Commons:Village pump/Archive/2022/12

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Ornitologists

Hello, do we have a contributor on board with knowledge of ornithology or even better, an Ornithologist? Thanks. Lotje (talk) 10:32, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

WD mismatch

At Category:Co-orbital objects, the WD item on the left of the page does not match the WD item transcluded through the Infobox Wikidata template. No idea why. Kwamikagami (talk) 07:27, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: I think this is just the infobox trying to track down the main Wikidata item for the topic. Category:Co-orbital objects (Q15216182) has its Commons sitelink and its Commons category (P373) pointing at Category:Co-orbital objects, but its category's main topic (P301) is co-orbital moon (Q1707270). The main topic is generally where the useful information in Wikidata will be, so the infobox points to that rather than to the category. --bjh21 (talk) 18:04, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
Okay, didn't know if this was something that should be "fixed". If you're happy with it, I'll leave it alone. Kwamikagami (talk) 18:09, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Warren Commission

Hi, Could someone confirm that Category:US National Archives series: Numbered Exhibits is OK as subcategory of Category:Warren Commission. If yes, then all files which are in both categories can be removed from Category:Warren Commission. Thanks, Yann (talk) 20:58, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Also what's the point to have Category:US National Archives series: Numbered Exhibits, 11/30/1963 - 9/24/1964 (hidden category) in addition to Category:US National Archives series: Numbered Exhibits, with some images of the same item in one and some in the other? That's very confusing. Yann (talk) 15:05, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Posible duplicate

File:218 137-8 DB City-Bahn Lackierung - DB Museum Koblenz 13.06.15 (18651127679).jpg and File:218 137-8 (Flickr 18651127679).jpg are the same but one has been 'optimized'.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:13, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

✓ Done. --A.Savin 20:22, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

When reading a page on the English Wikipedia (in fact my own user talk page), I am seeing a banner at the top, with a slideshow of various photos and a link to "help choose the best image of the year". The only trouble is, it is for 2021. I guess that the relevant input that produces this is somewhere on Commons, so am reporting it here in case someone knows how this can be updated. (Note that this banner appears above the page title, so it is clearly not part of how the talk page's own wiki content is being rendered.) Dani di Neudo (talk) 16:01, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

  • Isn't that exactly correct? Aren't we currently determining the best picture of the previous year, not the current year? - Jmabel ! talk 16:17, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
    @Jmabel: Yes, that is exactly correct. We can't judge what happened in 2022 until it's over and all the votes for all the FP nominations for all the uploads for 2022 have been tallied. The nominating, voting, and tallying for FPs takes months.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 18:48, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
    Thanks for clarification. For some reason, also the link wasn't giving me the opportunity to vote, so I assumed that it was last year's competition. Tried it now (on a different computer) and it was fine. --Dani di Neudo (talk) 05:06, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Mark for manual license review?

  1. File A is from Flickr with license review passed.
  2. File B is a derivative work of File A, but it is lacking proper reference to the original File on Flickr
  3. I add that information and mark File B for {{Flickrreview}}
  4. The bot detects that as of now the File on Flickr is all rights reserved and marks file as a non-pass (which I reverted for now)
  •  Question Is there a way to request a human license reviewer to have a look at this (other than posting here)?
  •  Question What happens if I as a non-license reviewer just copy the successful review from File A to File B? (i.e.: do we have any mechanism in place that prevents non-license reviewers from just putting a reviewed by bot template on a file description page?)

Thanks, El Grafo (talk) 09:07, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

  • @El Grafo: No idea on your first question, but on your second is there any reason {{LicenseReview}} wouldn't work? - Jmabel ! talk 16:26, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
    @Jmabel I don't know, I assumed the bot would jump in and reject it again since there doesn't seem to be a parameter in the template to stop it. --El Grafo (talk) 08:34, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Question for the community in general: any problem with someone just marking File B as a derivative work of the already-approved File A, and leaving out file review entirely for File B? - Jmabel ! talk 16:28, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
    I think that's a perfectly reasonable approach. The point of licence review is to have a second, trusted person record that the file really is available at the source under the licence specified, because we can't trust that the source will keep it available. Where the source is Commons itself, this isn't really useful, because any admin thinking about deleting the derived file can look at the history of the purported source file to determine whether the derived on is correctly licensed. --bjh21 (talk) 17:44, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
copypaste the original review template. you're not forging it so it's ok.--RZuo (talk) 20:01, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Categories of Intangible Cultural Heritage

I have started work to import all items in UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists (Q4435332) and we are working to make a global effort to bring all items in the national inventory of intangible cultural heritage (Q113040113) to Wikidata. When the data is added, it can be used to power contests about these traditions. The activities are related to the 20th anniversary of Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (Q5166256).

The data and the structures are entangled on all Wikimedia projects. The UNESCO lists, their subsets nationally and the national inventories are mixed up with list articles and other arbitrary items. I have started working on arranging the structures on Wikidata in the WikiProject Intangible Cultural Heritage (Q112898263), but I notice that also Wikimedia Commons categories will need rearranging. I created a quick class draft, and I would be willing to correct the references created during the Wikidata cleaning process to corrected Wikimedia Commons categories. I would need to rename and create categories. What are your concerns about this? – Susanna Ånäs (Susannaanas) (talk) 08:53, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

sorry i'm a bit lost. what's the different between Category:Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in Finland and Category:Intangible cultural heritage in Finland? also there should be a consistent cat tree (using the same preposition), unlike finland using "in" while others use "of".--RZuo (talk) 07:33, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
This is the point I am making: Not all intangible heritage is Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity that is listed in the UNESCO lists. Some are official national inventories, and some are intangible cultural heritage without an official status (notice caps in the other and lowercase initials in the other). I think we should consider that as well. The name does not reflect to all these use cases.
I made a draft/proposal of changing the naming scheme from "of" to "in" to communicate that this is some of the intangible heritage in the country, not all. But as I think more closely about this, the UNESCO inscribed elements are finite, and therefore the name of the category that ONLY includes UNESCO inscribed elements could have it written with "of".
Previously it may not have been necessary to make the distinction, as there has been so little information to make base it on. But with this upcoming effort, I think it is only fair that the category structure can be made to follow the actual structure of the elements. – Susanna Ånäs (Susannaanas) (talk) 11:33, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

revision merging railroad maps from different years into one file

At Help Desk a user wants to merge the files for the Vienna light railway system from different years (with different lines in the different years) into a single file (as the earlier version will still be in the file history). Them gives the file File:NYC subway-4D.svg as example. It is an featured picture and picture of the day, it is used in multiple wikipedias in multiple articles and it has over time been changed to include new stations and changed lines. The rationale is, that all the articles should include the current railmap by changing the existing file. It is really meant to work this way? --C.Suthorn (talk) 17:46, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

i think we should come up with a guideline (named like com:updatable images). does one already exist?
basically, i think there are two ways to handle continuous updates to a file, very often a map, logo, flag...
  1. an official version should be updated to the latest version and bear the official name, e.g. File:Flag of New Zealand.svg
  2. (significant) historical or alternative versions should have separate files, e.g. File:Flag of the United States (1912-1959, 3-2 aspect ratio).svg.
a map obviously can be designed in many different ways unlike logos/flags, so technically there is no official version, but ofc there should be a version constantly updated that will be utilised by other wikis to show the latest reality.
significant alternative versions, such as flags in different aspect ratios or colour schemes, should get separate files, just as different/historical graphic designs of the same thing should get separate files.--RZuo (talk) 07:33, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

POTY mistake

Well I unknowingly voted for a picture and I don’t know what to do, since I’m not registered before 2021. It is at this post where I voted. Jellyfish picture —-SikiWtideI (talk) 02:32, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

@SikiWtideI: you can unvote by clicking the button. if you're concerned about your eligibility to vote, you dont need to worry, because that's determined by software. even if you're ineligible, organisers of the vote will take care of that. you dont need to do anything.--RZuo (talk) 07:33, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Voting on the Wikimedia Sound Logo is about to begin

Dearest Commons community members,

In a few hours, you'll be cordially invited to vote on your favourite sound logo finalists. With 3,234 submissions from 2,094 people, we were positively encouraged by the participation and hope that the voting will be equally engaged. This is the fun part now and we are grateful to all participants that got us to this point. We are particularly grateful for the screening team of volunteers and the selection committee that helped frame and guide this phase of the project. We are so close to the identifying the Sound of All Human Knowledge. Voting begins on 6 December and ends on 19 December, 2022. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 19:33, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Arabic headwear

Seen in Saudi Arabia

How do we classify this style of headwear? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:51, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Probably Category:Keffiyeh. --A.Savin 20:25, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
More specifically, it appears to be an agal. De728631 (talk) 19:43, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

How to warn about previous hoaxes

A few years back, we had a series of photoshopped images uploaded by different accounts/socks, in which different people were shown as standing next to a now-deceased poet. (See Commons:Deletion requests/File:Ferlinghetti at Caffe Trieste.jpg and links therein.) Category:Lawrence Ferlinghetti exists, and although I haven't seen any similar images recently, I'm wondering if there is a good way to leave a note that lets other editors know about previous problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:46, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I can't really think of any useful way to do that. - Jmabel ! talk 04:18, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
As someone who has found hoaxes/manipulations/forgeries myself; I find the approach of "Commons will refuse to learn lessons" not okay. I think we should NOT begin to clamp down on new submissions (most uploads aren't hoaxes), but a training/guide that is linked somewhere in the Help-Section for those who find problematic files, would be great. Such a dedicated page would explain how to detect hoaxes and image manipulations, and discuss previous cases. Just from the top of my head: 1 and 2 hoaxes involving map forgery. (On the other hand, let's not get over-excited and exp­ect deception and hoaxes everywhere.) --Enyavar (talk) 12:09, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
I agree that it's a bad idea to expect deception everywhere, except in the part that says "own work". ;-)
I had thought about leaving a note at Category talk:Lawrence Ferlinghetti with links to the deletion requests. It might make it find-able for someone who's searching for it, but not bother anyone who is just browsing categories. I'm not sure if it's worth it, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
There is a {{Hoax}} template with which you could tag relevant images. --HyperGaruda (talk) 18:46, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

operation of space bar in POTY voting

I visited the POTY voting page using Chrome on Linux. After casting one of my votes, I then pressed the space bar in order to scroll down, as is normal in Chrome. However, it had the unexpected effect of removing the vote just cast. Fortunately there was then a message stating that the vote was being removed, which alerted me to it, so I cast the vote again. This time I clicked away afterwards (i.e. clicked a blank part of the page), and then when I used the space bar to scroll down, it worked properly without the problem recurring. Maybe the design of Chrome is such that there is nothing that can be done about the unintentional removal of votes (for example, if all that the server sees is that the form has been resubmitted, and there is no way for the server or any Javascript function to tell whether a space bar press or a mouse click caused this). However, if possible, it would be good to change this behaviour so that to remove a vote you have to use a mouse click, especially because the length of the page is such that most people will need to scroll down to see them all. Thanks. Dani di Neudo (talk) 05:26, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

@Dani di Neudo: Hi, and welcome. Any time you just used a checkbox in a browser, pressing the spacebar will change the status of that checkbox because the focus is still on that checkbox. Instead, please try: tapping the pagedown button (you may have to repeat, tab, or click whitespace for this to be effective); clicking whitespace or unclickable text outside the checkbox to change the focus, then tapping the spacebar; or scrolling down your mousewheel (if you have one). Similarly, using arrow keys when you just clicked a radio button may change which radio button is selected (depending on the layout of the radio button array).   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 12:11, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. Yes, as mentioned, on my second attempt I clicked on whitespace before using the spacebar. I was just wondering if there was a way to make the default behaviour more intuitive. Maybe not? Dani di Neudo (talk) 13:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
@Dani di Neudo: You could ask the Google Chrome and Mediawiki developers for settings to do that, but your chances are slim. JavaScript to capture the use of the space bar and not let it click might work, if you run JavaScript and can program that.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:30, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Okay, not to worry, thanks. I just reported it in case there was anything simple. Dani di Neudo (talk) 22:21, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Wich paddlesteamer?

On the 14th july 1999 I sailed from Évian to Lausanne (D 19:00 A Lausanne 19:35) I took the pictures from File:Paddle steamer Lake Geneva 1999 1.jpg to File:Paddle steamer Lake Geneva 1999 5.jpg If I compare with other pictures it is most likely Category:Helvétie (ship, 1926) or Category:Simplon (ship, 1920). Both boats hve split lower windows and a pilot cabine with slichtly sloping windows. However in the picture File:Paddle steamer Lake Geneva 1999 3.jpg there is the engine date of 1915, before either 1920 or 1926. Maybe it is a reused engine. Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:16, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it is Helvétie. As one can see in File:L'Helvetie.jpg, that ship has triple windows as opposed to the one in your image. Moreover, Helvétie doesn't seem to have a bell installed in the bow section. Simplon, however, does have a bell whose rim matches exactly the pattern that can be seen on the left edge of your photo. De728631 (talk) 19:40, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Flickr2commons

I just loaded File:Portrush railway station - An Elizabethan railway station.jpg, a Robert French image from the NLI [1] with no copyright restrictions which usually is sufficient everything to be sorted out okay under the hood. This time I've just noticed its been flagged for deletion due to invalid licence (which undefined is). I can probably fix this manually in a little while. It could be this is a one-off blip or it is possible something has begun not to work with the process, which is the reason I'm posting here. Thankyou. -- Deirge Ó Dhaoinebeaga(a)talk 11:54, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Same for me: early this morning I uploaded one photo from Flickr, no problem. Two hours later I uploaded another three, all with licence cc-by-2.0: at this moment (5 hours later) there still is no (automatical) review. So, there might be something wrong, or a very long list with uploads? JopkeB (talk) 14:50, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
@Deirge Ó Dhaoinebeaga: Hi, and welcome. We now have 1,096 files in Category:Flickr review needed. The bot FlickreviewR 2 usually reviews them, and is currently working on the backlog, but had a nearly 5-hour outage earlier (from 07:38 to 12:31 (UTC)). I reviewed the file for you anyway.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:14, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
See also User talk:Zhuyifei1999#Backlog.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:27, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

UploadWizard writing "undefined" instead of "Flickr-no known copyright restrictions"

i just tested Special:UploadWizard using for example File:NMRC-Asia.jpg. instead of writing {{Flickr-no known copyright restrictions}}{{flickrreview}}, it wrote "undefined".--RZuo (talk) 17:35, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Obviously, it should not be doing that.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 18:01, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
Thats what had happened to me with Portrush railway station this morning but I fixed the license myself by comparing with another example. See Special:Diff/713144043. Also probably not relevant for the Flickr2Commons import is that a similar image pre-exists here, namely File:Portrush Rly Station, 1890s.jpg, which appears as if its a cropped lower res. image wich on close examination was probably but not certainly a different copy of the same original. I mention this in the outside chance it was relevant to the barf. -- Deirge Ó Dhaoinebeaga(a)talk 19:52, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Voting in the Wikimedia sound logo contest has started. From December 6 to 19, 2022, please play a part and help chose the sound that will identify Wikimedia content on audio devices. Learn more on Diff.

The sound logo team is grateful to everyone who participated in this global contest. We received 3,235 submissions from 2,094 participants in 135 countries. We are incredibly grateful to the team of volunteer screeners and the selection committee who, among others, helped bring us to where we are today. It is now up to Wikimedia to choose the Sound Of All Human Knowledge.

Best wishes. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 20:53, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Featured photo in 2023

This file named File:Makkasan Interchange at night by Mark Fischer.jpg it took place 11 February 2023. 2001:44C8:422B:98D0:BC73:F86C:7B24:6DE0 00:59, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

No, 2023 is in the future.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 03:12, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Reminder to provide feedback on the Movement Charter content

Hi all,

We are in the middle of the community consultation period on the three draft sections of the Movement Charter: Preamble, Values & Principles, and Roles & Responsibilities (statement of intent). The community consultation period will last until December 18, 2022. The Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) encourages everyone who is interested in the governance of the Wikimedia movement to share their thoughts and opinions on the draft content of the Charter.

How do you share your feedback?

Interested people can share their feedback via different channels provided below:

If you want to help include your community in the consultation period, you are encouraged to become a Movement Charter Ambassador. Please find out more about it here.

Thank you for your participation!

On behalf of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 11:09, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

4nn1l2 banned by the Foundation

The administrator 4nn1l2 was banned today by the Foundation. This was one of the users who were particularly aggressive against me here, so I can not really complain, but I though the community should know. (I am unrelated to the block). Ymblanter (talk) 21:17, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

English Wikipedia's The Signpost has a story drafted about the 16 bans at en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Next_issue/News_and_notes. If anyone has Wikimedia Commons-context for the ban then please post to en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom. Right now, the general cause for the bans is not apparent, although in the case of this one user, there are on-wiki records of conflicts. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:19, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
I do not have any insider information, and whatever else I have to say would be qualified as "gravedancing", so I better won't.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:39, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Request for deletion of uploaded copyright work.

In this discussion (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Template:Resolution_restricted-by-sa#Template%3AResolution_restricted-by-sa) the license I used for many of my works was deprecated. I have only just become aware of this. My understanding is there is concern the images are not "free" even though that was the intention with the license. However, if there is such substantial risk that they are't free and I am not willing to amend or change the license, why are they still here on Wikimedia. I would suggest they be deleted and I would welcome that. Saffron Blaze (talk) 03:13, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

@Saffron Blaze: Please see Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Saffron Blaze.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 03:43, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
@Saffron Blaze: Why don't you want to change the license? Just curious. Nosferattus (talk) 04:45, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Category:Rising Sun Flag of Japan

For some reason, Category:Rising Sun Flag of Japan is its own parent. Nothing overt; maybe a problem with a template that causes category inclusion and shouldn't? - Jmabel ! talk 01:43, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

{{Japanese militarism symbol}} includes {{Teikoku symbol}} which includes {{Teikoku symbol/layout}} and sets Category:Rising Sun Flag of Japan. -- William Graham (talk) 01:58, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
I would think Template:Teikoku symbol/layout should not be setting any topical category. - Jmabel ! talk 06:27, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Participation of russia in Wiki Loves Monuments 2022

I can understand (barely) that russia was included in this year's WLM ... however, I can't understand how it can still be a part of Wiki LOVES Monuments while engaging in deliberate destruction of monuments (see: Ukrainian monuments, destroyed by russia)

I'd suggest that the russian participation in this year's Wiki Loves Monuments can consist only of photos of Ukrainian (and Syrian, and Chechen, and Moldovan, and Georgian, etc. etc. etc.) monuments russians destroyed.

All other entries by them should be absolutely ineligible, rejected with utter disgust, and russian participation in the WLM should be barred until further notice.

...

A decision to leave the genocide perpetrators and monument destroyers in this year's WLM after the russian invasion would be a conscious, political statement that amounts to genocide and destruction support - and it can't be made without consulting other participating countries (especially Ukraine), and other contributors to WLM. I as a contributor myself will absolutely reconsider having my entries displayed together with those from genocidal, monument-destroying russia.

--KAP Jasa (talk) 09:09, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Please don't bring political issues to this neutral platform. --HyperGaruda (talk) 09:18, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
Being "neutral" is a political statement. And Wiki Loves Monuments is a public photo competition - not some cold, impartial description of facts (that requires neutrality). So it is absolutely necessary to discuss participation of destroyers of monuments in an event that celebrates the love of monuments. KAP Jasa (talk) 09:56, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Movement in Russia is part of the opposition against the government of Russia. Some activists from the Wikimedia Movement in Russia are even in prison. Why should we exclude the Russian opposition from our project because of the Russian government? We should support them and not punish them for the country the live in. GPSLeo (talk) 10:25, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
For clarity, the organizers of WLM Russia have no connection to the Russian government and even not with the national Wikimedia chapter. Ymblanter (talk) 10:49, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
 Comment I blocked KAP Jasa for harassment for 2 weeks, i.e. [2]. Yann (talk) 10:29, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
The contributions are based simply on geography. Not nationality, ethnicity or the sense of belonging of the contributor so your proposal has a major flaw, unless you want to proclaim Ukraine and Syria as part of Russia? Not to say that in some cases the occupying forces are the only ones who can take pictures of some destroyed monuments, I don't think that is who you want to participate either. A Russian photographer could travel the world and participate in as many regional contests as they pleased, surely we are not going to ask uploaders for their passport. Looks like the Russian contest hasn't picked any finalists for the international round before the deadline anyway so this issue has been solved even without your campaign. TFerenczy (talk) 10:38, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
No, the images were actually sent to the international jury. Ymblanter (talk) 10:50, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
What about monuments destroyed in Ukraine, Poland, Baltic countries by authorities and activists? Shouldn't same principle applied in these cases? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:24, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
@EugeneZelenko: no, the "principle" should not be applied anywhere. What next? Coming after the U.S. for recent destruction of Confederate monuments? History happens. Sometimes we like it, sometimes we don't. Commons (and Wikipedia) are supposed to be primarily about documenting, not about taking sides. - Jmabel ! talk 18:03, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
This was exactly my point. Sorry, if I was not clear in expressing sarcasm. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 19:54, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

How to upload a video?

