Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/01

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Mass renaming of wrongly identified plants labelled as Nymphaea tetragona

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 22:42, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Greetings, I recently noticed, that almost all images labelled as Nymphaea tetragona are not this species. But there are too many photographs and I am unwilling to write a file renaming request for each individual file. Is it possible to do a mass-rename of all the obviously falsely labelled images? Conan Wolff (talk) 14:53, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Conan Wolff: Sure, as long as there is some way for you to communicate which are misnamed, and what they should be renamed to. - Jmabel ! talk 19:34, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel Thank you for your reply! How should I do that? Should I just write a list of filenames here? I think it would be best to rename them to "Unknown Nymphaea species or hybrid 00", "Unknown Nymphaea species or hybrid 01", ...
Would that be alright? Conan Wolff (talk) 19:43, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I don’t care for putting “Unknown“ in the filename: categorization and/or the description can communicate that. If someone identifies the species in future, the file(s) concerned will probably want moving again, which circumstance we can anticipate with a degree of vagueness in the names. How about simply replacing “tetragona” with “sp.”?—Odysseus1479 (talk) 20:09, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Conan Wolff: I'm inclined to go with Odysseus1479 here. Is Nymphaea tetragona => Nymphaea sp. or hybrid OK with you?

Mass rename has to work with one category at a time, so while a list of filenames here would be fine, it would be best if you break it down to sub-lists in a category. OR, better, if you are good with either cat-a-lot or VFC, it would be even easier for you to add a temporary Category:Nymphaea rename 2023-01 to the relevant files, which would make it super-easy for me to do the mass rename (and then get rid of the temporary category). - Jmabel ! talk 20:51, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel @Odysseus1479 I'm fine with your naming suggestions. For me the main thing is to get rid of the false filenames. I would prefer the "sp. or hybrid" option, because the plants displayed are also likely to be artificial hybrids, and not species.
I don't know what cat-a-lot or VFC is. But I would be fine with adding a category like "Category:Nymphaea rename 2023-01" to mark the files in need of renaming. Conan Wolff (talk) 21:27, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Conan Wolff: OK. Add that however works for you, then ping me here and I can do the mass rename. - Jmabel ! talk 21:32, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel I have added the temporary category to 98 files, which should be renamed. Conan Wolff (talk) 11:51, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Conan Wolff: Helpful links: Cat-a-lot and VFC. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 15:29, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jeff G. Thanks! I wish I had used that tool instead of adding the category individually. That wasn't fun at all, but at least I'll know about it in future. Conan Wolff (talk) 16:40, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Conan Wolff: the bulk of these have now been moved. The rest apparently create collisions if we try to simply substitute Nymphaea sp. or hybrid, so we'd need to do something a little different. Probably Nymphaea sp. (or hybrid) would not cause a collision on these; would that be acceptable? - Jmabel ! talk 20:15, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel Thanks for the renaming. Yes, that sounds good. Conan Wolff (talk) 20:29, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Conan Wolff: Done. Could you please check Category:Nymphaea rename 2023-01, make sure that everything is as you want it, and if it is come back here and let me know to kill the maintenance category. Thanks. - Jmabel ! talk 20:55, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel The files "File:Nymphaea Tetragona 8.JPG", and "File:Nymphaea Tetragona 9.JPG" are still missing, but the rest is fine. Conan Wolff (talk) 21:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Convenience links File:Nymphaea Tetragona 8.JPG, and File:Nymphaea Tetragona 9.JPG (please link files when referring to them). - Jmabel ! talk 21:30, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Now did those two by hand. No idea why they failed before. @Conan Wolff: do you still want that maintenance category for a while, so you can easily find any descriptions that need editing? Or should I kill it? - Jmabel ! talk 21:36, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel Great, thank you for your help with this matter! I tried to link the files, but then it displayed the images here in the preview of the comment as images, not links.

The temporary category can go. Thank you! Conan Wolff (talk) 21:40, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Conan Wolff: sounds like you were missing a colon in the syntax, after the two left square brackets: [[:<File:FILENAME.EXT]]. - Jmabel ! talk 22:25, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel Ah, thanks for the explanation! Conan Wolff (talk) 22:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 22:42, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Revision deletion?

I accidentally uploaded a copy of Thure de Thulstrup's Battle of Shiloh instead of his Massacre at Rock Springs in the middle of a chain of uploads (I like to upload in-progress uploads of restorations ever since I had a file I had been working on for hours get corrupted a few years back). The bad upload is https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/7/7b/20240102005056%21Thure_de_Thulstrup_-_The_Massacre_of_the_Chinese_at_Rock_Springs.png - the main file link is File:Thure de Thulstrup - The Massacre of the Chinese at Rock Springs.png.

The mistaken upload is on Wikipedia already (File:Thure de Thulstrup - Battle of Shiloh.png) so no need to keep it.

I do apologise: I have to use the chunked upload for this as it's over 100MB, and that skips past some of the checks, like the preview and the duplicate warning. Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:30, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Adam Cuerden: this describes in detail what you did, but not what you want someone to do. Are you asking for a revdel of the version from 23:41, 1 January 2024, or are you asking for something else? - Jmabel ! talk 19:37, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, if possible. Just want to get rid of the one upload of a different image. Unless it's agreed it doesn't matter. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:07, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I vote for “doesn’t matter”. We have zillions of old revisions that are “wrong” in some way or another, quite harmlessly.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 20:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

In this case it would be a good idea to delete the old revision. It will remove the temptation for someone to invoke COM:Overwrite to revert to the original upload in technical compliance with the guideline, which would restore a duplicate of another file we have stored elsewhere. From Hill To Shore (talk) 20:30, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Done. - Jmabel ! talk 20:42, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --From Hill To Shore (talk) 20:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2024-01

Currently, there are 186 sysops.
Please take part in Commons:Requests for comment/Technical needs survey to share your thoughts about Wikimedia Commons.

Edited by RZuo (talk).

Commons Gazette is a monthly newsletter of the latest important news about Wikimedia Commons, edited by volunteers. You can also help with editing! --RZuo (talk) 09:12, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Commons 2023 in numbers

The number of files increased from 89,715,735 files on 1st January 2023 to 101,839,339 files on 1st January 2024, which is an addition of 12,123,604 files in 2023, including the subtraction of deleted files in 2023. The amount of files grew by 13.5 % in 2023. The increase in 2022 was 9.917523 Mio. files.

The amount of data (excluding deleted and old version of files) increased from 417.461 terabytes (1st January 2023) to 532.934 terabytes (1st January 2024). This is an increase of 115.472 terabytes. The amount of data grew by 27.66 % in 2023. The biggest increase was in 11/2023 and 12/2023 with 44.26 terabytes. The increase in 2022 was approximately 71 terabytes large.

--PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:42, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 21:28, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Video2commons still down?

Is Video2commons working? I can't seem to get it to work. SeichanGant (talk) 16:52, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Me too. I had to download it and reupload it to V2C --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:27, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Assuming this is about a transfer from YouTube, last I've heard is that YouTube is currently blocking downloads. - Jmabel ! talk 19:38, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Dutch east indies birth cert

i have a question about this cert. the date in the lower right corner is 1955 right? then the question is, did the indonesian govt or the dutch govt issue this cert?--RZuo (talk) 11:16, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

There are in fact three dates visible in this birth certificate. (1) The certificate states that Tjiong Joen Foeng (a girl) was born on 26 October 1934; (2) the excerpt is dated 27 Nov. 1948 (date of issue); (3) and legalized ("gezien voor legalisatie") on 25 March 1955. The third date indicates that an Indonesian official legalized this birth certificate in 1955. Vysotsky (talk) 12:39, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

thx a lot. i'm surprised by the document being written still in dutch (using old spelling bandoeng etc.) a few years after the independence. i have no knowledge of the legal customs there, so i was confused. RZuo (talk) 12:45, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

The original document dates from 1948. It was legalised later, in 1955 (using a different typewriter). My guess is that several Chinese citizens of Bandung tried to get out of Indonesia in 1948, and needed official documents to be able to travel. See this photograph, in which Chinese representatives from the city talk to nine Dutch officials in Bandung, June 1948. Sukarno and Hatta declared Indonesia independent on 17 August 1945, but Dutch officials were in Indonesia until December 1949. Vysotsky (talk) 16:53, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

True; major cities on Java remained under Dutch control for most of the independence conflict in 1945-1949 and Bandung was one of them. Perhaps there was no landrechter available for the second signature when the ambtenaar van den burgerlijken stand created the certificate. Considering the situation at the time, I am not too surprised. Then Tjiong Joen Foeng apparently had to wait until 1955 for the signature of the Indonesian successor to the landrechter (ketua pengadilan negeri, handwritten). Fun fact: while most of it is Dutch, there are two typewritten parts in Indonesian: Ongkos Rp. 1.50 (looks like you had to pay 1.50 rupiahs to get this excerpt) and 23 Maret 1955. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:52, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

thx a lot. that clears up my doubt. i dont understand dutch or indonesian, so i thought someone was still writing in dutch in 1955.

the story behind this is the girl and her father went back to gwongdung, but the father fled to indonesia again after the communists came and purged anyone with a bit of money, but the girl stayed in gwongdung coz she was engaged and then married. the cert was sent to her by her elder siblings. this paper could be an escape ticket coz situation in gwongdung turned really grim since 1950s. RZuo (talk) 03:09, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Bertrand de Beauvau

Another medium-sized category (including a subcategory) consisting entirely of AI-generated images of a quality that might be (barely) acceptable for a children's book, but has no apparent relevance to Commons's scope. Category had no parent categories, which is how I ran across it. I'm certainly not going to do the research to put parent categories on what I consider junk. - Jmabel ! talk 06:08, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

File:Tesla den Hahn abdrehen, Blaues-Band-Aktion gegen Tesla, Grünheide Fangschleuse, Wasserschutz vor Profite! Fabrik-Eerweiterung verhindern! 01.jpg

Oooch Leute, nichts daran ist mehr lustisch. Da habe ich 33 Dateien, bei denen ich leider überall ein e zuviel im Dateinamen habe, die also einfach ent-e-t werden müssen und weil kein file mover das bemerkungen feld in der bewegen vorlage nicht ignoriert muss ich also 33 edits machen damit auch alle 33 dateien ent-e-t werden. und was sehe ich zufällig nach 3 tagen? eine datei wurde falsch verschoben, zweien wurde einfach die vorlage entzogen und die anderen wurden nicht bearbeitet. Informiert wurde ich darüber nicht. ja bei den bewege-anträgen ist mir ein fehler unterlaufen, der wäre durch den medienbeweger aber einfach zu entfehlern gewesen, oder alternativ mir "bescheid" sagen. aber nee, das wäre wohl alles zu einfach. --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 15:33, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@C.Suthorn: I usually read German decently, but I'm afraid I don't follow that. Are you asking for someone to do something, complaining about an (unnamed?) tool not behaving correctly, or what? Is there some action you are requesting? - Jmabel ! talk 19:41, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Among other things, "file mover" (in English): do you mean software or a person? "kein file mover das bemerkungen feld in der bewegen vorlage nicht ignoriert" seems to be "no file mover fails to ignore the comment field in the move template" which is awfully convoluted, and I assume means "all file moves ignore the comment field in the move template" but I still don't know what you mean. {{Move}} doesn't have a comment field (unless you mean the "reason" field) which I would expect any software to ignore. So are you complaining that people are ignoring your stated reason? or what?

