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Ok, this is getting a bit ridiculous, but this rename request has been at some sort of limbo state for 5 months so I'm bringing it here so it can gain more attention. Should we rename the file to File:Air Force Ensign of India.svg? I quote Fry1989's reasoning:
"This flag is currently in use, so the year of introduction should not be included in the file name. This is as per Commons' long-standing practice of naming flag images "Flag of XXX.svg" without a year of introduction unless the flag has been retired from use. It also can be confused for implying this flag was only used in 2023, as per the naming styles for flags such as File:Flag of Burundi (1966).svg, File:Flag of Zimbabwe Rhodesia (1979).svg, and File:Flag of Jamaica (1962).svg, which were only used for 1 year or less and for that reason include both their year of introduction and year of retirement as a single year."
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Stuck in category redirects
At Special:Permalink/880570764 a list of category redirects with files (or subcategories) that aren't moved.
Normally, there shouldn't be any category on that list. If one is there it means RussBot tried to move the files or subcategories, but couldn't. If the category is empty now, it means it has been fixed.
User:SteinsplitterBot is back in service rotating files. User:Steinsplitter explained that it was out of service because ' the so called "Toolsforge" does not provide enough ressources (RAM, CPU, Storage and binarys) to run Rotatebot '.
We have several pictures from WWII concerning Croatian area that are described wrongly or incorrectly given that this is what the secondary sources who comment or talk about these pictures say. The source that took picture from a Yugoslav archive is United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is also a factual source, however, it has a description of the image that is not in accordance with modern sources, which mark such an interpretation(regardless from whom) and as propaganda.
What to do in this case, and if nothing can be changed, can the same picture be posted but with an explanation ie description based on modern high-quality sources of historians?
Images are: Corpses in the Sava river, Sisak 1945.[1], Ustaše militia execute prisoners near the Jasenovac concentration camp[2], Glina church massacre [3] --Mikola22 (talk) 06:28, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't think we can write caption/disclaimer below "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" because this source is not an archive. It can be said that it is a secondary source. But the problem is that they took these photos from the Yugoslav Archive or sources which interpreted these photos in their own way. In modern sources of historians this method is labeled and as propaganda and with the explanation that the photographs show some other events and not the events that are presented through Yugoslav historiography. Let's say for the majority of Croats killed in Sisak, these photos are listed in the archive as pictures for Jasenovac with a note that this is how people were killed similar or the same and in the concentration camp Jasenovac, so these pictures can also be used in topics about Jasenovac, etc. Today, in fact photos of the majority of Croats killed in Sisak are placed in the context of the killing of Serbs, Jews, the Jasenovac Camp, etc. Mikola22 (talk) 14:24, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
For starters, there is {{Fact disputed}}. If (as appears to be the case here) the matter is genuinely controversial, that's a good choice: you are not simply making a correction, you are noting that two presumably scholarly sources disagree.
Also, when contradicting a presumably respectable scholarly source, it is a good idea to report the contradiction back to them. They are likely to incorporate it into their archives as well (which I see has now happened with that example I gave). - Jmabel ! talk19:02, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
Categories included due to templates frequently have issues with updating due to cache issues or the MediaWiki software updating its index (which I believe is done weekly). So while three days is a long time for it to not display, it’s not entirely unreasonable. Have you tried purging both cats and the template (I cannot on the machine I’m using presently)? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯22:58, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
I had purged both cats. I didn't think to try purging the template; now I've done so, and it still didn't resolve this. - Jmabel ! talk00:29, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
So I've been making a spreadsheet of all the numerical PNG files on here from 01.png to 99.png. While browsing I found that 27.png is somehow still an existing file? Here's the link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:27.png
I don't know what it is so I can't move it to a better file name. Hopefully someone knows what this is.
0x16w (talk) 09:59, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
I recently made this Category:Hungern bis ihr ehrlich seid 2024, then realized that that name is confusing, formed something more suitable, and duly added a redirect. That confusing name is still being shown as an auto‑completion option when filling in other more sensible categories, which could lead to wrong categorizations and be detrimental. I believe that that confusing category name is orphaned in any case.
Thanks! I looked at the documentation for Template:How to delete empty categories and it is not clear (to me at least) where to place this template. I guess that the target category is the correct location? Perhaps that information could be confirmed and added to the usage notes for that template? I have also already added a topic to the template discussion page to record my suggestion there. In addition, the template name seems confusing: is this template invoking a deletion process or merely offering passive advice. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 07:11, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm currently in something of a dispute with User:186.172.16.70 over guitars, bass guitars, and (implicitly) COM:OVERCAT. If this were a logged in user, I'd try to sort this out between just the two of us but, sorry, I'm not engaging over time with an account that might be a different person each time I interact.
If I understand correctly this edit is because bass guitars are, in a sense, a form of guitar, so there is an implicit argument that Category:Male guitarists from Austria is overcat for Category:Male bass guitarists from Austria. However, bass guitar is, in practice, a distinct instrument from a regular guitar, and we don't have something like a Category:No, really I meant a normal guitar. This particular person (unlike most bass guitarists) played/plays both a bass guitar and a regular guitar professionally, and in my opinion in that case someone should certainly be categorized under both, despite the theory of OVERCAT. Do others here, besides this one user, see it differently? - Jmabel ! talk22:18, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
There is no such thing as "regular guitar". Unless there is such a thing as irregular guitar. Do you mean Spanish guitar? Classical guitar? Ritm guitar? Of course admins are always right, this is why I chose not to be one. 186.172.16.7023:14, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
There may be an expectation by some that the guitar(ist) categories are meant to contain guitar-like instrument(alist)s as subcategories. That issue is easily solved by {{Cat see also}}. We already have Guitar family instruments as a common category. I assume bass guitarists mostly aren't also known as (or routinely professionally performing as) "normal" guitarists – if they are, then the issue is different. –LPfi (talk) 09:06, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
I would certainly be happier if, in general, bass guitars were subcatted from Category:Guitar family instruments (which should probably be hyphenated: "guitar-family" as an adjective) rather than Category:Guitars. Similarly for bass guitarists, though we don't yet have a category for players of guitar-family instruments. - Jmabel ! talk14:45, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Invitation to participate in the #WPWPCampaign 2024
Dear community members,
We are inviting you to participate in the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2024 campaign, a global contest scheduled to run from July through August 2024:
Participants will choose among Wikipedia pages without photo images, then add a suitable file from among the many thousands of photos in the Wikimedia Commons, especially those uploaded from thematic contests (Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Folklore, etc.) over the years.
In its first year (2020), 36 Wikimedia communities in 27 countries joined the campaign. Events relating to the campaign included training organized by at least 18 Wikimedia communities in 14 countries.
The campaign resulted in the addition of media files (photos, audios and videos) to more than 90,000 Wikipedia articles in 272 languages.
Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (WPWP) offers an ideal task for recruiting and guiding new editors through the steps of adding content to existing pages. Besides individual participation, the WPWP campaign can be used by user groups and chapters to organize editing workshops and edit-a-thons.
The organizing team is looking for a contact person to coordinate WPWP participation your language Wikipedia. We’d be glad for you to sign up directly at WPWP Participating Communities page on Meta-Wiki.
Thank you,
Reading Beans / readthebeansgmail.com)
Project manager and coordinator
Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2024
Though the former discussion about Cat-a-lot was archived yesterday because the problem would supposedly have been resolved, for me the problem is still the same: it still does not work for subcategories with at least one subcategory. So can this discussion be restarted and can the problem really be solved? JopkeB (talk) 03:56, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
@JopkeB: you should always feel free to "necromance" a recently archived VP section back from the archive and continue the discussion. Just be sure that your edit summaries make it clear that is what you are doing. - Jmabel ! talk05:35, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel: How do you do that? To me it looks like a next level action. Just moving/copy-paste it and mention it in the edit summary? JopkeB (talk) 04:14, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
@JopkeB: yes, though in this case cut-and-paste is more appropriate. Mention it in the edit summary both on the archive page and where you restore it. If you have something to add, this is perfectly appropriate. - Jmabel ! talk04:43, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
It would also be nice if it worked on the conventional search rather than only special search. Yesterday I noticed it displays 1000 when only 500 items have been selected. I think this should be discussed and pointed out at the Cat-a-lot talk page. And how to solve it would be the same as for most technical issues: 1) more WMF priority/spending in that area and, more importantly, 2) things to get more volunteer onboard and have them implement/solve the most important issues such as those of tools widely used like cat-a-lot, video2commons (currently dysfunctional), or the Upload Wizard which still makes people add categories that are redirects. Banners for volunteer devs on software-related Wikipedia articles as well as a campaign with things like leaderboards, badges, gamification, internal attention, possibly external reporting, prizes (maybe also anonymous bounties), and prioritized weighted issues would be a straightforward way to implement that. One can only speculate why the WMF isn't doing things like that, could be incompetence, related to techcompany donor funds, a general lack of a sense of community wishes, and/or something else. I don't think just merely asking about any particular major technical issue on VillagePump does anything. I don't think this particular problem is large though: just refresh and move the remaining subcategories using HotCat. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:15, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
Hello,
I have noted Al-Hilali Z uploads what is designated as flags of Arab tribes. None of the files has an indication of a source on which the file design has been based. When queried about this though the talk page, it is confirmed the great majority are the user's personal design. Is this not an issue, especially when these flag images end up being displayed in Wikipedia articles and presented as recognized flags when this is not accurate? Moumou82 (talk) 20:41, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
I found this too for made up coats-of-arms for obscure royal families, and then websites using them. --RAN (talk) 21:50, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
Hello,
Arabs Tribes flags are very different of other flag, they dont respect vexilollogy codes, everyone is free to create Tribal flags, there are no Official flags, except in rare cases, but they are inconsistent and free to create your own design. Al-Hilali Z (talk) 08:11, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
No, they are completely legitimate, the majority of the flags that I make are made with the approval of members of the tribe and are adopted by them, there is no connection with the oos. Al-Hilali Z (talk) 10:48, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
Is it okay if I force category using Cat-a-lot rather than wait?
