User talk:W.carter/Archive 21

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Archive 15

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Archive 19

POTD Notification

⭐ The file you uploaded, is on the main page! ⭐

The file File:Red fishing huts in Rågårdsdal.jpg, that you uploaded, is on the main page today. Thank you for your contributions to this project.

//EatchaBot (talk) 00:00, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments in Sweden

Hej!

(For information in English, see Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 in Sweden or other participating countries.)

Du får det här meddelandet då du tidigare har deltagit i de svenska deltävlingarna av Wiki Loves Monuments eller Wiki Loves Earth!

Den 1 september inleds 2022 års svenska deltävling av Wiki Loves Monuments, där det skulle vara väldigt roligt om du ville vara med och delta! Målet med Wiki Loves Monuments är att fotografera svenska kulturarvsmonument. De kategorier som ingår är byggnadsminnen, fornminnen, kulturmärkta fartyg och fritidsbåtar och arbetslivsmuseer – och du är välkommen att bidra med bilder hela september.

Välkommen till tävlingen, och lycka till! /Axel Pettersson (WMSE) (talk) 10:26, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Quality Image Promotion

Your image has been reviewed and promoted

Congratulations! Young tabby cat keeping watch.jpg, which was produced by you, was reviewed and has now been promoted to Quality Image status.

If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Quality images candidates.

We also invite you to take part in the categorization of recently promoted quality images.
Comments Good quality, overall. -- Ikan Kekek 02:25, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Your image has been reviewed and promoted

Congratulations! Pink cherry blossoms in Tuntorp 1.jpg, which was produced by you, was reviewed and has now been promoted to Quality Image status.

If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Quality images candidates.

We also invite you to take part in the categorization of recently promoted quality images.
Comments
Support Good quality. --Jsamwrites 17:17, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

--QICbot (talk) 05:22, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Greetings and some support

"I already know that my photos are boring and of inferior quality for FPC." Not true at all, but I know you wouldn't want a discussion of that on FPC. How are you? -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:53, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi Ikan, thanks for dropping by. I'm fine and productive these days. Not being confined by the FPC has re-kindled my joy for photography as well as drawing for articles. I have grown comfortable with Slaunger's excellent camera and that has added to my creativity. I can now do aurora and night photography and I have also taken my first tentative steps into street photography. I have joined an online group of women photographers, most of them professional, and it's wonderful to learn from them and their experiences.

My statement at the nom stands. Let's face it, I don't do the normal stuff FPC wants, so therefore my photos bore the judges. And I doubt that the good people of FPC can find a single shot I've made that doesn't have a pixel, artifact or spot in the wrong place, and just like Frank, I don't feel like jumping through the pixel-peeping hoops again. My shots are used and enjoyed both on and off the WikiProject, and that is enough for me. --Cart (talk) 09:44, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

This →→ is great btw. The contrast between the power lines and aurora is giving me strong Boards of Canada vibes (ambient/psychedelic/electronic artists with a sort of haunted nostalgia aesthetic). this remains one of my favorite albums if you want to check it out. :) — Rhododendrites ^talk | 12:50, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Yes, it was an incredible night! I actually said "WoW!" out loud several times. I'm thrilled to finally have a camera good enough to shoot these lights at a reasonable noise level. I went out at about 10 pm and thought I'd get a few shots, but then the whole sky lit up as if someone had just parked a major city by the horizon. I didn't get home until 4 in the morning. The night was warm and almost without wind. It sure beats gearing up for auroras in the middle of February. Totally worth it! Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. --Cart (talk) 13:21, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Cart, I'm glad you're enjoying your life and enjoying photography! Thanks for the report. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:46, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Ikan, sorry if my reply to you sounded so cold, you had to call it a "report". But after everything FPC has put me through, did you really expect I would just happily get back there one day? I know that the gold stars are like a drug that have pulled other users back after they have left or even quit Commons, but thankfully, I never got addicted. I still love the WikiProject too much to leave Commons, so I'll continue but while keeping a very low profile. --Cart (talk) 19:36, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

No, I haven't expected that. I didn't feel like your reply was cold. I also didn't mean to sound cold; sorry it seemed to you that I was. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:52, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Really very nice captures! One day I wanted to go to Abisko to shoot Aurora, but even there and at the "right" season, really doubtful that I would be so lucky to see it just like this.

As for your withdrawn sunset photo, I still hope you make an exception. Regards --A.Savin 12:41, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! :-) Yes the auroras are rather unpredictable, it takes many attempts to get a really good one. But there are tricks. They peak on a 28-days cycle and you can get a hint of what's coming on space weather sites like this one (scroll down for the aurora forecast). I also follow some aurora enthusiasts in Canada and northern Scotland, and if they spot something, it's time for me to suit up and go out into the night the same night and the next. And of course the sky needs to be clear. I was very fortunate one time on a visit to Jokkmokk when the aurora exploded all over the sky like it was made by people from Industrial Light and Magic on acid. However Sweden can be very cloudy, so if you're planning for an aurora trip, I think it might be better to go up along the coast of Norway. The Atlantic coast (where I live) is usually clearer and the weather changes more rapidly, so you stand a greater chance of seeing it.

The photo is just a sunset photo (we all know what FPC rules say about sunsets...), and a rather ordinary one too, so no big loss. And as long as the two guys who tipped the scale for me to leave FPC, are still around... Let's just say I would rather spend an evening naked with Putin and Trump than go back to FPC. --Cart (talk) 13:37, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Comment See latest development at the nomination: Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Sunset over the ice of Brofjorden 1.jpg. --Cart (talk) 18:11, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Quality Image Promotion

Your image has been reviewed and promoted

Congratulations! Dense vegetation on the shore of Brofjorden at Lahälla 1.jpg, which was produced by you, was reviewed and has now been promoted to Quality Image status.

If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Quality images candidates.

We also invite you to take part in the categorization of recently promoted quality images.
Comments Nice. -- Ikan Kekek 03:02, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Your image has been reviewed and promoted

Congratulations! Wild cherry blossoms in Tuntorp 1.jpg, which was produced by you, was reviewed and has now been promoted to Quality Image status.

If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Quality images candidates.

We also invite you to take part in the categorization of recently promoted quality images.
Comments Good quality. --Yeriho 20:19, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

--QICbot (talk) 05:26, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

FP Promotion

★ This image has been promoted to Featured picture! ★

The image File:Sunset over the ice of Brofjorden 1.jpg, that you uploaded is now assessed as one of the finest pictures on Wikimedia Commons, the nomination is available at Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Sunset over the ice of Brofjorden 1.jpg. Thank you for your contribution. If you would like to nominate, please do so at this nomination page.

/FPCBot (talk) 21:00, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Quality Image Promotion

Your image has been reviewed and promoted

Congratulations! Star magnolia in Tuntorp 1.jpg, which was produced by you, was reviewed and has now been promoted to Quality Image status.

If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Quality images candidates.

We also invite you to take part in the categorization of recently promoted quality images.
Comments
Support Good qality. --Robert Flogaus-Faust 09:45, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

--QICbot (talk) 05:25, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Featured Picture Nomination

Hello. I just wanted to let you know that the image Lilac leaf buds at Myrstigen 2.jpg, which was created or uploaded by you, has been nominated for featured picture status; have a look at the nomination page. Thank you and good luck! -- Артём 13327 (talk) 16:59, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Артём 13327 , thanks for letting me know. I've fixed the gallery to the correct one for plants. I don't think it will get enough support votes though; it is far to "arty" for a plant photo at FPC. We'll see. --Cart (talk) 17:06, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

POTD Notification

⭐ The file you uploaded, is on the main page! ⭐

The file File:Dark Matter 27x39 ENGLISH.png, that you uploaded, is on the main page today. Thank you for your contributions to this project.

//EatchaBot (talk) 00:00, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

FP Promotion

★ This image has been promoted to Featured picture! ★

The image File:Lilac leaf buds at Myrstigen 2.jpg, that you uploaded is now assessed as one of the finest pictures on Wikimedia Commons, the nomination is available at Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Lilac leaf buds at Myrstigen 2.jpg. Thank you for your contribution. If you would like to nominate, please do so at this nomination page.

/FPCBot (talk) 05:00, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Happy holidays 2022/2023!

* Happy Holidays 2022/2023, Cart! *

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Joyeux Noël! Bonne année!

Frohes Weihnachten! Frohes Neues Jahr!

