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COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES (index) Commons Help desk Village pump (general discussion) Copyright Proposals Technical Graphics and photography discussion Photography critiques Image improvement Illustration workshop Map workshop Photography workshop Video and sound workshop Categories for discussion Undeletion requests Deletion requests Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard Translators' noticeboard Work requests for bots Contact administrators Vandalism User problems (Dispute resolution) Blocks and protections Bureaucrats' noticeboard CheckUser requests Oversight requests Telegram IRC webchat Commons mailing list (archive) Commons' bugs on Phabricator Welcome to the Village pump This page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2023/05. Please note: If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias. Have you read our FAQ? For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming. Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer). Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam. Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page: Please do not make deletion requests here: use the relevant process for it instead. For technical support and graphics talks (PNG, SVG, GIF, etc.), please post on the Graphics village pump. To ask for image improvement, see: Graphic Lab/Photography workshop for photographs. Graphic Lab/Map workshop for maps. Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop for other illustrations. To ask for video or audio improvement, see Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop. For translation requests, please post at Commons:Requests for translation. For media requests, please post at Commons:File requests. Search archives:       Start a new discussion

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Village pump in Rzeszów, Poland [add]

Centralized discussion See also: Village pump/Proposals   ■ Archive What rules should we have for media created by automated cameras? (17 April 2023) Should Commons opt-in to global abuse filters, or opt-out from them? (22 March 2023) Overhaul of categories by period (5 December 2022) Tolerate users to upload pre-1949 Chinese books (13 November 2022) Version of Saudi flag to use (11 July 2022) Concern regarding revocability of KOGL licenses (22 December 2021) Should deleting content from your own talk page be forbidden? (11 November 2021) Revise the COM:FOP Sweden section (1 February 2021) Template: View   ■ Discuss    ■ Edit   ■ Watch

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

May 11

Wrong deletion

Today, User:Jameslwoodward deleted Data:Ncei.noaa.gov/weather/Montpelier.tab and Data:Ncei.noaa.gov/weather/Juneau.tab without any valid reason and without any notice. Both sites are U.S. weather stations, both state capitals, and are corroborated by at least two sources. All data are owned by NOAA and are in the public domain. --Fumikas Sagisavas (talk) 06:31, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

This appears to be related to Commons:Deletion requests/Files found with Data:Ncei.noaa.gov/weather. MKFI (talk) 06:34, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

@Fumikas Sagisavas: The DR refers to COM:SCOPE. Could you please elaborate how these data tables fit into the scope of this project? I think the problem might be that since the data namespace was launched in 2016 we apparently hadn't much discussion about this. As we are a media archive, something like Data:NewYork.map is surely within scope but I fail to see why we should keep tables with weather data. Thinks like that are probably better hosted at Wikidata. --AFBorchert (talk) 07:11, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Because these data will be directly used as data charts on Wikipedia, but due to technical reasons, it is currently only possible to upload weather data data on shared resources and not on Wikidata. Fumikas Sagisavas (talk) 07:22, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

If it is at Commons, it has to fit into COM:SCOPE. Technical reasons like other projects do not support that yet are not sufficient to place something at Commons. --AFBorchert (talk) 07:44, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Actually technical reasons might be enough, see COM:INUSE: "It should be stressed that Commons does not overrule other projects about what is in scope. If an image is in use on another project (aside from use on talk pages or user pages), that is enough for it to be within scope." In any case if these files are used and they can't be reasonably hosted in other projects I believe we could adjust COM:Scope to allow them. MKFI (talk) 08:14, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree. If there is a big class of such files we should probably have a more thorough discussion, but rather seeking a solution than just keeping them off Commons. Until that, I don't think we should delete them on scope grounds. –LPfi (talk) 08:38, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the data sets in question are very much in line with how the Data: namespace was intended to be used.

The whole Data: namespace was basically introduced through the backdoor before it was ready to be integrated with the rest of Commons. We still don't have any good way to organize it (no categories, no SCD), is does not seem to exist in the documentation and we never properly discussed how it fits in with existing policies (or if we did, the results of those discussions did not trickle down to the actual policy pages).

So +1 to having a thorough discussion. To Do:

1. Re-visit the old discussions, and refresh our collective memory on plans, intentions and predicted problems
2. Do some research on how the namespace is actually being used today
3. Discuss what's good and bad about this
4. Figure out how that does or does not work with existing policies and adjust policies if necessary
5. Delete what is not covered by the new policies.

Bonus: Poke developers until they finish what they started.

Do we have something like a Commons:WikiProject data namepace where we could make a plan? El Grafo (talk) 12:08, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Note that d:Wikidata:WikiProject Tabular data exists in the Wikidata community space, for discussions re using the Commons tabular data for data not well suited to Wikidata (ie most tabular data). Any ongoing discussions here should probably give that group a courtesy ping. Jheald (talk) 19:11, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

•  Comment I don't necessarily have an issue with files containing tabular data being hosted on Commons myself. What I don't like is that .tab files are editable, at least from what I've seen aren't sourced to the original file or website where the information came from, and contain no summary information. Which IMO goes against the guidelines. Also, at least in the case of weather data, the information is added to Wikipedia articles manually anyway. So I don't really see what the difference is between someone entering the data into the Wikipedia article from the original source themselves and it being uploaded here first and then transferred to Wikipedia. Except entering the data here first turns Commons into a buffer zone where the information can't and/or isn't going to be sourced, summarized, corrected, Etc. Etc. There's no reason this information can't just be added to whatever Wikipedia article it's going to be used in and they can deal with the sourcing issues, verify that it's correct, fix the information if it isn't, Etc. Etc. on their end. I don't think that's our job or within the projects scope though. That said, if .tab files couldn't be edited and contained summaries/sources, cool. I don't think they should be hosted on Commons until then though. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:55, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

• @Adamant1: this is a wiki, everything is editable. Making content uneditable is simply against the entire purpose of the project. Just because we don't provide ready-made tools to modify images does not mean that they are immutable. Sourcing for files is needed for copyright reasons but we don't require citations to verify map accuracy. Data files do have both summary descriptions and source parameter - if the editor did not fill them then that may be a reason for deletion. MKFI (talk) 10:39, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

@MKFI: There's clearly a difference between someone editing an image using desktop software or the crop tool and uploading a new version of it versus having an "article" that information can be added to in real-time. One still treats Commons like a media repository, and the just recreates Wikipedia with a .tab or whatever at the end of the URL. You can argue about semantic, but editable "page" of tabular data is simply using Commons like Wikipedia. Otherwise there's zero point in having the distinction. As to the rest of what you said, I said the .tab files should have sources. Not that each individual data point in the file needs to citated to something. I'm sure you get the difference. As to if the tab files are sourced or not, they haven't been from what I've seen and at least with the .tab files uploaded by Fumikas Sagisavas there was pushback when I asked for them. Either that, or the files were sourced to a page that didn't contain the file. I have yet to see a .tab file that's sourced to the actual URL where the file came from, probably because the information is added to the file manually from different pages, which again is why they are just glorified Wikipedia articles. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:21, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

@Adamant1: The fact that with Commons you need to use a desktop image editing software is a technical limitation, a flaw we should try correct. It is certainly not the model to aspire for. Trying to make Commons more like Wikipedia is very much desirable. Commons is simply a common storage place to support the different Wikipedias; it does not mean that we should be different from them except when needed for a file-centric project. MKFI (talk) 18:57, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

