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Auf Google Earth fand ich in Deutschland den Kauern 50º43´08,59 Nord 12º04´40,85 Ost im Landkreis Greiz
in der Nähe von Lunzig dort fand ich auch einen Querverweis auf Wikipedia, jedoch hat dieser Verweis
nicht mit dem Ort in der Nähe nichts zu tun, sondern er bezieht sich auf den Ort gleichen Namens
50º50´38,39 Nord 12º08´39,09 Ost zwischen Gera und Ronneburg. Ich übe keine Kritik an dem Beitrag,
jedoch sollte der Punkt für den Querverweiss dahin kommen, wo er hingehört. Da ich nicht weiß, wie
man diesen Fehler Google Earth mitteilen kann wende ich mich an Sie.
The coordinates used by en-Wikipedia and Wikidata were indeed incorrect, confusing the ortsteil in Langenwetzendorf and the gemeinde near Ronneburg. These have now been corrected, but I have no idea if and when Google will synchronise their information. --HyperGaruda (talk) 06:07, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Google has a location correction service where anyone can say the coords are wrong. I used it a few years ago for a mislocated public swimming pool in Brooklyn, New York. It took several months to take effect and I have given up on using Google's correction service. Presumably there is a way for a user to qualify to make corrections instantly, but nowadays I merely make instant corrections in Commons and in Wikidata. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:47, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
Updated language templates
Problem: mixed-language and script usage within a single localization. Aside from machine readability issues, this can be especially problematic for editors with mixed rtl+ltr scripts, or scripts that "don't like" certain wiki formatting such as italic/slant.
Inadequate current fixes:{{Script}} and {{Transl}} are inadequately copied from en:WP (without all the subtemplates included) and haven't been updated, and they don't include the language tagging of en:Template:Lang, which if imported would also have to take a new name to not collide with the two very different Commons templates {{Lang}} and {{Language}}. Individual templates may also have separate alternative fields or flags that sanitize for other scripts.
Possible fixes: a global-language template is possible as <bdi> or <bdo> tags will simply separate other scripts without regard to whether the surrounding text is rtl or ltr. The "default" language is whatever the localization of the page or the field in the description template is, and the point is simply to separate non-default languages and scripts, which would use an identical template for most localizations (possibly even all localizations with a creative wrapper template, since the only things in other scripts would likely be proper names, so if you have a template for tagging a proper name that fetches the current localization, you can reuse the same snippet of text in all localizations.)
Implementation and requested suggestions: start with updating {{Script}} and {{Transl}} from en:WP, and then import en:tl:Lang with minor tweaks to some name that seems like a decent suggestion ("Commons-lang"? "Lang-inline"?) and an appropriate abbreviation redirect. I welcome any other recommendations before proceeding. SamuelRiv (talk) 15:34, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
Is "Category:Interior of Lucas Oil Stadium" supposed to be an indirect subcategory of "Category:Grass"?
Right now following subcategory chain exists: 'Category:Grass', 'Category:Grass textures', 'Category:Lawn textures', 'Category:Artificial turf', 'Category:Artificial turf by country', 'Category:Artificial turf in the United States', 'Category:Sports venues with artificial turf in the United States', 'Category:Lucas Oil Stadium', 'Category:Interior of Lucas Oil Stadium'
(to avoid XY problem: I am trying to find good picture of lawn as an illustration, and planned to find FI/QI/VI in Category:Grass/Category:Lawns but from scan progress it is clearly going to list silly entries - is there a way to avoid or reduce this problem?)
@Mateusz Konieczny Yes, that is how our Category system works. If you dig deeper, you'll even find loops. You'll somehow need to limit the search depth (how many subsubsubcategories to include), but there's no universal measure for how deep is deep enough. It's an old problem: the whole system was never built to be queried (see video). Structured Data on Commons was supposed to be the solution to all of that, but it's taking some time ... El Grafo (talk) 14:22, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
Loops are not a problem at all at least. BTW, I made some edits removing cities from relations such as Category:Way of Saint James in Switzerland - it seems to me that trail crossing city is not enough to mark entire city as part of trail. Let me know if that is a bad edit. I admit I noticed it and was partially motivated by this categorisation breaking my querying attempt Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 21:23, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Although many, perhaps most, category inheritances are either "is-a" relationship (subclass, member of class) or geographical narrowing, many are not, and that's fine. - Jmabel ! talk22:17, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Remove requirement that Quality images be the work of Commons contributors
Now that Special:MediaSearch is the default Commons search engine, quality assessments can actually be useful for finding good quality images of the subject you are searching for. For example, instead of looking through all 421 images of staplers (most of which are terrible), I can quickly find the 3 that are the highest quality. The only problem with this is that our most common quality assessment, Quality images, is artificially limited to images by Commons contributors. So when you search for "quality images", you aren't actually going to see all the high quality images. This reduces the usefulness of the search engine. (We also have Valued images, but this is limited to the single best image of a particular subject.)
I would like to propose that we remove the requirement that quality images be created by Commons users, so that the assessment can be applied to any high quality images on Commons. Nosferattus (talk) 17:06, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
Strong support I've always found it utterly ridiculous that professional grade images were denied the green badge. It is ridiculous that when somebody is looking for a good picture of, say, Barrack Obama, querying for Quality Images of him will easily show this but not this because former official white house photographer Pete Souza is not a Commons user. It is ridiculous that trying to find a good Quality Image among our images of the horsehead nebula yields nothing useful because Ken Crawford is not a Commons user. It is ridiculous that none of our hundreds (thousands) of images from space telescopes cannot be tagged as QI because NASA/ESA/... are not Commons users. It is ridiculous that images from scientific journals published as open-access cannot be assessed as QI because highly trained professionals did not upload their work here themselves after publishing them under some form of CC-BY-XY.