I have a video I recorded on my phone, but when I try to upload it I get the error message "There was an error in your submission. This wiki does not accept filenames that end in the extension ".MOV"." - and nothing more? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:45, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

That was the error message through the upload wizard, Trying Special:Upload, it just highlights "Permitted file types: tiff, tif, png, gif, jpg, jpeg, webp, xcf, mid, ogg, ogv, svg, djvu, stl, oga, flac, opus, wav, webm, mp3, midi, mpg, mpeg." in red, which is even less useful. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:47, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
@Mike Peel You may use Commons:video2commons url —MdsShakil (talk) 21:30, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
@MdsShakil: That isn't linked to from the upload pages? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:39, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
The upload pages assume you are using a supported file type. - Jmabel ! talk 02:33, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
@Mike Peel: Sorry, ".MOV" is not supported. Per COM:Video#Video formats, "Commons does not support the more commonly used patent encumbered video formats such as H.264 and H.265 that are used in MP4 and MOV files, since their use could require royalty payments."   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 03:09, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jeff G., Jmabel, and MdsShakil: My point here is that we should provide some sort of guidance for people trying to upload .mov files - rather than just saying it's not accepted. I can figure it out - change the format to webm - but will others? And the file format is very common (the test file I was using was straight off an iPhone). The current error messages don't do anything to encourage people to upload videos. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:04, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
@Mike Peel: You could make a specific proposal at Commons:Village pump/Proposals. - Jmabel ! talk 17:18, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
You can also upload with Chunked upload. But you should firstly convert to webm format. -- Geagea (talk) 20:45, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Category keys

Not for the first time, I find images are being categorised with what are - it seem to to me - spurious sort keys.

For example, File:Amsterdam Airport Schiphol - 2019-10-24 - Andy Mabbett - 18.jpg was recenty changed from [[Category:2019 at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol]] to [[Category:2019 at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol|Transavia]]

I reverted the edit (not least on the grounds that it was marked as minor, when it is not), and have been reverted in turn by the same editor, User:Ardfern, whose edit summary claims: "It is indeed a minor edit and is standard format for aircraft at all airports"

Is this a "standard format for aircraft at all airports"? Where is it documented, and where was it discussed? If it is a "standard format", why do other images in Category:2019 at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, and other categories, not use it? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:33, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

2015 in rail transport in Germany

In moving the files to lander categories, I come across File:Depot-Gleis 4 mit der RB-Linie 122 nach Oberammergau und stationärer Be- und Entsorgungsstation für die Züge.jpg with the German file description 'Copyright: DB AG', while having a descriptive title. Same problem with: File:Der SüWex in den Bergen.jpg, File:Die Software wird geprüft beim SüWex.jpg and File:ET 425 - einer der letzten Fahrten im Werdenfels März 2015.jpg.

I have two files without location information and identified station category: Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:08, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

✓ Done
Regarding the "copyrighted" images: I think the uploader was just being (too) careful and only tries to say that the depicted subject belongs to someone/something else. File:ÖBB Elektrotechnischer Messwagen Bild 1.jpg is for example ascribed to a different company, but the camera model is still the same. Seems to me that the images themselves do belong to the uploader.
The two images to the right were taken at Frankfurt am Main's main railway station.
The coordinates were derived from the EXIF metadata, but it looks like the EXIF coordinates have a poor precision. I just replaced the ones stored in Wikicode with more plausible coordinates. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:19, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
location? must be easily recognizable

Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:26, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

The Saturn building in the back of File:National Express Tz 361 (Unfallzug von Meerbusch) (2).jpg is the Hansahochhaus. The photographer was most likely looking northwest from approximately 50.94505°N,6.95682°E (the end of a platform of Breslauer Platz station in Cologne) to get this view. --HyperGaruda (talk) 12:42, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
The Category:September 2015 in rail transport in Thuringia is all about the Category:Meininger Dampfloktage 2015. In the files I only see two dates: 2 september and 5 september.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:59, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Hotlinking policy

Hi,

The hotlinking policy states as follows:

Hotlinking is allowed from Wikimedia servers, but not generally recommended: ...
If you do hotlink, then it is still necessary to follow the licensing conditions ...
Wikimedia generally does not allow 'hot spider' services, where each time someone performs a search on their site, the query is redirected to our site.

I would like to run a site that allows users to search Wikimedia Commons images. The indexing would be performed locally (on my servers), but displaying each results page would result in one query for each image thumbnail being made to Commons' servers, since I don't want to have to mirror the totality of 301 TB of images. No search queries would be forwarded or 302'd to Commons.

Assuming that I properly attribute images, link back to Commons properly, and so on, would this be a permissible use-case, or would it be "hot spidering"?

98.128.180.111 18:50, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Wow, that sentence is old. It was in the first version of Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia in 2007. Based on David Gerard's comments on the talk page at the time, this may have come from a VRT stock message or may have been something they used to send to email enquirers. That suggests it may come from the Wikimedia Foundation, but I'm not sure where you'd go to ask about that. --bjh21 (talk) 21:35, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
I think I asked the devs what was a good and bad idea? I'm diving back into ancient memories there. But we were fine with hotlinking, though with the obvious caveat that the image might go away at any point. The search service text, I don't remember - David Gerard (talk) 14:20, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Seems pretty what they were trying to avoid was people having external submissions into our runtime search engine. Then again, they didn't consider your approach. It could be a lot of hits on the server (though at least not a lot of computation). Any idea how many images you would bring up each time you generate a page? Any guesses of the volume of queries you expect to handle? And do you have a way to do this where you will fetch appropriately small thumbnails, rather than (for example) continually have your clients dynamically fetch larger images that will be thumbnailed client-side? - Jmabel ! talk 23:55, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Ghana

I am an infrequent user of common files, and today I came here looking for a file with a map of Ghana to use on the English Wikiquote, but all I can find is this: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ghana

Can anyone help please? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 20:20, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: On that page there's a link to Atlas of Ghana which has a number of maps; even more can be found in the category Category:Maps of Ghana and its subcategories. -M.nelson (talk) 20:31, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
@M.nelson: Thanks so much, found what I was looking for with your help.
General comment: I tried to see if this would work for other countries if I ever needed a map, so did a search on "Norway", and it appears that finding the word Atlas there is not quite as easy. Ottawahitech (talk) 04:58, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
@Ottawahitech Galleries are very hit and miss (though the atlas ones might be better maintained than most). I expect you would have better luck with categories, like Category:Maps of Norway. Sometimes you just need to do things manually: you can open Atlas of Norway directly. Brianjd (talk) 05:52, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Patrolling workflow

Hi, I'm trying to spend some time on T120453 which hopefully reduces the work of patrollers on deleting copyright violations. Can you tell me more how admins/patrollers patrol new files for copyvio? For example, for what users do you check them (non-autopatrolled?), how does your workflow look like? I know the workflow for Wikipedia but not much for commons. Feel free to send me an email if you don't want to talk publicly. Thanks! Amir (talk) 06:49, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

ISA Workshop

Hello. The workshop on ISA Tool to discover, test and discuss the integration of semi-automated suggestions by Google Cloud Vision… will start in 20 mn (Monday 12th at 16h UTC+1).
All details here : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:ISA_Tool/Image_to_Concept#ISA_Workshop_-_Dec_12th

Anthere (talk) 14:41, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Seizure risks

I have created the category Seizure risk-related deletion requests. One such DR, Commons:Deletion requests/File:Color Flash.gif, is currently open; there, a user has suggested rules for seizure risk material. That discussion needs more comments from other users, and we need to move towards a guideline or policy on such material. Brianjd (talk) 05:47, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I recommend making all (in-scope) files with flashing fast enough to trigger seizures videos (so they do not automatically play) and placing “(SEIZURE RISK)” in the title; there should also be a warning template similar to the ones for things like Nazi and communist symbols. Dronebogus (talk) 01:21, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
Seizures are not merely uncomfortable; they are a serious medical issue that can require hospital treatment. Given the comments at the DR, I wonder if anyone except Dronebogus understands that. Brianjd (talk) 07:21, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
NOTCENSORED is such a powerful and respected policy that it can easily become dogmatic and put WMC above any kind of social responsibility. I agree we don’t have to be the morality police but that’s because porn and Nazi symbols won’t send you to the hospital. Dronebogus (talk) 12:37, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
@Dronebogus Porn and Nazi symbols won’t harm your computer either. But PDF files and images with very high resolutions might, and we already include warnings on those, along with tools for users to view those files safely; I haven’t seen anyone claim that is censorship and I can’t see why this is any different. Brianjd (talk) 14:12, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
Agree fully. Dronebogus (talk) 01:56, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Flickr Foundation launched

SmugMug, owners of Flickr, have launched the Flickr Foundation, "an independent, community-focused organization. We’re committed to stewarding this cultural treasure [Flickr Commons] for future generations, and fostering a visual commons we can all enjoy." Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:48, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

This is really encouraging and I'm surprised that I didn't get an email from them about it. Thanks! —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:26, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
@Koavf: I just got one an hour ago, they are probably rolling out the emails over some time. - Jmabel ! talk 23:17, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

File:11.02450 Brothel-girls-11.png

I feel like putting pictures of random prostitutes under the category 'Human trafficking' is somewhat defamatory Trade (talk) 19:31, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

It might be; but the source website says "The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (G/TIP) assigned a U.S. photographer, Kay Chernush, to take these photos in India", so perhaps these are not "random prostitutes". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:53, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
The description itself never makes that claim, tho--Trade (talk) 21:48, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
The file was upload as File:11.02450 Brothel-girls-11.jpg.gif. Its original description is lost. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:38, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
@Trade and Pigsonthewing: It looks like the original description has indeed been lost (by which we mean accessible only to admins). But I found another crazy thing: That file was earlier moved to File:11.02450 Brothel-girls-11.gif, whose talk page says: {{kept|2012-05-07|Commons:Deletion requests/File:The MILF barbershop Shenzhen China.jpg}}
WTF? What’s with the different filenames? And why is a DR closed as ‘delete’ being linked in {{Keep}} {{Kept}}? The talk page also has a comment about this image, but who knows which image that refers to? Pinging @Túrelio, Dharmadhyaksha. Brianjd (talk) 06:04, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Because the deletion discussion, which is about different image, mentions the reason why the image to which the {{Keep}} template refers is being kept. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:50, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing I wanted to say that was a misuse of {{Kept}} (not {{Keep}}), but then I reread the DR. There are four images mentioned in the DR (including the one actually nominated), and Russavia acted as if all four were actually nominated.
But the other three images were not nominated. 11.02450 Brothel-girls-11.jpg.gif was definitely not nominated. I will replace {{Kept}} with a more accurate message. Brianjd (talk) 11:57, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm with User:Trade here. In particular, a lot of "anti-trafficking" groups presume that all, or nearly all, prostitutes are trafficked. - Jmabel ! talk 00:00, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

@Trade, Pigsonthewing, and Jmabel: The current file description contains an original upload log, which includes this comment: … [The prostitutes] face routine violence from pimps and customers …. I don’t know whether this description is justifiable, but it does explain the category Human trafficking. Brianjd (talk) 06:10, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
 Comment I moved the talk page. Yann (talk) 19:25, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
@Yann I see that you moved File talk:11.02450 Brothel-girls-11.gif to File talk:11.02450 Brothel-girls-11.png, which at least clarifies which image it refers to. But it doesn’t explain what 11.02450 Brothel-girls-11 has to do with The MILF barbershop Shenzhen China or why a DR closed as ‘delete’ is linked in {{Keep}} {{Kept}}. Brianjd (talk) 06:25, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
Answered above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:50, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Depicts

I've been diligently adding depicts statements on uploads. But I often find that, despite a reasonably diligent search, the concept I need is not on Wikidata. I asked at some event what to do and was told to just create the Wikidata item I needed in that situation. I have now discovered many of these have been deleted on Wikidata despite being used in depicts statements on Commons. Surely being in use is a reason not to delete them? If not, it's just been a huge waste of my time to add depicts statements. Nobody contacted me about the, before deleting. Any advice on getting them reinstated? 07:01, 12 December 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kerry Raymond (talk • contribs) 07:01, 12 December 2022‎ (UTC)

@Kerry Raymond difficult to give advice without knowing what exactly was deleted. Can you give examples? El Grafo (talk) 09:07, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
@Kerry Raymond: Wikidata items must meet the notability criteria of that project, the simplest way to do that is to include one or more significant Authority control identifies such as VIAF or ISNI. Otherwise, add third-party, reliable sources. While not required, it's also advisable to add more than one statement to new items. As for getting items undeleted, ask the deleting admin in the first instance, per d:Wikidata:Guide to requests for undeletion. LMK if you need further advice or help. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:24, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
@Kerry Raymond: , Wikidata has repeatedly voted to not want better integration with the Wikimedia Commons, unless Wikidata's notability guidelines will include the Wikimedia Commons (as it already does for all other Wikimedia websites) we won't see many of those items undeleted any time soon. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:52, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
The Wikidata community has never voted [sic] "to not want better integration with the Wikimedia Commons", and the discussion to whcih you link does not show you it doing so. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:28, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Speaking as a Commons admin who is moderately active on Wikidata: there is not a lot we can do on this from the Commons side, and roughly nothing we can do about the issue in the abstract. If you can list some of the particular items that were deleted, then there is some chance of us being able to come up with at least a loose consensus to make a case for them. - Jmabel ! talk 16:12, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

None of the many hundred items I created and linked to commons categories got deleted. I would also be interested in what items got deleted here. --GPSLeo (talk) 18:01, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
I see six items on Wkidata which Kerry Raymond created and which were deleted. They are all of the same type: for example, d: Q114311084 (Church of Christ building, place of worship associated with the Church of Christ). All these items only has the name, no description, sitelinks, properties etc. All were deleted a few days ago by @MisterSynergy: as "empty items". One can debate whether the deletion was valid or not (after all, they were not empty, but not extremely useful from the Wikidata point of view), however, if the Commons community thinks they are useful we can restore them (either with agreement of the deleting admin, or after a discussion on Wikidata) and add properties and description, so that they are not empty anymore.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:15, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the ping, all items are restored.
  • We characterize items as "empty items" if there are no statements and no sitelinks, as in this case for all six involved items. These items do qualify for immediate deletion, and there are in fact way more of these cases at Wikidata than we could reasonably discuss.
  • According to the "structural need" criterion of Wikidata's notability policy, these items do qualify for inclusion at Wikidata (hence I restored them without further discussion).
  • However, in the current form they are not useful for Wikidata. They should have at least a basic definition (using statements in Wikidata), and ideally some sort of references to external sources. It is otherwise pretty unlikely that anyone else but the item creator knows how to improve them.
  • A difficulty with item use in SDC (such as "depicts" statements) is that this sort of re-use is pretty difficult to discover. As much as I am aware, I would need to use WCQS for each deletion individually since structured data use is not tracked via Special:EntityUsage.
—MisterSynergy (talk) 19:32, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, I will try to use some statements there (and will definitely welcome help). Ymblanter (talk) 19:38, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
@Ymblanter: Your "six items" link is only viewable by Wikidata admins. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:29, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
Not anymore, because the items have been restored, but they are pretty obvious on the Kerry Raymond's Wikidata contribution (most recent page). Ymblanter (talk) 11:40, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
  • I have noticed the problem before, although none of my entries were deleted because they had more complete information. What we need is the ability to show that a Wikidata item is in use at Commons with "depicts" when we click the "What links here" button at Wikidata. At Commons we know what it is in use at Wikidata, but not the reverse. At the current time the only work-around is to create a category for the single image, and add that category to Wikidata. I have brought it up before, but it didn't get enough attention to get a fix. Instead someone created a query to show usage, we need it baked into the "What links here" button. --RAN (talk) 19:32, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Just in case some people aren't aware, the Mix-n-match is a good tool to find/add external identifiers for existing Wikidata items, or create new items, which can better standardize & distinguish items and demonstrate notability. More abstract, trivial or esoteric entities like subclasses of things may not be Wikidata-notable, even if they might be hypothetically useful for "depicts" statements: an image that depicts the left foot of Barack Obama doesn't mean we need to create an item for "Barack Obama's left foot", nor "feet of United States presidents", even if some political foot scholar happened to make a Commons category for such. --Animalparty (talk) 03:30, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
@Animalparty: Not to say that no left foot could be notable: Boot Monument (Q4943827), My Left Foot (Q12811892). - Jmabel ! talk 05:32, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

procedure for derivative images

Is there a procedure to follow when deriving one image from another, to ensure that licenses and whatnot point to one another? I cropped an image, and just manually copied over all the details (original, crop), apart from the review which could not be copied. But it feels like there should be a less clunky way of doing this. U003F? 12:15, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

@U003F: Hi, and welcome. Please use CropTool for cropping, and consider using {{Extracted from}} and {{Image extracted}} or dFX to preserve source links.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:11, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
And, when using the crop tool, don't forget to remove any redundant categories from the extracted image. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:42, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Images with only a Wikidata link

I have seen images where the user created and added only a Wikidata item but no category. That Wikidata item contains only the image and no further information. The description of the photo is often too brief to see exactly what it is about and where (in which country, province) the photo was taken. Example File:Sima-kő kilátás.jpg of @Emilke82: . That user created many Wikidata items. I have added a comment on the users talk page, but what to do with this problem in general? Just leave it as it is although the Wikidata item has not any additional value in my opinion? Wouter (talk) 15:05, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

The image file names appear to be descriptive (they're in Hungarian), so they are not irredeemable. some of the Wikidata items are linked to articles on the Hungarian Wikipedia; the others seem to be intended to describe the predicted geographical features (A Google search for the file name in your example, without "File:" or ".jpg", for instance, shows that it relates to [3]). If we do not have a Hungarian speaker here who can assist, ask on hu:Wikipédia:Nagykövetség. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:51, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Photo challenge October results

Skyscrapers: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Miami skyline from the ocean Hudson Yards, Midtown
Manhattan at dusk		 Flatiron building,
Manhattan, 1969
Author Matthew T Rader King of Hearts Foeniz
Score 17 16 12
Greens: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Plitvička jezera Bamboo forest in Arashiyama
（Sagano）, Kyoto, Japan.		 Белый утёнок в зелёной тине
Author 66colpi Naokijp Vitaliy VK
Score 21 7 7

Congratulations to Matthew T Rader, King of Hearts, Foeniz, 66colpi, Naokijp and Vitaliy VK. -- Jarekt (talk) 04:20, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your congratulations Foeniz (talk) 15:02, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much @Jarekt! This is really exciting! Matthew T Rader (talk) 18:23, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2023 opens in January

Please help translate to your language

(There is a translatable version of this message on MetaWiki)

Hello

The Community Wishlist Survey (CWS) 2023, which lets contributors propose and vote for tools and improvements, starts next month on Monday, 23 January 2023, at 18:00 UTC and will continue annually.

We are inviting you to share your ideas for technical improvements to our tools and platforms. Long experience in editing or technical skills is not required. If you have ever used our software and thought of an idea to improve it, this is the place to come share those ideas!