• Re: "Commons is simply a common storage place to support the different Wikipedias," I disagree vehemently, and if that were to become a limitation on our scope I would immediately resign from the project. - Jmabel ! talk 20:07, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

• Not only that, but User:MKFI, have you heard of Wikivoyage, Wikiversity, Wiktionary, etc.? Inform yourself. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:47, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

• I used "Wikipedia" here to refer to all Wikimedia projects and intended it as a reason to expand our scope, not limit it. While all projects are independent, our decisions affect others more than most but I feel we are sometimes too insular. MKFI (talk) 19:51, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

• Use "Wikimedia" if you want people to understand you. But in fact, Commons:Project scope is broader than that: "Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to all. It acts as a common repository for all Wikimedia projects, but the content can be used by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose." And making Commons more like Wikipedia could be problematic in several ways, notably including scope but also fair use (unless Commons changes its policy on that, which I doubt we'll see). In which ways do you want to make it more like Wikipedia? -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:00, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

• FWIW, Wikidata is pretty useless for tabular data. If such data belongs on a WMF project, it would be this one. And, yes, there has been way too little discussion of almost all aspects of Data: space. - Jmabel ! talk 17:21, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
• It's my understanding that such files are supposed to go here, and thus COM:SCOPE needs to be updated accordingly. Help:Namespaces#Data says "This namespace is used for two types of datasets, Tabular Data with suffix .tab and Map Data with suffix .map", and refers to [1] and Commons:File types#Data files. At the very least this disputed speedy deletion should be undone and a proper deletion debate opened. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:53, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

  I agree with both @Pigsonthewing and @Jmabel

  "Documentation links"

  • Tabular help <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Tabular_Data>
  • Map help <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Map_Data>

  Ooligan (talk) 08:51, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Jameslwoodward: Why have these contested unilateral deletions not yet been undone? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:45, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

The consensus at Undeletion Requests was that data tables are out of scope, so they were not restored. .     Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 20:03, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Jameslwoodward: are you sure that's an informed consensus? What, then, is :Data space for? - Jmabel ! talk 00:10, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Further: Commons:Undeletion_requests/Archive/2023-05#Data:Ncei.noaa.gov/weather/Montpelier.tab that "consensus" appears to consist of one person. So Pinging @Yann, if this is out of scope, what, then, is :Data space for? - Jmabel ! talk 00:14, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

IMO, there are 2 issues with these pages, as mentioned earlier: there is no source for these tables, and we can't check if they are faithful or not. Then they could easily be implemented in the respective Wikipedia where they should be check for accuracy and suitability. Last but not least, no one except Jim gave an opinion on UDR. Yann (talk) 08:14, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I also note that I have been on Wiki for a long time and have several hundred thousand actions as an Admin and I have never seen anything in the Data: space before this. I'd like to draw your attention to Commons:File_types#Data_files which makes it clear that we do not support the Data file type. Perhaps we should, but that's not a question we can answer here. .     Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 13:46, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Your lack of awareness is no ground for deletion. There is nothing on that page to support your assertion "we do not support the Data file type"; on the contrary, it says that "data in JSON format in the dedicated Data: namespace" is supported. What is not supported are database file types (emphasis mine). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:03, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@Jameslwoodward: Link, please. I note also that the disputed flies are the subject of an open deletion discussion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:03, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion is open because I did not have the endurance to delete the files, one at a time since our other mechanisms do not work for data files. While my lack of awareness is certainly not grounds for deletion, it is strongly indicative that this file type very unusual. .     Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 14:16, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I think Commons:File types#Tabular data clearly shows that the file is of a type regarded as in scope, so any out-of-scope statement should be complemented by a discussion on why these files, as opposed to other .tab files, aren't in scope. As deleting files supposedly uploaded to be used, is disruptive, we should undelete these now, pending a discussion on and codification of the scope of the data namespace. –LPfi (talk) 17:46, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

May 17

Should we adopt the proposed Child Protection policy?

I noticed recently that Commons:Child protection is still marked as a draft policy, despite having been in the works for several years. I'd like to start a discussion here with the goal of making it an actual policy on Commons. The policy, as written, is eminently reasonable, serves as a reasonable baseline for child protection, and would help to bring us in line with child protection policies adopted on several other Wikimedia wikis (such as MetaWiki and EnWiki). — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 14:58, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm in favor of approving this policy, but there is one thing that's glaringly absent from it: a statement that everyone who violates it will be reported to Wikimedia Legal. Should we add that? Why or why not? -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:47, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

I think this is just a summary of other guidelines they are already in place. The "Advice for younger editors" could be advises to all people on the internet. Many of the cases mentioned on the page are not a reason of a infinite block they are cases for T&S and global bans. T&S is currently not even mentioned on the page. If we think we need something like this we should create a general Commons:Privacy and security advises page. GPSLeo (talk) 19:24, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

I think that would be a wise addition, so I've added that here. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 20:24, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

How do we figure out which material is considered obscene? The page already says that CSA is against the ToS (obviously) so i figure out the obscene part refer to something else Trade (talk) 21:33, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Since we operate in the United States, it would be by applying the Miller Test. I don't anticipate this being an issue we would encounter; genuinely obscene material is going to be out-of-scope, so we'd be deleting it already. The sorts of obscene images that are prohibited by that test cannot have non-trivial literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, and I think that educational media is going to almost always meet one of those.

Frankly, I'm struggling to come up with an example of something that's possibly in educational scope, not covered under CSAM, and also obscene under U.S. law. The closest I can come up with is a video taken by a rapist of them actively brutally raping some non-child being uploaded for use in an article about rape to demonstrate an example of what violent rape looks like—and I think WMF would have to delete it anyway because of applicable law (as well as... ya know... basic human decency, or absent that the Commons:Photographs of identifiable people policy). And even that example feels like a bit of a stretch. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 02:07, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Might wanna add this into the policy page Trade (talk) 15:11, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

And, for what it's worth, the ToU prohibits Posting or trafficking in obscene material that is unlawful under applicable law, so I don't think that this is introducing anything new. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 02:10, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

1. The proposed policy says: "Those affected should contact an admin by email". I have had very bad experiences with this, when I emailed an admin i really trusted. This should be deleted and perhaps replaced by contacting VRT, where at least several admins can look at it, which is a certain protection against a malicious admin.
2. It contains a list of things a child can do to not get harrassed. Somehow I had expected a list of things that commons and the community do to protect children (for example implementing a direct message system, that does not expose email addresses by design).

--C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 07:07, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

May i ask what happened regarding the admin you emailed? Trade (talk) 15:12, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Them turned out to be a friend of another well connected user who was later globally locked because of another incident. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 19:45, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

The other options that we would have would be:

1. "Those affected should email the Commons oversight team at oversight-commons@lists.wikimedia.org",
2. "Those affected should email the Commons information team at info-commons@wikimedia.org",

or some combination of the two.