Feel free to answer in German, but please try to be a little more straightforward, provide links and examples, etc. - Jmabel ! talk

Standardizing Setsumatsusha Categories

Looking at Category:Setsumatsusha I want to make the subcategories more standardized. Some of them are called "Sessha and Massha of X shrine" in various capitalizations. I think we should harmonize the names of the subcategories a bit. Maybe either rename it to Category:Sessha and Massha or rename the categories to "Setsumatsusha of X Shrine". My understanding from the English article is that they are effectively one thing now, and we do not need to distinguish between the two. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 09:56, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Immanuelle: I would (probably) start a multi-category CfD for this and (certainly) ping the people who've been working in this area. - Jmabel ! talk 19:37, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel how do I do that? Also is this more like the teahouse on enwiki or did I post in the wrong spot? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 19:41, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
@Immanuelle: Commons doesn't have an exact analogue of the "Teahouse" (which is mainly oriented toward beginners). This project has about 10-20% as many active participants as en-wiki, so we have fewer specialized discussion areas. There's the "Help desk" (where this probably ideally would have gone) and the "Village pump" (here, and not a bad place to ask). The Village pump is usually more for items that might require broad discussion among multiple experienced users, but it can become a bit of a catchall and that is OK. There is also Commons:Village pump/Copyright (specific to copyright questions) and Commons:Graphic Lab for help with retouching, making maps, etc.

Instructions for starting a discussion of a particular category or categories are at Commons:Categories_for_discussion; there's a section there specifically on listing multiple categories. I'm guessing you know how to look at histories, see who's involved, and ping them.
Let me know if you need anything else. - Jmabel ! talk 20:04, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel I just started the discussion Commons:Categories_for_discussion/2024/01/Category:Setsumatsusha do you have something like AWB to use to add the template to all the pages? There's 64 categories for discussion so it is quite difficult to tag all of them properly. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 22:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
@Immanuelle: We have it -- Commons:AutoWikiBrowser -- but I've never used it.

Could someone with AWB access (or some other relevant tool) possibly help this user to link the 64 relevant categories for this CfD? - Jmabel ! talk 00:26, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel and Immanuelle: Done. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 11:30, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Commons:Meet our photographers/People

Hello.

This page Commons:Meet our photographers/People doesn't appear correctly on smartphone. --ComputerHotline (talk) 07:17, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Shaping the Future of the Community Wishlist Survey

Hello community,

Thank you for participating in the Community Wishlist Survey over the years.

We are also grateful for your feedback about the survey and your patience in waiting for a response.

We have reviewed your feedback and made preliminary decisions to share with you.

In summary, Community Tech would like to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resourcing, and communication around wishes. Until the new system is established, the Community Tech team will prioritize work from the recently audited backlog of wishes rather than run the survey in February 2024. We are also looking to involve more volunteer developers in the wishlist process, beginning with the first-ever community Wishathon in March 2024.

Please read the announcement in detail either on the Diff blog or MetaWiki, and give your feedback.

The new intake system will need your ideas and involvement, and we’ll reach out on this topic in the next few months.

We look forward to hearing from you. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 17:34, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Does this have any effect on Commons:Requests for comment/Technical needs survey? (I think not, but just checking). - Jmabel ! talk 19:52, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion of an edit to Commons:Licensing

Input would be welcome at Commons talk:Licensing#Forbidden licenses and below that Commons talk:Licensing#Poll. Basically, a discussion about how to structure some of the sections on this page. - Jmabel ! talk 19:36, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Usage of files with link to file removed

Do we allow the removal of the link to the file if it is used on a page on Commons? If you use a file on a page it always has a link to the file page with the author and license information. But it is possible to remove this link. Do we allows this to be done for not public domain files? With the link removed we requirements of the license are violated. GPSLeo (talk) 16:25, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

@GPSLeo: I can't make sense of that. "the link to the file" meaning what exactly? Can you give an example? - Jmabel ! talk 22:34, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I think GPSLeo means using "link=" (that is, no link) in file display wikitext as per the last paragraph of en:H:PIC#Links. We should not allow this to be done for not public domain files unless the link would be obvious from the context. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 03:25, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. I'm just wondering if it may be an issue sometimes for images used as part of a template. Or do we confine that to PD & CC-zero for that purpose? Again: is there an example of an actual place where this has been a problem? - Jmabel ! talk 03:30, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

For more context see my edit in https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=836599240 explicitly setting link= to no value (because if we talked about HTML pages there would be no sense in linking a purely decorative embedded image which would be noisy in screenreader software). This conversation would definitely benefit from input by folks regularly using screenreader software. I personally see a tradeoff between accessibility practices versus interpretation of license requirements (and I'd love to be proven wrong). --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 06:35, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure how you can talk about "interpretation of licence requirements" as if there is some aspect of ambiguity. One example from your edit, File:PICOL icon Statistics.svg, has a clear instruction in the licence saying, "You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner." Your edit fails all 3 of the requirements in the first line. If this causes problems for screen readers then we may need to consider this issue as a wiki-wide problem - why is it just your one page that is impacted and not every instance of an image being used in a wiki? From Hill To Shore (talk) 09:26, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@From Hill To Shore: Well, there is "some aspect of ambiguity" as enforcing laws (and thus licenses) relies on human interpretation of requirements to fulfil. Would you say that "You may do so in any reasonable manner" is not ambiguous? In this case, my personal interpretation is that whether linked or not, an image currently does not provide a (direct) link to its license anyway. My edit fails all 3 requirements and in my interpretation all 3 requirements failed already beforehand. You may disagree here if you consider the link to the file page as "in any reasonable manner", and maybe you are right if that is your point of view. Anyway, no strong feelings and just trying to explain my point of view so please feel very welcome to revert my edit. Though I'm wondering if keeping the <span role="presentation"> around and removing the link= could be sufficient for screenreader software and that is why I wrote that this conversation would really benefit from folks regularly using screenreader software. I hope there's a way to both cover license requirements and throwing less unhelpful noise at people who reply on screenreaders to read that wiki page. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@AKlapper (WMF): Thank you for the clarification. The image link to the file details page (containing information on the licence, author and date) is the mechanism chosen by the wiki software developers (and endorsed by the consensus of wikimedia contributors at previous related discussions) to meet the "in any reasonable manner" requirement. The presence of the image link can be debated on whether it meets the reasonableness test; removal of the image link and not providing an alternative link clearly fails the test.

As you are not sure which part of your edit may impact screen readers, it would definitely be of benefit to get some additional view points on this. I'll see if I can track down any groups interested in accessibility issues on other wikis I frequent, to see if they are willing to provide input. From Hill To Shore (talk) 17:15, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I have asked at en:Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Advice on impact of image links on screen readers. From Hill To Shore (talk) 17:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

some pd design can be made to replace these files, while an investigation into commons' compatibility with screen readers is carried out.--RZuo (talk) 11:16, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@AKlapper (WMF) and From Hill To Shore: I'm a screen reader user. On my home project of the English Wikipedia, we actually have guidelines about this very topic as part of the alt text guideline. When an icon image needs attribution, alt text like "About icon" is just as good an option (from a screen reader perspective) as no image link at all. Graham87 (talk) 12:24, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I sympathize. I know from experience that for screen readers (of which there are a great many in this world), the shorter the description the better. Simple and direct descriptions are good. Krok6kola (talk) 03:04, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Photo signature help

Can anyone make out the photographer's name at the lower left of the photo at File:The Town Crier, v.15, no.51, Dec. 18, 1920 - DPLA - 336742dee91f10f14dff73ed6052b2f7 (page 1).jpg? Seems to be hyphenated, so maybe a studio name. Last part is "Connelly", so I'm thinking James Hargis Connelly (right era & subject matter), but the only hyphenated studio name we have for him is "Hixon-Connelly", and that's not what this appears to say (nor does it look much like the mark/signature at File:Stage actress Mabel Bert (SAYRE 6602).jpg). Location isn't entirely clear either. Maybe "K.C." ("Kansas City", which would fit for him), but maybe not. Any help would be welcome. - Jmabel ! talk 02:54, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I would not be surprised if the beginning of the signature was cut off. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 15:26, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I made a crop of just the photo and searched using TinEye and Google Images, but found no hits. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: Agreed. - Jmabel ! talk 19:35, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: it could be the studio just changed their logo/signature over time. The ones in File:Lillian Rosedale, stage actress (SAYRE 8715).jpg and File:Vaudeville actress Janet Bonni (SAYRE 9610).jpg actually do look quite a lot like the one in the Town Crier. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:50, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

@HyperGaruda: so do you think we should mention him as the likely photographer & add Category:James Hargis Connelly? - Jmabel ! talk 19:56, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: oof, Category:Hixon-Connelly Studio is as specific as I would dare to go. Which of the two photographers, Hixon or Connelly, clicked the button, I cannot deduce from this. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:06, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

At some point between 1918 and 1922, Hixon bought out Connelly but appeared to retain the studio name. Connelly went on to make entertainment photos for the Chicago Tribune.[1] As this poster is from 1920, the photo (with an unknown date) could have been taken by the studio (with or without Connelly), by Connelly acting independently of the studio or by another photographer with the same name (though I think this last option is less likely). From Hill To Shore (talk) 14:45, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Resurrection of Featured media candidates

Hi, It seems that the accession of Steamboat Willie into the public domain resurrected Commons:Featured media candidates. Please join. The bot archiving the candidates is dead, so we need replacement. There is also an issue with these successful candidates (Commons:Featured media candidates/File:Sunset on Halfdome timelapse Yosemite CA 2023-07-15 20-11-06 1.webm, Commons:Featured media candidates/File:Henry Purcell "Dido & Aeneas" (extrait) - Les Arts Florissants, William Christie.webm), which display Please add gallery! although the gallery is there. Any idea? Yann (talk) 20:19, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Flickr2Commons stalled?

I just set up a batch of 100+ files to upload with Flickr2Commons, and hit the upload button. The first five files were highlighted blue, as expected... and then nothing. NO files have been uploaded, and no error message has been displayed. Anyone else having issues? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:56, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Several others have reported issues. - Jmabel ! talk 22:32, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
Right, see Commons talk:Video2commons#Requested format is not available. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 03:27, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
That's reported as being blocked by YouTube? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:05, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Flickr2Commons is now working again. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Glamorgan

Glamorgan is also not working. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:05, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Long-term file warring regarding scope of Asia

There's been over a decade of slow edit warring as to whether western New Guinea should be included in File:Asia (orthographic projection).svg, with it currently being included. I feel there needs to be some kind of discussion to settle the matter. In my opinion, we shouldn't include it, because it's geographically not part of Asia (see [2]), and we're not including Western Thrace as part of Asia on the map, which nobody seems to have issue with. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:51, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Just my opinion, but it is part of Asia due to part of the island being Indonesia. But other people would disagree with that. So it really depends on who's definition your going by. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:56, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

But we're going off the geographical not geopolitical definition no? New Guinea forms part of the same landmass as Australia [3], and most sources I have seen do not consider it part of Asia. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:00, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I would say, not neatly either geographical or geopolitical. The purpose of categories is to help people find stuff. If people are likely to look there, it should be there. Categories are about navigation, not ontology. - 22:31, 3 January 2024 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmabel (talk • contribs)

This is not about categories, it's about whether a portion of a particular widely used orthographic map image should be coloured green or not. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:59, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia: got it. Sorry for commenting when I'd merely skimmed. - Jmabel ! talk 00:28, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

This is why COM:OVERWRITE was created. They should be separate files and each user should be able to choose which one they want to use.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:01, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, which is why I created File:Asia (orthographic projection) without New Guinea.svg by forking off a previous file version. The question is, should the title of the original file be changed? Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:20, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, they should be separate files and they should be clearly labeled to explain the difference (which means renaming the original file). However, unless you have a bot update all the transclusions, you'll need to have a redirect from the original name in order to not disrupt the numerous transclusions. Nosferattus (talk) 22:42, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

No, original file should not be renamed, see Commons:File renaming. You should of course clearly label it. It's up to the downstream users to decide which file to use. Multichill (talk) 11:54, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Template:Taken with

I'm brining this template up because the File:Asian Highways 1 South Korea.jpg was using {{Taken with}} in the Author field of the Information template. This makes it impossible to retrieve reasonable information from those fields to present in other interfaces. As I was looking at this case, I wondered where it SHOULD go. It's documentation page says it should go into the "Source" parameter. That seems wrong to me. The template has nothing to do with where the uploader got the image from, it's plain metadata. Then the documentation page gives an example where it states that it should be in the "Other fields" of the Information template. That seems slightly better. Where do you all think this kind of metadata should go (other than in Commons Metadata). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:41, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@TheDJ: That info was added in this edit 09:24, 9 April 2021 (UTC) by LERK. What would you do about the 140,570 transclusions? — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 13:32, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

For clarity, the information wasn't added in that edit. LERK removed "Category:Taken with..." and replaced it with the template. From Hill To Shore (talk) 14:28, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, according to the documentation, the template is also not to be used directly.. bit of a mess I'd say. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:17, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I can see the logic behing having {{Taken with}} in the source field of {{Own}} photos. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 05:20, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

How often have mp3 and mpeg-2 been used lately?

