Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/11

Speedy deletion: F3. Derivative work of non-free content

• File:Scientology Symbol with LGBTQ Rainbow Flag.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Scientology Symbol with LGBTQ Rainbow Flag.jpg

I tried to figure out how to correctly nominate it for speedy deletion, but alas I could not figure out how. Grorp (talk) 05:03, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Grorp: There is an important distinction between trademark (an identifying idea) and copyright (a creative expression). For example, the content of a novel is copyrighted, while the title or certain character names may be trademarked for marketing purposes. Commons primarily concerns itself with copyright, as it directly affects whether we can host a file. In this case, the symbol itself is too geometrically simple to be copyrighted. For non-copyright restrictions like trademarks that do not affect Commons but may affect reuse elsewhere, we sometimes use templates like {{Trademark}} as courtesy notices on the file pages.

There may be other reasons for us to not keep the file - in this case, it may be out of scope - but F3 is not applicable here. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 05:33, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Pi.1415926535: Well, I'm no intellectual property expert, but I do know that the trademark holder, the Church of Scientology, is particularly litigious... and anti-LGBTQ. And someone created this LGBTQ symbol and placed it in Wikipedia article Scientology and homosexuality, most likely as trolling/provocation/agitation... putting Wiki in the middle and smack dab in the crosshairs. Though it was quickly removed from the article, there is no need of keeping such in Wikicommons. I am only familiar with deletion process in English Wikipedia, and not in Wikicommons. How fast does that process usually go? Grorp (talk) 13:24, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, trademark is not a copyright restriction. However I wonder what educational use there could be for this file. I warned the uploader about scope and copyright violations. Yann (talk) 13:47, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:39, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Probable vandalism

I suspect the mutation https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ABad_Wildbad_tram_2019.jpg&diff=952047828&oldid=874105226 is vandalism, but I dont know any Indonesian. When I try to translate 'kakaksk', I dont see any results wich could apply to a tram. Its the only mutation of 'Feriaulia'. Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:18, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Edit reverted.--Túrelio (talk) 10:25, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:37, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Hosting HDR images as JPEG with gain map

The tools for creating and displaying High Dynamic Range (HDR) images are starting to mature. HDR displays can render much brighter highlights than before, which leads to a big qualitative improvement in an image. Software for HDR production, and web-browser support, are becoming wide-spread. (Note that this is distinct from the tone-mapped HDR images you may have seen for the past decade or so.)

This post is partly a response to User:Hym3242 and User:PantheraLeo1359531 in Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/08#Can I upload bt2020nc/bt2020/smpte2084(PQ) HDR AVIF images to commons and use them in wikipedia articles?. I was wondering the same thing, so I uploaded a couple files to see how well Commons would support them. They are formatted as JPEG with a gain map. The promise of this format is that it is backward-compatible with systems that process and serve standard JPEG. The base image is a JPEG, usable on any device. HDR information is inserted in the file as metadata. In the worst case HDR metadata is lost, resulting in a standard image. In the best case HDR metadata is preserved, the end-user has an HDR-capable display and web browser, and the image looks great.

My test results are at Category:HDR gain-mapped images. Both images survived the process of uploading and rendering previews. HDR metadata was stripped from preview images, but preserved in the original uploads. If you have a newish HDR screen and a compliant web browser, the originals of this house and this church will appear brighter than usual. The effect on the house is subtle, limited to where sunlight hits white paint. The effect on the church is more dramatic: the windows should appear much brighter than the rest of the interior.

Most users of Commons images will see one of the smaller standard files, so for now the benefits of publishing this sort of content are limited. Are there any downsides to publishing it on Commons?

This post isn't marked as a proposal, because hosting these images on Commons works already. At a later date, when the standards are settled and the hardware is widely available, it would be nice to preserve HDR metadata in the generated preview images. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Semiautonomous (talk • contribs) 23:51, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

A phab task would need to be created for "include gain map of images into thumbs"- C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 07:41, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2024-11

Volunteer staff changes

In October 2024, 1 sysop was elected. Currently, there are 180 sysops.

• User:Bastique was elected sysop (35/7/0) on 2 October.

Other news

• Results of Picture of the Year 2023 are out.

---

Edited by RoyZuo.

---

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

--RoyZuo (talk) 19:15, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Special:Uploads/Claudiupt

I'd like a second opinion on the user's uploads. All the pictures seem to be AI-generated. When confronted on his talk page, he admitted to heavily editing one of the pictures. Since the subject of hos articles are lesser known (but notable) persons, I cannot confirm they actually represent the persons he claims they represent. Given this situation, do these pictures respect Commons inclusion policy? Strainu (talk) 10:19, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Help needed with a new userbox template

Hi everyone!

I hope to receive your help with the template Template:User ISNI . The outputs should be as follows: the ISNI code in format like 0000 1111 2222 3333 on the Userbox (with spaces, because of Google indexation of ISNI codes), but the URL should be in this format https://isni.org/isni/0000111122223333 . So, my idea was that a user can input 4 groups of characters separately and the template logic would me it happen in terms of reaching the desirable output fortmat of ISNI code. I'm struggling to make it happen and would like to receive your helping hand, please. David Osipov (talk) 11:54, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Provinces of China by month and year

Hello! I have created templates for the distribution of provinces of China by year and month - these are examples {{MonthinChinabyprovince}} and {{Chinaprovinceyear}}. Could you help with categorization in a short time frame and also check the templates? MasterRus21thCentury (talk) 15:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Is there any consensus for categorizing images by Chinese province by month and year? Trade (talk) 20:03, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

We dont need new templates. use Template:Category description/Year by province. RoyZuo (talk) 23:58, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Derivative works (FOP etc.)

1. does commons want derivative works (dw) that are currently not compatible with com:l, especially photos taken in no-FOP countries?
2. were there users that got blocked for uploading such dw?

--RoyZuo (talk) 19:24, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

• Yes, they are wanted because one day they will be in the public domain. We hide the images and add an undelete date. There should be a mechanism in place where you can hide an image yourself and add the undelete date. --RAN (talk) 01:17, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if its neccessarily in line with the guidelines but I'm big proponent of people uploading uploading copyrighted works under the guise of documenting and theb deleting them with undeletion dates. At the end of the day this is as much about hosting documenting who created certain works and when they will become PD as it is a place to host freely licensed media. That's at least how I see it. There's no harm in uploading something purely to have it deleted so it can be restored once the copyright expires though. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:35, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Afaik, this topic or a similar one was already discussed. And uploading and then deleting sounds a bit circumstancial to me, but it would be very good if you could upload the file and set a publish date (especially for files with copyrighted content that soon will enter the public domain) :). But I strongly support the idea. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:09, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Just create a deletion request with the undeletion date. That's an easy way to do that. Yann (talk) 09:05, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the question one should read "FOP" instead of "no-FOP".
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 10:39, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Edit summary on project chat

Do we have a guideline that one should state which section one is replying to ? If not, should we have one? Commons:Talk page guidelines doesn't say much about it, but seems to concern itself more with user talk pages than with project chat (or noticeboards).