So what's up with this arrogance? People have argued that this is to motivate users to create high quality media. Well, I suppose if we had to compete with actual professionals, that should motivate us to upload even better quality media. Are our photographers so bad that we have to keep the competition out? The way I see it, QI's main purpose right now is to give people a warm fuzzy feeling about themselves. That's not a bad thing per se, but it misses the main point of Commons' mission: making media accessible to people. That's something we tend to forget around here when we do our thing.
TL;DR: We should put those people first who want to want to use "our" media, backslapping ourselves for good work should come after that. --El Grafo (talk) 08:22, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
Strong oppose Keep as is. QI is a low-barrier star with more than enough nominations. We would do better to raise the bar, possibly requiring two positive votes, rather than solicit more stuff. Charlesjsharp (talk) 08:53, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
Does that need to be mutually exclusive? I'm all for raising the bar and filtering our more of the weak stuff. The proposal is for giving the good stuff what it deserves. We should aim for making it useful for people who want to use our media. El Grafo (talk) 09:31, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
Rather Oppose. QI is meant to encourage contributors to provide high quality content. Mixing content by volunteers with images from museums, NASA, etc. would be meaningless. Beside QI wouldn't scale up with an increase of content. For rating the content quality, we need another system (COM:SDC?). Yann (talk) 09:30, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
I really don't get the "meaningless" part here. Competition from professionals should encourage better quality from contributors. Imo it's the self-imposed training wheels that make QI meaningless for anyone but badge colloctors. El Grafo (talk) 10:21, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
@Yann: IMO, not restricting it would give the badge more meaning, not less. And creating an entirely new system certainly wouldn't help with the scaling issue. Nosferattus (talk) 14:55, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
Well, like always: hopefully the people who nominate them. With the current restrictions place, nominations cannot really increase without more people participating at the same time. also mean Personally, I'd be much more inclined to review at QI if I knew that the badge actually meant something. El Grafo (talk) 11:48, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
Oppose per Yann and A.Savin. I don't want to see tons of us.gov portraits, war equipment and other propaganda material and commercial advertising on QIC. Such a change is also unlikely to increase the participation of contributors to QIC, as the exact opposite is more likely to happen. Everyone is free to suggest good pictures at FPC. --Smial (talk) 13:39, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
Support Indeed, the needs of contributors should come after the needs of users. If submissions do indeed increase we’ll need to figure out a way to deal with it, rather than letting implementation hurdles get in the way of doing what’s right for the users. Julesvernex2 (talk) 17:21, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
We don't need encouragement for uploaders of external content. People upload tons of images, regardless of quality, because they are following an already existing interest. Often they are people who would rather see a professional promo photo of themselves in their wiki article, or appropriately commissioned agencies. These people don't need any additional incentive and they won't upload any more pictures, regardless of whether we "reward" them with a badge or not. There are also professional photographers, institutions and agencies who promote themselves with their uploads. They don't need any encouragement either. The target group for such a badge is simply not there. But the chance of driving away voluntary hobby photographers who invest a lot of money, time and effort to illustrate Wikipedia is, in my humble opinion, very high. --Smial (talk) 00:21, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
@Smial: Well I spend a lot of time and effort combing through thousands of wildlife images on iNaturalist and Flickr and picking the few that are really high quality to import into Commons. The fact that I can't get these images designated as "quality" and thus more likely to be found by reusers is very discouraging to me. Instead they are just lost in the sea of poor to mediocre Commons wildlife photos. So it feels like a waste of time. Lumping me in with promotional agencies feels even more discouraging. It seems like my contributions here are not really valued. Nosferattus (talk) 17:58, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Support echoing Julesvernex2. That said, obviously there is another consideration of sustainability of something like Commons, which requires a continuing user/contributor base. On a brief search I have not found any explanatory essay or something similar that outlines the purpose of Commons, its target audience, who its editors are, why they come in and contribute and stay, whether they are retained, increasing or decreasing, etc. (Of course there's virtually zero reason to think that having more or less categories of quality images, or mixing user-generated QI with those from non-user sources, would have a positive, negative, or zero impact on any of those factors.) If a user search for quality images of something like the w:Orion Nebula is not shown anything from NASA, and there is no alternative quality filter that would include such images, that would seem to go against good user experience design (in any of the many formulations out there, but basically it violates the w:principle of least astonishment -- It's astonishing that the "quality images" filter for astronomy would by default exclude images from Hubble!SamuelRiv (talk) 02:46, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Support We should encourage commons contributors to also upload high quality files from other sources. This might also bring more people to the process. When they engage, they will also judge other images, so I do not see the problem of the new nominations overwhelming the process. I btw. did upload a number of good us.gov images, that are really good but below FP standard and not propaganda material - e.g. photos of Holocaust remembrance day, educational pictures around agriculture and forest management. While I don't know if I would want to nominate these images now, I think other might have uploaded similar things that would be worth highlighting as good quality to potential reusers. So I think this is the right step at this time. --Kritzolina (talk) 05:52, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Neutral On the one hand, I am sympathetic to the desire for "Quality images" to represent some notion of "all high-quality images of a subject". However, we are not going to achieve that with the current QIC system, when everyone is limited to 5 nominations a day. Instead, I propose keeping QIC as-is, as a sort of technical workshop by and for photographers (and illustrators, etc.), while adding a second tier of "Quality images" which can be labeled unilaterally by any vetted user (say, someone who has successfully achieved X first-tier i.e. regular QIs). A page can be created to resolve disagreements between reviewers (so unlike first-tier QIs, second-tier QIs can always be revoked later on by consensus). Filtering of categories can then be switched to use the union of both types of QI. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠06:40, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Comment, wouldn't it be wiser to just create a new category called "Quality imports" or something similar? This way we can preserve the unique incentive for photographers to have their own works be promoted to Quality Images and also create a separate incentive with a whole separate process for "Non-Wikimedia Commons originals" (or however we should refer to imported works). While both "Quality imports" would refer to images and "Quality images" would refer to images imported from somewhere else (the photographer's mobile telephone, laptop, desktop, camera, Etc.) The names would be recognisable enough to let people know which images were created specifically by Commonswiki photographers and which ones were merely imported by Commonswiki contributors from external sources. This would please those that want to keep QI exclusive and preserve the incentives for photographers and it would create more incentives for importers to find high quality images (due to the dopamine rush). --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:55, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