Do either of these stand out as better to you, C.Suthorn? My hunch would be toward pointing towards the oversighters (who are vetted for this sort of sensitive information a bit more closely than admins or random VRT members are), but the problem is that there's typically a good bit of lag between an email being received and an oversight action being taken. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 04:44, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

If there is no suitable group and no suitable email address, a suitable group can be set up and an appropriate email address can be created. For example "protect-me@wikimedia.org"? C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 05:55, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Sitting on this a bit more, I think the solution to this would be to try to have more oversighters. This sort of stuff involves the same level (or greater) trust than the other things that get suppressed, so having more people vetted for that purpose would probably be the optimal way forward. In emergencies, Stewards can act, but I don't think that they are going to want to be taking on this stuff (CC: AntiCompositeNumber and DerHexer, Jon Kolbert, who appear to be the only Commons admins who are also Stewards from what I can see). There aren't a shortage of people who are trustworthy enough to perform oversight tasks; the bigger issue is persuading people to run. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 03:24, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

@Red-tailed hawk: I have made use of the oversight tool as an emergency action once as there was private information linked to from a public channel in IRC and no local OSer available. I do not have access to the Commons oversighters VRT queue so I do not know what the turnaround is for a response there. I think a step in the right direction would be allow stewards to have access to that queue and amend the Oversight policy on Commons to include language similar to what is included on Wikidata's oversight policy which states "Stewards can perform local oversighting in emergencies, during crosswiki oversighting, or if there are no local oversighters available." That way, requests can be handled promptly even if there is no local oversight immediately available. Jon Kolbert (talk) 00:30, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

No, i don't think that policy is needed here specifically as its already covered under Wikimedia Foundation's own Terms of Use.. It was something worth discussing a decade back but since WMF started hiring more employees including litigators and lawyers, there is no need for it..--Stemoc 17:30, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Just my two cents, but it seems like putting the cart before the horse to have special policies for protecting children when there aren't even basic civility guidelines in place that are being inforced. Let the WMF deal with it if it's something serious, but that's already happening from what I've seen and admins aren't dealing with more minor stuff in the meantime anyway. It would be weirdly discriminatory if they were only dealing with civility issues or harrasement if either one involved children but not anyone else. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:49, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree that we need to work on getting COM:CIVILITY to policy status and actually enforcing civility norms. I think that's orthogonal to this discussion, though, and I don't see making progress on one as blocking progress on the other. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 04:30, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Just today a user was warned for copyvio despite my ban request being for posting pornography of a woman without her consent. No amount of policy will matter if admins don't actually read the block requests. Trade (talk) 00:19, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

May 18

Change of licenses

I've just had several art licenses changed. In combinations of, the death date deleted, and or 1923 deleted. This was justified because The date 1923 is no longer used in the template, it is desirable that it be discontinued, as it is no longer appropriate under modern law. And the dates of life are indicated in the object card. There have been other license changes too, example: PD-Art, not PD-art, sir. What is the justification for this as a change?

To my mind it was a totally unnecessary edit. 1923 flips automatically to 1928. Modern law, shifts sometimes, and the death date is the key element in the code, around which, legislation pivots. Unless wikidata takes over licensing completely, which (for art ) I'm in favour of.

I'm aware of Wikidata's benefits in part, however it reduces the accessibility of the project to the everyman. That's why I advocated retaining the deathdate. Licensing is already complicated enough. This project has for some time, been complicating itself to the point of not being accessible anymore. We are polluted with arcane edits, that add no value.

A question is; what is the licence I should use to prevent this sort of harassment in future? Given that most of my artwork involves the artists dead by 75 or 100 years. Thoughts gratefully received. Broichmore (talk) 13:23, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I've added a section header to prevent problems with the automatic archiving. Feel free to rename the section, if you wish.

Could you provide some example links to where the changes you describe are happening? It is hard to tell without examples what the other editor is doing and whether their actions are appropriate. From Hill To Shore (talk) 14:24, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Presumably the one referred to in User talk:RetroRave#License change. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:03, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Every art example here at Help:Copyrights shows 1923 in the coding, and one of the two shows the death date.Broichmore (talk) 19:01, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

{{PD-old-auto-expired}} is the current best-use template. I'd rather not have the death date for artists that died more than 100 years ago, as then it would cost $30/hr * 1/2 hr per work * a million works = $$15 million!!! for us to analyze everything, which is a good argument for the legislature not to make such a silly change and force needless costs on us and similar archives. Seriously, our planning for a case where rent-seekers are getting more than a century after the artist dies should involve public outrage and aggressive lobbying, not just sitting there and taking it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:01, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean that the year shouldn't be added even if known? What costs does that involve? Or do you mean that the effort to find the year is unnecessary when it is known to be long ago? If we don't state the year (or something like "before 1890") and don't link a WP article or WD item with the death year, how does a patroller or reuser know that the death year indeed is early enough? A PD-old can be added by a misinformed guess.

For the outrage, I think 70 years pma, 95 years after publication or 120 years since creation should still cause that outrage – but it doesn't. In the USA, I have understood that a work can be under copyright regardless of age, if it was published in a certain window (so you need to check for that for any old work).

–LPfi (talk) 11:02, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

That only addresses the USA license. Most of the work I do, does not originate from there. Broichmore (talk) 12:05, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

{{PD-old-auto-expired}} works for any life+x case. There are some other tags need for anonymous works or simple photos or crown copyright or other more complex situations, but that will work for most foreign cases.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:15, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

FYI: Flickr's update community guidelines

https://www.flickr.com/help/guidelines?utm_campaign=community-guidelines-update&utm_source=Flickr&utm_medium=email&utm_content=cc-users

From the email sent by them:

What was once a lengthy list of dos-and-don’ts is now a structured document built around the things that make Flickr great: Inspiration, connection, and sharing.

We also developed a new “give some grace” policy designed to protect both Creative Commons license holders and their users. We love that Flickr is home to generous artists around the world. But we’re not a home for copyright trolls, and never will be.

We shared our thoughts about the process on the Flickr Blog, and you can read the new guidelines yourself right here:

Could be of interest to many here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:23, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Specifically, Flickr is "asking licensors to give good-faith reusers a 30-day grace period to correct any error or misuse of their open-licensed content with no penalty. This change was introduced to prevent the malpractice of so-called copyright trolls using the threat of litigation to generate income." Is copyright trolling an issue for Commons? If so, should we consider adopting similar guidelines? Nosferattus (talk) 16:48, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

The most used license on commons is cc-by-sa-4.0, the second most used license is cc-by-sa-3.0. The most used group of licenses on commons are cc-4.0, cc-zero and pd licenses. The second most used group of licenses on commons are cc-licenses below 4.0. Possible copyrigt trolling affects this second group. All files imported from Flickr fall into this group. In the past it has been discussed to ask users who uploaded with cc, but below 4.0 to update their files to 4.0 because of the issue of possible copyright trolling. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 17:01, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't help that much unless the grace period is explicitly and bindingly granted. Otherwise the good faith copyright owners will continue to grant a grace period (usually as long as needed if the reuser is cooperating), while the copyright trolls will ignore the request. –LPfi (talk) 11:07, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

The new guidelines explicitly state that Failure to allow a good faith reuser the opportunity to correct errors is against the intent of the license and not in line with the values of our community, and can result in your account being removed. So, at least Flickr will eject people who do this going forward, but that doesn't actually help the end-user when they are still on the line for whatever liability arises. Frankly, they should just switch to the 4.0 licenses to protect the end-user. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 14:34, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Frankly Commons should ask commons users who uploaded own work with a cc license but below 4.0 to consider to switch their uploads to 4.0. More than a million users have uploaded files to commons and nearly all are unaware of the issue and of this discussion. A small number does use the 3.0 version, because they do not want to use 4.0, but the majority might do the switch. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 09:27, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