Personally, I find [1] problematic. The user does so regularly and insists on continuing doing so systematically.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:09, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

The gadget should be changed so that includes the section link of the closed discussion. This has already been request on its talk page. I also think section links to closed discussions are useful. If subscribing to a thread one gets notified about any reply (and one can also see the section via the diff linked at t he Revision history) which makes this somewhat redundant but it would still be useful. Better than having a gadget for marking threads about issues as solved would be some native button to do so like there is for DiscussionTools that is used on MediaWiki talk pages.

It's meta:User:DannyS712/EasyResolve. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:19, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

That a gadget could be changed is not really relevant to the question about what we currently require. Also, as the change has been requested for a long time, it's unlikely it will be changed. In the meantime, one should limit its use to user talk pages.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:27, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I think 1) the problem of not including section headers is not large enough for it to mean contributors should stop using it 2) many contributors often also edit without any edit summary or section header + there currently is no policy about such things and while it may be the case they should be requested to include such more often, they usually are not asked to change that 3) the benefits of this gadget outweigh. In addition, it is relevant to this discussion – I never said it was relevant to the question about what "we currently require". However, obviously it's also relevant to that. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:33, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it would be nice if the gadget did this, no it is not a big problem. - Jmabel ! talk 17:42, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Agreed with Jmabel. ReneeWrites (talk) 22:35, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

file description pages from IA Flickr stream

File description pages on these generally have extensive automated content, e.g. at this file there is:

"Identifier, Title, Year, Authors, Subjects, Publisher, Contributing Library, Digitizing Sponsor, Text Appearing Before Image, Text Appearing After Image".

All without actually including the title of the image (included in the source, but vertically).

By default, this all gets added into the "description"-field of {{Information}}. I wonder if there wouldn't be a better place: a separate section and/or field.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 14:30, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

New page for establishing textured meshes on Commons

In 2018, Commons allowed to upload STL files for the first time. To extend the amount of types that can be uploaded, a new page for textured meshes was created. Perhaps one or the another is interested :)

Commons:Textured 3D --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:16, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Moscow State University Herbarium

Hi, I see that the Moscow State University Herbarium has images of its plants under a free license on its website. It would be useful to 1. add all images already uploaded to the source category. 2. license review all files. 3. mass upload all files not yet uploaded. This may requires writing a bot, and knowledge of botany (and may be Russian although the website is also available in English) is probably needed to properly categorize the images (Total items: 983,569). And more than that, apparently all images under [2] are under a free license. Yann (talk) 15:36, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

File from NASA remains in "PD-USGov missing SDC copyright status" category indefinitely

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:45, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I uploaded this file from NASA months ago, and it has been in "PD-USGov missing SDC copyright status" hidden category since then. Usually, a few hours or days after upload, a bot fills the SDC copyright status and removes the file from such kind of category, but this does not seem to be happening with this file. Could it be solved manually in some way? MGeog2022 (talk) 19:43, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

 Done ReneeWrites (talk) 23:48, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @ReneeWrites! MGeog2022 (talk) 13:06, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@MGeog2022 and ReneeWrites: I created and emptied out Category:PD-USGov missing SDC copyright status some time ago. Looks like I forgot to add a job to keep it empty. Did it now and it's catching up. Multichill (talk) 17:37, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

👍 MGeog2022 (talk) 20:43, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

New law in Costa Rica: "Public Domain of Information"

Last Friday, November 1, 2024, Costa Rica’s official newspaper, La Gaceta, published Law 10.554, the "Framework Law on Access to Public Information". Pages 24-37.

Article 18 of this law establishes the following:

"ARTICLE 18 - Public Domain of Information
All materials produced by a public official in the course of their duties shall be considered in the public domain, except for personal data and without prejudice to the limits established in the Political Constitution of the Republic of Costa Rica, in international regulations approved by the Legislative Assembly, and in laws, in accordance with the principle of legal reservation."

I kindly request that a Wikimedia Commons administrator consider including this in the copyright policy. ¡Pura vida! LuchoCR (talk) 00:01, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

• Any idea whether this is retroactive? - Jmabel ! talk 19:45, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

  Hello. Pursuant to Article 34 of the Constitution, it has no retroactive effect. LuchoCR (talk) 01:04, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Commons:Oversighters/Requests/Kadı 2

Hello dear Wikimedia Commons Community,

My request for oversight access is open for voting until 11th of November, 2024. I wanted to announce it here because 5 days have left. Thanks for all voters and who are planning to vote. Kind regards, Kadı Message 14:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

External link detection is now live on Commons

Hi all! We are releasing the first version of our external links detection tool, that will help moderators in identifying potentially problematic media uploaded from potentially problematic domains (such as social media networks and/or stock image suppliers).

If the source corresponds to one of such domains, UploadWizard would create automatically a Structured Data on Commons statement source of file (P7482) file available on the internet (Q74228490), with qualifiers “operator (P137) = <the operator of the website where the image originated>” and “described at URL (P973) = <link to source>”. This would make the potentially problematic uploads easily accessible by administrators and moderators.

For the moment, we will be parsing only for a few selected domains and, if needed, the list can be amended by the community to include other domains that are problematic or have a strong probability of being deleted. We could also make it available for the community to maintain the list of domains directly.

If you have questions or suggestions, please write to us in our project’s talk page. (Since I will be travelling in the next days, I might be slow to respond, so please have patience)

Thanks for your cooperation! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 16:36, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

AI generated and licensing

Hello everyone. I'm trying to find informations about the possibility of creating images with perchance.org so I need to check if licensing is correct. With that AI generator, I've made a portrait for a Wikipedia article without illustration (composer Judith Weir) so I wanted to be sure I could use it on Commons. Thanks for your help. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 07:49, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

You can upload a real photograph of Judith Weir to en.wikipedia.org as they allow fair use, or reach out to her personally to ask if she could release a photograph of herself under a free license that can be uploaded to Commons (you can find a list of e-mail templates you can use here: WP:ERP). While I don't know if there's a policy against it, it's certainly frowned upon to use AI images for the purpose of illustrating things that have nothing to do with AI. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:08, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

