Commons talk:Galleries/Archive 1

Great!

Whoever wrote this has read my mind. Or are they a genius, too? Samulili 15:43, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Great minds think alike ;) Rocket000 16:55, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Captions and sections

There should be something about captions and sections too. These are somewhat problematic because each media file can't have a caption in every language, and each heading can only really be written in one language too. Richard001 04:43, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is something that needs to be addressed. I just don't know what a good solution would be. I have seen some galleries that use collapsible divs for the captions that have a lot of translations. It solved that problem of length, but was kinda annoying to have to click on each one to expand it. I have seen some headers that try to accommodate more than one language (e.g. == Header / En-tête / Коллектор ==). But that's not practical. I'm going to have a look around. I'm sure there's some good ideas already out there. Rocket000 16:55, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Categorizing galleries

I'm pretty sure about this, but I wanted to double check.

Let's say I have Category:A with subcategories: B, C, and D. I also have Galleries: B, C, and D (matching letters = same subject) Should these be place in their respective category (e.g. gallery B in category B) or in Category:A? Rocket000 19:36, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

That's an important question, though I'm not sure about the answer (maybe take it up on the 'pump?, you could also have a look around and try to work out what is more common). If we use the latter option, there are twice as many things to look for when browsing ("so there's no category... better check the galleries too"). Richard001 04:25, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

That depends. If it is a species of a living organism, there should not be a category B actually and the gallery should be categorized to A (the genus), see COM:TOL. If the gallery is of the type "the best of category B", the gallery b should be categorized to B. -- Slaunger (talk) 20:59, 14 June 2008 (UTC). Examples

• The species gallery Saxifraga nivalis (B-gallery) is categorized to Category:Saxifraga (A-cat) in accordance with COM:TOL. And there is no (and should not be any) Category:Saxifraga nivalis. There also exists a genus gallery Saxifraga (A-gallery). If this one was done right, it would be a gallery showing one good example of each species, as this gives a nice idea to what species in this genus look like. In this case it is mostly a set of links, which is unfortunate - and redundant to the galleries, which are already categorized to the parent category.
• The category Category:Pipe organs has quite a few images, a subset is shown in Pipe organ - in this case sub-divided in countries.

-- Slaunger (talk) 21:17, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok. That's what I meant. My hypothetical situation assumes all categories exist already. So it's:

Gallery B → Category B if exists, else → Category B's parent cat (Category A).

Add it's ok if Gallery A and Gallery B share the same Category? Rocket000 (talk) 21:21, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Almost yes, Common(s) sense should still be used. Like, someone has created Category:Saxifraga aizoides (against COM:TOL) while there is also a gallery Saxifraga aizoides (OK). Now, although the category with the same name exists (which it should not), Saxifraga aizoides should still be categorized to its parent category Category:Saxifraga. It is really confusing that there are the species categories, but there is such a large community pressure on requiring an image should be categorized, that it is a general turnoff to go and remove the redundant species categories (and also against the fuzzy mixed system gallery/category vote). As you have have guessed I disagree with quite a few formulations in the current policy proposal. An image should always be properly organized, but that does not necessarily means categorized. -- Slaunger (talk) 21:32, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Not being in a category can only hurt it. How is two ways of finding material worse then one? Galleries and categories should not affect each other. It's same for Wikipedia articles (or any other project's mainspace). Most people assume categories contain all and galleries contain the best or a least a good sample of the selection. It's unreasonable to go with the gallery only view. Why would you want to put 10 nearly identical images in a gallery? Or what if there's 100s of images of one species. You're saying all of those should be in a gallery? That would be a lot of work to maintain if galleries are the only way an image is "organized". On the flip side, not all images should be in galleries (unrelated to being in a category). For example, this doesn't make for a very interesting gallery. (Yes, those are all different :-) 22:19, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'd say if there are houndred images of a species it should all go into one gallery. you just organize the gallery in suitable subsections. You will be very happy about that the day some geneologist finds out it actually belong to another genera and thus needs renaming. now, instaed of changing the categorization of 100 images to the new genus name you just cut and paste the gallery to the new gallery page, modify descriptions in the gallery page, change the categorization to the new genera cat, and create a redirect from the old gallery to the new (as this will now be an official synonym). That saves a lot of work. Renaming of organisms happen frequently these days. Now, if the images are both in the gallery and in a cat you also have to go in on all the image pages to change the cats. That is not something the average maintaining user does. It is a myth that it is tedious to add an image to a gallery. I always start out my plant image pages with an interwiki link to the species gallery from the description. If the link is red I create the page and add the image, if it is blue I open it and add it, not that hard really. If you do the same with a category, you save a step if the category already exists, but if not, you have to open that and associate it with an appropriate parent cat. Quite often contributors just saves the image without checking that the category exists (I have fixed many redlinked species cats). If you add the image to a gallery instead you have to go edit that page and actually create it if it does not exist. (Of course some are too lazy to do that too). -- Slaunger (talk) 22:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

A related discussion on living organisms is here. -- Slaunger (talk) 21:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

HOWTO?

But how does one create a gallery? Shouldn't this be addressed here too?

SamJohnston (talk) 12:30, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess so. There isn't that much to say but I'm sure something could be added. Richard001 (talk) 08:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Plural or singular gallery names

Category names are normally supposed to use the plural version of a name. See Commons:Categories#Category_name.

I think that the same should be true for gallery names in order to avoid confusion in gallery naming.

Galleries are not the same as Wikipedia articles. Galleries are compilations of images. Therefore it makes more sense in my opinion to use the plural form of names most of the time for gallery names.

