Shortcut: COM:VP

#	💭 Title	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Is renaming categories with an English name to local language names a good idea?	82	17	Matthiasb	2024-09-19 21:38
2	Massive backlogs are now the norm	42	21	Matthiasb	2024-09-19 21:45
3	Category descriptions	51	13	Omphalographer	2024-09-18 01:46
4	Familytree	29	6	Enhancing999	2024-09-15 13:13
5	Categorizing Newspapers by date (YYYY-MM-DD)	9	4	Smiley.toerist	2024-09-15 12:09
6	20@ Wikimedia COMMONS	11	5	ZandDev	2024-09-21 12:32
7	Many images of book scans	38	16	Enyavar	2024-09-20 13:45
8	Repeated file renaming requests, how to react to their occurence	5	5	Matthiasb	2024-09-17 07:17
9	Proposal for a path forward for bringing together folks with a stake in Commons’ future	13	12	GPSLeo	2024-09-20 15:27
10	Proposal: AI generated images must be clear they're AI in the file name	93	31	Jeff G.	2024-09-21 14:19
11	Help in closing CfD	4	3	Zezen	2024-09-15 13:03
12	Created a derivative work, unsure how to tag it when uploading	6	3	DaneGeld	2024-09-16 21:13
13	Super-CfDs	7	4	Adamant1	2024-09-14 22:36
14	Community Wishlist: Let’s discuss how to improve template discovery and reuse	13	4	Tuvalkin	2024-09-17 20:36
15	W. A. Schulenburg of Copenhagen	2	2	Rsteen	2024-09-16 04:19
16	Fate of image that is broken, wrong, unused and duplicated simultaneously	3	3	Glrx	2024-09-15 15:52
17	Requesting some simple category renaming	5	3	Jmabel	2024-09-16 15:57
18	Own work selfie upload with a contested "no permission" tag	7	4	Alalch E.	2024-09-21 14:34
19	Request to delete previous version of file	3	2	PantheraLeo1359531	2024-09-16 18:22
20	Problems in Commons:Upload	3	2	Rsteen	2024-09-16 12:32
21	Category:Unidentified subjects in Japan is a mess	3	3	Adamant1	2024-09-16 11:14
22	Category WSC contributors	1	1	Una tantum	2024-09-16 11:11
23	Cleaning up the Category:Intel Core mess	5	3	Zache	2024-09-19 10:23
24	Issue with Wikidata Item	3	2	McPhail	2024-09-16 18:13
25	According to Exif data	5	5	ReneeWrites	2024-09-19 23:05
26	Free online ocr that is the best?	3	2	Glrx	2024-09-18 01:57
27	Redaction request by the Indian Supreme Court	6	6	Consigned	2024-09-21 09:51
28	Categorization of old maps, by year (another round)	23	9	Enyavar	2024-09-21 17:31
29	Photo challenge July results	2	2	Prototyperspective	2024-09-19 12:01
30	New round of proposed changes to UploadWizard: we are looking for your feedback!	1	1	Sannita (WMF)	2024-09-18 13:58
31	MM/DD/YYYY vs DD/MM/YYYY recognition	1	1	RZuo	2024-09-19 13:53
32	Proposal: de-prioritise AI images in search	23	11	ReneeWrites	2024-09-21 16:38
33	Commons:Categorization requests	1	1	Prototyperspective	2024-09-19 16:40
34	Wikimedia Commons group on Flickr	6	2	Adamant1	2024-09-20 02:19
35	Your wiki will be in read-only soon	1	1	Trizek (WMF)	2024-09-20 09:36
36	File (apparently) broken	1	1	ZandDev	2024-09-20 16:44
37	File:Arms of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.svg	4	2	Jeff G.	2024-09-20 23:05
38	Message for users creating uncategorized categories	1	1	Enhancing999	2024-09-21 09:59
39	PDF file (apparently) broken	1	1	ZandDev	2024-09-21 12:37
40	I was not aware, that only Public Domain content is allowed on the main page. I thought, creative-commons-by-sa is fine. Did I miss a rule change?	4	4	ReneeWrites	2024-09-21 18:16

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Centralized discussion See also: Village pump/Proposals   ■ Archive Third-party images published by the National Weather Service (26 August 2024) Commons:Requests for comment/Hosting of free fonts in Commons (18 July 2024) How do we organize categories by date (14 May 2024) Should PD-CQ Roll Call be used for recent images? (5 January 2024) Technical needs survey (17 December 2023) When does PDART apply to textile works? (15 November 2023) Does this image contain "love hearts"? (17 August 2023) Overhaul of categories by period (5 December 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) Change technical name of LRs to license-reviewer from image-reviewer(2 November 2023) 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.

Hello, all.

Soon (early August), the Beta Feature for "Discussion tools" here will be updated. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. If you enable the Beta Feature, then you will get this. Otherwise, you won't see it.

You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL. For example, if you click on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump?dtenable=1 you will see new [subscribe] buttons. If you click to subscribe to this thread, then every time someone adds a new comment, you will get a notice via Special:Notifications. (It won't annoy you with separate notifications for typo fixes or additions to comments, just for new comments.)

I'll be subscribing to this thread, so please feel free to subscribe and reply here, if you want to test it out.

I have found this especially helpful for cross-wiki communications, so I have asked the Editing team to prioritize Wikidata and Commons for this feature. I am very interested in learning what you all think, and if there are changes that would help you. You can reply here, ping me to another page, or post your thoughts to mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications (the central page for this feature).

Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:47, 30 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

let's see what happens when the section heading is changed.--RZuo (talk) 21:23, 30 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have tested it and the button shows. This is just what I needed now in an individual Discussion where the the participants keep forgetting to ping me. Ta Zezen (talk) 10:28, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Changing the section heading should not cause any problems for the notifications. I note that you only changed the spaces in the markup, which is probably not a representative test, but even if the heading was really renamed, you should continue receiving notifications. The software relies mostly on timestamps and comment authors to identify the subscriptions, because unlike section headings, they usually do not change. Matma Rex (talk) 12:15, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

tested one more time. how about now? :) --RZuo (talk) 12:45, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

test edit after changing heading.--RZuo (talk) 12:46, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Passed for me.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 12:53, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

do u still get notifications if someone doesnt sign? — Preceding unsigned comment added by RZuo (talk • contribs) 12:28, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@RZuo Nope. An unsigned comment can't be reliably distinguished from some formatting corrections, and we don't want to notify about those. (I work on this software.) Matma Rex (talk) 12:12, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I can confirm and I am sending my thanks directly to Matma hereby : I have signed up for notifications for this very thread as a test and I have received 2 of these, not 3. (Which is more than fine by me.)