It's frowned by a few anti-technology people who don't want to use novel tech for good but slumber. Many AI illustrations are inappropriate, some are great and many could be very useful. However, illustrations of living people are a special case. At least try to make sure no free media of the person exists and you may also try to reach out and ask for a photo albeit that certainly shouldn't be expected. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:11, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Why not? ReneeWrites (talk) 12:38, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Why should it be expected for people to reach out to people via email asking for a CCBY photo, they or somebody else could have simply uploaded it somewhere if they cared and usually these emails don't get a reply at least none that is positive. The main reason is that nowhere are people asked to first reach out via mail asking for such. There may be a point in requiring that but I think it would be enough / better (e.g. because it's more scalable and less time-intensive) to just have some well-findable FAQ-type Wikipedia info page about "I don't like the image of me in the article about me, can I replaced it?" or something like that where there would be info that they can simply release and/or upload a better photo of them under CCBY and then ask on the article or a user talk page about replacing the photo (or replace it directly). Related to that, I think something should be done about the dysfunctional or nonexistent media-requests system including making reaching out via email a much more common activity (I don't think it's particularly useful for or should necessarily be expected when it comes to just photos of people rather than illustrations etc). Prototyperspective (talk) 12:52, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

There's a FAQ-type page for this on the English Wikipedia at en:Wikipedia:A picture of you, and a (badly out of date) one about images in general at en:Wikipedia:Images from social media, or elsewhere. Belbury (talk) 12:09, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

"This is not Judith Weir, it's what an AI estimated she might look like. It's based on 3500 photos of other people, which all have their own copyright."

That's why. DS (talk) 13:42, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

"it's what an AI estimated she might look like" as are paintings. The image would only be used if sufficiently accurate. People also look at copyrighted photos and they can and are allowed learn from any images they have access to. Don't want people to look at your photos/images? Don't put them online or into public exhibitions. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:44, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

So it´s either simply stolen (via AI) or the AI is crystal balling it. That is truely what an encyclopedia needs. Alexpl (talk) 14:00, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

No, I just explained why it's not stolen. Hello to the 18th century. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:02, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

@ReneeWrites, Prototyperspective, DragonflySixtyseven, and Alexpl: A drawing or painting of a living person is accepted when we don't have any alternative illustration (there are many examples on Commons/Wikipedia), even if inspired by/based on many real pictures, so an AI drawing or 3D image is the same logic, at least as long as 1) it isn't a copy of an existing work, 2) it is clearly visible and/or mentioned that it isn't a real picture of the person. My question was mainly about licensing and actually also authorship: can I consider myself as the author or co-author of the image (since I chose/delivered the written instructions/guidelines topo the AI) and can I choose any license I want ? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 15:05, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

No, I think you should set lice {{PD-algorithm}}...it's unclear whether there is some credit/licensing-worthy authorship in prompting; advanced prompting where one continuously adjusts the prompt and modifies the image via img2img and further tools can be quite complex and require good skills but I don't think this applies much to prompting illustrations of persons. There is not really any downside to just selecting PD for these files instead of a CCBY one. Also consider that there probably aren't that many (or are there?) Wikipedia articles with paintings of people where the person lived in a time where photography was already invented. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:32, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

What is that supposed to mean? Almost everybody can turn a photo into a "painting" with a cheap grafics program. But nobody wants to see the results in wikipedia articels. Alexpl (talk) 17:15, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

1. AI images are not converted photos, they start of with a random seed like white noise and then "diffuse" this into a generated image. 2. False: if the result was CCBY and no CCBY photo was available then many people would want to see the results there and they would get added by contributors there. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

@Alexpl: It's not about "turning a photo into a painting", it's about creating a picture to illustrate an article for which we don't have access to any photo/picture with a compatible license. Do you prefer an article without any illustration? @Prototyperspective: There are many examples here. It's a project on French Wikipedia that aims to create articles about women and to add illustrations (of course photos when it's possible) to articles about women. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 22:59, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

If you don't have any photos/pictures of the subject, it is grossly inappropriate to "assign" them an AI-generated portrait. Not having an image at all is preferable to having a completely made-up image which is unlikely to resemble the subject of the article. Omphalographer (talk) 18:00, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Just like paintings it is not completely made-up and it's used only when resembling the subject. I just wonder whether it adds much to the article. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

It's up to individual Wikipedia projects whether they want to use AI-generated portraits for biographies, in the same way that some use speculatively AI-upscaled historical photos and others have a policy not to.

From Category:AI-generated images of living people (PIP), three images (File:Sirisha Bandla drawing.png, File:Midjourney Marie Dauchy.png and File:Drawing of Vida Movahed.png) are in use on Wikipedia projects and/or Wikidata right now. Belbury (talk) 18:10, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Commons:AI-generated media is the relevant guideline here. You can upload what you like, and its copyright status depends on what country you're making it in, and whether you modified it or based it on an input photo. If you're in France and are just writing a prompt, the output image is considered public domain. The file may end up deleted if the French Wikipedia doesn't actually want to use it, and if Commons decides (on the grounds of it not being in use) that it has no educational use. Belbury (talk) 11:57, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Invitation to the upcoming Commons Community Calls -- November 21, 2024

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

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

Our first call will focus on Content Organization. It will take place at two different time slots:

•  The first one will be on November 21, at 08:00 UTC, and it will be hosted on Zoom by Senior Director of Product Management Runa Bhattacharjee; you can subscribe to it on Meta;
•  The second one will be on November 21, at 16:00 UTC, and it will be hosted on Zoom by Chief Product & Technology Officer Selena Deckelmann; you can subscribe to it on Meta.

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

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

We hope to see you and/or read you very soon! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:33, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Please remove Category:Depreradovich family from Category:Zora Preradović

Hello there. I want to remove the parent category Category:Depreradovich family from Category:Zora Preradović, but I couldn't do it by editing. The category has no options for modifying and removing. The same problem is for Category:Petar Preradović, Category:Paula Preradović too. If you are reading this, please help me. I need to remove Category:Depreradovich family from Category:Zora Preradović, Category:Petar Preradović, Category:Paula Preradović.

I also need to remove Category:1911 in Ternopil Oblast and Category:1911 establishments in Ukraine by region, and Category:Karpelès (surname) from Category:1911 establishments in Ternopil Oblast and Category:Suzanne Karpelès, respectively. Please help me in that too.