¡Feliz Navidad y próspero año nuevo!

Щасливого Різдва! З Новим роком!

-- George Chernilevsky ^talk 00:45, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you George! All the best wishes for you too and hopes that the new year will bring back better days. --Cart (talk) 09:49, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Happy Holidays 2022/2023!

✴ Happy Holidays, Cart ✴

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!
Щасливого Різдва! З Новим роком!
Joyeux Noël! Bonne année!
¡Feliz Navidad y próspero año nuevo!
Buon Natale e felice anno nuovo!
Frohe Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr!

--Aristeas (talk) 11:27, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Dear Cart, at the end of this year I would like to thank you for many things – be it helpful hints and corrections on the FP page, be it your great help in completing this photo or your hints about that one. I have learned a lot from you. I especially want to thank you again for your compassion and for your editing of my photos of late Nikita! Please excuse me for not having come back to this. I took the photos you improved for commemorative prints which we love very much. I did not update the original files here (yet) because the intensive work (still) hurts too much.

For me it was a difficult year; I was sick more often, in autumn we moved to a new flat in another city, and that was very exhausting. The move was especially difficult for our three cats who are still alive, but in the meantime they have arrived very well, they obviously like the new flat and have really come alive; even our oldest cat is fit and lively again like in her youth. She especially likes the fact that you can sometimes watch squirrels in the nearby trees from the windows – that’s rather unusual in this area of Germany, especially in the middle of a city ;–).

You described to me once this year how you are doing in south-west Sweden. I sincerely hope that the past year also brought you a lot of good things. I wish you relaxing holidays between the years and all the best, hope, confidence and strength for the new year that is about to begin! May it fulfil your wishes and bring you much joy! — Aristeas (talk) 13:59, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Oh my, Aristeas, Im quite overwhelmed by your kind message! I'm glad I could help out in some small capacity. Glad to hear that the cats have found other furry "friends" and that you have settled after the move. Not much has happened here during the year, I'm hoping that will change in 2023. I'm wishing all of you a great holiday! All the best, --Cart (talk) 16:49, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Cart, and all the best for 2023 --Aristeas (talk) 09:12, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Beautiful pic on Main page!

Krok6kola (talk) 02:29, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

FP Promotion

★ This image has been promoted to Featured picture! ★

The image File:New snow on young oaks in Tuntorp.jpg, that you uploaded is now assessed as one of the finest pictures on Wikimedia Commons, the nomination is available at Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:New snow on young oaks in Tuntorp.jpg. Thank you for your contribution. If you would like to nominate, please do so at this nomination page.

/FPCBot (talk) 13:00, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Assessments template, com-nom parameter for FPs promoted via delist-and-replace

Hello Cart, just a short question. I have manually processed two delist-and-replace nominations (1, 2). But I was not able to find a working value for the com-nom of the {{Assessments}} template on the description page of the two images which were promoted by that action (1, 2). I have helped for now by creating redirects (1, 2) with the name of the two newly promoted images to the two delist-and-replace nominations. But that’s a workaround or a hack, not a perfect solution ;–). Do you know a way to specify the com-nom parameter in order to make the {{Assessments}} tenmplate on the page of the new picture link directly to the delist-and-replace nomination? If not, no problem, I just wanted to ask … All the best! --Aristeas (talk) 09:18, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi Aristeas, your solution with the redirect page is not a hack, but a good way to fix a tricky problem. The {{Assessments}} template doesn't cover all the things that goes on on the FPC forum. It simply states: "Move the nomination page so it fits one of the patterns listed above." In these cases, if you moved the nomination page to suit the configuration, you would get the same setup with a redirect to the moved page, so it's simply a matter of where the redirect is placed. But in a worst-case-scenario when moving a page, the original "removal nom"-page could get deleted and we would lose the vital "/removal/" tag in the file title, and that should be preserved for the records if someone was to make statistics or some other research about removed FPs. You did well! --Cart (talk) 11:36, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi Cart, thank you very much for your detailled answer and explanation! I am glad that I did the right thing. I’ll remember that for further delist-and-replace cases … All the best, --Aristeas (talk) 15:33, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Closing review of an FPC nomination with alternative version

Dear W.carter!

I would like to ask you for some advice, because I think that you, as an experienced user, could help: today while reviewing the final FPC results I came across this nomination with an alternative where I am not sure how to proceed. The original version has 8 supporting votes and 2 opposing votes. The alternative has 7 supporting votes and 2 neutral votes. Spontaneously, I would select the original version, but as I mentioned, I haven't had such a case yet. Maybe if you have time, you can take a look at the nomination and give me a hint. Thank you very much in advance for your advice :)

Best wishes, -- Radomianin (talk) 20:42, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi Radomianin! First thing, when counting votes, 'Neutral' and 'Abstain' votes count as nothing, just ignore them. They are only a way for voters to express their own indecision. AFAI can recall, we usually go for the percentages in close call situations like this. The original had 80% of the votes in support (8 out of 10 countable votes) of the nom and the alternative was totally unopposed leaving it with 100% of the votes in support. That makes the alternative the winner.

I see that some users have left notes leaning in different directions, but as long as you don't vote a clear 'S' or 'O', all such vague comments are open for ambiguous interpretations, that can't b taken as votes. This is why it's so important to ping all voters when an 'Alt' is made; and tell them to cast hard votes.

If some Talk Page Stalker remembers this differently, please add your thoughts. Best, --Cart (talk) 21:04, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Dear Cart! Thank you very much for your helpful advice which I have just applied. I guess the FPC bot will do the rest tomorrow morning. The parameter com-nom I will add tomorrow appropriately on the file page.
Once again, thank you and best wishes, -- Radomianin (talk) 22:20, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Good morning Cart, a quick update on the nomination closure in question: Unfortunately I forgot yesterday late evening to add the alternative in the template {{FPC-results-reviewed}}, so this morning the FPC bot (fortunately) didn't process the job. Thankfully, Aristeas noticed it today and completed the command line. Thanks to this difficult case, I have learned something new again. Special thanks and all the best :) -- Radomianin (talk) 09:08, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

No problem Radomianin, the "behind the scene" logistics of FP/FPC is a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare. It takes a while to learn it all. Fortunately, we have Aristeas as a kind of benevolent guardian angel hovering over it all. :-) --Cart (talk) 10:40, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Äntligen maj: Wiki Loves Earth 2023!

Hej,
(For information in English, see Wiki Loves Earth 2023 in Sweden or other participating countries.)

Du får det här meddelandet eftersom du tidigare har bidragit med bilder till de svenska deltävlingarna av Wiki Loves Earth eller Wiki Loves Monuments. Jag hoppas att du vill vara med i år också! Som vanligt ingår naturreservat och nationalparker, biosfärområden och naturminnen i tävlingen! Nytt för i år är att vi utöver bästa foto även belönar fotograferande av tidigare ofotograferade objekt samt bästa bildserie om minst tio fotografier av samma objekt. Tävlingen börjar 1 maj, och pågår under hela maj månad. Om du har varit ute i världen och rest kan du även se om resorna sammanfaller med övriga internationella deltävlingar, och i så fall vara med och tävla även där. Expeditioner, fotosafari eller en helt vanlig promenad? Via en smidig karta som visar ditt närområde hittar du bra ställen att besöka – eller varför inte damma av fotoalbumen och tävla med bilder du har tagit tidigare?

Välkommen till tävlingen, och lycka till! /Axel Pettersson (WMSE) (talk) 12:46, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, once again …

… for your help with the crop of that photo. Place 23 in POTY 2022 is not bad ;–) and our joint success – without your crop the photo would not work so well. At the first glance place 23 may not look as attractive as place 1, 2 or 3, but in the end 23 is a much more interesting number ;–). All the best, --Aristeas (talk) 18:43, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi Aristeas! Congratulation on the 23:d! Just being in the final is a great achievement. Don't think about the 22 before it, rather focus on the thousands behind it. :-) I've had photos in the finals, but that's just because I take photos that end up in weird subcategories with not much competition. Getting a landscape photo that high up in the ranking is really something. Very happy I could be part of it in a small way. Real good cooperation often works very well here, when the only objective is to produce a perfect image. It is one of the unique qualities on this site. Thankfully there are users who still work this way.