@Donald Trung and El Grafo: And then what happens when a photographer of an image in "Quality imports" creates a Commons account (or is discovered to have a Commons account)? Do we then have a third process for migrating images from "Quality imports" to "Quality images"? Such a system is just neednessly complex, IMO. Nosferattus (talk) 22:23, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
@Nosferattus: , Concerning "Do we then have a third process for migrating images from "Quality imports" to "Quality images"?" This makes no sense, the difference is very simple. If an image is made by a photographer at the Wikimedia Commons uploading their own works using their own account they can nominate it for QI, these are Commonswiki Originals and anything imported was published somewhere else first, either on the internet or outernet (so someone scanning works at a GLAM could upload a "quality import"). If a good photographer publishes on Flickr first can they import their images today and nominate them for QI? There are ways to limit "Quality imports", but such ideas can best be discussed when / if its being proposed. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:07, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose. Commons:Quality images says, "Quality images are diagrams or photographs that meet certain quality standards (which are mostly technical in nature) and are valuable for Wikimedia projects. Unlike featured pictures, quality images must be the work of Commons contributors; they need not be extraordinary or outstanding, but merely well-composed and generally well-executed." It is not a high bar, and I expect most professional photographs to qualify. I consider it more of a teaching and feedback opportunity for contributors. Contributors request their work be evaluated. They will get comments about focus, lighting, and composition. That will help them make better contributions. Although that feedback can also be valuable for making better selections of third-party submissions, it is less direct. I like the direct notion of helping contributors become better photographers or better graphic artists. Glrx (talk) 18:05, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Oppose Quality images stimulate the continuous improvement of the community of photographers who selflessly submit their photos to Commons. I find it disrespectful to eliminate this classification, denigrating years of work to order and classify images with higher quality standards. --Wilfredor (talk) 04:13, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
Oppose it's a very nice system to encourage people to contribute their own work. If you upload a lot of content from other sources (like I do) you can always nominated them for featured picture. Multichill (talk) 08:53, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
Support In my opinion, this rule is unnecessary. I do not expect that abolishment of this rule would flood the candidate list with images. Most people nominate their own photos and nominations are limited to five per user and day. Of course, QI cannot encourage any photographer without an account on Commons to make better photographs. But assigning QI status to a few imported images should be o.k. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 20:06, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose I don't see any point in giving the label to "foreign" images. The project is intended to encourage our members to produce decent images. --Palauenc05 (talk) 16:45, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Support. It makes sense for "quality images" to mean what they say, just like it makes sense for "discuss" to mean what it says, but Commons prefers to go its own way. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:18, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Move the playback arrow in video thumbnails
Utseende med spelaknappen i skrivande stund (ovan), respektive 50 % transparent (nedtill).Med knappen i nedre vänstra hörnet.
In Swedish Wikipedia a gadget has been made that moves the playback arrow in video thumbnails. I think this should be implemented by default, to avoid covering the central object in the thumbnail. Especially when it is a person being filmed the advantages is clearly shown by the examples. (There was also a diskcussion on making the arrow transparent, hence the middle pic.) The discussion in Swedish is here,[1], with some topics in the universal language of code LittleGun (talk) 07:41, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
Apparently the arrow was moved to the bottom corner between 2015 and spring 2022. Was there a discussion to have it centered or was it just overseen at som other change? LittleGun (talk) 08:10, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
Commons (and the other Wikimedia projects) use a new video player as of this year. That's probably why the play button is centered again. Personally, I think it's odd to have the play button in the corner. Nosferattus (talk) 19:24, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
*Oppose - I guess it could be replaced on a case-by-case basis (for instance over at de:Benutzer:Tuvdef:Corioliskraft it doesn't look bad) however IMHO we have far more important things in the world and on Wikimedia than where a play button is situated .... Sort of the least of the worlds problems right now. But sure I would support replacing this with the replacement video thing on a case-by-case basis. –Davey2010Talk20:51, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
Andrew, I have far better things to do be doing with my time than to be arguing with you. If you had bothered to read my comment you would've seen me supporting this on a case-by-case basis but hey don't let that stop you cause more drama Mr Mabbett. –Davey2010Talk18:52, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
Support - Having further thought on this my thoughts are the same as Lord Belbury's, Not fully onboard with this but I do agree with LB having the play icon obscuring faces etc isn't really helpful to our viewers. –Davey2010Talk15:43, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Support. Looking through a random search of videos, practically all of those that show their subject in the thumbnail have it focused in or near the centre of the image. I'm not finding any where a bottom-left play button would obscure more detail than the centre one currently does. --Lord Belbury (talk) 12:44, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
Support. Not obscuring the thumbnail better serves our end users by giving them an idea of the content of the video, which is kind of the point of even having a thumbnail. At the very least, make this available as an option for users. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Huntster (talk • contribs) 09:24, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
Oppose I think having the play button in the center is more intuitive and standard, although I wouldn't oppose making it smaller or less obtrusive in other ways. Nosferattus (talk) 22:28, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
Is it standard? Looking at the big two online video sites, Vimeo and YouTube both have play buttons in the bottom left of full-size videos; YouTube flashes a play/pause circle in the centre when a video is paused or resumed, but only momentarily and it doesn't show it otherwise. YouTube has no play button on smaller search result thumbnails, Vimeo has one in the bottom left. --Lord Belbury (talk) 08:24, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm talking about for thumbnails, not full size video players. Google and Encyclopedia Britannica put the play button in the middle of video thumbnails, but you're correct that Vimeo puts it in the bottom left, which I didn't realize. I'll strike my vote. Nosferattus (talk) 15:19, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Comment - If we do move it to the bottom left, can we also change it from a circle to a rectangle (similar to Vimeo's thumbnails)? Having a circle in the corner looks awkward. Nosferattus (talk) 15:21, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
On tape decks the triangle symbol was associated with a rectangular button, though I recall some Discman-type products with circular buttons. Rounded-rectangle containing triangle symbol would look better; agree the circle is awkward when near the corner.
