Commons:Village pump

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Welcome to the Village pump

This page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2023/11.

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# 💭 Title 💬 👥 🙋 Last editor 🕒 (UTC)
1 Should categories for extinct taxons begin with "†"? 11 8 Nosferattus 2023-11-25 21:19
2 Will commons become a depository of all movies？ 30 12 Koavf 2023-11-25 19:35
3 Osvaldo Guillermo Torrez Arisaca 12 4 Krisgabwoosh 2023-11-27 06:20
4 Change file extension 5 4 Jeff G. 2023-11-28 13:58
5 500 terabytes (455 tebibytes) threshold exceeded 3 2 PantheraLeo1359531 2023-11-28 16:23
6 Harassment 4 4 Yann 2023-11-26 10:01
7 Special:UncategorizedCategories 9 5 Jeff G. 2023-11-29 20:11
8 Role accounts 7 5 RZuo 2023-12-01 19:33
9 Similarity detection and updating of already-existing images 5 3 Jmabel 2023-11-27 03:22
10 Clouds clinging to mountains 1 1 Smiley.toerist 2023-11-27 10:13
11 Heads up: we passed 100 million files (about a half-million ago) 10 4 GPSLeo 2023-11-27 18:13
12 From french Commons Bistro about a Category 2 2 Jmabel 2023-11-27 20:33
13 Protista: SVG image translations needed 4 3 Jmabel 2023-11-27 20:36
14 Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Job Centre Plus 1 1 JSutherland (WMF) 2023-11-27 23:35
15 How to find images added since a given date in a category with multiple sub categories 5 4 RZuo 2023-12-01 19:08
16 Subcategories Rail vehicle doors 6 3 Smiley.toerist 2023-11-30 21:45
17 Transcribe 3 2 Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 2023-11-30 17:32
18 Movement Charter 12 5 RZuo 2023-12-01 22:56
19 Commons Gazette 2023-12 1 1 RZuo 2023-12-01 12:05
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November 21[edit]

Should categories for extinct taxons begin with "†"?[edit]

Should categories for extinct taxons begin with "†"? I would think not, but four currently do:

Does anyone disagree? - Jmabel ! talk 19:15, 21 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think they should not. It's not part of their name, I do not see the need to distinguish these from others as far as their identity, it's not readily apparent what that symbol is, and it's one more variable that interferes with ease of linking/consistency among naming. If this sort of identity is useful to have at all, then having it as a category is the way to go. DMacks (talk) 19:28, 21 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I would say definitely not. It is ugly for sorting and in many cases a species was considered as extinct but then a new populations is found. GPSLeo (talk) 19:29, 21 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Unless the extinct taxon was overwhelmingly Christian, I’m sure it’s inappropriate, even if found to be typographically acceptable. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 11:58, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The symbol is mainly German and is usually called a "death dagger". It does look rather like a cross, but it is not particularly Christian in its origin.
Anyway, it's pretty clear we have consensus here, and I will move these categories (I'll leave redirects for now). - Jmabel ! talk 16:06, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Category:†Streptochetus was empty, so I'm just deleting it. - Jmabel ! talk 16:09, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
+ of course Acacia is not extinct. Jeez. - Jmabel ! talk 16:13, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Jmabel: It seems MILEPRI and Allforrous made these categories for fossils of Acacia etc. for brevity.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:44, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
That somewhat explains it, but there's still no clear advantage over Category:Acacia fossils. They're not even useful as shortcuts/redirects for quick categorization via HotCat because virtually nobody will be able to type the dagger symbol on their keyboard. Just  Delete them all. El Grafo (talk) 09:52, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Definitely the names should not include "†", it is not part of the name. Sneeuwschaap (talk) 17:21, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I agree. The category names should not include "†". Nosferattus (talk) 21:19, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

November 23[edit]

Will commons become a depository of all movies？[edit]

two things are certain:

  1. users have been uploading public domain movies to commons.
  2. as time goes by, new movies enter pd every year.

as i see users discussing increasing file size limit, i wonder:

  1. is commons planning to be a depository for all (or a LOT of) movies? what're the commons user community's views on this?
  2. should commons become such a depository?
  3. what's WMF's view on this?

