Commons:Village pump

Shortcut: COM:VP

• Community portal
  • introduction
• Help desk
• Village pump
  • copyright
  • proposals
  • technical
• Administrators' noticeboard
  • vandalism
  • user problems
  • blocks and protections

↓ Skip to table of contents ↓       ↓ Skip to discussions ↓       ↓ Skip to the last discussion ↓

COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES Commons Help desk Village pump (general discussion) Copyright Proposals Technical Graphics and photography discussion Photography critiques Image improvement Illustration workshop Map workshop Photography workshop Video and sound workshop Categories for discussion Undeletion requests Deletion requests Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard Translators' noticeboard Work requests for bots Contact administrators Vandalism User problems (Dispute resolution) Blocks and protections Bureaucrats' noticeboard CheckUser requests Oversight requests Telegram IRC webchat Commons mailing list (archive) Commons' bugs on Phabricator Welcome to the Village pump This page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/09. Please note: If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias. Have you read our FAQ? For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming. Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer). Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam. Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page: Please do not make deletion requests here: use the relevant process for it instead. For technical support and graphics talks (PNG, SVG, GIF, etc.), please post on the Graphics village pump. To ask for image improvement, see: Graphic Lab/Photography workshop for photographs. Graphic Lab/Map workshop for maps. Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop for other illustrations. To ask for video or audio improvement, see Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop. For translation requests, please post at Commons:Requests for translation. For media requests, please post at Commons:File requests. Search archives:     Start a new discussion

Legend
In the last hour
In the last day
In the last week
In the last month
More than one month
Manual settings
When exceptions occur, please check the setting first.

Thatched water pump at Aylsham, Norfolk [add]

Centralized discussion See also: Village pump/Proposals   ■ Archive Third-party images published by the National Weather Service (26 August 2024) Commons:Requests for comment/Hosting of free fonts in Commons (18 July 2024) How do we organize categories by date (14 May 2024) Should PD-CQ Roll Call be used for recent images? (5 January 2024) Technical needs survey (17 December 2023) When does PDART apply to textile works? (15 November 2023) Does this image contain "love hearts"? (17 August 2023) Overhaul of categories by period (5 December 2022) Version of Saudi flag to use (11 July 2022) Concern regarding revocability of KOGL licenses (22 December 2021) Should deleting content from your own talk page be forbidden? (11 November 2021) Revise the COM:FOP Sweden section (1 February 2021) Change technical name of LRs to license-reviewer from image-reviewer(2 November 2023) Template: View   ■ Discuss    ■ Edit   ■ Watch

	SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 1 day and sections whose most recent comment is older than 7 days.

August 22

Is renaming categories with an English name to local language names a good idea?

Category:Heroes' Cemetery in the Philippines has been renamed to Category:Libingan ng mga Bayani, to "match Wikipedia and Wikidata", see history of this category. Though there are exceptions for English category names: "some proper names, ... and names for which the non-English name is most commonly used in the English language" (see Commons:Categories#Category names), I wonder whether such an exception applies to this category and whether this would be a good development for other category names that are now in English but might have other names in Wikipedia and Wikidata. Because I can understand the English name without a translation program, but not the name in Philippine (or the majority of other languages). @Seav: Can you give your opinion as well? JopkeB (talk) 05:43, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

If there is a Category Redirect, I see no problem. There is a problem with English names that are meaningless to local people. Like Our Lady of the Forsaken, that is a very common thing to find around my place, that means absolutely nothing to the Valencian local people, who are enterly familiar with either la Virgen de los Desamparados or la Mare de Déu dels Desemparats. I do use English category names, but I have to explain my wife once and again what is Our Lady of Good Health (la Virgen de la Salud) or Saint Anthony the Great (Sant Antoni del Porquet).
I think a more multilingual approach is required. B25es (talk) 05:55, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Then I would prefer to have the redirect the other way around: let the English name be the category name and let the local name have the redirect. JopkeB (talk) 06:11, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

That's perfectly fine for us B25es (talk) 16:32, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi! Thank you for bringing this topic up. I think the relevant policy is Commons:Language policy, which defers to a section: Commons:Categories#Category names. As you have stated, the important passage is:

Category names should generally be in English (see Commons:Language policy). However, there are exceptions such as some proper names, biological taxa and names for which the non-English name is most commonly used in the English language (or there is no evidence of usage of an English-language version).

