Commons:Village pump

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Shortcut: COM:VP

↓ Skip to table of contents ↓       ↓ Skip to discussions ↓       ↓ Skip to the last discussion ↓
🌐 Village pumps for other languages
COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES (index)
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/2021/11.

Please note:

  1. If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias.
  2. Have you read our FAQ?
  3. For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming.
  4. Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer).
  5. Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam.

Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page:

Search archives:

 

Start a new discussion

Cast iron pump with handle dated 1875 in the form of a fluted column with Corinthian capital on a profiled, square stone base [add]
Centralized discussion
See also: Village pump/Proposals • Archive
Template: View • Discuss  • Edit • Watch
SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 1 day and sections whose most recent comment is older than 7 days.

October 21[edit]

User:Rs-nourse, a valuable contributor on heraldry under misguided attack, help needed![edit]

User:Rs-nourse has contributed thousands of premium quality images on heraldry, all his own work, but he is now being threatened by User:JuTa with mass speedy deletions for supposedly not having credited authors of derivative work. We are lucky to have such a talented artist contributing his work to our site. All the work is his own, as he states in the licences, there is no derivative work to credit! What can be done to halt this misguided threat by User:JuTa and make him discuss his concerns before he jumps to what are totally erroneous conclusions? Please see recent posts by User:JuTa at User talk:Rs-nourse which set out his erroneous concerns. Is he really able to just delete all this great work so casually and negligently?Lobsterthermidor (talk) 16:53, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @Rs-nourse, JuTa as a courtesy.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:56, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
You raised this on JuTa's user page 15 minutes before bring it here, then did so without waiting for their response. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:58, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
User's uploads are coats of arms. Appear to be historical ones, so user is not designs' authors. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 17:06, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Sorry, Pigsonthewing, I am panicking a bit, as it seems speedy deletion is threatened. Similar threat being made to his work by another admin, who as you advise I won't name here, but have raised it on his talk page.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 17:21, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Hi EugeneZelenko, thanks for your rapid response. I'm not sure I follow your point, please elaborate/clarify. Are you saying that he's not allowed to reproduce a design seen on a coat of arms, i.e. following the pattern set down but in his own unique way with his own artistic interpretation? The arrangement of a coat of arms, i.e the "blazon" (written instruction for artists, i.e. Gules, a chevron or - meaning, "a gold chevron on a red background") is not subject to copyright restrictions, that would be a misunderstanding I think. Is that the problem?Lobsterthermidor (talk) 17:21, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Please see Commons:Coats of arms: "Coats of arms drawn by users based solely on the definition (blazon) without any reference to the original drawing (representation) are usually safe for upload." The coats of arms created by Rs-nourse seem to be based on the blazon (which is mentioned in the description, for example in File:Coat of Arms of NEFYDD HARDD, of Caernarvonshire, Lord of Nant Conway.png "Argent a chevron sable between three spear heads of the second, embrued, points upward"), so they are OK imho. COM:AGF should apply too. BrightRaven (talk) 08:58, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
I have not looked at all the files, but File:Coat of Arms of the See of Hereford (ancient).png, for example, is perfectly legit. The blazon and its source are clearly mentioned in the description (moreover, it is a PD book published in 1848). It is not right to flag it as "no source". BrightRaven (talk) 09:09, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
BrightRaven, thanks for your input and for directing us to the guideline Commons:Coats of arms, which seems pretty clear. However, even the statement of the blazon or source is surely unnecessary in the file description - although much encouraged for its usefulness to students of heraldry - there is no copyright on coats of arms - unless reproducing original artwork. In other words we should not set a precedent that any coat of arms image which does not quote the blazon is liable to speedy deletion. It is important to clear up this issue definitively, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of images of coats of arms on wikimedia, which would all qualify for speedy deletion under these misguided criteria. The use/bearing of another person's coat of arms, for example displaying it on one's tomb, used to be a serious offence a few centuries ago, dealt with by the Heralds' Court, in at least one famous case meriting the death sentence. The unauthorised display of the royal arms in England will still today cause a visit from the police, but the reproduction of coats of arms, in one's own artistic interpretation, for academic/exposition purposes, has never been a legal/copyright issue. We await a fuller response - and hopefully retraction - from the two persons concerned who have threatened speedy deletion of all these images, due it seems to a genuine misunderstanding of the issue, which is no doubt somewhat distressing to Rs-nourse - and to others here interested in heraldry, like myself, as his work (with other notables such as Sodacan, etc) forms the backbone of the heraldry project on wikimedia. I'm copying your statement to Rs-nourse's talk page, as a handy riposte in case of future ocurrences.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 14:03, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