--RZuo (talk) 09:50, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  •  Support Uploading all free materials to Commons provided that they have educational and/or historical value Юрий Д.К 11:47, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  •  Info When interpreting movies, we can learn a lot about culture, and in case of older videos, history. First of all, older movies give us an idea how movies looked like and how they were recorded. Movies can give a hint to events (historical references) at a time when they were produced. This gives us an idea how people thought about events back then or how they were seen by them. Having several movies over the years, we can see how techniques of cinematography and other techniques changed over years. Sometimes, movie are subject to research. I think these points qualify to be educational, which is a condition to be uploaded to Commons. Culture is manifold and so are movies. Movies don't just record some scenes. Furthermore, the director puts many ideas into this, and this makes a movie special, unique, and often educational. And these point make movies worth to be conserved :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:31, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  •  Support Wikisource is transcribing those movies, and it would be nice to see cross-Wikisource translations of transcriptions. I don't see any reason to include books and photographs and paintings and not movies.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:49, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • As a note, several pornographic films, like w:Behind the Green Door and w:Deep Throat are more well known and culturally important than the vast majority of films. The legalization of pornography is late enough that we won't get many films in the PD until the 2050s, at least.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:57, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Please be cautious. A (full-length) movie is not like a photo or a painting, it's often a complex creative process that involves many people such as director, actors, cameraman, screenplay writer, and so on. We can only be sure the movie is PD if really all participated people meanwhile have been dead for >70 years. --A.Savin 22:29, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Well, it depends on the country. For example, Indian movies get into the public domain 60 years after publication. Yann (talk) 22:33, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@A.Savin not at all movies. For some movies like U.S. ones, those become public domain years after publication or first release (many after 95 years due to the copyright extension law by the late Rep. Sonny Bono). One great example is the Steamboat Willie, an animated theatrical short from 1928. It turned 95 years old this year, and will officially enter public domain around 2 months from now, provided that the attempts of Disney and their fellow stakeholders to lobby U.S. Congress for another U.S. copyright extension fail.
We actually should not just include movies in this discussion but also theatrical shorts (cartoons or any other shows) that were originally meant to be shown in movie theaters. Someone should list the public domain dates of Disney, Looney Tunes, and Tom and Jerry shorts. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 23:02, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
OK, however by default it's surely the same as for any other copyrighted work -- 70 years after creator's death. Thanks --A.Savin 23:52, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
There are many countries for which 70 p.m.a. is the law, but plenty where it is not. Obviously we take only what is clearly PD or free-licensed, as with any other media. - Jmabel ! talk 00:12, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
There is no default; more than half the people in the world live in countries with less than life+70 terms, even not including the US. Moreover, according to w:List of countries' copyright lengths, many nations that normally have life+70 terms have 70 or even 50 years from publication for films. Even in countries with life+70 terms for films, I think the set of people who count as creators differs from country to country.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:41, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  •  Support Yes, as said above. Old movies have multiple educational values: history, culture, social, cinema technics, etc. Yann (talk) 22:35, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
 Support as long as the movies themselves are in public domain both in the U.S. and the country of origin. Proper categorization should be taken into account. Treat movies just like any other audio-visual file that we currently have. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 22:56, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
And, second in motion to inputs of Prototyperspective and @Юрий Д.К.. Only movies that are worth for educational and wholesome purpose can be shared here, not porn movies. The inclusion of only wholesome movie in terms of educational, historical, cultural, and other useful purpose should address some of concern on the server space ("trash" like porn movies just consume needless space that should be utilized by more wholesome movies). I think there should be some condition that only users with xxx user rights can upload movies or theatrical shorts. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 12:50, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@JWilz12345: I think that softcore videos like 1980-90-00s erotic films and porn films/movies with professional models also [will be] in scope. Obviously homemade porn videos clearly not for Commons likewise tons of dicks and exhibitionist photos of non-model people. Юрий Д.К 13:30, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Юрий Д.К. that's why I think it is best to implement the movie/theatrical short uploading rights to a specific group of users, like admins, sysops, image reviewers, and autopatrolled users (or those who really deserve some uploading rights). Obviously, users like new users and users with less than (n) contributions should not be allowed to upload such audio-visual works. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 13:41, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  •  Support Movies are for example useful regarding prior imagination, techniques, concerns, cultural viewpoints, predictions, art styles, and so on. Since some people may consider porn videos and porn movies to also be "Movies" and a set of decisions elsewhere on WMC seem like users here would like WMC to become a (non-amateur-) porn site, I think it's necessary to clarify that I don't think WMC is the right place for such media, of which there are many TBs, and do not support that. The Internet Archive also hosts many PD films – if file-size or server-load are an issue maybe it's worth considering whether it's possible that the content is on their servers but embedded here in a way that allows them to get categorized and used as if it was hosted on WMC. The value of movies in this context is similar to the value of other art which is also hosted on WMC. Documentaries may be of special value.
Prototyperspective (talk) 12:35, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
my concern wasnt so much about copyright. all copyright will terminate one day.
i'm more curious about plenty of things that need to be considered if commons really become the netflix or fmovies several decades from now. for example, storage is cheap so probably not a problem, but bandwidth and pressure on servers, if 100 million people are simultaneously streaming 1080p movies from commons. also, it would probably be difficult to set exclusion criteria, which means, although acclaimed movies would be hosted, the majority will be shitty b movies, as long as someone makes the effort to upload them. and the problem of movie ratings and parental control. etc.--RZuo (talk) 13:54, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This is not a valid comparison. We will never host recent movies. All movies on Commons will always be decades old (probably at least 70 years), with a few exceptions (en:Night of the Living Dead). Yann (talk) 14:04, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
it's hard to estimate how many people watch old movies, but certainly plenty of people do. a magnitude of million or above is not that difficult, considering there will be 10+ billion people on earth.--RZuo (talk) 14:19, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think that such problems should be solved as soon as they appear. The problems about videos are obviously not ours, for example, a 1990 softcore film can be legally uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in 2111 (120-year rule). Юрий Д.К 14:06, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
i think 95 years after first publication is more common. that means, many Audrey Hepburn's movies will become available no later than 2050s; 1980s movies will become available in 2070s.--RZuo (talk) 14:19, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
also, publication+95y or creation+120y is only valid if us keeps both its own longer duration and rejection of the "rule of the shorter term".
bern convention only requires 50y after first showing or creation. hypothetically if us changes its laws towards the bern convention, commons will be able to host more recent movies pretty soon. RZuo (talk) 14:27, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
or if wmf and servers move to a country that recognises the rule of the shorter term. :) RZuo (talk) 14:29, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@RZuo server migration may become legally controversial, and will always be impossible to achieve. Note some past proposals to have Commons servers migrated to a country with FoP were thumbed down due to potential legal implications in linking and transcluding content (see Commons:Requests for comment/Non-US Freedom of Panorama under US copyright law). A similar forum tackled the same proposal but over URAA reasons (see Commons:Requests for comment/Commons Abroad and related ideas). It just ended up creating the so-called Wikilivres, the freer version of Commons that did not need to respect U.S. laws and was last hosted in New Zealand (that has 50 years p.m.a.), but is now practically a dead website as well as a dead free culture project (proofs: [1] and [2]). No further attempts to migrate Commons has been made after the 2012 URAA RfC discussion. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 16:03, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Yann and Justin: Is there any chance of reviving Wikilivres or making another project with similar goals?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:18, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Jeff G.: There are dumbs of the site on Internet Archive, i.e. [3]. So from that, it could be restored. I can't do that, but if anyone wants to try, it is more than welcome. Technically MediaWiki has become much more complex, and Canada, where it was initially hosted, changed its law. Yann (talk) 15:10, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I hope these are rather dumps than dumbs :D --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:47, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
There is not: I gave up the domain years ago and Canadian copyright changed. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:35, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  •  Support Commons is a media repository, and so as long as the movies are freely licensed or public domain in the U.S. and the country of origin, we should host them. Obviously, we should be mindful of copyrighted modern scores of silent movies and new copyrighted title cards with public domain movies. Abzeronow (talk) 17:07, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

November 25[edit]

Osvaldo Guillermo Torrez Arisaca[edit]