May 19

File:Betriebszentrale S-Bahn Berlin, Halenseestraße am Friedhof Grunewald mit Stellenanzeige Fahrdienstleiter:in am 2023-05-17.png

I uploaded File:Betriebszentrale S-Bahn Berlin, Halenseestraße am Friedhof Grunewald mit Stellenanzeige Fahrdienstleiter:in am 2023-05-17.png. Accidently I uploaded it as File:Betriebszentrale S-Bahn Berlin, Halenseestraße am Friedhof Grunewald mit Stellenanzeige Fahrdienstleiter-in am 2023-05-17.png. Either that, or a glitch in the software changed it from File:Betriebszentrale S-Bahn Berlin, Halenseestraße am Friedhof Grunewald mit Stellenanzeige Fahrdienstleiter:in am 2023-05-17.png to File:Betriebszentrale S-Bahn Berlin, Halenseestraße am Friedhof Grunewald mit Stellenanzeige Fahrdienstleiter-in am 2023-05-17.png. I requested a renamimg from File:Betriebszentrale S-Bahn Berlin, Halenseestraße am Friedhof Grunewald mit Stellenanzeige Fahrdienstleiter-in am 2023-05-17.png to File:Betriebszentrale S-Bahn Berlin, Halenseestraße am Friedhof Grunewald mit Stellenanzeige Fahrdienstleiter:in am 2023-05-17.png. But it turned out that file movers cannot rename the file because of some software problem ("file already exists"). So can an admin please manually do the rename? (context: ":" is a gender marker in the german language) --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 15:46, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

@C.Suthorn: can you have a colon in a Commons filename? I would think it would confuse the mechanism for "file spaces". - Jmabel ! talk

Such files certainly exist: File:About - La vieille Roche : 1ère partie, le mari imprévu.djvu, for example. There are only 618 files on Commons with colons in their names, though, and their page_ids suggest they're all from 2013 or earlier. So I suspect it's difficult or impossible to create new ones. --bjh21 (talk) 18:02, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

... with one exception: File:Ed Saperia - Open Access Reader: A project to cite all OA papers in Wikipedia - Wikipedia Science Conference 2015.webm, from 2015. I'll stop looking now. --bjh21 (talk) 18:07, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Gremlins

There are Gremlins in Commons! User:Koavf uploaded File:A Weekly Conversation- With Mike at W. S. Jenks & Son.webm and File:A Weekly Conversation- On the Line with Michele.webm in 2021. Both starting with "A Weekly Conversation:". But the Gremlins changed it to "A Weekly Conversation-". Without leaving an entry in history or logs! Prove: go to "Page information" for both files and compare the "Display title" and the "Sort key"! By 2022 the Gremlins had learned to also falsify the sort key: File:Bridge Over River Feugh -Feugh Cottage Banchory Ternan - George Washington Wilson - ABDMS004835.8.jpg. --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 05:28, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are talking about with the lack of "entry in history or logs" - you can quite clearly see the change for the first file in the history and even navigate to the specific difference at [2]. On the second file I can't see any evidence that it was uploaded under a different name; I was able to change your "proof" on the page information page with a single edit to the default sort template on the file.[3] This seems to be the result of normal editing and there are no gremlins here. From Hill To Shore (talk) 08:14, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

For testing I uploaded a new version of File:Möbeluppsats, 12 delar, VI:II:A.a.11 - Hallwylska museet - 39426.tif with the BigChunkedUploadSrcipt by User:Rillke, but it ended up as File:Möbeluppsats, 12 delar, VI-II-A.a.11 - Hallwylska museet - 39426.tif instead. --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 10:12, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Page for bad YouTube authors?

I recently got burned by an unofficial YouTube channel that was lifting content from the official one. The channel had high-quality uploads and a few thousand subscribers, and it wasn't clear it was an unofficial one until another user pointed it out to me. This brings me to my question: is there a page that tracks bad YouTube authors?

We have a Commons:Questionable Flickr images for Flickr, but I couldn't find an equivalent page for YouTube. Ixfd64 (talk) 21:02, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

We don't have a comprehensive one; User:YouTubeReviewBot/bad-authors is the old one that was used by the old YouTubeReviewBot, but it is very small and doesn't run anymore. That bot's successor bot hasn't run since April 2022, so we effectively don't have a bot at all doing this task. The existing projectspace tracking page for this (Commons:Questionable YouTube videos) has not been updated in seven years, and its existence is not well-advertised.

That being said, getting an actively maintained tracking page going would be worthwhile—a clever bot writer could use it to tag images screenshotted from known bad accounts with a "failed license review" speedy tag and could notify the uploader, or could at least put them into a category for human review. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 13:46, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

May 21

File:Jaguar E-Type Roadster Eté2016 Marcq-en-Baroeul dfil-du-grand-boulevard en 2009 (1).jpg

Greetings. I have come upon an improperly named image file that needs changing but don't know how to do it. I see no commands or appropriate options. This is the file: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jaguar_E-Type_Roadster_Et%C3%A92016_Marcq-en-Baroeul_dfil-du-grand-boulevard_en_2009_(1).jpg. The problem is that it does not show an E-type Jaguar (see a selection of proper images here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=jaguar+e-type+&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image) but an MG-A instead (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=mga+roadster&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image) - which the author themselves realizes is the car portrayed in the misnamed file (confirmed in their description of the image here: MG A Roadster au défilé du Grand Boulevard du 27-09-09 à Marcq-en-Barœul, Nord).

Please, whoever has the ability to make this change, do so, as (unfortunately) my ISP changes at least once daily, and I cannot always remember what pages or files I may have worked on here or at Wikipedia and am provided no means of maintaining continuity with a previous day's work. So leaving instructions (even if an unregistered user can carry them out) may still not work out for me to make the change. Thank you, whoever steps up and makes the simple but necessary alteration to the file name. 2601:196:180:DC0:693C:8091:E454:316C 10:03, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

If you note on what page you discussed an issue, you will find it there (or in some cases in an archive of that page, note some keywords to find it more easily). Only appointed users can move files on Commons, but you can request a move, adding {{rename|Jaguar MG A Roadster Eté2016 Marcq-en-Baroeul dfil-du-grand-boulevard en 2009 (1).jpg|3|MG A, not E.}} or something similar (the "3" stands for "obvious error"). –LPfi (talk) 10:54, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you User:LPfi for your reply. What page? Where? All I know is that an image file (as indicated) is misnamed. Where to request a "move" to a page with the correct information I do not know. Thank you. 2601:196:180:DC0:B9E8:3C0F:92D8:FB6C 06:55, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• You request the move on the file page (the page you linked as the heading to this section). - Jmabel ! talk 17:07, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Also, you should probably register a user name, which would solve the issue of not being able to keep track of your edits. –LPfi (talk) 10:55, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Is 'Aadgujjkm' a right caption?