People may want to use inline links for both the singular and plural names. That can be made possible even if the plural name is used for the gallery name. For example:

• graph redirects to graphs

Here is the wikicode for the redirect:

#REDIRECT [[Graphs]]

One can see and edit the wikicode by looking at the history of a redirected page:

• http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Graph&action=history

The same method can be used for seeing the wikicode of redirected Wikipedia articles. It is easier to redirect Wikipedia articles, though, since they have the "move" link at the top of article pages. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:56, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

It depends on the subject quite a bit, but I guess it does make sense to use the plural with words like 'building' etc. (By the way, you might want to sign that comment). What is the current guideline/practice? Richard001 (talk) 23:41, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if there is a guideline currently. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:11, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I removed that line. Rocket000 (talk) 18:24, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Peculiar Overlay on Project Page

There is a peculiar overlay of text over The Call for Participation on the project page, on the right side. This is true in both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Am I right? Can anyone help? Davidt8 (talk) 11:36, 21 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

Yes, seems to be unique to this page. Richard001 (talk) 07:11, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

You mean the shortcuts? They're created by {{Shortcut}} and sometimes get in the way of other things. Rocket000 (talk) 07:33, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

The overlay is not unique to this page. Davidt8 (talk) 14:28, 23 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

proposed status

I removed some of the questionable things from this page (like the singular name thing). I also restructured it to make it more of a help page instead of a guideline/policy page (see reason). I'd like to label this as a guideline if we're going to be linking to it in the newarticletext system message. And start the translations up. Any objections? Any issues we need to address first? Rocket000 (talk) 18:45, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if "interwiki" in the introduction shouldn't be replaced by categories (or moved further down in the content). I think interwikis are more important on categories than on galleries. -- User:Docu at 18:53, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Categories definitely belong in the main list (not "other things"). I think I left that out because telling someone how to categorize properly takes quite a lot of instruction (a whole page actually), but I agree we should at least mention that galleries should be categorized. They might get it wrong but it's better than nothing. The main purpose of the extra emphasis on interwikis is due to the common trend of new users to treat Commons as an extension of Wikipedia, and usually the English one. They include links and "see also"s like it was a local page. Or worse, they duplicate all the links in a non-interwiki/side-bar format for some reason (this is slowly getting better, categories are worse, e.g. Category:Astronomy). Rocket000 (talk) 21:17, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I like linking the main subject back to Wikipedia, e.g. as Category:St. Moritz.

At Lake Burley Griffin, I'm not convinced that interwikis and descriptions are really needed (I expanded it some time ago as the lake article is featured at WP and needed illustrations). Category:Lake Burley Griffin has descriptions (in the commons sum-it up format, somewhat shortened though.).

In any case, I think we should link this from MediaWiki:Newarticletext for namespace 0. -- User:Docu at 23:13, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I'll let you know a secret. I personally can't stand descriptions on galleries. For most galleries, you don't need one. The name speaks for itself and any other text should be about the images not the subject in general. BUT I wrote this as a reflection of current practices, while trying to leave out my own biases. I have no problem if you change this. Rocket000 (talk) 06:36, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not too convinced about that, but it seems that I'm visiting mainly galleries with 1-4 images. We could phrase the list more like this one ("should contain the following information (in order of importance)"). -- User:Docu at 02:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Which part aren't you convinced of? That I hate descriptions, that most don't need them, or the current wording is it's a reflection of current practices? Rocket000 (talk) 16:25, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

(sorry for the delay in answering this). The part that it reflects current practices to write all these descriptions. It probably depends on the field though. Recently I worked with a series of images of Barcelona. There some galleries are longer than corresponding Wikipedia articles (e.g. Plaça Catalunya (1929 Barcelona Universal Exposition) compared to ca:Plaça_de_Catalunya#Hist.C3.B2ria or en:Plaça_de_Catalunya,_Barcelona#Sculpture). -- User:Docu at 17:52, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

You're right, it completely depends on the purpose of the gallery. I guess I was writing this with general subjects in mind where the descriptions are completely unnecessary in my opinion yet it's very common to see them with some intro text at the top. When I wrote that a "brief description" should be included I was writing with the assumption that people were going to include a description anyway. My point was to say that it should be as brief as possible, not that galleries must have a description at all. Here's an example of text ruining a category (same applies to galleries but I couldn't find a good example right now): Category:Aldous Huxley. Rocket000 (talk) 13:06, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. BTW Huxley might simply be a sample where {{Multilingual description}} could be of use. -- User:Docu at 13:28, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Naming conventions

• Conclusion: the proposal to modify the section was withdrawn by Evrik. -- User:Docu at 15:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Singular/plural?

In the recent time, I noted some people who moved galleries from plural to singular. I was just wondering if that's covered by this guideline. In my opinion, Grey-green orthographic projections map instead of Grey-green orthographic projections maps would sound funky. --The Evil IP address (talk) 19:52, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It used to, until someone pointed out the problem with it. It originally said gallery names should match Wikipedia article names. Usually it's pretty clear if it should be plural or not (like in the case you pointed out), but I haven't worked enough with galleries to come up with some general rules yet (other than the unhelpful "just use common sense and go with what sounds the best"). Rocket000 (talk) 06:50, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Alphabets

« Galleries should be named in language most associated with the subject. This applies to people, places, art, culture, etc. »

What about the alphabet used ? This came up on the french village pump regarding Иван Семёнович Куликов, a gallery about a russian painter. Jean-Fred (talk) 19:10, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Seems perfectly reasonable. Compare, e.g. 胡锦涛. What is odd, is that there is no description in the language of the title. -- User:Docu at 19:16, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I think we should use the alphabet most affiliated to the subject. If we would say "only Latin characters" then this would be unfair for those who don't have them on the keyboard. If someone can't type in the title, then one should create a redirect in English or their preferred language. If they want to link the gallery, they can simply copy paste the gallery title. --The Evil IP address (talk) 19:26, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, sorry The Evil, I do not agree. If I understand well (sorry for my bad english) an english redirect should go to the russian version? For what reason not from the russian to the english? I do not see any unfairness to the russian speakers on that. Most of the contributers do worldwide their best to contribute in english, willing to make and keep this project coherent for both - contributers and users. I am shure the russian contributers do as well and I think there is no need to make things more complicated that they are. This russian UFO-gallery was lost in space without any category before I created one. I guess that happend because the largest part of the community was unable to read the gallery name. What happens when the maintenance helpers have to handle galleries in at least 3000 different languages spoken in the world? --Bohème (talk) 03:20, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this: "For what reason not from the russian to the english?" --Timeshifter (talk) 21:32, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