The dates for the phases of the Survey will be as follows:

  • Phase 1: Submit, discuss, and revise proposals – Monday, Jan 23, 2023 to Monday, Feb 6, 2023
  • Phase 2: WMF/Community Tech reviews and organizes proposals – Monday, Jan 30, 2023 to Friday, Feb 10, 2023
  • Phase 3: Vote on proposals – Friday, Feb 10, 2023 to Friday, Feb 24, 2023
  • Phase 4: Results posted – Tuesday, Feb 28, 2023

If you want to start writing out your ideas ahead of the Survey, you can start thinking about your proposals and draft them in the CWS sandbox.

We are grateful to all who participated last year. See you in January 2023!

Thank you! Community Tech, STei (WMF) 16:45, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

@Ziko: Will you use this opportunity for proposed improvements for Commons? Per Commons:Think big - open letter about Wikimedia Commons. Ellywa (talk) 17:41, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
Hello Elly, I have not planned so. :-) Repairing Commons is too big for a wish list.@Ellywa Ziko van Dijk (talk) 18:02, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
Hi Ziko, suppose you will be right. Small steps won't solve big problems. Ellywa (talk) 06:03, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
If we make two wishes for urgent and not so complicated problems and get 300 votes on them, this would definitely help. We should definitely discuss this and find out what to propose and request to vote on. GPSLeo (talk) 06:38, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
I agree with User:GPSLeo here: there are a lot of small, simple things that would be of value. - Jmabel ! talk 16:23, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Derivative work licensing for print

I redrew a facepalm emoji changed colors and slight variation in the hair. I would like to use the image in a card game being sold to the public. Based on the page I find this statement: attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

Because I want to use this in print how/who do I give credit?

Here is the art: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emojione_1F926.svg — Preceding unsigned comment was added by 23.29.37.233 (talk) 04:21, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

For what it's worth, EmojiOne is now JoyPixels; their later releases as JoyPixels are not open source, but these early ones are. I honestly don't know whether they'd prefer a credit to EmojiOne or JoyPixels. At the time they licensed this, they were called EmojiOne, so I guess you are probably safe giving that attribution, but I'm not a lawyer.
Also, because it is a "sharealike" license, you need to offer the same license for any work you derive from theirs. - Jmabel ! talk 05:30, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Movement Charter: End of the community consultation round 1

Hi everyone,

On behalf of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC), we would like to thank everyone who has participated in our first community wide consultation period on the Movement Charter.

People from across the movement shared their feedback and thoughts on the content of the Movement Charter. If you have not had the chance to share your opinion yet, you are welcome to do so by giving the drafts a read and filling out the anonymous survey, which is accessible in 12+ languages. The survey will close on January 2, 2023. You are invited to continue to share your thoughts with the MCDC via email too: movementcharter@wikimedia.org.

What’s next?

The Movement Strategy and Governance team will publish the final report with a summary of the feedback received in January 2023. It will be shared with the MCDC and the communities via different distribution channels.

After receiving the final report, the MCDC will review the suggestions and communicate the changes by providing an explanation on how and why suggestions were or were not adopted in the next versions of the drafts. There will be additional ways to engage with the Movement Charter content in 2023, including early feedback on a proposed ratification process and new drafts of different chapters in the second quarter of 2023.

We invite you to sign up for the MCDC monthly newsletter, which will be delivered to the Talk page of your choice. Monthly updates are available on Meta to stay updated on the progress of the MCDC.

Interested people can still sign-up to become a Movement Charter Ambassador (MC Ambassador) to support their community. MC Ambassadors Program will restart accepting applications from both individuals and groups ahead of the next round of consultations in the second quarter of 2023.

We thank you for your participation, time, and effort in helping to build the charter for our movement!

On behalf of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 09:57, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Listed Source for Category allpaintings.org is currently invalid and/or possibly hijacked.

Seems like most images in the following category have a inappropriate source listed, currently redirecting to an unrelated site.

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

Example image with incorrect sourcing: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Envoys_of_Agamemnon_by_Ingres.jpg

Erroneous source listed at the time of posting: http://www.allpaintings.org/v/Neoclassicism/Jean+Auguste+Dominique+Ingres/Jean+Auguste+Dominique+Ingres+-+Achilles+Receiving+the+Envoys+of+Agamemnon.jpg.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Siegtyr (talk • contribs) 22:09, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Siegtyr (talk) 22:07, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Merge accounts

I have accidentally created two accounts, Chris.sherlock2 (talk) and User:Chris.sherlock3. I keep accidentally logging into Chris.sherlock3, when I mean to be in Chris.sherlock2. How would I get them merged and make Chris.sherlock2 the main account? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 13:38, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

You'll need to go onto Meta:USURP, it may or may not be possible. Bidgee (talk) 13:45, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
@Bidgee, Chris.sherlock2, and Chris.sherlock3: Sorry, it is it is technically impossible per that link.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:52, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
Oh well, I'll try to remember to not use one of the accounts! - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 16:57, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
@Chris.sherlock2, you can just post a disclaimer that this is an "accidental account" that belongs to you and has not been created for sockpuppetry... ─ The Aafī (talk) 18:34, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
You can rename the second account to some other name. Ruslik (talk) 20:52, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
Or use one account as your main account and the other when your travelling and using say free public WiFi for example. Some contributors have done this, you’re not limited to just one account on Commons (you only need to disclose it on each of the user pages). Bidgee (talk) 21:56, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
The way I have: TheAafi and AafiOnMobile. ─ The Aafī (talk) 03:50, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks all, you've all been very helpful :-) - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 12:47, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Final reminder: Wikimedia sound logo vote ends today!!!

Hi everyone. A reminder that the Wikimedia sound logo vote is still open. Voting ends today December 19 at 23:59 UTC. Thanks to many of you from around the world who have played a part in this project's success. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 14:40, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Regions of NSW, Australia

I am in a real pickle here. I cannot for the life of me work out the regions of New South Wales! The Wikipedia article at Local government areas of New South Wales has literally no sources for their structure. And then I looked around, and there is so many different regions!

As you can see, all different! I'm sure if I look more I'll find even more regions.

So I found a GIS system that shows regions on a map, it is quite interesting, but now I'm even more confused how to divide up the categories!


Any advise would be helpful... - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 13:09, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

  • @Chris.sherlock2: My advice is: be very wary of trying to set up a subcategory system for something complicated, potentially controversial, and where you are not expert. - Jmabel ! talk 16:19, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
    • @Jmabel: I hear you, I got into all sorts of bother on the other site over categories. I’m actually only doing this work because I’m going through wikishootme to take photos of South-Western Sydney and I need a plan of attack. I’ve done a non-controversial category structure of suburbs into LGAs and I had thought regions would make it even better… then I found it was a mess! It’s why I took my concerns here. Do you know who I could speak into? The current category imis a mess already (it had suburbs in the category, for instance). I’d love to find a usable structure here. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 16:33, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Is there a more specific context? Category:New South Wales is a mess and Category:Places in New South Wales is unclear while Category:History of New South Wales weirdly seems a bit more organized. You may need to do a bottom up approach from the individual subpages into the main categorization instead of a top-down approach as places like en:City of Shellharbour have decent sourcing. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:20, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
    • That sounds like a reasonable idea. The problem is that in Australia (and I only recently discovered this) the only state to formally define their regions is Western Australia! Everyone else just uses whatever seems convinient. I'm rather beginning to wonder if we might not make up our own regions... but I'd need input from Australian Commons editors! The "bottom up" idea does sound the best though. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 19:33, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Category intersection problem

If you look at Category:Images from The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis, you will see a number of categories like Category:Apache people as photographed by Edward Curtis and Category:Navajo people as photographed by Edward Curtis, plus many others for various tribes/nations. The problem is that this seems to suggest that photos by Curtis of people from these same tribes/nations but that don't come from that particular work don't belong in the category, which in my view is really kind of silly. The category names don't suggest anything of the sort, and at least some of these categories (e.g. Category:Navajo people as photographed by Edward Curtis) were around for years before the category for that particular work was added as a parent by User:Look2See1, since indef-blocked for category edits that went against consensus. (Newer categories such as the "Apache" category were probably innocently modeled on those older ones). I'd be inclined to change Category:Images from The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis as a parent of these just to Category:Photographs by Edward Sheriff Curtis, but then for the ones that are from that work we'd lose all connection to the work. Any suggestions?

By the way, this is a perfect illustration of why there is a need to be cautious when making rather arbitrary intersections of categories, or when changing the meaning of an existing category. - Jmabel ! talk 20:46, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

@Jmabel I'd suggest taking them to CFD individually. It is possible people want them renamed to something more accurate like Category:Navajo people from The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis which will cut down the nonsense additions. I don't understand why these are "people as photographed by" at all. They are Apache people photographed by Curtis aren't they? That is a silly categorization to me but is it that Curtis identified them as Apache so we are categorizing them that way? It seems silly to focus on what he thought they were. Ricky81682 (talk) 00:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
@Ricky81682:
  1. "as" here probably means nothing at all.
  2. Do I understand that you are supporting User:Look2See1's narrowing of the category from its original meaning, and think that photos of these tribes/nations by Curtis that are not sourced from that particular work should not be in the category? - Jmabel ! talk 00:09, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
I don't believe in the categorization at all but I suggest asking if others do. I would likely support deletion but secondarily I would agree with you on the upmove option. Maybe just do it and let's see if people want to narrow it later with a separate category. Either way, the name itself needs work in my mind so it's better to have a CFD on them and see what people decide. It may close in 2027 but that's Commons lol. Ricky81682 (talk) 00:13, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

CFD now at Commons:Categories for discussion/2022/12/Category:Images from The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis. Jmabel ! talk 00:32, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Is Baglama2 still a thing?

It has not been updated since september C.Suthorn (talk) 20:16, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Are elements like pipes, cables, sockets and taps in buildings not architectural?

In Commons it looks like the developments of architectural elements stopped in the 19th century: I cannot find a connection between Category:Architectural elements and elements in a building that are needed for modern water supply, sewerage, electricity, gas and internet, things that go into or come out a building by default, like pipes and cables. While most of these things, if not all, are present in a building when it is delivered or is transferred after purchase; in the Netherlands the first three are even mandatory by law. So builders (and I guess architects) should take them into account. My questions:

  1. Is that indeed true: are these elements officially not architectural? (I am no architectural expert at all, so this might be a lack of knowledge.)
  2. Is there an English umbrella term for them, so I can make a main category for containing all of them? Perhaps something with "utility"?

Not architectural elements?

--JopkeB (talk) 11:12, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I would say that these are not "architectural". And while these all relate to utilties, I'm not sure we have one common term related to that which refers to elements like this. We tend to refer separately to electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems. - Jmabel ! talk 17:22, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
Perhaps Category:Building engineering would cover these? MKFI (talk) 07:31, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
There is a term en:Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing that is a subcategory of building engineering aka en:architectural engineering. However, lack of interwikis seems to suggeset that that's not a term that is commonly used outside of the US. Maybe the broader en:Building services engineering would be a term that works better internationally.
In any case, on the aesthetics side of things, there's certainly a connection to CAT:Interior design here, which is considered a sub-discipline of architecture in several countries and even called interior architecture in at least Italian, French, and German. Its subcategory Category:Interior architectural elements includes things like sinks, mirrors, and furniture. Boilers probably do not belong in there, but faucets and light switches certainly can be design elements. El Grafo (talk) 08:57, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
(HVAC = heating, ventilation and air conditioning). JopkeB (talk) 09:11, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, Jmabel, MKFI and El Grafo, for your reactions and research. So the category structure could be:
And I'll shop for more inspiration on en:Building services engineering for subcategories. And of coarse everybody (preferably with more technical knowledge than me) can add more subcategories and/or present suggestions.
Would this make sense? --JopkeB (talk) 13:56, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
In respect of the faucet, and radiator, it should be noted that in parts of Europe, they could be considered a 'design' if there was a significant expression of creativity in their appearance beyond mere functional necessity. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:20, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

I have implemented Category:Building services engineering. Please correct and add descriptions, subcategories, parent categories and files. For Category:Interior design I could not find an appropriate subcategory, so who knows one, please add it here. --JopkeB (talk) 07:49, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --JopkeB (talk) 07:49, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Requests for comment: 2022 overhaul of categories by period

Commons:Requests for comment/2022 overhaul of categories by period.--RZuo (talk) 07:33, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Endless category loops for films and actors

Hello,

Some users seem to add actors to categories about the films (and TV series) they performed in, and also add the films to the actors' categories through Category:Films by actor. This creates endless category loops:

In the case of a single random example (Cheech Marin):

Which out of the two types of categorization is most useful, if at all? For some reasons this seems to especially affect voice actors that dubbed animated films. Note that on en.wiki films are not categorized by actors, and actors by film or any other performer with their performance (there's a guideline explaining why this type of categorization is futile). Of course Commons doesn't apply en.wiki rules. However, is this any less futile, especially if it creates endless category loops? A better way to handle performer/performance may be to follow the links in the Wikidata infobox, for instance.

@Tuvalkin, Andy Dingley, Trivialist, and Howcheng: I've not found a previous central discussion about this, however I found some involvement from these users, so pinging them for input. Place Clichy 10:27, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

  • I'm not sure that either of them is particularly useful. The categorizers seem to be thinking of them more as keywords than a logical organizing scheme. Trivialist (talk) 11:04, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
    • They are both «particularly useful» and «logical», as they both address a legitimate and useful need for information about some kind of relationship between any two categories.
Trying to eliminate all “loops” in our category tree is both impossible without greately reducing its usefulness and an unecessary theoretical concern: Classification of all reality in neat nested boxes is a 19th century quest we should not care about (after all even the tree of life has anastomosis, as it’s known since 1983).
The only kind of category tree loops we should always avoid are those of 1st level (A→B and B→A) as it would offer two different categorization schemes for the same relationship between two categories — wider loops (say, A→B→C vs. A→C→B) are acceptable and should be decided for each individual pair of categories, with no concerns on whether a loop will evenually emerge or not.
Trivialist and Place Clichy mention keywords and Wikidata. Well, okay: Use those if you want to, and leave categorization for those who want to categorize. Starting a discussion which would lead to the elimination of most categories just to quell a concern that is essentially esthetical seems pointless, to say the least.
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 15:54, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
RZuo (talk) 12:35, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
  • First of all, what is the problem with a loop? What breaks? Why not simply accept loops, they're non-damaging.
This is MediaWiki categorization. It's a navigational mechanism, and a relatively crude one. It's not an ontological, ordinal or defining one.
The situation here arises because there are two commutative properties being modelled: "films of <actor>" and also "cast of <film>". If we represent both of these as properties (i.e. category membership on this platform) then it is inevitable that there is duplication, and thus (given how MW models properties) there are loops.
We do not need to have both property memberships (and so the "cast of <film>" would seem the most straightforward to keep). In that case, navigation for "films of <actor>" involves looking at the list of parent categories, not children (there is a prejudice against having many parent categories). Given the relative numbers, we'd be better keeping "cast of <film>" and ditching "films of <actor>".
We could instead limit this to "films starring <actor>" instead, (ditching both "films of <actor>" and "cast of <film>") which limits the number of parents for any film to just its handful of stars, not an entire cast. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:03, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
I can imagine certain tools that can search through multiple levels of subcategories, do not like loops. For example: deepcategory: in Wiki's search function and PetScan. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:37, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Commons:Categories (a policy) explains what are categories and what is their use. It writes: There should be no cycles (i.e. a category should not contain itself, directly or indirectly). Categories are a structured hierarchy, from the most generic concept to the very specific. Although there are several types of relations reflected by category inclusion, the policy again advises to avoid cyclic structure. A category loop is merely the sign that the relationship implied makes no sense. In the case at hand, films are not "a part" of the actor playing in them, or who voiced a character. Actors are not "a part" of the film; although they play a part, their life and work is certainly not contained in any of their films. Some kind of horizontal linking, in the text description or the Wikidata infobox, is certainly more appropriate. As Tuvalkin wrote above, leave categorization for those who categorize, without breaking the category hierarchy with nonsensical inclusions (and loops). Place Clichy 22:17, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
We need a category that is all categories that don’t contain themselves. I think that would be extremely interesting. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:20, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
Please refrain from personal attacks, “fellow” categorizer who yet thinks categories should be partly replaced with random see-also links and Wikidata cruff: Your fetish for a strict single-root dendrogram for all reality — now that’s nonsensical. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:10, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
Attacks? I don't see any in my reply, although I tried to insert an answer to your own friendly invitation to some other users to leave categorization for those who want to categorize. Place Clichy 16:46, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
@Andy Dingley: "What breaks"? Specifically, OgreBot's gallery pages. Every time someone creates a category loop that involves a person who is included in my gallery, I get messages from the bot such as this: "Your gallery has a hard upper-limit of about 8000 files per day, while your gallery would have had 24136 files (including files already on the page)." So then I have to go and break these loops so the bot doesn't freak out. —howcheng {chat} 00:24, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
So fix the 'bot. Loops can happen, and it's not hard for a 'bot to detect this without getting itself stuck. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:33, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
Truly, what Andy says here. Speaking as a longtime software developer, it is pretty near malpractice to right code that navigates a graph and doesn't check for loops unless some other technical mechanism has already guaranteed that the graph will be acyclic. There is no way in the world that we aren't sometimes going to end up with loops in the category "hierarchy". If our tools break when that happens, then it is super-easy for a vandal to break our tools any time they feel like it. - Jmabel ! talk 01:00, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
I'm not concerned about the occasional loop created by accident, and imho it is not a technical problem. I am a lot more concerned by the logic behind the simultaneous placing of actors under films and films under actors. The mention of the loops merely indicate that this logic is flawed in regards to what categories are as defined in Commons policy. In other terms, while actors and films are related topics, they do not have a hierarchical relationship. The mere fact that you can't tell which one is above the other is just telling that. Not all category cruft and over-categorization is good, some moderation is also welcome. To take an example above, not all of Elizabeth Banks' life and career in included in The Hunger Games (or the dozens of films to be potentially added on her page), and not all The Hunger Games is a Elizabeth Banks performance. At the very least, I think that direct inclusion of actors in films and vice-versa should be discouraged (i.e. without an intermediate filmography or cast layer). Place Clichy 16:46, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
The phrase "over-categorization" has a specific meaning in Commons — please do not misuse it. As for the matter at hand, I notice that you say «an intermediate filmography or cast layer», and that’s encouraging: That’s also how I feel about 1st degree loops versus any others. Of course more distant loops in the graph (i.e., with more than just 2 nodes) you still seem to see them as flukes «created by accident», which I do not agree with, but I’m all for adding those intermediate layers wherever needed. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:52, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
I’m a new Commons contributor, so I don’t stumble on any land mines, what does it mean? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:23, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
@Chris.sherlock2: "Over-categorization" or "overcatting" here usually means that someone has ignorantly or inadvertently added categories that are already implied, because they are ancestors of categories already present. E.g. adding Category:United Kingdom to something that is already in Category:London. That's not to say that it is never valid to use both a category and one of its ancestors for a given image. For starters, if there is a loop in the hierarchy (the topic at hand), then a category is its own ancestor! But, more subtly, it's common for a building to be in a category for the street or streets it is on, and if a picture shows the building but is basically a picture of the street, then it is reasonable to have both; similarly, a picture of multiple members of a family that has a category might show (among others) an individual notable enough to have a category of their own, in which case is would be OK to use both. So, much like loops in the hierarchy, it's a rule of thumb, but not an absolute prohibition. - Jmabel ! talk 17:40, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
Honestly, I would just import English Wikipedia's PERFCAT guidelines onto Commons, removing any categories akin to "Performer/performance by/of/for/from performance/performer", due to the aforementioned horizontality problem. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 00:16, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Template:Cc-by-sa-4.0,3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0

Are you allowed to use that template freely, without being granted by Creative Commons, Wikimedia, or Commons?I wish to use that for every file I upload for use for Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WPchanger2011 (talk • contribs) 02:37, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

@WPchanger2011: Hi, and welcome. You may use {{Cc-by-sa-4.0,3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0}} for your own work uploads. It is currently transcluded 416,264 times. See also COM:SIGN.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 03:21, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
thank you for the answer. WPchanger2011 (talk) 19:15, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
@WPchanger2011: the operative phrase being "own work". You can license your own work as you wish; you can't go issuing these varied licenses on someone else's behalf. Jmabel ! talk 05:10, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
and thanks to you too WPchanger2011 (talk) 19:16, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Categorisation of pages containing multiple DRs

Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Cape Town Stadium contains DRs relating to South African FOP, two of which were closed as ‘delete’ and one of which is pending. Therefore, it belongs in both Category:South African FOP cases/deleted and Category:South African FOP cases/pending. JWilz12345 disagrees, calling the former ‘redundant’. What does everyone else think? Brianjd (talk) 08:47, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

@Brianjd: in my opinion the current DR is the basis of the categorization. In that case, by having a "/deleted" subcategory categorized, it misleads other users that may think that the entire nomination page is closed. When I nominate images for deletion and the tools use an existing nomination page, I don't add "/pending"; rather I change either "/kept" or "/deleted" to "/pending". JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 11:44, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
@JWilz12345 If such confusion exists, it is not the result of categorisation. It is the result of having multiple DRs on one page to begin with.
Suppose a DR page is linked from {{Kept}}, but a later DR on the same page is pending or even closed as ‘delete’. Or suppose someone uses a DR (on page A) as a precedent in a later DR (on page B), but page A also contains a later DR with a different status. Sometimes you even find that two mass DRs are opened on the same page at the same time (with different rationales), and the later one is closed first. Is any of this misleading? No one seems to think so. Why should ‘/kept’ and ‘/deleted’ categories be any different?
On the other hand, your categorisation is misleading. The result is that two South African FOP DRs closed as ‘delete’ were deliberately excluded from Category:South African FOP cases/deleted. That is certainly not what I would expect when browsing that category. Brianjd (talk) 11:58, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
For example, [4]. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 11:53, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
@Brianjd: I think a more long-term solution is for VisualFileChange tool to have a function in which if it detects an identically-named deletion request, it will instead send the nomination to a disambiguated nomination page. Suppose the SoAfrican case page you gave, if a fourth nomination is made via VisualFileChange, the nomination won't be made at the existing page, but instead be made at "Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Cape Town Stadium 2". This will be more subcategory specific. Plus it prevents archival issues arising from overused pages, most infamous is Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Burj Khalifa. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 12:10, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
@JWilz12345 I agree with everything you said.
(another example: Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Judgefloro) Brianjd (talk) 12:30, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
@Brianjd: over in Morocco, COM:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Hassan II Mosque, now on its 33rd request. (Some sarcasm intended: is this deletion request a nominee for Guinness Book of World Records as having the most FOP-related nominations? 😅) JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 12:35, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
@JWilz12345 Three top-level boxes for previous discussions, with more boxes inside. I can remember nothing like it. Brianjd (talk) 12:42, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
I agree; in fact, I'd gladly prefer splitting up separate deletion discussions on the same page, potentially adding boxes to point to other discussions akin to what English Wikipedia does for its deletion discussions. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 21:16, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Page protection request

The media file "File:রেসকোর্স ময়দানে হোসেন শহীদ সোহ্‌রাওয়ার্দীর জানাজা (১৯৬৩).jpg" has generated some controversies recently.