An anonymous user added 'Aadgujjkm' as a caption in the Chamoru language. Since it's the user's only contribution, I wonder if this is a good addition. Google translate does not recognize it. Wouter (talk) 13:47, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

On ch.wikipedia.org no results were found. Wouter (talk) 13:58, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

@Wouterhagens, I could certainly be wrong, but I'm fairly sure it's vandalism. It's not found by Google at all, and it doesn't really conform to the structure of what I'm seeing of example Chamoru words. Plus, whenever I see letters like "ujjkm" together, it tells me someone was just hammering their keyboard (they are grouped together on an English keyboard). I'll revert. — Huntster (t @ c) 14:12, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

May 22

Berlin transit icons

I am exploring the possibility of refreshing the U-Bahn and S-Bahn icons (located here and here respectively), but I have run into an issue where the colours in the BVG website, S-Bahn website and VBB map are inconsistent. The following table contains the hexadecimal values from my research into three sources: the BVG website, the S-Bahn website, and the VBB map:

Mode and line colours

Line	BVG (web)	DB (web)	VBB (map)
Modes
Regio	be1414	e10a17	e2001a
S-Bahn	45935d	007238	008d4f
U-Bahn	115d91	1e6ab2	0066ad
Tram	be1414	cc151a	e2001a
Bus	95276e	a01c7d	a5027d
Ferry	528dba	0099d6	009bd5
S-Bahn
S1	bc6194	eb588f	da6ba2
S2/25/26	457236	047939	007734
S3	115d91	026597	0066ad
S41	a0542e	aa3c1f	ad5937
S42	af6223	ba622d	cb6418
S45/46/47	bc9144	ca8539	cd9c53
S5	ee771e	ea561c	eb7405
S7/75	8c6dab	764d9a	816da6
S8/85	7dad4c	4fa433	66aa22
S9	701c28	951732	992746
U-Bahn
U1	7dad4c	7dad4c	7dad4c
U2	da421e	da421e	da421e
U3	16683d	2e937d	16683d
U4	f0d722	f0d722	f0d722
U5/55	7e5330	7e5330	7e5330
U6	8c6dab	8c6dab	8c6dab
U7	528dba	528dba	528dba
U8	224f86	224f86	224f86
U9	f3791d	f3791d	f3791d
Fare zones
A	be5a00	fba71d	bd5a00
B	008291	1a9c9f	008291
C	5a821e	8dc73f	5a821e

I am aware that the U-Bahn line icon colours were changed by Teo.raff in 2020, in response to Berliner_Verkehrsbetriebe § Farben. However, I am minded to contest the changes because they are notably darker and desaturated, especially with the U7 icon. However, I have problems trying to find the Basiselemente (CD-Manual), as referenced in the German article. I wonder if anyone can help me find that because (1) I may look at using the Pantone hexadecimal values instead from the colour book that I happen to have, and (2) I don't know if the Basiselemente gives those exact hexadecimal values that the website uses. --Minoa (talk) 03:49, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Minoa So what? Sometimes in life there is not a single correct answer for something and that's OK. Suggest to watch this video on "the" American flag and embrace the chaos. El Grafo (talk) 08:18, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@El Grafo: Understood, although the discovery of the VBB handbook means I am close to answering my own question, with the choice between RGB and CMYK yet to be decided due to lack of time for now. ;-) Either way, I will be documenting the sources and my colour selection process. --Minoa (talk) 22:46, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

@Minoa That one seems like an easy one: CMYK only really makes sense for professional printing. Or main target audience will almost exclusively view our media on some form of screen, which is RGB. Go for RGB. El Grafo (talk) 07:48, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

References

Almost 60 Ukrainian libraries was damaged or destroyed since the war

“	According to her, the Russians have damaged or destroyed almost 60 Ukrainian libraries since the beginning of the war.	”
—[4]

The most imminent threat to library preservation is the Russia-Ukraine war. If Russian bombs hit Ukrainian libraries the book could all gone. Almost 60 Ukrainian libraries was damaged or destroyed since the war. Pictures. Do anyone know about Ukrainian libraries websites with scans? I hope they can be uploaded as part of Commons:Library back up project. 維基小霸王 (talk) 04:56, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Not to poo poo the idea, but ifthe books are already on the websites of the libraries I don't see why that would change just because the physical building was or is damaged. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:10, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

The server could be bombed as well. 維基小霸王 (talk) 09:04, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Because of the possibility, that a computer (for example holding a database) can be damaged there are backups and live mirrors. Good working praxis says to have original and backup at different locations and to secure backups from fire and other hazards. However it may be the case that some libraries in Ukraine have not save backup or that even secured backups are destroyed. Do you have information, if that is the case. Do you have information for which specific library this is the case? And if it is the case, then the internet archive (archive.org) would be the first place for additional backups and large national libraries like the Library of Congress in USA or the DNB in Germany would be the second choice. In every case commons.wikimedia can ever only be a place for free media, that is media in the public domain for old age or other reasons or media that was released under a free license like some creative commons license. Works in library are mostly not free but commercial. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 16:48, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, IA is the first place to look at, but the "Library back up project" is also on the same line: preserving documents for posterity, including those which are not yet in the public domain. These are deleted after uploading and will be undeleted when they will be free. Yann (talk) 16:59, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I also suggest getting in touch with Archive Team. [5] They're really good at this stuff. Ixfd64 (talk) 17:16, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Australians in South Western Sydney

Hi all, are there any Australians who live in South Western Sydney who might like to help me photograph our area? I have covered about three quarters of the City of Liverpool so far (see Wikishootme). It would be lovely to meet up with some like minded people to document our area :-) - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 09:52, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

FileExporter problem?

Lately I'm experiencing slowdown in image file transfers, especially when transferring User:Patrickroque01's tons of local enwiki photos to Commons using FileEx/Importer tool. I've suffered a major error while transferring his File:Saint Stephen The Protomartyr Church Ligao (San Esteban, Ligao, Albay; 04-16-2023).jpg to Commons. The error message reads "Import failed. Failed to commit operations". But after forcefully reloading/refreshing, the message claims the file exists here. Yes it exists, but the photo or the thumbnail versions cannot be downloaded. Kindly check the photo file. I'm not sure if it is a problem of FileEx/Importer tool or a problem of my network provider or my phone's browser app which tends to slow down when accessing most of Wikimedia Commons. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 11:59, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Seems ok now (or so?). I'll tag the enwiki copy for speedy deletion any way. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 13:05, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

How to fix a wikidata infobox

The infobox on Category:Queensland has the name of the former governor Paul de Jersey not the present Governor Jeannette Young. I looked on Wikidata but the governor there does appear to be Jeannette Young, so why is the wikidata infobox on Commons wrong? And, more importantly, how do I fix it? Thanks Kerry Raymond (talk) 12:40, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

If you mean the Wikidata item d:Q36074, as "head of government" Paul de Jersey and Annastacia Palaszczuk are listed there. And same is displayed in the infobox, so IMO nothing surprising here. Regards --A.Savin 12:51, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Kerry Raymond: I've updated the governor on Wikidata. Hope that resolves this issue. SHB2000 (talk) 10:06, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Autorization to take tripod photo from the top platform of the Shard, London

Hi,

Are there any Londoners here who could give clues on how to get an autorization to bring a tripod in the viewing gallery of the Shard please? Perhaps Wikimedia UK could help with that?

Thank you for any help or suggestion.

