Let alone for it to be in Commons completely unreferenced. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:59, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

  Do you know if we can use the <ref> tags at Commons? I have a number of categories for stuff that wouldn't fit into Wikipedia but is notable enough for Commons. I'd like to be able to reference it like I used to with Wikipedia. I was, even if I do say it myself, a very good article writer :-) I'd like to hold myself to the same standards on Commons. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 03:47, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

  • We don't normally use the <ref> tags at Commons, because almost nothing on Commons should have a complicated set of references requiring footnotes. You can cite your references inline. - Jmabel ! talk 07:25, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

    That’s what I’ve been doing. Thanks. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 08:56, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

February 16

Cropping images

How much should an image be cropped by to remove a damage / border / sticker artifact, before it ought to be re-uploaded as a separate file?

This is a crop to 70% of the previous image size. See others too: Vysotsky (talk · contributions · Move log · block log · uploads · Abuse filter log) block user My concern is that for some of these, like the motor-racing ones, we're starting to change the original composition of the image. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:12, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for asking this question. (1) I upload higher resolution images of files, e.g. Images from the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (a set of 485,000 photos, of which 25,000 are used in several language versions of Wikipedia). I always look carefully for any improvements or crops that have already taken place since the original upload date and only use images from the same source. (2) I also crop pictures (from other databases, like the Anefo examples you mention here) if there are irregularities in the image. I take care to keep the original composition by cropping only damaged parts. If I think the composition would be changed by cropping, I ask specialists at the Photography workshop to remove the watermark without cropping. Vysotsky (talk) 16:35, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley and Vysotsky: There is zero question that 70% crop should have used a different filename. Any crop of an image from an organized archive should use a different filename; the only exception is to remove excessive white borders, and even that is a judgement call. - Jmabel ! talk 16:38, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, one other exception: removing a watermark that is in a margin. E.g. the overwrite here. - Jmabel ! talk 16:41, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Three examples: different filenames when removing watermarks? Vysotsky (talk) 16:54, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

• 
• 
• 

I would certainly prefer a different filename on those. It is not obvious that the white area there is better than having a watermark. - Jmabel ! talk 17:55, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Really? My proposal would be to crop away the lower part of the grass (photo 1), the right 5% of the wall (photo 2) and the lower part of the sand (photo 3) and upload these crops as new versions of the original images. The composition of these press photographs will roughly stay the same, the original can still be found and no essential part of the photos will be missing. The alternative (filling the white areas with resp. grass, sand or wall) is not very attractive and much more time-consuming. Uploading as a separate image is a waste of time, if you ask me. Vysotsky (talk) 20:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

@Vysotsky: I see: I thought that white area was the result of some Commoner's removal of a watermark, but I take it those were clipped at the Dutch National Archive (a weird decision on their part, if you ask me). I really don't have an opinion what best to do when the archival source has already screwed up the image by clumsily removing a watermark. I would not oppose cropping in these cases, but I'd also have no problem with using a new name and keeping these as an indication of precisely what is in the archive, rather than that being semi-hidden in the history.- Jmabel ! talk 00:05, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

@Vysotsky: Uploading a separate image does not have to be such a waste of time; have you looked into using dFX?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 00:13, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

• These negatives are large glass plates. The white rectangles are paper catalogue stickers. In most cases they're off the image area, but it some cases they're over it. That's no problem to remove if the negatives were wanted commercially, but it wasn't done before the bulk scanning.

If anyone ever wants to crop these images in the future, that's up to them (we massively crop a lot of the group portraits to extract notable individuals). But those go back as new filenames. We should preserve the original images (even at the cost of a visible sticker), there's not much push to crop these pre-emptively. I'm not going to argue over small crops, but if we're taking more than maybe 10% (this is open to discussion) I think this should be a new file. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:31, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

I think we're nearing consensus. I would only like to address the time aspect once more. Anefo photographs are used heavily (total image use of this collection >170,000, distinct image use >22,000). If a photo is used in dozens of Wiki language versions (the record Anefo image is being used 352 times on Wiki) I would have to replace the watermarked image by a cropped image manually in several language versions if I would upload the last one as a separate file. This seems a bit of an overkill, if I only remove a piece of grass, wall or sand. So I think the proposal by Andy Dingley (small cropping up to 10% is OK) would be beneficial, if these crops replace the original. There should be no change of the composition. Vysotsky (talk) 09:32, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

@Vysotsky: You do not need to do this manually in all Wikipedias. That is what User:CommonsDelinker is for. - Jmabel ! talk 15:55, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

What if instead of cropping, the images get retouched/restored, with the restorations uploaded as new files and used in articles? This photo would be rather easy to restore, at least the white strip on the right (I use GIMP, and the Fix and Clone tools work wonders on removing scratches, blemishes, and text). It would be a bit trickier to retouch the sticker areas in the others two, but the more savvy volunteers at Commons:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop could probably clone and fill-in the grass and dirt. Heck, maybe I'll try restoring one tomorrow. --Animalparty (talk) 07:50, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

• @Animalparty: sure, but definitely under a new file name. - Jmabel ! talk 16:31, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

why is it necessary to crop out the white part? it doesnt affect the subject of the image. it's part of history now -- the original full photo has lost a part to whatever caused the white part.

have you not seen surviving fragments of old publications? they are what they are.

it's even worse to "restore" the missing part, which is fake. RZuo (talk) 07:12, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

There are two aspects: to make the photo a good illustration of the subject on one hand, and to keep a historic photo on the other. For the first, a crop or faking some grass is probably the best route, for the second, you want to keep the composition exactly as in the original and don't want to manipulate the photo (except to correct for distortions during the scan). If the second aspect is compromised, you want a new filename. We might not want to document what is in the archive, but rather the original; unless we want, cropping away things outside the photo proper is a "minor" change. –LPfi (talk) 08:16, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

a small part missing doesnt make them bad illustration.--RZuo (talk) 08:38, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

February 20

Category:Categories by city vs. Category:Categories by municipality

"City" has various colloquial meanings ranging from "very large town" to "local administrative unit of any size". In consequence and looking at our categories there is no clear understanding whether the subcats in Category:Categories by city are catch-all for stettlements of any status or if there should be differentiation into "by city", "by municipality" (which in some subtrees is understood as a general term including cities, sometimes as excluding them) and in some coutries "by town" and "by village" for further differentiation. Cats with "by city" as catch-all are still dominating, but the other subtrees are growing. This leads to e.g. "Category:Churches in Foo" being in different trees depending on the administrative status or size of foo. In practice it even leads to the objects being in "by-city" trees as well as in "by-municipality" trees as some topics differentiate between the two and others don´t.

My questions: (a) Should subtrees be formed along the status of the relating local administrative unit or not? (b) If not, is there a word that is universally understood to cover all kinds of towns and villages, making it clear both fit in the category? --Rudolph Buch (talk) 14:59, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

i think for many countries "municipality" isnt a relevant concept. like usa it's all counties or cities. china is all cities or "prefecture-level administrative divisions".

but for some countries where municipality is a distinct concept from city, that distinction should be explicitly written down on the cat page.--RZuo (talk) 09:53, 23 February 2023 (UTC)--RZuo (talk) 07:00, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@RZuo and Rudolph Buch: RZuo is wrong here about the U.S. "Municipalities" in the U.S. is broader than cities: it includes incorporated "towns" or "townships", "villages", and (in some states) "hamlets", and probably several other entities I'm not thinking of. In some states (e.g. New York) there is nothing unusual about having a "village" or "city" within a township.

"Counties" (or in Louisiana "parishes") are distinct from municipalities, but the relationship between the two is a bit weird, and varies from state to state. Typically counties are larger (though I believe some large cities are coincident with a county, and New York City has five counties—also known as boroughs—within the city), and there is nothing unusual about a city crossing county lines (Bothell, Washington is a good example of that).

So, at least for the U.S. (1) it's not neatly a tree (2) "municipalities" is clear, but doesn't deal with the municipality vs. county issue. I know that Spain has some similar issues: autonomous region -> province -> comarca (in some provinces, and I believe the Basques have a different name for this) -> municipality (plus a special case for Madrid, where the city is at the level of an autonomous region; and at least Rioja has the autonomous region be identical to province). - Jmabel ! talk 16:17, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

There should be some discussion on the issue on these category pages, and ideally a country-specific discussion on each country subcategory page. –LPfi (talk) 08:32, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Regarding question (b): I often find categories based on the term "populated places". --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:33, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

In the case of the Philippines, "municipality" is not a term for all incorporated places, the opposite of "municipality" in the United States. Municipalities here are essentially towns, having lower local administrative powers than cities. "Town" is also used here but informally; in official and administrative contexts smaller types of incorporated settlements are called municipalities. Both cities and municipalities are divided into wards called barangays. To simplify, if U.S. calls their smaller incorporated places as towns, then the Philippines calls the same places as municipalities.