Ever since mp3 and mpeg-2 patents have expired in the US, I was hoping that mp3 and mpeg-2 would become more popular here than webM and ogg. Why hasn't it been the case yet? Why still use webM and ogg over mp3 and mpeg-2? George Ho (talk) 18:52, 5 January 2024 (UTC) (comment moved from above)

Can you explain what you want? mp3 is an audio format. webm is used nearly only for video, ogg can be oga an audio format or ogv a video format. Both ogg and webm are younger formats than mp3 and therefore superior. For audio in really good quality on commons you can use wav, opus or flac. for video in really high quality you can use webm with AV1 encoding or at least VP9, but even VP8 is much better than ogv. MP3 is often used by new users for pirated content and therefore forbidden for new users. It would be good to completely phase out mp3, mpeg2, ogg, oga, ogv and webm with VP8 or VP9 with the only exception of imported media, where any of this formats is the original format in which the media has been published and other versions in other formats have been derived from that original. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 19:25, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay, outside Commons, I really thought mp3 files have been popular due to mass use. Actually, I've not uploaded audio and video files much in this project. I've uploaded short audio clips (i.e. samples) mostly in mp3 format as mp3 is more accessible especially on mobile and more compliant with Wikipedia's policy on unfree content. Also, I really want to use popular formats that are accessible and easy to use on desktop and mobile. I assumed mp3 and mpeg2 are popular due to mass production.

But then you discussed audio quality as more important than and topped it over convenience and popularity and familiarity. If you're very concerned about superior quality, then I'd love to use VP8 and VP9 formats. However, I really want to use formats that the masses can use especially to download or stream well without compatibility issues. George Ho (talk) 11:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Note: for this and other reasons it would be good if files could be converted to another format in a new version. That's also the problem had (and still have) at this broken file here. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Transcodes weren't done, I reset them. Yann (talk) 12:08, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Transcodes didn't change the issue, so I reuploaded it from YT, but File:Smartphone Becomes Microscope.webm isn't in Full HD, and I don't understand why. It works fine however. Yann (talk) 13:08, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

OK, I figured that out. Yann (talk) 13:34, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

MP3s aren't super popular anymore to begin with. Even with pirating music since most people do it through YouTube or sharing their Spotify accounts now. I don't know when the last time I've seen or used an MP3 file for anything though. Mpeg-2 is about the same. Although I don't really watch videos outside of streaming them. So that could just be me, but I still feel like both are super outdated. At best they are just pointless and at worst MP3s encourage piracy. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:59, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

"more accessible"? Every web browser will play webm, wav, opus, flac. What mobile device that can make use of wikipedia can handle mp3 and mpeg2, but not webm, wav, flac, opus? C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 12:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

WebM is playable on Android version of Chrome (fully) and iOS version of Safari (partially), but that varies, depending on whichever browser app version you are using. (No word about Chrome on iOS or Firefox on iOS.) Same for opus; that varies as well. The rest can run well on mobile devices. George Ho (talk) 14:31, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Maybe you overlooked what I did write "mobile device that can make use of wikipedia" (Website, App, Kiwix App). Wikipedia comes with its own MediaPlayer. That there is software available for Android and iOS that will not work with this or that format is a different issue. If I want to create derivative works from a video or audio from commons, I will use a software that can do the job. Maybe you overlooked that you do not get the uploaded Video or audio from wikipedia but a transcoded version (and for videos that is webm (VP9) or streamed VP9 at the moment) - audio also gets transcoded and played in the MediaPlayer. Example File:I-15bis.ogv is an ogg video, if you scoll down you can see it is transcoded to VP9. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 18:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I tested out Mediawiki's media player on Safari with one device running iOS 15 and another running iOS 12. Somehow, the player is not loading properly, or its loading time has gotten very slow and won't load content. I also tried transcluded versions, but the content still won't appear. I even tried an older version and then newest/latest version of Chrome on iOS. Same issue persists. I guess the video player works on iOS/iPadOS 16 or 17 then. George Ho (talk) 00:31, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Asahel Curtis

It looks like tens of thousands of previously undigitized images by Asahel Curtis will be digitized and placed online over the next year or so. The bulk of these should be in the public domain. Would anyone like to form a plan to import these as they become available? - Jmabel ! talk 21:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Fæ can do it. Oh, wait. Hm… -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 05:10, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Tuvalkin: yeah, but lacking a time machine I'd prefer having this done by someone who currently has some involvement with Commons. I figure they are a lot more likely to get around to it.

BMacZero, Dominic, is this something either of you could do, or could suggest who would? Does either of you have access to Washington State Historical Society content? - 07:37, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: You may ask at Commons:Batch uploading --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 21:11, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531: a reasonable idea, but probably premature since these are just starting to be digitized. I was hoping that one of the people who is already working with archives in the region might already have a relevant connection. - 01:33, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Mass rename requests

What to do with the 20,000 requests, a set (as far as I can see). I'm not going to rename that, it's weeks of work, or more. I don't even know if these requests are good. This is more for a bot, if it should be renamed, also if it should be declined. Grtz. - Richardkiwi (talk) (talk) 16:35, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Richardkiwi: care to provide a link to whatever you are talking about? - Jmabel ! talk 19:38, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel: there is an awfully large amount of rename requests according to Category:Rename, in particular in Category:Media requiring renaming - rationale 4. I think that also explains one of C.Suthorn's complaints in the preceding section, about hardly anything having been done about his requests after three days. There are just not enough filemovers to deal with this flood. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:11, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
I don't think anyone saw 20k rename requests coming when the requester got the advice in Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2023/12#staff situation. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:20, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Ah, all that Sanborn stuff. Didn't we say that if that was to go forward it should be done by a bot? - Jmabel ! talk 20:24, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
If the rename requests are valid, I won't oppose a bot-action but it is really a tough job to discern what is good and what is bad for a bot. However, since these Sanborn stuff requests are coming from a single user, I guess a few requests should be weighed in manually? If that's a good sign, let's get any bot to do this tedious job. ─ The Aafī (^talk) 20:37, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
There are 196870 files that need renaming from the old format.

And then there are a few ten thousand that need renaming from new format 1 to new format 2. This is due to a mistake i made during the initial upload.

User:Nowakki/test2 illustrates why the old format is inferior. For 1885 and 1888 the Library of Congress sequence number happens to be the same as the plate number, for later years this is not the case. Internally these maps only use plate numbers. One would have to click on a few files first to find what they are looking for. I don't think many people use these maps as they are now.

This is not a big deal. the Library of Congress provides the plate number for all files. This requires little manual intervention.

User:SanbornMapBot/teststate is a preview of the state index, to be prepended to the top level categories. SanbornMapBot (talk) 20:54, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Also I should note that the LoC metadata is very reliable. From my experience the error rate is less than 1% (haven't found one yet). The plate number, the year and the volume are also printed in big-ass letters on each plate. It is easy to verify that a random sample of new file names is correct. SanbornMapBot (talk) 21:05, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Not everything that is wrong or is in an old format, has to be renamed. Like 10k, for example, it must be really necessary. Big requests must be done carefully or declined when not really necessary. For small amounts, it's not a big deal. - Richardkiwi (talk) (talk) 21:11, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
I should have worked more slowly.

On the other hand, i have dealt with 5 different bureaucrats already, who don't seem to talk to each other and you guys haven't even made up your mind whether you want any of this.

The renames will be done in 2 or 3 days and they will eternally prevent headaches for each and every customer. SanbornMapBot (talk) 21:17, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

To summarize: sometimes requests have to be approved, sometimes they have to be declined. The number of files in general needs to be considered.

At this point the above has to be applied to the present situation. SanbornMapBot (talk) 21:30, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

These renames are not in line with Commons:File renaming. Point 4 was always for files like File:BSicon BHF.svg. File:Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Aberdeen, Monroe County, Mississippi. LOC sanborn04422 004-2.jpg is a fine file name, maybe not the best. We only rename files when something is wrong with the old name, not to improve it. The whole point of this option was old templates that relied on file names to function. With LUA these days that's no longer a valid point. We should probably remove it as a rename request reason. Multichill (talk) 17:43, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Well I have an SQLite3 database that allows me easy mapping from plate number to the filename.

We can distribute the database, so people can install it on their laptops and phones.

Or we let them click on a few files when they have a plate name in hand and try to narrow down where the corresponding file is. Since commons doesn't do improvements, i guess that is inevitable then. SanbornMapBot (talk) 18:07, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

If someone gives a green light, what Multichill already does a little, I want to help 'declining' them. As you can see, I already doubt if they should be renamed. Or let a bot do that, but I don't know how that works. If I see consensus, I can help. - Richardkiwi (talk) (talk) 18:12, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I have read all this discussion. I would decline all per @Richardkiwi as well as @Multichill, but would keep rename reason #4.

My concern is the use of the word "plate" in each file name, instead of the word "sheet." Every Sanborn Fire Map file webpage at the Library of Congress uses the word "sheet" or "sheets" for a map set.

Here [4] is a typical example of a Library of Congress JSON manifest page, where this object (map) description contains the word "sheet(s)"- not "plate(s)." -- Ooligan (talk) 08:28, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

There are already more than 200,000 new file uploads that use the word plate.

I don't think you'll get much support for a mass rename addressing a minor technicality.

Plates are illustrated full page sheets and as far as i know the use of the word in map books is common. The json file also calls a sheet "Page" in one place, "Canvas" in another and "Image" in yet another. Nowakki (talk) 11:20, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

We're not going to rename 200,000 files, I don't think Ooligan means that. - Richardkiwi (talk) (talk) 13:23, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

On the other hand: How would you solve the problem with LUA? Maybe that would work. SanbornMapBot (talk) 19:10, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

(common moved to below) Krok6kola (talk) 21:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Sanborn Maps. Time to Vote.

The Problem:

User:Nowakki/test2 illustrates why the old format is inferior. For 1885 and 1888 the Library of Congress sequence number (the number after the minus sign in the filename) happens to be the same as the plate number, for later years this is not the case. Internally these maps only use plate numbers. One would have to click on a few files first to find what they are looking for. I don't think many people use these maps as they are now, without an index they fail basic usability standards (are ass-backwards for no good reason).

Old format: c:File:Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Tacoma, Pierce County, Washington. LOC sanborn09345 003-4.jpg

(the 3 numbers are all Library of Congress - generated identifiers: town_id, volume_and_year_id, file_sequence_number) approximately 200,000 such files downloaded in 2018 currently exist

New format: c:File:Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Gadsden, Etowah County, Alabama, 1951, Plate 0012.jpg

approximately 300,000 such files downloaded in 2023 currently exist

To reproduce the problem, try to find plate 13R of volume 1 of 1896 in c:Category:1896 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Tacoma, Pierce County, Washington. Record the number of seconds spent.

Then find plate 201 of 1943 here c:Category:Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Gadsden, Etowah County, Alabama

Plate numbers are used to navigate the Sanborn maps as illustrated here:

There are approximately 550,000 files of which ca. 250,000 would be renamed. The rename would be entirely automatic, with the exception of workarounds for minor inconsistencies that i might fail to notice (and which exist in the data set regardless of this action). Verification is based on random censuses of the file structure.

A valid answer can be to oppose this proposal on the grounds that redirects can be created instead of files renamed. This solution is complicated: the redirects have to be in the categories the user clicks through. Where would the actual files reside? If files are renamed, the redirects left behind for legacy external linkage support don't have to be put into categories.