 Question Do you know how many people are not contributing to Commons because it's too English for them (see for example this discussion where it's part of a complaint about Commons that it would only be something for people who can speak English; one of the reasons why de.wikipedia doesn't yet have an upload form in the en.wikipedia style) or how often people of the German village pump have difficulties with categorizing because they can't come up with a good English category name. Besides these problems for people who aren't a native speaker of English, there are other problems with English names as well: Many things which don't exist in English language countries don't have an English name, which then leads to self-translated names. The other problem of using English as main language is that as a consequence, fewer redirects will be created from the native title, as the English title suffices. Then the galleries are much more difficult to find. All in all, I believe that making all gallery titles English would lead Commons to much more problems than the current way. The policy to name all categories in English already leads to too many problems and should be deleted. Considering other languages: You can always use Google translations (yeah, it's not perfectly accurate, but enough for a rough translation of what's meant) or the gadget Wiktionary Hover. --The Evil IP address (talk) 00:35, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) So we help the people of one language, and hinder people speaking hundreds of other languages. People can not browse the Commons if it is in hundreds of languages. English is the most universal language, and it gives the best chance of helping the most people. It certainly isn't going to make everybody happy, but it makes the most people happy. And you did not really directly answer the question: "For what reason not from the russian to the english?" For example: Search for Иван Семёнович Куликов from Special:Search

You wrote: "The other problem of using English as main language is that as a consequence, fewer redirects will be created from the native title, as the English title suffices." At some point the English title has to be used for the category. Otherwise the gallery is not categorized. So it sounds like the problem is about teaching people how to create gallery redirects from the gallery page with the native name. Here is the wikitext:

#REDIRECT [[ENGLISH NAME]]

This is not that difficult since the category name is usually known. Mainly it is about teaching people the word "REDIRECT". I understand how difficult it is to read outside one's native language. I have lived outside my native land of the USA. But using hundreds of languages on the Commons only makes the Commons more difficult, not less.

Redirects are the solution. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:50, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I do not think having gallery names in multiple languages causes any substantial problems. It would if we were talking about categories due to the technical differences (category redirects suck and just imagine what our category tree would look like if we mixed all languages together..) Yes, we could easily redirect all other language names to the English one, but I don't see how that makes things any better. As long as the redirects are in place (one way or another), why not try to be a little more multilingual? Rocket000 (talk) 12:29, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is browsing. Do you know what these are about?: Россия, Ελλάδα, ประเทศไทย, 日本 and 中国. I can try to be as multilingual as possible, but how will that help in the case of browsing hundreds of languages? --Timeshifter (talk) 08:49, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess I don't see any problem because I don't browse galleries. Either I see them within a (English) category or via a search. Rocket000 (talk) 09:53, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

When one browses categories one sees the galleries listed too. Sometimes one can correctly guess what the gallery is about by the category it is listed in. Sometimes not. Some categories have more than one gallery listed in them, too. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:26, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Country galleries

Why aren't these country galleries (and others) using English names?: Deutschland, België - Belgique, Sverige, Brasil, Italia, España, Россия, Ελλάδα, ประเทศไทย, 日本 and 中国

Only a few people will figure out what these galleries are about: Россия, Ελλάδα, ประเทศไทย, 日本 and 中国. Redirects from other languages to galleries with English names are a better solution in my opinion.

#REDIRECT [[ENGLISH NAME]]

Many more people will be able to browse the Commons directories and subdirectories and figure out what the galleries are about. Because English is the more universal language. People can use the sidebar search and Special:Search to look for Россия, Ελλάδα, ประเทศไทย, 日本 and 中国. They will see those names in the search results if there are redirect pages.

The Commons is about browsing, and not just searching. English significantly helps browsing. More people will find things when English is used most of the time for titles. I mean, do you want to browse when the gallery names are in many languages?

I think this has become unfortunately a political/nationalist issue. Nationalism causes all kinds of problems on Wikipedia. We don't need this kind of problem on the Commons.

What we really need is to improve the software. Maybe the Mediawiki developers can be encouraged to work more on language options. So that people can easily toggle between languages on the Commons for categories and galleries. In the meantime we should be using English titles for gallery names most of the time.

More Mediawiki developers need to be hired too for many other needed changes too. They are overworked now. I think the Wikimedia Foundation needs to be encouraged to spend more money to hire more Mediawiki developers instead of wasting money on stuff of less importance. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:57, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps part of the problem is that we're operating a picture archive, using software intended for an encyclopedia. Technical improvements that only indirectly benefit the encyclopedias will surely attract less effort than they would in the kind of software other online picture archives use. Jim.henderson (talk) 05:47, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess people from the non-English wikipedias need to explain to the Mediawiki developers the importance of these suggested changes to all the Wikipedias. Most of the Mediawiki developers are native English speakers, I believe. So they may not see how important it is to make the Commons more accessible to non-native English speakers. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:18, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

To make the pages easier to read, you might want to convert them to use {{Multilingual description}}. This generally improves the layout of galleries and category descriptions. -- User:Docu at 04:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Good tool. Here is the "what links here" link that lists the pages it is used on:

Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Multilingual description --Timeshifter (talk) 09:01, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

@Timeshifter: Keep in mind this page is simply a guideline. The naming convention part is mainly to let new gallery-creators know that languages besides English are fine and "this is how things are". It's not a policy and it's not trying to become one (we would need a lot more input/discussion from the community at large to make this anywhere close to absolute). I like to think that nationalism and/or politics have not played a role. I despise nationalism and tend to prefer usability over accessibility (or in this case liberalism, i.e. "all languages are equal"). I wrote it to reflect common practice as much as I could. There hasn't been a ton of discussion (at least not in the last couple years) over this, so don't go into it like there's all these strong opinions to argue against. We're just trying to figure out what we're doing here. :) Rocket000 (talk) 12:50, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I am not saying you have strong opinions, but after my years of experience on Wikipedia, I believe there are strong opinions about such things.

Is Mediawiki capable of recognizing the language of non-registered users, or what country they reside in? That ability might be used someday by the software to automatically put up category and gallery titles in the majority language of that country.

Commons:Galleries says it is a policy. And the naming section is vague: "Unlike naming categories, where English is almost always used, galleries should be named in language most associated with the subject. This applies to people, places, art, culture, etc. For general subjects and ones not tied to any specific language, the name most likely to be searched for (usually English) should be used. An exception to this rule is the naming of galleries of organisms and subjects where Latin names are considered universal. These follow the same guidelines as categories and should share the same name."