  • JuTa seems to have already speedily deleted a few thousands (!!) of these CoA images. Of the few that remain, it would seem that the few that are not 100% Rs-nourse’s {{Own work}} (assuming COM:AGF) are derivative works including (as “clipart”) what is obviously {{PD-old}}. These should be tagged as such, but the whole thing needs to be undeleted and reevaluated by users interested in making/keeping Commons as a repository of free media. (It is especially commendable that some Heraldry artists are willing to freely license their work, by the way, as so few do it.) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 19:37, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
    I agree (and with much that Lobsterthermidor and BrightRaven say above), and am quite disappointed to see that the tagging and deletions were done so hastily and without discussion or detailed rationale—especially considering the quantity.
    Regarding blazons, where official (or at least recorded) versions are available they’re a valuable inclusion for provenance, educational value, and verification, but their omission should not be sufficient ground for deletion in itself. More generally I would argue that illustrating arms from a blazon is exactly the artistic equivalent of paraphrasing a piece of writing in one’s own words: as long as you’re not copying or imitating others’ creative expression, you’re not infringing on their IP. The ‘Platonic form’ of the arms described in a blazon (whether explicit or deduced from a given emblazonment) is a non-copyrightable idea. (I might add that there’s little scope for individual style in many heraldic elements, which have highly conventional forms making them more like letters of an alphabet than pictures. The example mentioned above, Gules a chevron Or, would certainly fall below the American ToO and probably many lower ones as well, unless executed with an extraordinary amount of w:diapering, ornamental contouring or suggestion of dimensional moulding with light & shade. That said, human & animal figures, among other more complex elements, can exhibit considerable creativity and distinctiveness.)
    Regarding laws regarding misappropriation of arms, these are non-copyright restrictions, which I think of as a combination of personality rights & trademark protection. (At any rate I believe the only heraldic authority that still has any legal teeth of its own is the Lord Lyon’s court. Of course one would expect misrepresentation that’s outright fraudulent to be criminal anywhere.)—Odysseus1479 (talk) 01:24, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support mass restoration of all deleted images. It is not reasonable to expect a contributor to respond to thousands of these tags in a single week. If any individual images appear to be problematic, they can be nominated through a regular DR. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:02, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
this is unacceptable behaviour. the user has been active for two days after being notified, but did nothing to reverse the obviously wrong tags.
if it had been any ordinary user, s/he would have been blocked for disruptive editing.--RZuo (talk) 21:42, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
I also Symbol support vote.svg Support the mass restoration of the deleted files. BrightRaven (talk) 08:25, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
While this is not a vote I also (morally) Symbol support vote.svg Support their undeletion, having gone through the quagmire that was "Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Media without a source as of 30 May 2021" and similar bad tags like "Commons:Deletion requests/File:1815 US passport - LONDON.jpg" (yes, a US GOVERNMENT file from 1815 tagged for speedy deletion) I wonder how much of this automated deletion is has already destroyed. I think that we should have a new version of deletion requests where these tags create new pages where users can challenge them, also because they are not permanently recorded in a searchable archive (unlike DR's) we can't know how many good files have been deleted because of such tagging. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:52, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
Well, the drastic action of mass deleting these files does not appear to have received any support here at all. I am not surprised. The question now is: how do we go about getting these images restored? I have had no response from User:JuTa, to my post on his talk page, and it seems the user who did the deletions was User:Fitindia, again I have left a message on his talk page. As I said these images are the backbone of the wikimedia heraldry project, we cannot afford to be without them.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 11:11, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
Great news guys, User:Fitindia has restored the thousands of images he deleted. Still no reply from User:JuTa who may be on a wiki-break, we need confirmation from him that this will not happen again. Thanks for all the support - sadly Rs-nourse now seems inactive, but as he generously donated his valuable images to the project, we can say we've fought on his behalf with success. I am copying this discussion to his talk page, for future reference.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 12:23, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Pictogram voting comment.svg Comment, for anyone interested in this, I opened another discussion down below about the same type of misguided "No source" tagging by the same Bureaucrat, in all the cases I found the files were both properly tagged and properly sourced, so if anyone would want to help out save those images from automated deletion then please do and then comment in the relevant section below (named "9.4 Missing source?! What am I missing here? (16Exul82)"). In this case it concerns centuries old German documents and drawings with proper source and authorship information. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:33, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