I have accidentally stumbled upon a part of photography I haven't tried before: sports. As you might recall, sports is one of the few things they are good at in this god-forsaken municipality, and on my way home from a walk with the good camera, I stumbled upon a Little League soccer game. I snapped a few photos, and I wasn't prepared for how much fun it was following players and the game, trying to get some shots. I had the wrong lens with me, so the best captures came from cropped images. But I like the one I got of a little boy giving it all when he made corner kicks. (His body language reminds me of Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes) :-)

Today I happened upon a game of boule. Only with my pocket camera, and not much of an action sport, but it was just as fun. Hey, you have to start somewhere! :-D I think I might seek out some other, real, sports events during the summer. With the right equipment. ;-) Always fun to do something new and different. New lines and situations, plus I like the high percentage of chance when it comes to making a good photo. All the best, --Cart (talk) 19:38, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello Cart – delayed, but all the more heartfelt Thank you for your congratulations! And also for your experience report. Yes, it is exciting to suddenly discover an unknown area of photography. I felt the same way lately. In the fall I had bought a used 100–400mm zoom lens to photograph landscape details – a long-held desire. But in the spring I’ve been using it more to try to capture our furry friends. I’m anything but a wildlife photographer, and squirrels are oh so incredibly nimble, but a few photos are still quite usable – most of the images in this list (except for the first two) are the result. It’s tedious, but it’s also a lot of fun. I hope you continue to enjoy the new field – sports photography – and bring in many beautiful images! Warm greetings from --Aristeas (talk) 17:56, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Aristeas, oh what lovely images!! ♥ I hadn't really expected an answer, but it's nice to see that we both have progressed to more mobile targets. Have fun you too! --Cart (talk) 18:08, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Off-topic question: website language

Hello Cart,

sorry for disturbing you so often. I hope it is OK to mention a short off-topic question here; if it is not OK for you, please just ignore it!

I have built an intentionally very simple website with some of my photos and wonder which language I should use for it. (The layout etc. are also very arguable, I have build better and more sophisticated websites before, but that would need a separate discussion.) So I would like to ask a few tasteful people for their impression.

Would you expect such a website to be in English?
Or does it look more “modest” that it uses German? (My idea was that it looks more modest this way and that using English would a bit boastful, but maybe I am too cautious here.)
Should I add the ability to switch between English, German and, say, Spanish? Or would that look really boastful?

I just want to know your immediate personal impression. Thank you for your help, --Aristeas (talk) 09:42, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Hello Aristeas, no problem, I like your little questions and projects and I don't think you ask very often. :-) My "immediate personal impression" might be a bit tired and bleary-eyed this 'morning' though. ;-) Yesterday we celebrated Midsummer, which in Sweden is bigger than Christmas, and I woke up to the mess in Russia on the radio - a stark awakening to say the least, but here goes:

I have built and maintained several commercial websites over the years, so I have some experience with this. Any website today will transcend international borders, so it is expected that it will be easy to understand for anyone. Even the most modest, but serious, website is either in English or bilingual. Only very local and provincial websites use only the native language. We who are over 30 are a bit behind the curve on this. ;-) Having the main site in German with an English option is the best thing, especially if you are a photographer. People from other countries are more prone to visit your site if you showcase photos than other things. Having the site in your native language will make it more genuine, and English will make it more welcoming (an English option is not "boastful" it is hospitable). I don't think any more languages, like Spanish, are not needed at this stage. Having it in just English would be a mistake. It would lose its genuine/authentic impression. The only non-English sites doing that, are mass-produced and badly translated Asian sites selling cheap stuff. And let's not forget that not everyone living in our countries, speak our native language.

So there you have an initial reaction of ever there was one. :-) Thankfully it's a photo site, so not that much text to translate. Always fun helping with your projects! Best, --Cart (talk) 10:36, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Hello Cart, thank you very much for your detailed, well thought-out answer! (Sorry that I forgot about Midsummer – even Germans should know about it – I should have waited for a day or two before bothering any Swedish user with questions ;–).)

That’s exactly the kind of answer I had hoped for, it is very helpful for me. Excellent, I will realize your suggestion, it is certainly the best solution. Interesting enough two other users from other countries have given me more or less the same answer, so there even seems to be an international consensus, that’s great.

Thank you very much again, have a good rest and all the best --Aristeas (talk) 15:32, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Straw-bale greetings

Hello Cart,

we have a little holiday, therefore I have reduced my Commons activity (and also have not yet answered to your last message, sorry!). But here are some summery straw-bale greetings:

The photos need a bit more editing (espec. the last one needs noise reduction), which I will do after the holiday, and they are just amateurish experiments in the genre of straw-bale photography ;–), but I thought I send you these as kind of a little greeting card. All the best, --Aristeas (talk) 19:58, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello Aristeas, what a nice greeting! :-D Cool to see that my bale-mania is spreading. Hope you are enjoying your holiday. I saw the Wiki-break on your page, and I'm filling in as gallery-fixer on FPC for you. I try to be on my best behavior, since people are used to a "friendly gallery fixer" and now they have to make do with the old grumpy one instead, ;-) Best, --Cart (talk) 20:06, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello Cart, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for adopting the gallery-fixing job on FPC! :–) It was much easier to relax for holidays because I knew that you took care for that task. (Without that a whole list of misplaced, unsorted etc. FPs would have assembled.) I will return to my regular FPC gallery link routine in the next days. Today I have started by searching in general for broken FPC links, invalid FP gallery entries etc.; from time to time it’s useful to do such a spring-cleaning. Thank you very very much again! All the best, --Aristeas (talk) 15:31, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

No problem Aristeas :-)! The "FPC tribe" has been unusually well-behaved lately, with no major incidents. A lot of people seem to have (finally) grasped how the gallery system works. The more civilized atmosphere also seems to have attracted some "old" FPC users to return. I hope this will keep for a while, and I'll probably stick around the section for a while longer, and share the work with you.

I hope you had a restful vacation despite the extreme weather. Nice to have you back! :-) --Cart (talk) 15:43, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Natural phenomena#Rainbow

Hello Cart,

I agree it’s a good idea to add a new rainbow section to the Natural phenomena gallery page, as suggested here. I can take this task. What do you think on the following details:

Not all rainbows are cause by wheather (there are also rainbows at waterfalls etc.). So we could add the new section either (1) as a direct top-level section of the Natural phenomena gallery page, between “Organic” and “Reflections”, or (2) as a subsection of the Wheather section there, between “Rain” and “Snow”. I feel torn here – (1) is “correct”, (2) seems more practical. What do you think is better?
For the new (sub)heading, I would use the plural, “Rainbows”. (One user suggested the singular, “Rainbow”, and indeed some Wheather subheadings use the singular – “Fog”, “Lightning”, “Rain”, “Snow”. But that’s probably because these words are used in a “collective” way in the English language, i.e. it’s not common to use them in plural. The plural “Rainbows” is common, so I would use it.) OK?
Should we scan the gallery pages for other photos in which the rainbow is the overwhelming subject and move them to the new (sub)section? IMHO this would make sense. Of course I don’t want to move many photos – AFAICR there are not many photos which emphasize rainbows –, but moving 2 or 3 additional photos to the new subsection would fill it with life. (Of course only if we really find photos in which the rainbow is the overwhelming subject.)

Best, --Aristeas (talk) 08:04, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi Aristeas, thanks for taking on this.

I think it's best to keep the reainbow section as general as possible, especially since it's a new section , to accommodate all relevant photos like those in waterfalls, from garden hoses etc. So I would go for the top level between “Organic” and “Reflections”.

Go for the the plural, “Rainbows”. As much as possible, we should try to keep the gallery names corresponding with the Commons categories, and we have Category:Rainbows.

It's a good idea to see what other FPs could be better suited for that a section. I always did that when I was minding the gallery. I did a quick scan when I wrote the comment on the nom, to see if there were any likely candidates. No one immediately popped out. The closest I could find were File:Радуга над вулканическими конусами.jpg and File:Burg Hohenzollern - 6620-2.jpg since the rainbows are the main feature in these photos and the shots probably wouldn't have been made if it weren't for the rainbows. I wouldn't mind seeing File:St Nikolaus Mittelberg South Tyrol Rainbow.jpg in that section, since it is probably the best rainbow shot we have on Commons, but it's a toss-up between rainbow and church. We have File:Church of light.jpg in the 'Aurora' section and not among the churches. Perhaps you could ask the author what they prefer.