As a side note: I have also noticed that this tool is also working in at least one smallish project that seems to not have received the relevant Tech News thereof yet. Zezen (talk) 12:24, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The ?dtenable=1 "secret code" should work on all the wikis, but you have to put that in for every page individually, which is inconvenient. The Beta Feature automates the code for 7 wikis so far (including Meta-Wiki). I hope that Commons will be the next to get this automated. Eventually, I think it will turn out to be very helpful for all those Wikipedia editors who drop a drive-by comment on Commons and then never come back to see your reply. (In fact, I think you're going to want occasional editors to be auto-subscribed to all discussions they participate in.)

In terms of how it works (tech stuff here), it's primarily keying off the timestamp of the first comment. This is more reliable (less likely to change, more likely to be unique) than the section heading. Also, through some sort of dev magic ✨, if someone decided to do a cut-and-paste move of this whole conversation (or at least the first post) to another page, all of ours subscriptions would transfer with it. This means that if someone posts on the wrong section of the Village pump, you can re-locate the discussion without people being upset that they lost track of it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:36, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

amazing work! thx to all coders!--RZuo (talk) 16:52, 6 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, if as you're trying out topic subscriptions, you notice new thoughts coming to mind (e.g. "Wouldn't it be nice if..." or "This is making this thing I'm used to do a lot easier") please do share them here, @Whatamidoing (WMF) and I are keen to hear how this new tool impacts you. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 6 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@PPelberg (WMF) and Whatamidoing (WMF): Thank you for coding this and being so open to suggestions. Wouldn't it be nice if the name of the page was visible in each notification (or summary, if grouped)? We get lots of "Delete" and "File:Example.jpg" named sections here. It would also be nice if https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_requests/Global?dtenable=1 had "subscribe" links.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 12:34, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T288749

Hi, @Jeff G. About the Meta-Wiki page, unfortunately it only works on ==Level 2== sections, which I suspect isn't what's really wanted for that page. Also, as the page isn't in a "talk" namespace, it'd need the __NEWSECTIONLINK__ code added (and I don't know if the Stewards want that).

I've filed a request for your idea about including the page name. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:48, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. An option to add level 3 sections would be helpful, especially on that page.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 14:04, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T275943

There's a task to investigate ===Level 3=== subscriptions, but the practice around them is so varied (by wiki and by page) that it would be likely result in people missing comments they really wanted to see. It might be easier (though not necessarily better; that depends on all the facts and circumstances) to re-format such pages to use =Level 1= section headings for the main sections. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:51, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Update: This is  Done! If you go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and enable "Discussion tools", you will get a [subscribe] button on talk pages like this one. Please try it out, and ping me or leave a note at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications if you run into any problems. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Thanks!   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 00:59, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you are enjoying this feature here, then I believe that most of the Wikipedias (but not English) will get this tool next Wednesday. Tell your friends. :-D Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:55, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The British Library have today announced:^[1]

Today's the day - one million 19thC newspaper pages free to view (and download) on the British Newspaper Archive. And this is just the start. https://blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/2021/08/free-to-view-online-newspapers.html

and:^[2]

...Essentially, you need to register to access the free content, but won't be charged anything

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:31, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing Sounds useful! I haven't been able to log in; keep getting "Sorry, an error occurred while processing your request." Is it working okay for you? — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 03:54, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like it was probably the fact that I was including non-alphanumeric characters in my password. Is working now. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 04:57, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Can we thus upload them here? This Poor Man's Guardian advertised there seems not to be in Commons yet. Zezen (talk) 17:32, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Update: It does not work for me. I used to have a Wikipedia (free account), I logged in after some years' break and now I see only

Get unlimited access to the British Newspaper Archive. There are hundreds of millions of incredible stories just waiting to be found. Get your subscription today to start exploring over 300 years of history.

after the first free page. Sigh. Zezen (talk) 17:39, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It says the same for me, but searches come up with lots of hits, and I've not yet found any article that's not accessible. Maybe the message about subscriptions is out of date. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 04:57, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like the have 230 issues of The Poor Man's Guardian, from the first issue on 9 July 1831. It seems to be possible to download only one page at a time, unfortunately. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 04:58, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(Revising my viewpoint) Some works are marked as public domain, regardless of the website terms, this should override any other legal claims.

Okay, it should be possible to "hack" the website as tiles can be queried directly using links like https://tiles-api.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/API/dz?Q=BL/0000097/18310716/0007&p=m1c8f9qbrpt45686s6lam9itplb26s2sgbnmsengsj0ppa2v1gvrllo19re4r7kov0g53ea9vg6m83ff5q61mne4pitkooou5qohu2o%3D&t=_files/11/2_2.jpg.

The "t" parameter is the tile with <zoom level>/x_y at the end and I presume "p" is the session reference that tracks users. You can actually plug the tile reference into Dezoomify and it'll create a PNG for the newspaper page, no programming talent needed. However, you can automate the browser session and download the PDFs, which could be an approach to download thousands of pages in PDF, but with an annoying and unnecessary "public domain" watermark. Another presumption is that the "3 free downloads" does not count public domain files, though if it does, then directly "reading" the (jpeg) tiles would not be counted as downloading anyway, it's part of the display function and if someone writes a dezoomer to recreate the full jpeg originals, these would be easy to upload to Commons and have no watermark.

Bizarrely, the "official" downloadable PDFs just look like they are generated on the fly from the jpegs and don't even have the OCR text, which exists in the system for their searches to work and the text is displayed in their zoom viewer. That just looks lazy. Someone could probably hack the searchable text, considering that there's a text highlighting function in the viewer. However there MIGHT be a potential claim of copyright over the derived text, even if the creation of it is the product of some off-the-shelf OCR tool. I have no idea why the only downloadable format they offer is PDF, especially considering the originals sitting in the image database are jpegs, again that's lazy.

I'm not volunteering to do any of this at this time. --Fæ (talk) 14:05, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above URL is now returning "405 Not Allowed". Given that, and the fact that the BL's blogpost includes the statement "The fact that we consider newspapers made before 1881 to be in the public domain does not mean that we can make all pre-1881 digitised titles available for free—the BNA is dependent on subscriptions to maintain the considerable effort required to sustain it, and the one million pages per year arrangement [[SIC: read "limit"] is intended to protect that model", I suspect that laziness is not the motivation here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:49, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The "p" parameter will vary by user session, probably, which means it will timeout. This can still be mass uploaded with an automated browser session, or someone might work out how to get around it as the OpenResty instance looks pretty open to me, not that I'm intending to hack it myself. I don't agree that the Findmypast company needs us to pay them £8, or that the British Library's decision to hand over these public domain public records to a private company (DC Thompson Ltd) so their directors can get rich is a "good thing". --Fæ (talk) 18:59, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If things cost money to produce they need to be paid for. If you're not the product, and there's no advertising... Secretlondon (talk) 19:04, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't notice that going on the last time I was at the British Library.