At the picture, a substantial crowd is seen amassing in the Racecourse Field, which is currently known as Suhrawardi Uddan. Regarding this picture, there are three claims.

1. Some claim that this is Hossain Shaheed Suhrawardi's funeral.

2. Some claim that this is the funeral procession for former president Ziaur Rahman. The third and least important argument is that this gathering intends to welcome Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to Dhaka. The first two arguments are made by two of the confronting major political parties in the region since those parties' two founding leaders are the first two historical people. These two political parties have histories of conflicts among them that cost thousands of lives.

The file now holds the title that supports the aforementioned first claim. The title reads “Hossain Shaheed Suhrawardi’s funeral at Racecourse field” in English. Before moving, the title was “ File:Ramna Race Course Queen Elizabeth II 1961” which was in favor of the third claim which was again supported by a reliable third party source.

The first assertion is correct according to a recent investigation by a fact-checking organization, and they have since sued Wikimedia Commons for spreading misinformation. The filename has been updated to reflect the current situation in light of the fact-checking investigation report, and the initial source has been replaced with the article link of the fact-checking organization. Widespread public interest in this file has been generated after the fact-checking report, including rival organization members. According to the Bangla text of the "Source" in the summary paragraph, “This image is from The Daily Star, but The Daily Star isn't the major source. The Daily Star most likely copied this image from Facebook and published it again in 2018, misrepresenting it as a crowd waiting to see Queen Elizabeth.” This clearly supports the first of the aforementioned claims, which supports the assertion of one of the political parties. As the page history is constantly visible, this raises risk for the uploader, file mover, and editors of the page.

I request to move the file to a more “neutral” name and protect it for the sake of the safety of our editors. Please check the talk page of this file for more information. -Wasiul Bahar (talk) 19:36, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

(Excuse my bad english)  Oppose. No need to protect the page. There are some false claims in the internet but https://rumorscanner.com/fact-check/shaheed-suhrawardy-janaza-picture-claim-ziaur-rahman/30396 clearly shows which one correct, with explanation and evidence. I have also added the image to person's article bn:হোসেন_শহীদ_সোহ্‌রাওয়ার্দী#মৃত্যু. If the topic creator disagree, they can discuss this on Bengali wikipedia article talk page. আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 19:50, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
It's true that this file has received vast public attention which can be seen in its mediaview analysis. It's also true that this image is being debated in the political sphere of a region and recently the debate has been revived. Wikimedia Commons is very straightforward, we host educational media files, we're not responsible for the facts stated in the media files, the author and the source is. It's the local wikipedia communities, which collects and presents information with citations following NPOV. আফতাবুজ্জামান, please don't bring any local wikipedia debates in commons, stay relevant. According to Commons:Project scope/Neutral point of view, subject matter of the media file not necessarily should follow NPOV but the texts in the description should. However, neutrality of description should be aimed at wherever possible, and in any event neither filenames nor text may be phrased in such a way as to constitute vandalism, attack or deliberate provocation. I think, this incident loosely falls under "deliberate provocation".
 Strong support to move the file to a neutral title which doesn't specifically mention whose funeral this was. Also support to protect this page. As the uploader downloaded the image from The Daily Star, the news agency should be mentioned solely in the "Source" without any doubt, it's not Wikimedia Commons' responsibility to verify whether the daily star portrayed it right or wrong. What Wikimedia Commons can do the best is, mention Rumor Scanner's claim neutrally avoiding any bias in the "description", not in the source. --Mrb Rafi (talk) 04:18, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
I am going to inform Bengali community for comment if they have any, As native, they can easily verify Bengali sources. Thanks. আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 04:25, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
Not good in english, so writting in Bengali. সঠিকটি মূল পাতায় লিখে দিলে কীভাবে এটি নিরপেক্ষ দৃষ্টিভঙ্গিকে লঙ্ঘন করে? নিরপেক্ষ দৃষ্টিভঙ্গি মানে এই না যে ভুলটিও রাখতে হবে। রুমর স্কানার https://rumorscanner.com/fact-check/shaheed-suhrawardy-janaza-picture-claim-ziaur-rahman/30396 বিস্তারিত ব্যাখ্যা ও তথ্যপ্রমাণ দিয়েছে। প্রয়োজনে ডেইলি স্টারকে সরিয়ে ফেলা যায়, ডেইলি স্টার এই ছবির মূল উৎস নয়, তারা ফেসবুক থেকে নিয়ে ছবিটি প্রকাশ করেছে ২০১৮ সালে, একই ছবি উদাহরণ এখানে ২০১২ সালে, ২০১৫ সালে পাওয়া যাচ্ছে। সঠিককে ভুলে নামান্তরে বিরোধিতা। (Google translate: How does writing the correct info violate neutrality? An NPOV does not mean that error must be kept. Rumor Scanner https://rumorscanner.com/fact-check/shaheed-suhrawardy-janaza-picture-claim-ziaur-rahman/30396 provides detailed explanation and evidence what this picture is. Daily Star can be removed if necessary, Daily Star is not the original source of this picture, they took the picture from Facebook and published it in 2018. Same picture for example is available here from 2012, from 2015. Opposing the naming of correct info to wrong.) আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 04:27, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
Also With above user logic, i should download the same photo from here (published in 2012, 6 year before Daily Star): http://web.archive.org/web/20221225192001/https://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/RJTeady/29606318 and name it "১৯৫০ সালের ঢাকা রেসকোর্স 1950 in Dhaka racecourse"! আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 06:03, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
  •  Oppose, No need to protect. Also opposing to renaming the file from correct to wrong name. No political party in Bangladesh hasn't officially commented about the file. So I don't see the need to consider it politically. Al Riaz Uddin (talk) 05:59, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
    • @Al Riaz Uddin Ripon: Possible English-language confusion. When you write "No political party in Bangladesh hasn't officially commented about the file," that means the same thing as "Every political party in Bangladesh has officially commented about the file," which seems extremely unlikely. Did you perhaps mean to say, "No political party in Bangladesh has officially commented about the file"? - 16:21, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

deletion of images from Lake Bonneville page

Explain why two images were deleted from page. We assume they were deleted by user Wouterhagens. Please help us understand! Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Staplini (talk • contribs) 18:48, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Convenience links: File:Wasatch Fault and Lake Bonneville.jpg and File:Image of Lake Bonneville shorelines.png. Wouter (talk) 22:29, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
@Staplini: apparently the two images were grabbed from the Internet, from unfree websites. "Google" is the cited reason. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 01:54, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
They were obvious Google Earth screenshots with the actual "Google Earth" name and in one case even a copyright notice ("Map data © 2019 Google") clearly visible. Please read Commons:Licensing for an explanation why that is not allowed. --Rosenzweig τ 15:41, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

International relations templates

Looking over the various Category:International relations by year subcategories, I have seen a number of templates like Template:Relations of New Zealand and Poland by year for individual relationships but they only have one continent. For example, Category:Relations of New Zealand and Poland in 2008 shows Relations of Poland in 2008 but only pulls the Countries of Oceania template so New Zealand and Australia shows up but none of the others at Category:2008 in international relations of Poland. It would seem like we need to have many continent template calls ('Poland and' and 'and Poland') if we wanted the page to show all the relations of Poland in 2008. Should we rename it to 'Relations of Poland and Oceania countries in 2008' or does a template inside the template that calls each continent and both directions be added to the NZ/Poland template or should the whole section be junked? Ricky81682 (talk) 08:07, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Alt text for Commons images as structured data

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T166094

Hi all! Following two discussions here on Commons (Commons:Village pump/Archive/2022/05#Making ALT text part of Commons, Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2022/05#Adding alt texts through structured data), discussion on Phabricator (T166094) and an extremely protracted property dicussion on Wikidata (Wikidata:Property proposal/alt text), the propery alt text (P11265) has been created recently. The first discussion linked above was closed with "The Commons community asks the SDC development team to add a structured data text field (like the caption field) for multilingual alt texts." -- while the ex-SDC team (now the Structured Data team, focused on a less Commons-specific project, Structured Data Across Wikimedia) wasn't involved (Wikidata is flexible enough that new fields can be added without any developer involvement), I think this is essentially the same thing, and so there is consensus to use the new property. Please let me know if you disagree!

I made an example of how the property would be used: File:Hungary-0057_-_Shoes_on_the_Danube_(7263603836).jpg#P11265 - again please let me know if you think there is anything wrong with it. Otherwise, I plan to write a documentation page soon.

Note that technically there is not one multilingual field but multiple monolingual fields in different languages; this is a long-standing Wikidata limitation (T86517). If Wikidata ever gets first-class multilingual field support, it should be a simple matter to migrate the data.

Note also that adding P11265 values to an image doesn't automatically do anything extra (e.g. adding the alt text to the image in a way browsers would understand), although I hope we'll get there soon. --Tgr (talk) 22:41, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Pinging the people who have been heavily involved in the previous discussions: @Jmabel, DrMel, Peaceray, Glrx, Andy Mabbett, El Grafo, and GPSLeo: . Also @CBogen (WMF): from the SD team, just as an FYI since the team was mentioned in the closing summary of a previous discussion. --Tgr (talk) 23:49, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Looks fine. Now we would need to create at least a short page explaining how alt texts should be written. We have Help:Alternative text, but I think Commons namespace would be better if me make this a guideline later. And at the start we maybe should have an abuse filter marking the edits that we can see if there is a vandalism other problem with this. And of course when everything works fine we should think about adding this to the UploadWizard as well. GPSLeo (talk) 09:59, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
The suggested default alt text: "Black and white photograph of a man with a tripod camera and pine trees in the background."
  • I do not like any of it. It violates some clear ideas.
    1. There is no doubt that one can use a database to store multilingual strings, but that does not seem to be the design approach of Wikidata or the advantageous part of structured data. Multilingual strings are atomic; they do not have structure. Wikidata items usually have properties that resolve to other items or quantities such as dates. Look at Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Q8007). It does not have properties whose values are multilingual strings. The translations are for items and properties: Франклин Делано Рузвельт (Q8007) and 富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福（Q8007）. Using them for alt text is using them outside their design intent.
    2. Alt text strings should to be tailored to the topic.
      https://accessibility.huit.harvard.edu/describe-content-images
      https://www.med.unc.edu/webguide/accessibility/alt-text/
    3. The notion of default strings being reasonable is dubious. An image may have many details, but only a subset will be important for a topic. The alt text (P11265) property proposal shows a portrait of Ansel Adams with alt text that does not mention his name. The tripod will be irrelevant in most contexts. The B&W aspect is important when considering AA's approach to his art. The Shoes on the Danube description, "Dozens of metal shoes clustered at the edge of a wharf," is a literal absurdity. It mentions nothing about the symbolism of those shoes being a memorial to murder victims. People were told to remove their shoes before they were shot and fell into the Danube.
    4. I disagree with the notion that generic alt text is better than no alt text.
    5. I fear that users uploading a picture to Commons will be pestered to supply dubious alt text.
    6. A far better approach, and an approach that fits usage, is to require alt text when an image is used in an article. That article will be monolingual, and it have a focused topic (where mentioning Ansel Adams or tripods will be obvious). If an image does not have explicit alt text, then the article should go into an automatic maintenance category. If the image should not be described, then set its alt text to "".
    Glrx (talk) 19:46, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
    • @Glrx: remember that pictures in articles nearly always have captions. The purpose of ALT text is distinct from that: to let blind or sight-limited people (or -- rare these days -- any person using a text-only browser) know what a sighted person sees when they look at the image. This feature was specifically requested by an organization working with blind people, with the specific intent of getting such texts translated into as many languages as possible. Contact User:DrMel if you want details: there are apparently a large number of people (mostly not current Wikimedians) wanting to work on this. - Jmabel ! talk 19:57, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
I would like to answer to some things you wrote. 1 and 2: I also do not think that this is a perfect solution but this is way better than using Wikitext templates. For 3 we need a guideline on how to write a good alt text description. 4: Of course good Wikipedia articles should have their own alt text but we also have many long or even auto generated lists. I think the new Wikifunctions also wants to have photos. 5: Yes we have a vandalism and spam problem, but also within the very old Wikitext descriptions. GPSLeo (talk) 20:47, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@Glrx: contextuality was discussed several times in the linked pages. It's clear the majority thinks generic alt text is better than nothing. As to your other points:

  • See d:Special:ListProperties/monolingualtext for a list of properties with a text value. It is not in any way unusual. Sometimes it makes sense for the value itself to be a Wikidata item, and sometimes it doesn't.
  • The purpose of alt text is to provide the information that a reader can get directly from the image, and that readers with visual limitations would miss. So I think both examples you criticize are reasonable uses of alt text. The reader will no doubt learn from the article or the image caption who is shown on the image or what the shoes represent.
  • Fair point that forcing users to provide alt text might result in low-quality alt text (or, I guess, less uploads). There is little reason to do so, though. There are some types of metadata the uploader is uniquely well situated to provide - e.g. if they don't indicate the source, it can be very hard for others to figure it out. For alt text, though, it is just as easy for anyone else to provide it.
  • You (or anyone) should feel free to propose inline alt text to be required on the various Wikipedias; personally I don't think there is not much chance of such a proposal being accepted. A tracking category is doable but (with the possible exception of enwiki) there would be way too many articles in it to be of any practical use IMO. In any case, you'd probably still want alt text for various situations where an image is used outside of an article (not least the file description page itself).

--Tgr (talk) 03:38, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

I created a sketch of how alt text could be used on Commons and on other Wikimedia wikis: T325955 Feedback welcome, here or on Phabricator.

(To be clear, this would probably have to happen on a volunteer basis, which means not soon, possibly not ever. I think it helps to have a map of possibilities regardless.) --Tgr (talk) 04:40, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

  • I opposed the creation of a property for holding generic alt text every time it was propose, for the reasons enumerated above. I also requested that advice be sought from accessibility professionals; this was not done.
    The example given above of "Black and white photograph of a man with a tripod camera and pine trees in the background." is indeed a good example... of why generic alt text is not a good idea. If the photograph is used on a Wikipedia article on Ansel Adams (which seems to be its most common usage), then the fact that he has a hat and beard is pertinent. If it is used on the article on bellows cameras, then the fact that the camera in the picture is "probably a Zeiss Ikon Universal Juwel" is more relevant. But in both cases, what goes in the alt attribute will depend on what the editor puts in the caption. The use of this property is destined to harm, not aid, accessibility. It was ill-conceived, forced through despite failing to achieve consensus multiple times,and does not have the support of people who are, or who work with, users of alt text. It is no more than tokenism. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:54, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
    • @Pigsonthewing: again, this is mainly an accessibility issue. ALT text is not in lieu of a caption, and text browsers and accessibility tools for the blind will both read out captions just fine. What they won't do is describe what a sighted person will see in the picture. DrMel who first kicked this off is an accessibility expert (and I'm a little surprised not to have had her weigh in again on the current thread. - Jmabel ! talk 19:03, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
      • Where do I say alt text is not an accessibility issue? Where do I say alt text is in lieu of a caption? Where do I say text browsers and accessibility tools for the blind will not read out captions correctly? Your comments bear no relation to mine. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:07, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
        • My point being that ALT text is supplementary to a caption. The things you are mentioning as relevant on a per-article basis will presumably be in the caption. Remember that generic advice about ALT text is based on the situation generally found on the web (but not on Wikipedia etc.) where there normally aren't any captions such. - Jmabel ! talk 16:33, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
    @Pigsonthewing the point you would actually need to argue (but you didn't even try, which is probably why the consensus went against your liking in each of the past discussions) is that an alt text like "Black and white photograph of a man with a tripod camera and pine trees in the background" on an image used about bellows cameras is worse than not having alt text at all, leaving the visually impaired reader with a mystery image they have no clue about. Harping on about how alt text hand-tailored to the image + containing article can be better than alt text tailored to the image only misses the point; that option continues to be available.
    Also your counterexamples tend to be worse than the originals. E.g. "probably a Zeiss Ikon Universal Juwel" is something that should be in the caption if it is important, because the average sighted reader will sure as hell not know it just from looking at the image; and as pretty much every guidance about alt text warns, it should not repeat what is already in the caption. Tgr (talk) 00:44, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
    Consensus did not go against my liking in each of the past discussions; the proposal was rejected every time except the last one when it was bludgeoned trough. The point you say I should have argued was indeed argued; as I pointed out in the last round, it is unreasonable to keep bludgeoning in such fashion, requiring proponents with valid positions to repeatedly re-state them. And, once again, my post above says "If it is used on [an] article [...] what goes in the alt attribute will depend on what the editor puts in the caption.". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:40, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
    Earlier Wikidata proposals were rejected for different reasons(" It might be relevant to propose it again once structured data is available on Commons."; "discussion has stalled with no consensus for creation" after only three people commenting). For the more recent discussion, the people who opposed previous proposals specifically for context-dependence showed up and opposed again, the people who previously opposed for different reasons didn't oppose it as those reasons didn't apply anymore, and way more people showed up in support. "Bludgeoned through" is a funny thing to say about a discussion that was kept open for almost two years and had >75% support rate with detailed arguments. You said not fully contextualized alt text is worse than nothing, refused to argue for that position (you did not in fact do that in any of the earlier discussions either), most people weren't convinced. Horse, stick, etc. Or feel free to actually explain why you think a reader with visual disabilities is better served by no alt text at all than by alt text that's not contextualized to the article, instead of just repeating many times that that's what you think. Tgr (talk) 22:53, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Online meeting about Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons: rescue is close! Or, is it?