Hi everyone. I made this category: Category:ONCHI to track the files we have uploaded as a part of our project in Indonesia. It is included via this template User:RXerself/ONCHI but I put the category later than when the files were uploaded, so the category is now still only has 3 files which, 2 of which were "forced" in which one was edited manually and saved without changing anything and the other one using Cat-a-lot. MediaWiki help page on this explains that: "when changing the categories applied by a template in this fashion, the categorization of the pages which include that template may not be updated until some time later: this is handled by the job queue." [5] But it's now more than a week already and it still only has 3 files. Is it okay if I "force" the files by using Cat-a-lot? Not okay as in I would break anything, but as in if I am allowed. RXerself (talk) 22:30, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
Is there any agreement on which categories should be placed here? This honestly feel very random. Like why are Femboy, Incest, Incel and Skoliosexuality even located here?--Trade (talk) 22:55, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm not convinced this category should exist at all. Whether a topic is "controversial" is not a judgement call which Commons should be making; it's not essential to the identity of the topic. Omphalographer (talk) 00:12, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
I have to agree with Omphalographer. Most, if not all, sexual and gender identities are controversial to some degree and depending on the time period or location. So the category is essentially meaningless. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:24, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
One of the files in the category is directly related to zoophilia. Considering this is a subcategory of both Gender identity, Sexual orientation and LGBT i'm not really a fan of what this is implying.--Trade (talk) 01:39, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Yesterday I overwrote an image, when I went to crop out details from the new image, croptool wanted to goto the original image to do the croppng. Had to resort to GIMP to do the job. It wasn't a cache problem. Broichmore (talk) 10:54, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
Good. Doing some back-of-the-envelope math, someone can plausibly do three of these a minute, so with 23,000 images, that means 128 person-hours of work, which is a lot for one person, but reasonable for a small group. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯20:54, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
Just to say, the museum source has not cropped them, why would they not? There seems to be some kind of mania, here, in cropping out borders to satisfy OCD urges. Margins prove the extent of images, they confirm that images are indeed complete. Any source museum would consider this vanadalism. I have to say that certain museums employ prestigous decals on their images, claiming source, the Imperial War Museum, The British Library, the Bundesarchive in this case. Cropping out these details, deny them the opportunity of advertising, which is cheeky when you consider they curate these images for us for free. These Bundesarchiv decals that are being cropped out deny 'end users' easy attribution of where these images come from. Wikipedia in particular is bad for not only referencing the source museum, but also even the artist. Furthermore, in the new world of AI, these decals go some way to prove authenticity. At this point their discreet enough, not to worry about. This is not a good use of our resources, and is wrong. Broichmore (talk) 08:24, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
@Broichmore: I don't necessarily disagree. If I had my way I'd probably just remove the crop requests, but I didn't add them to begin with and I try to respect what other users want. It would at least be less work to just not crop the images to begin with though. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:35, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Indeed, the thing is that every so often editors discover the crop tool and see it as an easy pastime. When in fact it's a tool that should be rarely used, and with great caution. The average original uploader is more than capable of cropping their images prior to uploading, their wishes should be respected.
Even in these images, the Bundesarchiv logo, tell us so much. Date, German origin, the importance put on collecting the image by the German government, and that they consider it being worthy of preservation, & etc. Broichmore (talk) 09:53, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
This misunderstands how Wikipedia/Commons attributes images. The sources and authors are listed on the image's descriptions pages, not in the text on Wikipedia itself (this also to discourage using Wikipedia as a tool for self-promotion). With regards to this collection specifically, the information listed in the image is also listed on the page (the bild ID (and a link to the ID on the archive), the year it was taken, the name of the photographer, if one is known, the archive itself). This is where that information is supposed to be; there is no need to have it be visible on the image too. This kind of visible watermarking is discouraged. Invisible watermarking on the other hand is encouraged because it doesn't interfere with the contents of the images themselves. Every single one of the images in this collection has invisible watermarking too (the EXIF data if you scroll to the bottom), which contains the same information that's visible in the margins, and is wholly unaffected by the crop tool. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:31, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
@ReneeWrites: I don't misunderstand anything. While attribution is optional on Wikipedia; not every source is notable. However, many, and most are!
Discerning casual readers (who are, who Wikipedia aims itself) want to know the source of artwork or notable photographs.
I am yet to see an encyclopaedia, or source book which does not attribute at the front end. Children's books don’t attribute. Hiding attribution as you describe, is a successful way of withholding information from Wikipedia’s readership. The majority of which, are in computing terms illiterate.
As an incentive, the secret to successful Wikipedia writing is creating ''links'' to other articles on the project. There is an ongoing opportunity to link, to articles, about ''said'' notable artists and photographers. Those players, in turn, are often part of the stories themselves.
If you want the image info to be visible directly in Wikipedia articles, then try to create a policy on Wikipedia recommending attribution in the caption. The info in the image border isn't visible in the thumbnails actually shown. You need to click at the image anyway to be able to read that information, and it is much more prominent in the actual file description than in the tiny text on the border. Now, clicking may get you to the image viewer instead of the image description page, but even then, clicking "more info" (and searching for that link) isn't unreasonable if you want to get to that info. (Many books attribute images in a separate list instead of "at the front line"; if you want the info, you have to look for it.) –LPfi (talk) 06:58, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Unfortunately Ancestry would guillotine the books to ease scanning then discard the originals. I used to buy them at book sales and see if it was on their list of needed copies, but stopped when I learned their policy. Having them online is absolutely awesome. --RAN (talk) 21:48, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
in germany you can find a list of full names and a group photo of students doing abitur in a certain year on the newspaper and its website. XD
This is probably just my lack of understanding of French law but, @Kontributor 2K: given that this appears to have been a published document, how is this "private data"? - Jmabel ! talk17:46, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't think it's been published (like a book); it's just been printed. In general, this type of document is given to families at the end of the school year, or after the ceremony. It's not a public document. --Kontributor 2K (talk) 17:58, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
Under international copyright law that does constitute being "made public", also lists of names are not copyrightable. To be eligible for a copyright a work must have unique creative elements. If you asked a dozen people to compile the list of names, each person would create an identical list. If you asked a dozen people to compile a list of the best music of all time, each list would be different and copyrightable, that is why the Time 100 list each year is copyrighted, or the Fortune 500 list. --RAN (talk) 21:44, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
You mean the Berne convention? Anyway, is privacy law coordinated with copyright terminology? In Finland, we have a lot of material that is public (you will get it if you ask), but still publishing it in a newspaper or similar is illegal unless there is sufficient public interest or other specific reasons to. This includes tax records and court cases. –LPfi (talk) 07:16, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Any procedures for seeking and archiving explicit consent when subject is identifiable?
Michael Winter in skeleton suit lying outside the German chancellor's residence to protest the lack of action on climate policyClimate activist Tessel Hofstede from XR Netherlands speaks to Letzte Generation in Berlin in 2023
I took the photograph shown and have had a clear and unequivocal discussion with Michael Winter, the subject, that I can upload that and similar images to Wikimedia under CC‑BY‑4.0. Michael also provided me with his email address on my request and I was intending to follow up with a proper "release form".
That event occurred in Berlin, Germany of course and German and European privacy law would prevail.
I have had a reasonable look around this site and could not find mention of any formalized processes like this. The notion of "asserted consent" is traversed. So I take it that Wikimedia does not wish to provide support for written agreements of this nature? I guess that position is understandable? Particularly given the large number of legal jurisdictions involved and also changing statutes and evolving case law.
So I suppose the best thing to do in this particular case is to undertake some email traffic with Michael and leave that exchange on my hard‑drive as a kind of insurance policy? Any assistance welcome. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 17:54, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks GPSLeo and Jmabel. I did once use that process for another image in relation to consent. In that case, my associated email traffic was somehow stored out of public view and linked backed to the particular image. I also presume that my earlier assumption that the concept of release forms is not supported by Wikimedia due to the legal complexities present. Thanks both for your quick responses. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 19:17, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
Maybe we could add a param to consent, so that people can reference a document id, link or VRT/OTRS id. That might be worthwhile! —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:51, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
For what it is worth, the accompanying image of the woman in yellow uses the following field "permission={{VRT info|1=2024050810008791}}" as part of the 'Information' template. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 21:21, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
Only the VRT agents can see what info that ticket includes, so whether it is relevant to this discussion is unclear. But yes, that's the way to link to such correspondence. You could reference it in the permission field if you want reusers to know something about what privacy issues are covered. –LPfi (talk) 08:35, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Placement of recurring terms in sets of subcategories
Are pre- or postmodifiers preferable in cases like those that are being discussed in Commons:Categories for discussion/2023/12/Category:Old women sitting? I.e. when the option is semantically appropriate and linguistically feasible, do we want e.g. sitting-related subcategories to be called "Sitting x, Sitting y, Sitting z" or "x sitting, y sitting, z sitting"? As per my post in the category discussion, I think the latter makes the most sense, but perhaps there is more information and/or user consensus to be found somewhere. Sinigh (talk) 14:07, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
Makes sense but "Old women" is also a recurring term so the optimal solution both this and items where the former term is a nonrecurring one would be to have redirects so that e.g. Old women sitting redirects to Sitting old women or the other way around. Would be good if there was a bot/script that did so / created redirect proposals one could quickly confirm or add to a list of likely inappropriate proposed redirects. (The same could maybe also be done for category names in languages other than English but that's another topic.) Prototyperspective (talk) 15:35, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
EK 318 flight Dubai Tokyo 11 may 2024
I was seated close to a window and have taken some pictures: The camera time is the time in Amsterdam, not the local time. The route is trough Pakistan and China. There where no delays.
I've done this sort of thing a lot. I strongly recommend plunging into Google Maps looking for similar landforms. (BTW, for the future: much easier if you take a lot of pictures, even if you don't plan to use them all.) - Jmabel ! talk14:59, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
Also useful is if you are listening in-flight to the pilots talk to Air Traffic Controllers, making a note of which Air Traffic Controllers' areas the pilots are told to switch to (the next area on the flight plan); for flights arriving here, that is typically "New York Approach". The frequencies are not necessary for this purpose. It will help if you can listen in English, as that appears to be the standard language of air traffic control worldwide. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:09, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
De official times are Dubai departure 02:40 am local time and arrival at Tokyo 17:35 pm local Japanese times. Camera time Amsterdam GMT + 1 (+ 1 summertime); Dubai GMT + 4; Japan GMT + 9. 7 hour difference between Japan and Amsterdam. China is GMT + 8). From what I remenber the plane avoided India went trough Pakistan and then took a more or less straight line trough China and South Korea passing trough large Chinese dessert areas. So the Himalayas would be at de western end by the Pakistan / Chinese border, but could also be inside China.Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:52, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
@Smiley.toerist: At least the city on last three images should be relatively easy to identify e.g. with Google Maps satellite mode; provided you know at least approximately what area and/or what country had been overflown at that timepoint, as otherwise this would be a search for the "needle in a haystack".
In general, it's quite tricky and common landforms are difficult to identify afterwards, likewise in flight because from my experience, GPS on your phone seldom works well in flight. --A.Savin16:27, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
The solution to have and keep a GPS connection in fast moving vehicles with a smartphone is to activate a constant tracking before you start moving. For these photos case it might be the best solution to look at the Flightradar24 data for the flight and then matching the capture time. But that requires a paid account there. GPSLeo (talk) 16:43, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
The last picture must be in Japan, about 15 minutes before landing. With the long shadow of a western sun, this must be an east coast. Smiley.toerist (talk) 17:02, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
(EK 318 flight Dubai Tokyo 11 may 2024 4) is close to JR station Izumi and (EK 318 flight Dubai Tokyo 11 may 2024 5) is close to Otsu port (found on GE). I have problems finding the correct location categories. Narita airport was approached from the north along the coast.Smiley.toerist (talk) 17:56, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
, by doing some time and distance calculations and finding out that the village must be about 3.258 km from Dubai. The scharp dark green fields contrast with the more dessert like image from Google Earth. The most dificult to lokalise images must be the two mountain images where I wil probably be using ADSB data.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:21, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Calculating that the mountain views 71 minutes before the dessert village, places the mountains within Pakistan. (13,03 km by minute)Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:36, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
The ADSB data of past fligths indicate that the plane usualy crosses Chinese border halfway between the Afganistan border and the Indian border (line of control). Close to the line, a bit to the East is the K2 mountain. However it is complicated to find the rigth mountain.Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:59, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
ADSB for flight that took off Sunday 02:45:00 AM UTC+04
Thanks for the info. The positions are estimations and imprecise. I was on a seat on the left side. By the landing (4, 5, 6) the plane was clearly flying over land and not over the sea. The details of picture 3 match with the GE satelite picture. As the plane was flying around 10 km heigth and the village has a low altitude of 1017 meter above sealevel the plane must have been someway south of that position.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:36, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
First, a jetliner cruises at about 1000 kmph or 16 km per minute. An error of 5 minutes is 80 km.