DC Thompson Ltd is a commercial publisher, they exist to make a profit, not to provide public services. --Fæ (talk) 19:12, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We should adopt the policy of not downloading newspaper archives wholesale, or even in major part I.E. whole daily issue. These collections cost an enormous sum to create, the software required to curate and search them is highly specialized and a lot more sophisticated than what we have to offer. Last but not least it takes a proprietorial organization with substantial funding and systematic patience to create these databases in the first place.

If we disrupt their funding / fiscal model by plundering them for free, they will not be incentivized to create or maintain them, or add to their collections. Past newspaper archives would be lost forever.

This is one of the reasons google stopped or limited access to their book project.

Commons should be aware that it cant do it all, plundering museum sites (funded by the public) and auction houses (who do not rely on exhibition of pictures for revenue), is one thing. Copying an entire catalogue of a newspaper collection is quite another and is destructive.

They already allow (sic) us to to publish individual photos from their collections, and we should be happy with that.

Considering the huge expense of these curations, they are remarkably cheap for the public to access.

This exception, to the policy on downloading PD images, needs to be written into our policy, urgently.

This is the proverbial sleeping dog that should never have been woken up. Broichmore (talk) 11:29, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@User:Broichmore. I quite agree with you on this! It is important to keep in mind that (our) commons is in the first place a repository for things we use, or might use in the future, on our Wikimedia-projects. It is not a repository of everything that is (more or less) freely available in the world. We don't want to be a group of Robin Hoods, that roam around and plunder what we find on our way. There is still something like an equilibrium of Quality and Quantity. Thanks for your intervention.

Apart from that it is very interesting to hear that The British Library has opened the Newspaper Archive for the 19th century. Thank you for that hint, @User:Pigsonthewing. That is exactly what we want and what we need, and that is something we surely can use to enhance the quality of our projects. I'm going to take a look now immediately. --Dick Bos (talk) 07:32, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Or we can choose to believe that Public Domain is Public Domain and organizations that post-hoc rubber stamp "non-commercial use only" over Public Domain media are copyfraudsters and should be called out for it.

I'll just get on with populating Commons with useful educational material like today's Newspapers in Italian while you think of new funny names to call me like "Robin Hood" to make me feel and look like a criminal.

Thanks for your interest. --Fæ (talk) 10:17, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with User:Dick Bos that we should be something less than a universal PD host and that we probably should not swallow up all of this material simply because it is legally possible. However, I disagree that our purpose is limited to serving other WMF projects. There are many legitimate educational/academic uses that we support that have nothing to do with WMF. For example, thoroughly documenting the floats in a parade or the speakers at a conference is presumably not going to be useful to any other WMF project, but it might be very useful to an academic researcher with a specific scope and focus. - Jmabel ! talk 15:46, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"museum sites (funded by the public)" As are the British Library. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:19, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Definitions of "plunder" at Wiktionary include "To pillage, take or destroy all the goods of, by force (as in war)..." and "To take by force or wrongfully; to commit robbery or looting, to raid." Robin Hood famously "stole from the rich". The use of such terms in this context is an egregious failure to assume good faith. No-one is "plundering" or "stealing" PD content from the BNA. By definition, PD content cannot be stolen by downloading it, it already belongs to us all. debating what content is suitable for Commons is legitimate. Impugning the legitimate actions and motivations of others is not. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:16, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Broichmore, Dick Bos re plundering.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 14:44, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for using the wrong words. Please don't take it to literally. Of course I don't want to suggest that certain things are not done or said in good faith. Perhaps my intention was clear? Don't put everything on commons, especially if it does not have enough metadata to make it useful. Quantity and quality. Better try to put less things on commons, but with good background data. I can give you many examples of having a lot of work to arrange all double or triple images etc. on commons, without good categories etc. I regularly find cases that someone puts a lot of things on commons, and leaves it to others to order it. I don't believe that's what we want. But perhaps I'm wrong. Apart from that I did not call anyone a Robin Hood, but I said that we don't want to be Robin Hoods. As far as I'm concerned, we can finish this conversation --Dick Bos (talk) 19:18, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I used the wrong word. What is the right word?

I think we all understood exactly what I meant.

Robin Hood was not a thief or even criminal, he returned to the pheasants what was wrongfully taken from them, by a corrupt regime acting falsely in the name of and against the wishes of its legal king. A regime so heinous it led to Magna Carta. Calling someone a Robin Hood is in fact a compliment.

Regarding some of the points mentioned here. The British Library brought D.C. Thompson into the project, because the biggest "useful" library in the world did not have the funding, resources, or expertise for this massive project. Had they not done it, or had there been no fiscal interest in creating such archives, they would not exist. The entire past newspaper history of the world would either be in landfill, or on a dusty shelf awaiting the same fate as the en:Library of Alexandria.

The BL decided that they were going to create a fully accessible, properly curated archive of PD or soon to be PD materiel. They succeeded. It took a fiscal model to do it.

The commons model could not have done it, it would tiny, never complete in any part, missing huge chunks, quality would be uneven, and difficult to search. Not even as good as some of the immense government collections, publicly funded at great expense, which are so big, with so few librarians, that they are impossible to index. commons helps there. Broichmore (talk) 13:31, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of the wrong word, "pheasants" => "peasants" ("faisans" vs. "paysans"). - Jmabel ! talk 15:46, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The newspaper upload launched after this thread was started is now at over 14,000 public domain by age newspapers, that's how I invest my time while joining Wikimania sessions on the side. BTW, Robin Hood was a murderer and a thief (reference), don't gaslight our volunteers in this entirely unnecessary way and then tell them off for not thanking you for the "compliment".

Are you still arguing that I should stop this volunteer effort to create Commons educational content, and deserve to be criticized for spending my unpaid volunteer time doing it, or not? --Fæ (talk) 16:02, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I never put forward any argument against your downloading a mirror copy of a part of the Internet archive website.

From looking at a small part of it I can see that, google has no entry to it as it has not benefited from any OCR work. The Internet Archive probably got the files from tessmannDigital where there has been some OCR work done. Just looking at these websites is enough to be profoundly impressed with the British Library initiative. The Germans and Italians are catching up, but as you'd expect there is no easy access there for English only speakers and researchers.