Hello, German Wikipedia invites for January, 5th, 2023! We will talk about the history and future of Wikimedia Commons. With us we will have guests from the Wikimedia Foundation, to report what is going on right now.

The first hour of the evening (starting at 19.00h CET = UTC+1) will be in German and the second hour (20.00h, with our guests) in English.

More information (in German) and the link to the Senfcall meeting you will find on this page. Everyone is invited! Ziko van Dijk (talk) 18:09, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Doubts about an old map

Appreciated community, I have a doubt:

I'm considering upload to Commons this 1972 map, called "The floor of the oceans, but I'm kinda confused in relation with the "admissibility" of that map in regards of the license.

My question is: can I upload this map to Commons in the near future? I need an answer as soon as possible.

Thanks in advance, greetings from Colombia and God bless you. Universalis (talk) 19:31, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

  • Unlikely to be acceptable for Commons.
Material on Commons needs to be "freely licensed", either not under copyright, or under copyright but with a licence granted by its rights holder to allow some (fairly generous) use of it despite. See COM:LICENSING. This is an absolute requirement.
Some material can be used on Wikipedias under "fair use". The material is considered so important and so unavailable elsewhere that we 'stretch' our assumed right to use it. That is not permissible here on Commons though.
This is a 1972 work by a cartographer who lived until 2015.[5] Under most international rules, that's going to remain their copyright for decades yet.
Some altruistic library might have been gifted the rights to this, and have then chosen to license them to projects like Commons (we have many photo archives like that, see Commons:Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed for one). But that is not a common thing and not something we can ever assume, unless negotiated for and specificallly informed. Sadly the AGS map library[6] is also doing a poor job by failing to publish any copyright information for their content, so we can only assume the most restrictive case. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:30, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

2016 in rail transport in Germany

In Category:2016 in rail transport in Germany I have moved a lot of files to lander categories. However a lot of files are inside pictures of the Hamburg-Köln-Express wich crosses four Lander. (NRW, Bremen, Lower-Saxony and Hamburg) Three pictures are taken in a (may be recognisable) station:

Can the station(s) be indentified? Smiley.toerist (talk) 18:46, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist Have you included those in Category:Unidentified train stations in Germany? I'd say Category:Unidentified locations in Germany in the 2010s is also relevant. You may get more results with someone who is already watching the subject matter than here. Ricky81682 (talk) 01:08, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
What little we see of the station is very generic, it's hard to identify a station based on that. The photos were taken very early in the morning, there's hardly any people in them, and the train looks like it is at the beginning of its route. Which means the photos were most likely taken in the station where the train started. Per the reflections in some of the train windows, the train's destination is Hamburg-Altona, so the photos were taken at the other end of the route. In May 2016, per de:Hamburg-Köln-Express, that would have been Frankfurt am Main central station, also seen in the itinerary in File:2016-05-26 HKX Zug by Olaf Kosinsky-66.jpg. So my guess is Frankfurt (Main) Hbf. --Rosenzweig τ 16:31, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
On the other hand, I noticed that these photos were taken 40 minutes later than the first photo, and the train seems to be in motion in some of the images before. So probably not the first station. If not Frankfurt, then perhaps Bingen or Koblenz. --Rosenzweig τ 17:37, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
@Smiley.toerist and Rosenzweig: I'd place my bets on Koblenz. The reflection in the third window from the left of File:2016-05-26 HKX Zug by Olaf Kosinsky-94.jpg shows HKX 1802's departure time: 09:59. According to the 2016 schedule, this corresponds exactly with Koblenz. Considering the markings on the platform and the background in File:2016-05-26 HKX Zug by Olaf Kosinsky-100.jpg, this train was probably waiting at platform 3. --HyperGaruda (talk) 12:41, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
Very convincing, everything points to Koblenz indeed :-) --Rosenzweig τ 12:48, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of in-scope files

This discussion arose out of Commons:Deletion requests/File:Anas Khan Hindi.jpg.

It seems clear to me that when a file is clearly in scope (for example, because it is legitimately in use), then it is not eligible for speedy deletion under criteria like G3, G10 and F10. In short, if a file is useful, the uploader’s intentions don’t matter.

But Uhai says that this is incorrect: scope is irrelevant unless mentioned in the speedy deletion criteria. For example, COM:CSD#F10 says:

Personal photos by non-contributors
Low-to-medium quality selfies and other personal images of or by users who have no constructive global contributions.

Since personal photos is not actually defined anywhere, it could include files that are in scope. And nothing else refers to scope.

As I wrote this, I realised that this analysis was incorrect: a user who uploaded an in-scope file has a constructive global contribution, so F10 does not apply. But the broader question remains about whether in-scope files should be excluded from these sorts of speedy deletion criteria. Brianjd (talk) 09:26, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

  • How is the file in scope? It even isn't in use. It sounded like the only "use" was the user spamming the image and spamming the image isn't in scope. What is the constructive global contribution for the user? Uploading another image and asking for it to be deleted are not constructive contributions. Else, en:User talk:Bazmelahooti shows that everything else was deleted. What are you asking for? If a user uploads an image and creates spam articles for their image, the image is thus automatically in-scope, in-use, and the user has created a constructive global contribution? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 11:35, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
    @Ricky81682 This discussion isn’t about Anas Khan Hindi.jpg. That file is being discussed at the DR, where it is headed for deletion, which I do not oppose.
    This discussion is about the general question of whether in-scope files are eligible for speedy deletion. Uhai’s comments seem to imply that certain files should be speedily deleted even if they are (or could be) in scope, and that taking them to a DR discussion is a waste of time. Brianjd (talk) 11:54, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
    You are correct that these illegitimate uses do not automatically make a file be in scope. But there is nothing wrong with having a discussion about whether the uses really are illegitimate or whether the file is in scope for some other reason. The answers to those questions might be obvious to you, but they won’t be obvious to everyone, which is why we have these discussions. Brianjd (talk) 11:57, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
    @Brianjd What is your concern? Are you arguing we need to define "personal photos" because of what scenario? I can only go with the specific example at hand which follows almost every part of F10. Is it possible that someone uploads a useful, personal photo and doesn't contribute elsewhere that I guess is used in an article, be listed for F10 and could have an admin decide to delete the image anyways? It has maybe happened before but I highly doubt that. People aren't hunting around to delete good, useful images out of spite. Ricky81682 (talk) 12:09, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for creating this, Brianjd.
Really, F10 is incredibly vague and I've seen administrators enforce it very differently. To be clear, my interpretation of F10 is that personal files, meaning files that are of oneself (e.g. portraits/selfies) or otherwise pertain to oneself (e.g. scans of one's signature), are eligible for deletion if the user has no constructive global contributions, plural. What I look for when nominating is at least 2-3 non-reverted and non-trivial (not minor punctuation, whitespace, or spelling changes) mainspace edits on another wiki. I also look for the file author field to say own work, the user's own username, or an obvious alternate/sockpuppet account of the uploader. If the file is in apparently legitimate use in a wiki's mainspace, I won't nominate it. If it's in use in a user space, it's fair game if it fails the other criteria I look for. If it's in use in the draft space on the English Wikipedia, I also consider it fair game as it will generally be an autobiography. While autobiographies are explicitly not disallowed on said wiki, they are usually deleted by most admins under that wiki's CSD G11 criterion de facto for self-promotion because they usually contain other problems and have wikipedia:WP:SNOW chance of making it into the mainspace. My understanding of F10 is a common sense interpretation (to me, at least) and is derived from F10's proposal and subsequent discussion.
It's clear from my contributions on Commons that most of what I do is nominate files for F10 deletion. I typically end up on Commons after encountering problematic material on the English Wikipedia. I also do some data mining on meta:Quarry to identify files that have been re-uploaded after having been previously deleted for F10 to combat reuploads of problematic files. I don't have a vendetta against selfies themselves or against unequivocally constructive editors uploading personal files to, say, have on their user page to express themselves. I do have a problem with single-purpose users who have contributed nothing or next to nothing who try to use Wikimedia projects as social media or for self-promotion. Selfies uploaded by the latter form of users are clearly out of Commons' scope regardless of if they are used on a user or draft page somewhere. Once those users have some constructive contributions? Absolutely, feel free to reupload.
Regarding inconsistencies in enforcement, I've had admins decline my F10 nominations when the uploading users' only two global contributions are to upload the image on Commons and put the image on their user page on some wiki. This, in my opinion, is an inappropriate rationale for declining F10. On the other hand, I've also had admins seemingly share my understanding of F10 and delete files that have been in use in user spaces.
Ultimately, I think we need to clarify what F10 is for. Should a personal image by a non-contributor being in use anywhere automatically disqualify it from F10? What exactly defines a personal image? What defines a non-contributor? Can such a file still be nominated for regular deletion? If so, can't we just save time by applying common sense to speedily delete files from people clearly trying to use Wikimedia projects for social media or advancement of their own self-interest? These files have no educational value, after all, when the purpose of Commons is, of course, to host educational content. Uhai (talk) 13:37, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
File:Anas Khan Hindi.jpg is clearly not in scope. This user is blocked on the English Wikipedia, and has 3 remaining edits on Commons after cleaning. So not an active Wikimedia contributors. On another discussion, there was a consensus that around 300 useful contributions on Wikimedia is needed to be allowed for one's own pictures. Yann (talk) 12:14, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
COM:INUSE briefly mentions an exception to the if-it-is-in-use-it-is-in-scope rule: It should be stressed that Commons does not overrule other projects about what is in scope. If an image is in use on another project (aside from use on talk pages or user pages), that is enough for it to be within scope. Note the clause "aside from use on talk pages or user pages". --HyperGaruda (talk) 12:10, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
To be hypertechnical, and staying on the example that started this discussion, looking at the user's talk page, the user created the same page in draftspace there. I don't think we need to revise INUSE for drafts as drafts are a good use of Commons materials. Ricky81682 (talk) 12:23, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

NSW infobox oddness

The wikidata infobox for NSW is still saying that Gladys Berejiklian is the Premier, but I have updated Wikidata to say that Dominic Perrottet is the Premier. It doesn't seem to be updating in Category:New South Wales. Anyone know why? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 12:34, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

@Chris.sherlock2 It was only just changed? The leadership changed hands changed more than a year ago.
Anyway, the category infobox does say Perrottet for me. Brianjd (talk) 13:45, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
Actually, it says Dominic Perrottet (2021–). While the name is correct, I don’t understand the (2021–) bit. It implies that an end date should (eventually) be listed, but that will never happen. Brianjd (talk) 13:48, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
Why is that? He'll eventually no longer be the Premier. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 14:11, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
@Chris.sherlock2 Yes, then the new leader will be listed instead of him, just as he is now listed instead of Berejiklian. Brianjd (talk) 14:37, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
@Chris.sherlock2: Hi, and welcome. You left the rank of Gladys Berejiklian as Preferred. I demoted her to Normal and promoted Dominic Perrottet to Preferred in these edits, and then I refreshed the cat, producing the desired result.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:53, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
Ah! Thank you so much! - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 14:11, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
@Chris.sherlock2: You're welcome!   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:39, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jeff G. Why are humans still doing this sort of thing manually? Why is the rank required at all? Why can’t the infobox just look up the most recent entry? Brianjd (talk) 14:39, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
I assumed that the infobox did look up the most recent entry (as did the other user, apparently) until you explained otherwise. Brianjd (talk) 14:40, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
@Brianjd and Chris.sherlock2: I undid my promotion of Dominic Perrottet to Preferred, and now they all show, is that what you want? It appears the logic is not smart enough to figure out from the dates which is current.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:51, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jeff G. I wasn’t complaining about you promoting Perrottet to Preferred; I was just saying that users shouldn’t have to do that manually, or at all, because the infobox should work without that promotion.
Do we want to show all of them or just the latest one? I think convention is to show just the latest one, although showing all of them clears up my concerns about the dates above. Either way should be OK as long as there are not too many items. Does anyone else want to offer an opinion here? Brianjd (talk) 03:10, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
@Brianjd: I agree that showing all 46 Premiers of NSW (or all 46 Presidents of the US) would be too much, but we only have 5 Premiers of NSW in Wikidata. I also agree that it would be nice if the stuff behind the scenes would interpret the dates to make the showing of only the sitting head of government happen in the future. However, until then, I now understand that the many hands which adjust the names or dates for heads of government after every election for every government in Wikidata are supposed to adjust the ranks as appropriate in the same edit session. I would like input from @Chris.sherlock2 about promotion of Perrottet.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 06:05, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
Is there a way of manually excluding what fields get imported from Wikidata? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 06:09, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
It has occurred to me that we need to add the Premiers to the executive body, this is the area it encompasses. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 19:00, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
@Mike Peel: .--RZuo (talk) 15:20, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
It is possible to exclude fields, but that's generally discouraged - it's better to sort things out properly on Wikidata instead. Same with ranking values if needed - that's something that could probably be done by a bot on Wikidata, if there's consensus to do it that way (you could request this at d:Wikidata:Bot_requests). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:35, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
How would one include all the 46 or so Premiers and only include the last 5 though? The data is still relevant. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 10:50, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
The infobox cuts off after a maximum number, but the ordering is entirely arbitrary - it doesn't use the date qualifiers. That could potentially be added - the place to request that is Template talk:Wikidata Infobox. Listing only the current one makes most sense to me, though. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:09, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
It doesn’t use anything now… is this intended? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 19:53, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
@Chris.sherlock2: My experience today is contrary to yours yesterday, and the Wikidata item hasn't changed in the meantime.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:00, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
It looks good now! Thanks to whoever resolved this :-) - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 23:03, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Pinging etiquette

Do we have a etiquette guide for pinging other users? For example, notice how I keep pinging relevant users in Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Benlisquare (and wondering why they don’t ping each other), and no one is pinging me. I have that page on my watchlist, but perhaps other users would prefer to be notified via pings. Or perhaps they have that page on their watchlist too, and find the pings a nuisance. But, in general, I would expect a discussion tool to notify a user when someone replies to their comments. So I am really confused. Brianjd (talk) 13:58, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

@Brianjd: I ping as a matter of common courtesy when writing about or replying to a user in good standing. I can count on one hand the number of users I have pinged who actively resist pinging. OTOH, the vast majority of users I ping don't ping me back when replying, despite "please ping or talk to me" in my signature. Some people are incomplete in their attempts at pinging - per mw:Extension:Echo#Usage, one must link to another user's page and sign in the same edit (or mention in an Edit Summary) in order to effectively mention, notify, or ping them, and even then only if they have "Notify me when someone links to my user page" set (which is the default here).   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:34, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
@Brianjd: Well, not that I am aware of any netiquette, but it goes without saying pinging completely random unrelated users is discouraged. In my opinion a MediaWiki isn’t the best tool to hold (extensive) discussions anyways. The Echo extension is really just that: an extension to make MW more usable for such purposes nevertheless. ‑‑ Kays (T | C) 01:47, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
@Kai Burghardt I agree that pinging completely random unrelated users is discouraged, but the user you are replying to is about as far way from a completely random unrelated user[] as you can get. Brianjd (talk) 03:16, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
You did ping me, though. That’s good. But the users in that DR were not pinging each other, and that was a similar situation. Brianjd (talk) 03:18, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jeff G. and Kai Burghardt: Special:Diff/721965825 contains a long complaint about pings that might be worth reading. Brianjd (talk) 00:40, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
@Brianjd: Thanks, it takes all kinds.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:06, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Category:AI generated images

Am i the only one worried these AI images are going to drown Wikimedia Commons at some point? There doesnt seem to be much consensus as to when AI generated art have educational value Trade (talk) 02:57, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@Trade: any sense of how many there are now? I almost never see one, so I presume we are far from drowning at present. - Jmabel ! talk 03:11, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
I'm worried too... Often such images are not even categorised as AI-generated. This user alone has uploaded eight hundred-odd artworks of questionable educational value. --HyperGaruda (talk) 05:29, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
I think we should have a specific policy requiring AI art to be categorized as such. Deliberately masquerading AI art as 'real' art is far more likely to cause problems in the future than merely using the wrong category on an image Trade (talk) 15:23, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
Agreed. Regarding David S. Soriano's uploads, see Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by David S. Soriano. I think many of these are out of scope, and could be deleted. Yann (talk) 15:44, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
Soriano uploads several pictures a day. By the time your deletion request is finished there will be 50 news ones that needs to be judged and dealt with. DR's alone are not a sustainable solution Trade (talk) 21:45, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Soriano's work is spam to me. No one is ever, ever going to use File:19th Century Riveboat.jpg on any article about 19th-century riverboats. There is no difference between those uploads and some random unknown artist uploading their work here as a personal webhost but call it AI work and people defend it for the principle I guess. If he had painted that, would people want it kept? I doubt it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 12:01, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
I'll estimate roughly 900 images excluding the almost 1000 images uploaded by David S. Soriano
Regardless, would you not prefer we adress the influx of AI art before it becomes a problem rather than waiting until it's too late? Trade (talk) 03:30, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
@Trade, Jmabel, HyperGaruda, Yann, and Ricky81682: Alright, get cracking: Commons:AI-generated media. (Feel free to edit boldly!) Nosferattus (talk) 02:54, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
Speaking about newly created AI works, considering that they can be created on demand pretty much, it might make sense to require them to be in use. There should be no rush in uploading files that can be created when needed. Also, like (non-AI) amateur art, it sometimes can be difficult for someone who is not the creator to find a use case, especially when the file page has no documentation with that in mind. This could be different with high-profile AI works (that are typically not created by Commons users) with stories to tell based on reputable sources. whym (talk) 10:18, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
Hi, I tried to generate with DALL-E images of people when we don't have one available with a free license (e.g. en:Michel Audiard), but so far I didn't get any satisfying result. I suppose that these people don't have sufficient number of images available of the Internet for AI to be able to create a realistic portrait. DALL-E often got confused with people of similar names. Yann (talk) 12:28, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
How could an AI generate a free image of someone when there are no free images of that person? An AI will train with existing copyrighted images of that individual, producing a derivative work of an unknown number of unsourced, copyrighted images. Platonides (talk) 14:39, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
We don't know the training materials for any AI program at the moment. I believe that eventually that will be a problem that will overrun the AI generated images space. Ricky81682 (talk) 00:35, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Are non country related photographs by date categories allowed?

I created Category:Bird photographs by date because I thought it was useful. User:A.Savin has asked me to seek consensus on this before I create more categories. One of the reasons why I created it was because of the existing Category:Railway photographs by date which was created in 2018 (by User:Slambo) and currently has over 6,000 subcategories. Sahaib (talk) 14:51, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

@Sahaib: Railways can evolve (and devolve) rather frequently. Bird species, on the other hand, can take a much longer period of time to evolve (and devolve). OTOH, A.Savin can explain more than in User talk:Sahaib#Categories.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:58, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

There is also Category:Aviation photographs by date which was created in 2020 (by User:Kolforn). Sahaib (talk) 15:20, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I was prompted by @L. Beck: on these categories. --A.Savin 15:38, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

  •  Oppose as huge waste of time and potential watchlist hyperspamming. Country photographs by date are making sense due to current events that change each day. Railway photographs by date do not make sense to me, yet there seems to be some consensus for them, and railways are changing in time, being built or defunct. Birds may change their appearance seasonally, but not over years. Not everything that "costs nothing" automatically makes sense for usability on Commons. We should not encourage to create categories such as "Human penis photographs taken on...". Where is the borderline between desired and not? Better invest human resources in improving database tools which allow to find photographs on any given subject at any given date to anyone who wishes. Regards --A.Savin 15:38, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
    +1 Lukas Beck (talk) 15:49, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
    +1 El Grafo (talk) 13:53, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
  • Is "by date" relevant to the other categories it's being used with? For most human endeavours, it is. For most natural subjects it isn't, except in the cases where human intervention is changing that (broadly considered, as climate change and environmental damage is certainly date-sensitive). Or cases such as volcanic explosions, where the natural world produces a datable event. So I would be against "birds by date", but would support narrower groups such as "red kites in Wales by year" as a famous species re-introduction from near-extinction.
I also don't see the point in qualifying almost any categories as "photographs". Photographs are just our stock in trade here, it's what we do. We might distinguish drawings of birds where useful, but those are the more specific case, photographs the default. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:00, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Having a maintenance category (hidden, after all) classifying files by-day-the-photograph-was-taken-is-useful. Apparently we have Category:Photographs by date by country. It could have been simply "Photographs by date", without the "country" part. But it wasn't. Beyond that, creating parallel "branches" of hidden by-day-photograph-categories (of aviation, of birds, of politicians, of trains,...) is a tremendous waste of resources IMO. "By date" is not only 'by day', it may also include 'by year', 'by decade', 'by century', etc, that may be a more appropiate categorisation level to start with (i. e. railway, aviation). Strakhov (talk) 16:17, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I agree with L. Beck on all points. I think it's satisfactory to have an image categorized by the bird species, a month category for the location (city/state/country, depending on the area) and the individual date of photograph. If someone is looking at individual photographs by date, I doubt they care for the particularity of the animals within that date (I assume we may need a plants/mammals by date eventually under this scheme). Are there bird species categories large enough to even justify Category:Birds by year? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:50, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Template to mark media with official (non copyright restrictions)..