Best, --Cart (talk) 09:40, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi Cart, thank you very much – I will proceed that way! Best, --Aristeas (talk) 10:31, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Update: I wanted to do the change in time when the new FP gets promoted, but realized that I may (!) have no time the next days. Therefore I have added the new section right now. At the time being the empty section looks odd, but it will soon be filled when FPCBot adds the new FP (hopefully) right there …

Regarding the move candidates: I did some further research in our FP galleries, but could not find notable candidates besides the ones already listed by you. It’s odd that we don’t have more FPs with prominent rainbows, given how many people are fascinated by that phenomenon … From your selection, File:Burg Hohenzollern - 6620-2.jpg seems a very clear candidate to me, because it would not work at all w/o the rainbow (the castle would be far too small etc.). However, even in this case the description seems to indicate that the photographer regarded this as a photo of the castle. Therefore I have not yet moved any of the existing FPs, but will, as you have suggested, leave a note on the talk pages of the photographers/nominators of the images, asking them how they think about moving the photos to the new “Rainbows” section. I will do that next week when the new section contains the first (new) rainbow FP.

All the best, --Aristeas (talk) 09:17, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Aristeas! I'll be around here as usual. My work at the moment is a very dull translation project that will take months, and it'll be very tempting to slip over to Commons from time to time just to take a pause from it. ;-) Best, --Cart (talk) 09:30, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your help, Cart! – Now coming back to look at our new Rainbows FP section, I recognize that we also have at least 2 fogbow FPs: File:360 degrees fogbow.jpg and the recently added File:Брокенський привид на Шпицях.jpg, both in the Fog section. At least in the first one the fogbow is clearly the main subject of the photo. Well, according to my limited understanding (please correct me) a fogbow “works” physically very similar to a rainbow. And like a rainbow does not need to be caused by rain, a fogbow does not need natural fog, so just as we do not put rainbow photos into a “Rain” section, it is also not necessary that we put fogbow photos into the “Fog” section. Wouldn’t it make sense to rename our new “Rainbows” section to “Rainbows and fogbows”, and to move at least File:360 degrees fogbow.jpg immediately into that new section? It’s not a good photo of fog (actually, the fog is almost invisible), but a good photo of a fogbow … And File:Брокенський привид на Шпицях.jpg is IMHO either a fogbow photo or a landscape photo, but not a good fog photo, so I would dare to move it to “Rainbows and fogbows”, too. What do you think? --Aristeas (talk) 13:16, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Rainbows, part 2

Thank you for taking this thought on another spin around your brain Aristeas, you make some very good points. I could kick myself for not seeing it earlier, but in my defence, I had a bad cold with fever last week, and I wasn't at the top of my game. ;-)

I faced similar problems when I organized the Objects gallery and made 'Clocks' and 'Cameras' into 'Horology' and 'Optical devices'. People tend to get very hung up on the litteral meaning of section names. My counter-suggestion is that we instead of adding to the title, move it all up a level in the categories and instead of 'Rainbows' name the section 'Atmospheric optical phenomena'. Look at all the nice things (Category:Atmospheric optical phenomena) we can fit into that section! There is even a good Commons category for it. There are several FPs that would get a better 'home' in such a section. 'Auroras' would be a subsection of it, in the same way that the 'Golden Gate Bridge' is a subsection to 'United States of America' in the 'Bridges gallery'.

Aside from liberating assorted rainbows and fogbows from their current sections, here are some other FPs that could be move to it:

File:Lunar Rainbow at Victoria Falls HP L2778e2.jpg - now in 'Others'

File:Sun dog with reflection over Brofjorden.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Development of Green Flash.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Aurora Australis (icebreaker) berthed in Hobart under a rainbow.jpg - now in 'Sun' for some strange reason...

File:Брокенський привид на Шпицях.jpg - now in 'Fog' (fits better in a category comprising both fogbows and Brocken spectres)

(Perhaps create a subsection for 'Crepuscular rays' after 'Aurora'.)

File:Lunar Crepuscular Rays 2.jpg - now in 'Others'

File:Mường Thanh Valley.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Sunlight through clouds and view of Ginkaku-ji Temple from above, Kyoto, Japan.jpg - now i 'Sun'

File:Stanford Dish March 2013 HDR 1.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Indre Fure, Stadtlandet.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Strahlenbüschel oder Lichtbüschel 2.JPG - now in 'Sun'

File:Crepuscular rays with reflection in GGP.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Crepuscular rays 09-11-2010 1.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Back-scattering crepuscular rays.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Crepuscular rays over Plymouth Sound crop.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Crepuscular rays over the steam from hot spring.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Crepuscular rays in ggp 2.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Crepuscular rays over parc de Noisiel at sunrise, 26 May 2019.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Bruderwald Sunrays 150265.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Sun over Lake Hawea, New Zealand.jpg - now in 'Sun'

File:Babia Góra, zamieć śnieżna, 20230304 0704 3190.jpg - now in 'Snow'

I'm sure I've missed some, but what do you think?

This is an excellent idea, Cart! Instead of coping with the special case (Rainbows) your new approach offers a general solution which is much more useful and future-proof! I will implement the new “Atmospheric optical phenomena” section as soon as possible, probably tomorrow, and collect (move) the obvious candidates you have mentioned. Thank you very much. Best greetings, --Aristeas (talk) 18:16, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I must say, I love your expression "future-proof"! I so whish more things in life could be made future-proof these days. :-) --Cart (talk) 18:21, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Aye, future-proof was a big word ;–). It’s advertising language, of course. (Because what is really future-proof? Mathematics, I guess, nuclear contamination and the stupidity and greed of human beings …) What I wanted to say: Overspecific gallery sections like “Rainbows” or “Rainbows and fogbows” may have a short life, needing to be renamed and re-arranged soon; but a more general, well-abstracted section like “Atmospheric optical phenomena” has the chance to stay useful and survive even extensive revisions of the gallery pages. --Aristeas (talk) 07:14, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Hint: the English WP edition already has a gallery page Atmospheric optics. Nice! It’s not the same as your/our concept (we will keep sunsets and lightnings in their respective sections), but at least it makes a nice comparison. --Aristeas (talk) 07:18, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the link Aristeas. I'm not very familiar with how FPs on other Wiki-projects are organized or exactly how they function. I've been too busy keeping Commons' stuff organized. ;-) But it's nice to see that we are on the right track. There are several subjects that are in the en-WP category that don't correspond exactly with our gallery system, but I think we are close enough and the sections in our Commons gallery works fine for users here. — At least until the next update needs to be done. ;-) --Cart (talk) 07:37, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Well, I have implemented the new section according to your plan – thank you very much for collecting all the photos for the new section! I have taken the opportunity to make the labels of the photos more uniform and more descriptive, and I have tried to sort the new subsections a bit (e.g. by distinguishing crepuscular rays from clouds, c.r. from steam, c.r. from trees and lunar crepuscular rays). IMHO the result looks quite nice and confirms thus that the new “Atmospheric optical phenomena” section was a very good idea by you. Now (or later today) I will come back to the remaining rainbow photos (as listed above) which may also be moved to the new section. For now, what do you think? Have I overseen or misunderstood something?

There is one moved photo, namely File:San francisco in fog with rays.jpg, which drops back a bit now when compared to the other photos in the new “Crepuscular rays” subsection. The c.r. are not that prominent in this photo, the fog is. Therefore I think about moving back this one into the “Fog” section. What do you think?

Thank you very much and all the best --Aristeas (talk) 08:54, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Aristeas, the page looks much better now. For some photos, it is not until you see them grouped with others that you realize where exactly they fit in. I agree that File:San francisco in fog with rays.jpg could be moved to 'Fog', which is an improvement, since it was under 'Sun' from the start. From what I can tell, I think you got it all now. As with any project, there is bound to be something we've missed and will correct later. ;-) I particularly like how this new section cleared up the 'Sun' section. Improving the captions was a nice touch, the descriptions that FPC-Bot delivers leave much to be desired. Best, --Cart (talk) 09:14, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

I am glad you like the result. Yes, the “Sun” section looks much better now, too. Best, --Aristeas (talk) 10:16, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Aristeas, thanks for contacting the rainbow photographers. I think all this communication goes much smoother since you can do it in German. Besides speaking that. it really helps that you also is a native speaker of Diplomatic and Civilized. I'm tempted to add those Babel user boxes to your user page. :-) Myself, I can only grade myself as a level 3 in those. Unfortunately, my second native language is Sarcasm, and I try to use it a little as possible on the Wiki sites. ;-) --Cart (talk) 16:07, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Watermark removal

Hi, Cart! Please, could you remove the watermark in this photo? Thanks! ★ 03:11, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Ok, ArionStar, fixed. --Cart (talk) 11:12, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

FPs listed more than once in the FP gallery pages

Hello Cart,

our last discussion has reminded me of a little problem I have contemplated since a year or so. It is the question of FPs listed more than once in the FP gallery pages.