Regarding Robin Hood. I never called you that in the first place. Your definitely nothing like Robin Hood. Thanks for letting me know what criminal biographers of the 18th century thought of him.

Am I still arguing that you should stop this volunteer effort to create Commons educational content, and deserve to be criticized for spending your unpaid volunteer time doing it, or not? No, I didn't propose that you should stop. As a matter of fact had it not been for your efforts there would be be virtually nothing here, but non educational crap. Did I criticize you; no I didn't.

Don't put words in my mouth, and while here, I never told anyone off for not thanking me for any "compliment", and I'm not looking for any now either

Giving out some advice or a contrary position to your views is not gaslighting. I have a valid view, and some agree with me.

When the newspaper archives who give Wikimedia free access to their websites withdraw it, because we are disturbing their fiscal model we can point to the internet archive being there first. Actually we're not disturbing their model at all. Their model is selling retrievable indexed access, our model is providing access to material that has to be used the old fashioned way 18th century way; by reading it. Broichmore (talk) 12:54, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's also an OCR dataset, according to [1]. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:45, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• My understanding of this is that Wikimedia Commons is technically limited in way that well-financed websites aren't, to me the issue is with the somewhat isolationist nature of the website and the COIphobia, I am sure that if we created a Patreon-like model for technical volunteers who wish to add their time into developing technical features to help the Commons with better search and categorisation as well as import tools and help better maintain the tools we already had that everyone would win. Those of us that wish to donate our money could and those that don't want to won't. In fact this is theoretically already the case with the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) that have paid employees that work on the technical side of Wikidata and as a consequence as a website it is growing much faster and is better organised than Wikimedia Commons despite having a lot less volunteers. Despite almost existing for two (2) decades Wikimedia Commons doesn't attract newspaper archives to upload their archives here, we don't have easy tools that if people want to donate their digital content to this website that they could after giving VRT permission, and the website barely has any outreach programmes to GLAM organisations.

I don't get why Wikimedia Commons can't natively add text recognition software to help read words in media files here, such a change would benefit literally every Wikisource yet we're lacking the volunteers with the technical skills to do this. Personally I want to invite Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) over to use their army of technical users to improve the tools here but I think that they basically only care about Wikidata. The problem with Wikimedia Commons is that as a website it doesn't have a vision, there are no large groups of volunteers here that organise together and try to work with museums and other organisations to digitise, imagine if we had "a digitisation taskforce" that approaches archives. I know of a Brazilian user that spent countless hours digitising works to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons but lost his passion for the project because of the "bitey" community. Digitisation projects happen individually here with very little collaboration, Wikimedia Commons is essentially a "do-it-yourself archive".

Looking at this I don't think "We shouldn't take away their incentives by stealing their public domain content" I think "How can we convince such organisations to donate directly?", we should create a partnership programme and try to become a trusted name, The Internet Archive already has such a status but Wikimedia Commons' scope is different and as such should try to build its own reputation, it is quite baffling that despite Wikipedia being one of the world's top websites and most of its images coming from here most people probably have no idea what Wikimedia Commons even is, imagine if some strange website you have never even heard of "steals" your public domain content, Wikimedia Commons shouldn't be "a hidden gem 💎" forever and importing such archives can create more potential for Wikimedia Commons to prove that it could be "a better archive", if we had text recognition software and better integration with Wikidata, and better categorisation, Etc. But for all intents and purposes Wikimedia Commons currently is just "the website that couldn't".

Seriously, just think about all the massive archives Fæ imported over the years that have now disappeared from the internet, we shouldn't discourage users from importing any free educational work because who knows how long it will actually be accessible. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:02, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why would Commons install text recognition technology? The WMF has installed text recognition technology for Wikisource.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:04, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be safe, I wanted to double-check to verify that certain content would not go against our policy on sexualization of minors, namely "physique magazines" of the 1950s/1960s. Wikipedia's w:Physique magazine article gives some background on the genre. Basically, they were presented under the pretense of being about bodybuilding, but their real target audience was gay men. Models for these magazines often included adolescents. There are some examples (mostly covers) under Category:Beefcake magazines. This issue of Physique Pictorial is pretty representative of the genre. The ages given for models range from 16 (including the cover model), to 28. The magazines did not include exposed genitalia or sexual contact between models (or even any references to sexuality), but the sixth criterion at w:Dost test gives me some pause: Whether the visual depiction is intended or designed to elicit a sexual response in the viewer.

I would tend to think this would not be legally classified as child pornography given that these magazines are available at lots of research libraries (e.g. worldcat lists lots of university libraries with collections of Physique Pictorial) and images from them (including images of under-18 models) have been reprinted in books put out by reputable publishers (e.g. w:David K. Johnson's Buying Gay, published by Columbia University Press). Still I wanted to check here since I'm not familiar with how the community has drawn the line on this kind of material in the past. (There was a recent discussion about this material, but it focused only on the copyright aspects.) Colin M (talk) 20:59, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some statements of fact.

Commons is not censored.

Commons does not host child pornography.

The Dost test (United States v. Dost 1986) has only ever been used in one US court case as part of establishing criteria for assessing photographs of girls aged 10 to 14. It appears to have not been quoted in any court case in over a decade. It makes no sense to try to use it as a way to control what international volunteers are uploading to Commons.

Physique Pictorial is not child pornography.

Scantily clad or nude photographs are not turned into pornography just because a gay man might look at it, rather than some other observer. C.f. Florida v. Brabson, 2008.

--Fæ (talk) 10:06, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your thoughts. I brought up the Dost test only because it's specifically mentioned at Help:Sexual content#Prohibited content. Colin M (talk) 14:52, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This reference has been removed, see Help_talk:Sexual_content#Dost_test. That help page is effectively a user essay and the original text was rejected as policy. --Fæ (talk) 16:02, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just going to register here that I'm uncomfortable with that edit. I'm not a lawyer and it's not an area I have experience with, but even I've heard of the Dost test (perhaps not by that name, but that set of criteria). Moreover, you didn't just remove mention of the Dost test, but also the warning that "Images of minors – even if clothed – can be found to be in violation of child pornography laws". That seems like the sort of thing we should retain... If it were a policy page I'd certainly err on the side of reverting here, but will defer to others with more knowledge of precedent, I guess. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  04:05, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Less is more. There's no need to water down the statement Manufacturing, distributing, possessing, or intentionally accessing child pornography is a very serious charge in the United States, where Wikimedia's servers and main offices are located. By adding the "Dost test" you just confuse volunteers and create the risk of encouraging wikilawyers to argue about what that obscure and unused USA "test" actually means, for example, it has only ever been used in court for child pornography for very young girls, and Commons is not a host for any child pornography by policy which includes boys, selfies, faked images not of any living child, or even user-created artworks that promote child pornography, none of which is dealt with by vaguely waiving at the dost test.