I suspect File:Osvaldo Guillermo Torrez Arisaca (Official Photo, 2014) Chamber of Deputies of Bolivia.png is incorrectly tagged as CC BY 2.0. It was downloaded from Flickr. The page there says it is CC BY 2.0, but it sure looks like it's a screen grab off a TV broadcast or something similar, which makes me doubt the copyright status. Could somebody who knows more about this stuff please take a look? This came up as part of a GA review on enwiki. RoySmith (talk) 01:12, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I believe it's just the official portrait, as the same image set is used in the biographical dictionary published by the parliament. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 13:56, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
That seems plausible, but how does that translate into CC BY 2.0? RoySmith (talk) 23:23, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If the Bolivian government (the parliament specifically) owns the rights to a copyrighted work, it also follows that they're free to release it under a creative commons license. Why that specific license, I couldn't say. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 23:42, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'm not trying to be a pain here, but the image page says, "The copyright status of the image was undeterminable by the bot, and requires human attention." So I think we really need to wait for somebody who understands this better and is uninvolved to figure out what the status is. RoySmith (talk) 15:03, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@RoySmith: Ah, there's an explanation for that. Since the images are so low quality, I touch them up in Photoshop before I upload them. I used to upload the original image straight from Flickr then override it with the touched up version (Example), but I had another user ask me not to do so. Now I just directly upload the touched up version and tag it as from Flickr. Because of that, the bot isn't really able to detect and always requires human intervention. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 00:08, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Krisgabwoosh: A1Cafel is right, you should upload the touched up ones with different filenames and thus not bother the license reviewers.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 00:22, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Jeff G.: So should I continue uploading as is or upload two separate files each time? Krisgabwoosh (talk) 00:30, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Krisgabwoosh: Two separate files each time if you insist on touching up.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 00:33, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
That's fine by me. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 00:37, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Krisgabwoosh: Given that you are your retouching (which is always controversial), I agree with A1Cafel here. A retouched image should almost never be an overwrite. On the other hand if you were (for example) uploading a higher-res version of the same image, overwriting would be fine. However, you should wait until after license review to upload that higher-res image. I do this often with images from Seattle Municipal Archives, where they tend to put relatively low-res versions on their Flickr stream, with a link to their own site for the higher-res version. Typical example at File:Seattle - Aerial of Central District, 1965 (53303991494).jpg. - Jmabel ! talk 03:16, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Makes sense to me. For the time being then, I'll start uploading two images at a time to avoid this issue. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 06:20, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Change file extension[edit]

I want to turn File:Noam_Chomsky_portrait_2017_retouched.png into a jpg, how can I do that while preserving its upload/revision history? Σ (talk) 01:33, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • @Σ: I believe the only way you can do this is to download, create a JPEG in a tool such as GIMP, and then upload the JPEG to a new file page as a derivative version (linking the two with {{Derivative works}} / {{Derived from}} and otherwise copying the content of the original page; you will almost certainly want to use Special:Upload for this purpose rather than, for example, Special:UploadWizard. The JPEG's file page won't have the history, but the PNG's file page will retain that, and it can be found by anyone who is interested. - 06:22, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, these are different MIMEtypes, so an extra upload is necessary --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:09, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thank you, I've gone and uploaded File:Noam Chomsky portrait 2017 retouched.jpg. Is it possible to turn the PNG into a redirect or is there a script to run to replace the usages across wikis? Σ (talk) 06:29, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Σ Redirecting would require the intermediate png to be deleted - we don't normally do that. For replacing: CommonsDelinker might be able to do that. El Grafo (talk) 09:31, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Σ: I replaced all the usages that were left.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:58, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

500 terabytes (455 tebibytes) threshold exceeded[edit]

Hi!

Commons just exceeded the data amount of 500 terabytes. See: Special:MediaStatistics. 1 PB is expected to be reached in this decade. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:49, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@PantheraLeo1359531 Thanks, added to The Commons Log. El Grafo (talk) 09:43, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Cool, thanks :D --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:23, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

November 26[edit]

Harassment[edit]

My name is Alie Craig. I am a model and an actress whom is also a celebrity in the united states. About in 2018, I had someone who has recently won an Emmy named Bill Phill 1 make a wikipedia for me. It was then deleted by a user name by the name of jo-jo eumerus. I have to complain because I am worried I am going to be bullied and harassed for this. I am currently trying to make my wikipedia, and I have no idea who this woman is. I looked the name up on Google and apparently she's a singer. I am very scared that my work will not make it online due to people like this. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexandracraig (talk • contribs) 01:15, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • @Alexandracraig: this is Wikimedia Commons, not Wikipedia; both are umbrella'd by the Wikimedia Foundation, but they are distinct sites
  • I assume by "my wikipedia" you mean an article about yourself in the English-language Wikipedia. In general, you should not be directly editing an article about yourself. Please see en:WP:COI and, especially en:WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
  • User:Jo-Jo Eumerus is a very established Wikimedian (I think an administrator on the English-language Wikipedia) whose native language is German. I'm pretty certain Jo-Jo is not a singer, but I know little or nothing about their private life. In any case, it is very unlikely that they are harassing you, but very likely that they are enforcing the policies laid out in the two pages I just linked and suggested that you read. - Jmabel ! talk 02:54, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
edit conflict...
This is Commons; it is not the English Wikipedia.
The English Wikipedia has a notability requirement. You may not have met that requirement in 2017. Given [IMDB nm5450593], you may now meet the notability requirements of the English Wikipedia. However, some of those entries identify uncredited roles; notability may still be an issue. The English Wikipedia wants to see you mentioned in secondary sources. That requirement can be a high bar.
In any event, you should address the article issue at the English Wikipedia.
I doubt that Jo-Jo Eumerus is harassing you; she is just trying to keep articles up to certain standards. The English Wikipedia is not a social media site, it does not provide articles for everyone who wants one, and it discourages biased and/or paid editing.
A second editor (not Jo-Jo) has rejected your recent draft.
Glrx (talk) 03:02, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Aye, I deleted her article five years ago because folks here thought that it didn't meet our inclusion criteria - I promise you it wasn't because I have any opinion on you or want to erase your contributions. I don't know you at all and can't say if you now meet the inclusion criteria. I am pretty certainly not a singer, though. For reference, the discussion on the draft continues at Wikipedia Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:39, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
 Comment I deleted 2 images which are obvious copyright violations (not uploaded by the photographer, and no evidence of a free license). Yann (talk) 10:01, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Special:UncategorizedCategories[edit]

We now have 2,544 uncategorized (parentless) categories, down from about 8,000 in the beginning of September. At this point, most of the "low-hanging fruit" is taken care of. User:Billinghurst and I have done the bulk of the cleanup, although a few others have also helped in various degrees. We could definintely use more help, most of which does not require an admin as such.