Currently, due to the software limitations, if people want country galleries to be read by the most people, English is the way to go for the gallery title in my opinion. I tried to change a country gallery title to English, and was soon reverted. The reason given was the policy. I read the policy differently than this person did. It could be read both ways. --Timeshifter (talk) 08:51, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's the other purpose for this guideline (it says guideline at the top, not policy). It's to prevent edit-warring over names. If people can't decide what to call a category, just take the advice on this page. I guess this role pushes it towards a policy-like status, but if it's better to have centralized discussion over these things instead every time there's some naming dispute.

Is Mediawiki capable of recognizing the language of non-registered users, or what country they reside in? No, unregistered users always get the English interface (unless they came from a link on a Wikimedia project in a different language). Rocket000 (talk) 10:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I must have been sleepy when I wrote my last comment. It does say guideline, not policy. I really wish Mediawiki developers could develop the software so that it recognizes the country and adapts the language of the category and gallery titles accordingly. I think it could possibly be done. I see web pages now and then that tell one what IP number one is using. That tells the country. I have a free stats addon (addfreestats.com) on a website of mine that tells the IP number, hostname, country, and sometimes the city of the last 500 visitors. I just checked it again to make sure I remembered it correctly, and wasn't sleepy. :) --Timeshifter (talk) 16:22, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I have been told back in September that we sure could do it (mw:Extension:LanguageSelector is for that), but that it is not possible because of cache issues... Jean-Fred (talk) 18:23, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that info. I wonder if mw:Extension:LanguageSelector could be fixed and developed further to work only on the titles of categories/galleries and not the text on the pages. Maybe it could work if simplified for that task only. --Timeshifter (talk) 06:48, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

HOW TO create a gallery page

For those poor newcomers like me, a few words should be included like: Go to Search, put in "(the name of your future gallery page)", then click on the red gallery name, edit the page (marked as gallery page on the very top) by putting in the gallery tag and the pictures. Then add the category:[[Category:xyz]]. A gallery can have any name, but it is usual to follow the category name. Finally click on the button "Show preview", make final changes, and if you like your work, click on "Save page". --AHert (talk) 20:37, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Agree with this - I was trying to figure out this basic first step, and was happy these instructions were included on the "Discussion" page! Jwild (talk) 20:49, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Most of use come to Commons from Wikipedia, hence are already familiar with the procedures outlined in en:Wikipedia:Your_first_article#How_to_create_a_page. Yes, a sentence or two should be added in this gallery guide, for those who come direct to Commons. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:28, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

So, with minor changes and additions, I pasted your recommended text into the page. Perhaps others will find ways to improve it. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:57, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

A single image on a page is not a gallery.

Resolved

I have a problem with this statement. Say that an image is promoted as Commons:Valued images in a scope corresponding to a category for which there is no gallery. Now, I would like to highlight that photo for image repository users. The simplest thing would be to make a gallery in the category and tag that with {{VI-tiny}} ( ). But that is not accepted practise (albeit I do not understand why). The alternative is then to create a gallery page to highlight this content. And the highlighted content is only this image (and it is the most relevant to see). But that is not allowed according to this guideline. Now, all this redundant gallery category stuff is really a symptom of a broken system. (In my opinion the Mediawiki SW should be capable of higlighting content in the categories or make options available for sorting a category according to different criteria (usage, size, featured, view, upload date) but we don't have that). Considering that we have a broken system which we need to implement the best compromise solution on, I really think one-file galleries should be allowed. How else, should we show highlighted content for repository users in cases where only one image is highlighted in a given category? --Slaunger (talk) 22:54, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

See also the related discussions at

• User talk:Slaunger#Not "alone in the scope" any more
• User talk:Rocket000#Interesting idea
• Commons:Village pump/Archive/2012/01#Highlighted content in main category structure
• Commons talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive/2011#GA1. Empty gallery.

--Slaunger (talk) 23:12, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

We must be free to create gallery for even a single image. It's a job that some want to do, do not discourage them. --Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 06:18, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Just add a second picture to get rid of the nitpickers. --Foroa (talk) 09:46, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Surely, You're Joking? It is better to change the guideline to make it explicit that single image galleries of highlighted content (FP, VI or QI) is allowed if it is the only hightlighted media file available in the corresponding category. --Slaunger (talk) 09:51, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Not joking. I remember, during the discussions of deletion edit summary messages. Some people wanted to delete (replace with redirect) galleries whenever it had no additional layout and description texts, even with more than 20 images (some people of TOL and ships, in order to decrease maintenance work). So we landed with a compromise of more than 1 file; result, sometimes I add just a file in single image galleries. --Foroa (talk) 12:33, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I tried to look back in history. The sentence first appeared in 2009 as part of a restructuring edit made by Rocket000. I do not know the objective for adding it at the time, but I will go and ask him. --Slaunger (talk) 09:54, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this is a well-founded rule. As pointed out above, situations exist where they have merit. I've created single image species galleries. I expect that additional images will be added. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 00:55, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Seconded. I think the rule is somewhat "unwiki". A gallery for which there is reasonable expectation of being expanded in the reasonably near future can be started with just one image. Galleries that are too narrowly defined or where the content is almost impossible to expand should be merged or renamed, but that's not currently in the guideline, and the one-image rule is a poor substitute. Rd232 (talk) 22:51, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

There are several issues here. One that I think you are all ignoring is that ten to twenty new single image galleries are created every day by newbies and vandals -- galleries that are entirely outside of scope, that this rule makes it easy to delete. Without this rule, they would have to go to DRs and we are already falling behind on those.

Second, I, and I think many other Admins, do not apply the rule to single image species galleries -- they have a special place because they will logically get more images as we grow.

I confess I do not understand how a VI can require a single image gallery to show its scope. That seems to me a little like saying that I am the most valued editor on Commons with the Username Jameslwoodward. What is the point of saying that an image is a Valued Image over a scope that includes only itself? It seems to me that the problem here is not the rule against single image galleries, but a rule that allows such VIs.

What does a single image gallery do that the image file itself does not do? Since a gallery is always at thumbnail size, most images will initially display two to three times larger on their own file page than in a gallery. Sure, the gallery is a little prettier, but we are not really in the business of pretty -- we are in the business of creating and maintaining a repository of images.