Again keep in mind that this is not a policy document, in my opinion, the project would be improved by having this help page essay deleted and a meaningful and enforceable policy used and agreed with WMF Legal. Perhaps during UCOC enforcement discussions, this is something to revisit. --Fæ (talk) 14:51, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Beyond just saying that we don't allow child pornography (duh), I do think it's important to give the relevant definition of child pornography that we're working with, since there will inevitably be some cases (like the one described above) where files that otherwise fall within COM:SCOPE are at least conceivably in the neighbourhood of some plausible definitions of CP. I've tried to improve on this by moving a link to the US statutory definition of child pornography from a footnote to the body to make it more visible. Colin M (talk) 17:49, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, Alex Proimos is a Flickr user. De728631 (talk) 12:33, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• If this is provably genuine (the link suports that) then delete and salt with a clear warning, as for Marco Verch. We should stamp on this before it gets started. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:40, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm with you there but I'm failing to see evidence about Proimos' activities in the link above. It's just an extensive story about Marco Verch. De728631 (talk) 12:47, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Proimos' own Flickr page indicates that he's using Pixsy, but I'd want to see clearer evidence that he has used this to troll before we excommunicated them here. @Thomjobson: , BTW Andy Dingley (talk) 12:59, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Right, there is a disclaimer in the Info section of Proimos' Flickr page, but I was thinking of the article linked by Thomjobson. Anyhow, I would also prefer to see hard evidence of copyright trolling before we take any action over here. De728631 (talk) 13:04, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We should have a "{{Copyright troll}}" template, these are free educational images, while their licenses are free the re-users often make a small mistake and it's the author(s) that act in bad faith. The files remain free and if followed exactly won't result in a lawsuit. This is essentially "a non-copyright © restriction" and the files remain in scope. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 13:15, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do I understand this correctly?? There is a photographer, who uploads them photos at flickr with a cc-license. These photos have been imported to commons by Magnus-Manske's bot and other commons users and the flickr-license has been translated by these commons users to cc-2.5. The photographer does not have a MW account, them might not know of the existence of commons, maybe them is not even aware of a website by the name of wikipedia, but them now gets called out for trolling at commons?? If them has actually done something wrong, that would be needed addressed at flickr? --C.Suthorn (talk) 16:01, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@C.Suthorn: As I read it, the trolling does not appear directly at Commons but offline in the form of compensation claims when re-users of photographs by this person fail to follow all their complicated attribution details to the letter. On another note, CC 2.5 seems like nonsense to me because that is not an original option at Flickr. De728631 (talk) 17:20, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if this is an overkill, but perhaps the CC-BY-2.0 template should be amended with a warning that the attribution rules need to be followed carefully? BeŻet (talk) 16:12, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• +1 - Jmabel ! talk 17:25, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FYI copyright trolling is being discussed in a Wikimania session tomorrow @19:45 UTC see here. --Fæ (talk) 17:22, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I checked one of his images, at random. It's CC by here, but (now) CC by-nc at Flickr ([2]). It's not the only such example. Is that part of the problem? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:28, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As I thought: user:Alex Pro... user:AlexPro... does not exist. If action has to be taken, it would need to be at Flickr side, or Commons needs to outrule Flickr (because Flickr allows "changing" of license, which enables "copyright trolling") imports, or cc-2.0 needs to be outruled on commons, or the cc-2.0 template needs to be amended, to describe the difficulty. But without a user Alex Proimos at commons it does not make sense to declare them a troll at commons. Them does not interact with commons. Them photos have been imported to commons by others. --C.Suthorn (talk) 05:40, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I posted the original comment about this and just to clarify, I should mention I'm not particularly familiar with how Wikimedia Commons works. I reported this here because on two occasions people had said they'd been hit with a demand for over $600 by this photographer because they had linked to an image on Wikimedia Commons instead of his Flickr account. I don't expect Wikimedia Commons to be able to solve this problem entirely - that is indeed something Flickr should do (and they won't because they have a partnership with Pixsy and frankly don't seem to care about people abusing CC licenses, as evidenced by the fact they still allow Marco Verch to use their site). But given these cases were directly linked to the images appearing here on Wikimedia Commons and given that the vast majority of users of this site will be unaware of the potential risk there is in using these images, it is surely at a minimum worth notifying you about this. What you do with it is up to you - like I say, I don't have much understanding of this site or how your policies work, but when your users are at risk of being ripped off over a minor mistake (if it's even a mistake to give an attribution to Wikimedia Commons instead of Flickr) it seems like an obvious problem. Incidentally, we encourage people in our group to avoid CC BY 2.0 images completely for this reason. I personally run a website that runs thousands of articles each year and the idea of getting a $600 fine every time we make a typo is frightening. There are a long list of photographers who do this now but I specifically mentioned Proimos because of the link to Wikimedia Commons. Thomjobson (talk) 02:58, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

One possible solution is to edit the images in question to include a "forced attribution." See Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 74#User:Nightshooter - block & deletion request for a similar case. Ixfd64 (talk) 23:17, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

File:En-us-especial.ogg has incorrect pronunciation. The pronunciation in the file is something like "ess-peh-shee-AL", but the actual US English pronunciation is more like "es-PEH-shul". I don't know how to replace a pronunciation file; can someone help? Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:55, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Could that be a regional difference? The author Neskaya claims to come from Southern California so maybe it is pronounced like that where she comes from? De728631 (talk) 17:45, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@De728631: This person is giving a slightly anglicized version of the Spanish word, rather than an English-language pronunciation of the English word. This probably should be renamed as "es-us..." and a new en-us one recorded. - Jmabel ! talk 19:41, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel: I was thinking that too. It does have a heavy Spanish accent. De728631 (talk) 19:44, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This system is broken; we should not have magic names at Commons like this. As for the word, the actual US English pronunciation is as likely to be as a Spanish loan word instead of pronounced as a historically English word. And again, this is not and should not be a Commons issue; Wiktionary and Commons should be disentangled here.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:47, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This came up in a side discussion at Wikimania today. So far as I am aware, we have no process for automatically nominating/ awarding the winning images from Wiki Loves... related competitons, as quality or featured images. Should we? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:42, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Judges for most of the photo competitions aren't looking for the same things QIC/FPC are, necessarily. There are often some good candidates, but only a few ever succeed when nominated right away. Often they require some postprocessing adjustments in order to satisfy the technical expectations of the regulars in those spots. Like I was just looking through some of the winners of Wiki Loves Africa. this one is a contender, but people will inevitably say "too noisy" and "right crop". The former can be fixed, and that may be enough to make it succeed, but if it were automatically nominated, it would almost certainly fail on those grounds, for better or worse. Similarly File:Pupil.jpg has some heavy chromatic aberration. It's fixable, but requires someone to actually fix it.