There are currently 1.55m uncategorized images on Commons. If uploaders can't be bothered categorizing their photos then are those photos worth having? I propose that all uncategorized images should be deleted and the upload page revised so that uncategorized images cannot be uploaded. Mztourist (talk) 09:34, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
In my eyes this radical approach will delete useful images and will keep new users from joining the project. As structured data is getting traction and search has been improved, categories have also lost some of their importance, although of course not all. And I do recognize the problem with the high number of images that are not categorized - many of them because they hold no information that could be used to categorize them. I am one of the people who try to categorize images by other uploaders and while I am successful in some cases, I fail in others. So I am well aware that we have images that are without categories or useful description and have been for years.
How about a less radical approach and only delete images that are without categories for more than five years and are NOT USED on any project? Interestingly enough there are uncategorized images that are used in articles - often this is a way to find out which category to use for them, in cases of poor file description. Often those are photos well worth having!
Also I think we should not keep people from uploading images without categories, but we definitely should explain our system of categorization better to new users. How can we expect people to "bother with categories", if the system is deeply confusing and not well explained anywhere? --Kritzolina (talk) 11:18, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
Oppose. If there was a correlation such that 99% of uncategorised images were also very low quality or copyright violations or out of scope then there could be an argument for deleting them all rather than trying to sort through them, but I don't think that's the case. There's a lot of useful content there.
Response firstly who is going to review 1.55m images to determine if the images are useful or not? I started and got up to 10,000 before the page wouldn't show any more images. Of those I saw, I categorized about 6 that were of interest to me, but even then they weren't the only image of the subject matter, several probably copyrighted and we could have done without them. Most of the images I saw I would regard as useless, repetitive/excessive, self-promotion or someone's holiday photos (a few examples: File:GoodPhotos-86.jpg, File:Government Secondary School Kawo Kaduna 10.jpg, File:MIS PRIMEROS DIAS EN LA UNMSM-2.jpg, File:Horse - കുതിര 02.jpg, File:Hardy Nation 6.jpg, File:Mountains202.jpg, File:48aut austr-mag-del-no-23-08-2022.png, File:Kit body Envigado2012h.png, File:Harshpal singh Cofounder Dudar edtech.jpg and File:Zaria Mountain 25.jpg). To be useful an image must be categorized or searchable which most of these images aren't. In relation to the argument that a requirement for categorization "will keep new users from joining the project", good, we don't need more rubbish images being uploaded uncategorized creating work for us. I don't agree that the system for categorization is "deeply confusing", an uploader should have to take the time to decide if an image justifies uploading and what category it best fits, if not then they shouldn't bother uploading. In relation to people adding images to generic categories then those categories should be blocked. As a start I would certainly agree that all uncategorized images not used on any project and more than 3 years old should be deleted. Mztourist (talk) 03:46, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Most of your examples there are searchable because they have titles or descriptions. In the case of images which have no meaningful title, no description and no category - what harm is being done by hosting them until they can be assessed? Bots like User:CategorizationBot have existed in the past to automate the process, and more powerful bots may exist in the future. --Lord Belbury (talk) 11:19, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Did you actually look at each of those examples? Do you think that they are useful and we would lose anything by deleting them? Mztourist (talk) 08:43, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Do we really need 128 photos by the same uploader of Pierre Poilievre? Do we need 33 nondescript photos by the same uploader of Government Secondary School Kawo Kaduna? Do we really need 17 self-portraits of someone's first day at UNMSM? Do we need the 21 Hardy Nation photos? Do we need the 6 mountains photos? The answer clearly is no, and yet each one will have to be individually deleted, because apparently quantity is more important than quality or usefulness. Mztourist (talk) 07:35, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
The issue with the request is that categories are optional (as explained at the MediaWiki Upload Wizard), remember that our categorisation system is highly Anglocentric and making categories mandatory would automatically mean excluding those that can't speak English. Currently the Wikimedia Commons can be displayed in any language we have Wikipedia's in, but the categories are still in English. Let's say a user wants to upload an image of a deer but only knows Traditional Chinese characters, or Arabic, should we force them to first learn English before uploading here? The solution would be simple to allow for cross-language redirects, but the software isn't ready for this.