I did not interpolate the position from the ADSB data; instead I just chose a close time. Interpolation would be better if we know the times are accurate.
The error for the village is large. To match the longitude, I had to advance the time by 7.5 minutes, but the ADSB plane position was still well north of where it should be. The issue is partly resolved by the position being estimated because there is no actual ADSB data during that part of the flight.
The ADSB data that is not estimated should be accurate. The numbers I used do put the plane over water when it should be over land. However, you can look at track as it approaches the airport and see that portions of that track do align with the pictures.
That error may just be a time offset. You might see how accurate your camera clock is right now. Alternatively, you could try to figure it out from a reasonable track position for a particular image. That's what I was trying to do with the 7.5-minute village offset until I realized the track didn't fit and noticed the ADSB data for that time was only an estimate.
The EXIF data also has a quantization error of 1 minute.
I expect the ADSB times to be derived from the GPS satellites.
Is it actually useful for structured data to mark my own file that I copied from my own Flickr account as authored by Flickr user Joe Mabel, as against Commons user Jmabel (both me)? - Jmabel ! talk15:04, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
I would say so. Most Commons users upload their files here directly, not via Flickr. And most of the time when people upload files from Flickr with the Flickr2Commons plugin they are not the original author of those images, so it makes sense (and is imo useful) if that credit line is automatically attributed to the Flickr profile the images are from. For your own images you could always edit the credit line to your Commons profile if you prefer to be credited that way. ReneeWrites (talk) 20:27, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
I agree that the SDC should point to the named photographer if known, and not the Flickr user.
I think the bot’s behaviour is fine.
It didn't delete or replace the information in the Wikitext. It only added a creator (P170) SDC statement because there wasn’t one on this file before.
If there's already a creator (P170) statement, the bot leaves it as-is. I could point you to literally thousands of examples where the bot has looked at a file, seen a P170 with more specific information, and left it as-is.
If the file is edited to add a more specific statement, the bot will leave it as-is. I’ve done a manual edit to replace the Flickr user statement with one that points to Frank H. Nowell (Q26202833), and if/when the bot processes that file again, it won’t make any changes to P170.
I'd say it's widespread. It is going to happen literally any time a user first uploads their own content to Flickr and than imports it to Commons, and literally any time a third party posts historical content to Flickr and someone imports that. - Jmabel ! talk17:50, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Autobiography of Banbhatta
Thank you again to everyone who participated in this process and much appreciation to the candidates for your leadership and dedication to the Wikimedia movement and community.
Over the next few weeks, the U4C will begin meeting and planning the 2024-25 year in supporting the implementation and review of the UCoC and Enforcement Guidelines. Follow their work on Meta-wiki.
@Jmabel and AntiCompositeNumber: Good points. @RamzyM (WMF): It does seem rather misleading to talk about U4C starting its work without mentioning that the U4C is sub-quorum and is limited to only carrying out actions that do not require votes. Boud (talk) 20:15, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Can I use this picture
I have found this on flickr[6]. It is a photo of an original picture held in the Royal Library, Copenhagen. It is described, in: Niklas Eriksson & Johan Rönnby (2017) Mars (1564): the initial archaeological investigations of a great 16th‐century Swedish warship, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 46:1, 92-107, DOI: 10.1111/1095-9270.12210 [7] as "Illustration from a Danish manuscript, signed Rudolf van Deventer 1585".
The flickr version claims copyright – but presumably that is only copyright of the photograph. The illustration itself is clearly over 400 years old.
Is there any route through the various copyright laws that would allow a version of this picture to be uploaded to commons? Obviously, as well as the flickr version, there is the one in the paper listed above. There is also a cropped version in Niklas Eriksson (2019) How Large Was Mars? An investigation of the dimensions of a legendary Swedish warship, 1563–1564, The Mariner's Mirror, 105:3, 260-274, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.2019.1615775 (Open access[8]) Other pictures of the wreck of this vessel look to be heavily protected in copyright law, so this old picture would be of real value. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
What's the cost of this rename to WMF? Do we really need to spend resources on this rather than actually doing some development? Enhancing999 (talk) 19:01, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Naming of concert photography categories
Do we have any guidelines on how to name categories on Commons for specific concerts? I feel like there is a lot of freedom. Maybe it would be worth developing a scheme such as: Artist name - Place - Date or different in a specific format?
Example of diversity in naming: c:Category:2013 concerts in the United StatesGower (talk) 05:47, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
It probably depends on the artist and concert but I don't think the place or date needs to be in the name of the category in a good perecentage of cases. That's what parent categories are for. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:07, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
a lot of times categories for events are just titled according to their official names. sometimes when that name is not special enough a year, a date or a location is appended in parentheses, e.g. (2024) or (London).
it certainly helps if you choose to name your categories in a very detailed format. imo, a format of "concert name (yyyy-mm-dd)" is good enough, because quite rarely there would be two concerts of the same name on the same date? if the concert has no name, then "artistname's concert (yyyy-mm-dd)". if there are multiple artists involved then "Concert at venuename, city (yyyy-mm-dd)". RZuo (talk) 07:20, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
When I name a file on my Windows PC in a folder, and then upload using the wizard, underscores and or dashes appear in the file name. How to stop it from doing that? -Broichmore (talk) 14:45, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
@Broichmore: Spaces get converted to underscores (if necessary) for URL purposes, but both are stored as spaces and can be used either way (I find the underscores ugly, and so does AutoEd). What is getting converted to dashes for you? — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:09, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
MediaWiki will generally convert characters not allowed in filenames to dashes. Typically that means : / \ < > [ ] | # { } but can also include more obscure characters, such as control characters. Bawolff (talk) 19:12, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
That is by design, it can be annoying when you want to download, and then reupload to another website and use the filename as a description of image. You then have to remove the underscores by hand. --RAN (talk) 19:03, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
The final text of the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now up on Meta in more than 20 languages for your reading.
What is the Wikimedia Movement Charter?
The Wikimedia Movement Charter is a proposed document to define roles and responsibilities for all the members and entities of the Wikimedia movement, including the creation of a new body – the Global Council – for movement governance.
Join the Wikimedia Movement Charter “Launch Party”
Join the “Launch Party” on June 20, 2024 at 14.00-15.00 UTC (your local time). During this call, we will celebrate the release of the final Charter and present the content of the Charter. Join and learn about the Charter before casting your vote.
Charter refers some "community leadership" as teh accountable body for each Wikimedia project, without defining what it means (the whole community, some specific members?);
Charter rules over all Wikimedia project policies, but not over those of the Wikimedia affiliates and the WMF;
Charter leaves WMF out of the Global Council (community + affiliates), as an independent body at the same power level;
While the whole community, including affiliate people, get to elect 12 seats out of 25 in the Global Council, affiliates themselves get an additional 8 seats for themselves, which I considere a severe and totally unjustified unbalance of power towards affiliates;
I don't think this is acceptable, and will certainly vote to block this charter. I advise you to read it carefully, and eventually block it as well, as I don't see how this could favor our community. DarwinAhoy!16:06, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Why was this picture deleted with speedy deletion criteria? There is an article in the Hebrew Wikipedia about Yuval Karniel. This is a very puzzling deletion. See Category:Yuval Karniel. I am a VRT volunteer, and the photographer User:Pinhas stern contacted VRT system and asked why it was deleted. Hanay (talk) 05:03, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
It feels like the servers' performance seems to be decreased compared to the last weeks. Database queries take a lot longer, file publishing sometimes has a huge delay, and also the amount of uploaded files and data has decreased considerably. Do you experience this, too and what could be the reasons? Greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:49, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, though I have to say that removing the deletion notice sounds a bit like marking your own homework. For some reason I have never felt totally comfortable with my level of understanding copyright law, which might explain that sentiment. And that bot must have worked pretty quickly on this occasion, because in the past I have often uploaded with the wrong or a missing licence then immediately edited with the correct licence from a file that I know to have an identical copyright situation. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:14, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
& @ThoughtIdRetired: Good stuff! Any idea why the cannonballs have flames from both sides, were they incendiary cannonballs? Was it a special weapon, or just an artist never drawing a cannonball before. --RAN (talk) 14:55, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
The paper cited as the source argues that the ship is "probably" Mars. The arguments seem reasonable as this is a two decked ship (rare at the time, certainly in the Baltic) which caught fire in battle and ultimately exploded. I would suggest taking a look at the two archaeological papers cited in the article on Mars. Frustratingly, there are different historical accounts of the action – it probably doesn't help that the Swedish admiral involved was a bit of a celebrity. I take it that the cannon balls are incendiary ammunition – the original source of the illustration was a treatise on naval gunnery, so it seems. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:39, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Many thanks. I'll leave it to you to cross refer notes on the two images. Also, same for whether or not Deventer is a von or a van? Once you decide, I'll enter him into Wikidata. Last, the cannballs, this is actually en:Chain shot of a kind? Broichmore (talk) 22:18, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
I recently noticed that COM:Exif is linked from Special:UploadWizard's warning that files may contain metadata. I migrated the translation to the Translate extension, and while doing so I noticed that a lot of the page is either out of date (there's advice for Windows XP) or not particularly useful to a non-technical user. I'm not in a position to rewrite it, as I only use exiftool on Linux to mess with metadata. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 18:59, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
I noticed that some wikis still upload files licensed GFDL and some even with disclaimers (and more still host such files).
So if there are anyone out there that have any good ideas on how to get all wikis to stop using disclaimers and if possible also the use of GFDL-only or would like to help make that happen it would be great.
I have made a list of wikis and files uploaded with GFDL (table below only have a few of the wikis and it is just to illustrate):
Is the June 2024 Ukraine peace summit logo copyright-free?
Does the 15-16 June 2024 Ukraine peace summit logo consist "entirely of a simple geometric combination of shapes and text"? The official alt text describes the ring pattern as "overlapping blue and yellow circles". I see them rather as 10 greyish concentric annuli and 10 yellowish concentric annuli with a partial transparency rule used to show the intersecting parts. So rather simple, but not completely trivial. The Swiss flag is on there too, and that is geometrically very simple and has at least one PD version on Commons.
@Boud: Looks OK. In the future, when providing links, it is much preferred not to use URLs that result in downloads to the file system of the computer that is accessing. - Jmabel ! talk22:35, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
OK, cool - thanks! Regarding the URL, I don't see how it's possible to provide a URL to a file that does not result in downloading the file. Without downloading the file, the file cannot be viewed.But you also refer to storage in a file system. My guess is what you mean is that it's better to provide a URL that can be used to view an image in a browser tab - in which case the file is downloaded and stored in RAM and very likely also in a cache on a file system, which the user will generally not notice. I did notice that that my browser refuses to display that file in a tab using that URL. Just now I found that removing /jcr:content/renditions/original is sufficient for browser display of the file, in which the file is only stored in RAM and in a cache area of the file system - so thanks for the tip :). I guess jcr:content/... redirects to a script which insists on downloading and storage in a file system and refuses to allow downloading and displaying in a browser tab. Boud (talk) 23:01, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Yes, everything is likely cached, but normally when you browse to a page you don't need to explicitly delete it to free the disk space back up. - Jmabel ! talk23:18, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
These type of coin operated 'game' machines are usualy only found in funfairs, but in Japan these are in permanent shops. I hesitade to call these shops, but how should we classify them?