The best thing is probably to post the news of the results and maybe a few stand-out examples to Commons talk:Featured picture candidates. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  04:00, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do we have a category for the vertical desktop device that holds files, on the left side of File:Bill Rheubottom, Training Coordinator for Seattle City Light, 1974 (51325354425).jpg? - Jmabel ! talk 19:44, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel: That is a letter tray, but we don't seem to have a specific category for it. So, Category:Office equipment should be alright. De728631 (talk) 19:49, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RZuo has just created Letter trays. I think I’ve also called them paper trays, stacking trays, and sorting trays at one time or another.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:34, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've used them a lot, but very seldom for letters. Usually they are made so that they can be stacked, but not always (some are made to be hanged from a vertical pole so that they can be rotated, somebody found that very clever back in the 70s, I didn't like that). They are for sorting, and mostly used with papers (but not always). I'm surprised we just have one example in Commons. I'll try to improve that. B25es (talk) 07:49, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel, De728631, RZuo, Odysseus1479, and B25es: Staples still sells two of these monolithic beasts, but only painted black (the picture is probably of one with light-colored paint, ivory or white). They call each a "Side Loading Letter Tray, Black Steel" on-page or "Metal 5-Tier Letter Size Horizontal Organizer" in-URL and ""5-Compartment Steel File Organizer, Black" on-page or "5-compartment steel file organizer black" in-URL. I have had to deal with some (and their equivalents at the ends of collating copiers & printers), and they are very efficient at collecting dust. Staples also sell versions with more compartments. Modern versions are more modular, and the better ones can be stacked to save space in storage.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 12:59, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Are the ones where the separators are vertical instead of horizontal still "letter trays" or is there a different term? - Jmabel ! talk 19:21, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have an example of vertical separators? De728631 (talk) 20:05, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

E.g. this would not be a tray. Staples calls it a "sorter" and I would agree that a tray is something on a horizontal level. De728631 (talk) 20:10, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have one about 2-1/2 feet from me as I write that is sort of like the one in the picture I started this with, but turned on its side. A bit heavier-duty than De728631'a example. No time right now to take a picture, but I guess I should at some point since it looks like we could use one! Bottom of it is kind of tray-like, but I wouldn't think of it as a tray. "Sorter" seems reasonable. - Jmabel ! talk 05:08, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have noticed that for many plant species, the gallery page is not in the category of the species, but of the genus.

Example: The page Renanthera monachica is in Category:Renanthera, but not in Category:Renanthera monachica.

Is this on purpose?

By the logic on described on Commons:Galleries, gallery pages should be in their corresponding category, which in the case of plant species would be the category of the plant species, correct?

The one species gallery given as an example on Commons:Galleries (Lama glama) is in the corresponding species category (Category:Lama glama). I'm not sure if that's because it's an animal rather than a plant.

I'm now wondering if there's a logic to this, or if many plant species categories should be moved.

Cheers–Jérôme (talk) 14:01, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Edit: As additional info, let me add how I came across this: I'm searching for the name of plant species on Commons a lot, which leads to the gallery page. Then, if I'd like to see more images of the species, I'm looking for a link to the species gallery, but there is no such link, although in the cases I've tested a category always existed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jérôme (talk • contribs) 14:03, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Species galleries are often considered sister pages to the species categories. Ruslik (talk) 20:51, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This file has CtC but is it really free? Because I faced a bad experience uploading a mislabeled file(archived). - Coagulans (talk) 17:10, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• @Coagulans: You should probably alert User:Miehs (as I've presumably done now by linking) if you are going to discuss their image. I see no reason to doubt their claim of ro:Special:Permalink/11859247 being their own work, do you? It looks like a typical good upload by a competent user. - Jmabel ! talk 00:49, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This image depicts several vejicles, organizations and two helicopters, Category:PR-HEB (aircraft) and Category:PR-HCT (aircraft), and so those categories were added two years ago.

Today, User:Davey2010 deleted said categories claiming that "the vehicles aren't the main subject here". Given that these vehicles are subject of this image, i readded this categories, but the same user kept deleting them, and wrote in my talkpage that i should "not contribute nonsense-edits" with a template about vandalism (????) and not happy he is now threatning to block me.

Could someone explain to this administrator that just because he was the powers of an administrator, that he cannot accuse others of vandalism when is clearly not and and he cannot threat other users with blocks just to shove his own opinion on what categories are appropriate in a image. Tm (talk) 19:02, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Comment Addendum. I scratched the parts about Davey2010 being an administrator has he is not one and never was. No the less the part "administrator" should read "user". Tm (talk) 19:09, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The title does translate as "Air Operations, Maranhão" however imho the pick up and aircrafts don't need categorising as they're not the main subject. I'll stop reverting pending this discussion and if others disagree then I'll get consensus somewhere. –Davey2010^Talk 19:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

These seem to me to be entirely reasonable categories to add. And FWIW, I am and administrator.

Categories do not describe only the main subject of a photo. For an obvious example, for any individual person we have a category for, we tend to put that on any photo in which they are present, however incidentally. - Jmabel ! talk 00:55, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

+1 perfectly reasonable to me. When there is a need to distinguish, we split it into separate categories, e.g. Category:Hoover Tower into Category:Hoover Tower - Exterior and Category:Remote views of Hoover Tower. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:37, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments Jmabel & User:King of Hearts, I politely don't agree that these should be categorised however consensus is consensus and it's the way of life here :), Anyway thanks again your help is very much appreciated, Thanks, –Davey2010^Talk 10:39, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like starting this discussion, but it has to be held. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban and on Wikimedia Commons we have multiple pages like "Template:Afghanistan by year" that use the flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. As it is now a "historical country" and after two (2) decades the Taliban are back in power at what point will we replace the flags of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan with the flag of the Taliban? Perhaps it's when the IR Afghan flag emoji gets replaced with the Taliban flag, perhaps we should use international recognition as a standard but the old Islamic Republic of Afghanistan wasn't recognised either.