Poll ends Monday, January 8, 23:59 UTC

Should the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps be renamed?

Support SanbornMapBot (talk) 06:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Can you maybe summarize why you think the maps need to be renamed and the pros and cons of both option for us lay people who weren't involved in the original discussion? --Adamant1 (talk) 06:11, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

original post has been updated SanbornMapBot (talk) 06:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nowakki: Please login as Nowakki when discussing. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 06:31, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jeff G. what would be a reasonable time frame for the poll? I have never done this before?

8 January 00:00 UTC? Nowakki (talk) 19:22, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nowakki: "Poll ends Monday, January 8, 23:59 UTC" looks reasonable. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 08:30, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

(comment moved from above)
I don't understand what is happening with Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. Prior to this proposed change, Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps were categorized by city/town etc. in a straight forward way. e.g. if you went to Category:Hibbing, Minnesota, there was Category:Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Hibbing, Saint Louis County, Minnesota there. I have seen some cases where a specific map was useful for some feature of a location. An example of the new proposal, there is now a category Category:Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Davenport, Thayer County, Nebraska, 1921 under which there is "See parent category for index" with a link to the "parent category". I am questioning whether this format is too complication to be useful. Maybe someone could explain this to me? Thanks, Krok6kola (talk) 19:11, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nowakki: Above all, I would like a clear statement of the goals of this renaming project. "Uniformity" for its own sake is not enough. What is it that some user (including possibly editors) will want to do that you are trying to make easier? We cannot judge a proposal without understanding what it intends to accomplish by way of actual use cases. - Jmabel ! talk 21:33, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel You have been involved in this discussion for weeks. You still don't know what I am trying to do?

How much time have you spent working with Sanborn maps on commons? Nowakki (talk) 03:35, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nowakki: I've been involved in several hundred discussions over the last few weeks. This one may be top of mind for you, but that does not mean it is top of mind for everyone.

I see you interspersed an edit above giving "new" and "old" formats. It would probably be useful to show what the same file would be in the two formats. It is not obvious (to me at least) how (or even whether) some of the numbers in each of the two examples relate to the other example. Also, is the "new" format the one you are trying to move toward, or is it just something more recent than the "old" format?

As for how much time I've spent working with Sanborn maps on Commons: probably in the range of 20 hours at one or another time, mostly the maps for Seattle. I found the naming scheme for them those particular maps to be a total clusterf**k. Among other things, it is almost impossible to determine what we do and don't have. I've also spent significant time over the years dealing with Sanborn maps elsewhere than Commons, including in physical form in libraries.

And, again, I don't think I've seen any clear statement of goals for this. What are we trying to accomplish for what use cases? I think the cart may be in front of the horse. I agree something needs to be done because the current state is a mess, but I'm not yet convinced of what needs to be done, or even that renaming is the correct solution. - 07:25, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

To me, User:Nowakki/test2 illustrates nothing. It is almost completely opaque as to what it represents, and what it is saying about it.

I agree from experience that many of the Sanborn map file names are a mess, and there are a wide variety of conventions. I'm not sure we need a single convention across all Sanborn maps, but it would probably be good if the ones from a given locale (and certainly a given locale + year) all followed the same convention.

Could some of this be achieved with gallery pages?

I don't understand this proposal in the slightest. "Should the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps be renamed?" Renamed to what? Nosferattus (talk) 22:39, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: there has been some discussion over the last few weeks of Nowakki's proposal to impose a consistent file-naming scheme on the many Sanborn maps uploaded from the Library of Congress. - Jmabel ! talk 00:03, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nosferattus @Krok6kola

I have explained it further in the original post. Nowakki (talk) 03:29, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: Where is the original post? User:Nowakki/test2 makes no sense to me. I am very familiar with the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, but I am confused by your format. It seems to assume those maps are useful only for their dates. Did you overwrite the files of Fæ? Also, you changed the descriptions. I can't tell from the file histories what happened. Where are the files Fæ uploaded? Krok6kola (talk) 04:28, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Krok6kola original post == first post in this thread ("the proposal").

I did not overwrite any files uploaded by Fæ. They are all still there. A few hundred have been haphazardly renamed some days ago.

I used a simpler metadata scheme than Fæ for new uploads.

Maybe the confusion clears up when you re-read the updated proposal. Nowakki (talk) 04:38, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Admittedly I'm not super involved in the area, but it doesn't make sense to me either. Even after reading the updated proposal. You say in the proposal that "I don't think many people use these maps as they are now" but what evidence do you have that no one uses the maps with how they are currently named or that your proposed solution will actually fix the problem if it even is one? Personally, I'm not a big fan of overly long and complicated file names either, but I fail to see how your proposal does anything in that regard except for superficially changing a few characters around. I highly doubt anyone is searching for maps based on their plate number to begin with though. And don't even get me started on the whole "map from" thing or including the town, county, and state (along with the year at the end of it) in the file name. Except to say it's convoluted either way regardless. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:59, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: if you don't think anyone searches for maps based on their plate number, that probably means you don't work much with these. (1) When a map like this is referenced in an article or book, plate number is almost always part of the reference. If it's anything other than a Wikipedia article with a link to Commons, you are going to be looking for year + city + plate number. (2) There's an index map at the front of each volume or set, which shows the breakdown to plates. If you want to find the map for a particular place in the city, at least in the paper version by far the sanest way to do that is to start with the index map and go to the correct plate. It would be very convenient to easily do the same here on Commons. - Jmabel ! talk 07:32, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes. This is what i want. Nowakki (talk) 07:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I said I didn't ;) Anyway, I was mainly thinking about randos looking for maps of their local town or whatever. I image most people wouldn't know or care what the plate number is. Mainly just the date and location, both of which don't rely on the plate number. Although admittedly it's useful for multiple maps of the same area in order to find the "zone" the map covers, but you'd have to know that to begin with and how exactly it's relevant. That information isn't available in a file name though. Like if I as a lay person who just wants a map of Gadsden, Alabama how am I suppose to know what part of the town Plate 0012 corresponds to? I wouldn't. So it's not really usefull IMO. At least not in the file where there's a need to not be overly descriptive. The same goes for the county BTW. Regardless that information would be fine in the description or as part of a gallery page. But its just needless in the file name. But then so is the original "LOC sanborn09345." I'm not advocating for either one. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:09, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

c:File:Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Gadsden, Etowah County, Alabama, 1943, Plate 0000a.jpg

c:File:Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Gadsden, Etowah County, Alabama, 1943, Plate ind1.jpg

plate numbers are used to navigate these maps. Nowakki (talk) 08:26, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

the County names should be included to disambiguate town with the same name in different counties of one state. Nowakki (talk) 08:29, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Plate numbers are used to navigate these maps. No, really? I know they are there used to navigate the maps. But people can do the same thing with the current naming system. So the question is what makes this better then that, or at least better enough to justify renaming a couple of hundred thousands files, and I'm not really seeing the benefit. At least IMO if you going to do something on that scale it should have exponential benefit, or at least some.

Your proposal seems to be a wash at best though, if not a net negative since I'm sure there's people who are already finding and using the files with the current system. Like I asked you how you know that people aren't using them now and you've provided zero evidence for that. So this whole thing seems more like personal preference then an actual issue. Or at you said anything so far to prove it is was. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

how long did it take you to find plate 13R of volume 1 of 1896 in c:Category:1896 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Tacoma, Pierce County, Washington? Nowakki (talk) 12:22, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Like half a minute if even and I don't even browse maps that way to begin with. You see the plate numbers in the thumb nails though and it just makes sense that if your looking for plate number 13 it would be about 1/4th of the way down. Although I still don't think plate numbers are how must people search for maps to begin with. Your way over selling them. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I wonder how you do it without the plate number. In the overview map and the index to streets and specials, that's what you HAVE to use. Nowakki (talk) 12:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: I mean literally: how do you do it? Is there some alternative way to access the maps that I don't know about where the index is not needed?

My point here is that i wrote me a couple of scripts to work comfortably with the maps and make the translation, using the mapping in the LoC json files.

Without the index and overview pages the maps would be useless AFAIK. You'd have to search through all the plates to find a particular business or street address. Nowakki (talk) 15:04, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The last couple of digits in the file names already correspond to the plate numbers. They just don't say "plate" before them in the file name. Their also on the actual maps. I'm not saying the table or the numbers don't matter and aren't useful, but their just numbers. Its not like if you name a file "Town, county, state plate # X" that's any more helpful then the current system of "town, county, state # (which is still the plate number)." But my point here is that it's just a number. Most people don't call it a plate number or really anything else. They just look at the number in the index, look for it in the thumbnail or at the end of the file, and open the image. Its already pretty simple to do that with the current naming scheme. So adding "plate" to the file names doesn't change anything. Your acting like people can't figure it out on their own without big red signs screaming "plate number!!" everywhere though. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The LoC sequence number is different from the plate number for the majority of volumes.

see User:Nowakki/test2 for example (hover the link with the mouse). Only same for the first 2 volumes in the table. Nowakki (talk) 15:59, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1 Can you please clear this up before the poll closes. You voted "oppose", but your comment clearly indicates that you do not understand the main point of the proposal.

I am of course happy as a cucumber to answer any remaining questions. Nowakki (talk) 19:22, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, Town+County+State names need to be included in the naming scheme, and the year preferably as well.

Support for changes in the naming scheme, also on the category levels, as long as it gets more unified and makes more sense than the previous one. On another note on categorization, while I think it is great to have the Sanborn maps in the "Sanborn maps... of state/country" category tree (Category:Sanborn maps of Alabama etc), and to have them included in "Category:Maps of Etowah County, Alabama" (etc.), I beg that they are not to be included in "<year/decade> maps of <state>", because they are not showing the whole state or even larger areas of the state, and only clutter that category, like Category:1888_maps_of_Alabama: If don't think that people who search for Alabama state maps in the 1880s, will find Sanborn maps too helpful, they are too localized to be included on that level. Best, Enyavar (talk) 11:31, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Oppose Per my previous comments. I'm not really seeing the benefit here. Especially considering the amount of files that have to be renamed and potential issues that come along with it. The main selling point seems be that plate numbers are used to navigate these maps, but so are the library codes. I've actually used to navigate the maps myself a couple of times. Although people don't really "navigate" using files names to begin with. Regardless though, what's the main selling point to this? Because all I see unfounded, vague assertions that no one is using the maps but that they will if the names have the plate numbers in them. I'm sure there's plenty of people who are using the files with the current system though. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
Oppose The current naming system is easy to use, in my experience. If you look in Category:Frankenmuth, Michigan, you will see an example of how the Sanborn maps (under the old naming system) are used. What will happen to these if the names are changed? I have seen many examples of this. Category:Tampa Bay Hotel is another. Krok6kola (talk) 20:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
This is not even an issue. File moves leave behind redirects. Nothing will happen. Nowakki (talk) 20:53, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
@Nowakki: Your method requires three steps: #1. find the city/county, state #2. find the volume number (some states have 5 volumes) #3. Click on "See parent category for index". Also, your method requires the renaming thousands of files. Plus I agree with Envavari's comment above about not including "<year/decade>" maps of <state>" for the same reasons. Those Sanborn maps have been on the Commons for years and users are accustomed to the way they are now. They appear neatly in the category of the city/town. No effort is required to find them. I never would have known about them if not for that. Krok6kola (talk) 00:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
People here will use what they have been given.
You can imagine an experiment. 2 categories
- Sanborn maps (old format)
- Sanborn maps (fixed format)
what do you think is going to be used. Users do not oppose fixes. Natural part of any work in progress. Nowakki (talk) 11:53, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
Weak oppose. There just doesn't seem to be a consensus here, for something that (unless I'm mistaken) will affect over a million files. Also, I still don't see exactly what the scope of this is. All Sanborn maps? Just those from LoC? Just JPEGs (because we also have many TIFFs)? And, above all, there has been no listing of likely use cases and how they will be affected. - Jmabel ! talk 01:30, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
If only there was a place where those question could have been asked. Nowakki (talk) 11:50, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
- Oppose - Some files are already being renamed, but I want them all to be declined. It gives a mess too, not all files get the right name, and you get things like "file is missing", etc.. See Multichill (above) - Richardkiwi (talk) (talk) 13:41, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

References for map

Is this possible to add references to description of map? Eurohunter (talk) 08:51, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: not only possible but desirable. But generally the <ref> mechanism is a mess on a file page. Just list your references and (ideally) indicate roughly what you got from each of them. Also, sometimes it's useful to use an ImageNote to indicate that a particular detail came from a particular source. Feel free to come back here for review afterward, if you like. - Jmabel ! talk 17:29, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Help with categorizing

In what kind of device the person speaks on the right? GeorgHH • talk 13:42, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

It may be a dictating machine similar to the Ediphone. From Hill To Shore (talk) 14:58, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Looking through various images in Category:Phonographs it is definitely a cylinder-type phonograph. From Hill To Shore (talk) 15:12, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks good. thank you very much for your help. GeorgHH • talk 17:16, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

And in this context it would certainly have been being used for dictation. - Jmabel ! talk 18:40, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: --GeorgHH • talk 17:17, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Something’s wrong with SteinsplitterBot

See Special:Contributions/SteinsplitterBot, Special:ListFiles/SteinsplitterBot, and Category:Images requiring rotation by bot... --RodRabelo7 (talk) 15:53, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --RodRabelo7 (talk) 19:55, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Add SVGZ support

As title, since this can make uploading and downloading an SVG file somewhat faster.--RekishiEJ (talk) 13:49, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Please file such requests on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:37, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Downloads already use on the fly compression.. This isnt really needed and im pretty sure we already declined this request at some point in the past. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:03, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Second TheDJ.