Benh (talk) 22:40, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

May 23

Global Usage badges are gone

The Global Usage badges just have disappeared from all categories and galleries (though still seem to work on VisualFile Change). What happened? --A.Savin 00:35, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I've found the issue and am working on a fix. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 00:47, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@A.Savin Fixed at Special:Diff/765877258. Cc. Jon (WMF), who forgot the trailing "d" in "Deprecated", in case the same mistake was made on other wikis. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 00:53, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Generic category for upscaled/AI enhanced images

See: File:Charles Théodore of Belgium.jpg Do we have a generic category for upscaled/AI enhanced images? I don't think they need to be deleted just properly documented. --RAN (talk) 02:21, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

• Offhand, I'd use {{Retouched}}, but we may have something more specific. - 02:49, 23 May 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmabel (talk • contribs)
• Perfect! It lists all the subcategories once you add the template. --RAN (talk) 04:33, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): I think you're looking for Category:Photos modified by AI. Nosferattus (talk) 14:58, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

• Perfect! I see there are other categories for specific AI programs. This generic one is perfect, since the uploader did not specify which one they used. --RAN (talk) 15:00, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

AI enhanced images

The debate has started again about whether to keep or delete AI adjusted images: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Charles Théodore of Belgium.jpg and Commons:Deletion requests/File:Cardinal Schuster.jpg as well as a half dozen others, more eyes are welcome, no matter what your opinion is. --RAN (talk) 12:30, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Wikidata not being picked up

Category:Watership Down was previously a mix-up between the actual place and the novel of the same name. I have hived off the content related to the novel to Category:Watership Down (novel), but the Wikidata, previously at Category:Watership Down, which relates to the novel, is not being picked up at Category:Watership Down (novel), despite my edits to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q936801. It just says "NO WIKIDATA ID FOUND!". Can anyone fix this up and get it to work properly? ITookSomePhotos (talk) 19:06, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Fixed Trade (talk) 20:19, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Great, thanks for looking at that. ITookSomePhotos (talk) 21:03, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Problem with image with false information.

I have (righty or wrongly) nominated an image for deletion which depicts a person of other than it claims to be. There has been call to speedy keep the image and a direction that as the nomination was "my mistake" it is my duty to go and sort the whole lot out. Some may understand why I may simply walk away from the thing which is what I am going to do because I am annoyed by the whole thing. I'm a volunteer and when I good faith try to help I'm not going to continue with that response. Its simply an assault on my mental health if nothing else. Can I please ask if someone else kindly takes up case of the image, decides how to handle the problem and ensures it is not used on other Wikis. This is the deletion discussion: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Walther-Johann-Gottfried-01.jpg. I'm interested to know the correct and efficient approach should this happen in the further but I'll likely going to desist from responding to this thread at all but I my monitor it. Thankyou. -- 21:58, 23 May 2023 (UTC) unsigned but by User:DeirgeDel

Please sign with ~~~~. Otherwise the reply-Link will not show. The image cannot be deleted it is neither a copyright violation, nor fake, nor out of scope. But it can be renamed, the file description can be changed and it can be unlinked from all usases that assume it is the image of Walter Johann Gottfried. That is what you can do or everyone else. --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 23:09, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Sorry - for not signing ... just too battered .... apologies again. -- DeirgeDel ^t_a^c 00:09, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I've largely cleaned up this situation but there are several languages where the image is used where I don't even know enough to leave a half-coherent message. Could someone please eliminate the use of what is now File:Thomas Christian Walter 02.jpg where it appears in:

• bg:Йохан Готфрид Валтер
• fi:Johann Gottfried Walther
• ja:ヨハン・ゴットフリート・ヴァルター
• pl:Johann Gottfried Walther
• uk:Йоганн Готфрід Вальтер

Thanks in advance. - Jmabel ! talk 00:47, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I removed the image from these pages. Some of the edits must be sighted. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 16:51, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

• If you delete an image that is wrongly identified at Commons it just leaves the copies misidentified elsewhere. Instead of deleting we fix the errors, and explain in a note that has been misidentified. --RAN (talk) 04:22, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
  • @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): I'm not sure what you intend to say here. I didn't delete the image on Commons; I moved it. I left the redirect and allowed a global replace so, yes, the copies are now in articles with misidentified captions. I dealt with wherever the image is used in a wiki in a language where I can at least explain myself in an edit summary (French, Spanish, Italian, German; English was already dealt with). In each of these I deleted the image from the articles where it was misleading; unfortunately, we do not have an image of Johann Gottfried Walther to substitute. What I am looking for is for someone to clean up these remaining transclusions, because there is no way I could explain in any of the relevant languages what is going on. Are you trying to tell me to do something different from that when you say "instead of deleting we fix the errors"? - Jmabel ! talk 04:41, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

My comment was for User:DeirgeDel, who nominated the image for deletion. Sorry for the misunderstanding. --RAN (talk) 05:04, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

As the comment was towards we I really hate to say it but there is a real possibility of I has simply raised a discussion here "we" would have take a look and decided it was too difficult or told me to simply go off and do something. I find Jmabel's comments really helpful. I know some things about how thinks work here, I know far less about other things. In this case I'd reused an article on a Wikiquote article (that I had no particular interest in) to improve that article; and I do that very often on Wikiquote when sitelinking, and just tried to make issue was put through Commons (and Wikidata which I handled myself, hopefully relatively correctly). Obviously Jmabel has subsequently removed the image from Wikidata completely. In a case like this I feel its really important to get peer support for this impact of change. What I wil say is that this case comes up from time to time and having a bot to notify and remove from remote Wiki's would probably be helpful to everyone. Please be aware yesterday I was also trying to deal with some complex-looking stuff on Wikiquote so I was time-crunched on stuff there and was under pressure to minimise my time on this matter. -- (Formerly Djm-leighpark) DeirgeDel ^t_a^c 09:48, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

May 24

AI and the decision not to participate

I had been about scanning and uploading my old photos of unusual places to Wikimedia Commons, but then I decided not to. Why? The immediate and unresolved problems of AI-based images: wholesale licensing theft. I have my doubts about this getting resolved any time soon due to the piratical nature of tech CEOs. THSlone (talk) 00:58, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

• How is looking at your image, stealing it? They don't store a copy of your image, the AI just looks at it, an stores an impression of it. Just like me being inspired by a Jackson Pollock painting to copy his style. And if you don't store them here, they will probably be tossed in the garbage in one or two more generations. No one will remember who you were, and why the images were important to you. Sites like Flickr are threatening to delete once you stop paying, Google just announced all your cloud storage will be deleted if you don't log in for two years. --RAN (talk) 04:20, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
  • Richard Arthur Norton, About 10 (ten) years ago Google used to delete your cloud content after 9 (nine) months, the irony is that while Moore's law's demise meant that computing power hasn't grown exponentially, computer storage technology is still on an exponential curve. This means that despite computer storage becoming cheaper companies offer less of it and will delete your files more, my guess is that the AI training software doesn't need stored files anymore as people upload a lot of files to services like Meta's Facebook, Google's YouTube, and Bytedance's TikTok. My guess is that the Wikimedia Commons isn't a large source for AI training to begin with either. Plus as storage becomes cheaper less donation money is needed by the WMF to maintain the Wikimedia Commons.
    Uploading old photographs from the pre-smartphone era also allows a period in history to be preserved that I think a century from now people will be cursing at us for not having preserved as much of it.
    This is also why I'm for direct co-operation with SmugMug for us to import freely licensed images from Flickr, it's clear that a lot of data will be destroyed and nobody is doing anything to preserve so many files of historical value. -- — Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 08:15, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
• Twitter also announced they will begin deleting inactive accounts. --RAN (talk) 12:11, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