This machine is basicaly an ticketing machine, but it has also a money change function where banknotes are exchanged for coins.Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:35, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
I propose to create a subcategory: 'Rail fare machines on rail vehicles in Japan'. Sometimes no ticket is issued but you get permission to leave the train/tram after dropping the coins or check out with a card. On some local trains you print a ticket with the starting station. Above is a display showing how much must be paid at the next station from the starting station. At buzy stations the payment/check is done at the station gate.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:21, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
I think he's asking about the watermark specifically. COM:WM makes a distinction between different types of watermarks, this one squarely lands in the second category (promotional watermarks). Those kinds of watermarks should be removed but the file is fine to host here, even with the watermark. ReneeWrites (talk) 23:06, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
It clearly should have been part of the conversation. Short-sighted to not have had a plan of the extensive nature, and the migration, and whether that change should have occurred. — billinghurstsDrewth23:37, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
What? This is an outrageous decision! This was 10-6 votes over the course of seven years, which means practically nobody participated and people were not aware that this was ongoing. If this were still open now, I'd vote Strong oppose; no other extant country needs to be disambiguated. Is there support for a CfD to quickly move it back? --Enyavar (talk) 13:02, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Strong oppose as well! There is a LOT of disagreement in the CfD, but all of a sudden Sbb1413 simply declared a clear consensus without notifying any of the several users who clearly disagreed with it. This CfD needs to be reopened and the small amount of change done already backed off until a real consensus is reached to make such a massive change. No more categories should be changed to (country) form until this happens. Josh (talk) 15:05, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Apologies for my decision. I couldn't understand that there were a lot of disagreements related to the country name. I won't close any controversial CFD now on. The CFD can be reopened without prejudice. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 15:08, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
@Sbb1413 Completely understood. I am very confident that it was a well meaning attempt, and hopefully I was clear in my comments on re-opening that this wasn't about you at all, just a need to close it correctly and make sure it really is a consensus. I've done the same thing, closing a discussion I thought was a consensus, only to get a ton of blowback upon implementing it, so I understand how a well-meaning effort can go like this. I have a ton of respect for your work and contributions to CfD's and hope I haven't dented your enthusiasm for participating. Josh (talk) 16:15, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Also apologies, my outburst yesterday was also not directed towards Sbb1413, who certainly meant to finally close one of the oldest CfDs. It just really surprised me to read about this even happening; and I have now lodged my concerns in the re-opened debate. This also got me thinking: there should be a way to announce such consequential CfDs to a larger audience, so that nobody gets surprised (but so that nobody gets accused of vote-rallying, either). I check the pump every other week now, so here's a good place to start. --Enyavar (talk) 17:51, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
It seems to me that if one disagrees with a closure, the right thing to do is to ask a neutral admin to review it, rather then merely reopening it and restart the discussion, without adding much new and copying over other discussions. Enhancing999 (talk) 18:42, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Unfortunately, such procedure is followed mainly in Wikipedia. Since the disagreement with closure rarely occurs in Commons, we don't need such bureaucratic procedure here until such disagreement is common enough. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 18:49, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
I'd assume everything relevant had been said and re-said.
I think someone should just assess the consensus and we can move from there. Right now it just leads to an even more prolonged mess due this reopening by the two of you. Enhancing999 (talk) 19:00, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Uploading while editing wikipedias: beneficial or problematic?
I don't know if someone had posted about the issues surrounding uploads made by uploaders while editing articles on Wikipedias. Several of these uploads are found by reviewers like me to be copyright violations (whether obvious or suspected), like stolen from the Internet or not freely-licensed images harvested from Flickr or other media repository sites (no prior checking of licensing compatibility).
@Jmabel I'm only referring to uplpads that were made through cross-wiki or while editing Wikipedia articles. IMO, these are usually not easily detected, and many of the uploads that I see are questionable. Time to restrict cross-wiki editing to three groups only? (Only autopatrolled, image reviewers, and admins/sysops can do cross-wiki and/or while-editing-on-Wikipedia uploads.) JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)04:23, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't know anything about coding syntax, so forgive me for this silly question, but when a change to the cross-wiki filter added an exemption for users whose user group includes the string "confirmed", did that have the unintended effect of exempting also the users who are "autoconfirmed", thus basically nullifying the main criteria of the filter? -- Asclepias (talk) 18:43, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment@Asclepias: any user_group noted is local (not at the wiki where editing) per Special:ListGroupRights and is not based on user_rights which you can note in the second of the columns. So autoconfirmed user_group is different from confirmed user_group; also noting the "confirmed" is a specific allocated right by admins, not inherited as per autoconfirmed. — billinghurstsDrewth01:06, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for replying. Yes, I get that about the nature of the user groups. But my doubt was about the syntax that code the conditions of the filters. In filter 153, when the exemption condition says that accounts are exempted when the string of characters "confirmed" is found in their "user_groups", does that mean that nothing else can exist before or after strictly the nine letters "confirmed", or does that find also "autoconfirmed" because the string "confirmed" is found also in "autoconfirmed"? I'm trying to find an explanation for why uploads are not filtered when apparently they should be if the main conditions of the filter were applied. -- Asclepias (talk) 02:28, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
@TheDJ mistakes may either be accidental or (as my experience in image reviewing suggests) intentional. The speedy deletion tags are enough to teach them the hard way. The prevalence of social media has made many netizens disrespect copyright rules; in the case of our country, it has been normal to not attribute original authors and instead go away with usage of "CTTO" or "credit(s) to the owner", even if authorities and scholars/media and information literacy instructors continueto remindFilipinos to refrain from using "credits to the owner" and cite / attribute sources and authors properly.
What I want to suggest, is to effectively disallow any cross-wiki or "edits-from-Wikipedias" uploading, except if the user belongs to three user groups – autopatrolled, license reviewer, and/or admin/sysop (the basis of user group should be the user group status at Commons, not on Wikipedias). This would hopefully trim down at least around a tenth (my guess) of possibly copyvio files. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)10:38, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
@Jeff G. the intention for cross-wiki uploading is good, but Wikimedia community unintentionally invited vandals and trolls to upload either out-of-scope or copyvio files seamlessly. This has resulted to numerous problematic files that needed to be reviewed and/or nuked one-by-one (image reviewing is an intense effort in which a mass deletion request could only be used as a "last-resort"). Some of these files, were only detected a year or two after upload, seemingly slipped off the supposed edit filter. In fact, I conducted some recent file reviews by finding recent WEBP images, as I can still recall the discussion at Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2023/11#Restrict webp upload. One such file I found was from a certain Alexandre071109 (talk·contribs), who uploaded numerous problematic files (in terms of copyright violations) through "upload-while-editing-Wikipedia" method.
Note that my perspective on that discussion has changed. Restricting WEBP upload does not solve things, as copyvios in PNG and JPEG file types can still be uploaded by vandals/trolls, using any easy methods in uploading. A possible viable solution is to only permit cross-wiki/"upload-while-editing-wiki" methods to experienced users. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)14:56, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Do we have any figures on how often "while editing" uploads turn out to be copyvios, compared to locally-uploaded ones? I flag a lot of copyvios in general but the connection hadn't occured to me. Belbury (talk) 15:20, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Actually I suppose the more important question is how many "while editing" uploads are useful ones. If this is a situation where 95% are copyvios or vandalism then it might be worth changing our approach to them, but we need some proper numbers on this. Belbury (talk) 22:32, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Still one more thing, sharing it here as an emphasis on the problem. File:Hack.intro.webp, "Uploaded while editing 'Babhalgaon' on en.wikipedia.org." Unused on w:en:Babhalgaon, and the uploader's intention is likely trolling or treating Commons as similar to a socmed site, since it is unreasonable to use a cybersecurity-related stock image in an article of a small Indian village of 7,000+ residents that has no connection to I.T. industry or even cybersecurity experts. No obvious relation or connection, incoherent, just used cross-wiki uploading to "play"/"troll"/"test upload" (whatever that may be). On top of that, it is a COM:NETCOPYVIO. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)21:19, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
The entire point of Commons is (or at least was at the beginning) that Wikipedia contributors can upload images to a common repository while editing. Enhancing999 (talk) 21:56, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
@Enhancing999 this just reinforces what one WMF peep observed regarding Commons (see here). In their observation, "the primary focus of the Commons community is the collecting of free content, rather than its dissemination." This may be suitable for another thread, but may be partly true after all. Worse, we are failing to curate several uploads while we are collecting free content, so copyvios are slipping through. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)15:10, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Another worthwhile question might be whether we should take more steps to identify and delete "abandoned" cross-wiki uploads, where an image was uploaded from another wiki, but where the image is no longer in use there (e.g. because the edit was reverted or the target page was deleted). My intuition is that those images are particularly likely to be out of scope and/or copyvios, and a lot of them will simply be unusable due to a lack of context. Any interest in reviewing these? Omphalographer (talk) 00:35, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment based on some of the recent commentary on the files that have been uploaded that should have been rejected, I have made a minor mod to the filter to slightly increase the file size to disallowed. There is probably a little more we can do to look to challenge files where they add a url within the "uploaded while editing ...". — billinghurstsDrewth02:26, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Omphalographer, after some more digging on enwiki article's history, it appeared he (yes, he) added his apparent real name on the notable people section list and claimed he is from a national cybersecurity agency from India. That now explains why his only upload here was a stock image representing cybersecurity. Possibly implicit self-promotion but his upload is a copyvio anyway. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)02:47, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Now we just need someone to divine a query that allows us to identify those files that have got the tag and are not used. And I would guess that we are looking for those that fit that criteria in the past week; alternatively works that don't have eyeball'd categorisation. — billinghurstsDrewth03:32, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
IMO, the two main reasons for which there is a high number of problematic files are: 1. there are much less requirements than through the Upload Wizard on Commons; 2. it is technically easier to upload files that way. So the probabilities for the rate of success lead to have people uploading a lot of files without much checking. Yann (talk) 08:34, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Somehow I missed the point that that a different tool is being used. It's actually quite convenient (more than most other methods) except that one needs to remove "own" claims afterwards (also I duplicated the file extension). I think I will use that going forward. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:50, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
The upload links the dewiki lists are in most cases for topics were you will not find any photo online. Therefore it is not possible to claim the work of someone else as own as these works do not exist. Additionally I think the society in Germany is much more aware on copyright regulation than in most other countries at least in Europe. To address the topic specific differences is might be useful to not allow cross-wiki upload at articles about people but allowing it for articles about geographical features. GPSLeo (talk) 09:47, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
RFC: Automatic categorisation both bane and gain; work needed to identify source of categorisation
Hi. Having been involved in large amounts of tidying over the years we are starting to get to an administrative burden from automatic categorisation where it is going wrong, Our use of complex and layered templates that directly apply categories, eg. Template:Topic by country, or the inhalation of categories based on Template:Wikidata infobox, or through Modules is requiring more and more time and more and more complex knowledge to resolve this (mis)categorisation where it goes wrong, or where it causes issues outside of our criteria.