We do not have a general term for all municipalities and cities (whether independent [Highly-urbanized cities] or not [Component cities]). But a loose term, "local government unit" (LGU) is typically used to refer to the universal term for all Philippine cities and municipalities. The problem is that the provinces are also LGUs, as well as barangays (or wards of Philippine cities and municipalities). This was recently discussed on English Wikipedia here. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 08:14, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Santiago in Chile is a city with 34 municipalities. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 09:18, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

February 21

Community feedback-cycle about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use starts

Hi everyone,

This February 2023 the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Department is planning to host a feedback cycle about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use (ToU) from February, 21 to April 2023. Full information has been published here.

The Terms of Use are the legal terms that govern the use of websites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. We will be gathering your feedback on a draft proposal from February through April. The draft has been translated into several languages, with feedback accepted in any language.

This update comes in response to several things:

1. Implementing the Universal Code of Conduct
2. Updating project text to the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (CC 4.0)
3. A proposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing
4. Bringing our terms in line with current and recently passed laws affecting the Foundation including the European Digital Services Act

Regarding the Universal Code of Conduct and its enforcement guidelines, we are instructed to ensure that the ToU include it in some form.

Regarding CC 4.0, the communities had determined as the result of a 2016 consultation that the projects should upgrade the main license for hosted text from the current CC BY-SA 3.0 to CC BY-SA 4.0. We’re excited to be able to put that into effect, which will open up the projects to receiving a great deal of already existing CC BY-SA 4.0 text and improve reuse and remixing of project content going forward.

Regarding the proposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing, the Foundation intends to strengthen its tools to support existing community policies against marketing companies engaged in systematic, undisclosed paid editing campaigns.

Finally, regarding new laws, the last ToU update was in 2015, and that update was a single item regarding paid editing. The last thorough revision was in 2012. While the law affecting hosting providers has held steady for some time, with the recent passage of the EU’s Digital Services Act, we are seeing more significant changes in the legal obligations for companies like the Foundation that host large websites. So with a decade behind us and the laws affecting website hosts soon changing, we think it’s a good time to revisit the ToU and update them to bring them up to current legal precedents and standards.

See the page on Meta to get all the information.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Team,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 12:41, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

@Zuz (WMF) Your second link is broken (superfluous "wiki"), should be updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use. El Grafo (talk) 13:17, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Of special relevance to Commons, these proposals remove the ability for projects to opt out of the blanket policy on disclosure of paid contributions, so Commons:Paid contribution disclosure policy, which permits paid editing without disclosure, wouldn't be allowed. --bjh21 (talk) 20:09, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Actually, the change there is quite unclear as to whether it does that or not. I have started a discussion at meta:Talk:Terms of use#Commons and paid editing. - Jmabel ! talk 20:42, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

@Bjh21: See meta:Talk:Terms of use#Commons and paid editing. It sounds like you are wrong about this. If you think the proposed wording is unclear about this, you might want to engage with a follow-up question there. - Jmabel ! talk 07:28, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I think I was just not paying adequate attention and failed to notice that only one of the two sentences about alternative disclosure policies had been deleted. Sorry about that! --bjh21 (talk) 11:28, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@El Grafo Oops! sorry about that. Thank you for pointing this out.The link is fixed now. . Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 15:03, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

February 25

Annoying problem during FileExporter use

I have been undergoing occasional but annoying message during FileExporter use, in transfering User:Patrickroque01's local enwiki files to here. The message reads "Failed to discover API location from: <URL link of enwiki image>. HTTP status code 0. Error fetching URL: Received HTTP code 403 from proxy after CONNECT." While it can be resolved by repeating the exporting process, it gets annoying as there are too many images by Patrick Roque that I need to transfer here (of course after undergoing review of Philippine architectural artworks' licensing statuses). This issue only appeared just recently, in late December 2022. Can users engaged in programming or technical matter fix this so that the annoying error message no longer appears at any condition? JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 05:01, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: This is almost certainly a problem that can only be fixed by the Wikimedia sysadmins. I think you can follow the instructions at mw:How to report a bug to report the problem to them through Phabricator. --bjh21 (talk) 10:19, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

@Bjh21: I will leave that reporting to other users. There are too many photos of Patrickroque01 that still need to be reviewed and transferred here (apparently has treated English Wikipedia as his alternative to Commons despite not so). Adding to that are real-life things and college works of mine. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 11:32, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

February 28

Trying to identify a photographer signature

From 1916. There is a photographer's signature on the photo, at lower left. Below the signature I can make out "NY" and (uselessly) "R05". Given the context, it is probably a major New York theatrical photographer. Does anyone recognize the signature? - Jmabel ! talk 04:23, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

It looks to be White Studio. White did a ton of theatrical photography from the 1900s to the 1930s. Compare to stamps here and here. Note: sometimes the cursive White logo may be mistaken for the Elite Studio logo (and vice versa), e.g. here. --Animalparty (talk) 19:00, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

@Animalparty: how confident would you say you are of that? I thought of them, but it didn't seem to me to say "White". Were they often this sloppy with their marks? If you are confident, I'll go with that. - Jmabel ! talk 20:26, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm about 95% confident it's White Studio. It looks like there's an extra squiggle above "White" that might be an L. (perhaps for Luther S. White who apparently owned the studio but did little if any photographing), or maybe just a stylized flourish. That squiggle is also seen in File:Belle Mitchell, stage actress (SAYRE 6530).jpg. The White logo seems to vary a bit (maybe some were hand written), and sometimes the W gets extra squirrely and starts resembling a capital E, e.g. in File:A scene from "Gypsy Love" (SAYRE 12720).jpg. --Animalparty (talk) 20:55, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

@Animalparty: Thanks! You've obviously had occasion to look closely at more of their work than I have. - Jmabel ! talk 07:30, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

• Excellent detective work! --RAN (talk) 18:18, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Schopenhauer images don’t add up

Something fishy:

Compare the 1859 photograph of Arthur Schopenhauer by J Schäfer (File:Arthur_Schopenhauer_by_J_Schäfer,_1859b.jpg)

with the 1855 Jules Lunteschütz painting in Schopenhauer.jpg (File:Schopenhauer.jpg)

They are almost identical. It’s possible the artist painted from the photograph, but the dates are incorrect for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Humphrey Tribble (talk • contribs) 06:03, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

He might have had a characteristic pose. Remember that at the time a photograph would have involved staying truly still even more than is required for being sketched. - Jmabel ! talk 16:09, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

There's also a good chance the dates of one or both images are flat wrong. --Animalparty (talk) 19:08, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

• They are probably both estimates, if you can't find a reliable source, I see no reason not harmonize them both to a circa and use the same year. --RAN (talk) 22:31, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Too many subcategories in Category:Category navigational templates for photographs

There are currently 344.673 subcateogries in Category:Category navigational templates for photographs. All the dates of every country are in it now. Why is this? Does this edit have anything to do with this? --トトト (talk) 13:23, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

@トトト: Specifically this edit has put all categories with {{Country photographs taken on}} into Category:Category navigational templates for photographs. TilmannR (talk) 13:27, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

• I see. Somebody has to correct it. --トトト (talk) 13:30, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

  I've put the category into <noinclude>, so it only applies to the template itself and is not inserted into pages, which include the template. It'll take a while for this change to propagate. (It's already down to only 341,530 subcategories. ) TilmannR (talk) 13:37, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

• Thank you for quick action! --トトト (talk) 13:43, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

This is tangentially related, but it's completely ridiculous to have some 200,000 individual "photographs taken on" categories that only contain a single image in the first place. It's super obtuse and doesn't help anyone find what they are looking for. Especially once it gets down to the country or municipal level. Really the images in all of the categories should be up-merged and they should be deleted. Otherwise where does it end? 2 million single file categories for every country, municipal division, and date out there? That would be completely unmanageable. It's also not the point in the categories. Regardless though, the issue that instigated this discussion wouldn't have happened if there were reasonable limits. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:50, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Normally, single day should not go lower than country level. [originally I miswrote that sentence, sorry!] Given that you can navigate through these day-by-day, I think country-level ones with a single photo are actually less of a problem than typical single-photo categories. - Jmabel ! talk 20:28, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Given that you can navigate through these day-by-day You can't though. For instance go to Category:Afghanistan photographs taken on 1939-11-11. There's no way to navigate through it or really most (if not all) of the any of the "Afghanistan photographs taken on" categories day to day because the template is nothing but dead links. The only way that wouldn't be the case or we could navigate them day-by-day is if we created a bunch of empty "Afghanistan photographs taken" categories. It's impossible to do with how things are though. That's a large part of the problem. Either someone creates a bunch of pointless single file categories purely for the sake of making date templates navigable and there's a bunch of dead links in the interim, or there's just a bunch of dead links anyway. Either way it's a ridiculously obtuse and un-helpful way to do things. Best case scenario like 5 of the 15 links in the navigation templates work and even then it usually means creating a bunch of completely random, single file categories. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:57, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