  • Most of the remaining listings are legitimate categories, with content, but lacking parent categories. They need parent categories and they need incoming interwiki links from any relevant Wikidata item.
    • A disproportionate number of these would best be handled by someone who knows Hungarian or Estonian.
  • Some categories just need to be turned into cat redirects ({{Cat redirect}} and have their content moved accordingly.
  • A few categories listed here will prove to be fine as they stand; the tool messed up and put them in the list because it didn't correctly understand that a template had correctly given them parent categories. Many of these are right near the front of the (alphabetical) list, and involve dates.
  • Some categories probably either call for obvious renaming or should be nominated for COM:CFD discussions.
  • Some empty categories (not a lot of those left, but new ones happen all the time) need to be deleted.
  • At the end of the alphabetical listing (5th and 6th page) are about 75 categories that have names in non-Latin alphabets. It would be great if people who read the relevant writing systems could help with these. Probably most of these are candidates for renaming.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give. - Jmabel ! talk 03:21, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm a bit confused about something @Jmabel: I checked the page and some of the categories on there are for example Category:April 2016 in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (through 2023), but these were created years ago in some instances and already had parent categories from the start. How do categories like that end up there? ReneeWrites (talk) 02:09, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@ReneeWrites: Insufficient follow-through and patrolling, combined with out of control back end processes.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 02:48, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@ReneeWrites: Actually, in this case this appears to be some sort of flaw in the software that creates the Special page. As I wrote a couple of days ago, "A few categories listed here will prove to be fine as they stand; the tool messed up and put them in the list because it didn't correctly understand that a template had correctly given them parent categories. Many of these are right near the front of the (alphabetical) list, and involve dates." It looks like today's run added a bunch of these false positives and that (unlike the previous bunch) they are more scattered through the list. I believe all of the 100+ files that use Template:Month by year in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté are on today's list; none of these were there three days earlier. That probably has something to do with User:Birdie's edits to yesterday to Template:Month by year in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté; those are complicated enough that I have no idea what in particular might have confused the software. The categories still look fine from a normal user point of view, but the software that creates Special:UncategorizedCategoriesn is somehow confused.
Other than that: we're a couple of hundred fixed or deleted categories closer to where we'd want to be, compared to a couple of days ago. - Jmabel ! talk 04:23, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Server-purges should fix this but apparently it doesn't. Some categories that didn't appear last time after purging the cache have disappeared now so I'm more confused as to what the problem could be since the iirc the refresh time was after some pages were updated (it has problems when pages get all their categories from a template). There should probably be a phrabricator issue about this, albeit it's possible things work fine once there are always just a small number of cats there which seems increasingly feasible. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:35, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Jeff G., could you explain what "... out of control back end processes" means, so I can understand your comment? --Ooligan (talk) 16:54, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Ooligan: As I understand it, there are processes that run on WMF servers that run too long or get caught up in race conditions or whatever, and that get terminated after running too long. I think updating this special page may be one such process, sometimes. Certainly, updating the read / not read status of stuff on my watchlist seems that way, especially when using this new reply tool. Turning off the big orange bar before displaying my user talk page would be helpful, too. <end rant>   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 19:26, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Jeff G., thank you. --Ooligan (talk) 19:44, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Ooligan: You're welcome.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 20:11, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Role accounts[edit]