OperationSakura6144 (talk) 14:17, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

That category was erroneously linked to Wikidata item Preradović (Q20997674). I have made the correction and purged the cache and done null edits. Should be decategorized. William Graham (talk) 15:25, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Upload a new version

It's one hour I am waiting to upload a new version of Ahmad Shakir al-Karmi.png. Its not working for me. Can anyone please do it? the new source of new version is https://archive.org/details/2-1927-28/%E2%80%8F%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85%201%20-%20%E2%80%8F%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B2%D8%B1%D9%83%D9%84%D9%8A%201954-1959/page/n148/mode/1up. I will crop it later. --Sazwar (talk) 19:49, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Convenience link: File:Ahmad Shakir al-Karmi.png. - Jmabel ! talk 22:58, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

 Done - Jmabel ! talk 23:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Template:CR cooldown

What is the "cool down period" referred to at Category:Carmen Contreras Bozak? RAN (talk) 15:56, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @R'n'B, RoyZuo, Enhancing999 as involved users.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:36, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

RussBot will move pages out of redirected categories into the target category, but it waits a week after the last edit to the redirected category. That week is the "cooldown" period. It's meant to prevent pages ping-ponging back and forth between categories in the event a redirect gets reverted. --R'n'B (talk) 01:08, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

What parts of Template:CR cooldown should be improved?
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 09:45, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

• Probably adding the above text to the cooldown template to define cooldown period. --RAN (talk) 15:03, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

  Or the explanaaion could just be on a project page someplace, and linked from the template. I don't think we want to turn the template into a wall of text, or have to revise a template if the cooldown were to work a little differently in the future. - Jmabel ! talk 18:34, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Remove 1911 in Ternopil Oblast and 1911 establishments in Ukraine by region from Category:1911 establishments in Ternopil Oblast, and Category:Young people in Cuba from Category:Children in Cuba.

Like I said yesterday, I need to remove the parent categories 1911 in Ternopil Oblast and 1911 establishments in Ukraine by region from Category:1911 establishments in Ternopil Oblast, and also Category:Young people in Cuba from Category:Children in Cuba, but I couldn't do it manually. Please help me in it and tell me how you removed Category:Depreradovich family from Category:Zora Preradović elaborately so that I could do it myself following that technique. OperationSakura6144 (talk) 04:52, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Appears to be done. Probably was a template fix. - Jmabel ! talk 18:40, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

2024 open letter to the Wikimedia Foundation

Hi, It is usually best not to spread issues from one project to another, but this is a much wider issue, which may impact all Wikimedia projects, including Commons.

In brief, Asian News International, an Indian news agency, has taken to court the Wikimedia Foundation over its article on the English Wikipedia. Then it has requested that editors' identities to that article to be disclosed. And last, but not least, it has requested the article about this court case to be taken down, which the WMF did, pending the result. So there is now an 2024 open letter to the Wikimedia Foundation. Please sign it to protect our freedom to edit. More information available at the Signpost, on Community response to Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation, on the BBC, and newslaundry.com. Yann (talk) 17:26, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

It's a bit weird to think that WMF participates in court proceedings in other countries than the US, be it Iceland, India, Iran, etc.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 17:49, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Our Wikipedias are international projects, and some countries like the Philippines @JWilz12345: have a stance that all internet companies are subject to their laws. I signed, thanks for the reminder, User:Yann. Abzeronow (talk) 18:12, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

The question is what is WMF stance on that.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 18:18, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Unknown. When I talked to a few WMF people at Wikimania 2024, I got some indications that they would not comply with some legal orders to gather some information that they currently don't have. However, it may be possible senior leadership at the Foundation believes access to India outweighs the risks to three editors (at least one lives in India). Obviously, I disagree. Abzeronow (talk) 18:40, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the WMF policy is to comply with court orders if the country is democratic and to not comply in authoritarian countries. With for example countries from the EU, Russia and China it is easy to say in which category they belong. With India it is not that easy to say in which category it belongs. GPSLeo (talk) 21:18, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

In case it is unclear, because not stated explicitly above, the petition is a call for WMF to refuse to hand over information about editors to an Indian court. - Jmabel ! talk 18:43, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

There was some WP/Commons India-brouhaha in 2020: Commons:Deletion requests/File:India Bhutan Locator.png. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:17, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

How to edit Special:EditWatchlist, when there is a server timeout?

I have 43k pages on my watchlist. I want to remove thousands of them by editing Special:EditWatchlist. This however does not work because of a server timeout (the page is likely to large). What are my options? My network connection works fine. --Polarlys (talk) 17:56, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

You have to use the Special:EditWatchlist/raw editor. GPSLeo (talk) 18:56, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, this helps me a lot! Have a good weekend. Polarlys (talk) 21:33, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:58, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

About Category:Lakes in the canton of Zurich.

Also, I need to say something. This might be controversial but look at Category:Lakes in the canton of Zurich. There was an attempt by a bot to move Category:Lakes in the canton of Zürich to Category:Lakes in the canton of Zurich which has no umlaut over "u" in "Zurich", which makes no sense as most, if not all nor many, categories related to the canton of Zürich use "Zürich" with umlauted u (ü) instead. If you think moving Category:Lakes in the canton of Zürich to Category:Lakes in the canton of Zurich is justified, give me the reasons for it. OperationSakura6144 (talk) 05:33, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

It should use whatever spelling is used by Category:Canton of Zürich.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 09:43, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

At least there should have been a discussion at CfD before initiating a bot move. Moves at en.wikipedia, especially controversial ones, are no justification for bot moves at Commons. Rudolph Buch (talk) 18:40, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

The main reason would be that, for a Databank, use of the alphabet other than what's on the top of the keyboard is superfluous.

Pronunciation is of no consequence here. The project's core language is English. Zürich is Zurich in English. Use of diacritic marks in English is unusual, unless quoting French.

Diacritic marks are affectations within the setting of a databank. They are an unwanted overhead for users with standard keyboards, their use in the real world is inconsistent. Their absence does not destroy the meaning of the word. Their inclusion does not enhance the defined meaning. Even in Zurich, there are many signs not using the umlaut. Broichmore (talk) 14:54, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

"fire box" at Lean-tos and picnic sites in Sweden

Hi, in Sweden one often finds "fire boxes" at Lean-tos and picnic sites, such as here. In OSM, they are often just labeled firepit or bbq or so. I couldn't find out what the correct term is. Is there a wikidata (and OSM) entry (instance of) for them? What do the Swedes call them? Thx. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uli@wiki (talk • contribs) 14:56, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

That's a really weird link. I presume it is meant to go to File:Shelter (lean-to, vindskydd) at Skimlingen Lake (Uddevalla Municipality, Sweden) 01.jpg. - Jmabel ! talk 20:06, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Rename of a PDF in transcription at Wikisource breaks Wikisource links

I renamed a PDF while it was being transcribed, and now a bunch of links on Wikisource are broken, including CSS stylesheet links, hindering transcription and messing up the styling of the transcribed book (discussion on Wikisource). Could anyone make a bot to fix this sort of situation, please? Or is another fix suitable? I'd be grateful for any information. HLHJ (talk) 17:12, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

I posted on the Scriptorium and, almost instantly, MarkLSteadman fixed it. Thank you very much! HLHJ (talk)