I think my rename follows the "proper names [...] for which the non-English name is most commonly used in the English language". The English Wikipedia article title, Libingan ng mga Bayani, had been discussed and renamed a few times since 2009 between the English-translated name and the official native-language name (see the header on Talk:Libingan ng mga Bayani), with the latest move request in 2020 resolving to the native-language title. There is plenty of evidence that the native-language name is used in English-language sources (albeit sources in the Philippines, but then again, English is an official language of the country). Some examples of English reliable sources within the past year that use the native-language name: [1][2][3][4].

I consider this situation similar to categories like Category:Taoisigh which could be reasonably be actually named Category:Prime ministers of Ireland, but we're using the Irish name here in Commons (so far without any argument, I think?) and also in the English Wikipedia (w:Taoiseach). —seav (talk) 06:14, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

"Taoisigh" is apparently not a proper name of a person, like Mary Johnson, but the name of a function, in the rest of the world known as "Prime minister". So this is not part of the exception. AND it is clearly not conform the Universiality principle, which says that "Identical items should have identical names for all countries and at all levels of categorization." So, please make the redirect the other way around. JopkeB (talk) 08:43, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

"Taoisigh" seems a bit odd to me, I don't recall seeing that spelling (or hearing a pronunciation that matches that spelling), but as a native English-speaker, I'd consider "Taoiseach" entirely appropriate. The BBC, for example, pretty consistently use "Taoiseach". FWIW, Google gives 239,000 results for "Taoisigh", 5,820,000 for "Taoiseach", 545,000 for the phrase "prime minister of Ireland" and 419,000 for "Irish prime minister", which seems to confirm my instinct. - Jmabel ! talk 18:41, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

The plural of taoiseach is taoisigh, according to Wikipedia. --Geohakkeri (talk) 19:00, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Interesting, I guess I'd never heard it in the plural, and certainly have no idea how to form Gaelic plurals. - Jmabel ! talk 04:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

So it is also OK to rename Category:Prime ministers of France to Category:Premiers ministres? And for all other countries alike? Then we might delete the Universiality principle as well. I am not a native English-speaker and I consider "Taoisigh" not appropriate because I have never heard it before, I am familiar with the name "Prime ministers" and I guess the same applies to the best part of non-native English-speakers. Why would there be an exception for Gaelic? JopkeB (talk) 04:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Because in English when we talk about this person/office, we use the word "Taoiseach". Similar issue to Category:Tsars of Russia.- Jmabel ! talk 17:40, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Is that true for other English-speaking countries as well, like the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand? And the word "tsar" is well known, also in other languages, and is about heads of state, not prime ministers. So I think this is not a good comparison. JopkeB (talk) 04:08, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Definitely true for UK; for U.S. I've usually heard radio news reporters first use the word "Taoiseach", then define it once (e.g. "equivalent of a prime minister"), then use "Taoiseach". Again, I think that Google count speaks volumes: over ten times as many hits for "Taoiseach" as for "prime minister of Ireland". - Jmabel ! talk 04:51, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

"Chancellor" is also used for the German head of state. And "Teno" for the Japanese "king". Nakonana (talk) 11:48, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

So, it looks a little bit like a mess, for Germany even more than for Ireland (for Ireland there is at least a redirect, for Germany you have to figure out yourself what the category for federal prime ministers is). But luckily prime ministers of Japan‎ are still in Category:Prime ministers of Japan‎ (I could not find teno and japanese "king"). My concern are about (1) non-native English (and German) speakers AND (2) creators of templates and other technical solutions. Both groups need clear category names, with the same category name throughout the category tree. I think the Universiality principle is made for both groups. How can we apply this principle to categories for prime ministers of Ireland and the federal state of Germany (and perhaps other countries?)? JopkeB (talk) 16:27, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I typed it wrong, of course, Tenno is a redirect. Maybe "Head of State" would work? Nakonana (talk) 17:16, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Head of state is not the same as prime minister. Germany and Ireland both have a president as well as a prime minister of the (federal) government. JopkeB (talk) 05:02, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Agreed that a prime minister is normally "head of government" but not "head of state". I can't think of a country with a prime ministerial system where the prime minister is considered head of state. - Jmabel ! talk 00:25, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