After our last changes to the Natural phenomena gallery page I have scanned it for FPs listed more than once; I have found and eliminated a fair number of duplicates (please see the history of that page). I hope this is OK for you (else please tell me, I can undo my changes). IHMO in all cases the FPs clearly emphasized one specific feature, so it was just not necessary to have them in more than one section.

But there are far more duplicates scattered over our FP gallery pages. Here is a little list which gives an overview of all FPs which are currently listed (a) more than once on the same page (entries 1 to 4) or (b) listed on two or more gallery pages. Personally I do not like that, for several reasons.

Featuring a FP more than once seems unfair to the other FPs which are listed only once. After all the FP gallery pages are sort of a showcase or portfolio for Commons, and when a FP gets listed more than once this may seem as an unfair advantage for the photographer who has taken it.

It’s true that for many FPs the classification is not unambiguous and that many FPs could be sorted into more than one gallery section. However, if we want to do this, we should do that consistently in all cases – else, see above, this seems unfair to the FPs listed only once.

But if we would apply the principle of listing a FP in all matching gallery sections consistently, this would mean that we would have to list many FPs on three or four pages … This makes clear that:

Featuring FPs in more than one place in the gallery pages distends the gallery pages and makes them unnecessarily big, complicated, inflated and diluted. When we consider the FP gallery pages as kind of a showcase or portfolio for Commons, that showcase should be clean, clear and tidy.

In the end, this is what the FP categories are for, i.e. the subcategories of Category:Featured pictures. The category system can handle the ambiguity and diversity of topics, techniques etc. much better and allows to classify FPs by multiple topics, by technique, by location, by creator etc. Any FP can be put in as many as FP categories as apply to it; but IHMO it should be listed (normally) only once on the gallery pages.

I understand that there are two very plausible and clear exceptions:

There are some non-topical gallery pages, namely Black and white, Places/Panoramas, Sets. Only Black and white is still maintained actively, but we keep the others for historical reasons. Now if a FP is listed on one of these pages, it should always be listed on some topical FP gallery page, too. For that reason my list does not even include FPs which are listed both on a topical and on one of these non-topical gallery pages.
The FP gallery pages of the biology department (Commons:Featured pictures/Plants etc.) are somewhat different; they work similar to a big pictorial identification book, organized by kingdom, order, family etc. Now if a FP shows two or three clearly identifiable animals or plants, I agree that it makes sense to put that FP into all two or three sections of the biology gallery pages. (But if it shows many plants etc. from different IDs, this does no longer apply as putting it in all the possible sections would dilute the meaningfulness of these sections.)

IMHO both exceptions are fine. But in any other cases I would prefer if every FP would be listed exactly once and only once, in a single section of a single gallery page.

This is my current view of this situation. But maybe I am totally wrong. You have much more experience with the FP gallery pages and much more insight. What do you think on this topic? (No need to answer this fast! Take all time you need for research etc., this is a long-time question.) All the best, --Aristeas (talk) 14:53, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

PS: Maybe this needs a broader discussion. But I wanted to discuss this with you first, because you are certainly the most experienced expert for the gallery pages. (And many photographers seem not interested too much in the details of the gallery pages, so it may also seem superfluous to bother them with such questions.) Best, --Aristeas (talk) 15:00, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes Aristeas, this is a big problem. It's not a matter for a larger discussion, because the consensus for it these days is very clear: An FP should only appear ONE time in the gallery. It is absolutely essential now that we have so many FPs. That is why we have that part of the nomination where the nominator should select a gallery. Most people at the FPC know this and abide by this rule. The problem is all the other users who remember "the old days" or simply think they are "helping" by adding FPs to more than one gallery.

In the beginning of the FP system, we didn't have that many images in it. The pages we call 'galleries' today were in a loose way connected to normal categories as well as the special FP categories.

When I "took over" the galleries they were in a bit of chaos, and they were still called "Categories" which was very confusing (I implemented the word "Galleries" to disambiguate the pages from our normal categories) and it was customary to put one photo in several of those. This is what old users still seem to remember. It took me a long time to clean up and sort the pages in a more modern archive style, to make them, as you said more of a portfolio for the best of Commons.

An idea of how we might put this right once and for all, and keep people from putting photos in several galleries is starting to form in my head. I just need it to simmer for a while until I'm ready to write it down. Just wanted to give you a quick and firm answer. --Cart (talk) 15:27, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your answer, Cart! Don’t hurry, take all the time it may need. I just wanted, at last, to mention that problem. I am very happy that you agree every FP should be featured only once on the gallery pages. (And thank you for implementing the term Galleries – yes, Categories, which is sometimes still used today, is a very misleading word for these pages.) All the best, --Aristeas (talk) 15:46, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Ok Aristeas, I see that in many cases, the images that are “double-booked” are older noms. In those days, the nominations didn’t have the line about the Gallery page it's supposed to end up on, it was sort of up to the person who closed the nomination. Example. This is one big problem: The old ways persist in old noms and in people’s head. In the retail trade we have a saying: “It takes six months for customers to realize that we have a product, and ten years to realize we don’t have it any more.” It’s a bit of the same situation here.

Also, many photographers are so vain when it comes to their photos. The photos are “so special” and ‘’their’’ photos need special treatment and consideration. ((Remember the discussion about how many POTD you can have? One shudders….))

To make something really work, you need Carrot and Stick plus the Why and Visibility.

The Why is simple. We have so many FPs now, we need to keep the galleries sleek, and for fairness and the same opportunity for all authors, any photo/image can only occur once in the Gallery.
The Stick is to actually write the one-photo-rule somewhere, saying any image can’t be posted more than once in the Galleries.
The Visibility is trickier. Unfortunately, people don’t read the first page or even the top or bottom of the following pages. They just hop into whatever section they want to post their photo in.
The Carrot is that we need to give all those whining photographers who think their photos are so special they need to be posted twice, some way of expressing this without disrupting the galleries. Otherwise, they will just ignore all warnings and “break the rules” (this is the hardest part).

I suggest that we place the warning at the end of every section in a commented out note just above the {{FPGN}} template. When new sections are made, the code is just copied, so that text will follow into the next new section. A lot of work at first, getting the text in place, but we are two working on it, so I think it’s doable. Hopefully we only need to do it once. Only the Carrot left to solve.

I think we need to enable for some marker at the very image. The best thing I can come up with now is to do this via the special FP categories. If we put these markers on the “double-booked” FPs on your list, and on some scattered throughout the Galleries, my guess is that people will copy those and use them to mark that their photo is not just a FP bird photo, but also a FP photo of that place or the plant it’s sitting on. That would be an option to use instead of posting a photo twice.