کتاب لغت نامه بشرویه

کتاب لغت نامه بشرویه با بیش از 3000 کلمه و وازه های ناب و اصیل بشرویه ای توجه علاقمندان به فرهنگ وسنن گذشتگان و گویش محلی مردمان خوب و با صفای دیار بشرویه را به خود جلب نموده است . متاسفانه مشاهده می شود که برخی از این کلمات و وازه های به فراموشی سپرده شده و یا در حال کم رنگ شدن است و نیاز مند توجه بیشتر. معرفی این گونه موارد به نسل جدید و آینده به خوبی احساس میشود ونیاز به گار وتلاش در این زمینه

دارد  .

thumb —Preceding unsigned comment was added by 95.38.76.180 (talk) 05:33, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

There is a Persian-language village pump at "Commons:قهوه‌خانه". --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 08:18, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

File:E.-coli-growth.gif

File:E.-coli-growth.gif cant be found in https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030058 ? RZuo (talk) 08:57, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

The license at source is free. Yann (talk) 10:04, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

i think i found the problem. it actually came from another article https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030045 ? RZuo (talk) 14:37, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

@Yann i dont know how you were able to review that file. it was not found in that url, as i had said in my original post. RZuo (talk) 14:39, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Commons:Media of the day

Our Media of the day need some care. Please propose good quality media and descriptions in various languages. Thanks, Yann (talk) 09:24, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Can I upload a photo of a French postage stamp?

I would like to upload an image of a postage stamp to use as an illustration for an article about a painting by Maurice de Vlaminck. Unfortunately not sure if the postage stamps of France are copyright free? Τάρας στον Παρνασσό (talk) 14:06, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

No, French postage stamps aren't automatically in the public domain. It depends of the design and the designer. Maurice de Vlaminck died in 1958, this one won't be in the public domain in France until the end of 2028. Yann (talk) 14:31, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Categories for 360° panoramas are a mess

A recent bot task prompted me to look into the categorization of 360-degree photos, and it looks like such a mess that I think we ought to have some discussion here before we even get to the CfDing stage. Category:360° panoramas is the entry point, but it has lots of subcategories that aren't well-defined and may be redundant. Category:360° panoramic photographs doesn't articulate any distinction, since presumably all panoramas are photos. There's Category:Photography360‎, which has almost nothing except the photos subcategory. And then there's Category:360° panoramas with equirectangular projection‎, which leads to the subcategory Category:Spherical panoramics‎, which leads to the subcategory Category:Photo Sphere.

I'm not an expert on the different types of 360° photography, so I'd appreciate input from those who know a little more about how best to sort this all out. It'd also be nice if we could get {{Pano360}} to play more nicely with the categorization (maybe even using metadata to do it automatically?). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:29, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

there can be panoramic videos or paintings.--RZuo (talk) 18:39, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Comment: As of now, I have only uploaded a single 180degree stereoscopic video (mostly as a test), but I have a number of such videos waiting to be published. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 18:59, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

There are some pretty famous 360° panoramic paintings, e.g. the Gettysburg Cyclorama. Oddly, Category:Gettysburg Cyclorama appears to be in no way connected to Category:360° panoramas or even Category:Panoramas. - Jmabel ! talk 23:31, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Alternative to courtesy deletion: courtesy hiding of author info？

sometimes users want to delete files that were uploaded long ago and depict notable subjects. commons doctrines are that licences are irrevocable so these requests are often refused. but i think, author info could be hidden so that the authors would no longer be associated with them, if they request that? the motivation is it's possible that the subjects depicted may bring legal action or whatever threats to pressure and coerce the authors.--RZuo (talk) 18:39, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

The CC licenses allow name removal requests by the author. So this should be no problem. But we do not have a defined procedure for this. GPSLeo (talk) 21:03, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

License reviews

Hi, Manual license review obviously doesn't scale. We have files waiting reviewing for more than 2 years. Couldn't we have a bot reviewing licenses for files from YouTube and Vimeo, like we have for Flickr? Yann (talk) 19:26, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Actually there was a bot, supposed to be replaced by another bot, which stopped working more than one year ago. I could run it myself. The bot master is not active, but has anyone a copy of the code? Yann (talk) 20:04, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

@Yann I looked into this a while ago, and could not find the code. Eatcha did not reply to email either. I actually (just before seeing your comment) had requested a list of Toolforge tools for which Eatcha was owner phab:T337432, so one or both of us could hopefully adopt the tools per policy. Hopefully it was on Toolforge like some of their other tools! —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 20:10, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

i've been wanting to reform the youtube bot review process for a long time. instead of letting a bot review files by itself, i think it should be done like this:

1. the bot reviews a file (whose source=youtube) only to verify the given youtube link is youtube-cc-by. this puts the file into a category "files reviewed by youtubebot pending human reviews".
2. a human would check if the commons file does actually come from that youtube link, and pass it. then the file is put into a category "files reviewed by youtubebot and reviewer".

flickrbot can review files by itself because it verifies whether commons copy is identical to flickr copy, but it's obviously not feasible for youtubebot to do that.

"files reviewed by youtubebot pending human reviews" is less urgent than the current "licence review needed", because at least the given youtube link would be verified to be ccby. it doesnt matter if the licence would be changed later. the only problem would be if the video disappears before a human reviews it. then we can review the files on a case-by-case basis to decide if evidence is sufficient to establish the authenticity of the files. RZuo (talk) 22:48, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

In my experience of reviewing files from YouTube, reviewing could be tedious but we need to endure that. Not all freely-licensed YouTube videos are decent. They may look decent at first but later on one may find third-party content that the YouTube author incorporated in their video. That third-party content may come from unfree sources like screenshots from ABS-CBN newscasts or citizens' video shots that were not originally from the YouTube author but the author just included them in their video. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 00:37, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

@Yann: Last time we discussed this (Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2023/04#103,857_unreviewed_files) I did a suggestion on how to split up the work to make it more manageable. I was told this is a really bad idea and didn't feel like spending any energy on this anymore. I can just assume that user hasn't learned yet that the wiki way is to eat an elephant one bite at a time and for that the work needs to be bite sized so more people help out a little. Multichill (talk) 13:34, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Category:Files moved to Commons requiring review is split up by date. is that bite-sized enough for you? now is 2023, but the oldest subcat is Files moved to Commons requiring review as of 29 April 2008‎ (28 F) from 15 years ago. notably, that subcat was created at 20:11, 5 March 2009‎ by BotMultichillT.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Arash_Arabasadi_-_.@VOANews_HalftimeShow_is_about_to_start_at_SuperBowlLII.webm&diff=prev&oldid=398248932 added the file to "Twitter videos review needed" (which is small enough with only 13 files), but 3 years after this edit and 5 years after upload it remains unreviewed.