@Adamant1: Yeah, I probably wouldn't do this for Afghanistan, or for any other country where we don't have a lot of photos, but I think it is often useful for (for example) the U.S. or the Netherlands. - Jmabel ! talk 07:35, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I think we have had discussions about moving those images upward to months and years but they generally get rejected. We seem to have settled on by individual date and by country (NYC and Germany are exceptions that gets broken down much further) as a semi-resolution but one can dispute older photographs like the sole June 1973 from Wyoming image that is still an open CFD. We may eventually chuck the whole "photographs taken on" and move everything to "[date] in country" because events get doubled categorized and videos are a complete mess around this system. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:27, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

March 01

Input needed: restructing of {{PD-algorithm}}

There is currently some discussion at Template talk:PD-algorithm#Legal basis about restructuring that template. The question that needs to be answered is: given that some countries (the United Kingdom) are now extending copyright protection to AI-generated works, should {{PD-algorithm}} remain as a single, globally-applicable license template (like {{PD-textlogo}}), or should it be broken into country-specific templates that describe the distinct situation for that country (like {{PD-Russia}}, {{PD-United Arab Emirates}}, etc). Your input is appreciated. – BMacZero (🗩) 04:18, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2023-03

Staff changes

In February 2023, 1 sysop was elected; 1 sysop was removed. Currently, there are 189 sysops.

• User:Cybularny was elected (26/1/0) on 1 February.
• User:Mardetanha was removed on 13 February due to inactivity. He has served as sysop since 24 August 2008. We thank him for his service.

Other news

Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Multimedia and Commons concluded.

---

Edited by RZuo (talk).

---

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

--RZuo (talk) 07:59, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Terms of Use update and WikiCommons

The WMF right now has a plan to change the terms of use to get into compliance with the European Digital Services Act. Part of that act is about forbidden websites from hosting unlawful content. WikiCommons historically hosts images involving Nazi symbols that are illegal under German law. Under the European Digital Services Act German authorities would be able to make demands to remove those images from WikiCommons. If there's a desire in WikiCommons to keep hosting content that's illegal under German law, it should be important to protest the proposed change in the terms of use. ChristianKl (talk) 18:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

We are an educational project. Hosting Nazi symbols for educational purpose should be fine by German law too (see de:Rechtsextreme Symbole und Zeichen#Rechtliche Situation). We use the mandatory {{Nazi symbol}} disclaimer to warn re-users from illegal reproduction. Not sure how the WMF ToU would change anything here. Can you elaborate? Thanks --A.Savin 19:04, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

As far as I know, these symbols are not categorically banned. Showing them, hosting them etc. is allowed for a variety of purposes, including education, science, reporting on history and more (§ 86 (4) StGB, § 86a (3) StGB. --Rosenzweig τ 19:15, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia was incorporated in the United States to take advantage of First Amendment speech protections. The old Terms of Use did not forbid unlawful content to be added to Wikimedia. The WMF wants to add a reference to forbidding unlawful content to be in compliance with EU law.

Wikipedia articles generally report on history. WikiCommons pages generally don't report on the history that's linked to a given item. Historically, Wikipedia uses fair-use images because it can argue that it uses them in a context where fair-use applies while WikiCommons doesn't host those images because just hosting the image out of context isn't covered by fair-use.

While you can argue that some of the images that contain Nazi symbols that WikiCommons stores have historical value, I think it's relatively hard to make that case for images like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Swastika#/media/File:Fractal_swastika_(IFS).png or https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Swastika#/media/File:17-square_swastika.svg ChristianKl (talk) 17:56, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

 Comment in the two images you cited @ChristianKl: , I think COM:SCOPE can apply. File:17-square swastika.svg cannot be deleted as it is in use in many userspace pages like those of Soumyasch's enwiki userspace pages. It was uploaded by Estoy Aquí (talk · contribs). On the other hand, I find File:Fractal swastika (IFS).png, the only extant contribution of Jmknapp (talk · contribs), having little utility. Since it is not used, it can safely be deleted as out of scope. It is interesting to note that Jmknapp hasn't uploaded other files, except this one, making myself think of what was his intention to host this image here. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 23:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't see how the use on Soumyasch's enwiki userspace pages like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Soumyasch/Signature falls under the purposes for which it's allowed to show them under German law. WikiCommons might be fine with images like that getting removed by the Wikimedia legal team or not. I don't have strong feelings either way for content that violates EU law getting removed, but if someone has, now is the time to speak up in the discussion among the terms of service. ChristianKl (talk) 00:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Especially given that Soumyasch has been inactive for over seven years. - Jmabel ! talk 01:51, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Swastika is not just a nazi symbol. it predates modern civilisation. it had existed long before even "germanic people" emerged.--RZuo (talk) 08:38, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and the German law is about nazi symbols, not swastikas in general (nor swastika-based nazi symbols in paricular). Hindu swastikas, for example are not a problem (legally) in Germany. El Grafo (talk) 09:48, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

There's a simple solution to the "not educational because we're just hosting" problem: Just add a proper description that puts the image in a historical context. Preferably in German. If we can't come up with one, that might be a hint to check if the file is in scope in the first place. El Grafo (talk) 09:53, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

It is unclear to me what change we are talking about. I don't find any explicit mention of Germany or the EU in the linked document, and mentions of local laws seem to only caution the user of possible actions of law enforcing entities, not anything restricting Commons' scope. It would be absurd if Commons were obliged to follow laws of countries relevant to the media, such as not being able to host media seen as disgraceful for the "great leader" of such a country (the absurdity is even clearer in the case of Wikipedia). Thus, please point out the problematic wording. –LPfi (talk) 09:51, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

+1, what is the actual problem? El Grafo (talk) 09:57, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I also don't see the problem: Will this compliance prevent us from hosting of uncritical propaganda pictures of Naziism including nazi symbols? In that specific case, I won't cry outrage for losing some garbage due to policy. Yet: So far I'd still think even this image would fall under the education exception, as long as it depicts a legitimate person of interest. But, since it was mentioned that Wikimedia Commons is incorporated in the US, I would rather be more worried about coming Freedom of Speech restrictions in the education system of the United States. --Enyavar (talk) 11:04, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

• For anyone wondering, the image in question was just deleted as a copyright violation. It showed a smiling man giving a Nazi salute. Given that its title was the name of a prominent figure in opposing anti-Semitism, it was probably also out of scope, pure trolling on behalf of the uploader. - Jmabel ! talk 18:37, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

A US company hosting this image of a Nazi salute being performed in Australia is not what the German law is concerned with. A person located in Germany uploading this image to Commons could maybe get into trouble for "exporting" it, though. And that's how I understood the ToU too: Users are responsible for their own actions and need to be aware of local laws that could put them in jail for doing things that would be considered legal in the US. El Grafo (talk) 13:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

March 02

Reminder: Office hours about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello everyone,

This a reminder that the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Department is hosting office hours with community members about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use.

The office hours will be held today, March 2, from 17:00 UTC to 18:30 UTC. See for more details here on Meta.

Another office hours will be held on April 4.

We hereby kindly invite you to participate in the discussion. Please note that this meeting will be held in English language and led by the members of the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Team, who will take and answer your questions. Facilitators from the Movement Strategy and Governance Team will provide the necessary assistance and other meeting-related services.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Team,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 11:22, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

File:Urbiztondo Ordinance no. 1- 2022.pdf

Resolved

Licensed as CC-BY-SA, But surely this is a Philippine Gov edict (PD-GOV-edict)? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:33, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

• @ShakespeareFan00: So change it. Or discuss it with the uploader (User:Turistaboy, whom you don't seem to have pinged here). I don't see anything here needing a broad community discussion at VP. Am I missing something? - Jmabel ! talk 19:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

  Apologies. Meant to post this on the Copyright portion of the VP to ask for a second opinion. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:21, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

March 03

video2commons

Apparently video2commons hasn’t been working properly. At least I’m not the only one to note that.

Is there anyone else having similar problems? Does anyone have a clue on how to solve that? RodRabelo7 (talk) 04:51, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

@RodRabelo7 There are two ways to solve that: 1) You travel back in time about two weeks and vote in the technical wishlist survey for the project to repair video2commons. 2) you wait 11 months and vote in the next technical wishlist survey for the project to repair video2commons. C.Suthorn (talk) 09:58, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Category:Maps by century shown

Is Category:Maps by century shown a good name? I would be tempted to rename it to Category:Maps by century.