Have the unresolved policy issues raised by User:Bluerasberry in Commons:Role account ever been resolved? If so, what has been the resolution? - Jmabel ! talk 05:01, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I developed that policy in the mid 2010s. There is still ambiguity about how organizations can have role accounts. Here are some developments that come to my mind -
  • The advent of Wikidata has probably recruited more organizational staff to contribute to Wikimedia projects on behalf of their organizations than any other effort. One example of a major successful outreach effort was d:Wikidata:WikiProject PCC Wikidata Pilot/Participants, which recruited a lot of university staff and librarians to contribute ot d:Wikidata:WikiCite. In all cases so far as I know, the account pattern has been personal accounts, to individuals, who never share them, and who are under no obligation to design the account to indicate their institutional connection, and whose activity is not anything which has ever triggered a conflict of interest concern. If anyone else from the same institution wanted to pick up a project, they would make their own account. No account sharing here, and no account interlinking.
  • The state of United States GLAM partnerships is in existential crisis as the Met Museum in New York and the Smithsonian ceased renewal of their Wikimedian in Residence programs and consequently, much of their relationships with Wikimedia NYC and Wikimedia DC. While these relationships were not fundamentally critical, it was very helpful in outreach to be able to point to existing, ongoing, long-term, journalist-documented Wikimedia cultural partnerships with high-profile institutions. My own view of what these organizations would have wanted is communication metrics reports of the impact of their Wikimedia engagement, which they cannot get due to lack of software maintenance. I think these relationships could have been saved if there was continuous funding for 0.5 FTE software development for the GLAM space, but there is no Wikimedia community connection to any such development support.
  • Rumor is that outcomes of meta:GLAM Wiki 2023/Program may include conversation notes about potential crisis of institutional partner outreach. I am unsure who might or will post notes. If anyone has anything to say, English Wikipedia's Signpost is a possible channel.
  • Advancement of policy discussion is generally bleak in the Wikimedia Movement. At the last https://wikiconference.org/ in Toronto in November 2023, the organizers got a WMF grant, an additional grant from another sponsor called Credibility Coalition, and the conference was hosted in the city's public library. Despite all this support, there was no money available for video recording most talks, there was little money available for English/Spanish translation to include Spanish speakers in American/Canadian conversations, and the conference lacked money for the normal amount of conference catering. WMF is simply not adequately funding community conversation as a strategic priority through conferences or otherwise.
These are big issues! I wish that we could set in-kind donation of institutional staff time as a strategic priority for Wikimedia outreach. I think the community wants this, but I am unaware of WMF efforts to recognize, measure, track, encourage, and sponsor this activity. Bluerasberry (talk) 13:14, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Bluerasberry,
You wrote, "My own view of what these organizations would have wanted is communication metrics reports of the impact of their Wikimedia engagement, which they cannot get due to lack of software maintenance." (emphasis added)
Could you link to an example of a "communication metrics report?"
If these reports are not available, what "metrics" should they typically contain?
Specifically, how can "the impact of their Wikimedia engagement" be differentiated from other the "impacts" of other (non-Wikimedia) engagements? --Ooligan (talk) 21:37, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Ooligan: meta:BaGLAMa is not maintained. Suppose that a museum uploads 10,000 images. They would want to know how many times those images are viewed for a given year.
Compare this to for example, any twitter dashboard, which would report how many times people viewed all the tweets from an organization, or tweets containing images.
Social media professionals routinely operate social media accounts and their deliverable product is "impact metrics", which is a report from that platform of how much audience engagement the posted media generated. Wikimedia is different because we do not convert people to do sales, and hardly have equivalents to "like" buttons or "share" buttons, but such as is our nature, we do have some metrics. Social media professionals provide metrics, and if the wiki platform cannot generate metrics, then we block the possibility of professional communication service development.
I presume that we have nearly universal consensus that professional communication engagement in some form is highly desireable for Wikimedia Commons and all Wikimedia projects. If we had tools in place, then we could scale outreach of institutional partnerships, and get professional engagement from major institutions spontaneously without investing in outreach for every single institution, which is the current institutional engagement model. Bluerasberry (talk) 22:15, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I know for me even as a non-institutional contributor that not knowing how many people, if any, have viewed my uploads can be discouraging. I've actually been thinking about mainly uploading images to Flickr where they provide basic metrics due to it. So metrics would really be net a positive to the project all around. I guess there is the "page views for this category" template. But it's less then optimal, seems to be broken a lot, and doesn't provide per file or per user statistics anyway. So it's not super helpful in the grand scheme of things. Anyway, I could see why institutions wouldn't want to contribute to Commons if there's no way for them to know even on a basic level what kind of engagement their contributions are having. So hopefully that's something can be remedied at some point. Otherwise there's no reason they wouldn't just upload files to somewhere like Flickr or a media website instead of Commons. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:14, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I get this, but I have to say that I personally greatly prefer that Commons does not focus on this sort of metric. It's a commons, not a market. - Jmabel ! talk 23:53, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
there're some tools that can show usage or calculate views. i integrated some in {{Category helper}}. for example, Category:Images from the Nationalmuseum Stockholm, two links let you use http://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/glamorous.php and https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorgan.html .
in addition, User:DPLA bot created pages like Category talk:Images from the Nationalmuseum Stockholm/Views. i guess the same can be done for any category if needed. RZuo (talk) 19:33, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Similarity detection and updating of already-existing images[edit]

Is there some work ongoing regarding that? Many other websites run checks for similar images rather than only identical images before adding newly uploaded images. Such may be useful here as well – one way it can be useful is that it could lead to more people updating more charts instead of uploading them as new images, especially 'Our World in Data' charts.

One complications is that stats of prior years can in some cases also be useful and one currently can't embed a specified version of a file in articles (maybe that would be a useful feature?).

Having the same file multiple times can lead to many issues such as redundancy, category pages getting cluttered by the same file(s), differing/non-synchronized categories for the same file, unmaintained file-descriptions, articles embedding quickly outdated charts rather than the ones that get updated, and so on.

Here is an example of multiple versions of the same file (some have lower image quality or are outdated): File:Annual-co-emissions-by-region.png File:Annual-co2-emissions-by-region.png File:Annual-co-emissions-by-region (OWID 0055).png File:Global annual CO2 emissions by world region since 1750.svg File:Annual total CO₂ emissions, by world region, OWID.svg. This variant is an example for why it would be better if with MediaWiki one could embed interactive charts (from OWID and elsewhere): File:Ghg-emissions-by-world-region.png.

This may need some long-term code issues (and further debate elsewhere) but maybe such already exist.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 16:43, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Typically, "very similar" images are acceptable on Commons. E.g.
  • Multiple reproductions of a two-dimensional work of art.
  • People's possibly controversial retouching of other user's photos.
  • Maps that disagree in small details.
  • Similar charts labeled in different languages.
  • Similar charts or maps showing equivalent information for different dates.
So there is not a ton automated that could happen here. So far, our policy has been either to link these with {{Other version}} or, especially when there are too many variants for that to be practical (or when they represent a single work of art) to create a category for all the variants. Yes, I agree that there are cases where removing redundant versions would be good, but I suspect it may often be more controversial than it is worth, with different people preferring different versions.
Jmabel ! talk 22:21, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This is not about whether they're acceptable or not.
Thanks for clarifying that since I missed making that clear. The person uploading may want to know that there are similar images (they'd be shown during upload but uploading regardless would be possible) and also it may be optimal to somehow define which version of a file is getting updated and which isn't and probably also to keep the number of versions minimal, especially in cases when they don't meaningfully vary or one of the image has a lower image quality.
Moreover, please look at the examples and the exemplary issues I listed above that paragraph. A further related issue not mentioned explicitly is that most OWID charts for example do not get updated despite that OWID has newer versions of them. Sooner or later there probably should be some updating process where files selected to be the always-latest get updated. But that also is not a specific proposal, I made this post so these things and issues are discussed. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:15, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Prototyperspective: You may make your suggestion at phabricator or Commons talk:Upload Wizard feedback.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 00:26, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
So are you proposing that there should be a warning on upload that a very similar image already exists? Or, if not, what are you proposing?
In any case, variants of the same image should certainly be linked to one another, which I will do for the examples provided above. - Jmabel ! talk 03:22, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

November 27[edit]

Clouds clinging to mountains[edit]

I cant find a cloud type category for this image. There is 'clouds from above', but this is from the side. Mist and clouds are the same thing. Mist is inside the cloud.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Heads up: we passed 100 million files (about a half-million ago)[edit]