Prompted by File:Australian Government Digital COVID-19 Vaccination Certificate Sample 20210604.png.

On wikipedia, a document like this would be tagged with w:Template:Ir-Official, to indicate that it may be subject to non-copyright restrictions as it has status as an official document.

That template does not currently exist on Commons. Is someone able to import and translate that template, or is there an equivalent on Commons already? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:11, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: Category:Non-copyright restriction templates is a good starting point. --HyperGaruda (talk) 11:25, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
{{Governmental work}} has the same intent, but sounds less official. --HyperGaruda (talk) 11:37, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
That template seems to me seems to address a different issue. Here the issue was specifically to do with it being subject to provisions against counterfeiting, fraud etc. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:13, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
I don't have import rights on Commons, or i would have already copied the relevant template over. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:14, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
stop slapping files with these redundant warning templates already. does commons need to write down on File:US one dollar bill, obverse, series 2009.jpg that users should not print it out and try buying stuff with it, deface it (18 U.S. Code § 333), etc...?--RZuo (talk) 15:20, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
(Slightly off-topic, but I have actual copyright concerns about that file: see File talk:Australian Government Digital COVID-19 Vaccination Certificate Sample 20210604.png#Copyright issues.) Brianjd (talk) 07:45, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

1st level subcats for country cats

what topics should be directly contained by for example Category:Thailand? alternatively, this question would be which topics should be directly contained by Category:Topics? has there been discussion about this? (enwp does it like this en:Category:Main topic classifications.)

for example, in art, geography, history, people... are most commonly found in a country cat, but "politicians" would not be, because "politicians" go under "people" and "politics".--RZuo (talk) 15:20, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

  • @RAuo: Your example is certainly correct, but it's still hard to make a full set of rules on this. My best advice is "model it on practice for other countries." A lot of things on Commons are accomplished by loose consensus, and this is one of them. We do not have a hard-and-fast schema,=. - Jmabel ! talk 16:43, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
something new
i'll go straight to the actual problem.
look at Category:Peru or Category:Germany. someone is implementing something new, such that many rather "top-level" subcats are now hidden under just a handful of most generic subcats, or Category:Peru by topic Category:Germany by topic.
then Category:Germany by topic becomes so bloated. Internet, Military equipment, Projectile weapons... certainly shouldnt be on the same level as geography, politics... RZuo (talk) 18:05, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
@RZuo: Agreed, that sounds very poorly done. - Jmabel ! talk 00:29, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
Let's not forget about the already existing Category:Categories of Germany by topic and the like. --HyperGaruda (talk) 12:14, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
  • I don't think we'll ever settle this from a top-down approach. We have to basically attack each category one level below and decide if something like Category:Hackerspaces in Germany is a top-level topic (I doubt it) or should remain under Culture and Technology as it current is. It also violates that categorization rule but I have fought people who think an image of a building in Germany from the 1940s belongs at the main category because it's a pretty picture that everyone should see from the front of the category. This will have to be RFC-by-RFC'd to death. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 12:30, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
i dont suggest we make a list to be strictly followed, but i think we can come up with a "recommended list of 1st level subcats". the list is not only applicable to countries but also anything larger than cities. some consistency allows easier navigation, because users expect to find the same things in the same positions. the list would not be a hindrance to include anything else in the main cat.--RZuo (talk) 07:22, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
I think it's better to come up with a discussion on each level and then we can use the consensus from the ones that were resolved in the future. CFD is for discussion after all. Otherwise, do you propose discussing these here or at like Categorization talk? I don't think a static list will ever work so that would be new to me. We don't really do where-to-subcategorize discussions well from what I can tell. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:20, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
narrowing en:Category:Main topic classifications down, i think at least the following should be present in every "cat:placename" that's bigger than cities: Architecture, Culture, Economy, Geography, History, People, Politics, Society. in addition, some commons specialties: "xx by media type".
but i dont really care about this "something new" above, unless someone else also complains about not finding the common subcats in the usual places.--RZuo (talk) 15:35, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
I agree with that in principle but we don't always use English as a category scheme. My view is that if you have something that already fits under multiple subcategories easily (Hackerspaces fits under technology and culture logically) it should be there and not as a main category. On the other hand, I can see people saying the main topics should fit more to what makes it easy for people to find media which is a different concern than English. We also have Template:Topic which I presume is supposed to be illustrative. Ricky81682 (talk) 00:22, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

A note of appreciation

Can I say, Commons is way more civil than another project I’ve experienced. Thank you for this, it makes it easier to correct mistakes after I make them! I thought you all should know. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 19:04, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

@Chris.sherlock2: you're welcome. I hope you will enjoy your stay here on Commons. Good understanding of Commons' house rules on licensing, and you will have little to no problems to encounter. Happy editing! JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 05:19, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

File move requests refused

Q: Should file-movers have to give an explanation when refusing and removing file movement requests? GPinkerton (talk) 15:26, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

It would help to be somewhat more specific. Ellywa (talk) 15:40, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
In general, I certainly try to do so. When there are a series of requests, sometimes I only explain on one. If you have concerns about the handling of File:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg, it looks like you got explanations on your first two requests, and IMO the third did not require further explanation. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 19:26, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
@Mdaniels5757: I recently made one such request. It was refused on faulty grounds which are not based on policy. After I challenged this, I was invited to restore the request. I did so, but it was refused without explanation. The file remains unrenamed without satisfactory reason. GPinkerton (talk) 21:05, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
You did not explain why you want the file renamed "Minimize ambiguity" in no proper explanation. If you do not provide an explanation why you want the file renamed you should not expect a long explanation why your request is declined. GPSLeo (talk) 21:25, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
I, for one, don't see any reason that request should have been granted. We don't normally move a file just because the name isn't absolutely ideal: it pretty much requires that there be something actively wrong with the old name. In this case, it is not obvious to me that the new name is even an improvement. - Jmabel ! talk 22:08, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: One reason the new name is preferable is because there are certain templates on several Wikipedias that autopopulate using the English-language formula "Flag of English-languagecountryname.svg", which in this instance causes the wrong flag variant to appear (a nautical one instead of the general-purpose one). If the file was moved as I have suggested, the resulting redirect could be pointed at whichever file is desired (i.e. the general-purpose default flag and not the naval one), rather than directly to a file which does not represent the normal flag. Mainly, however the move would be to minimize the ambiguity of having a filename which wrongly suggests the naval flag is the default British flag. Is that clearer? GPinkerton (talk) 23:56, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
@GPinkerton: tremendously. - Jmabel ! talk 00:08, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel and GPSLeo: the thing is, the solution of moving the file was discussed on the talk page of the file involved, but this seems to have been ignored or misconstrued. GPinkerton (talk) 00:48, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
@GPinkerton: was that talk page linked in the move request rationale? I ask because admins who are trying to do these by the dozens or by the hundreds necessarily blast through these and make snap judgments. Typically, they aren't going to go seeking stuff out on their own. - Jmabel ! talk 01:06, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: yes I see that I could have been more expansive. Your answer that admins make snap judgments en masse to these requests suggests that my question's answer is no, file-movers do not have to give an explanation. How should I proceed? I am chary of submitting another move request. GPinkerton (talk) 01:44, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
I’d recommend that you should refrain from making another move request, as you might find yourself blocked for edit warring/disruption. Bidgee (talk) 01:49, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
@Bidgee: How should I proceed? GPinkerton (talk) 02:22, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
Pinging @Aishik Rehman as the involved admin: GPinkerton's rationale here actually looks reasonable (see the comment above dated 23:56, 23 December 2022 (UTC)), though I can see how the way the request was made would not readily have directed you to that rationale. Would you have any problem with another admin making the move he originally requested? - Jmabel ! talk 02:45, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
Pinging @GPinkerton and perhaps "1-2 ratio" or "naval jack" would be better than just "1-2", because I for one would look at "1-2" and have no idea what it intended to signify. - Jmabel ! talk 02:52, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
Others in the talkpage discussion should be given a chance to respond. Bidgee (talk) 02:59, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I suggest "File:Flag of the United Kingdom (1-2).svg" to harmonize with the other official versions "File:Flag of the United Kingdom (2-3).svg", "File:Flag of the United Kingdom (3-5).svg", "File:Flag of the United Kingdom (5-8).svg" and the relevant construction sheet "File:Flag of the United Kingdom (1-2) (construction sheet).svg". Of course, if there's a more obvious solution I welcome it, but so far this seems simplest and least language-dependent. GPinkerton (talk) 03:03, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
@GPinkerton: That also makes sense. Again, in general when making requests, it behooves you to spell out the rationale like you now have. Then the admin is likely to come through, go "sure, that makes sense" and do what you asked for. - Jmabel ! talk 03:06, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: yes that seems obvious now, but hitherto I had only submitted trivial renaming requests with minimal explanation and not run into any issues. Thanks for your guidance and the suggestion that someone else might submit a move request. GPinkerton (talk) 03:26, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
I’d recommend to start a whole new move request discussion on the image talkpage, if everyone is in agreement the move would take place but I think leaving it for seven days (due to the Christmas holidays) would be fine. Bidgee (talk) 03:35, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
@Bidgee: A whole new one in addition to the discussion I began on the 21st of this month‽ GPinkerton (talk) 03:51, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
Again, I've pinged User:Aishik Rehman and now left a note on his user talk page as well. If we don't hear from him within a few days, I'll make the move myself, but I don't want to override his decision without giving him a chance to respond. Also, note that despite the characterization above, he is not an admin, just a filemover. - Jmabel ! talk 17:23, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: The rename request was based under the assumption that the Union Jack should be shown in 3:5 ratio by default and as 1:2 merely as one of the several acceptable variants. The way I see it, this would come up on top wanting for an example of obviously wrong Vexillology — akin to «π=3» for Maths or «the Earth is a flat plane» for Geography. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 20:36, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
@Tuvalkin: but this is comment expresses your erroneous POV only, unsubstantiated by anything and contradicted by the fact: i.e., the fact that the 3:5 ratio was laid down by the relevant authorities in 1938 and has not changed since.
We must remember that this project is not the pet of Tuvalkin, but an auxiliary to educational projects which rely on reliable sources. These unambiguously state that the 3:5 ratio is the default one, just as the same authorities determined the File:Flag of England.svg should be in ratio 3:5, and the File:Flag of Wales.svg, and so on. Tuvalkin makes grand and dismissive statements — in a word, Tuvalkin stonewalls — but Tuvalkin never supplies any rationale for their inept claims, still less a reliable source. I suggest Tuvalkin produces such a reliable source (which must be of a higher authority than the Earl Marshal, the Garter King of Arms, the Ministry of Defence (successor to the Admiralty and the War Office), the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and the Flag Institute, all of which concur on a 3:5 ratio as the gold standard) or else Tuvalkin ceases to pronounce crass and demonstrably misleading falsehoods akin to those expressed just above. GPinkerton (talk) 22:54, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
I dont’t have to justify the status quo. You’re the one asking for changes, so you’re the one needing to justify your claims. As a vexillologist myself (one who avoids contributing about flags in Commons) you’re not convincing me. But you should feel free to go on trying. It will be an interesting experiment, whichever the outcome. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:02, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

@Tuvalkin: "justifying" (as you generously call your fact-free stonewalling) an erroneous status quo merely for the sake of it is disruptive editing. Either find a real reason for opposing the amply-justified file move, or stop opposing it. Put up or shut up, as they say. GPinkerton (talk) 23:14, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Like I said, I have nothing to add, but my opinion that you’re wrong. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:26, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

@Tuvalkin: I should also add that your self-declared status as "a vexillologist" is worth precisely nothing, especially when your "expert" opinion is flatly and wholly contradicted by the vexillological authorities of the country concerned. We do not follow the unfounded opinions of anonymous Wikimedians such as you. Instead, we follow what reliable sources say. GPinkerton (talk) 23:19, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, I am well aware that Vexillology is a hobby for most of us, vexillologists, even though I take it seriously with the best of my abilities. The way I do it was good enough for my peers in the FotW-ws community (which included the current president of the FIAV, the SHOM vexillologist, several present and past Flag Institute officers, and the author of the latest B.R.20) to award me the title of Vexillologist of the Year back in 2005, for which I am grateful, following (i.a.) my role in codifying the current official version of the national flag of my country, so that’s what my «self-declared status» is worth.
I’m not at all an expert in all things Union Jack, although I know the basics about it — including the several official ratio variants. But I’m yet to see someone else defending your view that the default basic image of the British national flag to be used in tandem with other national flags in an encyclopedic setting should be the 3:5 Union Jack instead of the 1:2 version.
Am I wrong? Well, we’ll see. I have been wrong before, and I have been right before, and every time someone learned something.
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:40, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
@Tuvalkin: Yes, of course you are wrong! What possible worth does your entirely ungrounded and unsourced opinion have? Or your faded status on some internet forum? (Is that really supposed to impress‽) How can your opinion possibly be set again the official rules of vexillology as laid down by the Great Officers of State, as reported by reliable sources? How can you ignore the numerous comments (even in this very discussion on this very page) that support the file move I proposed and then boldly claim you haven't read any such comments? It should be now amply clear that your opposition to the file move I suggested is grounded neither in policy nor reality. GPinkerton (talk) 23:59, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
@GPinkerton: your most recent posts (their tone, not their substantive content) are greatly decreasing your chances of getting anyone to do what you want here, and greatly increasing your chances of being blocked. Be civil. - Jmabel ! talk 00:03, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: [7], [8], [9], [10]. Presented without comment. GPinkerton (talk) 00:12, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
@GPinkerton and Tuvalkin: So I'll comment: would you both try sticking to the substance of things rather than smacking each other with a 3-day-old fish? - Jmabel ! talk 01:41, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Indeed. As things stand, on one hand we have – (inter alia) – the repeated official statements from the legal authority responsible for British flags (the Earl Marshal and the heraldic authorities under him) which fix the flags' ratio at 3:5 (for purposes not at sea) since before the Second World War. On the other hand, we have status quo on Wikimedia Commons, with not a lot else in its favour. I don't see how the status quo is a better status than the one I propose, which would minimize ambiguity and harmonize with the filenames of other-sized Union flags. GPinkerton (talk) 02:32, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
Got a reliable link that can prove this? Otherwise it is hearsay, and repeating it over and over will get you no where. Bidgee (talk) 02:56, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@Bidgee: of course! Here (at the risk of repeating myself) are several of the most important: the College of Arms (headed by the Garter King of Arms under the authority of the Earl Marshal, one of Great Officers of State); the Oxford Guide to Heraldry written by two heralds of the College of Arms, one of whom went on to be Garter King of Arms; the Ministry of Defence's Army Dress Regulations (which deals with flags); and a quasi-official vexillological charity, the Flag Institute.

For the avoidance of doubt and the sake of convenience, Garter King of Arms, under the authority of the Earl Marshal, has approved two versions of the Union flag as being accurate representations suitable for use. These are of the proportions 5:3, commonly flown on land; and 2:1, commonly flown at sea.

— College of Arms, Union Flag: approved designs

All flags flown at sea come under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty, which has laid down that their sides should have a 2:1 ratio. The Earl Marshal is the controlling authority over flags flown on land, and although the heraldic banner, showing the arms with a fringe of the livery colours was traditionally square, when the Earl Marshal laid down by a Warrant dated 9 February 1938 that flags flown on churches in the provinces of Canterbury and York should show the Cross of St George with the arms of the diocese on a shield in the first quarter, the opportunity was taken by means of a letter to the Press from Sir Gerald Wollaston, Garter and principal heraldic officer under the Earl Marshal, to state that flags on land should be of the approximate relative dimensions of '5 x 3'. Such a shape flies better than a square flag, whilst reducing the visual distortion caused by a flag of dimensions '2 x 1'. The dimensions of '5 x 3' for flags flown on land were entered in the Chapter Book of the College of Arms for 16 June 1947 (C.B. 21,96) as the officially accepted dimensions of all flags flown on land within the jurisdiction of the Earl Marshal.

— Thomas Woodcock, Somerset Herald, & John Martin Robinson, Fitzalan Pursuivant Extraordinary, p. 111, in: Oxford Guide to Heraldry (1988)

The UK's flag shape of 3:5 works well with nearly all other nations' flags and it is recommended to use these proportions if a standard size is required for all the flags in a display

— Ministry of Defence Army Dress Regulations, Part 11, section 2, page 1158ff, Section 11.008

The normal proportions for the national flags of the United Kingdom are 3:5 on land, but ensigns are customarily made in proportion 1:2.