 Oppose Changing the name to the "native-language" for two reasons

• 1. The idea that it's in the "native-language" now is totally ridiculous to begin with. According to Google 22.5 million people in the Philippines speak Tagalog. While 39.4 million speak English. Further the place being discussed here is a national cemetery within Fort Bonifacio. The national headquarters of the Philippine Army. So it's just more likely due to how many speak English then Tagalog nationally that they will speak English. Meaning the change will clearly reduce the number of people who will be able to find the category. I don't think it's simply enough to simply have a redirect in this case either. Otherwise you could justify renaming every category to the "native language" simply because redirects exists. That's not their purpose. Per the guidelines we have to go with the name whatever language has the most chance of being searched for and it's pretty clear that's English in this case.
• 2. There's been multiple CfDs having to do with this exact issue in the last couple years and there was clearly no consensus from them to change the names of the categories to the "native-language" at the time. I highly doubt if Seav had pf started a CfD for this before changing the name that it would have gone anywhere. That's what they should have done instead of just unliterally changing the name based purely on how the place is named on Wikipedia. Regardless, it's pretty clear that there is no consensus to use "native-language" names for categories in cases like this one. I'm not sure what the circumstances around Category:Taoisigh versus Category:Prime ministers of Ireland, but "other stuff" isn't really a valid reason to make the change. Again, especially considering the outcome of prior CfDs, guideline, and fact that clearly more people speak English in the Philippines then Tagalog and this is the national headquarters of Philippine Army. It would be ridiculous to say that shouldn't matter "because Wikipedia article." --Adamant1 (talk) 06:37, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

To be fair, your first argument only works for this special case of a country where a lot of people speak English. It doesn't work for other categories. For example, sometimes I go through the Category:Media needing categories (Cyrillic names), and there I find a decent number of files that actually are properly categorized, except that all the categories are written in Russian. The Russian community has a bot that addresses the issue to some degree but automatically searching and replacing Russian-language categories for their English counterparts, but the process is not perfect and you still find a lot of "uncategorized" Russian media. The other issue with translated categories is that there are various ways to translate one and the same thing, and it's a pain to figure out what the English name of an already existing category is. Oftentimes I go to Ru Wiki, find the subject there, follow the link to the Wikidata item from the article, and then look up the Commons category on Wikidata. There are just too many ways to "translate" even something as simple as "площадь мира" (transc.: ploshad mira, lit.: square [of] peace). You can go by Category:Peace square, Kazan or Category:Peace Square, Krasnoyarsk with a capital S, or Category:Mira Square (Kaluga)‎ (like Google does), or Category:Mir Square (the word "peace" = "mir" without the genetive suffix "-a"; Mira Square is actually equivalent to "Peace's Square", and if you want to have "Peace Square", you need to drop the genetive in Russian too "Mir Square"*), or you could translate it as Category:Square of Peace, or you use the Russian word order Category:Square Mira, which is a construction that you can find in translations of "проспект мира" (prospekt mira / Peace Avenue), such as Category:Prospekt Mira (Kaliningrad)‎ — why even bother translating when you can transcribe instead? (Now we only have to agree whether it's prospekt or prospect — k vs. c, see Category:Prospect Mira in Lipetsk‎.) Or you can just translate it like in Category:Peace Avenue, Krasnoyarsk, or you can be like Moscow and create a grammatical language monster by keeping the Russian words while using English word order: Category:Mira Prospekt in Moscow — this one raises eye brows in English speakers and Russian speakers alike.

* This is done with "площадь Ленина" (transc.: ploshad Lenina, lit.: square [of] Lenin). While the suffixed "-a" is kept in "Mir-a" for some reason, it is dropped in case of "Lenin-a": Category:Lenin Square (Ufa)‎ instead of "Lenina Square". However if it's a street (улица Ленина / ulitsa Lenina), then Lenin can keep his suffixed "-a": Category:Lenina street (Irkutsk)‎... or not Category:Lenin Street (Gdov). Nakonana (talk) 20:51, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

* typo: "It doesn't work for other countries." Nakonana (talk) 20:54, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

It is a fine balance line between translating native names into English ones or keeping them in the original language (or as a transcription for languages that have other scripts than Latin). For me names of streets and squares may be kept in the original language, except perhaps for very well known ones, like Red Square in Moscow. So the same rule as for place names (where only names known in English should be in English in Commons categories). JopkeB (talk) 09:22, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Do we have a reference for the English name or is it just a literal translation? File:2551Taguig City Landmarks 17.jpg is in English. Enhancing999 (talk) 06:43, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

In English the name literally translates to "Cemetery of (the) Heroes" (libingan = cemetery; mga bayani = heroes). I've seen that translation (with or without the definite article) and I've seen the variation "Heroes' Cemetery" as well. A couple more points: the official website of the cemetery is [5], which is in English but still uses the native-language name, and the law that established the cemetery is Proclamation No. 208, s. 1967, also in English, but the name is again the native-language name. —seav (talk) 07:03, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

 Oppose renaming but see meta:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Add machine translated category titles on WMC. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:19, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I think in this case the Tagalog name is appropriate, with soft redirects from the maybe two most likely English-language names.