The 100th million file

Per Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2023/11#We_are_dangerously_close_to_100_million_files--how_should_we_celebrate? and Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2023/09#The_1ooed_millionth_file_on_Wikimedia_Commons (@MasterRus21thCentury: ), we discussed celebrating, but it seems like nothing happened. :/ Does anyone who has rights to edit the main page want to whip up something? Maybe an admin or interface admin can edit MediaWiki:Sitenotice? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:42, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Koavf: Could you find a suitable file please? Yann (talk) 12:38, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
How's that now? A file to put in the site notice for instance? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 12:39, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Here's something that I dashed out that needs some styling fixes to it: File:Commons 100M logo.svg (it renders correctly when you view the file directly, but not in preview...) If you like it in principle, I can debug it and make it prettier with some textpath and gold colors, etc. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:07, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
IMO would be strange to celebrate the 100 millionth file without to know for sure what file it is. --A.Savin 12:56, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Agreed. Someone can do the forensics, but on the other hand, knowing exactly when we had 100 million is a bit tricky, since files can be deleted. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:07, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Wikipedias and Wikidata celebrate such milestones despite they are also not able to say which article or item reached the threshold. The other thing we should think about is the 20th anniversary of Commons next year. GPSLeo (talk) 15:10, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, the 100 millionth file is always an approximation (unless the developers have a magic script for that). It seems we reached the milestone on November 16th, around 19:52 UTC (see IA capture). So pick up a nice picture around that time, and go. I am surprised the WMF didn't issue a press release yet. Yann (talk) 15:27, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
OK, I got one. A nice consensual image uploaded at 19:51, 16 November 2023. Yann (talk) 16:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I would not say "This is image 100000000" as it is just not true. This image could be. GPSLeo (talk) 18:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

From french Commons Bistro about a Category[edit]

(Google traduction) Hello, a contributor of goodwill created the Category:Fleißkärtchen or Bon point in French (google: hard work cards!) - The article Bon point and Fleißkärtchen exist in French and German, but no article in English. The category names must be in English on Commons, so we would have to rename the category, what name should we choose? - Siren-Com (d) 12:57, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Wikitionary offers us "house point" and "brownie point" while wordreference.com offers "gold star". None of the translations seems entirely satisfactory to me. “House point” is like in Harry Potter with a team reward, while the “good points” are individual. "brownie point" does not really have the meaning of a reward linked to the school environment, it is more in the "good deed" of scouting. "Gold star" seems closest to the idea to me, even if it's not exactly the same thing (the reward is stuck on a board in the classroom). The big problem with "Gold star" as a category name is that it is also used for many other things and in particular military medals. cf. Gold star.

In the end 'Fleißkärtchen' doesn't seem so bad to me, because the only three Wikipedia pages that currently exist for this concept are Fleißkärtchen, Good point & Good note. The only practical improvement that I see would possibly be to create a redirect. Miniwark (d) 11:41, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Have you some idea about ? The solution will be to create an article in W:en about this subject, did this thing is also used in the english schools ? - Thank you. - Siren-Com (talk) 12:47, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
As a speaker of American English, I'd use "brownie point" (if not specific to school) or "gold star" (if specific to school). - Jmabel ! talk 20:33, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Protista: SVG image translations needed[edit]

2023 Apicomplexan

There are a bunch of SVG images (example above) in Category:Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity that could do with being translated into multiple languages, and then used in relevant projects. It might need some understanding of Protist biology. Where's the best place to flag this up? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:53, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I do not have a good answer about advertising new images that can be translated. I do not even have a good answer for translating SVG files that are already being used in foreign wikis. A translatable SVG file might include a link to SVG Translate when it is used in a foreign wiki.
Maybe there could be a link like "Random file" that suggests an experienced user consider adding a new file to an article. Maybe that link would be specific to an article: ask the user to consider adding a file to the current file she is viewing. The set of files to consider might be tied to a Wikidata item or templates on the file page. Some weighting function might be used.
If I take Anticomplexan specifically, it leads me to Apicomplexa (Q193030). That item shows many Wikipedia articles that could use the new image. That suggests the file could be used in many articles.
The Apicomplexa Wikidata item also shows a multilingual site, species:Apicomplexa. That suggests putting the image on that page. Maybe someone will see it, translate it, and add it to an article.
For Apicomplexan.svg, there should be more room for translations. The "APICAL COMPLEX" should be further to the right to allow longer translations.
For some SVG file pages, I add some translations pulled from Wikidata. See File:Map_Tenerife_Disaster.svg / Chinese version: airport (Q1248784) → 機場（Q1248784）. Wikidata can work well for some strings (Golgi apparatus (Q83181) → 高爾基體（Q83181）), but it will not work for strings such as "apicoplast membranes (4, secondary red, non-photosynthetic)".
Glrx (talk) 18:53, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The Apicomplexan.svg file is broken. Its text elements are doubled to effect a color change:
<g>
	<text transform="matrix(1 0 0 1 272.6781 246.8251)" class="st34 st31 st32">rhoptries</text>
	<text transform="matrix(1 0 0 1 272.6781 246.8251)" class="st33 st31 st32">rhoptries</text>
</g>
Glrx (talk) 18:58, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Maybe an additional "workshop" for Commons:Graphic Lab? - Jmabel ! talk 20:36, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Job Centre Plus[edit]

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

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Job Centre Plus. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 23:35, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

November 30[edit]

How to find images added since a given date in a category with multiple sub categories[edit]

Hello,

How could i dectect in a simple way images uploaded since a given date in a category containing many subcategories ? --Pline (talk) 07:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Pline: try Petscan with Page properties options "Last edit"->After and "Only pages created during the above time window": example. MKFI (talk) 07:58, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@MKFI: Thanks ! --Pline (talk) 11:10, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think WMC is missing ways to have pages display images, if toggled also of some/all subcats, sortable by things like upload date (or other things, maybe also 'number of Wikipedia inclusions'). Despite of the neglection of MediaWiki and WMC code development, I'm a bit surprised something like that has not yet been built in:
in many categories there are tons of outdated images where sorting by upload date would be very useful (example).
Let me know if there are plans or a phabricator code issue about this. Sorting by upload date and ways to have images of subcats displayed on a page sorted by proxies for 'most useful/quality/relevant' would be a common use-case and extremely useful (and I know about PetScan). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:11, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
i made a gadget Help:Gadget-DeepcatSearch that you can enable at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets.
the gadget works if the categories that would be searched are less than 256 due to mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Deepcategory.
currently it only has two links, but i've thought about making more links like filtering by filetype, sorting by upload date, etc. RZuo (talk) 19:08, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Subcategories Rail vehicle doors[edit]

I created a new Category:Rail vehicles sliding doors. There are other types of doors: Folding doors (d:Q1395007), the 'swerve-swing door' (d:Q22986165) and the 'sliding-plug door' (www.schaltbau-bode.com) The 'sliding-plug door' and 'swerve-swing door' are in in most cases imposible to visualy determine, because closed doors are flush with the outside vehicle surface and only the study of the door mechanisme can determine the difference. The difference is movement: one slides along until it is pulled in at the last moment (plug), while the other door swings and moves further outward. I propose to put both in the same category: Rail vehicles with sliding-plug doors or swerve-swing doors.