FYI

For the next few weeks, I'm looking forward to nominating some kind Wikimedians from this project on m:Merchandise giveaways to appreciate their contributions. I nominated @Abzeronow yesterday and I am hopeful that his contributions are valued. You might want to take a look at at the nomination. _Regards, Aafi ^(talk) 09:49, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Curious how much that cost? Aren't donations to WMF to run the servers and pay for MediaWiki developments?
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 09:53, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps check m:Wikimedia merchandise for this purpose. _Regards, Aafi ^(talk) 10:07, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't say anything about the cost of not selling the merchandise and not spending the charity funds on fixing the misconfigured Commons upload function instead.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 10:16, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

The stability of uploads (on the server side) has been improved significantly in this year. (this allows more stable upload tools by users. I cannot comment on the Upload Wizard, i nearly never use the Wizard) C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 16:37, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Apparently uploads by users at Commons are slowed down or stopped each time another wiki does some large scale cache invalidation, e.g. to add "JsonConfig tracking category" at dewiki (phab:T378352), More about it at Commons:Village_pump/Technical#Upload_Wizard_very_slow.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 21:15, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Something discovered only 2 weeks ago. It's getting fixed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:34, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

"Aren't donations to WMF to run the servers and pay for MediaWiki developments?" No. They are to support the foundation, which has as it's mission: 'to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally'. Handing out merch is a very small gesture that is relatively cheap to do and a gesture of appreciation from community to some of its members. Keeping the site up and developing the software is another (infinitely more expensive) part of that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:43, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Making such an announcement while having a request for Oversight rights running is a bit odd as it looks like you would try to buy votes. GPSLeo (talk) 16:23, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

{{TOO-US}}

When are we actually supposed to use this template?--Trade (talk) 12:24, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it is ever the only alternative, but it can clarify the reason something is {{PD-ineligible}} in the U.S. - Jmabel ! talk 19:29, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

US law is the “default” on Commons because Commons is hosted there. I’m not sure what purpose this has. Dronebogus (talk) 12:17, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

It's one of the oldest license templates we have and still used by many older files. --Rosenzweig τ 12:12, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Copy captions and alt texts from Wikisource?

Separately, wWould it be possible to automatically copy the captions and alt descriptions added to thea book transcription, adding them to the pages of the corresponding Commons files? Example in links. HLHJ (talk) 22:52, 10 November 2024 (UTC). (edited HLHJ (talk) 15:33, 11 November 2024 (UTC))

Broken link for share-alike clause in Template:Cc-by-sa-3.0, Template:Cc-by-sa-2.0, ...

The same problem also affects Template:Cc-by-sa-2.0, Template:Cc-by-sa-4.0,3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0 (and related CC templates), showing this SA clause (and in many translations of these templates, if they use wikilinks with the prefix alias, instead of the canonical prefix, or plain external links, see Category:CC license tags). The problem is apparently caused by externally translated messages such as {{int:Wm-license-cc-conditions-share alike-text (Cc-by-sa-2.0)}}. Everything is admin-protected and cannot be fixed (the problem is also present in the English translation source).

See also Template talk:Cc-by-sa-3.0#Broken link for share-alike clause, for the 1st template that I detected and where I 1st signaled it.

So this affects A LOT of file description pages on Commons, whose licencing conditions are NOT displayed correctly. verdy_p (talk) 08:09, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Someone accidentally added an extra line break on MediaWiki:Wm-license-cc-conditions-share alike-text/fr. Already fixed on Translatewiki, but might take some time to show here so I modified the local version for now. Multichill (talk) 17:47, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Unknown station and historic coaches in Denmark

File:Old coaches in Denmark in 2000.jpg

Where could this be? It is along an electric line in Denmark. I suppose this ia historic collection of coaches used for some special train.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:23, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

The picture was taken at Hillerød Station. The historic coaches belongs to Nordsjællands Jernbaneklub. --Dannebrog Spy (talk) 12:10, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Copyright for street poster?

I have taken a photo of a pro-Palestine poster that was hanging outside in the street, it is not visible who created the poster. Am I allowed to upload it or is there a copyright for the poster? Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 14:17, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

There can be: it all depends on where the poster was hung. E.g. in the United States, the threshold of originality is higher than in Australia, so a design has to be more complex before it is even able to be copyrighted in American than down under. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:21, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

It was in Amsterdam, NL. The design is not complex. Simple political, caricature and slogan, no author name. can I upload it? --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 14:37, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I recommend you take a look at Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Netherlands and use your best judgement. If you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. Someone making a good faith upload that happens to be a copyright violation will not face some kind of punishment: the file just gets deleted and we all move on. Looking forward to seeing it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:52, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Even if there is a copyright for the poster (and a caricature is probably artistically complex enough to incur copyright), the Netherlands has some Freedom of the Panorama, so if you photographed it from a public street it's probably okay. It's not as though you are likely to be infringing on commercial profits or otherwise harming the author; the author probably wants people to see their poster and register their protest, and does not want or expect to make money off selling posters. This is actually a legal consideration. HLHJ (talk) 15:04, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I am attempting to upload now and when I ad "FoP-Netherland" with "{{}}" it still says "The wikitext you entered doesn't contain a valid license template." --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 15:55, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, these arguments cannot be taken into account. Copyright is also granted for any kind of advertisement --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:13, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Depending on the jurisdiction, they can. For instance, in Canada, while ads are copyright, almost any third-party reproduction of them is legal.[3] I think there was even a case where someone posted a movie trailer on YouTube without comment, and the movie-maker sued (because the trailer was awful and people mocked it), and their claim got rejected on the grounds that reposting an ad was fair dealing. And the international Berne 3-part test is pretty much those considerations (but does not mention the rights of non-copyright holders, which are important in Canadian law). HLHJ (talk) 15:51, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I have uploaded it. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pro-Palestinian_Resistance_Poster_Amsterdam.jpg#%7B%7Bint%3Alicense-header%7D%7D If there is something wrong, please fix it. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 16:21, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

To answer your question, this is photograph is fine. The relevant ruling is here: COM:FOP Netherlands. Specifically these parts:

It is not an infringement of copyright to reproduce and publish pictures of a work, as meant in article 10 (...) which are made to be permanently located in public places, as long as the work is depicted as it is located in the public space.

With regards to "permanent": Article 18 is limited to works that were originally made for being placed permanently in public places. The literature mentions that this would also apply to graffiti, even if these normally are removed rather quickly. This is consistent with the interpretation of "permanent" e.g. in Germany as explained here; the "natural lifetime" of a graffito is considered to end with its removal.

While a poster is not the same as graffiti, the same principle applies. This is also extended to things like public advertisements, which also feature copyrighted material.