How about existing uncategorised images? Well, there are plenty of users who help in this respect, but it's not always easy to help categorisation.
Another issue is that many new users wouldn't necessarily want to "fuck around" with the category system, they may see "Buildings in London" but don't see a "Buildings in Theircity" category and are confused how such categories are made, maybe others do know how such categories are made and may first make categories before uploading, this will get a lot of categories speedy deleted and good faith users banned for "creating useless empty categories" before they upload.
TL;DR The issues this would create are manyfold, first it raises the minimum English-language skills required to upload excluding many non-Anglophones, secondly it raises the bar for new contributors to already be familiar with MediaWiki Pseudocode and how it works, thirdly it raises the bar for new contributors to already be familiar with our intricate categorisation system.
There are lots of more issues with this, like how the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) is slowly trying to phase out categories in favour of Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons (SDC), the chance that we'll get a large number of duplicate categories about the same subject "Animals in Ireland" Vs. "Animals of Ireland", and I'm sure that there are many more. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 06:47, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
As I said in my original post, categorization shouldn't be optional. Non-English speakers would simply have to run their proposed photo name and category through Google translate and find a suitable file name and category. If they can't be bothered doing a few basic steps then the image probably isn't worth having anyway. In relation to existing uncategorized images, I have already set out a compromise position above that "all uncategorized images not used on any project and more than 3 years old should be deleted." Mztourist (talk) 09:39, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
We shouldn't require our users to use third-party software, especially not software that has unacceptable terms of use like those of Google. Also, machine translation or a dead-wood dictionary often do a very bad job of finding the right words, and perfectly good translations may not be available as categories. You have an image of a "kalhu" and translate it to "right, shorter ski" (as in Wiktionary), how does that help you in finding a suitable category (especially if you don't know those three words and their relation)? –LPfi (talk) 19:01, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Google translate has "unacceptable terms of use"? I'm not aware of them. So it seems you think uploaders shouldn't make any effort to make their photos searchable. Mztourist (talk) 08:25, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose per Kritzolina, Jeff and Donald - Deleting 1 million images here is not the answer - As Donald correctly states if the user doesn't speak/understand English then they're stuffed (no one's gonna bother trying to translate during upload). If we were to delete peoples images than those uploaders could also see this as potentially being discriminatory against them. I hate uncategorised images but deleting them isn't the answer. –Davey2010Talk11:41, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Yep, it is discrimination purely on language skills alone. Plus we'd see the utter bombardment of basic categories like "Books", "Coins", "Houses", "Parks", Etc. by well meaning users. Sometimes I find uncategorised images because a user's other images were categorised and find good images that prove to be useful. For example a user uploads a lot of old Polish coins but doesn't know categorisation because he doesn't speak English, one person categorises a few of his images and I then discover the rest and categorise them for him. This is a collaborative project, we shouldn't try to aim to become a highly exclusive project. If an image is educational it is within scope, the media matters, how discoverable it is is secondary. I hate uncategorised images and badly categorised images, but I'd take those over lacking and wanting those images. In the future bots will be way more sophisticated than now and I can see "a gamification" of categorisation where an AI proposes categories for uncategorised images and a human reviewer can assess whether or not the robot 🤖 had the correct speciations (this is something Google Photos already has for years). Rather than making things more difficult and raising the bar of entry, we should be making things more easy and accessible. This interface can also have additional options like "Nominate for deletion: please select your rationale" and "More uncategorised images from this uploader" to make it much easier. But rather than creating such handy organisational tools the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) are just ignoring this website altogether. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 12:02, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Response No it is not "discrimination purely on language skills alone", if "no one's gonna bother trying to translate during upload" then clearly the image isn't that important and we can live without it and the extra work they create. Why should an uploader not be required to do some translation, when that is exactly what a User will need to do to to try to categorize their image? Translation has to be done by someone, the burden should be on the uploader. I'm sure that we can all find a few examples of uncategorized images that we each find interesting, but can you honestly say the project would suffer by their absence? Bombardment of basic categories is preferable to uncategorized images, because at least they're sorted into an area where other interested users might actually be able to find them and refine their categorization. As it is we have 1.55m uncategorized images, many of which are unsearchable other than by native speakers because their names aren't in English, how useful is that? Mztourist (talk) 12:50, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Do you really think only English speakers use this website? Really? Or should it only be useful to English speakers in your opinion? Kritzolina (talk) 19:11, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
No, but the page is structured so that if you don't speak English its not easy to use effectively. As I said above, if even the file name isn't in English, someone is going to have to translate it to categorize it and make it easily searchable. Mztourist (talk) 08:25, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
If there is a description in some language, then the image can be found and categorised. A good description is much more valuable than a category in most cases. I often see a Wikipedia article without image and Commons category, search for some keyword and create a category for those images. For interested users to find an image, a category like "houses" is worthless, but "Tamminiemen puuliiteri" will make it easy to find for most of those interested in the image. –LPfi (talk) 19:12, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
I categorized the first one, is it more useful now? And please - just because the site is easier to use when you can speak English, non-English speakers should be excluded from contributing or have it a lot harder to contribute? Please check your privilege as an English speaker! --Kritzolina (talk) 09:55, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