I'd also add: in practice, this varies a lot from country to country, and sometimes by region within a country. For example, for Catalonia, we pretty consistently favor Catalan names; for Romania, I've seen English-language names for things that it is hard to imagine anyone referring to that way, e.g. "Roman Square" for Piața Romană; it's like a Spanish-speaker calling New York's Times Square "La Plaza del Tiempo" or (even worse) "La Plaza de los Tiempos". - Jmabel ! talk 18:50, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

One example of that is how they call pizza "pie" in the New York City area. I'd prefer keeping Category:Pies for images of actual pies though. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:04, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose I think it is a bad idea in most cases. It is categorized in Category:Military cemeteries in the Philippines. Should that also be renamed to Category:Mga sementeryo ng militar sa Pilipinas? And Category:Sydney Opera House was designed by a Danish guy so should it be named in Danish? I think local names should be reserved for when there is no English name. --MGA73 (talk) 15:17, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

  @MGA73 how about Category:Cristo Redentor (Rio de Janeiro)? Should it be moved also? It has been under Portuguese name since the creation of the category. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 22:45, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

  • There is zero possibility that category name should be changed to something fully English. I'm a native English-speaker; I've been aware of that statue for over 60 years, and literally never heard it referred to in a fully translated mode (usually just "the Cristo" or if context is unclear "the Cristo in Rio", but of course "Cristo Redentor" is more correct). You would as well translate "Rio de Janeiro" to "January River" (or "Las Vegas, Nevada" to "the low places, snowy"). - Jmabel ! talk 04:02, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I think in English the name is w:Rio de Janeiro so it would not make sense to translate the name of the city. I do not know if there is an official or established name in English for this statue but Category:Statue of the Little Mermaid (Copenhagen) is in English and so is Category:Eiffel Tower. And Category:Denmark and Category:Brazil are also English. Should that be changed to local names too? I think the rule on Wikipedia is that articles is named by the most used name. So I think it would make sense to do the same on Commons. Just like it is Category:Bill Clinton and not William Jefferson Clinton. --MGA73 (talk) 07:08, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

@MGA73 the statue is "Christ the Redeemer", many know that. Unsure if using English language as the precedence will lead to the category being moved to "Category:Christ the Redeemer (Rio de Janeiro)". JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 07:39, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

JWilz12345 I think that if there is no clear name for something then just leave the name as it is and make some redirects if needed. I would just hate to see if someone get the idea to rename hundreds of thousands of categories just to use local names in categories. --MGA73 (talk) 07:52, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

"Rio de Janeiro" also has a literal translation to English. Enhancing999 (talk) 07:55, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

@Enhancing999@MGA73 we are talking about the statue's name in English. Everyone in English-speaking world calls it "Christ the Redeemer". Little to none use "Cristo Redentor". It is understood, but I am surprised about claims here that there is no clear name of the statue in English. It is crystal clear: Christ the Redeemer. Of course, English-speaking world calls the city "Rio de Janeiro"! So: "Category:Christ the Redeemer (Rio de Janeiro)" is the most-fitting name. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 09:04, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The concern is not so much this statue, but that people use the equivalent of "River of January" as it occasionally happens. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:09, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Should that also be renamed to Category:Mga sementeryo ng militar sa Pilipinas? I think this is a strawman argument. That category name is not the official name or proper name of an actual entity unlike "Libingan ng mga Bayani" and so would run afoul of Commons:Language policy. —seav (talk) 08:47, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The argument from MGA73 seems strange, but it's true that "Heroes' Cemetery in the Philippines" could suggest that it isn't a specific cemetery, but a class.