— Flag Institute

As you can see, the official sources all concur on this matter. I do not see how they can be gainsayed ... GPinkerton (talk) 03:47, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I have read the detailed discussion above. You can move the file if you want; I have no complaints. However, I would request User:GPinkerton to mention the details if he requests any move in this criteria in future. I think any file mover would have declined the request without detailing why the 1-2 should be added to the file name. Anyway, now it's crystal clear! Aishik Rehman (talk) 22:41, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

This turned out to be quite the epic, but GPinkerton's arguments have more than convinced me. Tuválkin, you do a lot of good work, but I think in this case you are wrong. Aishik Rehman, thanks for getting back to us, I realize this is probably not the best time of year to try to get hold of people. GPinkerton, at the risk of beating a dead horse: you could have saved everyone, yourself included, a lot of grief by stating your arguments up front in this rather complicated situation. I will now move the image as originally requested. - Jmabel ! talk 23:06, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Excellent work, thanks very much and my apologies that this has been so drawn-out on my account. GPinkerton (talk) 00:07, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Do you mean that File:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg will be pointing to File:Flag of the United Kingdom (3-5).svg instead of to File:Flag of the United Kingdom (1-2).svg as you did in this recent edit? That will cause some ripples in the thousands of Wikipedia pages using this image in things like infoboxes and tables on sports or military topics, where the image is not transcluded directly but rather via templates: I predict much wailing and theeth gnashing — hopefully I’m wrong about that.
(Incidentally, why a "-" instead of a "x" to indicate rectangle ratios in filenames, where the usual ":" is not available? One more example of how this matter was not though up properly?)
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 02:30, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Oh, the matter is being addressed below. (Popcorn time!) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 02:35, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Re: "Do you mean that…": I mean that a consensus has to be reached. I have no more to contribute to that than being a person of reasonable judgment if arguments are presented. I have no particular expertise. Yes, it could ramify via a lot of templates if that is changed. I'm sure we've seen bigger. - Jmabel ! talk 02:55, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: if I understand correctly the global replace function will try to alter Wikipedias to insert "(2-1)" to every instance of "Flag of the United Kingdom.svg"? If that's the case I'd urgently ask it to be cancelled if it's not too late. It was not my intention to request that, and I think it should be avoided. Moreover, it may not work as intended, as in various Wikipedias the relevant templates are often fully protected against editing. In most cases adding the extra characters will even be counter-productive; in most instances of "Flag of the United Kingdom.svg" the added "(1-2)" is unnecessary and unhelpful, since it is in most of these places that the 3:5 version should be the one that appears (if and when the "Flag of the United Kingdom.svg" on Commons redirects to the 3:5 version). GPinkerton (talk) 03:31, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
@GPinkerton: Way too late, I did this over 4 hours ago. - Jmabel ! talk 03:37, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I do not believe the change has yet been put into effect and it is my understanding that you can simply revert your own edit on the command page. I really think using the global replace function is a bad idea! GPinkerton (talk) 05:26, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I’m sure we’ve never seen anything remotely as big as this, concerning flag images in Commons and their transclusions in Wikipedia. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 03:58, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Redirect and parent categories

Now, could someone knowledgeable decide what to do with the redirect File:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg and either explain or remove what seem to me to be very odd parent categories Category:Australia at the 1896 Summer Olympics and Category:Great Britain at the 1896 Summer Olympics? - Jmabel ! talk 23:11, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I don't know anything about categories but the Australian category is presumably there because Australia's team competed under the British flag at the revived Olympics until the Australian flag was adopted around the time of the states' federalization in 1901.
As for the redirect, I suggest that it remain as is for now, until each of Wikipedias' pages on this flag have been rectified to avoid any errors or incongruities occurring when the redirect is eventually flipped to the 3:5 variant. GPinkerton (talk) 00:05, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
@GPinkerton: the fact that the Australian team used the Union Jack at the 1896 Olympics is certainly not a reason for a particular SVG image to be so classified. If that's the reason, then it doesn't even belong on some category up the line. This is probably a case of someone going, "Oh, this image is used in this article, I'll make that topic a category for the image," which is pretty much backwards. - Jmabel ! talk 00:30, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
This is the crux of the issue — nobody thought of it till now? Well, I have been thinking of nothing else. You see, unlike the case of the Swiss national flag, whose unusual square shape has been a stettled matter for many decades and all but the most crude “flag displays” and “flag charts” have been showing it (there is a 2:3 version, which is a sort of Swiss ensign — the parallel is fetching indeed), the Union Jack has been represented in varying ratios in unsophisticated “all flags” collections for most of the 20th century. Detailed vexilollogical works such as foreign naval flagbooks (namely Ottfried Neubecker’s seminal work, the SHOM Album, and all their clones) correctly indicated the 1:2 version of the Union Jack as the British naval ensign but seldom gave any firm info on its equivalent for use on land — because, unlike the Swiss case, the matter was far from settled among British heraldic authorities themselves.
As said I’m not an UJ expert, but I do remember reading discussions in the late 1990s and early 2000s concerning the matter of finally having a clearcut position and enshrining the 3:5 UJ as the national flag, matching other British flags (namely banners-of-arms, and also the Scottish and Welsh country flags and many others which were being codified by then or even created anew) as matters of ratio specification become more and more pressing: The general public got used to better quality flag images in things like books about flags for the bright-eyed wunderkinde of the late 20th century, more demanding than the target audience of cigar wrapper collectible figurines with sketchy vexillography of previous decades. Add to the mix a sudden change in flag manufacture, increasingly using printing instead of sewing for cheap mass-produced items, and growingly making use of the same computer templates used for illustration on paper. IIRC, it was Graham Bertam who, before his MoD stint (see quote above), spearheaded this approach, and while his rationale was cherished counter arguments were raised:
If the 3:5 version is preferred for the British national flag to be displayed among other countries’, then what to do with the obviosly derivative and yet unavoidingly 1:2 flags of Australia and New Zealand?, to mention but two… (And of course not a few were quick to note that 3:5 is the ratio of the national flag of Germany and thus even this niche geometrical matter got dragged to the whole deplorable Brexit mudfight arena…)
How will this change be percieved diachronically in things like historical charts? If we have, for instance, Russia in 1991-1993 represented by its official 1:2 flag and by its 2:3 official replacement afterwards, or Iran with its simple tricolor flag extremely oblong at 1:3 in 1925-1964 but shortened to 4:7 in 1964-1979, or Japan changing from 7:10 to 2:3 in 1999 (and many other, more or less subtle, ratio changes throughout history affecting many national flags) what can be said about the “change” of the British national flag from 1:2 to 3:5…? Was it a change at all? No, it was meant as a clarification of past practice often ignored; it was meant as a legal description, not a prescription, and contrasting a 1:2 UJ to represent Britain before 2008 (or whichever breakpoint date) with a 3:5 UJ for after that may be seen as misleading. (In this regard, please compare the 1:2 UJ on the cover of this book with the 3:5 specs preconized by the same entity.)
The way I see it, the matter is unsettled and offers no simple solution. By maintaing a cautious stance and keeping the status quo of representing Britain by means of its naval ensign among other countries, Wimimedia can say it doesn’t “take sides” and will go with the organic consensus. By going ahead and changing to the 3:5 version it will be seen, at best, as a bold trailblazer. Will other purveyors of flag images latch on and increasingly offer the 3:5 version as default just because Wikipedia does it? Maybe, but that’s not usually how Wikipedia/Wikimedia wants to see itself (cp. the whole debate on the name of Czechia in English…). Then of course there’s the matter of geometry: While you can stretch or squeeze a tricolor’s ratio without uncanny outcomes and indeed the same for something like the flag of Japan (provided the hino maru stays undisturbedly circular), the 3:5 UJ shows the ascending diagonal of the Saint Patrick’s cross as two irregular pentagons, while the more oblong 1:2 gives room for it to consist of two simpler parallelograms. This detail is of major importance for some, given the history of this flag and its original design in 1777 — the matter is not only purely vexillographic, as the three conjoined crosses (for England, Scotland, and Ireland) are set in a delicate balance to avoid primacy. Certainly this matter should be quelled by dully pointing to the official sanction the 3:5 version have been given, but expect much doubt and opposition if this “mangled” design suddenly starts popping up in each and every Wikipedia page about the Olympics, the Eurovision Contest, and whatnot.
And that’s the best case scenario: Hordes of disgruntled Wikipedia editors (English-language and others) might descend upon Commons in great wrath, demanding reparations over their affected templates, tables, charts, maps, and diagrams. The nitpicking and the hairsplitting will be epic and the discussion above and elsewhere will be repeated a thousand times in all affected talk pages.
That’s why I said before that this file renaming was a bad idea — a crass error to effect this change, at least for now: Anybody can dig up official documents, old and new; it’s what you do with them that counts. And now I’m now out for some popcorn. Toodeloo. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 03:56, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
This is a very long comment with many digressions but I will try to answer its substance.
The actual flag drawn by Isaac Heard and signed by George III. It's not 2:1, and the red diagonals are not quadrilateral.
  1. In 1800, the British and Irish parliaments gave George III the authority to decide new official flags in the first article of the Act of Union.
  2. Isaac Heard, Garter King of Arms, designed the new Union flag in 1800.
  3. George III approved the design prepared by Heard by an order-in-council on 5 November 1800. This ordered that the flag become the official national flag on 1 January 1801, a fact announced by royal proclamation and printed in the Gazette. The design accompanying this printed proclamation is badly bungled, upside down, and is not much like the order-in-council.
  4. The design made by Heard and approved by King George was neither 2:1 nor anything close to it. (It's about 5:6.)
  5. The red diagonals are not intended all to be quadrilaterals. This is certainly not something either authority thought important in 1800 or subsequently. A British national badge depicted in the same order-in-council is a crowned Union shield of the national arms; the red diagonals are not quadrilateral.
  6. Gerald Wollaston, Garter King of Arms, recognized in 1938 that the 2:1 variant in use by the Royal Navy distorted the intention of his predecessor and the Earl Marshal officially fixed the ratio of the national flag (on land) at 3:5. This ratio lies between the British Army's colours (fixed at 5:4 from the early 18th century) and the Royal Navy's jacks (fixed 1:2 from the latter 19th century).
  7. In the subsequent 80 years, the College of Arms (the constititonal authority on flags) continues to state that 3:5 is the flag's approved ratio.
  8. Since the Second World War, the ratio of the flag has basically been an officially settled matter.
  9. Since WWII, debate on the standard ratio of Union flags must largely have arisen from ignorance of some or all of the forthgoing 8.
Commons is quite happy to accept the 1938 royal warrant endorsing the 3:5 ratio for the flags of England and even for the pre-1801 flag: we allow the generic filenames to have this ratio. There is no reason the second Union flag should not follow the same logic as the first. Any derivative flags are irrelevant and follow their own rules, although of course all land flags in the Earl Marshal's purview ought to be 3:5 by default if not by necessity. Here, we must follow the reliable authorities. The constititonal responsibility for the flag ratio, derived from parliament via the king and the Earl Marshal, rests with the Garter herald. From 1938 until today, heralds Garter have fixed the ratio at 3:5. In what other country's case do we hand over "Flag of Countryname.svg" to anything but the officially accepted land flag? As for commercial flags, the flag-maker with the royal warrant does offer 3:5 ratio by default, but this a worthless metric and should be discounted. Changing the redirect to the 3:5 version will not meet particular opposition on aesthetic grounds, on the contrary. GPinkerton (talk) 04:04, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
I am in full agreement with @GPinkerton on this one. 1:2 is the ratio for naval flags, until 1938 there was no official ratio for land flags: 2:3, 3:5 and 5:8 ratios were all used, but notably 1:2 was never the standard ratio used on land. The flags of Australia, New Zealand etc. are a separate issue, those flags began life as ensigns for use at sea, hence when subsequently used on land as national flags retained the 1:2 ratio. In 1928 South Africa chose to standardize on 2:3 for the Union flag in 1928 so the national and imperial flags would have the same ratio when flown together. CorwenAv (talk) 15:42, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
You say that «until 1938 there was no official ratio for land flags» and in the same sentence you stress that «1:2 was never the standard ratio used on land.» Well, that’s a tautology. And that’s not what’s being discussed. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 11:31, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply at 04:04.
  • Points 1-4 add nothing to this discussion about the UJ ratio (although they send me down the rabbithole searching for whatever UJ history tidbit had imprinted 1777 in my mind, thanks for that).
  • Concerning point 5 — you are right that the exact shape of the two visible parts of the ascending diagonal of the St. Patrick cross is irrelevant: It’s but an emmergent outcome of its design (a saltire couped per gyronny on the St Andrew cross and with the white-edged St. George cross superimposed on it, the orthogonal witdth of the white-red-white compound saltire being overall 1+2+3), and depends on the ratio of the whole flag: The astute vexillologist will make use of it to ascertain the ratio of a particular UJ based on a glimpse or a partial, and nothing else: Trapezoidal means 1:2 (=0.5) or more oblong, pentagonal means 3:5 (=0.6) or less oblong (the exact turning point between 0.5 and 0.6 is a vexillological / trigonometrical rabbithole irrelevant to the matter at hand — and, yes, the elusive square UJ at ratio 1:1 (=1.0) has them as quadrangles again). Will this be however be seen as significant should the sought image replacement be enacted, adding more heat than light to the discussion? Well, I fear so, and that’s why I mentioned it.
  • In point 6 you go back to use loaded language to disparage the 1:2 UJ («recognized »« that the 2:1 variant «» distorted the intention»). This is not about what looks good or what follow someone’s original intent:* I never said that a 3:5 UJ is uglier or prettier, nor more or less authentic, only that 1:2 has been in overwhelming use, especially in the kind of use the image in Commons is meant for. Cursory review of relevant media and the fact that a preference for 3:5 has been officially set in 1938 and yet as late as 2008 the 3:5 was still not fully enshrined as the British national flag (unlike the comparable cases of Belgium and Switzerland, for instance) suggest how this is not a settled matter (contra your subsequent points) and how Commons should be wary of any bold trailblazing.
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 11:21, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
(*) Tangent off the asterisk above: And here I would contend that the exact ratio is immaterial to the original intent, which was equal standing for all three crosses, at least in terms of implied primacy in a heraldic setting. The fact that said intent is retained across all possible ratios, from 1:1 to 1:2 and beyond, is a testament to the genious of Isaac Heard. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 11:25, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
@Tuválkin: The official national flag enshrined by George III is not the 1:2 version. That's the point. Various proportions are possible, even official, but the 1:2 version has no right to default status. It has never been the most common, it has not particular advantages over any other, and in the opinion of Thomas Woodcock & John Martin Robinson (authors of the Oxford Guide I quoted above and will again quote), who wrote of "the visual distortion caused by a flag of dimensions '2 x 1'". If Gerald Wollaston were not of the same opinion, he would not have decided that the default ratios of flags ought to be 3:5.
You speak of "relevant media", but in this very long discussion into which you have introduced many irrelevancies and hypotheticals you have not cited anything anywhere. At times, you have repeated claims like "1:2 has been in overwhelming use", but while this may be true on Wikimedia as a result of the 1:2 version squatting on the "Flag of the United Kingdom.svg", you have not been able to produce any evidence that this is true in the real world, and our sources contradict this. Neither has anyone else opposed the change of filename.
Separately, it is very much untrue that the equal standing for all crosses was intended. If this were true there would be no obligation to fly the flag the right way up. On the contrary, the Scottish cross is above the Irish cross in the first quarter. GPinkerton (talk) 01:00, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

As discussed above, the file itself has been moved, the old name is now a redirect, there has been no universal replace, and there is plenty of time to work out whether the redirect should be changed to point elsewhere or not. - Jmabel ! talk 06:01, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

And if the generic filename File:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg is not changed from pointing at File:Flag of the United Kingdom (1-2).svg to pointing at File:Flag of the United Kingdom (3-5).svg instead, then this whole lengthy discussion was much ado about nothing.
If it ever is, though, you already have my warning that this change will likely be noticed with displeasure by Commons’ primary user community (Wikipedia editors) — but you also have GPinkerton’s hopefully correct assurance that «will not meet particular opposition on aesthetic grounds, on the contrary».
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 10:37, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
The redirect target having been changed by CorwenAv, no opposition has been registered. GPinkerton (talk) 01:02, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Seizure risks

Let’s continue the discussion at Commons:Village pump/Archive/2022/12#Seizure risks, now that Commons:Deletion requests/File:Color Flash.gif has been closed. There was a lot of discussion about seizure risks in that DR, but also suggestions that seizure risks were off-topic there. So let’s discuss those risks properly here.

Pinging @Dronebogus, Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), Tuvalkin, Capmo, Enhancing999, Glrx, Kai Burghardt, Red-tailed hawk, P199 as users involved in those discussions. Brianjd (talk) 13:46, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

We should do something, rather than letting those vulnerable to seizures stumble upon File:Color Flash.gif and any similar files.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:05, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
I have to admit I'm rather perplexed as why that image was even kept .... Is the file being used ? No .... Did anyone in the DR actually elaborate on why it should be kept and what purpose this image would serve ? .... No ..... So why's it still here ?,
Anyway there should be some sort of overlay-warning on the video before the video plays (similar to TikTok[11]), I don't have epilepsy but I find it highly annoying nonetheless and putting warnings in the desc area such as here is pointless as the video immediately plays before the reader gets to even do anything .... so if putting a warning overlay over the video before it plays is doable then I'd support that or failing that the image should be deleted. –Davey2010Talk 16:46, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
Pinging @P199 as keeping Admin.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:52, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
I have stated the closing decision in the DR (the majority felt it was in scope). No comments on the "seizure risk" - i'm rather skeptical about that. --P 1 9 9  ✉ 18:46, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
I feel like any seizure template would just be mindlessly spammed on almost every gif that changes colors Trade (talk) 02:44, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
@P199 Skeptical about what? Seizure risks from flashing seem to be well-established. Brianjd (talk) 07:46, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
On second thoughts I've changed my mind, Lets not discuss seizure risks because there are no seizure risks here (if there were this would've been deleted", I see nothing wrong with this image nor do I see any need to further waste the communities time with this rubbish. –Davey2010Talk 20:16, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
@Davey2010 Several comments address the purpose of this file, particularly this one:
Comment. According to https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/best-software-solutions-to-fix-a-stuck-pixel-on-your-lcd-monitor/ , flashing colors may fix stuck pixels. Glrx (talk) 16:48, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
Brianjd (talk) 07:49, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
@Brianjd Except we're not a guide on "how to fix your computer" and if people needed to find flashy images then they would search "flashy images" on Google .... No one would ever come here for pc issues.... –Davey2010Talk 20:13, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
 Comment.
The seizure risk is real. About 2.7 million in the US population have epilepsy, and 3 to 5 percent of those are photosensitive. Figure about 100,000 individuals in a population of 350 million: 0.000286 → about 300 per million.
GIF is an old format. Static bitmaps are probably better done as JPEG or PNG. Their valuable feature is the ability to do animations.
I want WMF to directly serve some SVG files. Some SVG files may be more compact than their PNG stils. SVG also offers user interaction. Interaction can be a security risk (e.g., taking a user to a malicious site). Placing SVG into an HTML img element disables those interactions and improves security. SVG can also do animations (which are not blocked by img elements). One of the points against directly serving SVG was the PSE risk with animations. WMF was allowing animated GIFs to play at load, but it was reluctant to let any other file format play on load.
During the above DR discussion, it came up that those with PSE can prevent their browser from playing animated GIFs by using a browser extension. There was comment about such extensions being poorly supported and having scary installation steps. Nevertheless, it seems prudent that someone with PSE would install such an extension. I took the availability of such extensions as the reason why WMF would allow animated GIFs to autoplay but disallow other formats. IF PSE users disable animated GIFs, then the problem is moot and WMF need not worry.
WMF allows GIFs to autoplay, so embedding warnings in filenames or in file descriptions is too late. The GIF will flash before the user would see any warning. What options would be effective? While some GIFs are out of scope or even malicious, there probably are in-scope PSE-triggering files.
The appropriate place for the PSE circuit breaker is under the user's control in the browser, but the support for such circuit breakers has diminished rather than increased. It makes more sense to implement the protection in a few browsers rather than every website.
Commons could say that PSE-triggering files should not exist in GIF format. That would prevent them from playing on load. If a PSE GIF is found, then convert it to some other format such as a video or SVG. (During the DR, it was pointed out that the flash rate of the GIF was above common video rates; it may not be possible to convert all files to another supported format.)
Glrx (talk) 20:21, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
@Glrx: FYI, maybe this issue warrants a proposal to the upcoming meta: Community Wishlist Survey 2023? I still think browser vendors are in charge of addressing usability, though, including disabilities and such. But if it’s our responsibility, there needs to be a technically-aided solution detecting problematic media and preventing them from automatic playback, in thumbnails, on the file description page, everywhere. ‑‑ Kays (T | C) 02:48, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
@Glrx and Kai Burghardt: Like I said at the DR, MDN Web Docs says that the website operator is responsible. Any developers here who can comment on what the developer community thinks? Brianjd (talk) 03:14, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
Any website should be responsible for the content it hosts.
That does not mean browsers should ignore the problem / not offer to disable animations.
Until the w:Halting problem is solved, a browser will not be able to stop all threats.
There are limits. Some people have severe peanut allergies, but that does not mean peanuts should be banned or eradicated. What steps are appropriate?
Glrx (talk) 19:07, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
@Glrx: No JPEG image can ever be a suitable replacement for a GIF image — unless the GIF format was incorrectly chosen (for, say, a photograph original), but in that case resaving the GIF’s pixels in JPEG format would just compund the error: one would need to access the original image (in whatever non-lossy format) for that.
If you want to say that any non-animated GIF file can be losslessly resaved as PNG, then you are fully correct (PNG format can even retain detailed palette information, which is critical for some GIFs); no need to name-drop JPEG.
Why is this matter even relevant for the discussion of an animated GIF file, though?
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 10:19, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
There problem, at its core, is that some of the images that may increase risk of seizure are also decidedly educational and in-scope. If this was a file that was uploaded maliciously and was being used to spam userpages, that would be a problem (and it could probably be deleted as vandalism), but we can't exactly censor images that have an educational purpose.
On the solution side, some software solution could be implemented to prevent auto-play of gifs tagged with a seizure warning template/in a seizure warning category on Commons. We could also disable gif autoplay altogether—requiring a single click on the gif is generally not all that burdensome—but generally disabling gif autoplay is less narrowly tailored towards this problem. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 15:35, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
@Red-tailed hawk Disabling GIF autoplay has other benefits too, which is why other sites do it. Why don’t we just do it too, and avoid all this controversy about seizure-risk files? Brianjd (talk) 15:43, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
Who defines when a GIF is considered an epilepsy danger? Trade (talk) 03:17, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Plants 2023