- Io Herodotus (talk) 20:53, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Category:Maps by century could be confused for Category:Maps by century made. I suggest keeping the current name for clarity. TilmannR (talk) 21:05, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. --Io Herodotus (talk) 21:36, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Categorizing newspapers by their cartoons

I have been noticing a large number of anonymous edits (I think they are related) categorizing a number of newspapers edition PDFs in odd categories like Category:Uncle Wiggily, Category:Howard Roger Garis, Category:Lang Campbell, Category:Anthropomorphic beavers, Category:Anthropomorphic pigs, etc. I asked @Joostik: what was the reason for this edit as it seems odd to say that the 1922 edition of the Glendale Evening News is a subcategory of Uncle Wiggily. I think they are categorizing these by the cartoons inside the newspapers but it is hard to discuss this when it is largely anonymous editors. It makes more sense to strip out of the comics (they are likely all public domain) into separate images but does it make sense to have basically every comic on a day-to-day basis as separate images here? It seems to have an educational purpose. Ricky81682 (talk) 20:56, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

• Seems pretty weird as a topical category for an entire newspaper. And I don't really see us wanting the full run of a comic, though I guess if someone wants to put in the effort it would be OK. Not sure how best to handle this. If someone is planning to do that, I'd suggest turning what is used on the PDFs into a maintenance category, effectively just indicating that there is something in there some Commoner may want to grab. - Jmabel ! talk 04:38, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

  I think it's silly. The first issue is that things should go down to the proper category instead of having the comic, the author, the illustrator, the general anthropomorphic bunnies parent, all having the same thing if we do do it. At best, we could have a separate Category:Newspaper editions containing Uncle Wiggily comics which I find absurd. Again, it's impossible to deal with since there is no one to speak to. I may just make a comment on the talk page and remove all these categories as Joostik isn't clear either. I just hope this doesn't end up with some slow-moving anon edit war situation but the anons will be pinged by the revert notices. Ricky81682 (talk) 07:39, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

• I think, rather than have a massive index to every edition of a newspaper with a category for everyone named in the issue, you should crop what you are interested in and isolate that part, I do that with obituaries. Can you imagine if we created a category for every person named in every newspaper? It would look like the index in the back of a book. We already have full text search once OCR has been completed. --RAN (talk) 18:16, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

  A list makes sense if people want but I agree on splitting out the comics if people care. We do that with advertisements but the problem is also one of choosing to do these as giant PDF files rather than separate JPG images so that the page for the comic can be separated. Ricky81682 (talk) 00:14, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Category:Charlie Brooks categorization

Similar to above, there are a lot of newspapers that have been put into Category:Charlie Brooks. I don't see the connection between 1920s newspapers in Glendale, CA and a British actress born in 1981. Ricky81682 (talk) 21:14, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

• @Ricky81682: If this had been done by a logged-in user, I'd say to ping them, but it wasn't, so just remove it. It is certainly generally OK to second-guess someone working from an anonymous IP who did something apparently wrong with no stated rationale. - Jmabel ! talk 04:41, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

  That’s fair but we are talking about more than 40 files by maybe 30 separate IP addresses I think. Just seeing if anyone else knows the logic here. Ricky81682 (talk) 05:08, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

  Charlie Brooks (a different one) is named as Illustrator of the Uncle Wiggily cartoons in these newspapers.--Raugeier (talk) 07:08, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

  @Raugeier It wasn't en:Charles Brooks (cartoonist) and I didn't see it at en:Charles Brooks. Should we create a new category for this person? It seem like these would all be covered by categories into Uncle Wiggily as a subcategory of the illustrator anyways. Ricky81682 (talk) 07:33, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

  It seems like a pseudonym used only a short time (mid-1920s). Maybe we create a category Charlie Brooks (cartoonist) with a disambiguaton link to Charles Brooks (cartoonist). --Raugeier (talk) 08:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Establishing a connection from a person's user account on Commons to that person's creator-page on Commons

I posted a question here: "If a creator has a user account on Commons and wants to connect their username to a creator-page on commons (or their entry on wikidata), is there a way to do that? So that such an established connection can be used to replace individual permission statements for each artwork from that user? This user here appears to be willing to establish such a connection, but unwilling to have to release files one by one (e.g. via Commons:Email templates/Consent). --Bensin (talk) 23:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Most commonly, proof of identity is established via VRT, and then we slap a {{Verified account}} on their userpage. In this case, they have provided public proof of their identity that anyone can verify, so they just need to add a link to [2] on their userpage. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:28, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Otherwise I agree, but the linked image just shows the request for permission, not an approval. Is there an approval somewhere? –LPfi (talk) 08:49, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

@LPfi: Seems to me that by placing the request on the site that we know is theirs, they were showing that they were, indeed, the person who controls that site, which is what they'd been asked to demonstrate. - Jmabel ! talk 17:22, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

@LPfi: @Jmabel: Thank you both for helping out! But even though it seems very likely that the image was posted on davidrevoy.com to establish the identity on Commons, it is not entirely impossible that the image was published with a text saying "Someone is impersonating me on Commons." What is the Volunteer Response Team procedure? Will an email from David Revoy suffice if he writes something like "I hereby assert that I am the person using the account https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Deevad" to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org, or does he need to include something else? --Bensin (talk) 18:04, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

@Bensin: Yes, though it would be even better were he to post that statement on a page at what we all agree is his website. Page doesn't even have to have anything linking inward, just post it and link the URL from his user page. That way literally anyone could verify it for themselves, no need to involve the VRT people. - Jmabel ! talk 18:52, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

We would still need an official record of some sort. {{Verified account}} requires an VRT ticket. The links to the statement would become unusable with a reorganisation of the site, and with no links to it from his other pages, he might not notice. Can a VRT volunteer archive the page and connect it to a ticket? –LPfi (talk) 06:57, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

If he posted an unambiguous message at an acceptable location on the domain davidrevoy.com, then that image or page can be archived on Internet Archive. --Bensin (talk) 22:52, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

March 04

Batch Categorization

Is there a way to add categories in bulk? For example, in the Category "Houses in Charleston, South Carolina," I would like to add the categories of "1-story buildings," "2-story buildings," etc. and also "Brick buildings," "Wooden buildings," etc. Is there a way to do that other than individually opening each image and manually adding each category, one-at-a-time?--ProfReader (talk) 03:03, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

• There are a few ways to do it. My preferred choice is VFC. Once you install that, then you'll see a choice "Perform batch task" in your left nav. Go to Category:Houses in Charleston, South Carolina, click that choice, and you are into VFC for that category. It's a little bit arcane -- I'd say 10 to 45 minutes of learning curve, depending on your background -- but it works pretty well once you learn it. I find the "custom replace" action the most useful. For example, you can replace a particular category with two categories separated by a linefeed, one of them en exact match for the original so it stays in that category as well. On your first few tries (and maybe well beyond), you should definitely use the "Examine scheduled changes" feature before you select "Execute". - Jmabel ! talk 04:53, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Mdaniels5757 nominated for checkuser

Hello. There's currently a checkuser request for Mdaniels5757 to see if they fit the requirement. Your input would be much appreciated. To vote or comment, please go to Commons:Checkusers/Requests/Mdaniels5757. Thank you. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 16:23, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

March 05

Garages

Various "garage" categories are a mixture of (usually small) buildings in which cars are stored, such as File:Garages_on_Lucky_Lane,_Exeter_-_geograph.org.uk_-_743893.jpg and places where you can get your car repaired and often also fill up with petrol, such as File:2 Mile Oak Garage - geograph.org.uk - 15307.jpg. It seems that the intention of category "garage" and all its subcategories is to include only the former. I'm not sure about other countries, but in the UK the tendency to label the latter "garages" is very strong. There almost needs to be a "don't use for car repair premises or filling stations" warning on all the subcategories. Any thoughts? ITookSomePhotos (talk) 10:18, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Also French uses the word for both meanings, and probably other languages also, so for many people not having English as first language (in addition to the British) it is not at all evident which meaning the word stands for.

In this case there certainly needs to be a clarification of the intended category content.

Generally all categories should have descriptions clarifying their use, subcategories possibly by a template pointing at the relevant parent category (I often have to move up several levels to get to a category with a Wikipedia or Wikidata link hopefully explaining the nuance of the words used – such as houses vs buildings). Even words that may seem clear to the category creator can have another meaning when seen in a different context.

–LPfi (talk) 12:08, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Should be the former; description can only be good; {{See also cat}} or similar is very useful. - Jmabel ! talk 17:33, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't suppose there's any way to automatically propagate a definition of "garage" to all subcategories of Category:Garage, is there? That would be handy. ITookSomePhotos (talk) 18:23, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

@ITookSomePhotos: Not automatically, but you could put the explanation in a template, which would mean that any later edit was easy to propagate, and would work especially well in terms of explaining in more than one language. - Jmabel ! talk 20:52, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

@Jmabel: OK, thanks, I'll have a look at that sometime. Actually, I've never created a template before. Do you happen to know of anything similar that already exists, that I can copy and just change the text?ITookSomePhotos ( talk) 20:32, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

@ITookSomePhotos: Nothing offhand, but this would be a pretty simple template, and a good place to start learning. Really, just look at the code of some of the simpler templates, you'll probably be able to work it out pretty quickly. - Jmabel ! talk 04:45, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

BCE/BC

Template:Place by century gives "BCE" when referring to the centuries BC. Why BCE and not BC. This template is used for many countries, I dare not change it.