As to many Afghan people the Taliban flag will be received as "the Nazi flag of Afghanistan" especially by non-Pashtun Afghans, but the government has changed, so when should we change the flags to reflect this in a neutral way? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:07, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest we wait until they form a government. And then wait until that government is the de facto recognised government of Afghanistan. Until then, I propose no changes be made. Is there a {{Disputed}} that covers this? Rodhullandemu (talk) 22:26, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I  Support Rodhullandemu's suggestion.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 23:57, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Assuming the regime change ‘sticks’, the state’s official name might be changed, or OTOH the Taliban may keep the existing national insignia to signal their feig^H^H^H^Hnew-found civic principles &c., so moving things around would seem very premature at this point.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 03:43, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, going over it, Wikipedia doesn't use a flag for Afghanistan at the moment, so it's safe to wait it out and then any changes won't be controversial as they would then be undeniable facts. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:34, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a link to a RFC on Meta concerning all Wikimedia projects. Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} 22:51, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the WMF office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me. The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

• File:Queen_Elizabeth_II_Bridge.jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Queen Elizabeth II Bridge. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 22:13, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the early PotDs (mostly from 2007 and earlier) were deleted due to copyright concerns. I know Commons is much better at detecting copyright violations nowadays, but having missing pictures of the day makes us look bad.

Would it be a crazy idea to retroactively nominate new PotDs to replace the deleted ones? Ixfd64 (talk) 22:29, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Ixfd64: Yes, it would be. Recently I had an argument on Wikipedia about whether it’s a good idea to hide revisions with serious vandalism but nothing legally unacceptable (no copyvio, no personal data etc.). I argued it’s not a good idea: vandalism belongs to Wikipedia’s history, don’t try to do as if it wasn’t vandalized regularly. Similarly, copyvio images belong to Commons’ history, don’t try to do as if no copyvios were selected as POTDs ever. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 01:15, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was afraid there would be no consensus to replace deleted PotDs. It looks like we'll either have to ask for permission and hope for the best or be really patient and wait for the copyrights to expire. But some good news: there are least two images to my knowledge that may be eligible to be restored. I'll file a request at Commons:Undeletion requests and see what happens. Ixfd64 (talk) 01:25, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee would like comments about the enforcement draft guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). This review period is planned for 17 August 2021 through 17 October 2021.

These guidelines are not final but you can help move the progress forward. The committee will revise the guidelines based upon community input.

Comments can be shared in any language on the draft review talk page and multiple other venues. Community members are encouraged to organize conversations in their communities.

There are planned live discussions about the UCoC enforcement draft guidelines:

Wikimania 2021 session (recorded 16 August)

Conversation hours - 24 August, 31 August, 7 September @ 03:00 UTC & 14:00 UTC

Roundtable calls - 18 September @ 03:00 UTC & 15:00 UTC

Summaries of discussions will be posted every two weeks here.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 23:44, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Voting for the 2021 Board of Trustees election is now open. Candidates from the community were asked to submit their candidacy. After a three week long Call for Candidates, there are 19 candidates for the 2021 election.

The Wikimedia movement has the opportunity to vote for the selection of community-and-affiliate trustees. By voting, you will help to identify those people who have the qualities to best serve the needs of the movement for the next several years. The Board is expected to select the four most voted candidates to serve as trustees. Voting closes 31 August 2021.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's operations. The Board wants to improve their competences and diversity as a team. They have shared the areas of expertise that they are currently missing and hope to cover with new trustees.

Learn more about candidates. Learn about the Board of Trustees. Vote.

Read the full announcement.

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 08:22, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

At Wikimania, on Saturday, the Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2021/Winners were announced. We are very impressed by the range of experiences that were captured to visually represent this year's theme Health+Wellness. Almost every one of the 8,319 images and 56 video files that were contributed by 1,149 photographers share the full range of precious moments that together add to the incredible complexity and universal experience of living - from heart breaking pain to unfettered joy, from stoic determination to unrelenting hope, and from the necessity of sterile clinical procedures to the wonder of a newborn’s very first breath. As a collection it is an exhaustive expression of what it is to be human all against a myriad African backdrops. We would like to thank the International Jury of professional photographers and Wikimedia Commonists for their tireless work and User:Ciell and User:Slaporte for their assistance on Montage. Enjoy!! Islahaddow (talk) 11:04, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the WMF office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me. The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

• File:DonThomasPosters10_(19290382478).jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
• File:Braniff_Airways_Rio_Poster_(19477938565).jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
• File:Braniff_New_York_Poster_(19482267111).jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
• File:Braniff_Panama_Poster_(19290403210).jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
• File:Braniff_South_America_Poster_(18857330933).jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Braniff International posters. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

My message is about this request : Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Blocks and protections/Archive 30#Bull-Doser. The first time it was posted, it was archived without an answer from an administrator. I restored it two times and no one even bother to take care of it. The problem is that the user who is the center of this request has a problematic behavior since at least 2015 (7 years). In all that time, the user only received warnings and nothing was done to prevent his bad behavior after multiple requests on the Administrator's noticeboards.

Is it common for the admins to ignore requests? Is it because they can't take care of cases more complex than simple vandalisms?

--Myloufa (talk) 01:04, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That noticeboard is for simple blocks for obvious abuse only. Complex cases should be discussed at COM:AN/U. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:27, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies if this has already been posted:

You can run to be on the Movement Charter drafting committee. If the language about the movement charter, movement strategy, and all of the other processes going on right now don't make your head hurt, you're probably a good person to consider participating! :) — Rhododendrites ^talk |  04:08, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sometime ago I posted here about a problem with a webp file. However, there was no response. Now I have the same problem with another webp file. This file does not display correctly on my desktop (macOS 10.14.6 with a Chrome browser). Is this just a problem with my desktop, and something that, in future, I should just ignore? – Epipelagic (talk) 09:25, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have the same problem with Firefox on Windows. The actual thumbnail image is correct, but Commons thinks that the file has an image ratio of about 10:1 and therefore squeezes it when showing it on a page. -- Discostu (talk) 09:47, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Epipelagic and Discostu: I experience that same problem. When viewing the full, original resolution, the image looks fine, but when viewing the actual file description page, the image is "squeezed". The embedded image on this section looks squeezed too. BTW I use w:Samsung Galaxy A20 browser. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 09:55, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have created a Phabricator task -- Discostu (talk) 09:59, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A problem I have with my images is that they do have a variety of licences, not least because of the CC BY-SA update from 3.0 to 4.0. Is there an automatic or semi-automatic way to add CC BY-SA 4.0 to all my uploads as addition to the licence they already have, perhaps with a bot or a batch tool? Vivo (talk) 19:33, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look at COM:VFC, it's a visual way of mass changing files and you can do something like this by having it work on a category or all your uploads and then filter by the wikitext for the license. If there are thousands of these you can ask at COM:BWR. --Fæ (talk) 21:30, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Fæ! I'll have a look. Vivo (talk) 23:29, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all

I'm very pleased to say the EU's European Investment Bank (the largest not for profit bank in the world) has released its first batch of content under an open license. To the best of my knowledge this is only the second EU body to make content available under an open license, after the Commission.