I doubt this would make any difference in upload or download: the transfers are compressed using gzip.

Furthermore, I do not want Commons to save SVGZ files natively. They are XML files, so they should be saved in the (inflated) XML format.

Glrx (talk) 20:26, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I see.--RekishiEJ (talk) 04:43, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Expedite cfd

i'd like to draw your attention to Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/01/Category:Hua Guofeng era and expedite the deletion discussion, because these categories lead to overly broad cat trees under these persons' categories. RZuo (talk) 10:50, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Just to be clear: RZuo made this request here four minutes after starting the discussion, so this is presumably a request for participation, not for closure. - Jmabel ! talk 19:27, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Help with translation

I’ve taken a stab at translating the description of File:Veduta generale di Sydney.jpg but it’s not quite right. In particular, I do t know what “sai mesi” might mean, can anyone help? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 13:38, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

"Mesi" = "months", "sai" seems to mean something like "as you know, ". Guido den Broeder (talk) 15:43, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

It may be a spelling error as "sei" means 6. So "sei mesi" is "6 months." From Hill To Shore (talk) 17:13, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Do you use Wikidata in Wikimedia sibling projects? Tell us about your experiences

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English.

Hello, the Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects team at Wikimedia Deutschland would like to hear about your experiences using Wikidata in the sibling projects. If you are interested in sharing your opinion and insights, please consider signing up for an interview with us in this Registration form.
Currently, we are only able to conduct interviews in English.

The front page of the form has more details about what the conversation will be like, including how we would compensate you for your time.

For more information, visit our project issue page where you can also share your experiences in written form, without an interview.
We look forward to speaking with you, Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 08:53, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Danny Benjafield (WMDE): Are you monitoring this post for answers to your question? I ask because its phrasing suggests that you posted this same text in several venues. If you’re not, then I suggest that the section title should be something like “WMDE interview about Wikidata integration” or some such, instead this misleading, spammy title. If you are, then here’s my answer: I use it to create automated interwiki links, especially between Commons categories and Wikipedia articles (in any language) — and that’s a part of Wikidata I appreciate and consider useful and well developed. The rest of Wikidata? Nah. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 05:17, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Eh, all Wikis have their flaws Trade (talk) 23:59, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Tuvalkin Hello and thanks for your reply and comment. Indeed the announcement was posted to nearly all Wiki Community portals to get responses from a wide cross-section of Wikimedians. What, why and how you use Wikidata in other projects is of value to us, as are the reasons why you don't. Should you like to discuss this further, please reach out to me on my Meta Talk page or the WD4WMP Discussion page. Thank you, -- Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 09:41, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Note that Wikidata is also used by non-WMF projects. There is the fundamental problem though with incorrect and/or incomplete Wikidata information. Guido den Broeder (talk) 13:20, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree to this. Often there is false or misleading info hidden in the structured data of false and nearly always is information missing, usually including information that could have been set automatically via the file's categories for example.

I think it would be better if people wouldn't spend so much time on duplicative efforts to add structured data to files when such is already set / implyable from the file's categories. It just makes things more difficult and laborious to maintain and takes up valuable time. Instead, it would be better if these things were set (synchronized) automatically via scripts based on file (and page) categories where they can be. Currently, a lot of things can't be set (or removed and changed) automatically this way (e.g. not every image in a person category also depicts that person) but in the future they could be by leveraging machine vision where users would then only (semi-automatically) review bulk changes or do slight modifications to automatic-synchronization-changes. Wikidata could improve the quality of AI training data, search engines, and semantic/reasoning AI systems among other things also outside of WMF projects but if it was currently used it would probably decrease quality due to lots of issues with data and missing/incomplete info. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:55, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Duplicate categories for Chinese characters

Why do we have Category:八 (numeral) in addition to Category:八? The former contains such images as File:Emblem of Nagoya, Aichi.svg (which at least in en:Nagoya is not connected to the number, except maybe through the mention of 八寸名古屋帯), while the latter contains file:012 - ba1 - eight.svg and file:China Emblem PLA.svg, which obviously are. Most other images in the latter category appear to represent the number, too. See e.g. the description for File:ACC-b00933.svg. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 13:00, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Guideline for Student Online Participation

Disagreements should be kept healthy: When a diverse group of students interact, some of the students may have different views. It is important to respect the views of all the participants. Refrain from personal issues and the use of inappropriate language during discussions. Express disagreements in a constructive manner. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zeldawildschut (talk • contribs) 19:20, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

@Zeldawildschut: and you are posting this on the Village pump because… - Jmabel ! talk 19:37, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Should files have "panoramio" in their names?

I've seen a lot of files like File:白山神社（新潟市） Hakusan jinja - panoramio.jpg with panoramio in their names. I think this is related to the original image source.

With that in mind should they be moved as per criteria 2:

An example given is "File:Flickr - law keven - Anybody know a Good Dentist^......Happy Furry Friday Everybody...-O))).jpg (no relation to file content) -> File:Lion-tailed Macaque, Colchester Zoo, England.jpg" but that one is a lot longer than these ones. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 22:53, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't move them just to remove "panoramio" from the filename. However, if there is another reason to move the file (such as correcting errors), the "panoramio" should be removed from the filename during that move. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 23:06, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Concur with Pi.1415926535. It's an accurate indication of source, there's nothing terribly wrong with it, but it's not particularly a plus. - Jmabel ! talk 01:31, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

@Immanuelle: Agreeing with the above, I'd just mention that criterion 2 applies to the file name as a whole. In this case, "白山神社（新潟市） Hakusan jinja" adequately describes what the picture shows and so criterion 2 doesn't apply. The presence of spurious words in the name doesn't change that. --bjh21 (talk) 13:32, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Photo of Bunsaku Arakatsu

Hello, this photo of Bunsaku Arakatsu (this one) was taken on 1 July, 1943 by Kyodo News. Is it public domain? Because 1. It was published before 1 January 1957. 2. It was photographed before 1 January 1947. There is more info here of a different version of the same photo. -Artanisen (talk) 04:37, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this is most probably covered by {{PD-Japan-oldphoto}}. Yann (talk) 10:52, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Reusing references: Can we look over your shoulder?

Apologies for writing in English.

The Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Deutschland is planning to make reusing references easier. For our research, we are looking for wiki contributors willing to show us how they are interacting with references.

The format will be a 1-hour video call, where you would share your screen. More information here.
Interviews can be conducted in English, German or Dutch.
Compensation is available.
Sessions will be held in January and February.
Sign up here if you are interested.
Please note that we probably won’t be able to have sessions with everyone who is interested. Our UX researcher will try to create a good balance of wiki contributors, e.g. in terms of wiki experience, tech experience, editing preferences, gender, disability and more. If you’re a fit, she will reach out to you to schedule an appointment.

We’re looking forward to seeing you, Thereza Mengs (WMDE)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --RZuo (talk) 21:11, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Today's MotD

This probably isn't the right place for this, but today's Media of the day File:A Case of Spring Fever (1940).webm, seems to be blatant copyright infringement of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. While the original film (File:CaseofSp1940.ogv) is public domain, the MST3K content isn't and doesn't seem to be even mentioned in the files description. Am I missing something here? Many thanks. Cakelot1 ☞️ talk 15:57, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree, the MST3K commentary and additions would still be copyrighted. -- William Graham (talk) 19:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

@Yann: .--RZuo (talk) 20:42, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

OOPS. I didn't realize that this is not part of the original. I will replace this by another version. Yann (talk) 21:15, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Done I will upload an even better version tomorrow. Yann (talk) 21:58, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

DIY copy stands

I seem to recall one of our chapters (Wikimedia Indonesia?) published plans for a simple DIY copy stand. I can't find, them in Category:Copy stands or by searching. Can anyone oblige, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:40, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Checkuserblock

these blocks often have a summary of "Abusing multiple accounts: {{Checkuserblock}}".

i wonder if it might be better to actually link to a page that explains what it is. something like

Abusing multiple accounts: Checkuserblock.

--RZuo (talk) 20:42, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Which, for anyone not looking at the source, is "Abusing multiple accounts: [[Template:Checkuserblock|Checkuserblock]]". - Jmabel ! talk 22:01, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

No, the template is used to display the detailed reason in the block notice. See this for an example. Hide on Rosé (talk) 04:04, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

@Hide on Rosé: The question wasn't about the block notice, it was about the summary given. Templates are not expanded in summaries. Presumably, RZuo's point was that he would prefer us to write the summary in a manner that would create a live link to the template. (I'm not sure if that's a good idea, but your remark seems orthogonal to that.) - Jmabel ! talk 07:44, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

You mean like this? Hide on Rosé (talk) 07:52, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that would actually be useful! - Jmabel ! talk 18:39, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Support. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 11:11, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Then, how do we implement this? Hide on Rosé (talk) 12:10, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
@Hide on Rosé: Convince the Checkusers to change their block summaries. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 12:15, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to globally ban Guido den Broeder

Hi, this is to let you all know that there is a proposal to ban User:Guido den Broeder at m:Requests for comment/Global ban for Guido den Broeder. You are receiving this notification as Guido den Broeder has made at least one edit to this wiki as per the m:Global bans policy. Best, --SHB2000 (talk) 05:44, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Can someone help me with autowiki browser for categorizing toki pona logograms?

I decided to start making categories for Toki Pona logograms by word, since we have a lot of them. With the exception of certain rare words we have almost all of our images in exhaustive sets of images resembling fonts.

I created the category Category:Toki Pona logograms by word to store such categories.

I made a page here User:Immanuelle/Toki Pona categorization showing each subcategory I want to create, the content I want for the category, and the list of files I wish to be categorized in each one. This is very time intensive so is anyone up to use AWB to make it easier? I'm not knowledgeable enough about AWB to know if this is a reasonable request or not, since it might not be able to do nested tasks like this. Otherwise I'd like to work on this for a couple days, and I'll disable the categories so they are not disruptive.Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 00:01, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) @Immanuelle: most of what you describe can be done with the Cat-a-lot gadget, aside for creating the category pages themselves. You can activate it in your Preferences, and when not using it you can minimize it to a small box.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 00:34, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@Odysseus1479 that is what I was looking for, but I do not see the post it note thing. Is the documentation out of date? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 03:14, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@Odysseus1479 I got it working, but unfortunately for this application it does not save time. I think AWB is the only way to make it not tedious. I created all categories though so they can be freely added if that will help the future AWB user Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 04:11, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Now I reworked the page to just a couple irregular ones that lack proper categorization due to irregular file names Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 18:50, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@Sobsz this may concern you. The one category I was not able to get into the list is Category:Simple SVGs of Toki Pona in sitelen pona since they contain the (variable) english translations Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 00:21, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

"Not around" template

I have manually imported en.Wikipedia's {{Not around}} and modified it for use on this project.