You start entering risky territory, copyright-wise, when you divorce this image from its context (this being the public space). For instance, if you made a derivative version of the poster that's a .svg of the graphical elements of the poster, those are probably still copyrighted and may be deleted, despite being a derivative of a free image, even if no author is known. ReneeWrites (talk) 23:39, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Commons mentioned in Hyperallergic

When Copyright Transforms the Right to Remember at Hyperallergic. Subtitle: "Images of “We Are Our Mountains,” an Armenian monument in occupied Artsakh, have disappeared from Wikimedia Commons in the months since Azerbaijan’s invasion."

Doesn't look like there's anything to be done. Artwork created in the USSR, then in [an area internationally regarded as part of] Azerbaijan, which only has non-commercial FOP. But some legal speculation in the article that may be worth discussing. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  00:26, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

All I can see is an empty white screen. Seems they're hyperallergic against Firefox. -- Herbert Ortner (talk) 09:30, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Better discuss this at Commons talk:Freedom of panorama, where it is currently being discussed. The topic forum is becoming fragmented (also including a message on my talk page). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 01:42, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Multilingual signature design

I would like to design my signature myself and would like the word for the talk page to be adapted to the language set. Which code do I have to use in the wikitext? --KimKelting (talk) 16:31, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

KimKelting, see WP:CUSTOMSIG for details. Note that it is on English Wikipedia. Ratekreel (talk) 18:19, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, disregard the above reply. You can add {{int:Talkpagelinktext}}, which will display the word for talk page according to language. Ratekreel (talk) 18:26, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

When I enter this, it makes {{SUBST:int:Talkpagelinktext}} out of it KimKelting (talk) 07:37, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Why categories "London by topic" and "Porto by topic" act differently #2

This follows Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/09#Why categories "London by topic" and "Porto by topic" act differently

@JotaCartas, Jmabel, and Joshbaumgartner: I investigated. The two categories London by topic and Porto by topic both include {{Country category}}. This uses {{Country category/data}} with by=topic and name=London or name=Porto. {{Country category/data}} collects the informations that {{Country category/layout}} finally display. The problem is that {{Country category/data}} use a lot of {{Country label}} that recalls {{Country label/K}} for London (and a row exists) and {{Country label/N}} for Porto (and a row doesn't exist). ZandDev (talk) 13:05, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Implicit dual-licensing

Commons:Deletion requests/Files found with "with an active link required" recently concluded that if somebody CC-licences a photo and specifies additional restrictions on its usage, this is meaningless, and all they've actually done is dual-license it. Anybody who wants to reuse the image can choose the base CC licence and ignore the additions because any condition provided for outside of the license is not part of the license and does not constitute an additional restriction.

Should we put an explanatory template on such files? Commons visitors would be forgiven for assuming that such conditions were additional restrictions, possibly in Commons' voice, that had to be obeyed. Belbury (talk) 11:07, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Do we need to retain the text describing the non-free license at all? If we're confident that the files can be reused under a CC license, we shouldn't need to retain information about alternate licensing terms. Omphalographer (talk) 04:13, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Commons:Multi-licensing says to retain this kind of thing, that Commons "tries to preserve mention" of overly restrictive licences (such as non-commercial ones) when they're multi-licenced alongside a valid free one. Belbury (talk) 18:55, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Charts extension is about to be deployed

Hey everyone,

As a heads up, WMF is preparing to deploy the Chart extension to Commons the week of Nov 25th, 2024, with deployment to pilot wikis soon after. Charts are already enabled on testwiki and testcommons, where you can find the documentation. The extension has been designed to use the Commons Data namespace as the central store for definitions and datasets, making it easy to include a chart on any wiki.

We know that visibility into pages in the Data namespace is low, creating gaps in the current ability to patrol it. While the initial deployment to pilot wikis should be minimally disruptive, we are considering improvements to the Data namespace that would help make storing charts on Commons sustainable in the long run. We're open to suggestions about what other improvements you’d like to see and we are available to answer any questions you have about the deployment.

Thanks in advance for you help! -- Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:32, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

@Sannita (WMF) Thanks for the info. The main reason the Data namespace is flying under the radar of most Commons users is almost certainly that it doesn't work with Categories (see phab:T242596). Categories are out main way of organizing Media. If Data: pages are not showing up in Categories, for most people over here they might just as well not exist at all. Reason number 2 would be lack of Structured Data integration (phab:T235332) - which is somewhat surprising given how much StructuredData has been pushed by WMF/WMDE in the past. Don't you folks talk to each other across teams? El Grafo (talk) 18:58, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

You mentioned testcommons but testcommons shows that it is disabled and editing there is not possible. And one question: If the community decides to block anon users from editing charts can this be done through a config change or do we need to create an AbuseFilter if we want to block them? GPSLeo (talk) 19:23, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Tramtype Wroclaw

Unfortunately there is no wikipedia articles wich list the tram numbers of the tramtypes. I'm looking for 2242. It looks like Konstal 105Na, but I am not certain. Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:59, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Solved, I found a close number (2250) in File:Konstal 105Na, -2250, MPK Wrocław (35054236092).jpg.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:05, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

mail:commons-l

For those wondering why you got unsubscribed from commons-l...

First, I am sorry. It was me, hastily clicking "confirm" to remove all subscribers instead of specific user I wanted to remove.
  [06:22:19] <revi> oh shit
  [06:23:07] <revi> I just clicked "remove all members" for commons-l and mindlessly clicked "confirm", would it be possible to undo... this catastrophy?
Yeah, I am stupid. Mea culpa. What I wanted to do was "unsubscribe that fakemailgenerator user", but I ended up clicking "remove all" instead of "remove selected".
I filed a task to see if WMF can undo my grave mistake. Again, I am sorry for all those confused.

After calming myself down, I just took second look on subscriber lists, and it seems like... I closed the browser fast enough to stop truly removing everyone, so people with email address K (and later in latin alphabet) survived, but A to K was affected.

Well, those who received this in your inbox is probably unaffected, so... if someone asks, tell them to resubscribe or wait to see if WMF can resubscribe you. :P

(Pasted from my posts to commons-l)

Yes, I am certified to be stupid at this point. Sorry for those who got unsubscribed. — regards, Revi 06:51, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I think you could blame the interface.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 07:05, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, but I should have read that RED button more carefully. :-p — regards, Revi 07:21, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Note: Database got rolled back and (unless you manually subscribed again) you were automatically re-subscribed with your preferences intact. (If you manually re-subscribed, your preferences are not restored.) — regards, Revi 08:56, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Project scope: question concerning videos

Hello,

I have a question, or a request for opinions, about our project scope concerning video files. While working on license reviews, I happen now and then over video files without sound; at the source (like Youtube), the clips do have sound. I do not know for every case why the audio data was removed, it is likely so to avoid copyright infringements. I challenged one of these files with a deletion request for being out of scope as lacking educational usefulness. This opinion seems to get challenged by Green Giant among others in this discussion. On this deletion request page, there are already clashing opinions, with Srittau supporting the notion of a lack of usefulness.