Instead of just writing about it, it’s easier to show what I mean with an example. So I’ve made this mockup page with these ideas. This is the first, and perhaps clumsy, draft of what can be done: Mockup for testing Galleries. I base it on part of the food gallery since it’s small and rather uncomplicated. Look at it and let me know what you think and how we maybe can improve on this. --Cart (talk) 20:21, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi Cart, thank you very much for your well thought-out plan! I will think some hours over this, but in principle this is certainly the best we can do. Will come back to this later this day (or at the latest tomorrow), after es in meinem Herzen bewegen, as Luther translated Luke 2,19 (en, sv) ;–). --Aristeas (talk) 08:15, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

No need to hurry Aristeas, we can let this putter for a while. Maybe we (or someone else) will come up with some other way of improving this. Whatever we do, it will be a lot of work, so we better be sure. Have a good First Autumn Day :-) --Cart (talk) 08:21, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your nice words, Cart, and for your patience! I hope you had a nice First Autumn Day, too! However given that I am always occupied with several things it is probably better not to postpone this task any longer, else we may postpone it forever. The best start seems to decide how to split this project into single tasks, then we can work on them one after another whenever we don’t want to do other things ;–). What do you think how we should proceed? I could imagine (just correct me!):

Study the list of “double-booked” FPs and check which FP categories are missing and would be particularly useful. Create these categories, and sort some FPs into them. (IMHO we do not need to create too many new FP categories. But some more would indeed be very useful, e.g. we don’t have Category:Featured pictures of cityscapes which would be the category corresponding properly to the Cityscapes gallery page – cityscape FPs are scattered now over Category:Featured pictures of landscapes and other cats.)
Actually write the one-photo-rule somewhere, saying any image can’t be posted more than once in the FP galleries. I would assume the rule would fit (a) on Commons:Featured pictures (it’s the main gallery page, after all), (b) into the “Formal things” section of Commons:Featured picture candidates and (c) into the detailed Manual procedure section of the same page. I think we need to write the same rule 3 times in these 3 places, don’t we?
Increasing its visibility by writing the reminder comment into every FP gallery section. (This point made me hestitate. I was scratching my head in the face of all that redundancy. ;–) The hobbyist programmer in me has learned to avoid storing the same information in more than one place in source code. But in the end I think you are right: We need much redundancy here because the gallery pages Wikitext is not a computer program but edited by human beings. Adding the warning to each single FP gallery section is like adding warning signs to every dangerous road bend – most of them would be superfluous if people would drive carefully and with great foresight, but actually people often don’t do that, so the warning sings are necessary at every sharp road bend.) To do that we can just take the list in Category:Featured picture galleries and one of us will take the first half of pages, the other one the other half.
Using my list (I can generate a new version with Wikitext formatting and put it on some user page subpage), splitting it again in two halfs, we go through all currently “double-booked” FPs, check them one by one, decide on which gallery page they should be kept (discussing some difficult cases with each other and/or with the photographers/nominators) and assign by the way more FP categories to these FPs, to make up for the removed 2nd or 3rd gallery page presence.

Some hints and questions:

I can re-generate the list of “double-booked” FPs at any time; I have written a Python script which checks for this and other issues in the gallery pages. So if you need an up-to-date version, just tell me; and when we are done with this task it’s easy for me to search periodically for double FPs and to resolve them.
Your proposed warning text:  is very good. Are we sure that every, even the most vane photographer will understand it, or must we use an even more explicit wording? ;–)
I have mentioned above two possible exceptions from the “Only one gallery page entry per FP” rule: (a) the biology department (for photos which prominently show 2 or 3 species) and (b) the non-topical gallery pages from which only Black and white is maintained actively. Should we keep these exceptions, or should we abandon them, too? If we abandon exception (b), should we declare Black and white as deprecated, too? IMHO B&W photos are not a different genre (as some people think), just a style and therefore it is not necessary to provide a specific gallery page for them. But maybe this needs broader discussion. Anyway, the more complicated case is (a) – I guess our wildlife experts (more specific, one of them ;–) will be angry when we do not allow their FPs to do double duty anymore.

That’s it for now. Thank you very very much for your his commitment and all the best, --Aristeas (talk) 14:21, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi again Aristeas . Yep, it's a lot of work, and the best way to tackle it is to do it the same way you eat an elephant: One bite at a time. :-)

Your "to do list" looks fine to me. I think we should start with the things that are most monotonous and causes the least trouble with thinking and then move on to more complicated matters. I think the best would be if we start on one part of the project each, to minimize edit conflicts and confusion. Laying good foundations is good procedure both when building houses and improving websites.

My suggestion is that you start with #1 on your list and fix up the FP categories. It's good to have them in place when we start weeding out the doubles. I can start with #3, adding that warning to every section. I think that language is strong enough and not too offensive. Using another traffic sign analogy (that I guess only a German autobahn driver will understand), that warning text will be the Commons version of the "Ausfahrt" sign. ;-D I don't think adding all of them will be that much trouble for me. I have an old web editing program rattling around in my computer, that allows me to search and replace words or blocks of text. Using that, I don't need to go to every section and add the line, the program can fix the whole page at a click. (Word has a similar search and replace function, but it can't handle line breaks, just words or sentences.)

Doing these things first will also work as a "soft introduction" of the new things. After these two steps are done we can continue with the rest of your points and questions. OK? All the best, --Cart (talk) 15:02, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Hello Cart, thank you very much for your fast reply – okidoki, this is the way to go ;–). I will start tomorrow with looking into point #1. All the best and have a nive evening! --Aristeas (talk) 15:46, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Working on it...

Particular questions on the coordination between FP gallery pages and FP categories

Arachnida

Most subcategories of Category:Featured pictures of insects use the scientific names and belong to a whole class, therefore they also nicely correspond to the particular gallery subpages of Commons:Featured pictures/Animals/Arthropods. Exception: We have Commons:Featured pictures/Animals/Arthropods/Arachnida, but Category:Featured pictures of spiders. Now spiders belong (in my poor understanding) to the class of Arachnida, but not all Arachnida are spiders. Hm … Should I (a) just rename Category:Featured pictures of spiders to Category:Featured pictures of Arachnida (and update all files); or should I (b) create Category:Featured pictures of Arachnida and make Category:Featured pictures of spiders a subcategory of it, in order to add all non-spider Arachnida to Category:Featured pictures of Arachnida, while keeping the spiders in Category:Featured pictures of spiders? Solution (a) is much easier for now, solution (b) seems more exact, but in the end “spiders” is too rough and would need to be splitted into the different orders … What do you think? I would go for (b). --Aristeas (talk) 08:52, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Aristeas, looks like we've "opened up a whole can of worms" (pardon the animal pun :-) ) with this clean-up project. I had no idea the FP categories were in such bad shape. I think the name came to be long ago and haven't been updated. The FP categories should definitely correspond with the normal Commons and Wikipedia categories. High time to get rid of general names like "spiders" and use the categories to the scientific names, but there needs to be a smooth transition for now.

In the normal category system there are often parallell "category trees", one for general names and one for the scientific names. Like Category:Apples and Category:Apple cultivars G. These category trees are then cross linked with each other, either by placing the categories with each other or via the a note at the top saying "See also: Category Xxxx". There is usually no problem with an image being in both, categories are more flexible than the galleries. We could use the same system for the FPs. Keep all the old categories , but create new scientific ones where it is suitable and place the categories with each other when needed. That way the categories can be used as people like (or have the knowledge to do) and images can be moved to scientific names at anyone's leisure. What do you say? --Cart (talk) 09:23, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Cart, thank you for your thoughtful response! Your proposal is clearly the best solution. Sigh, this makes the whole clean-up project more complicated, but it’s better to to it right when we have to do it. I will keep the old categories and create new ones which correspond to the scientific classification … at least for the “animals” FP categories. --Aristeas (talk) 10:17, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Glad you agree. Having categories that don't correspond with the rest of the Wiki-project is just silly. A bit like the groups in which the photos for POTY are placed, good for the average voters but bad for classification. At least we don't have to create all the categories at once. It will take time. But don't despair, I'll help you. :-) --Cart (talk) 10:31, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Done Mostly done yesterday. Category:Featured pictures of spiders still exists, but Category:Featured pictures of Arachnida now contains also subcategories with the scientific names. --Aristeas (talk) 07:57, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Arthropods/Arthropoda

One level above we have a similar issue: We have Commons:Featured pictures/Animals/Arthropods (which contains insects, but also other Arthropods), but we have no Category:Featured pictures of Arthropoda, only Category:Featured pictures of insects. Here I tend to create a new Category:Featured pictures of Arthropoda and make Category:Featured pictures of insects a subcategory of it. I would add subcategories for the other classes of Arthropods, e.g. Category:Featured pictures of Diplopoda, as needed in order to get a roughly working FP category tree, because for many other orders and classes etc. of animals we already have specific FP cats. Do you agree or do I overlook some problem? --Aristeas (talk) 08:56, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

My proposal is in accordance with your response above (in the Arachnida section), so I will do it that way. --Aristeas (talk) 10:18, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Done – Category:Featured pictures of Arthropoda created and linked. (Yes, it’s always the question whether the category should be named … arthropods or … Arthropoda. Given that arthropods is not a real English word used by normal people in everyday life, but just a pathetic attempt to anglicise the greek word a little bit, I have opted for now to use the real scientific names and called the category Category:Featured pictures of Arthropoda. I mean, when I have to create all that stuff, I want to use the real scientific names which are the same all over the world; hence … Arthropoda instead of … arthropods. And: The basic category is called Category:Arthropoda, too; its subcategories show a nice mix of … arthropods and … Arthropoda. If you dislike this, we can change the FP category name, of course. Personally I would prefer instead to change all these “arthropods” categories to “Arthropoda”, if necessary.) --Aristeas (talk) 07:53, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Plants