We need some better technical solutions. We need a direct and overt ability to know the source of the categorisation be it:
direct category in the page
template that has local data
template that is importing information from wikidata
Some of this sort of exists when one has Com:HotCat as a gadget, though the other two have no ready means to identify the source.
Categorisation is clearly something where automation is useful and it is not in itself the problem. When it is wrong, and needs a lot of work to resolve, then it moves from problem to big problem.
We also need a better means for getting resolution categorisation fixes of the points in #2 and #3. We need guidance to people to how they best address categorisation that has gone wrong and they don't know how to fix it. Some of that is that we need to review our documentation in the templates to ensure that they have guidance for the appropriate use of the template, and what it actually does, as well as the guidance on the appropriate use of the parameters. Template designers/creators need to be involved in that space as an expectation, and those that put them through major rewrites. If it is hard to use and hard to understand then the community needs to challenge both its design and its purpose.
If we don't do something the categorisation issues are going to continue to multiply, and the rules that we have in place will be ignored and we will just have mess. I know that I am partly just stating the problem, and not necessarily the solution, however, at this point I am looking for comments about where others think we are, and some general thoughts on how we can address this at a higher level before drilling down into all the solutions. — billinghurstsDrewth00:22, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
It's probably a side thing, but I have a serious problem with categories being forced on us through infoboxes. Like there's a ton of people who are recipients of minor, non-notable awards that automatically get sorted into categories for said awards and their various sub-awards when it's not really useful to have things categorized down to that small of a level. You can't really do anything about it on our end either. Regardless, we shouldn't have how we categorize things dictated by other projects period. We certainly don't name categories based on standards set by Wikipedia editors, or keep files that violate the guidelines simply because of how other projects do things. -Adamant1 (talk) 00:34, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Wikidata Infoboxes provide given name, surname, and birth and death dates, and "living people", which should presumably be uncontroversial. [Similarly, some gender info so it can do "men by name" and "women by name" as well as "people by name". - Jmabel ! talk 01:53, 9 June 2024 (UTC)] I'm not at all sure they should do any other automatic addition of categories, though there may be some others that are equally clear. I haven't really seen this thing with awards, but that may say something about what topics I work on. @Adamant1: can you give an example and (anyone) is there documentation somewhere about what categories infoboxes add? - Jmabel ! talk01:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I don't necessarily have an issue with infoboxes providing given name, surname, or birth and death dates. That's about it though. If you want an example of what I'm talking about checkout the subcategories in Category:Recipients of Russian military awards and decorations. Like categories for people that have won the various "X Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" medals. For instance Category:Heydar Aliyev, where there's like 30 categories for minor awards that I assume were all added by the infobox and can't be removed or edited. The whole thing is totally ridiculous overkill. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:11, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
The same way we decide anything else of the sort. It does seem odd for the decision to be hidden in a template. - Jmabel ! talk01:44, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Interesting territory, and there I think that we need to take a bit of a step back. The first question has to be whether the category should exist here, prior to what and how it is populated. Only after that can we then discuss the means that we want things populated, and whether they are falling into a variation of Com:OVERCAT. I don't mind cats coming from WD data as long as it is sustainable and comparatively easy to manage and resolve. It is the deep/problematic dives that we need to resolve, either in the finding or in the fixing. — billinghurstsDrewth02:18, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
That's an excellent point by @Billinghurst. Fundamentally, we should be creating good categories and populating them in compliance with Commons category policies first and foremost, regardless of how this is done, be it manually or using templates and other tools. I agree very strongly with @Adamant1 that some of these categorization schemes (e.g. "recipients of X award") which clearly are really about storing data points about a topic in the form of categorization are not good form, as they aren't really about categorizing media, but trivial categorization of topics, which is not the purview of Commons. Josh (talk) 15:31, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
But as far as I can see it is not at all documented there; not even the mechanism (buried somewhere other than the code on that page) is documented. It's not at all clear where one would look to see what properties/categories are handled this way. - Jmabel ! talk01:48, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
I think Wikidata could be helpful for populating categories about video games, movies, television shows and animes. Adding the correct categories by hand is somewhat of an tedious process Trade (talk) 01:41, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Wikidata Infoboxes provide given name, surname, and birth and death dates, and "living people", which should presumably be uncontroversial. I'd dispute that! Broad categories like "living people" or "2000 deaths" have limited utility on Commons. There are extraordinarily few situations where they are genuinely useful as a means of locating media. Omphalographer (talk) 02:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Bollocks. The Commons category structure has been an untenable mess for years. A large part of the problem expressly lies with editors from Wikidata and Wikipedia who bring their baggage with them and fail to understand that Commons is a separate site with its own policies. A prime example of the Wikidata side of the problem is with the "Births in" categories. These editors have actively sandbagged a clear segregation from "People of" categories, resulting in a massive clusterfuck of superfluous categorization and a failure to understand what a meta category actually is, as opposed to what they personally think a meta category should be. In the few times where Commons admins have crossed paths with me in attempting to clean up this mess, I gained the impression that those admins had zero understanding of COM:CAT. However, let's not get bogged down with examples, because the problem's a lot bigger than any example.RadioKAOS (talk) 02:05, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
@RadioKAOS: I am very comfortable with us using WD data to categorise here. My issue primarily is how we fix it when it goes askew. Our categories, our categorisation, and decision-making how we use WD data to categorise here. We will always face the issue of implementation of decisions from contributors who edit elsewhere, so the issue isn't their ideas, it is the consensus they need to reach in its implementation, instead of unilateral implementation.
So for the moment, rather than stray into the "whataboutism" it would be nice if we focus on the issue, rather than inflate to a blame game. — billinghurstsDrewth02:27, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: Not to point fingers at Wikipedia users, but I think it gets to one route cause of the problem, which is that it seems like people from other projects use categories as a rudimentary way to store (or display) information about a subject. Not necessarily organize media related to it. Like with the example of categories related to awards, if you look at Category:Ivan Matyukhin there's 10 categories for awards that they have received but absolutely zero images in the category having to do with them.
So the categories are just being used as rudimentary ways to store and display biographical facts about Ivan Matyukhin, not to organize media related to the awards. And again not to point fingers, but I don't think that's something regular users of Commons would do on our end. Regardless, I think the problem could largely be solved if we were clearer about (and better enforced) the idea that categories are intended to group related pages and media. Not act as shoo-ins for Wikidata data item's or something. But then we don't have the ability to do that if the categories are being automatically created and added by the infoboxes either. So... --Adamant1 (talk) 11:37, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1: Creation of a cat and the population of a cat are different and separate acts. For WD, they are also both happening here, not at WD, as they are in templates that we control. Someone has created the category and someone has added the code to Template:Wikidata infobox for the population to occur. The automation thereafter is due to having created the cat, and done the coding to add the cat, the population is from data at WD. If that is the issue, then can we please address that in a different thread. At this time, it is the ability to locate and identify from where the categorisation is taking place and resolving that. — billinghurstsDrewth01:21, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@Billinghurst If I understand you correctly, it seems what you are saying is that it is not the automation per se that is the problem, but instead our process of having created these kinds of categories in the first place...if Category:Ivan Matyukhin exists and the 10 'Category:Recipient of...' categories exist, we can hardly blame the automated tool for adding those presumably accurate connections, but instead it rests on us as a community to have the deeper discussion and develop a consensus on how much of this kind of categorization we should have in the first place. Am I reading you correctly? Josh (talk) 15:41, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@Billinghurst If I understand you correctly, it seems what you are saying is that it is not the automation per se that is the problem, but instead our process of having created these kinds of categories in the first place...if Category:Ivan Matyukhin exists and the 10 'Category:Recipient of...' categories exist, we can hardly blame the automated tool for adding those presumably accurate connections, but instead it rests on us as a community to have the deeper discussion and develop a consensus on how much of this kind of categorization we should have in the first place. Am I reading you correctly? Josh (talk) 15:41, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@Joshbaumgartner: My original point, is the fixing of problematic categorisation which was the primary reason for my raising the issue. These are all categories that are created by us, and the coding in the templates is by us, either through WD infobox or other Commons templates. Finding how and where to fix things is increasingly becoming difficult, and I am looking for solutions there. We need to show how it gets there, and either how to fix it, or where to request the remedy, AND we cannot be relying on individuals. [So a clear means to identify auto-populated cats, and in the documentation in the template to show it autopopulates and where.]
My second point is that we own our categories and their creation. If we allow them to exist, then auto-population is okay, though the criteria in my first point needs to be met. Point 2 cannot exist in isolation. — billinghurstsDrewth04:02, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
I fixed a few cases when trying to work on categories stuck in Category:Non-empty category redirects. This concerned mostly categories on category pages (not files) and -- beyond the question which name to choose -- the categorization itself was rarely controversial. (There is some debate about the "old map" and "historical map" categories at Module_talk:Messtischblatt, categorization added for years).
Categories added by Template:Topic by country are actually relatively straightforward, but that template did lack documentation (somewhat improved yesterday). They can highlight problems in our category tree. Wikidata was rarely much of an issue. (I did blame it by error when a category was added with &html entities).
A search in the source text of Template: or Module: namespace usually finds the definition of a categorization. "|setscats= " in template documentation is meant to help. A general problem with categories added by templates is that everything needs to be refreshed if it's changed. Once one was identified a search with PetScan on subcategories of Category:Non-empty category redirects helped find other problematic uses. I noted some finds on User talk:RussBot/category redirect log. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:14, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
To me this is that if a template categorises other pages, then the template needs to specifically say that is its purpose, and give clear statements of what it is doing, ie. where to expect to see results. Ideally I would like to see a complete list of categories that it populates as that makes reverse finding useful. I would also like to see categories that are populated automatically also have a maintenance category that says that can be autopopulated by such and such template. Clarity is gold in these situations. If there is a master template for broad categorisation, then it should have a section for problems noted, and it should be identified for watching by numbers of people. (fixing problems early before they propagate is also gold) — billinghurstsDrewth04:27, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Not sure how practical that is. Potentially it could mean that one would have to edit every parent category (A of X, B of X, C of X) for each subcategory (NEW of X) instead of just a category.
Unless we find a central way to add them, this could mean that for 250 new categories one would have to edit every occurrence of several parent categories (All A of .., All B of .., All C of ..), possibly thousands. Enhancing999 (talk) 12:18, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks a lot @Billinghurst: for starting this RfC, I totally agree with your description of the problems that templates can create. So we need to:
inventorize the problems
give solutions, how can we address these problems.
Agree Templates are often a great tool, for instance for the date categories and the template that is importing information from wikidata (as long as it is limited to the basic categories, like given name, surname, birth and death dates (useful to decide whether works of an artist are in PD), people/men/women by name).
But I am struggling too often with automatic categorisation by templates, and indeed Template:Topic by country is one of them (others are about photographers). Some of my problems:
The template is automatically adding parent categories that do not exist for that country, while a parent of it or another alternative category does exists, and/or there are not enough files or subcategories to justify creating the red one (and it is a lot of work to create new ones over and over again, which I consider part of the "administrative burden" Billinghurst is talking about).