It can be added to the talk pages of long-departed users (three months inactivity is the suggested minimum) to inform people using those pages to ask for advice or assistance. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:30, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Selfies of "Wikipedians"

Some people post selfies here without categorizing them. As a person who likes to give pictures some meaning, I and (some others, I noticed) categorized them as "Wikipedians." The logic is simpleː by uploading a selfie, people became contributors to the project, and therefore automatically can be categorized in the Wikipedian-category. But now I have my doubts.

Roughly, we can divide the selfie-uploaders in four categoriesː

Those who upload one or more selfies, and are never seen again;
Those who make a selfie, use it in a Wikipedia-user-profile and are never seen again;
Those who make a selfie, use it in a Wikipedia-user-profile, make a few edits on the same day, and are never seen again;
Those who make a selfie, use it in a Wikipedia-user-profile, and start editing.

I would propose to use the speedy-deletion-template "db-selfie|help=off" for the selfies in first two categories, since those are only self-promomotion. Meanwhile we can keep the selfies in the latter two. We could discuss the third category, but then we might get endless discussions on how many "a few"are. What do others think about this? Regards, Jeff5102 (talk) 08:15, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Per current policy the third type should be deleted as well. However, keep in mind that people may contribute to other projects than Wikipedia. For that same reason, this may also not be the best category. Guido den Broeder (talk) 08:23, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd support that. Including deleting selfies in the third category. A few edits could easily be defined as "X amount of edits over Y time" if anyone has an issue with it. But there's no reason someone who only makes 3 or 4 edits on the same day and then is never seen again should have a selfie on their profile. Otherwise people uploading for clearly promotional purposes could just it, make a few edits, and then someone couldn't have the image deleted. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:46, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

In "Media_needing_categories" I regularly see low quality Category 1 selfies. Is it worth nominating the photo for deletion and then having someone else delete it? In my opinion, the effort would be better used for more important things. Wouter (talk) 15:27, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd go for "Wikimedians" rather than the more specific "Wikipedians".
perUser:Wouterhagens, if there are only a couple of images from a given person, I probably wouldn't bother with the hassle of deleting. If they are uploading a ton of useless personal images, and doing nothing else, that merits the process to delete. - Jmabel ! talk 20:06, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
For me it also depends on what they write on their user page. If the only contribution is to create the user page and introduce themself as "business men" or "famous rapper" I delete the photos and the user page. If they write something about photography or open knowledge I assume that they are really interested in contributing here and would not delete anything. GPSLeo (talk) 20:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
@GPSLeo: yeah, I'm also a lot more likely to DR if their only other action is to start a category about themselves. - Jmabel ! talk 01:13, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

To me it looks like what COM:F10 is already saying, so what exactly is being proposed? An amendment to COM:F10? Supplementary information? Instructions to be added to {{Db-selfie}}? In other words, how do you intend to process the results of this discussion? --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:43, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi, There was a discussion some time back about how many contributions are needed for personal images (not just selfies) to be accepted. Then there was an agreement that around 300 useful contributions across all Wikimedia are needed to consider someone active, and to accept personal images. Yann (talk) 21:20, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that actually adding a specific number is actually wise. A user who contributes 3 (three) or 4 (four) large high quality Wikipedia articles, each launched as a single edit will seem "less active" than a user who makes 300 (three-hundred) largely cosmetic edits. Then the question is, are selfies actually that largely of an issue that they require constant deletion? Obviously personal images without any educational value of non-contributors should be actively excluded, but placing an objective number on what makes someone "a contributor" as opposed to "a non-contributor" actively promotes the idea that quantity of edits are more important than quality of edits. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 00:27, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

It depends on whether you define "that large of an issue" in terms of importance or of how many there are. Even using the most conservative definition here -- categories 1 and 2 -- there are thousands and probably tens of thousands. The main value of having a number here is doing less work -- going through 50 edits to various pages that may not be in English takes a lot more time than going through 20 edits to someone's userpage.

In terms of importance, that probably comes down to how much you personally relate to the Terrible Trivium scene. Gnomingstuff (talk) 08:08, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Selfies of the third type are not eligible for speedy deletion; COM:CSD#F10 is clear to specify "no constructive global contributions". However, they could be eligible for regular COM:DR. This is for good reason, as it is often controversial how many edits are required before considering that a "user is or was an active participant on that project" (COM:INUSE). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:43, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

If we start defining things, we should also define how much time we give people to return for more edits. Do we delete after a week? A month? Several months? This all feels super bureaucratic and unnecessarily so. I'd rather leave things as they are and trust the existing processes. --Kritzolina (talk) 08:30, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

It's kind of basic maintenance isn't it? Like take this guy. He only had three edits in 2021. Uploading a selfie and two other images are probably COPYVIO. Maybe he'll come back eventually, but so what? At least IMO 2 years and no contributions other then uploading a selfie and COPYVIO should be enough to justify just deleting the selfie. Maybe it's not necessarily and could be construed as bureaucratic, but then there's also no reason to think the user will ever actually contribute to the project in any meaningful way either. So what's the issue with deleting the selfie in that case? --Adamant1 (talk) 08:48, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

This semmes to be a pretty clear cut case. Like I said - we can deal with these cases without creating new rules. But if we start creating new rules, we would need to deal with the grey areas and everything would become complicated. Kritzolina (talk) 09:28, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Currently, if a new user creates an account and uploads a selfie a minute later, that selfie becomes immediately eligible for F10 (and I do in fact see taggers applying this criterion this way in practice). I think this is unnecessarily BITEy, and we should give them time to become a productive user. I suggest making F10 a "delayed" criteron similar to F5; the uploader will have 7 days to rectify the situation by either 1) using the image on a page that is not a user page or talk page; or 2) becoming a constructive contributor. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:28, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Would support this (and apologies if I've mistagged anything in this way) Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:23, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Types of files covered

I'd like to start a new thread on a different issue. Currently, it says "F10. Personal photos by non-contributors: Low-to-medium quality selfies and other personal images of or by users who have no constructive global contributions." I often see other types of files such as PDF resumes which ought to be speedily deletable but technically do not qualify. Also, if some notable person uploads a selfie and adds it to their Wikipedia article, we shouldn't speedily delete that. May I suggest a revision: "F10. Personal files by non-contributors: Low-to-medium quality selfies and other personal files of or by users who have no constructive global contributions, which are not legitimately in use." -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:37, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Could you give some examples? What do you think of this one File:Chandolin (Switzerland, November 2020) - 103 (50898939036).jpg. It's a photo of a person beside a famous mountain. Not used anywhere. Or File:Switzerland-01767 - Beautiful Place and Friend (22285389512).jpg, a Flickr upload of two people in front of a famous lake. They are not selfies, but in my opinion they could qualify as well. I come across many of such or similar files when I am categorizing and I also wondered what they are doing here, that's why I ask. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 07:45, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Support Yes, obvious out-of-scope files should be covered under F10. Yann (talk) 10:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Support. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 12:07, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Support --Adamant1 (talk) 12:14, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Comment I deleted such kind of files unter the G10 (advertisement) criterion. With the proposed change F10 and G10 would basically become the same. We could make this change and then use G10 for pages only and F10 for files. GPSLeo (talk) 12:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Support Makes sense. Signatures are another common offender here, as are professional photos that aren't "selfies" but out of scope. Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:24, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Upload Wizard wording

In the section "Please select the option that best describes the purpose of this work" of the Upload Wizard, the options are

This work provides knowledge, instructions, or information to others.
This work is for my personal use e.g. photos of myself, my family or friends, or I am required to upload it for my job.

Neither of these, to my mind, seems to absolutely capture the idea of a "free media repository", as Wikimedia Commons is described. I suggest that some wording such as "a resource for others to use" is added to the first option. ITookSomePhotos (talk) 19:02, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

The "I am required to upload it for my job" clause is also inappropriate, given the role of Wikimedians in Residence, and colleagues in GLAMs and suchlike from whom we solicit image donations. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:05, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Uploaded images are supposed to be realistically useful for educational purposes. Personal images or images uploaded for tbe uploader's job have a high likelihood to be deleted because they are out of scope, even though there are some exceptions. In my opinion, the wording is o.k. if chosing this option produces just a warning. GLAM people and Wikimedians in residence should know what they are doing and will not be deterred by the wording. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 18:30, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

"Personal images" seems to be a borderline case. I can upload my image of my work as long as it shows something that is educational --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 12:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Experience shows that many such people will be deterred by things like this. Your claim otherwise is without merit. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:18, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Synthesis of different licenses

Hello. I am looking to combine two images from WIKIMEDIA to create a descriptive image for an article. One of the original images is cc3.0 and the other is cc4.0. Is it possible to combine these two images? If so, which cc should I use for the finished product and are there any precautions I should take? Thank you in advance.--狄の用務員 (talk) 05:38, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

@狄の用務員: I think it depends in part on the type of CC licence, in particular the SA condition. The main principle is that you can’t remove any conditions that apply to the original; specifically no BY-SA can be published under BY only. I don’t think there’s a problem relicensing CC BY-SA 3.0 as CC BY-SA 4.0. (But CC 1.0 licences can’t be ‘upgraded’ in this way.) Be sure to link & credit the sources, and it’s probably safest to mention their original licences as well. (You may get a more informed or technical response at COM:VPC.)—Odysseus1479 (talk) 07:29, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for explanation. I checked and one is Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported and the other is Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, both were Share Alike, so I will release the finished product as CC BY-SA 4.0. I will make sure to include a link and credit, as well as the original license. thank you. 狄の用務員 (talk) 08:53, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Problem with File:Sefer ha-ʼiggeret ha-ḳodesh (IA b30092838).pdf

Hi, File:Sefer ha-ʼiggeret ha-ḳodesh (IA b30092838).pdf is described as one book in page but in reality is a completely different book. It's actually he:שערי ירושלים (ספר), not the claimed book by en:Gershon ben Eliezer Yiddels. What do we do to correct the error? The uploader of the file is inactive. DGtal (talk) 08:13, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Assuming it is still PD, just make the appropriate corrections in the description and ask for a rename. - Jmabel ! talk 22:17, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

copyright whitelist

I asked some weeks ago about the licenses status of archive.org magazine rack collections.

The answer I got was that it is up to me to do research on the license status.

This answer is not satisfactory. A project such as this here would do good to keep a list of collections that are ok to use. There are several compelling advantages:

1. Entries in the whitelist will be more competently researched. Such an entry will exist for years, while my own research for one image will last a couple of minutes or it will not be worth it.

2. It allows work to be done by users that don't want to invest into a crash course in copyright law. As I understand, commons expects its users to do just that, even though it would not be necessary.