--Io Herodotus (talk) 17:27, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

• @Io Herodotus: "Before the Common Era" vs. "Before Christ" because the latter presumes the historicity of Jesus Christ, and the traditional Christian dating of his birth, not assumptions widely shared by non-Christians. - Jmabel ! talk 17:36, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion: NSFW tag

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T331250

I was looking for GIFs of people doing "the finger", and... well, try it for yourself. Thankfully, I was not in public. --Synotia (talk) 18:21, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

• @Synotia: The problem is that there is no one clear line. There's been a lot of talk of how we might address this and allow one or more "safe" viewing modes, but it's really tough to do it in a way that isn't culture-specific. It would take an enormous investment of effort to tag for the dozens of different things that could be issues, in order to allow someone to build an adjustable filter. - Jmabel ! talk 20:57, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

  That is a bit tame. Wikipedia and Commons are international projects and the same Medium that is NSFW in one society can be completely Ok in another society with another medium the other way around. The image of a child with an automatic weapon may be ok in USA or Afghanistan but considered child abuse in Germany. And what is a NSFW tag considered to do? With the MW software as it is, readers would see the image, scroll down the file desription page and then see the NSFW tag. For other ways the software would need to be changed. But in what way? What should the tag do? Trigger age verification? Ask the user for them religious beliefs? Open a window with a red border: Caution. this is NSFW. Proceed at your own risk. While simustanly playing a voice recording: "Attention, your colleage at desk seven is about to view NSFW content" C.Suthorn (talk) 22:33, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

  What a bureaucratic answer. All this bla bla bla to say "no, don't change anything"

  Are you familiar with any websites outside of Wikipedia? Tumblr or Reddit are examples for NSFW warnings. Synotia (talk) 23:55, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

  Tumblr and Reddit aren't caring about being an encyclopedia. Do you want advertising here as well? It's an entirely different purpose for this website. Again, give more specifics on what you want. A block from searching? From displaying? From being used at all? Why not propose the deletion of those offensive images if you want to have a sanitized website? They will be overruled but feel free to try it. Ricky81682 (talk) 00:06, 6 March 2023 (UTC),

  • @Ricky81682: I, for one, don't want Commons censored in terms of what we can store, but I think it would be entirely appropriate to make it possible to filter out unwanted results in any given search. If we can work out a way to define what a certain person finds inappropriate, they should be able to filter all of their searches by saying, effectively, "but not this stuff". In any case: what Synotia links below is, at least, a pretty egregious search result. If I were searching for "finger" on a general educational website, even if I were specifically looking for GIFs, I would not expect to get a bunch of videos of women masturbating. I don't think anyone can defend that as good UX. - 02:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• On "the finger", at least the first 20 items I get are pretty innocuous. But I'm using the "old" search. - Jmabel ! talk 20:59, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

  There you go. Don't click on this if you're in public. Synotia (talk) 23:58, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

  • Looks more like a problem with the search tool. Those are clearly not the results any reasonable person would expect on that search query. Glad I'm still using the old search. - Jmabel ! talk 00:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. We have a hard enough time policing things and what is offensive to one person's sensibilities is not to another's (the swimsuits section varies heavily on acceptability). Looking at Category:The finger (gesture) it starts off fairly tame. I question whether all the nude or partially nude people images are all that educational in purpose but that have been strongly kept for a while now. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:58, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

  My proposal is just for a measure similar to Tumblr or Reddit: extreme violence and hardcore porn should be, in search results, at least covered with a NSFW tag so that no kid looking for the innocuous term "finger" (no the!) will be greeted by this assortment. Synotia (talk) 00:00, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

  Do you think you are the first person in the decades of this website to find something offensive? There are governments who have banned the entire website because one page is offensive but please explain why "think of the children" is an acceptable discussion when we have entire categories like Category:Nude or partially nude people. Do you want a warning on each image? Should it only display on Commons? On every page that displays the image? On every website that displays the image not on Wikimedia? At least do a little more effort than "I find something offensive so I want a warning because I search public websites without a filter and I find things I don't like." Ricky81682 (talk) 00:04, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Please explain why "think of the children" is an acceptable discussion The main purpose of this site is to be educational and to that end be used in an educational setting. Are you seriously going to argue that any school out there is going to advocate for their students using the platform at school if there's nude pictures on here that come up in search results when people aren't even looking for them? Come on. There's clearly a difference between a government censoring something just to be autocratic versus a website not allowing certain content because it undercuts their target market. There's zero legitimate reason anyone should have to see multiple gifs of a woman fingering herself when they do a search for someone giving the middle finger. That's not autocratic, it's just smart and shows the platform cares about it's users. Just like if someone does a search for "death" in Google search they don't get a bunch of websites and images about snuff films or bondage porn. Either way, there should be a basic expectation with any website that if someone does a search for "X" topic that the "X" shouldn't be pornographic unless it's specifically what they are looking for. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand your point. Me, I don't want the pictures of all this clit-rubbing to be removed, I just want an option to hide such images for people not looking for them, so that this kind of stuff doesn't show up when in public.

You're mocking me with "think of the children", but I don't see what's unreasonable in my proposal. What's wrong with not wanting a child looking for a picture for his school presentation to encounter pics of clit rubbing and fisting? Synotia (talk) 10:57, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

"but please explain why "think of the children" is an acceptable discussion when we have entire categories like Category:Nude or partially nude people" - because ability to skip display of pornographic images is entirely desirable tool when doing something with a children. "think of the children" is often misused (and therefore mocked) exactly because in many contexts it is entirely valid Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 19:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

perhaps some folks have never used the internet in a public place? Synotia (talk) 16:19, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

• Comment This is obviously a problem given the educational nature of the platform and the fact that most users probably don't want to see pornographic images when doing otherwise innocuous searches. That said, it seems like the problem would be better solved by taking a clear stance against the platform hosting such images in the first place, which is way more doable then creating a filter would be. Although I agree that what is pornographic varies by culture and people's sensibilities, but so do most things. Including some types of images that Commons has clear guidelines against hosting. So I don't think that means it wouldn't be doable. That's not to say there wouldn't be edge cases, but so what? If nothing else it would at least stem the near constant flood of non-educational pics of random people's private parts that seem to be clogging up the DR process lately. It would be way more reasonable to just speedy delete all that crap as clearly out of scope then have the umpteenth conversation in a week of if the millionth "hard penis of man from X minority group" or whatever image serves an educational purpose or not. There's better ways to spend our time and there's no shortage of similar images out there on other sites. Either way, it's not our selling point, the purpose of the project, or a good usage of time to deal with. So at the end of day who cares? Just ban it. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:13, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
• I've created a Phabricator ticket, linked at the top of this section. Please, Phabricator is not the place to discuss a proposal for censoring or filtering Commons, but it probably is the place to discuss an anomalous search result. @Synotia: if you have other examples of comparably egregious results, you might want to add them to that ticket. - Jmabel ! talk 02:15, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

  I agree. Searches should return what people are searching for. If you search for things most people wouldn't be searching for, it makes sense to have to use a bit less general search phrase, especially if the results may be shocking to many users. –LPfi (talk) 09:30, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

  My search returns the same collection of clit-rubbing and fisting and dildo-shoving with the term "finger". Is "finger" something unusual? Synotia (talk) 11:01, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• For the NSFW thing, WMF tried hard and the proposed solutions had too many problems to be workable. In addition to cultural differences, the main problem was that such taggs are prone to misuse and impossible to police in any reasonable manner. If you think you have some solution to that problem, first read at least a summary of that heated and mile-long debate. I think nobody who was here at the time wants to repeat the debate anytime soon. Any proposal that isn't very much better than what WMF could come up with will at best be ignored by most of the community and soon forgotten, otherwise the debate will be repeated with nothing accomplished but some contributors leaving and others wasting a lot of time and energy. –LPfi (talk) 09:33, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

  Haven't read it all, but perhaps some folks might be turned on by this, which would explain why they would argue against any change. Synotia (talk) 11:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

  I was there, and no, I do not want to have that discussion again. Still think there might be a solution if we approach the whole thing with a clear mind and from a different angle. El Grafo (talk) 11:33, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• As other have pointed out above, we can not decide what is NSFW or otherwise objectionable due to the vast variety of different views on this in different cultures. That's partially why a couple of years ago, the whole "Image Filters" idea of the WMF blew up spectacularly. Any discussion in that direction will inevitably drift off towards an emotional "freedom" vs. "but the children".