Sometimes there is even a better child category for a country/location than the automatically added one (for instance for the photographer by location by date: the standard parent is the location, but sometimes "history of location" or even a category that groups all the photographers together for the location and/or date would be better).
Some templates make use of lists or other pages that I cannot find, they might be hidden, but anyway not documented (with links) in the template.
Though it is indeed probably a side thing, I agree with Adamant1 that there are editors who create categories, just because there is a Wikidata item or an EN-WP category/page with the same name, no matter whether we need them on Commons or not. And then it is a lot of work to put that right again. That also contributes to the administrative burden.
Suggestions for solutions:
Before you intend to create a new template that is more complicated than a simple date template: present your proposal to the community (at least in plain English, you might of coarse also present (a part of) the proposed program), ask for comment. Same for adding automatically new parent categories by a WD template.
Good documentation should be a basic feature in each template, before a new one is published or in use:
in plain English, like functional specifications; explaining what the template does (what actions), how it does it ( mechanisms and for instance: what lists/other things/links it uses), when to use it (in what kind of categories) and how to use it (what exactly should you do to make it work). Written with people in mind who know nothing or very little of programming, but are interested in templates. This should also be checked and done for existing templates as well.
technically, for editors who will solve problems when the creator is not available.
A procedure for when a template creates trouble:
Where to drop the problem?
Who is going to solve it? Especially when the original creator is not available (or refuses to solve it, what I have experienced as well).
Can we remove the template and add better parent categories (and often a navigation template) instead? Without the risk that the next editor will reverse it?
Question@Mike Peel: do you have a system-based solution for how we can readily identify the categories that are/can be populated from WD (and thinking as maintenance cats) if it isn't already. What is done at WD end, and what can be done at Commons end to be clearly overt? — billinghurstsDrewth00:56, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Solution mode
So taking the next step, what exactly do we want to achieve?
Starting simple, what if anything do we want to achieve at
and without getting into the detail, where else are we looking to get information into place, or where might we need clear procedural change, or mention of expectations. — billinghurstsDrewth00:50, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
It looks like the guidelines are roughly speaking OK, perhaps just some additions. The main issues might be applying and enforcement. JopkeB (talk) 07:42, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
For applying these policies, this can be done manually or automatically. To support manual application, the best tools are well-written and easily-accessible guidelines for editors of all levels on how to do so correctly and efficiently. For automated application, good tools, such as templates, are needed. These tools should allow for manual override (e.g. a nocat parameter to suppress automated categorization on a given application) where applicable. Documentation should make it clear to users how to use these options.
For enforcement, which I see basically as maintenance, automation is valuable in the form of good monitoring tools, such as automated flags for cases that are outside of the guidelines and spotting areas of inconsistent category organization and naming. However, actually addressing these situations is incumbent on human editors to do. As for the term 'enforcement', I associate that more with the involvement of authority, such as admin action to stop abuse or dealing with intentional disruption, while 'maintenance' doesn't necessarily imply that previous editors did anything wrong per se, but just that we are continuing to evolve and improve our categorization and so forth.
Ultimately, human editors are the key to successful categorization. Templates and other tools can be used by them to help increase their efficiency, but it is up to the human to ensure those tools are correctly applied. For example, applying a template and then saying that the categorization must be adhered to because that is what the template added is not appropriate. Thus the guidelines should focus on ensuring editors understand what the end goal is of categorization and provide them with tools on how to get there, with or without templates and gadgets. I would certainly like to start looking at some specific language being proposed for the above policies to get to the meat of the matter. Josh (talk) 14:55, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Undoubtfully tools can play a role. But I think step one is to convince people who create (and/or adjust) templates, that creating(/adjusting) a template is only half of the job. The other half consists of creating(/adjusting) good documentation (and testing according to a test plan). JopkeB (talk) 11:55, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Updating Commons:Templates and Commons:Template documentation is certainly a good idea. Both of these have relatively little and out-of-date information, so both lack utility in their current guise. The implications of what is changed are significant however, with a great potential for unintended consequences, so new wording should be first proposed with significant input solicited before any actual adoption of a new and revamped template policy is published. I think it is an effort worth doing, however, and look forward to participating. Josh (talk) 14:30, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
On the Wikidata side, if we are going to allow any element of Commons categorization to be controlled by Wikidata properties, then there has to be a clear rule set agreed to on the WD side for each of those controlling properties to ensure that changes on the WD side do not adversely damage our categorization scheme here. For example, existing properties such as 'instance of' and 'subclass of' are probably are unworkable, as the WD scheme for these is well established but quite different for Commons categorization in many ways. Perhaps a new set of properties will need to be thought out and proposed on WD specifically to support Commons categorization. This could all be very useful, and a cross-project collaboration effort which brings both Commons and WD minds together may well be able to work out some good tools for this. Josh (talk) 14:30, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
As part of a Wikimedia France project on sign languages I uploaded better files for a whole category of 100 files and I have the authorisation to remove the old files. I see Wikidata uses these files 83 times (see https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous.php ). I would like wikimedia projects to migrate to the new .webm files, and delete the old .ogv files. How should I proceed ?
Done: I added the `other_versions` value to the {tl|Elix}} template. Maybe it will help bots to detect those pages, remove them, and put a Redirect in place. Yug(talk)18:37, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Is this category for flags that are fictional? Or is it for flags for countries featured in creative works? There is no way to infer this from the category name alone Trade (talk) 22:21, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
As I've interpreted it, it's both - they're flags which are fictional, and which have appeared in fictional works. I'm not sure how you'd have one without the other. Omphalographer (talk) 05:00, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Right, so we are we showing both type of flags into the exact same category? This is just a mess to keep track of Trade (talk) 18:22, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
What do you mean by "both types"? As far as I'm aware, there is (or should be) only one type of image in this category - depictions of flags which stem from fictional works, and which represent countries which only exist within those works of fiction. A typical example would be File:Gilead-Flag.gif, the flag of the fictional country of Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale. Omphalographer (talk) 18:31, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
There is nothing in the category nor it's name to indicate that only flags from creative works should be features. Trade (talk) 22:24, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
I could be totally off base here but I've done some work in the area and I think at least some of the problem is the ambiguity of the parent categories and how the whole thing is structured going up from there. For instance the category has both Category:Flags in fiction and Category:Special or fictional flags as parents. But then Category:Special or fictional flags is also a parent of Category:Flags in fiction. So it's just circular. Plus the Wikidata entry for Category:Special or fictional flags appears to be about "unofficial flag", which really has nothing to with fictional flags to begin with. Regardless, it seems like this combines "special", "fictional", and "unofficial" flags into the same category and does it in a way were the categories are just circular. We should just pick a term, go with it, and make the parents categories actually lead somewhere meaningful. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:06, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
How about "Flags of countries from creative works"? This could then be a subcategory of "Flags from creative works", with it being a subcategory of "Symbols from creative works" Trade (talk) 21:57, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
I think not. That could as easily mean fictional flags of real countries as flags of fictional countries. - Jmabel ! talk01:10, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
The current name applies the adjective 'fictional' to the country, not the flag, which indicates that a fictional flag of a real country would not apply here. A fictional country is one from a fictional work (our scope would limit this further to notable fictional works), so any flag that is used by such a country would go here. However, renaming this category to "Flags of countries from creative work" could be interpreted either in the exact same way (expression: "(flags) of (countries from creative works)") or as Jmabel does as fictional flags of real countries (expression: "(flags of countries) from (creative works)") which is always a possibility when using a double-prepositional phrase. Thus I think the current category name is more clear. Josh (talk) 13:47, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
At this point Commons have hundreds if not more than a thousand fictional flags while flags from creative works makes up less than a hundred files. One is very clearly an issue, the other is not. Trade (talk) 14:23, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1, Category:Special or fictional flags is a complete violation of the Selectivity Principle and Simplicity Principle. A special flag (presumably described by the linked WD item as a privately used, unofficial flag) is very different from a fictional flag. The former is very much a real flag, while the latter is patently not real. Since these alone are two different topics, they should be two distinct categories, not to mention any other hodge podge that is currently in this category. As for the names, "special flags" is a horrible category name, as 'special' is way to broad of a concept. We should focus on what the flags represent (and hence whether they fit in our scope), so 'flags of countries', 'flags of social movements', 'flags of companies', 'flags of individual people', etc. are all potentially good concepts for categories. I would say the the OP category 'flags of fictional countries' also is fine as a concept for this reason. Josh (talk) 14:02, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
@Omphalographer: way back on your 05:00, 11 June 2024 remark about "I'm not sure how you'd have one without the other," it seems to me that most micronations are "fictional countries" without necessarily involving any fictional creative work. I don't think there is any escaping needing an explanatory headnote for any name we might come up with in this terrain. - Jmabel ! talk19:17, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
I think there is a meaningful distinction we can make between flags which are generally acknowledged as artifacts of fictional works (e.g. flags from books, movies, video games, etc) and flags which were created to be used in the real world to represent some entity, even if it's an entity of dubious existence like a micronation. Omphalographer (talk) 20:31, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Just correct it, it is nothing new that sometimes editors make bad categorization choices in good faith. --Enyavar (talk) 12:37, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Just correct it that requires me, and for other cases many other editors, to be able to quickly and easily see what the source of the category is. Hence my question.
(And I went through the cat tree but didn't check Demographics of the European Union somewhere in the branches above it and don't know how you found it). Prototyperspective (talk) 12:55, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Right, you were hoping for a method there. I admit, I just randomly went up the tree from the in-file-categories to see which upwards category was most likely to lead towards "maps of the world". --Enyavar (talk) 13:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Example (this is already part of the FastCCI gadget) Yes and I was looking for a method that it isn't manually going through all the category's cats' cats etc but quick reliable technical method. I found such a way today but I'm looking for something that does just that: the FastCCI tool can load all quality images anywhere in branch of a given category and when clicking on any item of it, it loads how the file is placed in it – see the screenshot. It's just this feature that I'd like to use on a given file, eg by entering the file's url into an additional searchbox shown on the category page or anything else. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps the problem is that there aren't really clearly-defined 'source cats' (or more commonly referred to as a 'main category' or 'main topic') for topics in the category tree. We even have a maincat tag that has been added to some, but still no real agreement on what exactly makes one exact category a main category vs. any other. We have parent categories and sub-categories, but any category could conceivably be considered a main cat for all of its child tree, depending on the perspective of a given user. The reality is that categories are not exactly class-subclass or set-subset relationships. They may resemble that in many cases, but they are not limited to that. Categories are really not even trees so much as webs, so it as desirable as it might be to have a 'source cat' with some kind of defined 'tree' of sub-cat branches under it, that just isn't how categories ultimately are structured, and your example shows a lot of the reasons why.
Your example File:Krettnach Wegekreuz L138.jpg at the right illustrates the problem with rooting the category tree. It seems to present a singular linear path of categorization. The image in question is in 15 categories directly, but this tool only picks 1 to navigate up through. That makes sense as this tool is focused on quality images but even then this file is in 4 quality image categories...it picked 1. The same pick-one problem recurs at each level, leading to essentially a random category navigation exercise to a certain level. Josh (talk) 16:43, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
The main category/ies subject is certainly interesting but it's pretty much unrelated to this topic: this is about finding why a specific image is located in a specific category (such as the example file somewhere underneath "Maps of the world").