3. An entry in the whitelist can be referenced by a file. If the entry is found to be in error, files that were uploaded in error can be tracked down. This list would then also serve as a service to license holders and it provides a place were they can go on record with their claim. Nowakki (talk) 09:44, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

It is not possible to produce a whitelist of the copyright status of magazines. A magazine is a collection of works all potentially subject to their own licensing and copyright situation. Because Commons policy is that we require files to be suitably licensed (or out of copyright) in both the country of first publication and the US, it is not possible to set a universal rule. Sure, you may find that the September 1940 edition of a US magazine didn't follow copyright registration correctly and therefore should be PD, but that same magazine could include copies of photographs first published in London and subject to UK copyright. You must examine the situation of each file individually and articulate a rationale for upload. It is not possible to create a shortcut process to absolve uploaders from having to think. From Hill To Shore (talk) 09:55, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

1. But it is possible to create a whitelist for the first step: determining the copyright status of the magazine itself.

2. If such a magazine follows the policy of tagging works under copyright protection where and when they are published, that could be mentioned in the whitelist and then the list would cover steps one and two. Also true for content that is clearly an own product of the magazine staff. Nowakki (talk) 10:11, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

But then your suggestion is no longer a "white" list where everything is safe from copyright but a "grey" list where the answers are ambiguous and people will still need to conduct the same research. As uploaders will continue to require an understanding of copyright principles, I think Commons' approach on providing guidance on copyright principles is the right one. Feel free to work on your list if you want but it will be a herculean effort for limited benefit - it will all come back to the principles. From Hill To Shore (talk) 10:26, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

If a magazine publishes images without a copyright notice and without stating the author, how am I supposed to determine the copyright status? Nowakki (talk) 13:32, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

That is the difficulty we all face as volunteers at this project. We find a file we think is useful to upload, we consider the circumstances and apply the copyright principles set out in our guidance. If we think we have a clear justification and can meet COM:PCP then we upload and include all relevant details in the file information. Many times we conclude that we don't have enough information to continue the upload and the file is never added to Commons. Sometimes we do upload but get things wrong; the consensus of a deletion discussion may decide that the file should be deleted. We can think of improvements to the guidance we offer but there are no easy answers here. From Hill To Shore (talk) 13:56, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

What about: "The copyright owner can request the file be removed".

That's not on COM:PCP. The copyright holder has that legal obligation, does he not? Of course assuming good faith, which would amount to:

1. Magazine issue is not protected

2. no copyright tag or author next to the image or anywhere else in the issue.

I don't know how frequently commons received complaints, feel free to give me some insight into that end of the process. Nowakki (talk) 14:18, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nowakki: I would suggest that rather than creating a list, a better approach is to document your research in the category page for the magazine in question. See Category:Time Magazine for an example. The category is naturally linked to and from the corresponding files, and is where people uploading new issues are likely to be looking anyway. The only thing this lacks from your proposal is bundling multiple magazines together into a list, but I don't think that's particularly useful. --bjh21 (talk) 12:52, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Your recommendation is to do it informally and haphazardly. And for me as an amateur to do it myself.

I think the problem should be solved professionally and systematically. Until then i will just do something else than upload files. Nowakki (talk) 13:34, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nowakki: "Your recommendation is to do it informally and haphazardly. And for me as an amateur to do it myself." Erm, yes. Welcome to Wikimedia Commons (and the wider Wikimedia community), where a bunch of amateurs do things informally and haphazardly. If you wanted formal professionalism, I fear you've come to the wrong place. --bjh21 (talk) 13:45, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

The software we are using was not written by amateurs.

There are people who have been with the wiki projects for over 10 years.

Even if the above was not true, something approaching professionalism well enough can be created by a large enough number of amateurs. Nowakki (talk) 13:58, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Nowakki people would have to add the information to a whitelist anyway. So it's not having one would be any less work. At least not in the short term. Although it would be good information to have and it makes me wonder anyone has created such a list before. Do you know of any examples? --Adamant1 (talk) 14:20, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I do not and the list could have been started years ago and we would not be having this conversation. Nowakki (talk) 14:24, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Is that something your interested in working on (maybe with other people) or are you mainly just here to criticize the project for not having one sooner? --Adamant1 (talk) 15:00, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Just to criticize.

The project has to be efficient, no?

Think of me as a hobbyist auditor if you want. I am just asking questions. Nowakki (talk) 15:24, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I mean, sure. But it doesn't just magically become that way and there's a lot of different areas to work in on here. Anyway, I was going to suggest starting a Wikiproject for magazine, since it's an underserved area already, and going from there. It doesn't sound like that's something you'd be interested in though. I will say that it's a lot easier to find out what's copyrighted or not just by organizing images related to the topic. You can't really know what is or isn't copyrighted if you (or anyone else) isn't working in the area and keeping track to begin with. There is lot of ways to document and track those things just through editing in the area though. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:47, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

If it's a magazine from the United States you can probably just look at one from a year in say the 60s and if there's no copyright notice then it's reasonable to assume issues before that one won't have a notice either. The same goes for in the other direction to. Like if an issue from 1954 has a notice then the ones after most likely will also. That can narrow it down some. It's not like you have check every page either. Just the first couple, which should be trivial if your manually uploading them anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:57, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

You should check every page. For one, there's a long list of places where a copyright notice can be, including the last page of the main work. Secondly, individual works can have their own notices. Works without notice are pretty rare, and each work should be checked individually when uploading.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:48, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html offers a list of many periodicals and information about renewals in them. It's long and complex. Generally speaking, you can use US publications from before 1929, but after that it gets complex.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:53, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I mean, sure. There could be a copyright notice in the middle of the magazine, but realistically what's the possibility that there is one (at least for the magazine itself, which is what I was talking about)? I look at it like a "due diligence" thing. It's totally reasonable IMO to look at the first and last few pages of the magazine for a copyrighted and then upload it if there isn't one. That's at least better then nothing. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:53, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: Please look also at the Table of Contents and the pages before and after that. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 13:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: That's perfectly reasonable to. I just don't think someone should have to look through the whole magazine with a fine-tooth comb before they can fairly conclude it's probably not copyrighted. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:58, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

You look at it as a due diligence thing to not bother to look all the places a copyright notice could legally be? No comb needed, but look at the entire magazine. Make sure it's intact and nobody has stuck random crap in it, and you might as well look for the copyright notice while you're there.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:02, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

It really depends how large something is. No one sticks the copyright notice on page 96 of a 400-page document. It's either in the first few pages, the last few pages (& that not very often), in a masthead, or near the table of contents, and usually looking at the first and last few pages includes finding any masthead or table of contents. - Jmabel ! talk 23:00, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

There's a few places near the beginning or end that it can legally be. It's definitely not limited to the first couple pages; I've seen magazines that bury the title page after 30 pages of ads. And sometimes works have their own notices, even buried in the middle of a work.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:05, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

And I don't know what you mean by "at least for the magazine itself". If one of the stories in the magazine is copyrighted, you can't upload the magazine as a whole. s:Weird_Tales/1929 demonstrates another issue; just because a magazine doesn't have a renewal, or even a copyright notice, didn't necessarily mean that works first published in England or elsewhere effectively lost their copyright.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:05, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I was going to create a property of first copyrighted issue, but never got around to it. I was going to import the data from https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html, since we have the link in each Wikidata entry. --RAN (talk) 02:39, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

My idea was to store what issues are copyrighted or not in tabular data that could then be checked and updated by a Wikiproject or the like. That would probably be going a bit overboard though. But it would be good information to have readily available for each magazine and issue anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:01, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Mass rename requests

I have another 50,000+ to rename.

Prior advice i got was to state in the {{rename template that no redirect should be left behind.

I feel reluctant to go ahead and flood the queue again. People working on it are real troopers, over 10,000 requests have already been approved and the effort is ongoing (despite the action being voted against).

Or should I wait until they figure out how to write scripts?

FIles in question are recently uploaded with wrong filename. Sanborn maps using year, volume instead of volume, year. Whatever inconsistency exists in Sanborn file names, it is not necessary to keep this one. Nowakki (talk) 05:42, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm confused, and seem to get more confused rather than less as this proceeds.

Is there any reason names of maps from this particular source all need to follow a single pattern? Not that it wouldn't be nice, but as you presumably know, there are all sorts of issues with mass renames.
Unless there is a reason they all need to follow a single pattern, why would year, volume be any less useful than volume, year? - Jmabel ! talk 07:47, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

You'd have to keep track which file uses which format when processing the files.

For example when generating an index, when writing an application that uses commons

as a data source. Nowakki (talk) 10:21, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

If you're processing files from Commons, you should avoid assuming any particular filename format. Much better to do something based on the description page or structured data. For instance, if I want to find the Commons file corresponding to a particular image from Geograph Britain and Ireland, I can look up the corresponding sort key in Category:Images from Geograph Britain and Ireland and I'll find it no matter what naming scheme the uploader has used. This isn't always possible (for instance if you're writing a MediaWiki template), but even then a redirect is usually good enough. --bjh21 (talk) 17:09, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

If the filenames are strict and all that searching becomes unnecessary that would be better.

Imagine you upload one book as 500 images, one per page. Do you include the page number in the filename or do you put it into the description only? Finding a page only requires to search through 250 descriptions on average and users will be happy to put up with an extra layer of nonsense and be more likely to write the application or process the files automatically?

If somebody does the work to make it better, why not allow it to be made better? Nowakki (talk) 18:10, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I have tried everything possible. The Sanborn collection commons offers remains less useful than the one i made in one day on my own computer at home. There is one piece of metadata that stands out: the filename. Commons thinks the filename should be treated with very little importance. Because this works very well for random files that Joe the Plumber uploads.

MEANINGFUL FILENAMES ARE AN OPTION THAT SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED. Retrain your workforce. I am out. Nowakki (talk) 10:15, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

There's no need to shout, Nowakki. --SHB2000 (talk) 02:20, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

There is no need to have the maps on commons. I can just use my own. Nowakki (talk) 03:57, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

There are technical reasons, why renaming (of certainly mature) files is discouraged here. Better to seed descriptions with keywords and categorisations, so they can be made visible, useful, and facilitate keyword search. I have no objection to improved titles for newly uploaded files, especially one's that don't come from Govt. agencies or large institution collections. Broichmore (talk) 20:04, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

What are those technical reasons? Nowakki (talk) 20:09, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Link rot, and unnecessary burdening of resources by re-directs, etc., read the policy! Not to mention, but I will, a very large number of tiff file, which are reference files by definition in the main.Broichmore (talk) 20:15, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

This is a necessary burden. The burden is not big. These are not high request volume files. Nowakki (talk) 20:28, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

This is a necessary burden. This is just my opinion of course, but it doesn't seem like you've shown that it is. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:56, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I am fairly confident that if you asked 100 random people, the new naming scheme would be preferred. And that is polite, because the old scheme is braindead. Every plate you look up will result in unnecessary searching. Un-use-able.

And that a unified naming scheme is better than having more than one, pretty sure that is true also. Nowakki (talk) 21:14, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nowakki: Based on the kinds of Phabricator tickets I've seen relating to file storage, I think there's an additional danger. MediaWiki's file storage is not tightly connected to its database, and files in the file storage are indexed by filename. This means that if you rename a file and something crashes in the middle or one of the requests gets lost, you can end up with an inconsistency between the database and the file store. At best that disconnects the file from its description page; at worst the file is lost entirely. --bjh21 (talk) 12:53, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

How often does that happen? Nowakki (talk) 13:04, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nowakki: I have very little idea. As I said, this is mostly an impression I've got from seeing Phab tickets related to file storage. Here's a high-level ticket about the issue: phab:T153565. And from browsing file-related tickets I've found this pretty straightforward case of a file being lost during a move (so it's not a wholly theoretical danger): phab:T336086. --bjh21 (talk) 13:48, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Software problem. Nothing anyone can do about it. Nowakki (talk) 15:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nowakki: Nothing anyone here who is not a WMF developer can do about it. Perhaps TheDJ might comment, though. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 15:57, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I am ready to generate a nice 50,000-sized test case for him. Nowakki (talk) 16:12, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I have no idea what this is about, but the discussion doesn't seem very inviting to invest time in figuring it out. My overall opinion is that there should never be a need to rename 50 000 files, because then someone majorly F'ed up. I have no exact idea about what kind of load that would generate, but the overall advise it that we should avoid renaming this many files in quick succession. I'm not sure if any of these files are linked (either internally or externally) because those would require cleanup as well of course. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:32, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@TheDJ They can be renamed slowly. The question we are asking ourselves is whether many files will become lost in the process. Nowakki (talk) 16:38, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Nowakki: There is one highly relevant thing we can do to avoid being bitten by bugs related to file renaming: avoid renaming files. --bjh21 (talk) 19:04, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

You don't even know how often the bug appears. I wouldn't care if 50 out of 50,000 images got lost. Can always check afterwards if they are still there.