Finally, my personal belief is that galleries have one important purpose. This is to gather a selection of images the best images on one topic. These are of particular value if the relevant category has many images and when it would be good to have several related categories presented in one place. An example of this is Lighthouses in Maine, which has one image for each lighthouse, taken from about ten different categories. A gallery with only one image does not fit that need.      Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 00:27, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

"It seems to me that the problem here [is the rule] that allows such VIs" : I do not consider VIs as miss universe election within a category, but as images with a particular value, and being the only image depicting a species seems to give such a value to me. Totodu74 (talk) 11:51, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Let me be clear. I'm fine with saying "This is a valued image", but it seems absurd to me to say "This is a valued image within a scope that includes only this image." That demeans the image -- better to expand the scope. However, as I have made clear, my time on Commons is not spent finding our best images, so I am not qualified to make recommendations on how to manage that effort. I spend my time getting rid of images and pages we do not want, and am, therefore, opposed to allowing single image galleries, except as I noted above.      Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 14:29, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

@James: Thanks for coming here to comment. Your view is appreciated. I think both worlds can meet, and I also hope I will be able with providing you clearer idea of the objectives, drivers and meaningfulness of the VI project. See my replies below :-)

• I fully understand your objective regarding the fight against vandalism. I am not interested in making any change in the guidelines which makes it harder to fight vandalism. I do think though that some nuances can be put on the "no single image gallery statement", which still allows for speedy deletion of gallery pages made by vandals. For instance,

A single image on a page is not considered a gallery unless it higlights an image which has been elected by the community as either featured picture, quality image, or valued image

• You are (in my opinion) missing a important nuance regarding the VI project. You ask what the point is in electing an image as VI if it is the only image on Commons within a scope? The point is to encourage diversity on Commons. It has greater value for Commons to get a single (reasonably good) photo of an entirely new topic, narrow or not, than YAETI (Yet Another Eiffel Tower Image), not to mention YAPI (guess what P "stands" for :-)). If you want to get a VI of the Eiffel Tower, fine, but very hard to get as there are so many high quality images of it already. But is some user has done an extra effort to show us something new, this should be encouraged. It is not such that any image of some narrow scope can then get the VI tag. No, it has to follow a standard and meet six well defined criteria. That is to assure that if a user opens the file page, he/she can expect a certain level regarding the overall quality, the description, geolocation, categorization, etc. Moreover, if there are a lot of images in a category, it can be hard to see in the small thumbnail view, which images are worthwhile to see. VI/QI/FP tags help in that respect. Now, a lot of users do not need these "rewards" to contribute, but for others, it can be a driver to dig up new stuff (we are all volunteers, and do this in our spare time, so why not make it into a sport, for those who want to?). For instance, we have users, who has uploaded countless high quality studio images from a private collection of rare items. It is my impression that the work used in making all these photos accumulate to very many man hours. It is also my impression that the VI project is one of the drivers for these contributors to invest so many resources in uploading media. Because getting another VI from a new topic is fun and motivating - for some.
• I agree with you that the single image galleries derived from single image categories are kind of silly. But it is the only (alllowed) option we have for highlighting content. In my mind it would be better to simply remove the category from the image(!) and insert a gallery tag in the category page with the VI/QI/FP tag on. For the repository user it would give enhanced browisng experience. But it will break our stupid rule that everything should be categorized (the sensible thing would be to say organized). Moreover, to my knowledge, such galleries on category pages are not accepted. It woud be even bettter if the Mediawiki framwork had the capability of showing the VI/QI/FP icons automatically based on the presence of the template on the corresponding file pages. Much like the FA stars in the interwiki links in the wikipedias. Unfortunately, we do not have that option.
• I agree comletely with you regarding the obvious relevance of having gallery pages for parent categories highlighting the best content from sub-categories, like in your lighthouse example. Another example could be a genus gallery page listing all the best photos of each species in the genus.--Slaunger (talk) 20:39, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

 Comment this is drifting a bit into "what are galleries for" territory. There is currently an RFC on galleries: Commons:Requests for comment/galleries. Rd232 (talk) 23:57, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I would be entirely happy with a slight rewrite:

"Galleries with only a single image are permitted if they highlight an image which has been elected by the community as a featured picture, quality image, or valued image", but see below.

(Again -- my Commons task is getting rid of what we don't want, not encouraging what we do, but...) I think that the principal problem I have with using a single image gallery to define the scope of a VI is that it does not, as you say, highlight the image -- it loses it. We have more than 12 million pages on Commons, growing at around 7,000 a day. Who is going to go to the gallery page that started this discussion? Why will they go there? There is no path to a gallery except through a category. If you want to highlight VIs, then I suggest creating galleries slightly up the category tree, so that they contain maybe ten or twenty VIs, not just one.      Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 14:00, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

It actually seems like we are pretty aligned on this view. The single image gallery living side-by-side a few-image gallery with no subcategories does not make much sense as hardly noone would navigate to it. That is also why I observe it would make more sense to embed the gallery directly in the category page. Since it only contains a few images, the gallery on top will not disturb browsing the other few images in the category. But if there is only one image in the category, I admit that this distinction does not really make sense. Besides that I agree with you that it is of further benefit to make galleries for overlying parent categories to highlight the good stuff that can be found underneath. However, if they are created from fresh, they will quite often only contain a single image. And that is a relevant stub which can later be expanded. And no I do not think it is the responsibility of the creator to expand it. The creator may simply be doing an administrative task of working on, e.g., our backlog of more than 2000 VIs, which should be considered for tagging in a relevant gallery to highlight it. Very often a VI is the first within some broad topic area, and there are not 5-10 other VIs to accumulate in a gallery. You start out with one, and it can then later be expanded.