shifting files around in maintenance cats only make some users feel good, but doesnt actually help with shortening the queue. RZuo (talk) 15:17, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Category:Files requiring license review sorted by user name has 1k gallery pages, but the review process was obviously not sped up even with this aid. RZuo (talk) 16:14, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• My guess is that WMF is waiting for AI to become intelligent enough to handle these reviewing tasks. Maybe 10 years later? If an AI-fortied bot can do all the tedious tasks, why humans do the same things spending their precious time? --トトト (talk) 14:57, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:ANA_LABORDETA_2008.jpg&diff=prev&oldid=766959842 took me quite some time to find the actual webpage. is this effort to find the source worthwhile? or should we just send this to DR and let the uploader fix it properly? RZuo (talk) 16:12, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

May 25

Question about North Carolina government copyright laws

Hello, while trying to find out about the VRT process regarding government documents published by the North Carolina Department of Transportation, a fellow editor made a good point that those documents, and many like them, could be considered "public records" under Chapter 132 of North Carolina state law. Though, there is some confusion on the basis of what the statute defines a "public record" as (the public being able to view gov. records vs. the public being able to view and modify/reuse gov. records). If anyone knows something about state copyright laws, is there enough justification in this statute that could allow the creation of a public domain license tag on Wikimedia Commons for documents created by the government bodies in North Carolina? Thank you for your help and have a great day! DiscoA340 (talk) 04:01, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• Adding on to the above, this "Copyright Decisions" page from the Government and Heritage Library of the State Library of North Carolina says "Most of these [North Carolina state publications] are considered to be in the public domain, pursuant to General Statute 132-1b," which is the section of law which defines what constitutes a public record. Despite this, other state sources do not treat their files/photos/publications this way, as evidenced by the different licenses with which agencies' official Flickr pages will use, and other various references to some state works being copyrighted. -Indy beetle (talk) 04:22, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Ship manifests at https://heritage.statueofliberty.org/

Has anyone figured out how to download ship manifests at https://heritage.statueofliberty.org/ (SOL)? The same manifests are available at Ancestry and Familysearch, but sometimes this website indexed the name properly, so it shows up in a search. It would just be easier to download from the SOL website, rather than trying to refind the same page at one of the other websites, where the name is misspelled in the index. RAN (talk) 12:41, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

fascinating website. thx for sharing! RZuo (talk) 13:26, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

It is a very good website, Ancestry has the same images, but it is a pay site, although Ancestry is free through Wikipedia Library. I always search both because of spelling errors, when each created an index by transcribing the names. At Ancestry you can fix the spelling errors. --RAN (talk) 17:11, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• OK, I figured it out. It is a two step process. Add the "Enable Right Click for Google Chrome" extension, then when you are on the page you want to download click the extension's icon and right click is enabled for that page. Then you have to use the procedure: right click > Inspect > Application. From there you can click on each graphic element. Once you found the right one, you can use "save as". The second step is the same one you use to download eBay images. --RAN (talk) 17:07, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Name change (error in name)

Need name change. Many files uploaded by me have name "Hans Dahlberg...."-something, error. Should be "Hans_Dahlgren..."-same-something. Example file "Hans Dahlberg.21f337.1072176 03.jpg" ERROR - should be "Hans Dahlgren.21f337.1072176 03.jpg" Correct. In only this example, I have corrected the category and desciption, so all instances of "berg" should be changed to "gren"... Sorry, I was in stress. I applied and got a long time ago FILEMOVER right, and if I had that still, I could have changed the name. See this as an application for FILEMOVER rights. It is much better that the file uploader has the name-change-rights, automatically. Hope for a speedy change! --Janwikifoto (talk) 13:34, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• @Janwikifoto: I believe these are all fixed now. Please check the files in Category:Hans Dahlgren in Hässleholms kulturhus and make sure it is now how you want it.
• If you want to request filemover rights, please ask at Commons:Requests_for_rights#Filemover, not here on the VP. - Jmabel ! talk 17:36, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

image probably in wrong Category, but I can't be sure

The Category:Thomas Francis Kennedy (bishop) has an image that is highly unlikely to be an image of this person (Kennedy/bishop). It is a colour photograph (not colourised) that claims to be the bishop's confirmation, though this particular bishop's confirmation occurred in 1907. The Description notes this is the confirmation of "Bishop Tomas Kennedy" - note different spelling of 'Tomas' v. 'Thomas'. My guess is that this needs to be moved to its own Category, not just deleted, but I can't be sure, so I'm not willing to make the move myself. Seauton (talk) 16:08, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• Good catch of an error. I removed it from the category. File:Consecrationbishoptomas.jpg. The Irish need to broaden their names lexicon or add an extra given name like in Germany. An Irish death record is terrible too, they list the name of the dead and their age at death. No name of the parents. --RAN (talk) 17:12, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

May 26

Global ban proposal for Leonardo José Raimundo

There is an on-going discussion about a proposal that Leonardo José Raimundo be globally banned from editing all Wikimedia projects. You are invited to participate at Requests for comment/Global ban for Leonardo José Raimundo on Meta-Wiki. Thank you! Elton (talk) 00:59, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Legality of Indian maps

This discussion about the legality of Indian maps seems like it might be relevant to Commons: w:Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Communications from government of India to Wikimedia Foundation regarding content about maps depicting the borders of India. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:30, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

api to return best images with date for a category

I am developing Expounder (https://wiki.johnbray.org.uk/Expounder), a system to create wikis populated by wikidata, with a geographical/historical focus. As part of this I'm creating an Images tab with 12 images from Commons for the item, eg for ship HMS Belfast (https://warlike.johnbray.org.uk/Q757178). To do this I'm currently scraping the Commons category page for the item, but I would prefer to use the Good Pictures filter to get someone's opinion of the best 12 images, and to return the date the pictures were taken, as the focus of the site is historical. Is there an API I can query that returns "best 12 pictures with dates for Category:X"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vicarage (talk • contribs) 12:39, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

• Your best bet is to look for featured pictures, quality images and maybe valued images, but Commons image search often doesn't work. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:38, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

  I looked through the API, and it seems that https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=categorymembers&cmtitle=Category:HMS_Belfast_(C35)&cmprop=timestamp%7Ctitle is the best I can do, getting the timestamp when a file was added, not the date the image was taken. I have raised https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T337605 to get the date added as return value Vicarage (talk) 09:08, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

stanford.edu

Stanford University has a huge collection of interesting documents (everything online until 1927 shows 991,157 results). Many documents are available for download, but I can't find any way to download whole books. Any idea? They also have a silly license, claiming a copyright on everything, even 2D reproduction of old documents. Yann (talk) 22:21, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

May 27

Selection of the U4C Building Committee

The next stage in the Universal Code of Conduct process is establishing a Building Committee to create the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C). The Building Committee has been selected. Read about the members and the work ahead on Meta-wiki.

-- UCoC Project Team, 04:20, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

speed graphs

There does not seem to be a category for graphs in general and for speed diagrams/graphs in particular.

examples:

,

,

logaritmic

Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:07, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Mass deletion nomination tool?

In these contributions a sock account has what seems to be a rash of made-up flags. Some were already deleted at Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by User Russian Onest, but the rest are now being disruptively added to Wikipedia pages. Unfortunately Help:VisualFileChange.js does not appear to be working, even manually. Is there another way to place them all in one nomination (besides manually I suppose)? Thanks, Chipmunkdavis (talk) 10:57, 27 May 2023 (UTC)