October 23[edit]

Archiving user talk pages that are too long?[edit]

from time to time some user talk pages will be too long to properly load transcluded templates.

i have an idea -- those pages should probably be obliged to set up automatic archiving (at least an one-off archiving) by other users/a bot. is this idea reasonable? has this issue been discussed before?--RZuo (talk) 21:42, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Automatic archiving makes sense in those cases. Actually we just need to add
{{User:MiszaBot/config
|archive = User talk:***/archives %(counter)d
|algo = old(15d)
|counter = <s>48</s> 1
|maxarchivesize = 100K
|minthreadsleft = 4
|minthreadstoarchive = 1
|archiveheader = {{talk archive navigation}}
}}

to these talk pages, replacing *** with the username. Yann (talk) 15:07, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

... and replace 48 with 1. -- Andreas Stiasny (talk) 13:09, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
@RZuo and Yann: In my experience, "maxarchivesize = 100K" can be way too large, 18K is much safer.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:07, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
Right, counter = 1.
@Jeff G.: My experience is quite the opposite. 100K makes moderately long archive pages, while a smaller size would create too many pages. Ultimately it is up to eachone to ajust the parameters. Regards, Yann (talk) 18:29, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
@Yann: Please see revision 569666601, only 18,855 bytes but in Category:User talk pages where template include size is exceeded.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 21:54, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
Is there a way to get the bot to count templates instead of bytes?—Odysseus1479 (talk) 03:30, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
@Odysseus1479: That is not likely, but I am Pinging @-revi, Whym as ArchiverBot's maintainers just in case.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:56, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
I suppose another possibility is to have the bot subst: or expand the templates for archiving purposes—I noticed Fæ’s bot doing that on a few prolific uploaders’ pages—but unless it can discover the user’s language preference the i18n would be lost.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 19:09, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: OOPS... I wonder why users with such a long list of warnings were not blocked before... Yann (talk) 14:43, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@Yann: No Admin acted on Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Blocks and protections/Archive 30#Bull-Doser before automatic archival.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:15, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support archiving. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:50, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Honestly, I never got why the welcome-bot doesn't also add an automated archiving template (like the above) on user talk pages for any thread older than 365 (three-hundred-sixty-five) days, some users only come here to upload stuff and never check their talk pages which could be extremely long. Some users simply don't know that they can archive, and unlike other Wikimedia websites, the Wikimedia Commons has a much, much stronger culture of automation and automated messages (only less so than Wikidata) so having automated archiving would make sense. Another issue is that for some users seeing all the deletion request templates makes them think less of the users, even though the copyright issues are for vastly different subjects, there is a difference between a user that only uploads copyrighted FOP violations of statues in a country with no FOP and a user that travels around and sometimes uploads images of statues from a country with no FOP.
Automated archiving would keep all the records of past discussions and deletions easy to find, while it would also let users leave these old warnings behind them. Most users probably don't know how any of this works and some users have extremely long talk pages with messages that are over a decade old, it would work better as an opt-out system than an opt-in (if people don't like the automated archive they can remove it, but if they do like it they could just leave it alone). --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:19, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
Symbol support vote.svg Support. See also Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 76#Messaging 37 accounts about their transclusion count problem.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:04, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

October 26[edit]

Small change to Upload Wizard coming regarding EXIF geolocation metadata[edit]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T284941
Mockup of proposed EXIF geolocation warning for users

Hello everybody! A small change to the Upload Wizard is coming regarding EXIF geolocation metadata, that will inform users about the risks of sharing the geolocation of their images.

An audit conducted by the WMF Security Team earlier this year revealed that this kind of data may pose privacy risks for Wikimedia editors, as bad actors may deduce (or try to deduce) their likely location from their uploaded media.

The suggested measure to counteract this is to inform the uploader very clearly, through a note in Upload Wizard, that such geolocation metadata will be collected and made public - making it, in the end, an informed decision of the editor to upload the media or not.

This change will be rolled-out in the next few days, I will keep you updated on this. I am here in case you have any questions or requests for more information. -- Sannita (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