So a photo of a horse is now categorized under Black Horses where there are already 27 subcategories and 275 individual images, do we really need that image? No. Meanwhile Mountains202 has been put up for deletion. Please check your snide accusations of racism. Mztourist (talk) 07:22, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Isn't the one I put on the horse image the kind of category you were asking the uploaders do as a minimum? That would make the images more useful? Maybe it is not about categories after all? Btw., there are Wikimedians who find that image of a black horse useful enough to use it in an article. And yes, the other image is probably not useful and should be deleted, but that is not because it is uncategorized. The problem is the lack of description or any other clue about where this image was taken. This could be a category, it could be description, it could be a correct depicts statement .. As to my comments about your English language bias and privilege (I share the last one, just to be clear), I checked before posting. Yes, I could have said this nicer perhaps, but I really would love for you to think about the situation of people who do not have any knowledge of English at all and who still want to contribute to and/or use this platform. Some of them speak several languages that you and I don't understand. And that possibly are not supported well by tools like Google translate. Among them users who are bringing knowledge that this and other projects are missing, closing important knowledge gaps. I often categorize images from Wiki loves Folklore or from the Photo challenges. And there are real treasure in those uploads who lack not much - except perhaps categories. --Kritzolina (talk) 09:57, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes the uncategorized photo of a horse has now been moved into black horses, while that is better than it being uncategorized, do we actually need that image? The answer is clearly no. This page is an English language page, if people don't have English language skills and are unwilling or unable to use translation tools, why should that burden fall on other users? Unlike you, I don't see many treasures among the uncategorized images, I see lots of self-portraits/holiday photos and promotional pictures many of which are hugely repetitive. If the uploader thinks their image is important enough to be here they need to justify why that is the case even if that means some extra work for them. Frankly the upload process is slow and tiresome, if a non English speaker can get through that, then they should have no difficulty providing a distinctive file name, description and a category or two. Mztourist (talk) 11:54, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
No one who knows Commons will disagree that there are many images here on this platform that are not useful. But adding categories does not necessarily change a lot about the usefulness of the image. You don't find that image of the black horse useful, even if it is categorized. A user on Malayalam Wikipedia found it useful enough to add it to the article on horses on that language Wikipedia, even before it had categories. People are different and do things differently - and in most cases that adds to the Wikimedia projects and there are only few cases were this is harmful. Why do you feel burdened by the existence of uncategorized images? I don't - I see them as a kind of quarry where I can go and see if there are gems hidden in the rubble. And yes, there is a lot of rubble - but please, also go to any broader category with many images and you will find rubble there as well. So please, if you do not enjoy looking at uncategorized images, don't do it. But don't try to push others to take your point of view. And also - give people time to learn. The first images I uploaded certainly were not the most useful I uploaded, it took me time to understand how to write useful descriptions and use good filenames. By now many of my images are used across several projects, on knowledge and news pages outside the Wikimedia projects and I have contributed a number of QIs and even 2 FIs. If somenone had deleted my first images or not allowed them to be uploaded for some formal reasons, I would not be here today. Especially if the reason my images were not accepted had to do with me using my native language instead of English. --Kritzolina (talk) 07:38, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
The black horse picture is in a gallery section of a general page about horses, so its hardly an essential image. I "feel burdened by the existence of uncategorized images" when so many are so clearly useless and the sheer volume of those useless images prevents me from finding the "gems hidden in the rubble". I have categorized hundreds, if not thousands of uncategorized images that have been uploaded by DPLAbot and from Flickr and am convinced that more gems exist but that such gems have inadequate file names for searching or are uploaded by users or programs that I don't know exist, meaning the only remaining option is to scroll through all the 1.55m uncategorized images to try to find them. I repeat again, a non-English uploader should accept the burden of translating their native language to provide a useful and searchable file name and description and a category or two. If that stops them uploading then its most likely the image isn't worth having. Mztourist (talk) 09:22, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose Unhelpfully broad and inappropriate deletion. Even if 99% of uncategorized images were useless (I doubt it's anywhere near that high) that would still leave a wealth of useful images - many unique and valuable - deleted without consideration. I have repeatedly found good images, sometimes in use in articles, that were not categorized - so I categorized them. This problem is better addressed by working to make users more aware of proper categorization and simply categorizing useful uncategorized images when spotted - many slow pecks can gradually wear down even mountain sized problems. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 21:25, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose unhelpful. Deleted images will be occupying the same space in Wikimedia servers and many useful images will be hidden to most users. If someone gets overwhelmed when accessing the category, they just can direct their attention elsewhere. Strakhov (talk) 07:34, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
I want to find and categorize useful images that interest me, but as I have already said the search function seems to only allow you to view the first 10,000 images. Mztourist (talk) 08:25, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Aditionally 1) there are many images already in use in Wikimedia projects with no Commons category at all. 2) Categories are not the only way to find a file (filenames, captions, descriptions and Structured Data hit searches too). Strakhov (talk) 11:01, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
No I don't. Otherwise we have to maintain two systems of curation forever. The structured data system should grow into such a better system that categories are no longer needed. I guess some of the long time users have to go through the five stages of grief at that point. With the current lack of progress I expect this to still be years if not a decade away. Multichill (talk) 16:54, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