Let me give an example. Here is a VI of a prison in Oregon that I recently tagged. I do not know anything about the topic, I was just working on the backlog. At that time the file page was categorized to Category:Buildings in Oregon and Category:Prisons in Oregon. The first thing I did was to create a new category Category:Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution and let that be a subcat toCategory:Prisons in Oregon and Category:Pendleton, Oregon as it happens to be located near that place. I then replaced the original cats on the file with the new cat specific for this prison. I also found another photo of the same prison and changed its categorization accordingly. I then created one of those galleries which neither you nor I like, Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution to make a single image gallery with the VI-tag. Not very useful, and more sensible to place direcly in the category page, but I am unfortunately not allowed to according to current quidelines for categories. Now, further to that, following your line of thought I went to the parent categories. First Category:Prisons in Oregon is really a few-image category with some 17 images. Now there was no Prisons in Oregon gallery page, so I created one and placed the current single VI in it. Unfortunately no other images of prisons in Oregon has been elected VI, so another single image gallery. This one makes perfect sense to me. It is like a stub, which can be expanded later as we get more material in that category, or if others more knowledgeable about the topic area add some more photos to the gallery. Not my responsibility. Same story for the Pendleton, Oregon gallery, which did not exist previously, but which is now a single image gallery "stub". Quite tedious, actually to do, but given the limitations in the Mediawiki framework and our current guidelines the only way to highlight this content in the main category structure. If the Mediawiki software allowed filtering or sorting in categories, or tagging based on the presence of specific templates on file pages all these extra gallery pages would not be needed. It has actually this series of edits which made me realize very clearly that the system is broken, and triggered that I initiated the above-referenced thread on COM:VP. Unfortunately we have to make the best possible out of a broken system and sometimes unfortunate guidelines. --Slaunger (talk) 21:44, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the effort which went into the lengthy explanation for my benefit. I am afraid that I still don't understand why we have two different single image galleries for one VI, but perhaps this is the moment to drop it and move onto other things.      Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 00:12, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, sorry about my tl;dr post. I have a weakness of not mastering brief and concise comments. Anyway I appreciate that you acknowledge my effort in trying to explain. But lets leave it at that. We have agreed on adding VI/FP/QI exceptions to the statement, and I have modified the policy page accordingly. --Slaunger (talk) 10:24, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with English, so I have not talked so much, but thanks for this move. Totodu74 (talk) 13:28, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Intention

I feel like an explanation is in order regarding my addition of "A single image on a page is not a gallery." First, let me state that I created this page as my proposal for some kind of guidance concerning galleries. It was meant to fall more on the help-page end of the guideline spectrum, not the policy end. At all. As much as I would support a policy banning single image pages (outside of the file namespace), that was not my intent with that single sentence.

I can understand how the language I used was misinterpreted. I wasn't thinking Wikimedia Commons "Gallery" at the time, but "gallery" as in the common sense. Galleries, by definition, contain multiple works (or are expected to eventually). We call our mainspace pages galleries because that's what they're normally used for. That doesn't mean they must never contain 1 (or even 0) images. Just have a reason for doing it. If the community feels that VI designation is a good reason, that's fine. Rocket000 (talk) 03:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Gallery linkage

Piggybacking on the above comments, i think we need to set guidelines for how galleries are linked, both from other projects, and within the commons. we have some very high quality galleries, such as London and New York City, which one can only find if you type the search term, or happen to be in the category tree for that specific category. I think large galleries can, and should, be placed in as many categories as people may be likely to want to see them, so that London might be in Category:Cities, Category:Europe, even Category:Tourism. I know this goes against overcategorization rules established here, but those rules NEVER mention galleries, only files. we can modify those rules for galleries. I also like Category:Gallery pages, which never got off the ground. that category tree could work well if used more. I would also like to suggest that there be a review process for rating galleries, similar to Featured Article and Featured Image status. Since this talk page is not seen much, i will mirror these comments elsewhere, when i can figure out the best places.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 17:48, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia links to galleries

In my experience, galleries rarely contain all the best images for a subject, and often times not anything good at all. So I'm puzzled by the fact that the links to Commons from Wikipedia always direct one to the Commons galleries, instead of the categories. I have no problem with galleries, though I personally find no use for them, but is there any good reason why Wikipedia should link to galleries rather than categories? FunkMonk (talk) 14:52, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I had the same concern, that many galleries linked to from WP are horrible, whereas the category tree may be well organized (though some are not, of course). I finally figured out, as you may have, how to solve this:

{{Commons}} links to the gallery of the same name

{{Commons|actual gallery name}} links to the gallery name indicated, which may be different from the article name

{{Commons Category}} links to the CATEGORY of the exact same name as the article

{{Commons Category|actual category name}} links to the category which most closely corresponds to the article, but which has a different name.

hope that helps. I would say that unless the gallery is really comprehensive, change the coding on the WP page to target the category insteadMercurywoodrose (talk) 17:42, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

{{commonscat}} is enough (it's shorter than 'Commons Category') - but please only change commons-links from galleries to categories when necessary (if you worked on a gallery, it's really frustrating to see the link changed - even if it's often only a general change and has nothing to do with your work... ;->). Anna reg (talk) 12:39, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Botanical galleries

Hello,
I wanted to notify some people interested in galleries of the discussion I just started at Commons:Village pump about plant galleries (if they should be strict species galleries or provide an overview of the material about the plant that's available on commons). I'd appreciate comments!
Best wishes, --Anna reg (talk) 23:43, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Category:Categories with a gallery for a better choice of sub-categories

Hi,

People upload their images into categories. But often, it should be better if they uploaded into sub-categories. To avoid crowded categories. But users dont know what sub-categories exist or what sub-category to use.
To help, I add sometimes a gallery in some crowded categories. With an image for each sub-category to use.
I added this type of galleries inside a category into the present article, but it has been reverted.
I have added this in the examples of galleries :
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

• A gallery for a better choice of sub-categories. Example : Category:Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

The categories with such a gallery are gathered here : Category:Categories with a gallery for a better choice of sub-categories

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other wikipedians added this type of galleries inside a category in the categories they update.
I think that the category with the largest gallery is Category:Eiffel tower (21 sub-categories).
Is the revert appropriate ?--Tangopaso (talk) 11:15, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I confess that I did not understand what you are trying to illustrate with the additions that I reverted. Now I do, thank you.

While I think that the system you show might be a good idea, I see two problems. First, policy on categories says nothing about adding a gallery to a category, see COM:C. It calls for only a "short description". Second, if this is to be allowed, I think the captions in the gallery must exactly match the categories that they are intended to illustrate and that they should be in the same sort order. In all of the half dozen that I have looked at, one or both of these was not true. This very much limits the usefulness and makes the added gallery just clutter.