@Sannita (WMF): Can you confirm that, as shown in the mockup, the warning will be shown for all uploaded files, whether or not they include geolocation metadata? --bjh21 (talk) 22:08, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Beseitigt doch besser die Fehler des Uploaders. Das wäre wichtiger. Gruss --Nightflyer (talk) 22:42, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@Bjh21: Yes, it will be shown for all uploaded files. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 12:31, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
@Sannita (WMF): This seems like a terrible idea. Showing a warning every time a tool is used simply teaches users to click through the warning without thinking. The warning should be shown only when it is relevant! Even better would be to display the actual metadata (if any). Brianjd (talk) 14:20, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
@Sannita (WMF): thanks for the heads up. Where does the "learn more" link go and can we please be selective about which parts of the meta data we suggest to be removed? It's a good idea to remove position information from pictures taken at home, but there's really no good reason to scrub the whole meta data and remove things like shutter speed or camera model. --El Grafo (talk) 11:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
@El Grafo: thanks for the question, and sorry for the delay (for some reasons, the notification system didn't work). The "learn more" link will link to Commons:Exif, and the request is and will be limited only to geolocation. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
@Sannita (WMF) thanks, that makes sense. El Grafo (talk) 12:18, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
@Sannita (WMF): This does not make sense at all. Commons:Exif starts:
Photos taken with a digital camera are likely to be JPEG images with embedded Exif data, with automatically recorded date and time the photo was taken, exposure settings, focal length, and so on.
It does not say anything about location. Later, there is this heading:
Display of geolocating Exif metadata on image description pages
I almost got a headache just trying to read that heading. Even if a user finds that section somehow, they will find a single paragraph about user interfaces, uploaders and bots. If the aim is to provide clear warnings about location data, this is a clear failure. Brianjd (talk) 14:20, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
@Brianjd: Then I guess either the page should be updated, or we need to create a shortcut to that paragraph. Or we need to find (or create?) another landing page. Anyway, this part of the decision is going to be a community-led decision, so all suggestions are welcome. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:26, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
Yes, that page could certainly benefit from an update. In general, we prefer EXIF data to be present, to the point that photos without EXIF data are seen as suspicious from a copyright perspective. But privacy concerns should be discussed on that page as well. Be aware though, that there are different view points. A professional photographer may actually want to be identifiable through the meta data for publicity and copyright reasons. It's not that easy … El Grafo (talk) 14:54, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
@El Grafo: Does non-location information matter? The answer is right there at w:Exif#Privacy and security (emphasis added):
For example, a photo taken with a GPS-enabled camera can reveal the exact location and time it was taken, and the unique ID number of the device - this is all done by default - often without the user's knowledge.
This may not be the end of it. I have been wondering whether a large collection of Exif data can form a fingerprint; I am not aware of any research into this issue. Brianjd (talk) 14:20, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
Yes, it may be a good idea to remove things like that if privacy is a concern. That should be an informed decision made by the individual user. My comment above was directed at photographic parameters that pose no risk and can be useful. El Grafo (talk) 14:47, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
@El Grafo and Brianjd: Just to be 100% sure: this is a message intended to make users aware of this problem - if they want to continue uploading their files with geolocation, it's fine. We are just saying that they should be aware of this problem, and decide if they want to go on or not. This is not intended to force people to not upload those data in any case. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:49, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I got that – I was just thinking out loud about how the info page should look like. Sorry if that was confusing, I think we're actually all more or less on the same page here. El Grafo (talk) 17:25, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
I clicked on the section hoping to see a message telling me that the bug that caused UW to fail to pickup and display the geotag from the exif had been fixed. Has it?
I can see why a specific editor may be reticent about revealing their location and should have a global option to prevent it occurring on all their images- but if that is the case they shouldn't be uploading an image here. Removing location information is like adding NC to their copyright tag. An image is the exif, and the visual content it contains.
As this appears to be a fait accompli, can you add a global preference so an uploader can reject the addition of this tag. I do see the situation in the future where some faction will write a bot that will go to tagged files and remove exif data regardless. When testing a mod, all variations must be considered, not just the simplest case I don't find the graphic on one file helpful. Is Commonist working yet, is vicuna working- at the moment UW is all we have got and it needs to be reliable for mass uploads. You have to know that the exif is secure from future actions. --ClemRutter (talk) 15:34, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
@ClemRutter: regarding the bug you're referring to, can you please link me something? I really don't know anything about it, but probably I can link you the correct Phabricator link.
Regarding the advice: again, I made it very clear in my initial message. The intention of this is to inform the uploader very clearly, through a note in Upload Wizard, that such geolocation metadata will be collected and made public - making it, in the end, an informed decision of the editor to upload the media or not. No further actions are planned, nor wanted. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:49, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, @Sannita (WMF): the bug is (T223051)-but it is a questions of resources and priorities, and the more people that are aware of this bug the greater the chance of a fix. in the conversations above we are talking of a privacy improvement that is great for a single upload but very clumsy for multiple geographical shots. I have a queue of 250 images waiting to be uploaded of images along a canal in North London- they are sufficiently similar to copy down one description leaving the differences in the filename which is prepared offline. I won't be looking at each uploaded image- and don't need or want each one to be tagged with a privacy warning. It doesn't add any value to the potential user, and will confuse when included on a non en wiki. As to future actions by zealots- we need to make their deletionist ambitions as hard as possible to achieve. We see disruptive zealots all the time on en:wiki. If the intention is to leave a message to the uploader then it need not to be visible to the general user- or more feasible is to give prolific users the chance to opt out. --ClemRutter (talk) 17:46, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

October 29[edit]

Account too new to use Twinkle[edit]

My account is over 18 years old. I made my first edit on this project on 5 April 2007. Ive just got a notification that "Your account is too new to use Twinkle." How much longer must I wait? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:57, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Commons:Twinkle says "Twinkle does not work on Commons." --Magnus (talk) 11:12, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
Page marked as inactive since 2014. If it really does not work, then maybe it's time to remove the instructions on how to enable it and everything else that's not relevant for Commons. Basically keep the page for users who might look for it but reduce the content to "does not work on Commons, here's what else you can try". --El Grafo (talk) 11:22, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing, Tsungam, and El Grafo: Of course, it would be nice if someone could get the actual Twinkle to work here. In the meantime, I use the following code in my m:User:Jeff G./global.js (yours would be m:Special:Mypage/global.js) for some functionality:
if ( (mw.config.get("wgDBname") !== "wikidatawiki") && (mw.config.get("wgDBname") !== "testwikidatawiki") ) { // Don't work in Wikidata
    // Fork of Twinkle intended to work on as many wikis as possible, copied from JavaHurricane
    mw.loader.load('//meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Xiplus/TwinkleGlobal.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');
}
  — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 11:30, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
I can confirm that TwinkleGlobal works well for basic tasks. I've also been looking into twinkle-starter as a way to import some additional features of Twinkle from en.wiki, such as file tagging. clpo13(talk) 18:32, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