Another usefull subcategory could be: Rail vehicle doors with stairs. Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:30, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It's not really the doors that have the stairs is it? --Adamant1 (talk) 12:49, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
No but the stairs are an integral part of the dooropening and passage, necessary to negociate the high differences. Sometimes there are folding steps that move simultaniously with the door.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
A better name would be: Rail vehicle with doors and stairs combinations.Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If there is 4 separate things to categorise then I'd prefer 4 separate Categories, But I'd only categorise files which display relevant content such as the opening/closing mechanism, rather then here's a distance view of a train in which you can barely see the doors let alone discern the type of doors. If you do not know the type of doors then just don't categorise it. Rather then just guess or use an imprecise and therefore ultimately pointless category. Oxyman (talk) 17:35, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
There special type of folding doors, that are frequently in international and long distance coaches. d:Q1256461 What is the name in English? If I try to translate Drehfalttuer, I get Hinged folding door. Is this correct? Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:45, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Transcribe[edit]

At File:"The Glandon family around the fireplace in their home at Bridges Chapel near Loydston(sic), Tennessee. Glandon's... - NARA - 532689.tif there is a transcribe button, to add a transcription. It seems to be added to NARA tif images. How do I get rid of it? Since it is a photo, it only needs a caption, which it already has. It appears to be designed for text documents. RAN (talk) 16:39, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), looks like you want to set Text=no in the invocation of {{NARA-image-full}}. According to the documentation for that template, Use "no" if there is no text to transcribe. (Note: Depends on the 'TIFF' parameter being set to "yes".) --bjh21 (talk) 17:25, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Thanks! Text=no didn't work but Tiff=null worked. --RAN (talk) 17:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

December 01[edit]

Movement Charter[edit]

There has been little or no discussion on Commons of the pending Movement Charter (see especially meta:Movement Charter/Content and meta:Movement Charter/Content/Global Council) and whether the Commons community may have any particular concerns about how it is shaping up. The Movement Charter document is still an incomplete draft as of November 2023.

A few comments/questions:

  • One portion of this seems relatively uncontroversial in its overview, with only relative details to be worked out (though, please, if you disagree, speak up!): meta:Movement Charter/Content/Hubs (draft) describes the formation of geographically- and thematically-based "Hubs" that will fill a space between affiliates and the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). There are now nearly 200 affiliates, and that number presumably will only grow. Some of them are pretty tiny. It's become nearly impossible for each of these, especially the smaller ones, to maintain any meaningful relationship with the WMF. This has made it particularly difficult for smaller affiliates to seek grants from WMF, or even learn what other groups are doing successfully in their own fundraising, collaborations, etc. The hope is that the Hubs will be of a scale to be more tractable from both "above" and "below." (E.g., on the budgeting front, WMF can give a chunk of money to a Hub, which can make allocations "closer to the ground.")
  • As far as I can tell, the main other goal of this process is to form a Global Council that (1) can remain reasonably light on its feet while at the same time (2) can, in some respects, provide a better representation of the broad Wikimedia movement than is provided by the WMF, which appears to be willing to offload/devolve some significant responsibilities to this Council. The best summary I've seen of this proposed delegation is at meta:Movement Charter/Content/Global Council.
  • This will almost certainly be the largest change in Wikimedia movement governance in well over a decade. Because representatives to the Wikimedia Summit that will take place April 2024 in Berlin were selected through a process centered on affiliates, not sister projects, there is no formal representation of Commons as such, nor of people whose participation in Wikimedia projects is entirely online. Instead, representation consists of WMF itself and of the geographically or topically based affiliates.
  • I believe we should have some forum to discuss whether the Commons community as such has any particular concerns about the Charter. I don't think just a section like this on the Village pump (or several such sections) is the greatest way to do it, but I suspect we should have some high-level discussion here first and then start a more dedicated page.
  • After some back-and-forth on the part of the organizers, I will now definitely be attending the Summit, and intend to try to represent any concerns that the Commons community may have, both in the next several months and at the Summit itself. I suspect that the next several months will be more crucial than the face-to-face meeting: as with most "summits", the meeting itself is likely to be more of a pro forma ratification than a place where anything is hashed out.
  • I'd be very interested to know if there are others who are significantly active in Commons and who will be there in Berlin or are otherwise actively engaged in this process, especially if you are also willing to commit to helping represent any concerns that the Commons community may have.
  • My own two largest concerns, just for the record:
    1. I don't think enough attention is being paid to the type of contributors I see as the backbone of Commons and virtually all other Wikimedia projects: people who contribute entirely (or almost entirely) through on-wiki activities, and who never attend face-to-face meetings even locally, let alone ones that require travel. Unsurprisingly (but I hope not inevitably), the bulk of "movement" level decisions are made by a group of perhaps a thousand or so people who travel to meetings and have come to largely know each other; I'd consider myself to be roughly on the fringes of that group. In a potentially vicious cycle, the very people liable to be under-represented are also under-represented in the process of determining how the community is to be represented.
    2. I am concerned that the Global Council could become a "talking shop", the sort of thing that in my view has happened to the General Assembly of the UN: lots of speeches, some resolutions, no power or authority. I'm not sure how much that is a matter of what we say in a charter vs. what will happen over time once it is established, but I think that if this Council is going to create meaningful and beneficial change, it can't hurt to keep that in mind in drafting a charter.
  • And one last remark: something like the Council should have happened ages ago, but let's face it: as WMF went from a handful of people in the 2000s to something much larger in the 2010s. Most of us with an on-wiki focus took years to even notice this change, and when we did notice it was because several things went wrong (I don't think I need to enumerate those here, but certainly the disastrous first release of the WYSIWIG editor for Wikipedia was a wake-up call for a lot of us). The relationship between the WMF and a lot of on-wiki participants was pretty awful in the mid-2010s. I think that has improved a lot, but not enough. I think a council like this is almost certainly a step in the right direction, but I also think it could be botched, and that we should be paying attention. I realize that "movement governance" isn't everyone's thing, and that's OK, but I think we need more than a handful of us to pay attention, and we need to recognize that if we are concerned with the shape this takes, we have way more chance to influence this the next few months than we will in many years after that.