I, on my part, do think that subtitles are not enough to heave a tampered video with sounds removed over the threshold of educational usability. I'd rather have a nicely curated media repository instead of a heap of data with little usefulness, even if this means that the amount of video data for Commons gets reduced as a result. There is no point in removing useful data – vocal information may e.g. serve for people endeavouring to learn a language, more so than subtitles. Of course, videos that are already published without sound as a concise decision by a videographer would still be allowable. What does the majority think? Shall video clips with sound data removed in order to avoid copyright issues that have sound at the source be unconditionally seen as in scope (barring other issues) or is the sound removal a valid reason for deletion? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 03:25, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I also think if a video is published under a CC license and we challenged the legitimacy of this claim for the audio I would also not trust this claim for the video. In most cases I would delete the entire video per COM:PCP. If there are explicitly separate licenses for video it is something different. In such cases I would keep the video only version. GPSLeo (talk) 07:07, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

is the sound removal a valid reason for deletion No, it is not. Exceptions include if the audio is an essential part of the video (and with no plausible substitution any time soon). Prototyperspective (talk) 07:16, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Actually the source is not under a free license. So the issue is not scope, but copyright. Yann (talk) 09:55, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

More generally, the only cases where the video is OK but not the sound are old films with a new soundtrack. I have never seen a recent free video with a copyrighted sound. Yann (talk) 09:57, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

There are lots of videos with nonfree sound that have their sound muted (including recent ones). Good time to mention that somebody should take care of Category:Videos containing non-free audio as well as the other cat linked there. It can be a bit more difficult to fix in an optimal way when only parts of videos extensively contain nonfree audio while other parts contain useful speech audio that would be good to keep. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:01, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I've seen plenty. A common one is conference presentations where the conference video was released as CC-by-sa 4.0, but where the conference organizer had copyrighted intro/outro/background music at the venue that nobody had considered. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:21, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

In such a case I would cut away the break entirely. If there is a speaker and from the neighbouring room there is some music audible it would falls under de minimis. GPSLeo (talk) 07:43, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I also think that this particular video is not very useful this way. And even with subtitles, it is questionable AND you are modifying the video to a level that materially alters it, while not being very distinct from the original. Japan has moral rights, which means that the author is allowed protection of the integrity of the work. I think it can be argued that that integrity get pretty broken down here and I think it is not a good look for our project. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:26, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

@TheDJ: If it is free-licensed in a way that allows derivative works, "integrity of the work" would seem moot. - Jmabel ! talk 18:34, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to place a clarification of my ideas that seems to be necessary. There are in my opinion two different crowds of Commons contributors, of course with large overlaps. One of these crowds are uploaders, the other are maintainers. The maintainers take care of operations like license reviewing, file moving, categorization and so on. I do see an obligation to provide good quality data among the uploader crowd so as to not unnecessarily add to the maintainer workload. Completely removing audio so as to filter out possible copyright infringements of the original videographer on media like interviews or vocal explanations is not a suitable way of working, I dare to say. I'd rather have less videos than clutter our repository with media with dubious usability at best that will hide the good works in their mass. Is this something that could be working into a RFC or policy? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 00:05, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

As a general matter: there is probably a lot less user review of audio/video uploads to Commons than there should be. Reviewing video content requires dramatically more time and effort than reviewing images; even with the smaller number of files being uploaded, many are probably not getting viewed at all. Omphalographer (talk) 20:16, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Parking assistants category?

Parking assistant in Cuenca, Ecuador

The lady on the picture on the right is basically a replacement of the parking machine: She takes payment for parking, indicates where there are available places, and stops the traffic when a car needs to park in or out. She is likely employed by the municipality. Is there a proper name for this type of profession? Do we have a category describing this activity? Ymblanter (talk) 21:24, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I think this fits: Category:Parking marshals. It also links to this category: Category:Traffic wardens. ReneeWrites (talk) 22:21, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 08:11, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Obtuse bot created categories

Apparently User:Gzen92Bot has been mass creating thousands of categories that only contain a couple of images and basing the names of the categories on the file names. Category:"Papier dominoté. Damier alternant le motif du dé, face cinq, un carré plein, deux carrés avec deux fleurs stylisées différentes, un carré avec un motif " géométrique ", sur fond vert pâle - btv1b10576326x being one of thousands of examples. People can look through Category:Files from Gallica needing categories (images) to find a ton more. Creating 20 word categories based on purely descriptive file names seems sub-suboptimal at best though. More so given that it's being done in mass and through automated editing. I'm not really sure what to do about it though since I'm not an expert on bots. Let alone am I even sure if it's an issue to begin with. But it does seem like a needlessly obtuse way to do things. So does anyone else have an opinion about it or know what can be done done to fix the issue assuming it even is one? --Adamant1 (talk) 04:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: I fully agree. Creation of >7,000 uncategorized and possibly-nonsense categories is not appropriate. Doubly so given that this does not seem to be an approved task for the bot. I have blocked the bot until/unless the task is approved.

@Gzen92: This is the third time your bot has been blocked for operating with an unapproved task. Per Commons:Bots#Permission to run a bot, it is not optional to seek approval for bot tasks. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 05:46, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: As a regular user with some background in research data management, I completely agree as well. Thanks for pursuing the matter. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 06:53, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Gee .. what's the cleanup plan for these?
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 07:48, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Please delete all the subcategories of Category:Files from Gallica needing categories (images). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:56, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Strong oppose towards such mass deletions. These categories appear to contain similar images, which can greatly aid the manual, proper catgorisation on commons - these categories may or may not be deleted if the images in them have been properly categorized. ~TheImaCow (talk) 16:24, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Most of them contain just 2 images. The files would be upmerged. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:20, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1, Pi.1415926535, and Enhancing999: I continued uploading following Commons:Bots/Requests/Gzen92Bot-4, but I agree with the additional categories. I will make a new request (I will indicate the link here soon). This raises questions: there are millions of files to upload and it cannot be done manually, so from how many files should a category be created? How to name the categories (other than with the name of the file)? Following the decision I could easily empty the categories. Gzen92 (talk) 08:19, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