Yes, that's a good point but still not really what this topic is about: that one can check the source of categorization for a file (its category path) doesn't mean that it will or needs to be altered just if it doesn't seem to be right. For example, the "Maps of the world" cat contains a "Category:Maps of the world in art" that contains a lot of files one wouldn't expect to find anywhere underneath "Maps of the world". When one sees that it's just included due to the recurring standardized "xyz in art" subcategory, it won't need to be removed. It would be useful if for example tools/views that show files from many subcategories of a category like FastCCI could distinguish between several kinds of subcategories to e.g. exclude certain ones or give the user the option to do so but that's not what this is about and just something that could follow up on this.
This gets back to something I had wanted to pursue when we first introduced SDC, but most of the people pushing SDC were more or less antagonistic to categories, so they weren't interested in integrating the two well. Little by little some of this has made its way into Wikidata regardless, but not in a way that is particularly useful to us, because when it made its way into Wikidata, Commons' needs weren't particularly considered. In particular, distinctions in Wikidata like "subclass of" vs. "instance of" vs. "location" as a relation between items are all at one remove from categories, which are at best related to their parents (or, more precisely, to their parents' "main topics") with "category combines topics". It might yet be possible to piece this all back together and use structured data (I would hope in Wikidata rather than SDC, but I'd settle for either) to express the nature of each case of category inheritance. - Jmabel ! talk18:35, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I think SDC can only ever be useful if it gets synced with categories and changed whenever categories are changed. For most files SDC are missing and easily half of those have them have flawed and/or very incomplete data in there, the data is a bit hidden and little cared about so people don't notice if there's false or vandalizing data. An example issue is that "depicting" something is different from a file having something as a subject. Lastly, I don't think SDC for WMC files has any use at this point whatsoever so is just a time-drain that could and would better be populated by bots/scripts only that largely use well-maintained categories if at all since it mostly just duplicates metadata & maintenance. Not even Wikidata is well-maintained, for example the items for subjects as fundamental and large-order as "Past", "Present", and "Future" were heavily flawed before I fixed them and categories and their contents should and could be as query-able as Wikidata items (example where they're not: one can't do a petscan and then run WMC category operations on all the files in the results). Most studies are also not in Wikidata, just an arbitrary 1% or so subset of them and queries for such as Scholia does them for charts about studies on a given research topic etc or by a specific author are not useful at this point either. Often there is data in categories not in fields that make WDInfoboxes auto-set categories and these infoboxes cause UI issues (reduce columns). Manually (really in 2024?) translated captions are frequently moved to other languages by vandals. WD item data could be useful to make the relation between categories more explicit, often they are phrased in a way that explains the relation but it could be more explicit.
I was thinking about how to make these more useful and maybe I can concretize some proposal soon. This also related to this question here as a tool that shows cat-paths for files could be useful for eliminating miscategorizations better enabling the categories to be used by bots/scripts that populate structure data / Wikidata based on them.
I started this gallery in my user space. Before I move it to the public space (ideally a more comprehensive version), I would like to make sure that such a gallery complies with what is considered acceptable in this project. Otherwise I would gladly leave it where it is. There is not corresponding category after all. But from the reader's point of view, I see multiple practical purposes of such a gallery, for example can it serve as an aid to identify species that they have seen in a garden. Stilfehler (talk) 16:57, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Is it correct to use the "Extracted from" template for images that are merely filtered and aren't a crop or "extracted" in any meaningful way? (And if it *is* okay, what's the difference between that and *any* derivative image?)
Since I didn't receive a response or any form of engagement the first time round, I figured it would be more productive to ask here whether or not this was okay or not? Ubcule (talk) 19:03, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
The template documentation of "extracted from" explicitly says that it is for cropped images. However, the two examples are probably not derivative works either in the sense of Commons:Derivative works (you do not seem to be claiming to have added distinctly copyrightable content). They are probably simply "retouched pictures". -- Asclepias (talk) 19:27, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
@Asclepias: - Okay, so we're both agreed that the use of "extracted from" for such images is misleading and incorrect regardless.
Sometimes a source is just a source. IMO, the simple normal link in the source field does just fine. Optionally, a thumbnail can be displayed in the other versions field (with or without particular format). -- Asclepias (talk) 21:59, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel and Asclepias: - The problem with {{Other version}} is that it doesn't make clear which is the original or "parent" version. Particularly if I'm uploading a modified version of an existing image, I like to be clear that mine is the "derivative" version (in the more general sense) and to be able to make that relationship obvious in a manner that's clear and consistent for both users and automated processing.
Ditto simply displaying a thumbnail in the "other versions" field- it has no semantic meaning.
@Asclepias: - I honestly haven't come across anyone complaining about my use of {{Derived from}} until now, and I've been editing here for a long time. I'm still not 100% convinced that "derivative" in this sense *was* necessarily required to include/imply "distinctly copyrightable" input?
Merely reminding that the documentation of the template "Derived from" says that it is specifically for derivative works, which has a precise meaning legally and in the Commons official guideline on the matter. If you want to use the template in a broader sense than what that says, do what you want. But then you could hardly complain when Mewhen123 uses the template "Extracted from" in a broader sense than what it says. -- Asclepias (talk) 00:39, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
@Jmabel and TheDJ: - Apparently you are technically correct that- by its own definition- the Commons' {{Retouched picture}} template covers anything "which [..] has been digitally altered from its original version". By that definition, this would count anything up to and including even (e.g.) a re-saved JPEG with no visible difference as "retouched"(!)
Regardless, I suspect that the majority of people would take "retouched" to mean an image which had undergone more serious and active modification of the fundamental content itself beyond (e.g.) trivial brightness, contrast, colour balance tweaks etc., even if that wasn't actually the case (Note this redirect on English Wikipedia).
You'll understand why I might feel this to be misleading, whether or not it falls within Common's (own) definition.
Regardless, it seems odd- and frustrating- then that we don't at least have a proper "most general case" root template to indicate that one file is based or derived (in the more general sense) another "parent" image and nothing more than that.
And, as TheDJ already indicated above, hacking such information non-systematically into "freeform" fields is no use to to automated systems, Wikipedia's included. Ubcule (talk) 13:47, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
Category:Engraved illustrations from Iconographic Encyclopedia of Science, Literature and Art, Published in 1851
Похоже, была ошибка атрибуции в источнике, который использовался при загрузке. Наверное, был образ диска, где эти иллюстрации були смешаны с иллюстрациями из ЭСБЕ. Нужно ботом описания исправить. Займусь задачей, только нужно сначала сверить действительно ли все ли они из Iconographic Encyclopedia --Butko (talk) 15:34, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
Those seem like a bit of a special case. Those categories are less of an intersection by date, more photos of an event which is known primarily by its date. I would hesitate to generalize from there. Omphalographer (talk) 19:43, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Having complete coverage of useful subjects is generally a good thing - that's why we have GLAM collaborations. While there is a need to avoid actual duplicates (and yes, a few uploaders need to be reminded of that fact), I don't think that's the main factor behind the increasing number of questionable categories. A great many subjects are extremely complex and will rightfully have a large number of files; our category system should be designed to allow users to navigate those files efficiently.
The key issues to me are:
How do we decide which intersection categories are useful and which are not (the reason I started this discussion)
What tools need to be created to enhance the category system and have it adequately serve the 100+ million files on Commons, and
For tools that are beyond the resources of Commons volunteers to create and maintain, how do we get the WMF to prioritize making them?
Without steering the discussion too far away from that first point, there seems to be general agreement that we need the ability to arbitrarily subdivide a category by certain parameters. In particular, we need a tool that can allow you to find all files in a category (or category tree) within a selected date range - and have it be available on the category pages as well as in the search function. This would eliminate a large swath of intersection categories - in particular, the ones that require the most labor to populate and provide the least benefit. Division by date, file type, resolution, and license could all be done with existing structured data; it would provide a great deal of functionality without getting into any areas likely to be controversial. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 06:08, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
The question of intersection categories is a constant one on COM:CFD. Essentially, nearly every topic category is an intersection category. Thus I don't think how we treat discussions on intersection categories is really that different from how we approach topic categories in general. There are sometimes calls to arbitrarily limit the amount of sub-categorization of a topic (essentially a process of intersecting categories), but these rarely gain consensus as it usually involves unintended consequences and lots of exceptions. Essentially, the basics are that there ought to be enough media to support an intersection category, that the intersection be sufficiently distinguishable to make a distinct category, and there it offer some meaningful sub-division of its parent categories. If any of these are in question, the issue is raised and discussed at COM:CFD (or other appropriate forum) and consensus for that particular use case is implemented. Basically, if a user creates a category, so long as it does not violate Commons category policies, until there is a consensus that it is not useful, it is presumed useful and kept.
As for tools we need, better and more accessible search tools that obviate the need to use categories as search criteria would be high on my wish list. There are some good SPARQL query tools and gadgets that are helpful for those users with the initiative to learn and apply them, but they are not available to the mainstream and most users I would presume are not interested in learning to code just to view the media they are looking for. User-friendly interfaces built directly into the Commons interface (not requiring opt-in gadgets or third-party sites) are a must to make these useful for more than a small group of users.
Clearly, involvement beyond volunteer contributors will be needed for at least some of these tools, and I have absolutely no clue how to push that cart. I'm not politically minded, nor am I steeped in the inner circle workings of the project, so I wouldn't even know how to start such a drive, but I'll gladly sign on to voice support for valuable tools. I added my name to several items on the wishlist a while ago...not sure if that did anything.
While I continue to look forward to better tools and development in the future and am eager to see how we can use them to best effect, I have been doing Wiki projects since 2005 and the idea that we shouldn't worry about making current systems work since there is a new tool just around the corner that will solve all problems is a song I have heard for going on 20 years now and one that all too rarely fails to deliver on the promises. Thus, my approach is to make the system we have now work as well as possible, and here that means making sure the categorization system provides the most robust and accessible system possible for finding media. I'll be pleased the day search tools obviate the need for it, but until that is shown to be true, I will be opposed to any attempt to limit categorization on the promise that search tools are the answer. Josh (talk) 17:03, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Subcategories shouldn't be created simply because a category had a large number of files in it. If there are a lot of images related to something, that is what it is; we don't need to introduce artificial distinctions just to make categories smaller. Time-based category intersections in particular seem to have little value unless they're categorizing something which changes over time in a way that's significant to the topic. Photos of a person, perhaps (although breaking it down by month would still be excessive); photos of generic topics like weather, not so much. Omphalographer (talk) 15:01, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Chronological categorization seems to be coming under increased scrutiny lately. As the number of hosted files continues to grow and topical categories get larger, there seems to be increasing efforts to diffuse topics by date, and by increasingly precise dates at that. Beside appearing to be a benign effort to diffuse bloated topic categories, there can be specific technical value to categorization by specific date for maintenance, curation, and some specific research efforts. However, the unintended consequence is that topic files become buried in layers of date-based categorization, frustrating most users looking for images of that topic who are not concerned with exactly when the image is of. I think it is fair to conclude that the vast majority of users looking for images of snow in Massachusetts do not care if happens to be January or February of 2012, or if it is February of 2012 or 2013. Maybe one might want to focus on more recent times vs. pictures of yore, and some may indeed be interested in January vs. February for seasonal differences (not caring which exact year), but most don't probably care about the exact year even, much less month or day. Requiring them to select one particular moment in time to see images is very frustrating for most. This also makes normal diffusion more difficult, as files moved to specific dates are less likely to correctly get diffused to more appropriate sub-categories (e.g. a pic already moved to Snow in Massachusetts in February 2012 is less likely to ever be correctly be put into Snow in Boston as it no longer appears directly under Snow in Massachusetts).