Terrible contrast: While we have detailed FP categories for many orders, classes etc. of animals, we have only three subcategories for Category:Featured pictures of plants: Category:Featured pictures of flowers, Category:Featured pictures of fruit, Category:Featured pictures of trees. OK, I am not going to create all the necessary categories like Category:Featured pictures of Asparagales, at least not for now. I would just keep and use these three rudimentary plant categories. OK? --Aristeas (talk) 09:02, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Ok Aristeas, keep the old categories for now but we can start making scientific categories for the plants and cross-link with the old as we go along. It's only too apparent that the FP categories have sort of lived a life of their own for too long and they are out of step with the rest of the category system. --Cart (talk) 09:39, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

That’s certainly the best solution. However I will postpone the scientific categories for plants until I am done with checking the other FP categories. I am working along the alphabetical list in Category:Featured picture galleries, but will handle the plants only at the end, because it seems better to define the new scientific plant categories all at once, to make sure that they follow a coherent plan. Best, --Aristeas (talk) 10:22, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Update: Dear Cart, in between I have learned that adding the most obviously useful and missing FP categories is much more complicated than I would have assumed. ;–) At the second glance the plants actually look like one of the easiest parts, because IMHO it is clear what to do here. So I have started to create FP categories for all orders of plants listed in Commons:Featured pictures/Plants (right now I have arrived at the Liliales, will do the rest later). Of course some of these new categories only contain 2 or 3 files, but on the other hand this has the advantage that any photographer can learn, just by looking at the numbers after the names of subcategories of Category:Featured pictures of plants, which orders of plants need more attention ;–). Naturally we keep the three existing categories: Category:Featured pictures of flowers, Category:Featured pictures of fruit, Category:Featured pictures of trees, they are sort of parallel categories which are useful for people looking not for some specific order/family/species, but just for nice photos of flowers, fruit or trees. But the general category Category:Featured pictures of plants should be more or less empty at the end. I hope this is OK. All the best for you and greetings, --Aristeas (talk) 08:22, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Aristeas! Yes, this project certainly turned into something much more than we expected. I plod along with your list, and I constantly come across missing categories that needs to be created and files moved to (still a lot of files that needs to be moved the right place). I've spent most of the time over in the 'Objects' and 'Natural phenomena' sections to start with , so I don't collide with your work.

I'm happy to see that we are also getting some unexpected and welcome help with the categories from A.Savin (Thank You!), who is connecting, fixing, moving and adding files. Hopefully, other users will continue the work once we've done our bit.

I won't be able to work much on this fixing today or tomorrow, as I have some urgent regular job work to take care of. Best, --Cart (talk) 10:15, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Done or at least mostly done, Cart. For all orders of plants listed on Commons:Featured pictures/Plants, Commons:Featured pictures/Plants/Asparagales and Commons:Featured pictures/Plants/Asterales we now have a matching “Featured pictures of <order>” category. For now they are all subcategories of Category:Featured pictures of plants; if the plants FP categories get more complicated, we can create an intermediate Category:Featured pictures of plants by order‎. The general category Category:Featured pictures of plants now contains only some dubious and mixed cases. Maybe I have made some small errors here and there (I am not a biologist, after all), but I hope the new categories will work. Many thanks to A.Savin for your additional work – it’s great that you have already added the new plant order FP categories also to FPs contained in the Commons:Featured pictures/Food and drink galery page!

What should we do with the algae? They don’t form a real taxonomic group, but the term “algae” is widespread. Should we create a general Category:Featured pictures of algae category, not really scientific but probably quite useful?

Cart, please contribute only if you have some spare time and if you feel like doing so ;–). Commons is a great project, but working for it should always be voluntarily in the full sense of the word – please never feel compelled (by whatever I do) to help! And, as you told me wisely, take time to relax! All the best, --Aristeas (talk) 14:57, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the plant categories Aristeas! Great job! Re algae, I think we can start with creating a the Category:Featured pictures of algae for now. Those photos are not as many (and most of them mine) as those of plants above water, and we can get back to see what can be done with that later.

Frankly, for me, pottering about with Commons is a way of relaxing. :-) I reached the 1/3 mark milestone yesterday in the big translation job I'm working on as "my regular day job" now. It too turned into a bigger project than expected, with lots of revisions of texts in two languages and three types of media. Compared to that mess, Commons is (as they say) "peanuts". ;-) Checking doubles and fixing categories is straightforward and downright soothing when I have the time. Still wrapping up yesterday's job today, and it will take most of tomorrow too, but I'll be back here then - relaxing. Best, --Cart (talk) 15:19, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

It’s great that you can use pottering about with Commons as a way of relaxing :–). Too often this becomes a kind of second job … ;–).

Supplement to the plants: Two of the new categories, Category:Featured pictures of Asparagales and Category:Featured pictures of Asterales, were much more crowded than the rest. No surprise, these are the two orders of plants who also already got their own gallery pages. For these two orders/categories I have now created subcategories for their respective families, corresponding to the subsections of the gallery pages. I think this is enough (for now!) with the plants FP categories – we can represent each section of the botanical gallery pages by a specific FP category. Best, --Aristeas (talk) 13:49, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Landscapes

Dear Cart and dear Alexander, another FP category which is very crowed is certainly Category:Featured pictures of landscapes. It had only very few subcategories. Alexander, you have already added Category:Featured pictures of volcanoes – thank you very much! After looking at the photos, I thought we need at least also Category:Featured pictures of coasts‎, Category:Featured pictures of forests‎, Category:Featured pictures of lakes‎ and Category:Featured pictures of watercourses‎, so I have added these categories. Of course “lakes” and “watercourses” are used in the widest meaning here, including also ponds etc. and streams, brooks, rivers, canals etc. I have started to move some obvious candidates to these new categories (far from complete yet, will continue in the next days). I have also moved photos which show a “mass of trees” from Category:Featured pictures of trees to Category:Featured pictures of forests‎. Together these new categories are IMHO much more descriptive than the general Category:Featured pictures of landscapes – see Alexander’s beautiful photo as an example. Feel free to propose/start more landscape subcategories! I don’t want to create too much of them for now, but certainly some more may help … Best, --Aristeas (talk) 14:03, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

PS: Thank you very much for creating Category:Featured pictures of reflections, Cart – this is a wonderful complement for the landscapes categories and also useful for many other things! I see users already starting to use this new category … --Aristeas (talk) 14:05, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi Aristeas, and thank you for this day's hard work! I took the liberty of creating Category:Featured pictures of bodies of water. Its normal Commons category is a useful spill-over category (pardon the bad pun) for all water things like waterfalls, fjords, ponds, whatever doesn't fit in the more usual water categories. Given its nature, it became a head cat for the water FPs.

I also got rid of the irritating word "shot" (what are they: hunters shooting nocturnal animals, a 24-hours vaccination clinic or something you order at the bar at night???) for the Category:Featured night photography. One shudders! Of course, this gave me more to do since I slid into QI image territory with this too. Made one blunder (waiting for it to be deleted) but overall, I think it when well.

The best thing is when you get "thanks" from random people for fixing categories, moving files and you also see that people are starting to use the new cats. Getting those, it feels like we are doing something right. So far no complaints, except for some well-placed reverts when I was too eager. (Sorry about those!) --Cart (talk) 18:05, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Category:Featured pictures of bodies of water is indeed a perfect spill-over category; thank you for this – and for all the other work! Yes, “Featured night shots” was a cruel name. ;–) (I sometimes wonder why photographers which are often so proud of their wonderful photos are quite careless about their language … I remember some photography textbook for beginners stating right in chapter one: “Don’t snap or shoot photos. You want good pictures, so you should care. Therefore, take photographs.”) --Aristeas (talk) 18:19, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Agriculture

Hi, as you might know, I recently started a project to document agriculture in California: Commons:Agriculture in Northern California Project. Agriculture is one of our weak spots on Commons and Wikipedia and I'm hoping that I can also motivate others to contribute visuals (both photos and videos) in this area. Looking at the featured picture galleries, I'm wondering whether it would make sense to combine Agriculture (which is now weirdly located in “Places” and Industry (even more weirdly under “Architecture”) under a new header called “Economy” (or something similar). Any thoughts? All the best, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 02:59, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi Frank, good idea, but this is a hard one. When "Agriculture" was created and located in "Places", it was in response to the fact that people's first reaction is to place those photos under "Places/Natural". They still do, People see something growing and think "Nature", even if agriculture is very far from what a natural place looks like. "Industry" ended up under “Architecture” because the photos were mostly of industrial buildings of some kind, so the same cross-over there.