What we could do, however, is define a couple of "tags" in COM:SDC and have a place in the settings where users could opt out of seeing certain types of content (replace them with a "you chose not to see this image, click here to reveal" placeholder). For logged-out users, you could store those choices in a cookie. Sister projects could be allowed to set sensible defaults; default on Commons would probably be nothing being hidden per COM:CENSOR.

If you think about it for a moment, this could be about much more than penises: Archnophobes could opt out of seeing spiders, people with en:epilepsy could avoid flashing GIF's. Maybe dry alcoholics would like to avoid seeing images of alcoholic beverages? Of course we would not be able to guarantee that every single image will be tagged accordingly, but given how much we obsess about categorizing the tiniest detail, I think it could be at least mostly functional. To manage expectations, call the filter "try to hider spiders" rather than "do not show spiders". On the community side of things, we would probably want to have a process for determining what is worth making a filter tag for. --El Grafo (talk) 10:20, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

All this discussions about whether pictures of even numbers of flowers might be offensive to Ukrainian women etc etc etc are in my opinion just filibustering. I don't know what's their motive.

Might as well replace the front page by goatse. Synotia (talk) 11:07, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

And here we go, drifting off. I understand you're probably experiencing a variety of negative emotions right now. That's understandable, but they are not helping. You will not get what you want, for a number of (partially highly frustrating) reasons. I was trying to work towards a solution that might actually have a chance of succeeding. If you're not interested: fine, I'm out. El Grafo (talk) 11:29, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@El Grafo: I totally agree with Synotia about the filibustering. Otherwise, I'd be interested to know exactly where in the world it's culturally acceptable to display images of women fisting themselves at work or in public place, because I can't think of any. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

It's not the blacks and the whites we need to talk about. No, we do not need to discuss numbers of flowers (where did that even come from?), but we do need to discuss where to draw the line between black and white on a long spectrum of shades of grey in-between. That is going to be a long and difficult discussion that requires discipline and the will to work together towards a solution every side can somehow live with. This is not a debate club situation where in the end one side can "win". This is not the place for polemics. Repeatedly yelling "CENSORSHIP!" and "PORN!" back and forth at each other is not going to help. El Grafo (talk) 08:53, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

SDC is the way to go. However there are currently 90 million files at commons and they all need to be accessed by a human. Commons has about 20000 active users. C.Suthorn (talk) 15:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

There is nothing magic about SDC vs. a tag in the Wikitext. The issue would be what the rules would be, not a technical detail of implementation. - Jmabel ! talk 16:37, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Why not just let people make the filters themself? Trade (talk) 17:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Why does it have to be either all or nothing? Trade (talk) 17:23, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• I have run into it in another context - I wanted to tag in Commons Android app something as "Forest" and got unexpected dick pic. As I am not fan of unexpected dick pics I am no longer adding categories when uploading (except few that I remember adding without unwanted side effects). See https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons/issues/5138 I do not have a ready solution, but ability to skip photos where genitalia are primary focus would be nice. Maybe this Wikidata-powered tagging content of images can help? With data consumers able to filter out whatever they want? Someone may want to filter out genitalia, someone dead bodies, someone else images of spectacular gangrene. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 19:00, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Given that Commons is volunteer driven, I'm not sure how reliable SDC would be if it user-contributed data. (Having formal censors, would be completely unacceptable.)

The issue is what constitutes 'NSFW' content. The issue is a POLICY problem, not a technical one, and perhaps it's something the WMF needs to set out based on legal requirements in the US, and consultation with the Community in line with what is industry practice on other platforms.

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:26, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Bingo. That's exactly my stance. It's 100% a policy problem. Although you said it a lot more clearly then I did ;) But the suggestion by some people that we can't stop images of women fisting themselves from showing up in searches by not allowing for it to be uploaded in the first place because of cultural differences or whatever is just ludicrous. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

It's not a policy problem so much as there are too many people who absolutely enjoy uploading this nonsense and are probably putting in keywords so that their images go to the top for basic terms. We either need to get rid of those images/uploaders with a nonsense purpose or better figure out the keywords. You can put all the image blocks in place but the people who get a thrill out of this nonsense are always going to volunteer more time at it. It's the same reason categories like Category:Middle-aged men in 2022 are constantly filled and refilled with NSFW penis images no matter how much you remove that stuff. Ricky81682 (talk) 18:29, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's such a black and white thing as that, but your not wrong either. I just prefer a multiprong approach to solving the issue. Otherwise the solution/solutions are just going to be half backed and ineffective. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:11, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

• We should not rate any file in this way. But I could imagine to have an option at MediaSearch for easy negative filtering where people can add to exclude all files depicting human reproductive system (Q20645683). --GPSLeo (talk) 20:00, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

  Might as well include all files that depicts nudity and porn while we are at it Trade (talk) 22:27, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

  And that is why we can not have a general filter. I would not add non genitalia focused files of nude people to such a quick filter. GPSLeo (talk) 06:48, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Hier ist der Wunsch aufgebracht worden, bei der Suche nach dem gewünschten Thema "X", keine Medien des Themas "Y" gezeigt zu bekommen, obwohl das eingegebene Suchwort "Z" sowohl Medien "X" als auch Medien "Y" finden muss. Und das läßt sich umsetzen, indem die suchende Person individuell Filter bestimmt (in der Suche, in den Präferenzen oder durch Gedankenübertragung). Damit das funktionieren kann müssen allerdings alle (derzeit 90 Millionen, künftig mehr) Medien maschinenlesbar beschrieben sein. Dafür stellt MW ein Verfahren zur Verfügung: SDC-depicts. Damit kann eine Person, die eine (zB) Ukulelen-Phobie hat (oder irgendwelche Finger für NSFW hält) für sich sicherstellen, nie von SVGs belästigt zu werden, die das Wort Ukulele als Vektor-Pfad enthalten, oder Videos, wo in der 37ten Minute eine Ukulele durchs Bild fliegt, oder DJVUs die im Literaturverzeichnis das Bild einer Ukulele enthalten. SDC-depicts sind keine Wörter sondern Begriffe - also sprachneutral, was für ein internationales Projekt unabdingbar ist. Irgendwelche Tags wären im besten Fall eine Wiedererfindung von SDC - also eine Doppelstruktur, die doppelten Pflegeaufwand verursacht. Aber das Problem bleibt bestehen: Es gibt bereits 90 Millionen Dateien und mit 20000 Usern dauert es Jahrzehnte diese alle zu markieren. JEDE der 90 Millionen Dateien kann für einen User NSFW sein.

Die Alternative wäre, dass Synotia festlegt, was NSFW ist, und einen Tag NSFW in die 3000 animierten GIFs setzt, die Synotia aufgrund einer nicht-eindeutigen Suchanfrage findet.

--C.Suthorn (talk) 20:06, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@Synotia: Please see meta:Image filter referendum/en, meta:Image filter referendum/Results/en, and meta:Image filter referendum/Sue's report to the board/en. Nosferattus (talk) 20:22, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Ich verstehe was Sie meinen. Es ist ja schwerig retroskeptiv zu tun, aber warum nicht prospektiv für neue Files? Und ja, wäre es möglich gewesen, hätte ich sie markiert als NSFW, aber so etwas besteht nicht. Synotia (talk) 20:28, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

ANY of the 90 million files can be NSFW for a user. That's a ludicrous statement. Most images on here aren't NSFW and no one is acting like they are. This issue was raised because of specific images of women fisting and fingering themselves, which are clearly not safe for work. Especially if that work is being done in an educational setting. Why not address the actual issue instead of acting like people are just needlessly bitching about innocuous images of Category:Pie charts pie charts or some nonsense?

In the meantime I'm not really convinced that filtering out the images through search custom filters would work since the search shouldn't be providing people with images of penises when they search for ""Forests" in the first place. Just adding another level of obtusity on a broken search system isn't going to stop it from being broken. Also, it assume people would know about the search filters in the first place, which they likely wouldn't. Plus they would have to add filters for every possible term even slightly related to pornographic images for it to be effective. No one associates the term "forest" with penises though. So if you create a filter for "forest" that blocks images of penises great, but no one is going to use it. Sure, you could create a search filter for "penis" that filters out images of penises. That's not the issue here though. I shouldn't have to explicitly ask a search image to not give me images of penises by actively filtering them out when I'm looking for forests either. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:40, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

That is naive. Pie charts are extremely controversial, as they are used for propaganda and fake news. Someone typing "Forest" into the search box may very well looking for Category:Fuck for Forest. Fuck for Forest contains nudity. That there are until now no penises is a fault of Commons' lacking diversity and low number of contributors. And it is likely that someone omits the word "Fuck" from a search as other websites tend to censor the word. C.Suthorn (talk) 09:43, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

It might be time to seriously revisit this filtering issue in general. I'd suggest, though, that there is little to be gained by continuing what is becoming a repetitive discussion here on the Village pump. Just to be clear:

• I've opened a Phabricator ticket about the anomalous search result. I'd suggest that if other people have concrete examples of equally bizarre search results, whether about NSFW issues or otherwise, they should add to that ticket.
• Would someone like to start a new page to discuss possible technical approaches to a filtering system? It seems pretty clear at least where to start in a problem statement, Both from what I've observed in discussions over time and from User:Adamant1's links above) it seems that it remains a widely supported principle that Commons is not censored, and that anything we do should be more about providing people with a chance to be warned before seeing certain imagery, rather than preventing them from seeing that imagery if they so choose. There seems to be widespread concern about sexual imagery and violent imagery, with a lesser but parallel concern from those who would like the availability of other filters. I, for one, don't see anything objectionable in providing the option of such filters; the question is more a technical one, and about the amount of effort it would take to enable this. I'd also suggest that any useful discussion should take up the question of what percentage of false positives and/or false negatives would be acceptable, because in my experience the closer to perfection we would need this to be, the harder it would be to achieve. But, again, I don't think we are going to get much further in the present discussion. Either someone should take on driving a new page where this really can be usefully discussed (creating the page, laying out the basics of the issue, sticking around to make sure it doesn't just go stale), or we should just say, "yes, this problem has cropped up before; no, we still have no concrete idea how to solve it." - Jmabel ! talk 00:58, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for opening the Phabricator ticket at least. It will be interesting to how they deal with it and how much whatever the solution is helps things. Although I still think there should be a discussion about what exactly people should be allowed to upload or not when it comes images that are NSWF, but your probably right that this isn't the best venue or discussion for it. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:45, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Technical approaches, won't solve the policy issue. The community here needs to set out clearly defined and enforceable guidelines on what constitutes unacceptable NSFW content beyond what it and the WMF is already legally required to remove. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:26, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Mention has been made about explicit nudity, and religious iconography. To this I would suggest that consideration should be given as to the appropriateness of certain media which promotes outright disinformation ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:26, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't know if I'd go as far as censoring disinformation since what constitutes disinformation clearly isn't a bright line and it can serve an educational purpose sometimes regardless. But anyone who is being at all good faithed about this has to agree that images of women masterbating are both pornographic and not educational. So I think the guidelines could slightly clarified to not allow for such images without running into any kind slippery slope or going to far in the direction of censorship. At least from what I've seen most even semi-pornographic images are deleted when someone does a DR for them anyway. So it's not like having it would be a drastic change in the current state of affairs or anything. We could just deal with those types of images more expediently and without having to get a consensus through the DR process first. Unless someone wants to argue videos of women masterbating are educational, which OK I guess they could be, but so could a lot of things that already aren't allowed. Even things that aren't even necessarily illegal like videos of beheadings. I don't really see what the difference is. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:46, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Is that a clear indication that cultural issues will be difficult problem? Where I live, I would expect most people to agree that women's masturbation is an important thing to talk and educate about, and probably at least a significant minority would believe some such files are educationally very valuable. Ergo, discussing what is non-educational will quickly lead astray. I have much more to say on that theme, but let's keep this discussion focused on NSFW filtering.

Voluntary filtering has at least two main problems, in addition to the technical ones: the filters can be used by some authorities forcing a target group to use their filter settings (by imposing a proxy or by other means; think public libraries), and some may tag innocent images, to make them less visible. I assume a lot of borderline images would be tagged, like when Jimbo started deleting nude images, including old paintings.

The project Jmabel suggested should include a discussion on these and other issues and be humble about their judgement on what should be filtered.

–LPfi (talk) 16:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Videos of women masturbating are educational, see for example Venus_Berlin_2018_148.webm It contains the personality rights template and is part of three categories that have the nudity warning template, which constitutes a NSFW tag, that could be used in searches or whereever you want. C.Suthorn (talk) 16:45, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm getting really tired of the straw-man arguments. The issue here is that, normally, and especially in public, if someone searches for "finger" they should not see a bunch of videos of women masturbating. This is not a question of whether such photos, or photos of men masturbating, or whatever else, should be on Commons. It's a question of being able to avoid seeing such images when making a presumably innocuous search.

Either we can set up a place to talk about this seriously, or people can keep hitting each other with trout. - Jmabel ! talk 16:50, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

To my understanding the author of the thread was looking for something called a "Stinkefinger" (and obviously "the finger" in english?) but used a broad search term that could mean anything from depictions of the unix finger command (a stalking tool and clearly NSFW) to human fingers, a brand of ice cream (Flutschfinger), a high rise building, or whatever. C.Suthorn (talk) 17:03, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I suppose we all agree on the search issue, that "finger" should primarily show result for human fingers, ideally suggesting more specific search terms for the unix command (which was very useful), icecream, masturbation and whatever. I hope WMF will not try to solve the issue by raising the bar for sexual content; if you search for masturbation you should get media on masturbation. For educational videos of masturbation, I don't understand how the linked one makes the mark. It might be an educational video on sex fairs, but that's it. –LPfi (talk) 17:20, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

And what about a photo of a woman protesting against the Compulsory headscarf in Iran while climbing the Reichstag? Is it NSFW? in the US, in Germany, in Iran? C.Suthorn (talk) 16:58, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Is topless women considered NSFW in the US? Trade (talk) 17:19, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

@Trade: depends where you work, and in many cases depends on other details of the photo, which is a perfect example of why this is not a matter of drawing a line somewhere but of providing the technical means for different filters to be created. - Jmabel ! talk 17:34, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Is the issue censoring the image itself or what keywords pop that up? If I search for "headscarf" that image should not be anywhere in the top search result. Possibly related to the protests but the bigger problem is that people are definitely going out of their way to ensure that the images in something banal like Category:Young men in 2008 are not NSFW. Ricky81682 (talk) 18:32, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

The nude images shouldn't be directly in that category: there are more specific categories where people wont be surprised to find them. But this is a problem of curating the categories and about categories it is a fool's errand to curate. The category should include at least a substantive proportion of portrait photos taken that year, and arguably a lot of other files. Thousands of subcategories and thousands of individual files. –LPfi (talk) 19:09, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Things like that are exactly why I said above that a broken search with filters is still a broken search. Cool, add filters. But it's doubtful people are going to even add them to images or use them if they aren't even curating basic things like what images go in which categories. So I think it's both a technical question and one about if the images should be on Commons in the first place. If technical things aren't going to be dealt with or used then it seems like the only option is not allowing for the images to be uploaded in the first place though. Personally, I say we wait and see what happens with the Phabricator issue and how effective whatever they implement (if anything) is and then go from there. It's pointless to discuss alternatives or other ways of dealing with the problem at this point though. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:48, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Would you be in favour of a CSD for explicit images? Media that violates COM:NOPENIS is in effect speedy deleted on scope grounds already. Widening COM:NOPENIS is a policy debate that could be had.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:55, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Sure. I don't have time to do it myself right now, but there's definitely an argument to be made that COM:NOPENIS should be widened to include fisting videos and the like. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:57, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

But it's doubtful people are going to even add them to images or use them if they aren't even curating basic things like what images go in which categories. - Original uploaders in most cases certainly won't. But the community is already obsessively categorizing pictures of nude or partially nude women planting flowers - just need to divert that energy. Of course that doesn't mean we shouldn't delete things that certainly shouldn't be here in the first place. Filtering (opt-in) would be for those files that are not entirely black nor white and could go beyond things like nudity and violence (arachnophobia, epilepsy, ..?). This is a complicated issue and there will not be a simple, single solution to it. El Grafo (talk) 08:27, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

• I also want to add the note that these files are on the top of the search results because they are so popular. More popular files are considered more relevant and become ranked higher in the search result. Category:Videos of penile-vaginal intercourse is with 180.000 views in the last month the most viewed category followed be some more sexuality related categories. --GPSLeo (talk) 07:13, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

  Which search are you talking about here? That may be true for external searches vie Google et al., but popularity or number of views is not mentioned as criterion for ranking search results at mw:Help:MediaSearch at all ... El Grafo (talk) 08:49, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

March 06

Speedy deletion

How would I see a gallery of the files up for speedy deletion, rather than just a list of filenames? --RAN (talk) 00:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): You can look at candidates for speedy deletion in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion and its subcategories. Here's a neat trick: Searching for hastemplate:X-To-DR finds all files with the "Challenge speedy deletion" button. That way you get all files with {{Speedydelete}}, {{No permission since}}, {{No source since}} etc. with a single simple search. TilmannR (talk) 09:42, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

its close from home — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikan80 (talk • contribs) 10:58, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Mainstream cameras generating non-existent artifacts (AI generative upscaling?), what can we do about it?

Pixel 6 Pro stock camera vs. Open Camera artifacts

I believe that AI-generated content should be clearly tagged as such, so that we know what is real and what is not. For instance, if I take a picture of a lake with some Charadrius alexandrinus flying, a picture enhancement tool might transform them into the more common Charadrius dealbatus because that's the only species the tool's AI knows, misleading readers and researchers into thinking that this species is found there.