If you are not able to categorize the photos properly when uploading such an amount of photos you should slow down the upload process and create them manually. GPSLeo (talk) 08:29, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Categorisation of images on Commons is not a requirement when uploading images & it shouldn't be - especially not for batch/GLAM uploads. A category such as "Images to check" is sufficient & often much better than automated categorisation. There are still thousands of content categories with random junk in them that was dumped there by automatic categorisation from ten years ago which needs to be cleaned up. A bunch of images, or also a bunch of 500,000 images waiting in a "to check/to categorize" category don't hurt anyone whatsoever, as opposed to poorly done automatic categorisation. ~TheImaCow (talk) 16:24, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I made the request. Gzen92 (talk) 17:26, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it's practical in this case but the way I'd do it is to categorize the images by subject. For instance "maps from Gallica", "books from Gallica", Etc. Etc. Then people sub-categorize the images beyond that if they want to. But at least it doesn't lead to a bunch of random categories. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:42, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

•  Comment I'm not a fan of mass creation of categories with very few files in them (generally I do not like categories with very few files and I prefer to have 20 photos of John Doe in one category rather than to have 10 categories of John Doe in 2020, John Doe in 2021 or John Doe wearing a yellow hat looking west). But now they are created I agree with TheImaCow that it might be better to keep them untill better categories are created. --MGA73 (talk) 18:04, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

At Commons:Bots/Requests/Gzen92Bot-6 there is now a discussion if the user should be trust to allow more uploads without categorization or cleanup of the current mess.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 10:46, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1, Enhancing999, TheImaCow, Prototyperspective, and MGA73: the millions of files in Gallica will not be able to be categorized automatically (default maintenance category). So :

1) Empty the 7,000 categories of Category:Files from Gallica needing categories (images), put the files in Category:Files from Gallica needing categories (images).

2) Continue uploading files to Category:Files from Gallica needing categories (images).

Is that what you need to do? Gzen92 (talk) 09:43, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Instead of 7000 or 50000 categories with strange names will it be possible to make fewer categories and put the files in them? For example 500 categories with more generic names? Putting millions of files in just one category does not sound optimal. --MGA73 (talk) 11:22, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

User:Multichill can you remember where the mapping of images from Geograph was done? I think perhaps a similar method could perhaps work here. --MGA73 (talk) 11:24, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's an idea. With the author or what is represented. The problem is that it is not structured data, it's text (example author "Atget, Eugène (1857-1927). Photographe" or title "[Eglise] St Sulpice - Buffet d'orgues dessiné par Chalgrin - A été orné de statues de Clodion : [photographie] / [Atget]"), it's complicated. Gzen92 (talk) 12:41, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Some effort is needed to map existing metadata to Commons categories. Professionals at GLAMs should be able to work it out.

Millions of uncategorized files aren't useful. Files dumps should be avoided.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 08:31, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

The "obtuse" categories group the files by the originating works so they seem to be useful. It should be made sure that they do not interfere with manually curated categories or pages like "special: uncategorized categories" but as long as they stay in their own maintenance system I see no need to mass delete them. More important is to develop rules and a workflow how to proceed with this huge upload. Many of the files are valuable and can be put to good use so a more positive view may be adequate. Does anyone remember Commons:British Library/Mechanical Curator collection ten years ago? I´m not sure whether User:Jheald or User:Pigsonthewing initiated that and they chose a different approach (automated table of contents with a focus on commons workflow and manual upload instead of automated upload) but they may have some advice on the handling of British Library´s french counterpart. I hope they are still around :-) --Rudolph Buch (talk) 10:57, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

While ironing my laundry I thought about it a bit more and have a few suggestions:

• (1) Check if the bot needs these exact category names to avoid double uploads. If yes, we shouldn´t change them for now even though they are strange.
• (2) Make sure that the provenance of the files from Gallica is included by a template in the file descriptions so this information can´t get lost by any recategorization done manually. Same for the uploader information, if Gzen wishes to retain that.
• (3) Allow the manual creation of a set of maintenance subcategories to group Gallica files and cats by country and by object type (e.g. Category:Gallica - Uncategorized buildings in France or Category:Gallica - Uncategorized people of Italy and invite everyone to move (not copy!) all suitable content there. Reason: Anyone can do that kind of rough sorting in a first manual run. For a a finer categorization people with interest and expertise in the specific topic can proceed from there.
• (4) Define how comprehensive an image must be categorized before it can be released from the maintenance categories.
• (5) Create a special Gallica dust bin, e.g. Category:Gallica - files and cats to be deleted, to avoid the complicated nominations for deletion of files and categories that contain have no useful content
• (6) Move all the empty images, backsides of postcards and obsolete categories into the dust bin, but keep and rename all categories that group a series of files like book pages or images from the same artist or style.

--Rudolph Buch (talk) 17:30, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't think building a parallel temporary hierarchy for a millions of files is the way to go. If there are issues with mapping meta data to our categories, this should be looked at by specialists.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 17:36, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

The file name is the Gallica "title", I can truncate it or put only the Gallica identifier (btv...).

I will try to extract all the authors and see how many there are (unique). If there are not too many, I can match them with existing categories.

Otherwise I can use the date to make categories by year or decade.

But with so many files, there will always be a need for better human classification. Gzen92 (talk) 21:40, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

By author, 25,200 cases. About 11,100 complete (example "Dautel, Pierre-Victor (1873-1954 ; sculpteur)") and they must be associated with a category. And very often only family names (example "Dannbach, P"). Gzen92 (talk) 10:27, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

By date, 4,387 uniques (there are intervals, example "1840-1860"), 563 if I take the first year. With about 1,200,000 images, 2,000 files on average by categories. Gzen92 (talk) 10:50, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi, I'm also against mass-deletions of actual content. However, Gzen92, my suggestion here is to (regrettably: manually) make a list of images that you want to upload as just one single file, without the reverse, like for example in the current Category:(Paris, hôtel de Châtillon) Profil du corps de logis et des pavillons sur la rue (profil de la cour d'honneur du côté droit, second projet) - (dessin) - btv1b6937302q. The architectural drawing is certainly of interest for Commons, the flipside is not. A bit less than half the categories you create, just have these "2-file cases". If you don't upload the reverse/flipside in the first place, there is also no need to create a category (which will have to get deleted eventually, when interested users process the images). These single-images can then be placed directly in Category:Files from Gallica needing categories (images). Best regards. --Enyavar (talk) 06:41, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello. Problem of the reverse side: the description is common to all the images of an id, there is no indication "reverse side". 458,000 id so 458,000 BnF pages to go see and choose the photos, it is not possible.

I propose:

Subcategory by year in Category:Files from Gallica needing categories (images), for example Category:Files from Gallica needing categories (images of 1880).

No category for 2 files because often reverse sides (category with 3 or more files).

At the end of the import, I will manually browse the categories by year to visually identify the reverse sides and move them to a "trash" folder. Gzen92 (talk) 07:23, 15 November 2024 (UTC)