The moment you “phase out” categories, is the moment when me and many, many others, will (either just give up or) fork the h*ll out of this. You will keep your ourfit fed by gamified, casual edits from a trillion unaffiliated drive-by editors made through your clumsy UI and your A.“I.” batch edits direct to the database, and we will continue a Human-curated edeavour. -- Tuválkin✉✇18:49, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Mztourist is aproaching a very real problem with an elitist mindset. That doesn't make the problem any less real. Just one small example, already provided by Mztourist, shows it: pictures of unidentified shrubs in front of rocky unidentified hills. No location given. As this is, it cannot be used for any educational purposes. I would support a proposal of changed rules: unused images that remain without a useful identifying description of their content (in any language(!!), in either category, description, captions, etc.), may be tagged as "not useful" and then deleted after a period of five years unless someone intervenes by inserting such a description. But I Oppose the broad deletion of a million potentially useful files despite all the (pardon) crap that gets uploaded. --Enyavar (talk) 08:40, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose and I don't think it has a snowball's chance. Yes, it's a real problem. For unknown reasons, the Commons App has stopped accepting categories on my Moto 5G Ace phone, so the majority of my photos this summer have arrived uncategorized. I usually categorize them the next day, and later add and refine cats. And as it happens, almost all my uploads are geotagged, and an automated process to categorize the geotagged as "Uncategorized but geotagged in New York" or some such name would be a help and not a hindrance. Another possibility would be to encourage hashtags, which are widely used in upload sites, being very easy to understand and only moderately less precise than the majority of our categorizations. So no, we would be crazy to ban uncategorized uploads. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:53, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose You will never find a single solution that solve 1.55 million images. We need partial solutions for breaking this down. I think we are talking about the entire slog at Category:Media needing categories but I browse Special:UncategorizedFiles regularly. A number of them can go into Category:Media needing categories requiring human attention which could be renamed to something like "categorization review" rather than being Mulitchill's bot. Then we need to advertise these backlogs and have people attack them. Make a game of it. Instead of projects to get new images, a project to find and search for unknown images will help. Will it go to zero? Never. Can there be a system? Yes. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:24, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Comment I suggest closing this proposal as not passed. It has gathered no support and much opposition; I see no reason to think that keeping it open longer will change the result. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 15:57, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose Three years seems too fast and the amount of time that would be spent by administrators before they would consider deleting all images because of a hard and fast three year rule could be just as easily spent on reviewing and listing the vague uncategorizable images for deletion. Not because it's rules-lawyering but I would not be shocked if we had wholesale requests for undeletion to review all images or other nuttiness if we followed such a rule and basically end up in the same place. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:26, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
I would love to see uploaders who have loaded images uncategorized that aren't used on any page justify why their deleted image(s) should be undeleted. It would suitably focus them on whether or not their image(s) are actually useful. Mztourist (talk) 11:25, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
@Mztourist You won't have uploaders fighting about it. I suspect most have uploaded and are gone. You will have other users arguing and everyone wasting time because of an arbitrary time deadline. Better to just recognize that while it is a problem, the vast majority of people here would rather keep the images in the hopes of finding a single useful image rather than care if people haven't categorized them. The goal of categorization is to find useful images anyways, not categorization for the sake of categorization. Ricky81682 (talk) 22:07, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
If they've uploaded and gone then that's good. Yes the goal of categorization is to find useful images, not as an end in itself, but without categorization or reasonably searchable file names you have to try to scroll through every single image in the vague hope of finding useful images. Mztourist (talk) 06:17, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose Uncategorized images, even if they are not used within the Wikipedia universe, may still have been used outside by someone. It is virtually impossible to find every such external use. If such an image is deleted from commons, then the subsequent user is deprived of the legal basis, because he can no longer prove that he is using the photo legally and in accordance with the licence. I am aware that probably far more than 90% of external re-uses are legally incorrect anyway, but even one case like the one I described would be too many. Besides, uncategorised images may be difficult to find and search for, but deleted images are NOT findable at all. The proposal is simply gross nonsense. --Smial (talk) 08:46, 17 September 2022 (UTC) Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
It is, because it is stupid and unfair to our "customers" outside the Wikipedia universe and it reflects very badly on our project. --Smial (talk) 17:14, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
Red herring. The vast majority of deletion requests are made for copyright infringement, and this is to protect potential subsequent users. Your request is not comparable to this and would have exactly the opposite effect. --Smial (talk) 10:58, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Not a red herring at all. We don't know if images are used off wiki, if they're deleted through the normal deletion process the issue that you identified arises. The fact that many deletions are due to copyright infringement is irrelevant as images are deleted for numerous other reasons also. Mztourist (talk) 10:11, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose I do not see a compelling problem here. There are gentler approaches, too. Every three years we could send an email with a list of their uncategorized uploads. I'm also reluctant to delete files that have been available for years because there may be off wiki links. I've been bitten several times with removed files that are categorized. Glrx (talk) 14:27, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose, still no clear reason given for why a wiped-clean empty space is better for Commons than a chaotic heap of uncategorised images. They don't take up additional disk space, they aren't getting in anyone's way. Yes, it's daunting to visit the 2018 heap and see how much of it has yet to be categorised, but throwing it all away isn't any kind of solution. --Lord Belbury (talk) 15:23, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
They do get in the way because you have to scroll through thousands of uncategorized poorly named images to try to find anything potentially worth keeping. Mztourist (talk) 04:57, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
I am saying that to find images potentialy worth keeping you have to scroll through thousands of uncategorized poorly named images, most of which will eventually have to be individually deleted. Mztourist (talk) 09:42, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