Wikimedia South Africa is planning to launch Wiki Loves Plants 2023 in January. The event will run from mid-January to the end of February 2023. The event will take place on iNatralist so as to get the correct taxonomy of the plants submitted. A requirement of the competition is that all images will be submitted under a copyright licence compatible with Commons. This will allow us to upload qualifying submissions to commons, from iNatralist, so that they can be used to illustrate articles on Wikipedia. I have put in a submission for a banner ad to run from mid-January to mid-February. I apologise for only posting this here now but, I am ashamed to admit, it only occurred to me to post about it on the Commons Village Pump now. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about this event.--Discott (talk) 13:37, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

I think the banner needs more discussion. As far as I know we never had a competition promoted in a banner campaign running outside of the Wikimedia projects and where a separate account is needed. GPSLeo (talk) 14:56, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
GPSLeo, that is a good point. I will ask the admins at central notice to hold off for a bit until a decision has been made on the banner ad campaign. We did at first plan to run this event in Commons like we did with the Wiki Loves Fynbos event last year (a sub-event of Wiki Loves Science 2021 in South Africa) which was a test event for this one. However we really struggled with getting the correct taxonomy of submitted photographs. iNatralist was a suggested by multiple botanists we approached for that event as it solves the problem of getting lots of pictures correctly identified whilst also opening the event (and participating in the Wiki movement) up to a broader community of people interested in the natural world. It was at the suggestion of some senior community members at iNatralist that it was decided to move the focal point of the competition from Commons to iNatralist as it a) streamlined the process of identifying submissions, b) made it easier for that community to learn about and participate in the event, and c) increase awareness amongst this community of why using a Commons compatible CC licence is a good thing. --Discott (talk) 16:47, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
@Discott: CentralNotice banners require a landing page in a domain owned by WMF or recognized affiliate (see FAQ). Ciell (talk) 13:06, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
Hi Ciell, understood. That is why we created this page on Commons. Perhaps we should then keep the landing page to the one on Commons but stating that those who wish to submit photos need to do so through iNatralist? The downside of that is that it will be a two step process to entering which will mean we will loose a fair number of participants. Discott (talk) 14:37, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
@Discott: agree, and also I think for you as organizer it is much harder to track participants and metrics when people use iNaturalist? If they can provide the info, I don't see a problem.
With WLM and other in-Commons photocomps, the banners point to a country specific landing page with national lists and a specific upload campaign, so there are also several steps to take. I am not familiar with the iNaturalist process: would this be much more complicated? Ciell (talk) 17:56, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi Ciell, I am also not very familiar with the iNatralist process and have been relaying on the assistance of a WMZA chapter member and a very helpful iNatralist volunteer administrator and botanist to guide me through the process. The main metric we are looking to track is a) the number of identified photos that get submitted, b) how many of them get to Commons, c) how many of them get used on Wikipedia, and d) how many participants we have. Metrics a and d are easy to measure on iNatralist and metrics b and c can only be measured on Wiki projects. Pointing the banners to country specific landing pages might be a bit ambitious at this stage as the event is still quite experimental and I it is only three of us all based in South Africa at the moment. We could do a list but that currently feels unnecessarily limiting for this event (we also don't really know where to start with a list) although it is something we could do, but it would likely have to wait until the next event which, if it happens, would be in 2025. We did originally intend to focus just on South Africa (like we did with the pilot event last time) but I was convinced to drop the local focus as was seen as arbitrary given the need. Discott (talk) 20:36, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
I was absolutely not trying to design the process for you, my comment on the workflow for WLM was only meant as an example here. There are more (WLA, WLF) that work without lists, I just meant to illustrate that people almost always have to go through a two- or multi-step process when uploading for a photo-competition. Ciell (talk) 20:44, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Ciell, I apologise if I came across as a bit defensive, I did not mean to sound critical. I think your point is a good one, I should not be too put off by having more than one step in the participation process. As WLM has shown, people will participate even if there are multiple steps so long as it is clear enough, for the public good, and not too hard. Discott (talk) 14:45, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Isn't that more an 'iNaturalist loves' kind of thing, then? Since it's not on-wiki? I also wonder, if iNaturalist is better than us at identifying plants (automatically?), there might be a way to run uncategorised photos of plants here through their approach to help sort out that backlog? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:51, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Hi Mike Peel, in answer to your questions, yes (I guess) and yes (for sure). Yes I guess in a way it is kinda like an 'iNaturalist loves' kind of thing even though the primary purpose of the event is "photographs for use on Wikipedia". However I don't think we can use the iNatralist name in that way without having a big iNatralist community discussion. Having said that I think that would be a good thing to do for the next iteration of this event and it is a nice bridge building exercise between the Wiki and iNatralist communities. As for running uncategorised photos on commons through iNatralist to get the correct taxonomy, I can see that working well. The iNatralist community and site is almost entirely geared for that purpose and they would be delighted to have the extra pictures. On a different issue, one of our chapter members who is very active on iNatralist has suggested that we (WMF + community) should ask iNatralist to build in a button that would allow for automated uploads of submitted photos from iNatralist to Commons if the author of the picture so chooses. I really like that idea but I can see it taking some time to get done.--Discott (talk) 14:20, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Such button exists. Just check any category page of a species. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:09, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
@Discott: I think there's a tool called iNaturalist2Commons for that. Nosferattus (talk) 12:57, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
I've used this one a few times in the past, and my experience with it was quite positive! There is also a (semi-automated?) License review procedure for the imported iNaturalist images. Ciell (talk) 13:09, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
Oops, yes, you’re right: I see it in every category page of a species because I have installed iNaturalist2Commons in my preferences. To be able to use it, Discott should do the same. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 10:13, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
I was meaning the other way around: take images from, say, Category:Unidentified plants and pass them to iNaturalist to see if they could help ID them. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:30, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
That would be groovy! -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 17:32, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Tuvalkin that is fantastic news, thanks for letting me know about iNaturalist2Commons! This is a great tool and one I will definately start using, it is also one I will be promoting as much as possible. Seems like a most excellent fit with the Loves Plants event being hosted on iNatralist. I suppose we could focus the Wiki part of the event on getting people to help us move photos from iNatralist to Commons. That way we could resolve multiple problems at once. Solving the taxonomy issue through iNatralist, soling the moving of images over to Commons issue and the competitions connection to Wiki issue by encouraging people to use this tool.--Discott (talk) 14:11, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
What a great initiative!! May I use the opportunity to introduce Wikiproject Biodiversity? Fun fact, this group started as Wikiproject iNaturalist during Wikimania in South Africa in 2018. @Mike PeelIt is exactly because of the iNaturalist community being better in identifying images that we started the project to use that leverage. Currently within the project we actively use iNaturalist projects to collect observations to identify observations that lack Wikipedia articles. Examples of such projects are: Wikiproject biodiversity and Wiki mentor africa. In both case we use jupyter notebooks to identify missing Wikipedia articles, we than start. In the latter specifically for sub-saharan africa in local languages. Long story short, cross polination between the wiki and iNaturalist community is very interesting. We renamed the project from Wikiproject iNaturalist to Wikiproject Biodiversity, to also give love to other resources, such as for example plantnet or the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Andrawaag (talk) 20:52, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi Andrawaag, this is why I love doing these sorts of events and talking about them with the community. One always learns of exciting and interesting projects they would have otherwise might not have been aware of before. I would love to talk to you some time about Wikiproject biodiversity. :-) Discott (talk) 14:41, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
As for the banner, I love the idea. Don’t care if it’s not really an WMF idea. It will be a great addition for the project and should be supported and widely announced (unlike several less-than-great WMF ideas whose banners spam us so often). -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:11, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. :-) --Discott (talk) 14:11, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Andrawaag, Tuvalkin, Ciell, GPSLeo, Nosferattus, and Mike Peel (apologies if I missed anyone) I just wanted to know if we are any closer for forming a consensus on the issue of posting a banner on Commons and Wikipedia to promote this event? The new start date has been moved to 15 January 2023 (same date as Wikipedia's 22nd birthday). It would be nice to start the campaign, if it is agreed to, on that date.--Discott (talk) 16:44, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I still do not think that we should start doing this, because following campaigns could do this more and more. But if the link is not directly to the external site I would not veto on this. GPSLeo (talk) 16:56, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
No problem, I will change the link to point to the event page on Wikimedia Commons then. However the Wikimedia Commons page will still point people to the iNatralist page to enter the event. Is that okay? Discott (talk) 06:52, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
I have just relised that the banner add already points to the Wikimedia Commons page however I will ensure that it continues to remain that way. Discott (talk) 06:54, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
Since I haven't received a no yet and I have resolved the issue GPSLeo raised I am going to move ahead with the banner add request. I don't think I can wait much longer. I am already 2 days past the new start date of the event and 17 days past the original one. Discott (talk) 11:06, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Objectification

A photo I took of a reasonably prominent writer about music, File:Evelyn McDonnell 02.jpg has had its categories modified over time by User:Chenspec, User:DerHexer (one small edit), User:Albedo, and most recently User:Joshbaumgartner, so that it now has categories such as Category:Female human hair, Category:Women's faces, Category:Women looking at viewer, and Category:Women with opened mouths. These seem to me to be terribly objectifying categories. We don't add comparable categories to photographs of men, or (with rare exceptions) older women, but photos of young women are often treated this way. I find this objectionable (especially in this case, where it is a photo from what was basically a feminist music conference).

Yes, these categories are technically accurate, but they are some combination of useless/inappropriate. For example, almost every portrait photograph is going to show someone's hair and face.

This is repeatedly done specifically for photos of young women and, no, I don't think the right solution is to equally objectify everyone else. Jmabel ! talk 16:30, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

@Jmabel There is a discussion at Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/05/Category:Men with opened mouths but strangely not one for the women one. The parent categories deserve discussions as well. Ricky81682 (talk) 23:49, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
 Comment My involvement has merely been to apply the results of closed CfDs to effect certain name changes on these categories, and should not be taken as endorsement or otherwise as to the validity of their existence. Additionally, the CfD cited above should be expanded to cover both genders since ostensibly it would apply to both. Josh (talk) 19:07, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
@Joshbaumgartner: as I figured, but didn't want to leave you un-notified if you felt you had a stake in this. & I agree about the CfD. - Jmabel ! talk 23:51, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I appreciate that and no worries, I just wanted to clarify my role. It turns out there is a discussion for the women as well at Commons:Categories for discussion/2022/12/Category:Women with opened mouths, so I'm linking it here as well as cross-referencing the two discussions. Josh (talk) 00:05, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
I agree with Jmabel that sorting identifiable individuals by body details is highly questionable (and IMHO without much use anyway). But the fault may not be in the category itself but in the loose ways images are attached to it: If hair is the central topic of an image and the person has obviously confirmed to be used as a symbol for "hair" (e.g. as a model at a haidressers competition) I´d have no objections. Category:People with opened mouths is fine for images that are targeted at illustrating dentistry methods or singing techniques, but not for any snapshot where someone conincidentally hasn´t closed his mouth fully. And Category:Smiling women is fine for Mona Lisa, where the specific smile has even found scientific attention, but that´s a rare exception. I suggest not to delete the categories but to define their scope more clearly and to amend Commons:Categories with guidance that objectifying categorization should not be applied to identifiable individuals unless there is documented consent or specific justification. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 22:57, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
@Jmabel, Ricky81682, and Rudolph Buch: Similar issues were discussed at Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/06/Category:Upskirt in sports, which has been open for far too long. Brianjd (talk) 05:15, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
We have plenty of files in Men looking at viewer and subcategories. ‘Looking at viewer’ is more about behaviour than the person’s inherent appearance; I don’t think it is objectifying. Brianjd (talk) 05:22, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
The other categories are about appearance, but are accurate, are not derogatory and are not indecent, so I do not see the problem. The file used as an example here, Evelyn McDonnell 02.jpg is a picture of (not merely depicting) a woman’s face, or at least a woman’s head, so the category Women's faces is fine. It also prominently shows a significant amount of hair, so Female human hair is fine. Both of these categories may require diffusion or other pruning, but that is a separate issue. Other categories like Women with opened mouths should be discussed on a case-by-case basis (I will add a comment to that category’s discussion as well). Brianjd (talk) 06:38, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Eigentlich (Eigentlich) sind die Kategorien ja obsolet. Ersetzt durch SDC und depicts. Und depicts für dieses Bild wären "Frau", "offener Mund", "feministisches Event", "Gesicht", "Portrait", "Blick auf den Betrachter" und würden es erlauben mit der Such-Anfrage "Alexa/Siri": Zeige mir Portraits von Frauen auf feministischen Events, die auf den Betrachter schauen und gerade sprechen. Dieses Bild und alle anderen Bilder auf Commons zu finden, die der Anfrage entsprechen (unabhängig von der Sprache, denn SDC sind im Ggs zu Kategorien multilingual). Insofern ist der Streit um objektivierende Kategorien müßig. Im Gegenteil kann aus diesen Kategorien teilautomatisiert auf die einzutragenden SDC geschlossen werden und dann können diese seltamen multi-begriff-kategorien verschwinden. --C.Suthorn (talk) 20:10, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

  1. @C.Suthorn: No, categories are not obselete. So far, they still function a lot better than structured data, at least for a human trying to find an image. If you are telling me that I should rely on a commercial company's AI to help me navigate Commons, then I'll refrain from answering that, because any response that seems appropriate to me would probably get me blocked for incivility.
  2. I stand on my original remarks about these categories and the way they are applied in practice constituting objectification. - Jmabel ! talk 01:08, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
    +1 on both points. SDC is a long way away from even being a semi-functional replacement for categories, much less supplanting them altogether. — Huntster (t @ c) 01:16, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
    I have a gadget that moves categories to the top of the screen, and I routinely read them, and they make sense to ordinary humans. But structured data? Do I want to click on another tab every time I open a page, just to view some confusing screen that looks like it’s full of technical details for data scientists/librarians/something like that? (We are getting off-topic here, but I could not resist bringing a bit of common sense to the SDC discussion. Objectification concerns should apply equally to categories and SDC, so categories vs SDC is irrelevant.) Brianjd (talk) 04:58, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
    If you can use a gadget that changes how categories are displayed you could use a gadget that changes how SDC is displayed. Please don't conflate content with presentation. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:42, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
    @Pigsonthewing I agree that we must separate content from presentation, but I think presentation is a huge practical problem for SDC. The default display for categories is still much easier to read than SDC, while the only site-wide gadget I see for changing the presentation of SDC is one that removes it completely. Brianjd (talk) 07:44, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
    (applause) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 05:11, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
    @Jmabel: I agree with your points. This is obvious objectification, and it's absurd that we have categories like Category:Nude women, bare feet apparent, soles exposed as if Commons was a porn site for very specific fetishes. (FYI: Commons:Categories for discussion/2020/06/Category:Nude women, bare feet apparent, soles exposed.) What do you think we can do about this? Nosferattus (talk) 18:32, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
    There is no other solution than to do the hard work of nominating these categories for deletion and arguing about them on principle grounds. It's no surprise that it's easier for create a objecting category and have fun filling it up than to suggest deleting it and having someone find some rationale no matter how absurd the category for its use (even if it is just a blatant 'no censorship' opposition to any deletion). I wonder if we should start sorting CFD discussions like we are doing for file image discussions so we can formulate categorization rules better. Ricky81682 (talk) 01:30, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    This discussion raised many important arguments, but it seems that they can be concentrated into two central issues. The first question is the legitimacy and necessity of a certain category. This should of course be checked for each individual case. If a category is found inappropriate, it should probably be deleted with all the tags in it. That way you can save many separate discussions on the same topic. The individual inspection of the files and images themselves should only be done for categories that have been decided to be kept. In this context, I definitely agree that it is better to leave in a certain category only images that have a clear connection to it and at the same time delete tags for images that have a marginal connection to the category. Chenspec (talk) 13:30, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    CFD? Trade (talk) 16:55, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
    The fact that it takes a category deletion request with four deletes and zero keep almost three years to get deleted seems to be the bigger issue when it comes to categories like these Trade (talk) 17:07, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

At the risk of saying more or less the same thing over and over: File:Fremont Solstice 2012 - 184.jpg (probably NSFW, depending where you work): categories include Category:Nude or partially nude women wearing flip-flops, Category:Nude or partially nude women with bicycles, Category:Nude walking women, Category:Nude women smiling with teeth, Category:Nude women smiling while standing, Category:Front views of nude standing women, Category:Nude standing women with unshaved genitalia, Category:Nude women with brown hair, Category:Nude women with long hair, Category:Nude women wearing flip-flops, Category:Nude women with bracelets. Geez! But beyond that, there is exactly one "depicts": female pubic hair (Q116174568). By my estimation, the pubic hair takes up less than 1% of the photo. Nothing about depicting a bicycle, or body paint; and, now that I look closer, nothing in the cats or depicts that would let you know that there was a body-painted male anywhere in the photo (some categories do refer to the clothed male photographer at right). - Jmabel ! talk 23:33, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

It would be a lot easier for others to understand if you linked the images in question. Trade (talk) 23:40, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
@Trade: My most recent remark is about exactly one image, and it is linked in the first sentence of the remark. My remark that started this section was also about exactly one image, linked in the first sentence of that remark. What, additional to that, do you think I should have done? - Jmabel ! talk 03:37, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
@Jmabel That’s not the best example, given that all those categories refer to the most prominent person in the image.
I agree that the ‘depicts’ is a problem. But it was added by Trade in a batch edit. I doubt that Trade or anyone else looking at this image specifically would have edited the structured data that way. So the answer is simply to add more appropriate ‘depicts’ statements to this file. Brianjd (talk) 08:23, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
Following from my comment about the nude woman being the most prominent person in that image, I had a quick look through the category Solstice Cyclists in 2012; it seems that the category itself has a massive gender bias. Brianjd (talk) 08:27, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
Most of the images comes from a third party FLickr user. What are we are supposed to do about gender bias? Trade (talk) 11:24, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
@Trade The subset of photos taken by Jmabel seems to have a gender bias too. That doesn’t answer your question, but hopefully we can at least get a comment about it. Brianjd (talk) 11:31, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
I took the bulk of the photos (including the ones imported from my Flickr account). Basically, anything that isn't Flickr's notion of "safe" is uploaded directly to Commons.
@Brianjd: Could you tell me what you see as gender bias among those photos as such? Basically, I was trying to photograph everyone I could. If you are saying just that there are more female breasts than male genitalia, that is because there are a lot more people (of both genders) exposing the top half of their body than the bottom, because male genitalia are hidden by legs from most shooting angles, and because in many cases male genitalia even when technically visible can barely be seen because (1) they are a lot smaller than female breasts (2) they are often hard even to notice because of body paint (if that portion of someone's anatomy is painted a solid color, you probably won't notice genitalia unless you are actively looking for them. Really annoying for Flickr's "safety" requirements: having to closely look at every detail of my photos to work out whether someone else closely looking at every detail might see a stray penis that I hadn't even noticed!). - Jmabel ! talk 16:29, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
@Jmabel My judgement was based on a quick assessment of the gender(s) of the most prominent person/people in each image, based on thumbnails zoomed to 250% on the category page. Brianjd (talk) 06:44, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
@Brianjd: There may well have been more men than women in the contingent, or they may have been more interestingly painted (I probably didn't take all that many pictures of guys who were just painted a solid color), but if there was any "bias" on my part it was unconscious. - Jmabel ! talk 16:32, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
Looking quickly at the first 60 or so from 2017, it runs somewhere between 40% & 60%. If someone wants to do a larger sample and a careful count, I'd be interested in the result, but I don't have the patience. Certainly not something I'm consciously focusing on when I'm shooting or selecting, but I'm a heterosexual male, and it wouldn't surprise me if I notice women more than men. - Jmabel ! talk 16:37, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Looking at some other images here, I came across the widely used file Topless blonde sunbathing at the beach.jpg. Its categorisation is a bit different to another file showing the same subject, Blonde Woman at the beach.jpg. But more to the point, it was the subject of a bizarre featured picture discussion that kept referring to her buttocks. Brianjd (talk) 12:57, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Wow. Talk about objectification. - Jmabel ! talk 15:51, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
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