I am not going to comment on the 7 year old, 14 watchers bug about giving files new names... Nowakki (talk) 19:24, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Bjh21 The file disappearance can be caused by double rename, for example a user clicking on a button twice.

process 1 start copy file src to dst

process 2 start copy file src to dst

process 1 update database

process 1 delete src file

process 2 update database fail

process 2 delete dst file Nowakki (talk) 17:19, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

One minute, you say: I have another 50,000+ to rename. The next you say: The burden is not big. These are not high request volume files. That's not a small job.

Despite what you say the only important piece of meta data here is the unique identifier ID number.

1996609 brings up one Sanborn file, and another of some English swimming pool. This ID number appears in the source entry.

How are you going to ensure that renaming is not going to confuse our scraper bots, so that duplicates are going to be uploaded in various formats, or with diffrent checksums. How are we going to know, what items are the missing from our collection.

Again, seeding descriptions with search keywords and comprehensive categorisation is the obvious route here.

As it is your committing to 50,000+ name changes, that must be completed for any kind of consistency, plus I'm guessing an additional unique accession number as yet unknown, or it's equivalent. We already know that Sanborn's ID numbers are not unique enough. -- Broichmore (talk) 11:14, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Wow, there is a lot wrong with your comment.

1. 50,000 renames at 5 per second (that's what the script achieves to insert the tag, don't know how much the server has to work to finish the move). In any case, it takes a few hours. one-time effort.

2. the map files are not high request volume files. A redirect left behind by a move will not be followed often in the next years, and the resources spent on the redirects will be small.

3. the ID number is an internal nypl.org or geograph.org.uk number. it should not be used for anything other than identifying the source of the file. I think there are many more files from these 2 sources where the ID overlap. All sanborn files specify source IDs in their source field in the description.

4. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps have used an official naming scheme since long before the first vacuum tube started the computer revolution. Each sheet of paper in the whole collection is uniquely identified by: name of town, year, volume, sheet number. These identifiers are typically printed on each sheet, like a page number in a book.

5. scraper bots, duplicate checks? First of all, a rename does not change the sha1sum of a file. second, there are duplicates among the sanborn files uploaded in 2018 that eluded your scraper bots for years. There have been 300,000 files missing from the sanborn collection since i uploaded them last december.

6. seeding descriptions with search keywords... that can still be done. this here is an effort to systematize 500,000 files so nobody has to keep around a large list to perform an extra step of indirection all the time when looking up a file. This is a minor fix to make sane and consistent a collection of 500k files. Nowakki (talk) 12:02, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Are you allowed to nominate your own images for Valued or featured image?

I just nominated two of my images for Valued image Commons:Valued image candidates/Masakaki with Sword.jpg and Commons:Valued image candidates/Masakaki with Mirror and Jewel.jpg as they are the highest quality existing images of the objects in question. Am I allowed to do this? Likewise can I do the same for featured image? I saw a guy above had nominated his own images but he was also not on good terms with the rest of the community. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 22:34, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I have nominated my own images and they were promoted. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 23:33, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Immanuelle, yes, you can nominate your own images on the Featured picture candidates page. Most FP candidates are nominated by their creators, so this is absolutely common. You can even vote for your own candidate images there. Please read the FP rules before nominating; e.g., you can nominate max. 2 images at concurrently. Best, --Aristeas (talk) 10:12, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Chris.sherlock2 thank you. Can you look over those two images and see if they qualify as good valued image candidates? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 17:19, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I’ll be back in a few days, look then. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk)< Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 02:01, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

New discussion related to "Describe" step in UploadWizard

Hi all! We are collecting feedback regarding the usage of the "Describe" step in UploadWizard, and its challenges to newbies. You are kindly invited to participate! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:31, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Uploadwizard wiped link to user profile

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T354529

i think wizard has wiped links to user pages. i just randomly saw 3 users' new uploads, which all have no link to their user pages but only their usernames in the author field. i dont think this is a coincidence. RZuo (talk) 17:37, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

by looking at photos on User:Yahya/Entrepreneurs/2023_December_1-15, it seems wizard started making no links on 15 dec 2023. RZuo (talk) 17:51, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @Sannita (WMF) - Jmabel ! talk 18:05, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I didn't notice it before, but with my uploads, the wizard stopped linkin my userpage with the start of the new year. --Kritzolina (talk) 19:38, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

How is this an improvement? — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 02:26, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

It looks like a bug that might have been introduced with the changes of the upload wizard in December. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 08:38, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

We know already about this bug, the team has deployed a patch one hour ago, as far as I can tell. The patch should be shipped during the week. Sorry for the disruption. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 12:09, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I just want to add that this is a very serious bug as fixing the missing links manually or by writing a bot will take many hours of volunteer work. GPSLeo (talk) 20:11, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with GPSLeo here that this bug could cause quite some work for us volunteers. I would greatly appreciate help from development team to fix the missing links in my uploads - could they provide a bot perhaps for all whose uploads were affected? Kritzolina (talk) 09:15, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll talk with the team immediately and see if we can support you with fixing this bug. I think the list of uploads could be something feasible, but suggestions are welcome. I'll keep you posted. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:39, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I guess these are all uploads starting Dec 12. I can check the exact time for my own uploads. Ymblanter (talk) 11:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

For my uploads, the file I uploaded 20:09, 12 December 2023 has the link. The next file I uploaded 20:34, 13 December 2023, and it does not have the link. I guess probably between these two times the Wizard was modified, and starting from the modification time uploaded files have no link. Ymblanter (talk) 11:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

A dev from the team provided me with this query, hope this helps for the moment. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:38, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

The linking for the new uploads is working now, thanks again. Ymblanter (talk) 20:47, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Photo challenge November results

**Bicycles: Entries • Votes • Scores**
Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Through the flooded street on a bicycle	Bicycle helihoisting	Silvia Persico and Esmée Peperkamp in Tourmalet during TDFF 2023
Author	Debanutosh	Ibex73	Shougissime
Score	20	17	14

**Too many to count: Entries • Votes • Scores**
Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial	Pacific Sardines - Monterey Bay Aquarium (California)	Eriophorum_scheuchzeri in Vanoise National Park
Author	Foeniz	Changku88	Ibex73
Score	19	15	14

Congratulations to Debanutosh, Shougissime, Foeniz, Changku88 and Ibex73 Jarekt (talk) 03:25, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Foeniz (talk) 10:12, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Commented out, as this is again forcing horizontal scrolling for the entire page. I thought that had been fixed, but apparently not. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

i am using firefox and browsing with 133% zoom but it still doesnt cause any problems.--RZuo (talk) 21:06, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Question about Category:Søren Rasmussen (politician)

Søren Rasmussen has an unusual amount of photos for a local politician who never exceeded the rank of deputy mayor of a city of 62K. That's fine, of course, as they do seem to be free (though I have some worries about Flickr white-washing for some of them). I write here because I found the election posters to particularly obnoxious and redundant. I organized them here: Category:Election posters of Søren Rasmussen. They could not just be in the parent category of Category:Election posters in Denmark because they would dominate it visually if not otherwise. Commons is not my home project. Am I worried about nothing? Or is this some form of spamming? Thanks for your thoughts on this. Cheers, --SVTCobra 05:37, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd say the number is not that unusual for someone who puts out a steady stream of media. Here where I live in Seattle, there's Category:Tim Burgess (politician) (175 files), who served multiple terms on the city council, then briefly as mayor during a transition; Category:Sally Bagshaw (over 450 photos for another longtime member of the city council); Category:Rob Johnson (138 photos, and he served all of four years on the council, and never held any other public office). Admittedly Seattle is a bigger city but it's mostly a matter of a steady stream of media. And I bet we have more photos of all of the above, because 1,912 photos are simply categorized as "Seattle City Council".

I think you did well to put the posters in a subcategory. - Jmabel ! talk 08:20, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

"I found the election posters to [sic] particularly obnoxious and redundant." The best response is to make this point to his opponents, and encourage them to open =licence their posters in a similar fashion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:34, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Andy. I am, however, not about to contact mayoral candidates out of the blue. And seeing as he already lost the election to Category:Knud Erik Langhoff, such suggestions might fall on deaf ears. Cheers, SVTCobra 14:04, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

MediaSearch dysfuncional

I am sure there was a page on commons to discuss MediaSearch with the people in charge of it, but the link on the search page only links to the mediawiki website and it does not look that there is much traffic.

Here is the thing: On https://article.wn.com/view/2021/01/27/factbox_the_brexit_impact_so_far_8211_paperwork_process_and_/ is a reuse of one of my fotos. It is attributed with " Protests against Brexit at the Brandenburg gate in Berlin, Germany on 7 September 2019." So I thought, if I enter "2019-09-07 C.Suthorn" in MediaSearch I will find all the fotos I made on that day and published at commons (this specific image has my name and the date in the descrtiption page, in SDC, in the category and in the connected "depictrs" wikidata entry. So the MediaSearch has a number of ways to make the connection between the query and the image i was looking for). But actually MediaSearch returned a large number of images by me and many of them about brexit. But it did not only not return the image i was looking for but none of the images from 2019-09-07 i published at Commons. It is a search result of images not from that date! Whats wrong? --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 13:37, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=%222019-09-07%22+C.Suthorn&title=Special:MediaSearch . RZuo (talk) 14:27, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

@RZuo: Thanks! @C.Suthorn: It appears to be File:StopTheCoup 23.jpg, which does not bear that form of date. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ_{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 14:33, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

from the info template: "|date=2019-09-07 12:31:08". Also it should not matter, if someone who does a search enters 2222/11/11, 11.11.2222, 11.September 2222, 11th of september 2222. MediaSearch should be able to interpret a date as the given date and search for the date, not for the string that was entered. That is what SDC is for: structured data: a machine interpretable data. I really was under the impression if there is an intersection between the date in a file "2222","22222-11-11","2222-11-11 11:11", "2000-3000" and the date in the query "2222","22222-11-11","2222-11-11 11:11", "2000-3000" all files within that intersection will be considered possible search results and all files outside that intersection will be excluded from the results. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 15:42, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

The search engine does not use and semantic interpretation of the input. It just compares differences in strings. If I search for "GPSLeo 2022-09-06" I get over 2000 results. The files taken on this date are among this result but also files wit name like "Name 2022-03-09 06" or "Name 2022-09-23 06". The first 10 results are not taken on the 2022-09-06. But all these files are uploaded much earlier then the ones of the 2022-03-09. As the files are sorted by relevance and the first files have more media views. The first file has less media views but a redirect to the file. GPSLeo (talk) 16:43, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Done ich habe die Seite gefunden: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Structured_data/Media_search#mediasearch_dyfunctional_(copied_from_VP) C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 10:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Book classifications translation help

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on creating navigations for Japanese and Chinese books. In the template I've developed, users can view translations of classifications based on their preferred language. For instance, Category:NDC10 912 Drama and Category:NDC10 912.7 (Note: this is for preview purposes, and many more categories will be generated by a bot). You can change commons display language: English, Japanese, Chinese, French, and the class names will change as well. The translations need to be specified in Module:Library classification navigation/<classification scheme>/DisplayNameTable. It's more convenient to first translate in Excel and then convert to Lua format.

I'm seeking assistance with the translations. Use ChatGPT with a bit proofreading (no mismatching lines) would be OK. You can find information for DisplayNameTable in the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1v-vujzUwXTJbtvPrYDOXYNcr4xziXHpt/edit .

Here are the specific translation tasks:

Japanese: Approximately 1000 items in the "NDC10" sheet require translation. NDC8 and NDC9 can also be translated, but they are rarely used and only apply to books that cannot be mapped to NDC10. Feel free to skip them.

Chinese: There are a total of 17,000 items, but translating the main 5000 items from the "CLC_main" sheet would be sufficient. I have already gathered a small number of English items by looking them up on English Wikipedia CLC article.

Please download the sheet locally to edit. Once you've provided the translations, upload the file to Google Drive or any file-sharing service and share the link here. I will merge different translations and convert them to lua format.

Thanks a lot for your help! --維基小霸王 (talk) 07:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Please leave a message first to avoid duplicate works.--維基小霸王 (talk) 08:55, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

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