Getting the galleries to work well, you have to make it easy for those using them to relate to the page names and headings. People tend to have a more simplistic view when they describe photos, unless you are in the nerd section of "Natural phenomena". They see houses, plants, cars, people, whatever. More abstract and loftier concepts like "Economy" are harder to get across, so this bears to think about. I suspect that if we introduced an "Economy" gallery, most users would think it relates to photos of banks and stock markets, and not to someone planting rice or an old saw mill. The name of a gallery page is mostly the answer to the question: "What do you see in this photo?". Still, as an umbrella heading with sub-galleries in place, it could be done. The only other, simpler, term that comes to mind would be "Work". Let's think about this while we finish this cleanup project, some bright idea might occur. --Cart (talk) 10:52, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

General remark on our clean-up project

As I must do some work in real life, too, and also want to select, edit and upload some photos for Wiki Loves Monuments this month (not because I want to win, but because I need that competition in order to pull myself together once in a year to scan my large archive of architectural photos and to edit and upload some of them ;–), I will work on our clean-up project in part time and switch often between working on cateories etc. and working on my own files. Just wanted to avoid irritations in view of my strange timing ;–). Best, --Aristeas (talk) 10:27, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

No problem Aristeas! I'm not participating in any way in WLM so I can keep working on the clean-up while you are busy with your entries. (Good Luck btw, I hope your photos do reasonably well. :-) ) In other news, my old program worked very well, and the the new line is now added to all sections in all galleries. I have also fixed #2 on your list and updated the info on the pages as you suggested.

Would you like me to start looking at / working on your little list and see what I can do with some of the doubles? Like you said, you can update the list after the WLM and see what is left to be done. I may have to create some new FP categories along the way, but I assume that won't be any problem. Or is there some other task you would like me to start with now? --Cart (talk) 10:42, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it would be great if you could start to work at the little list. I fear the work on the FP categories will take many days. I am done (I hope) with Category:Featured pictures of Arthropoda and subclasses, but then I wanted to jump to Category:Featured pictures of architecture which is another special mess, but it was not possible to complete that today (nor to do anything else :–). Enough for today, maybe I can continue the category work, say, for 2 hours each day to find a better work balance … All the best, --Aristeas (talk) 16:54, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Ok Aristeas, will do! Perhaps not today, as I think I've done my Commons work for the day. It's easy to get carried away, but we can't let this interfere with our normal jobs and life. This mess took years to make, so we can't sort it in simply a few days. If/When I stumble upon some photos that looks like it could belong in two places, I can also add those little notes to them (if FP categories exist).

Seeing how well my program aided me in fixing my first part, I feel a little guilty that you got stuck with such a massive job. I honestly had no idea it would turn out like this, I thought I was volunteering for the biggest job. It will be satisfying when it is done for this time. Focus on your WLM photos and normal life for now. All the best and many, many thanks for your hard work!!! --Cart (talk) 17:08, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Cart, thank you for your nice words! One idea: When you start to look at our list of “double duty“ FPs, you will certainly stumble over cases in which a FP category is necessary that does not exist yet. Feel free to generate that category or just leave me a short note, then I will create it (a bit at a time). Best, --Aristeas (talk) 07:42, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Aristeas, thanks for the advice. I plan to go for the "low hanging fruit" on the list first and move to harder cases later. I have made a copy of the list and will mark my progress as I go along. If you at any time want to know what files have been taken care of, just ask and I'll e-mail you a PDF of the list in its current state. I'm a little slow today as I don't feel very well. Might be getting a cold. Yuck... --Cart (talk) 09:46, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Cart, that’s a pity. Then get some rest, I hope you will get well soon! Take all the time you need for the list. If you can (and the weather is good), a walk is certainly more pleasant and health-promoting than commons work … All the best, --Aristeas (talk) 09:55, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

FP Gallery Pages Duplicate Entries

Good evening Aristeas, I think I have some good news. From what I can see, I'm now done with your list of doubles. But since I might have missed something (or perhaps someone added a double after you made the list) could you please run your program once again when you have the time, to see if anything pops up. Figuring out which one to keep wasn't that hard, except for in a very few cases, and most were rather blatant ways of exploiting the gallery.. The "usual suspects" were actually well behaved, instead the virtual list of sneaky edits, had Estonia and France in the top. I'll take a break from this tomorrow, and then we can see what else needs to be done. Enjoy the weekend, hope your WLM goes as planned. :-) --Cart (talk) 17:14, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

These are wonderful news, Cart, congratulations, and I really admire how you have managed to clean out these Augean stables in such short time! My program lists now only three remaining duplicates:

Thank you very much for this immense amount of clean-up work! I wish you a restful break and all the best! --Aristeas (talk) 18:18, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Ok Aristeas , the black and white file is taken care of. The other two are used as icons at the top of those pages, so AFAICS not doubles, only some bug your program has. I saw them the first time around too. So we're officially done! :-) Best, --Cart (talk) 19:06, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

P.S. Looks like I'm participating in WLM after all. I had an errand to make to the next town, Uddevalla, last week. It was a nice day so as always I brought my camera (mostly to have another go at the glass ceiling of the bus terminal). But it turned out that during my walk about town, I had accidentally taken photos of some WLM things, so why not. Would be a shame to waste good photos. ;-) --Cart (talk) 23:01, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for checking the files, Cart! You are right that File:Castle of Peyrusse-le-Roc 20.jpg and File:Frankfurt Am Main-Stadtansicht von der Deutschherrnbruecke zu Beginn der Abenddaemmerung.jpg are false positives. I have resolved File:Castle of Peyrusse-le-Roc 20.jpg (there was a tiny formatting anomaly in the header of the gallery page which may irritate not only my program, so I have resolved it); I am still wondering what’s the problem with File:Frankfurt Am Main-Stadtansicht von der Deutschherrnbruecke zu Beginn der Abenddaemmerung.jpg – there must be some very subtle bug somewhere in my program. So we are really done with the duplicate FP gallery entries congrats again! And it’s nice that you participate in WLM, too. Your three photos of the bell tower and surroundings in Uddevalla are beautiful! Best, --Aristeas (talk) 08:33, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Aristeas, it feels good to have the Gallery as a sleek "Commons portfolio" again. I think you may need to save that program and run it about four times a year to see what may have been done to the pages. It's mostly people's "good intentions" that are messing it up.

Yep, it will be WLM this year too. ;-) Yesterday I found an old never used folder with photos of a church ruin in Visby. They are from 2015 and taken with a small, very inferior camera, so going black-and-white is the only option to make them 'pop'. WLM organizers beware! It will be arty...;-D I checked out your uploads too, and for once I really liked church ceilings; that is rare.

WLM will always hold a special place for me, since it's the reason I'm here on Commons. I was looking up something on Wikipedia when I saw the banner, and I thought "Why not?". With heaps of photos of listed buildings I selected a few, and I was surprised how much I liked the whole research/wiki experience. So here we are. Even more surprised when one of my photos was in the Swedish top 10. I got nice prizes, and the photo got a double spread in the local newspaper. But it's much easier to win something in Sweden than in Germany. This year so far, there are only 353 uploads compared to Germany's 11,854 (!). Hardly fair. Best, --Cart (talk) 09:15, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

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User talk:W.carter/Archive 21

Contents

POTD Notification

Wiki Loves Monuments in Sweden

Quality Image Promotion

Greetings and some support

Quality Image Promotion

FP Promotion

Quality Image Promotion

Featured Picture Nomination

POTD Notification

FP Promotion

Happy holidays 2022/2023!

Happy Holidays 2022/2023!

Beautiful pic on Main page!

FP Promotion

Assessments template, com-nom parameter for FPs promoted via delist-and-replace

Closing review of an FPC nomination with alternative version

Äntligen maj: Wiki Loves Earth 2023!

Thank you, once again …

Off-topic question: website language

Straw-bale greetings