If good images are hard to find in a large unsorted collection, deleting the whole collection just means that they will never be found. If earlier years genuinely do have a significantly lower hit rate of useable images, perhaps we could add a note to the top of the older categories, for the benefit of anyone considering where to dedicate their time. If you're personally tired of the 2018 category, it's okay to stop searching through it. --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:10, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose Deleted images are still kept on disk; they are merely hidden from view for non-admin users. Deleting them doesn't save anything other than reducing the count in the uncategorized lists. Maybe deletion feels like "progress" there, but that's not really the goal of our project. There could be external users of images (which is part of Commons:SCOPE); they get directly harmed. We provide educational content to *all*; that includes people who directly link from external websites. I can see cases for photos with nonsense titles, no categories, and with the content of the photo not being reasonably possible for a non-author to recognize (either location, or what the subject is, etc.) -- that may fail the test of realistically useful for an educational purpose. But the simple fact of being uncategorized alone does not do that, to me. Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:29, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose Why this repeat performance, this is still basically the same proposal as the previous one: unrestricted, unsupervized, blind mass-deletions. These days I am often picking up mass-uploaded pictures from the British Library, where some images from the same book are extensively categorized, others are used, very few are both and even more are neither. But they can still be found and sorted thanks to their descriptions, or their filenames. If we had deleted those uploads before now, those categories (now that they have been created), would contain just half the imagery they do now. I would support unused, undescribed, uncategorized and badly named media (and including those with useless descriptions, names and labels, like "DSCP11123456.jpg" with the descriptor "my picture") qualify for (quick) deletions after 5 years. To that I would say "Halalii!" and wish happy hunting. Enyavar (talk) 17:47, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose. I'm tempted to create a subsection titled "I propose Mztourist is indefinitely blocked for trolling". This proposal like the last is ludicrous and to be very blunt stupid beyond words!. MZtourist - The time and energy spent making these idiotic proposals could be better spent on actually categorising the uncategorised images. Good grief. –Davey2010Talk18:20, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose You may not like the part of it that addresses you specifically, but "The time and energy spent making these[...]proposals could be better spent on actually categorising the uncategorised images" is spot on. The fact that an image has not been categorized doesn't and must not make it worthless and subject to automatic deletion. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:47, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
OK, fair enough, but that still doesn't mean that everything that doesn't already have a category should be summarily deleted. If you feel that way, I think you are probably burnt out or experiencing tunnel vision because you've been nominating too high a volume of photos for deletion and should consider taking a break from that. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:32, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
The whole purpose of this project is to house "educational media content", a file cannot be educational if it has a meaningless name, no or generic description and no or general categories. When I find files like that I put them up for deletion in accordance with our Commons:Deletion policy as they are Out of scope. Mztourist (talk) 09:59, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Do you notice that no-one so far has agreed with your proposal to summarily delete all uncategorized files? I prefer to rescue potentially usable photos, rather than deleting them, whenever that's possible. But where we agree is that it sure would be helpful if uploaders would provide such information up front. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:31, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose No benefit; solves no problem. Sometimes I stumble on a good and somewhat relevant picture because it has a word that matches my search term. That lets me look into others from the same uploader or even the same day, and find one that's actually useful to some article in my range of interest. Naturally while prospecting in that domain (upload date, username, whatever) of uncategorized pictures, I also categorize the ones that are easily identified yet useless to my immediate purposes. The category tree is usually the most useful starting point, when provided, but not the only useful one. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:52, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
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Strong support I've always found it utterly ridiculous that professional grade images were denied the green badge. It is ridiculous that when somebody is looking for a good picture of, say, Barrack Obama, querying for Quality Images of him will easily show this but not this because former official white house photographer Pete Souza is not a Commons user. It is ridiculous that trying to find a good Quality Image among our images of the horsehead nebula yields nothing useful because Ken Crawford is not a Commons user. It is ridiculous that none of our hundreds (thousands) of images from space telescopes cannot be tagged as QI because NASA/ESA/... are not Commons users. It is ridiculous that images from scientific journals published as open-access cannot be assessed as QI because highly trained professionals did not upload their work here themselves after publishing them under some form of CC-BY-XY.
Strong oppose Keep as is. QI is a low-barrier star with more than enough nominations. We would do better to raise the bar, possibly requiring two positive votes, rather than solicit more stuff. Charlesjsharp (talk) 08:53, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
Oppose. QI is meant to encourage contributors to provide high quality content. Mixing content by volunteers with images from museums, NASA, etc. would be meaningless. Beside QI wouldn't scale up with an increase of content. For rating the content quality, we need another system (COM:SDC?). Yann (talk) 09:30, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
Support Indeed, the needs of contributors should come after the needs of users. If submissions do indeed increase we’ll need to figure out a way to deal with it, rather than letting implementation hurdles get in the way of doing what’s right for the users. Julesvernex2 (talk) 17:21, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
Neutral On the one hand, I am sympathetic to the desire for "Quality images" to represent some notion of "all high-quality images of a subject". However, we are not going to achieve that with the current QIC system, when everyone is limited to 5 nominations a day. Instead, I propose keeping QIC as-is, as a sort of technical workshop by and for photographers (and illustrators, etc.), while adding a second tier of "Quality images" which can be labeled unilaterally by any vetted user (say, someone who has successfully achieved X first-tier i.e. regular QIs). A page can be created to resolve disagreements between reviewers (so unlike first-tier QIs, second-tier QIs can always be revoked later on by consensus). Filtering of categories can then be switched to use the union of both types of QI. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:40, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Comment, wouldn't it be wiser to just create a new category called "Quality imports" or something similar? This way we can preserve the unique incentive for photographers to have their own works be promoted to Quality Images and also create a separate incentive with a whole separate process for "Non-Wikimedia Commons originals" (or however we should refer to imported works). While both "Quality imports" would refer to images and "Quality images" would refer to images imported from somewhere else (the photographer's mobile telephone, laptop, desktop, camera, Etc.) The names would be recognisable enough to let people know which images were created specifically by Commonswiki photographers and which ones were merely imported by Commonswiki contributors from external sources. This would please those that want to keep QI exclusive and preserve the incentives for photographers and it would create more incentives for importers to find high quality images (due to the dopamine rush). --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:55, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
--Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 12:02, 1 September 2022 (UTC)