October 30[edit]

WikiMemes User Group[edit]

(Sorry for using an IP)

WikiMemes User Group (on Meta) does very weird things. They have groups on Facebook, Telegram and Instagram, called "wikishitposting" where they post pictures like 1 or 2, featuring real people. The name of the groups is publicly published, the users are identifiable (at the bottom of the page). -- 115.84.96.174 08:47, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

1) As far as I can tell, that's 100% standard internet behavior. Questionable, but normal. See en:Internet meme in general, en:Image macro in detail and en:Bad Luck Brian in particular.
2) This has nothing to do with Commons in particular, meta would probably be a better place to complain about that.
--El Grafo (talk) 15:50, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
@El Grafo: Please see m:WM:RFH#Report concerning User:Sabas88 then.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 23:45, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Pictogram voting comment.svg Comment, just to be clear, this page is not spam as it clearly also States to seek to document internet meme culture on Wikimedia websites (which has both educational and historical value) and its founder, Sabas88, has been an active member of Wikimedia websites for over a decade. I don't see what's wrong with the page, especially since it has the potential to introduce Wikimedia websites to more demographics that we're currently not reaching through exposure. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:01, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

COM:PEOPLE and COM:L broken. This group uses non-free pictures on the social networks and pretends its actions compatible with Commons. This is counter-educational. -- 115.84.95.158 23:30, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

  • Pictogram voting info.svg Info page in question has been nominated for deletion → here. --El Grafo (talk) 17:31, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

October 31[edit]

File:De-Acre.ogg[edit]

This file should be deleted. It's a weird pronunciation that's apparently an attempt at an English spelling pronunciation by a German speaker. It's neither English nor German, which it should be. --Espoo (talk) 08:28, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Espoo, if I am not mistaken, the deletion can be requested at Commons:Deletion requests. Hulged (talk) 08:39, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
@Espoo and Hulged: There are multiple methods of requesting deletion, as detailed at COM:D.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:54, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Berlin rail transport maps before the wende and after WW II[edit]

There are a lot of recent S-Bahn maps, but no maps with the city wall border, where many lines where interrupted. It would be usefull to illustrate the breakup of the rail network into a east and west part, with some trough running of Western S-Bahn trains in East Berlin territory.Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:18, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

PS: in the Category:Train stations in Berlin there are a lot of 'Station in Berlijn 1990 x' with unidentified stations.Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:21, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Mis-labelled months[edit]

Hello, as of now various categories, which use Template:Date, display wrong month names, such as Category:September 2014 in Leipzig, Category:February 2021 in Dresden and Category:April 2019 in Prague. It seems to me that everywhere February, April, June, September and November are affected in any language, not only english. I assume that there is recent edit mistake somewhere in the „backgrounds“ of Template:Date or Module:Date. But I cannot find the place ... Could someone please have a look? Thanks in advance! Regards, --Kleeblatt187 (talk) 15:35, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

The last edits to Module:DateI18n were made by @Verdy p: in the September. Ruslik (talk) 20:32, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
Which language are you trying to display? I looked there, and labels (for months?) are shown correctly in the languages specially translaterd in the Category template (German, English, French, Polish, Swedish...).
May be this is data specific to a language that is incomplete for month names, or there's a need of a special form (e.g. changing the grammatical case) for specific languages.
If you are speaking about the abbreviated month names (shown in the horizontal table), they are not translated by Template:Date but inside the navigation template (showing counters of pages per month below each month of the year).
I've tried cleaning a bit one of the nav template for Months in Leipzig (before that, I did not edit anything there, when you posted your comment). May be this makes things clearer, and can be applied to similar templates for Dresden, Prague.
But there was nothing wrong in the displayed labels, that correctly display the expected months and in the appropriate language (and abbreviations used in the table look ok for me, in English, German and others, and correctly fallback to English abbreviations for missing translations, e.g. when viewing these pages in Russian or Italian). I did not create these Categery nav templates. So please explain better what looks wrong for you. May be it's just the presentation that is misleading you, or there are problems of caches in your browser?
verdy_p (talk) 14:17, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for your replies. I was only talking about the labels below the table (which display the respective category's month name in cs / de / en / pl / sv etc.), not the table itself. The table was always correct as far as I did watch. For example in the before mentioned february categories there was displayed the word for March in all displayed languages, in the november categories the word für december in all displayed languages. But anyway, the problem which I mentioned seems to be fixed as of now (not only for Leipzig) – by whatever and by whoever. Nevertheless I would be interested in what happens. The phenomenon has been watched and mentioned by further users before, e.g. here. Then, back in February 2021, the unknown misspelling was also gone after a few days. Regards, --Kleeblatt187 (talk) 09:18, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

November 01[edit]

WLM photos with no EXIF[edit]