I also see that there are 59 examples of this system in all of Commons. We have over three million categories and over a hundred thousand galleries (see Commons:Database_reports/Page_count_by_namespace). Even if the system were approved, I don't think something that has only 59 uses deserves any mention on a page that illustrates common practice on Commons.

I suggest that you organize approval of this system before you do anything else. Without that, you run the risk that one of our colleagues will simply remove the galleries for being confusing clutter and outside of policy. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 14:39, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Incidentally, I think that Category:Eiffel Tower is a very poor example of this scheme. There is almost no correspondence between the images in the gallery and the categories available, so that the gallery offers no help at all in picking a subcat for an image. Unless it is promptly cleaned up and made actually useful for the purpose you describe, I will probably remove it. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 14:51, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for answer.

1. Obviously, only the main sub-categories are present in those galleries. For example in Category:Eiffel tower. But it is very useful, because before that, there were dozens (or even hundreds) of images in the main category Eiffel tower. Its stupid, but every month, users upload more and more photos of the Eiffel tower. From all the point of views. Now the gallery help to put the photos in the right sub-category.

2. The order of the categories in the gallery is not the same than in the main category to put in head the most important ones..

3. The names of the sub-categories in the gallery are often shorter than the plain name of the sub-category for a purpose of place below the image. And with the "blue link", you can reach directly the right sub-category..

4. I created this system for categories that I am following, but other wikipedians do the same in their categories. It is "piranha effect", I suppose..

5. These galleries are only useful for crowded categories. Here are examples of crowded categories :.

• Category:White House : 906 images
• Category:Kew Gardens : 696 images
• Category:Golden Gate Bridge : 558 images
• Category:Manhattan, New York City : 409 images
• Category:Consolidated B-24 Liberator : 308 images. In Category:Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress (with gallery), there are only 31.

I think that with a gallery in these categories, these images should be transferred to sub-categories..

6. What do you mean by I suggest that you organize approval of this system. What is the procedure to follow ? As you read, my English is not very fluent..

Best regards. --Tangopaso (talk) 22:24, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Obviously, the gallery is very useful for non-speaking english users. But I don't think we need the category:Categories with a gallery for a better choice of sub-categories.--Paris 16 (talk) 23:23, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Paris 16 in regards to the galleries for non-English speakers. As for the categories grouping the galleries... I'm not sure what is the best choice for them. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:40, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I have put it up for deletion. See Commons:Categories for discussion/2015/01/Category:Categories with a gallery for a better choice of sub-categories. It is probably best to use that as a place for discussion at this stage. Alan Liefting (talk) 04:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

нужно редактировать этот текст

Я удивлён - почему никто не отредактировал правила на русском Викискладе? Разве это не важно для нашей работы? Хотя бы стилистически обработать текст! --Rumata10 (talk) 08:39, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Proposed addition

Since this is a guideline, I figured I should come to the talk page rather than just start editing.

I think Commons:Galleries#The benefits of galleries currently omits one of the most important benefits. I'd like to add something to the following effect: "Galleries can include relevant images from subcategories. Commons' rule against over-categorization means that images in a given category should not be in any of its ancestor categories. However, it can be very useful to have them in a gallery corresponding to an ancestor category. For example, a gallery page about a city can show images of the most famous places in the city, even though those famous places each has a category of its own. Similarly, a gallery page can gather together examples of different species of a particular plant genus, to make them easy to compare and contrast."

Any objections? - Jmabel ! talk 05:06, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to improve navigation from gallery pages to parent categories

Background

I'd like to raise a particular issue with gallery pages which I think gets overlooked: galleries are landing pages. When a user comes to Commons in search of images (usually through a Wikipedia link) they often land on a gallery page instead of the subject category. The same is also true of searching within commons. If I search for "London" I end up on the London gallery page rather than Category:London. While gallery pages offer various advantages, they have the distinct disadvantage that it is not usually obvious that the user can browse deeper into the range of images – the user must scroll down to the bottom of the page to locate the link to the subject category, or open an image and then find the image category hidden at the bottom. This is very poor usability as it requires the user to have a working knowledge of Commons functionality. It is very likely that a first-time user will assume that the images shown in a gallery page are all that is on offer, and fail to explore the category. An example of this is the page for the National Gallery of Art in Washington; it is not at all clear that there are over 1700 images of artworks hidden below this selection, unless the user knows that they must find the category link hidden at the bottom of the page.

A possible solution is demonstrated in the London page – near the top of the page, the {{Maincat}} template is used to point the user up to the parent category thus:

Main category: London

This provides an instant signpost to more content. Additionally, under some headings, the {{see}} or {{Maincat}} templates can provide relevant links to sub-categories to assist the user with wayfinding. Another good example of this is the page devoted to Star Wars.

I would like to propose that these wayfinding templates be recommended, possibly mandated, as a matter of policy for gallery pages. Perhaps a new template could be developed as a gallery page header and automatically applied across the board - its aim would be to make clear to the user that the gallery page is just a selection of highlights, and for a wider selection of images, they should delve into the category taxonomy.

Does this seem like a fair idea? Cnbrb (talk) 16:37, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

In my opinion - you are absolutely right! I'm also interested of creating of Gallery Pages - so good as possible and encourage users to browse more, all what is available in all concerning categories. Probably I found the best and easy configurable solution: {{for2}} and use it on Raspberry Pi gallery. Many great examples and inspirations can be found e.g. at User:Nilfanion/Galleries, also at Commons:Galleries of course. --Jasc PL (talk) 19:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Jasc PL! Very interesting comparisons. Cnbrb (talk) 10:06, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Proposal

So I propose a couple of changes. First, a new template, provisionally called {{gallery page}} (not created yet). It could look something like this:

Shotwell logo

This is a gallery page containing specially selected images. They have been chosen as highlights of a particular topic, but do not represent the full range of images that are available on Commons. For a wider selection of images connected with this subject, see Category: CategoryName

Secondly, an addition to this policy page: Under Starting a gallery, after the Categories section, I suggest we add the following wording:

Category Linking

A gallery page is often the first place a user arrives at a subject, for example when they search on Commons. Therefore it is important to make it clear to the user that the gallery only contains a small selection of images, and that more images are available. It is recommended to add the template {{gallery page}} at the top of a gallery page to make it easy for the user to understand this difference, and to provide a link up to the parent category.