"in the Philippines" as a disambiguator is unusual, possibly incorrect. Enhancing999 (talk) 08:55, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The question was "Is renaming categories with an English name to local language names a good idea?" And I think not. I think in general it is best to use English names if there is one. For example "Denmark" not "Danmark" and "Statue of the Little Mermaid (Copenhagen)" not "Statuen af Den Lille Havfrue (København)". You can always find cases where the name can be discussed and in these cases just leave the name the creator have chosen. --MGA73 (talk) 09:14, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

(1) The problem was the sample didn't quite match the question. If there is an actual name that can be referenced and that is in use, not a "river of january"-thing. (2) Your argument is about classes of objects, not specific objects. (3) there are casses where we don't use English names even for classes: Category:Betula pendula etc. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:23, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose The default language for Commons is English for good reasons, some of them well outlined by others here. The best idea, is to put alternative names, in however many languages into Wikidata. Broichmore (talk) 11:07, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
•  Oppose There are many situations where the "local language" may not reflect the majority of people talking about it. Take Category:Vatican City for instance. We could call it Category:Città del Vaticano or Category:Civitas Vaticana but the problem is that the Vatican city is a location with many international visitors and discussion. This would add a lot to confusion without adding much. We don't need to translate the name, but in more international locations this could cause major issues. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 16:38, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Conclusions + proposals + questions

• The question is: Is it allowed to rename categories with an English name to local language names?
• Answers:
  • Local language names are OK for category names if:
    • there is no English name, or
    • there is a redirect from the local language name to the English name or
    • it meets the criteria of Commons:Categories#Category names (names for which the non-English name is most commonly used in the English language).
  • Categories with local language names are doubtful if:
    • it is not about a proper name, but about something else, like a function: Category:Taoisigh (prime ministers of Ireland) and Category:Chancellors of Germany (prime ministers of Germany) are in the rest of the world known as prime ministers. Though these local words may be well known in the UK, they are not in most of the rest of the world and they certainly do not meet the Universiality principle, which says that "Identical items should have identical names for all countries and at all levels of categorization."
    • names are hard to translate into English (then they should at least be transcribed to Latin script).
  • It is not OK if:
    • there was no CfD for (there was no CfD for this case)
    • the name is not in the language that has the most chance of being searched for (in this case that is English)
    • the name is not in Latin script.
  • Another solution is to put alternative names, in however many languages, into Wikidata.
• Category:Heroes' Cemetery in the Philippines should not have been renamed to Category:Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Proposals

1. Revert the renaming of Category:Heroes' Cemetery in the Philippines and let the local category have a redirect to the English one.
2. Try to include the conclusions of this discussion in Commons:Categories.

@B25es, Seav, Geohakkeri, Jmabel, Nakonana, Adamant1, Enhancing999, Prototyperspective, MGA73, JWilz12345, Broichmore, and Immanuelle:

• Do you agree with the conclusions?
• Do you agree with the proposals?

--JopkeB (talk) 15:29, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I thought we don't want "River of January" type of translations (easy to do)? The question for a reference for the past name of the category seems still unanswered. We do have it for the current category name (even in the category). We do seem to agree the "Category:Cemeteries in the Philippines"-category should remain in English.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 15:35, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

• I think there is a big difference between "allowed" to rename and "a good idea" to rename. I understand "a good idea" as "we should" rename. I'm from Denmark and we have Category:Copenhagen and I think it should be left alone because there are more readers that know the city as Copenhagen than København. But if someone had named the category "Buy a harbour" then I would ofcourse agree that the original name was better just like I think "River of January" should be renamed.

I think both the conclusions and the proposals are fine. But I also live happily with the new name. Just don't start a mass rename of thousands and thousands of categories just to get local names. --MGA73 (talk) 16:01, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

• Both conclusions and proposals make sense.
  Some understanding has to be used regarding those of us that not being proficient enough in English ignore how to say some things in English. Some categories written the best we can will pop up.
  Also when things may have an English name but it is not widely known even among native English speakers themselves, category names may be not as perfect as desired.
  I do appreciate when categories I have created are properly Anglisized, but category redirects from other languages are of great help.
  A long term plan/idea/intention to have something like Wikidata's Qs, where somebody writes iron, my wife reads hierro, and someone in Dodoma reads chuma, would be great. B25es (talk) 17:25, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 10:22, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I certainly disagree with the conclusion that we should call the Chancellor of Germany the "prime minister of Germany". The term "Chancellor" dates back at least to the 1870s (and may have been used in Prussia before that, I'm not sure). It is simply the correct word in English (the German being Kanzler). The Germans do not use the word Kanzler to refer to comparable positions in other countries (e.g. they would not refer to the Prime Minister of the UK as a Kanzler, they would use Premierminister. It is simply not the same title, even if the role is similar. - 19:11, 30 August 2024 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmabel (talk • contribs) ‎‎ (UTC)