What’s the deal with them? I’d expect it to be a basic requirement. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 09:15, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

  • Why? EXIF can be edited. The information of EXIF is also in SDC. It is complicated to view the EXIF at all (other than the part that is displayed in the MetaData section of description pages). MW strips nearly all EXIF from thumbs. --C.Suthorn (talk) 13:44, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

When we upload an entire book in djvu or pdf are we going to discard the fragments?[edit]

I load individual biographies from larger works, I wonder in the future, when we upload an entire book in djvu or pdf are we going to discard the fragments? For instance: File:Hans Christoffer von Rohr (1627-1700) in Karl XII's officerare biografiska anteckningar.png The djvu files are for Wikisource and they discourage Wikidata links or other annotations, which I add to the fragments. I feel we need explanatory notes and translations to appear somewhere. --RAN (talk) 19:28, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Fragments of books can often be useful, I have extracted pages from books I've uploaded before because sometimes individual pages are more useful for Wikimedia websites like Wikipedia's. I don't think that it would be wise to delete fragments just because the entire work exists, they can always just be placed in the relevant category of an individual book and if Wikisadata links and other annotations are more encouraged for fragments then fragments are more useful in other ways. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:20, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the encouragement! I am sure we all worry if our hard work will be discarded in the future. --RAN (talk) 20:24, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
Conceptually a “book fragment” seems to me closely analogous to a cropped image (the “extracted“ kind that should be in a separate file). For some purposes a part can be more useful than the whole.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 21:27, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Meet the new Movement Charter Drafting Committee members[edit]

The Movement Charter Drafting Committee election and selection processes are complete.

The Wikimedia Foundation has appointed two members: Runa Bhattacharjee (Runab WMF), Jorge Vargas (JVargas (WMF). The committee will convene soon to start its work. The committee can appoint up to three more members to bridge diversity and expertise gaps.

If you are interested in engaging with Movement Charter drafting process, follow the updates on Meta and join the Telegram group.

You can read this announcement in other languages here.

With thanks from the Movement Strategy and Governance team

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 20:02, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Reply tool available[edit]

Hello, all.

The Editing team is offering the [reply] tool to everyone at Commons. This tool makes it easy to reply to a comment in a discussion. It automatically adds your signature at the end, and it counts all the ::::colons for you. There is a visual mode for anyone who prefers that, and a live preview for people using the wikitext source mode.

If you want, you can turn it on now at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. You can also test it on this page by clicking this link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump?dtenable=1 These options will give you the [reply] button plus other tools, such as the [subscribe] tool. Only the [reply] tool would be turned on for everyone. Everything else will remain accessible only through the Beta Feature.

If you don't like the reply tool, you will be able to turn it off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

Contributors who deal with tech stuff may wish to put these two pages on their watchlists: mw:Help:DiscussionTools and mw:Help:DiscussionTools/Why can't I reply to this comment? The second page is useful for de-bugging.

This tool has been very popular at other wikis, but I particularly wanted to ask you all what you thought of it. It gets used about 20 times a day here at Commons. I expect that it will be most useful at pages like this, and less useful for voting-style pages. What do you think? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

One note about the future:
Later (maybe November, maybe not), the Beta Feature will get a new feature, called mw:Talk pages project/Usability.  The two main ideas are:
  • to show more information at the top of a discussion (e.g., how many comments have been posted, perhaps a bit similar to the numbers posted at the top of Commons:Administrators/Requests), and
  • to discourage newcomers from pasting non-discussion content into talk pages (or is that only a problem at the Wikipedias?).
If you have the Beta Feature enabled whenever the new Usability feature is available, you'll see the first steps there. If you don't have the Beta Feature enabled, you won't. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
I like it! It's unobtrusive, optional, and works with existing talk pages rather than trying to replace them with something else. Also thrilled to see the new option to subscribe to individual sections of a talk page. Quick question though: does this automatically send a ping to the person I'm answering or do I still need to ping them manually? mw:Help:DiscussionTools doesn't seem to have any info on that … – El Grafo (talk) 07:56, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
@El Grafo you can simply type the Klammeraffe codepoint and select the username C.Suthorn (talk) 11:17, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I know, and that is useful and very convenient for pinging other people I'm not technically replying to directly. But when I click "reply", it already says (in this case) "Reply to C.Suthorn" in the background of the typing area. So it clearly has recognized who I'm replying to and I was wondering if the system maybe automatically sends a ping. Just curious: did you get a ping from this message (assuming you did not also subscribe to this section, of course …)? El Grafo (talk) 12:18, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
No pings unless you link the username. If you type the @ symbol, it will give you a list of previous participants in that ==Section==. You can also search for any username you want.
Auto-pinging has been suggested. I think the product manager even supports the idea, but I'm less certain. I wonder whether we will want to ping individuals so often, once it becomes normal for people to subscribe to discussions. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

November 02[edit]

How to convert PNG to SVG using Commons[edit]

Any tool in Toolforge to convert PNG to SVG?. --BoldLuis (talk) 13:17, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