Problem: Recent mainstream software (be it desktop software or apps) tend to silently include such "enhancements", by default.

Example: On the same Pixel 6 Pro device and at the exact same place and almost same time (at dusk), I took a picture of a building's rooftop using both the Open Camera app and the stock camera app. It seems like the stock camera app generates non-existent artifacts, probably using a mix of edge detection and other techniques. I am not 100% sure it involves AI, but it is only a question of time before most mainstream cameras start doing it.

Question: What can we do about it? I have not found any policy about this.

A first and unfortunately very niche idea could be to embed Open Camera into the Commons app to encourage the use of a camera that does not perform such enhancements.

Cheers! Syced (talk) 11:23, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Do about what? The Open Camera app is generating artifacts too; the letters aren't blurry in real life. All lenses/films/sensors have their own artifacts, and going from a digital raw (or film) to a JPEG involves making choices about how to process the data. Nothing here seems out of the norm.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:40, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Blur and JPEG artefacts are previsible, confined to a known number of neighboring pixels, and won't transform a given bird into a high-definition other bird. On the other hand, AI can add realistic objects dozens of pixels wide and you won't be able to tell. It is a very different problem, and we definitely need to at least clearly mark these images as such. Syced (talk) 22:46, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

When AI is adding realistic objects dozens of pixels tall, we can talk about it. So far your example image shows some oversharpening and possibly a bit of lens flare.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:55, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

The middle artifact is 80x48 pixels. The leftmost artifact is 80 pixels high (and is 20 pixels far from any edge so this is not a case of oversharpening or compression artifact). Also, the leftmost artifact is very realistic, it really looks like there is a wall joint at that place... while nobody cares about a wall joint, there will be cases where details matter. Finally, by "lens flare" do you mean that the stock camera might have added a fake lens flare for style, or that two camera apps might handle lens flare differently, or that I was just unlucky and might see such flare randomly distributed if I take many pictures with each app, or something else? Thanks! Syced (talk) 04:57, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

'Search inside' template for document files

Do we have a template that could be added to pages about PDF and DjVu files, to allow users to search inside the individual document? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:32, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Redirects "pd-simple" and "PD-simple"

What to do about {{Pd-simple}} and {{PD-simple}}, both redirected to {{PD-shape}}? Must I nominate them for deletion, change target boldly, or what? George Ho (talk) 21:28, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Where do you think they should be pointing to? I don't have an opinion here, I am just unsure what your reason is for your question. From Hill To Shore (talk) 23:56, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Either {{PD-ineligible}}, import the enwiki version of the template. I just think "PD-simple" is sometimes interpreted as "PD-ineligible", especially when an image is not a simple shape. George Ho (talk) 01:33, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

The redirects appear to be used on thousands of files, so we can rule out "bold" retargeting here - that will just leave the wrong licence on thousands of existing files. Looking at "What links here" on the two redirects, they have been subject to several deletion discussions before. That probably also rules out any bold action as you are trying to overturn a previous consensus. I would recommend reading the previous discussions to understand the old reasoning for retaining the redirects. If you disagree with that reasoning, you can start a new discussion to see if consensus has changed. From Hill To Shore (talk) 15:07, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I couldn't find past discussions ([3][4]) about this unless I overlooked. George Ho (talk) 16:43, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

March 07

Notice for Friday bringing in students

On March 10, 2023, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS - https://inf.ffzg.unizg.hr) at the University of Zagreb (Croatia) will host a presentation and hands-on workshop for the students of Information and Communication Science inside of Virtual Museum course, on the topic of Wikimedia and few of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata.org and most recent experiments on Wikispore.org. The program will be facilitated by informed and experienced Wikimedia contributors, open content/data advocates and educators who are actively involved in the (Open) GLAM wiki Croatia initiative.

During the event, students will be able to gain insight into some of the possibilities offered by these platforms, including those beyond Wikipedia, that are publicly less known. They will learn the significance of these platforms for the open knowledge ecosystem, as well as how to contribute and improve upon existing data. Furthermore, in partnership with the Department, students will have the opportunity to complete a portion of their course obligations by contributing data and improving content on selected topics on Wikimedia platforms, as well as to optionally join Wikimedia campaigns and initiatives.

We kindly ask you all for patience and understanding with new users on the day.

Thank you very much. --Zblace (talk) 08:52, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Welcome all! :-) Syced (talk) 08:16, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

COM:TOO India question regarding color gradients in logo

Hi. Coming from User talk:Túrelio#File:New Goa International Airport's Logo.jpg, I'm wondering whether the logo at https://www.newgoaairport.com/images/goa-logo.svg falls under the threshold. Thanks for your inputs -- DaxServer (talk) 10:05, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Size of preview?

So I was wondering, how is the preview size of an image determined?

I'm asking because for this file the preview size is 799 pixels, but other files like [5], [6], or [7] have preview sizes of 800 pixels. I was trying the to get that image to show up as a preview when you hover over a link on Wikipedia but that seems to work only for images with preview sizes of 800 px. Alin2808 (talk) 13:24, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

@Alin2808: I wasn't able to find the documentation for this, but this is how it seems to work:

The goal is to make the size at most 800x600 while minimizing distortions. In the case above, if we scale the image to a width of 800, we get

$height_{new}=width_{max}\cdot {height_{original} \over width_{original}}=800\cdot {848 \over 3023}=224.41\ldots \approx 224$

But if we resized the image to 800x224, the image would be slightly more distorted than necessary, because the optimal width for preserving the aspect ratio of 3023:848 is

$width_{new}=height_{new}\cdot {width_{original} \over height_{original}}=224\cdot {3023 \over 848}=798.52\ldots \approx 799$

I don't believe that the width of 799 pixels prevents the image from getting used in the preview. mw:Extension:PageImages#How_does_it_select_images? says that aspect ratios of 0.4 to 3.1 are allowed. 3023:848 = 3.56 is simply too wide to be used as the PageImage. TilmannR (talk) 15:51, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Alright, thank you! Will try to get it to work. Alin2808 (talk) 18:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Review process of nominations for deletion

Hi, I nominated an image for deletion in November last year (as copyright violation imo). However, only the uploader and I have discussed it and since then it has been silent. It seems that, with many other nominations, it is still awaiting review. I am wondering now why the review process is taking so long - especially since in this case copyright issues are at stake. KKoolstra (talk) 14:05, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Can you please provide a link to the discussion? If it was a copyright violation, it should have been flagged for speedy deletion, and I would have expected the admin that refused the case to have commented as well (if the admin accepted the speedy deletion nomination, it would be deleted already). It could be that this case hasn't drawn attention due to our large backlog or it may be that the nomination page hasn't been listed correctly (so practically invisible to other users). It is hard to say which reason is more likely without the link. There is not much we can do about the backlog short of gaining the input from more volunteers (there is always more work than there are people here). From Hill To Shore (talk) 16:48, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

@From Hill To Shore: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Rijkswaterstaat logo.png. See also Commons:Deletion requests/File:Logo rijksoverheid.svg. TilmannR (talk) 17:04, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Help needed from a license reviewer

File:Marcial Gómez Balsera.jpg used to be a free image extracted from a YouTube video: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Marcial_G%C3%B3mez_Balsera.jpg&direction=prev&oldid=694624426. Since then it has been overwritten with a likely non-free image and the information template is broken. I'm unable to fix the situation as I'm not a license reviewer and therefore unable to revert to the previous state. Thanks for any help. Cryptic-waveform (talk) 21:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Deletion requests

The instructions for the "Delete" template refer to a "Mark for deletion" link in the "left menu". I can't see this anywhere. Which "left menu" is it talking about? ITookSomePhotos (talk) 22:11, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

There should be "Nominate for deletion" and "Report copyright violation" links on the left side of the screen under the "tools" section. Either one works. Really, the "report copyright violation" link could be phrased a little better to indicate clicking it will lead to the image either being speedy deleted or sent to DR by an administrator. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:43, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, I see "Nominate for deletion" now, when I am on an image page. The reason I did not see it earlier seems to be that I was trying to nominate a category for deletion. When I am on a category page I do not see any "Nominate for deletion". Any particular reason for this, do you think? Also, someone should probably change "Mark for deletion" to "Nominate for deletion" at the "Delete" template (I don't have permission to edit this). ITookSomePhotos (talk) 23:05, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure why but there's no way to delete categories through the interface. You have to edit the category, blank the code, and add SD in brackets plus your reason to nominate it for speedy deletion. Otherwise, you can nominate it for discussion and just say you want it deleted. Other then that normal users can't just edit templates. I think you have to make a request for the change on the templates talk or something and someone with the privileges will make the edit. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:11, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Normally, categories go through CfD rather than outright deletion (unless they are already empty) because there is more to be decided than a simple keep/delete. - Jmabel ! talk 04:48, 8 March 2023 (UTC)