Additionally, if your gallery page is split up under subheadings, users may benefit from links to relevant subcategories. If an appropriate subcategory exists, add the template {{maincat}} under a subheading to provide a relevant link.

For example, If you have a gallery page about London, and a subsection about Big Ben, add {{gallery page|London}} to the top of the page and {{maincat|Big Ben}} under the subheading.

Not all subheadings have corresponding categories, so you do not have to use this template if an appropriate subcategory does not exist.

Comments

• Strong  Support I personally prefer for any page that is not filled with a gallery to link to a category e.g. "XXX" redirects to "Category:XXX" and where galeries exist they should immediately link to the relevant categories, not force us to scroll to the bottom of the page to find the category. This proposed template would immediately solve this issue. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 13:06, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Gallery pages are not allowed to redirect to categories. Such a cross namespace redirect is an official reason for speedy deletion. A link to a gallery page should be red if the gallery does not exist. Jcb (talk) 23:14, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
• User:Cnbrb You have also my  Support of course - I'm fitting in with above arguments. I see, you are doing a very good work! --Jasc PL (talk) 13:43, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
•  Support: Ideally, the namespace would be deleted after the contents of the the very few sensible galleries is moved to categories; this seems to be a step in that direction, and it’s eitherway a good idea. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:53, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Seems good. I had created some galleries which follows most of this proposal, including links to categories in all sub-heads. And those galleries are only to display the best photos to describe the subject in each sections. Jee 05:51, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Beautiful gallery and many of your hard work @Jkadavoor, but isn't it to big / so long; near 1000 images on the one page? Maybe better idea would be to keep main gallery and 6 subgalleries? --Jasc PL (talk) 14:04, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Off course; they can be split if difficult to load. The Birds of Kerala gallery is a bit difficult to load; but all other fauna galleries I created so far works well. BTW, I have no problem if some one make changes on them. The goal is to give people an easier way to identify their photos without browsing through so many pages. Jee 14:13, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Ooppsss... Jkadavoor. "Butterflies of Kerala" was any problem - for me. "Birds of Kerala" is beautiful too, probably, i don't know :) - I must close its tab due to some "Page is not responding" errors. In my opinion, there are some serious problems we all must resolve by creating a big gallery pages:

• Technical: there are billions of people, not only from poorest countries, they use older computers with weaker CPU, small amount of RAM and older browsers - they should't be excluded from using Wikimedia resources due to their equipment.
• (so called) Usability: in this example - how to fast end easy find something on the page that have a TOC that's many screens scrolling long? Also navigation on pages like that is significantly straitened. However, you excellent linked the page content to other resources.

It's not simply my criticism of your work - only some insights based on my "technical" point of view and experiences by web pages design.
Greetings, --Jasc PL (talk) 15:26, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I understand. But we've many heavily loaded galleries. We can't avoid them for the sake of some users. I too avoid visiting them when in a weak resource. Other times, I enjoy them! :) Jee 15:40, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

This example has any problems with loading, displaying or editing (having an appropriate amount of code the browser must render to display content). Some issues with page design, but who care about it if a page have so beautiful content! :) --Jasc PL (talk) 16:21, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

@Tuválkin: Am I missing something? Is there a proposal here to get rid of galleries entirely? If so, I oppose that strongly. While galleries have been underused, the best of them are very worth having, and categories are no substitute. A couple of examples, from among my own work: Romanian Orthodox churches in Bucharest, Seattle and the Orient. There is absolutely no way that categories can serve an equivalent purpose. - Jmabel ! talk 16:10, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Strong  Support - for:

• consciously created galleries having the best examples of category content - and/or
• galleries including all (with the reasonable amount) content of category/s - with valuable descriptions, helpful links etc.
  --Jasc PL (talk) 16:35, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

•  Support. This exact issue is why I so rarely create galleries—I'm always worried that I'm making things harder to find rather than easier if the gallery is anything less than perfect. –IagoQnsi (talk) 15:35, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
•  Support excellent idea, imho. --El Grafo (talk) 12:48, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

• Thanks for the input everyone. The template {{gallery page}} is now available to add to your commons pages.

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

User galleries

Just curious but are galleries from categories of Wikimedia photographers considered to be "regular galeries" or "user galeries"? ---Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:14, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

• In general, if you have a gallery of your own work, it belongs in "user space" (e.g. User:Jmabel/People). - Jmabel ! talk 22:45, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

For some reason this didn't get automatically archived

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Wide support for proposal to update the Commons:Galleries policy as proposed. The template {{gallery page}} is now available to add to commons pages, and proposed text will be added to the policy page. Cnbrb (talk) 16:04, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

---

Quite a few things here I'd like to change

There are quite a few things I'd like to change here, and I wondered if there would be objection to my having a serious go at this. The following list is not comprehensive, it's just what struck me offhand.

1. There seems to be an implication here that a gallery page will have a single pair of <gallery></gallery> tags; for the good ones that is almost never the case.
2. There is no mention of <gallery></gallery> tags being adjustable with things like mode="packed", which are generally better for this sort of thing, nor for the use of {{Wide image}}.
3. There is no discussion of the value of using a gallery on a moderately high-level category to embrace images from a variety of lower-level categories: e.g. different species within a genus or varieties within a species, different churches within a city, different people who have held the same office.
4. Almost nothing that is stated here is fleshed out with examples.
5. There is no discussion here of using galleries as an internal tool, to aid visual identification of future images (species within a genus or varieties within a species are a good example here).

I could just "be bold," but I don't want to put serious time into this just to be reverted, and I know that guidelines should not be edited casually. Jmabel ! talk 16:10, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Makes sense to me, I have no objections. Jcb (talk) 19:40, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Interwiki links?

Isn't this largely supplanted by Wikidata items as a means of linking to Wikipedia articles? - Jmabel ! talk 03:08, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Changes to this page

See this discussion. Synthwave.94 (talk) 13:19, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Add always a "Gallery" category

I would like to add to point 4. (about categories) that a gallery page should have at least two categories:

1. A "normal" category: one with the same name or another relevant category, as it already says.
2. A "Gallery" category, one from Category:Gallery pages or it's subcategories. Too often I miss this one at gallery pages. Mention it on this Help page might prevent it.

JopkeB (talk) 03:15, 12 May 2021 (UTC)