  • @BoldLuis: vectorizing is not usually a simple process. Is there a particular file you have in mind to vectorize? - Jmabel ! talk 15:33, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
  • @Jmabel: It is a PNG file about eutrophization, where there os dime texto that I cannot transmite becaude It id not a SVG file, using the SVG translación tool. So vectorización méritos the try.BoldLuis (talk) 06:56, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
    Can you provide a link to the original PNG? In the vast majority of cases, manually re-drawing the figure as a vector image is by far the superior solution in terms of quality and effort. The people at the Illustration Workshop can often help with that … El Grafo (talk) 08:25, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
  • @Jmabel: @El Grafo: :: Of course. This File:Eutrophication.png and other images with texts in. --BoldLuis (talk) 18:39, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
    • Yeah, got to be simplest just to build that in a vector format from scratch. - Jmabel ! talk 00:20, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
      • Here's a start: File:Eutrophication diagram.svg. Font doesn't display quite correctly when rendered through mediawiki, but I don't have the patience to fix that right now … --El Grafo (talk) 15:19, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
        • @El Grafo: You are probably running into the librsvg small font bug: when the font is less than 20 logical pixels, the character placement can have problems. Your diagram uses font sizes of 4 and 6 logical pixels. The problem has been fixed upstream in modern releases of librsvg, but MW has not incorporated those (and a lot of other) fixes. WMF's failure to keep its tools up to date causes a lot of user frustration. WMR is using major version 2.40; current release is 2.52. Glrx (talk) 18:23, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

November 03[edit]

Deletion of file File:Characters of Asterix.png[edit]

Why was the Characters of Asterix picture deleted?

It was on the List of Asterix characters article for a long time and nobody complained.

The only change I did was to upload a version in a higher resolution.

It's my first Wikipedia page edit so please bear with me if I didn't do it the right way.

BTW: This is the picture in question (or at least a similar one): http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/12200000/Everybody-asterix-12243899-1024-768.jpg

There are many many versions of it everywhere on the internet (and even posters, jigsaw puzzles, etc.). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Manu.miu (talk • contribs) 13:55, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

@Manu.miu: Most images on the internet are copyrighted. We can't accept copyrighted images here on Commons unless the creator has given them a permissive license (see COM:NETCOPYVIO). On Wikipedia (which is not where you are right now), some copyrighted images can be used under the Fair Use doctrine, which requires them to be used at a low resolution, among other things (see en:WP:NFCC). – BMacZero (🗩) 15:01, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Photo challenge voting page[edit]

Can someone please create the voting page for the October 2021 photo challenge https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photo_challenge/2021_-_October_-_Autumn_leafs

The instructions say to just start typing. But the voting page is special, and I think requires more than that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magogview (talk • contribs) 16:40, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

  • @Magogview: Does that have something to do with Characters of Asterix?? and didn't you post something similar on the Help Desk (please don't hit several general discussion pages with the same issue). - Jmabel ! talk 00:22, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
    • OP probably just didn't know how to add a new section. Done now, and section resolved as the requested page has bee created meanwhile. --El Grafo (talk) 14:01, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
  • @El Grafo: Thank you. I clicked on the Start a new discussion button and entered my question. When I hit the publish button, the question disappeared and I could not find it again. I thought that I must have hit cancel by mistake, but I wasn't sure. I thought my question might have gone away for good. Looking at other questions at the Village Pump, I thought the Help Desk would be a better place for my question. I think what happened is that I forgot to add a subject, and the wiki added my entry to the bottom of someone else's entry. That's what I'm guessing.

(I've entered questions in other support pages (like Apple.com) and the question becomes the subject. If a user clicks the new discussion button, maybe the system should not publish without a subject and issue a warning instead.)

  • Regarding the orginal question. It's still not resolved. There is still no place to vote on the October 2021 photo challenge entries, at least none that I can see. If people are able to vote and are in fact voting now, then I don't know how to do it. Could you please try yourself to vote for an entry? If you can do it, can you please explain step-by-step how it's done?
  • Thank you again for understanding and fixing this discussion. Magogview (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

How should I edit descriptions?[edit]

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I was wondering what is the exact policy for editing the description of an image. Is it similar to how users can simply edit stuff on mainspace Wikipedia or are there any additional restrictions? For example, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Watt_balance,_large_view.jpg has an outdated description (because the kilogram is no longer defined by a physical artifact). I wanted to know if I can just correct it or do I have to leave it unchanged as it was true when the image was uploaded. Thank you! --Lone Warrior 007 (talk) 19:15, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