They're released around 100 amazing graphs from the largest survey of the public's attitude to what actions should be taken on climate change (+some photos of their buildings). Broadly it shows widespread support for significant action on climate change.

Please help to encourage them to release more by adding them to articles.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Content_produced_by_the_European_Investment_Bank

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Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 19:43, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Colleagues who are having difficulty reading old, hand-written documents might find retroReveal, hosted by the University of Utah, useful; for a given image it produces a large number of varieties with different saturation, contrast, and colour filtering, etc. With a few test images I've found the readability markedly improved. Samples can be viewed here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:54, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I was looking around Category:Geocoding_templates and I was not able to find a nice template to mark "photos difficult to be located". The purpose is for internal organization, and I was also trying to help in this feature request [3] in the Commons:Locator-tool to be able to exclude these photos if you want. What do you think? Thank you! --Valerio Bozzolan (talk) 11:34, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• We do have "unidentified location" categories. But there are also many items where location would not be particularly relevant (e.g. for a formal portrait of a person we rarely know exactly where it was taken, nor do we usually care). - Jmabel ! talk 15:40, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Food for thought:

I have an important message to everyone who has been over there, whether in a military or a civilian role — please lock down and/or redact your social media accounts.

If you’ve been posting a lot about the people who are in danger, please know that anyone can see a public post. The Taliban has a lot on its mind right now, but they can absolutely use social media, they are using it, and we must all err on the side of caution.

https://nataliaantonova.substack.com/p/lock-your-accounts-redact-your-afghanistan

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:26, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder that as well as IRC and email, COM:Telegram is a private group where joiners are vetted, and we have over 200 Commons volunteers as members. It's a good alternative to a public noticeboard to check if some images are a problem or not without having your account associated with these topics. Plus, of course, it makes it a lot easier to exchange private direct messages about media that may be harmful to you or others and so should not be discussed in public "on the record" and perhaps you would prefer not, say, to pass unencrypted through a WMF server or a volunteer-run IRC server. --Fæ (talk) 15:39, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hadn't we agreed that "taken on" location should never be more specific than country? I now see the narrow Category:Berlin photographs taken on 2018-04-25 resulting from a narrower use of that template, and even the narrower Category:Mitte (district of Berlin) photographs taken on 2018-04-25. I think this is a wrong direction and needs to stop. In the latter case it looks like something outside the template resulted in this narrow categorization. - Jmabel ! talk 15:45, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I already used to take picture with my older phone, but now I have a new phone that can really take good pictures. However I'm still a newbie in photography. How can I make better pictures? Where can I get other Wikimedians' opinions and suggestions? Tetizeraz. Send me a ✉️ ! 11:56, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't really any informal feedback system like this. You could nominate an image for Quality image but the standards are high, and although mobile phone photos aren't usually made QIs, that isn't a bar. But any defect in composition, exposure or processing is very likely to be spotted. Another way is to nomate for Valued image, but those nominated have be capable of being the best of a given topic, known as the scope. I'd suggest you take a look at Quality image candidates and Valued image candidates to see what is likely to be acceptable. Rodhullandemu (talk) 12:10, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You might also ask others at Commons:Photography critiques. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 14:02, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(This discussion does not consider copyright.)

Should "artist's impressions" be allowed on commons? I ask this question because I saw File:Mathieu da costa.jpg. The subject was long dead before photography was invented. The file was probably the uploader's own creation. I pondered this and could think of a few scenarios:

1. impressions created by notable artists/agencies -- accepted unconditionally, because their creators are reputable. Examples: FBI's sketches of criminals, NASA artists' rendition of exoplanets, CGI of new buildings by developers/govt, CGI of dinosaurs/ancient humans based on fossils...
2. impressions of something that exists/existed in real world, created by wiki users. Example: someone draws a person/a building.
3. impressions of something that doesn't exist in real world, created by users. Example: someone draws some imaginary buildings, imaginary machines...

I feel that there should be tight restrictions for #2 and #3. For instance, if #2 is allowed, then users would be allowed to upload lots of drawings of Eiffel Tower, which are not desired. Users could upload their own drawings of File:Mathieu da costa.jpg for someone that doesn't have any attested portrait. That seems to contradict with what an encyclopedia is--a book that's attest from reliable sources rather than user-generated fiction. -- RZuo (talk) 15:08, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I have mixed feelings here but: Commons is not an encyclopedia. It is a media repository. We do host many images that would not likely belong in an encyclopedia. - Jmabel ! talk 17:18, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I am for keeping them, if they comply with the policy: Commons:PS.

  See e.g. the related discussion here: Commons:Deletion requests/Edward Knapczyk files from 2013 and 2017

  Zezen (talk) 18:24, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

URLs: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:European_age_of_male_erotic_emancipatio_(thumb-readable).png and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:European_age_of_male_erotic_emancipatio.jpg

The map and its versions are used cross-wiki, I think I found it first in dewikivoyage.

See the decade-old comments there, the title, caption and descriptions "male erotic emancipation", "lawful pederastic [!] relationships", the map data itself, and the uploader's Toolforge record.

I have not commented there (yet) on purpose, as some Meta is involved, so experienced admins may advise us here first.

Zezen (talk) 19:58, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Zezen dropped me a line about this because I took a "related admin action" years ago, which I gather is the indefinite blocking of the uploader, Haiduc, on the English Wikipedia. That block arose from an off-wiki discussion by the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, and so I can't discuss it. At a glance, I would say that the map's a problem because i. it's inaccurate (per the discussion on its talk page), and ii. rather than simply setting out the age of consent in various jurisdictions, it is labelled, for no discernible reason, as being about at what age boys are "emancipated" to engage in sexual relationships with men (which then creates further inaccuracies, as also noted on its talk page). Beyond that, I don't think I have anything to contribute here. Steve Smith (talk) 20:38, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Deep bows @Steve Smith. I thus also have nothing to add at this stage. Zezen (talk) 20:41, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'll add that the labelling also creates a POV problem, I think, since it implicitly endorses the notion that children want to have sex with adults, and that it's only the government's meddling that prevents this. That is, of course, an endorsement calculated to normalize pederasty and pedophilia. Steve Smith (talk) 20:42, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]