Jmabel ! talk 02:55, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

thanks for making the effort to represent commons despite wmf's restrictions etc.
i dont intend to derail your discussion, but i just want to say this observation of mine in short -- no matter how hard people try to provide equal opportunities and rights universally, the majority of people often end up not reached and remain neglected, but power and control fall into only the hands of the power-hungry, unrestrained few. RZuo (talk) 12:24, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • It mostly looks like a long-winded thesis consisting of either vague wordiness or explanations of the way things already work. I expect it will be much like the UCOC: quietly stored somewhere on Meta, 90% of contributors wont even know it exits at all, most of the rest wont read it, and most of the rest will immediately forget it. GMGtalk 13:12, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I am afraid the only way to be heard is to form a Commons User group. It will not solve the issues - in any case users who did not become (for one of thousands reasons) the members of the group will net feel represented, but at least there would be someone invited to these meetings. I believe that we have a Photographers user group or smth similar though. Ymblanter (talk) 16:09, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Ymblanter: we do have a photographers' user group (Commons:Commons Photographers User Group) but its focus is rather specific. Typical topics for the mostly Zoom-based meetings are things like " Underwater photography" or a "Post Photograph Processing Workshop" or "Wildlife photography and citizen science". That is to say, it is very much a photographers' group. It has zero concern with the roughly 50% of Commons' content that comes from GLAMs or other third-party sources such as Flickr; it is very little concerned with curation, not at all concerned with governance, and any concern with online tools is precisely about those that are useful to serious photographers.
At WikiConference North America I brought up the possibility that Commons as such could form a user group that could become a WMF affiliate. In general, this was not warmly received. There seemed to be a fear that each of the several hundred wikis in the WMF cosmos would form a user group, and that there would be an awful lot of separate, possibly redundant, entities. (On the other hand, a user group related to GLAM content would probably be welcomed, and there should be other appropriate themes for thematic user groups that would at least intersect Commons' work.) - Jmabel ! talk 20:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@RZuo: I agree that is likely, and is a danger. What I'm saying is that I think there is more leverage than usual right now to do something about that, and it would be foolish to ignore the opportunity. - Jmabel ! talk 20:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@GreenMeansGo: yes, these documents are tedious, and unfortunately blowhards are heavily drawn to working on these. But the Hubs are already starting to form, and the General Council will almost certainly happen. We need to identify our needs and work out how to get them met. - Jmabel ! talk 20:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Aside: my biggest beef with documents like this in not so much the vacuous, ornamental declarations, as the parts that say something will happen without laying out mechanisms and responsibilities. I really do urge people to slog through at least some of the document, look for places where it could be improved—including where it could be improved by cutting something outright—and bringing that up on the appropriate talk page. The recently adopted Universal Code of Conduct also started out as a lot of vacuous blather, but it actually ended up being workable. Not necessarily pretty, but workable. - Jmabel ! talk 20:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Prioritizing our technical needs[edit]

A largely separate issue that has come up in the course of this process. I've had several very good discussions with Selena Deckelmann, CPTO of the WMF. I have no doubt of her good will, and that if the Commons community can get reasonable consensus on a priority-ordered list of our largest technical concerns, that would influence where at least some technical resources were allocated, certainly in terms of projects taken on by WMF technical staff and possibly by WMF grants to build particular tools that are better built by someone other than WMF technical staff. As it is, descriptions of those technical needs are floating around as a bunch of phabricator bugs, and we have really given WMF little or no guidance as to how those might be prioritized. There is no guarantee we'd be listened to?, but as long as we don't have such a list, it is a certainty that we have almost no influence on how money is spent. - Jmabel ! talk 20:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

May be we can get here at least some of these Phabricator tags and then try to prioritize? I do not think there is a single person knowing all the issues, but collectively we might be able to find many of them. Ymblanter (talk) 21:13, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think we often said that bugs in the file handling resulting in failed or corrupted uploads and bugs in the UploadWizard are our priority number one followed by batch upload desktop software and mobile upload apps. GPSLeo (talk) 21:42, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
i think many functionalities currently fulfilled by user scripts should be taken over by the software or at least maintained by wmf staff instead of volunteers.
i think we can divide commons into these different parts and list "feature requests" respectively.
  1. file upload: better video/audio upload tool; batch upload tool (wizard often breaks for me when files exceed several dozen, and to batch edit description fields is hard and annoying); https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T350917 ...
  2. search and use media: better deepcategory search; sorting options (instead of only alphabetical); better video player (now cannot even jump forward or backward 5s by pressing left or right arrows); better document reader interface; super high resolution image viewer.
  3. maintenance: category description that's more like wikidata items (meaning instead of a single title we can have multilingual titles. instead of constructing relations into the english title like "cat:2023 in France" we can have "this category combines topics '2023' and 'france'". etc.); licence review tool...
i also made Commons:Idea Lab where everyone can write ideas. i wrote quite a lot...--RZuo (talk) 22:56, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Fixing the issue where thumbails for other image file formats besides JPEG are fuzzy would be huge. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:46, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Commons Gazette 2023-12[edit]

  • The total number of files on Wikimedia Commons exceeded 100 million on 16 November 2023.[1] This has taken 7 009 days since the founding of Wikimedia Commons on 7 September 2004.
Some files on Wikimedia Commons
fireworks animation
Zimbabwe $100 000 000 (2008)
The 100 millionth file
Galaxy NGC 7479, approximately 100 million light-years from Earth.
Galaxy M82's burst of star formation is thought to have been initiated by a close encounter with M81 about 100 million years ago.

References

  1. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20231116195221/https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

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) 12:05, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

December 02[edit]

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