  • @Lone Warrior 007: pretty analogous to Wikipedia except when the source is a GLAM, in which case it is important to distinguish our own description from what the GLAM said. Also, we tend a little more than on Wikipedia to defer to the original uploader, especially if it's someone really active here, but in this case it should be fine to edit. - Jmabel ! talk 00:25, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
  • (Edit conflict)@Lone Warrior 007: pretty much as for Wikipedia articles, although our content-related policies relating to text are minimal, given that it’s out of scope in quantity. You are quite right to consider the context of the media to avoid anachronisms &c.; for example we wouldn’t identify George VI as “former king” in the description of his coronation portrait. In your example, especially since the physical kilogram standard was part of the subject’s raison d’être, I might add an brief note about the redefinition (mentioning the date) but I’d avoid engaging in revisionism, so to speak. (I might add that in general I disapprove of ‘mini-articles’ in file descriptions where a sentence or two containing cross-wiki links could lead viewers to all the same info. Most general-background content belongs more on a category page—where a suitable one exists—than on an individual file page, and the focus should be on identification as opposed to explanation.)—Odysseus1479 (talk) 00:53, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Missing source?! What am I missing here? (16Exul82)[edit]

I came across these tags by user "JuTa" after finding similar tags on coats of arms (see a discussion in this village pump from October 21st), a lot of centuries old Prussian and Austrian files uploaded by user "16Exul82" were tagged as "missing a source", yet if I look at this version of a file it reads "Source Urkundenauszug aus dem Staatsarchiv Wertheim, G-Rep.9 Lade Xiii-XIV Nr.1 # 1330 Februar 1 - Author Jürgen Gerner", which is both properly sourced and properly attributed, the only issue I can find is an incorrect copyright license, but why didn't the tagger simply change it to "PD-old" instead of adding a speedy deletion template? This isn't a rare thing either, something tells me that we're probably losing historical public domain files every day because of human error like this. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:44, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Going over it again, most of "Category:Media without a source as of 14 October 2021" is actually either properly sourced public domain files or properly sourced "Own work" coats of arms, I wasn't able to finish this category, I am calling for other contributors to help save the images in this category before they will be deleted and lost forever. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:05, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
Hallo, ich fühle mich irgend wie komisch, ich ändere und arbeite an den Nachweisen und alles soll falsch sein. So macht das Arbeiten in der WIKIPEDIA kein Spaß. Wissen die "Löscher" wie viel Arbeit und auch Geld in den Dateien steckt. Wenn ihr könnt helft mir bitte. Ich weiß auch nicht wo die Fehler liegen, erst dann kann man korrigieren. DANKE16Exul82 (talk) 20:20, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
@16Exul82: I understand how you feel, thankfully there are also volunteers that want to help save these files, if I had come across one of your uploads I wouldn't have guessed them to be incorrectly sourced, as both the authors and the archives from which you've taken them are properly listed, I am somewhat confused how they were tagged as "no source" so I hope that this won't happen again in the future. People like you are highly valuable and we appreciate you for the hard work you're doing in preserving the wonderful history of Germany and its diversity. Face-smile.svg I really hope that you won't feel demoralised or demotivated from uploading after these experiences, your work is valuable for future generations and have high educational value. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:31, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I mentioned to JuTa that tagging these as "no source" doesn't make sense. I removed the "No source" tag. Some of the remaining files have the wrong license, i.e. PD-self instead of PD-old-something, but source is there. Yann (talk) 22:23, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Italian republicans - what category?[edit]

Face and figure study; a Republican smoking his pipe - circa 1860 - Gioacchino Toma - 9359

What category may be used to indicate that the figure in the above painting was an Italian Republican of the Garibaldi era? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:06, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: People of the Italian Risorgimento?—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:48, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

November 04[edit]

File formats: pdf and jpg[edit]

I inadvertently saved and uploaded a group of files in pdf format rather than jpg, here: Category:Notice of Beehive Houses in Harris and Lewis (1862). Is there a way of converting these to jpg or of uploading jpg files as replacements? The descriptions contain quite a bit of detail, and I would rather not delete and start again, if possible. Thanks Kognos (talk) 11:55, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Category keys[edit]

I think I need to understand Category "Keys" - what they are and how they work but I can't find anything in Commons or Help. Can someone point me in the right direction?? --Headlock0225 (talk) 12:30, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

See mw:Help:Categories#Sort key. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:39, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
(ec) @Headlock0225: I take it you mean category sort keys? Normally a sub-category is sorted alphabetically in the parent category, but a sort key can override it. See en:Help:Category#Sorting category pages for more.
As an example, in Category:Harvest by country all the "Harvest in X" sub-categories would be normally sorted under "H", which would make it difficult to find different countries. Instead the subcategories have country names as sort keys to separate them out: Category:Harvest in Italy has [[Category:Harvest by country|Italy]], where "Italy" is the sort key. The sub-topic categories are sorted to appear first by having a sort key starting with space (though this is not always done), so Category:Haymaking by country has [[Category:Harvest by country| Hay]] with sort key " Hay". MKFI (talk) 14:41, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

SDC for postcards[edit]

I want start to add many structured data to picture postcards, but I need an advise. Here is my request. Maybe wrong subpage. So I link it here in the village pump. Thanks for help. --sk (talk) 18:02, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

November 05[edit]

Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Village_pump&oldid=605523196"