The solution to this dilemma would be one where the files are available in the main topic category for users to look through without requiring they select a specific date to be limited to, while also permitting the images to be collated by date to whatever level of specificity is meaningful for the topic. We have the same issue with categorization by media type. Most users are not looking for images of a precise type to limit their browsing to, but such categorization does have a lot of technical value to specific users. What we have done is make the Category:Media types tree separate from the Category:Topics tree. Files can be added to the Category:Media types tree and be diffused to whatever exact media type specification they fit, however, they are not to be removed from the Category:Topics tree (i.e. the main topic categories for the file). The Category:Media types categories are to be "__HIDDEN__" which puts them in a separate list of categories (only visible to users who elect to see non-topical categories).
We could adopt this approach for date-based categorization, creating Category:Chronological categories as a separate non-topical tree. This would allow continued categorization by specific date without diffusing topical categories. For example, in the case of Massachusetts snow, all files regardless of date would be present under Category:Snow in Massachusetts, a topical (visible) category. The files themselves can be additionally categorized by date under Chronological categories to whatever level of precision those involved feel is warranted. They could be accessed from the main category via Snow in Massachusetts by period which would still appear under the main category for all users. Josh (talk) 17:44, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Is there a reason specific dates can't be off loaded to structured data? I think that would be a better way to do things since we are already having issues with the amount of needless categories in general. Really most categories could, and probably should, be off loaded to structured data at this point. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:54, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
To query for images from a certain date, just use inception date (wdt:P571) in a structured data query at https://commons-query.wikimedia.org/. We need to stop treating categories like a query language. They are ill-suited for that purpose. And if using structured data queries is too difficult, we should get the WMF to add more capabilities to Special:MediaSearch, for example, filtering by date. Nosferattus (talk) 20:48, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
@Nosferattus, structured queries are great, and you are right that categories are not queries! Unfortunately, requiring users to have SPARQL knowledge in order to search for files is, I fear, a bridge too far. We need tools to bridge that gap and bring query functionality to a broader user base before we can point to that as the answer to the problem. Josh (talk) 16:08, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
@Adamant1 That is absolutely the way it should be done, but right now the structured data just isn't there yet to make this an accessible option for a lot of users and use cases. I'm all for moving that forward. In the meantime, this issue will persist. Josh (talk) 16:05, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I do think date categories are useful, especially when you are looking for other photographs taken on a certain date or month of the same subject and either harmonize their categories or create a new category, or to check whether a photo can indeed be taken on a certain day (if there is snow on the other photos instead of rain or blue sky, you know that something is wrong).
I disagree with Omphalographer that subcategories shouldn't be created simply because a category has a large number of files in it. If a topic category has more than 200 files, it should be broken down into subcategories to keep a good overview. Those new subcategories should preferably be topic categories, not date categories. Exceptions might be longlists and subjects like all the pages of a book.
I agree with Josh that files in date categories should also be available/stay in topic categories, for the reasons he mentions.
I agree with Pi.1415926535 that we need a tool that can allow you to find all files in a category (or category tree) within a selected date range.
@JopkeB: We have a tool that allows you to find whatever you want without abusing catagories. Want to see all the photographs of snow taken on January 1, 2009? Here you go: https://w.wiki/ARP$. Just click the Run button. Frankly though, I think the use case of needing to find images of a certain subject at a certain location on a certain date is entirely made up. Who has ever actually needed this? I certainly haven't. And if we're going to diffuse by location and date, why stop there? We could also diffuse by file type, license, aspect ratio, color vs. black and white, photographer, etc. The point is, categories are a poor substitute for search queries and are not what they were designed for. But when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Fortunately, we now have other tools, so we don't have to keep abusing categories. And if writing queries is intimidating, just ask Magnus or the WMF to create whatever type of search interface you want. The data is there. We don't need categories to redundantly encode it. Nosferattus (talk) 14:39, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
@Nosferattus, we do diffuse by many of the things you list, such as photographer, color, file type, and a hundred other criteria, depending on the topic. Scoffing at those who aren't prepared to create SPARQL queries to view what they need is not the answer. Also, no, the structured data is not all there yet, so queries are rarely complete. In theory you are not wrong...in fact a good enough database with a good enough search interface may make categories completely obsolete. We aren't there on either the data or the interface yet. If it is as easy as you claim it is, then go forward, get WMF to create the interface and demonstrate how the average user can easily use it in lieu of category browsing and maybe then you will have a valid argument to not use categories. Until then, we need categories to work for the broad user base that continues to need them. Josh (talk) 16:25, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
You do have a good point that the data and interface are not complete. However, in my opinion, they are a lot more usable than our terrible category system which is only getting less and less useful by the day, mainly due to over-diffusion. Nosferattus (talk) 17:02, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
@Nosferattus And I agree that over-diffusion is a serious issue. This is why I've floated the idea, at least in the case of the date diffusion, to remove that from the topic category tree and make it a separate tree, leaving the files undiffused in the original topic category. I see search tools as a valuable adjunct to this, in fact. I am not personally well versed in our third-party interfaces, but I would like to build a template (or bit to include in existing templates) that invokes a search to identify any files in a non-topical category that are not still present in the related topic category. This would permit easier maintenance reversing incorrect removals from the topic category. Josh (talk) 17:09, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, @Nosferattus: for the link. But I am one of those for who aquiring "SPARQL knowledge in order to search for files is ... a bridge too far." as Josh says. And I agree with him that this tool only show files with the correct structured data, what is not good enough for me. JopkeB (talk) 09:44, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
@JopkeB, as you can probably guess, I'm in agreement of most of what you've written here as many of these ideas are things that have come op in CfDs and other forums we've participated in. I am not a fan of placing hard arbitrary lower or upper limits on category size because I find topics and structures where very large or small categories do make sense within the scope of the topic and the available media. Of course, truly bloated categories do need to be diffused into meaningful sub-categorization, preferably by multiple different criteria. They don't even necessarily need to get to 200 files to warrant this in many cases. I do see you accept some exceptions though, which is good. One issue is stating 'subcategories should preferably be topic categories, not date categories.' I think I get what you are trying to say and I agree, but the root of this discussion is based on the fact that 'date categories' are 'topic categories' at the moment, at least structurally. The main effect of this is that, per COM:OVERCAT it is in fact required to remove a file from the main topic category when adding it to a date category. This is why I'm floating the idea of breaking date cats away from the topic tree and making them their own tree, akin to media type cats, thus reversing that requirement and making it a requirement to keep the media in the topic cat when adding it to a date cat. Josh (talk) 16:38, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm not a big user of date categories, though I've had to work on several of them as part of being a broad-based maintainer. Commons doesn't have an exact analogue to Enwiki's non-diffusing categories, but we do have major category trees (see major category policy) which are similar in effect, in that categories under one major category do not diffuse categories in another major category (e.g. a file in a Media types category does not diffuse from the related Topics category; the file should exist separately in both). This is why I presented the idea of creating Category:Chronological categories as a major category and making all 'by date' categories fall under this, prohibiting diffusion of the original topic category. I understand that nuking date categories would be your first choice, but appreciate your understanding that at least making them non-diffusing is an improvement that should be made if they are to be retained. Josh (talk) 17:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I also support this idea. Whether we ultimately keep these date-based subcategories or not, infusing their contents back into parent categories is a clear step in the right direction. Omphalographer (talk) 17:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Support the idea in absence of a better option like moving dates to structured data. The whole thing just seems circular though. We don't fully embrace SDC. So it's not properly implemented, naturally leading to lower adoption rates Etc. Etc. I'd like to at least see a realistic plan with some implementable steps to move in that direction. Along better guidelines and enforcement around these kinds of things. Although admittedly both are tangential to the current problem and I have no issue with Josh's idea in the midterm. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:20, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I absolutely agree with the suggestion of always keeping/ automatically adding some other category (by default, the parent one, in no better one is available) besides date categories. COM:OVERCAT has been misused and abused a lot here, unfortunately, either by lack of good sense either by some obsession with pigeonholing everything people see in a cat - and pushing files into data cats while removing the parent cat is only one of those situations. DarwinAhoy!17:50, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
@Ghouston You were more visionary I guess. It is indeed a problem that isn't always apparent until it has grown into a real monster. Regardless, I've seen it really come to a head in a lot of different topics over the last year or two and while we can't go back to 2013 and fix it then, we can do something now. I've created Category:Chronological categories as a base and a corresponding CfD to get input over there, but it sounds like a lot of support for not allowing diffusion by date to remove the files from non-date topical categories. Josh (talk) 17:42, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
What to do in this case
While we continue to discuss broader issues, I'd like to get some consensus as to what should be done in this specific case. AnRo continues to create hyperspecific categories such as Category:Spring 1951 in Boston, many of which have very few files, and they have not responded here nor at their talk page since this discussion began. To my mind, this is now an administrative matter - disruptive editing and a refusal to communicate - that needs action. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 18:03, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
This is just exacerbating the situation. There is some good discussion going on about how we can improve the system, but no matter what systemic changes we make, a disruptive effort by someone seemingly unwilling to participate in discussion is always going to be a problem. Unfortunately, some specific further action on that front might be needed. They don't even seem to be employing a consistent naming structure to these categories. Josh (talk) 22:59, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
The comment in support of this proposal was: "I would like to replace it with this icon being more modern and slightly more accessible" by Manjiro5
As the template talk page is unlikely to get much traffic to comment on this, but the template is widely used, I am putting it out here on the VP for comment before we move forward with the edit request. Josh (talk) 17:33, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
Support as proposer. —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - 
gmail.com)
Strong oppose; no other extant country needs to be disambiguated. Is there support for a CfD to quickly move it back? --Enyavar (talk) 13:02, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
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Comment @Asclepias: any user_group noted is local (not at the wiki where editing) per Special:ListGroupRights and is not based on user_rights which you can note in the second of the columns. So autoconfirmed user_group is different from confirmed user_group; also noting the "confirmed" is a specific allocated right by admins, not inherited as per autoconfirmed. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:06, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
first and foremost, regardless of how this is done, be it manually or using templates and other tools. I agree very strongly with @Adamant1 that some of these categorization schemes (e.g. "recipients of X award") which clearly are really about storing data points about a topic in the form of categorization are not good form, as they aren't really about categorizing media, but trivial categorization of topics, which is not the purview of Commons. Josh (talk) 15:31, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Agree Templates are often a great tool, for instance for the date categories and the template that is importing information from wikidata (as long as it is limited to the basic categories, like given name, surname, birth and death dates (useful to decide whether works of an artist are in PD), people/men/women by name).
Question@Mike Peel: do you have a system-based solution for how we can readily identify the categories that are/can be populated from WD (and thinking as maintenance cats) if it isn't already. What is done at WD end, and what can be done at Commons end to be clearly overt? — billinghurst sDrewth 00:56, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Done Upload new .png/220px-FastCCI_Commons_gadget_showing_why_a_file_is_erroneously_categorized_into_a_category_(category-tree).png)
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