Maybe chancellor would be an appropriate term for historical figures who traditionally called that, but I don't anyone outside of Germany uses the term these days. Like I know Hitler was called a Chancellor in Germany during World War 2 but if I do a search for him Google there's plenty of sources, including Google's information panel that calls him a Prime Minister. But then conversely the Wikipedia article for the role is called "Chancellor of Germany." So...There should be some standard and at least IMO Prime Minister makes more sense for our purposes if for no other reason then universality. I don't think it would make sense or work if he had diifferent terms for political appointees based purely what they are called locally regardless of if there's a universally recognized term for the role or not. Categories mainly (if not completely) exist as a way to organize images and naming them based on universality is clearly the best to do that regardless of if its 100% acccurate in every single instance. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:41, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

"Chancellor Angela Merkel" (in quotes) gets 1,880,000 Google hits. "Prime Minister Angela Merkel" gets a mere 5,940. Rather more recent than Adolph Hitler (also held the office rather longer), I'd say a 30:1 ratio suggests that the term is quite current. And since both "Chancellor" and "Prime minister" are specifically English-language, this should be specific to English. - Jmabel ! talk 21:59, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: With Hitler it's 60,600 results for "Chancellor Hitler" versus 6,550,000 for "Prime Minister Hitler" and as I've already said that's even with him being called Chancellor in Germany at the time. So it clearly depends. You'd have to agree it would be pointless to argue about which term should be used used based on who the particular head of state was at the time. "Well, my German head of state has 6 million results on Google for Chancellor and yours only has 60 thousand for Prime Minister. So clearly the category should be named 'Chancellor'!" Not to say you'd do that, but I do think it's a case where it would just be better to go with the university principle instead of trying to determine how to name the category based on a game of one upmanship over who's favorite term for a head of state gets more results on Google Search. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:47, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: I'm pretty sure you didn't use the quotation marks in doing that Google search. Obviously, Hitler would often be mentioned on the same page as some prime minister. But with quotation marks I get and 59,700 for "Chancellor Hitler" and only 9,440 for "prime minister Hitler", and even the latter include some more-or-less false positives: right near the top I see things like, "To the British Prime Minister, Hitler complained…" or "On May 13, 1940, Churchill gave his first speech as. Prime Minister. Hitler invaded France…" - Jmabel ! talk 23:23, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Weird. I thought I had. It looks like I probably left out the leading quotation mark though. My bad. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:26, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

If we are insisting that we use strict English for the cemetery in question (despite the Tagalog name being extensively used in English sources [see above]), then there is still the question of which English translation should be used. Should it be the original "Heroes' Cemetery", or "Cemetery of Heroes" or "Cemetery of the Heroes"? All three are acceptable English translations of the official name, but I prefer any of the two latter names as these more closely resemble the official name (this is like preferring "River of January" instead of "January River" for Rio de Janeiro). As for disambiguation, do we append "in the Philippines" as with the original category name, or use a parenthetical "(Philippines)" which seems to be the convention? —seav (talk) 22:32, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

At least in regards to the first part of your message, probably the best way forward at this point would be to revert the edit that changed the name and then someone can open a CfD to figure out what the best option is from there. It's pretty clear from this that the name shouldn't have been changed without there being a CfD first though and at least IMO figuring out what is to go with instead is probably out of scope of this conversation. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:55, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Adamant1 about reverting. And, @seav, I intended "River of January" as a reductio ad absurdum, not a serious proposal. In English, the city in question is universally called either "Rio de Janeiro" or just "Rio". This is never turned into English words. - Jmabel ! talk 23:29, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I know that "River of January" wasn't a serious suggestion, but I simply used it as an example of which of several possible English translations ought to be used if we are translating a name. — seav (talk) 00:39, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't think anybody tried to do a literal translation of "Rio do J.", but occasionally I come across similar ones, where it's likely that Commons is the sole source for that name. I could name one or the other, but I don't want to embarrass the user who did try to do so. If you find a bad translation of mine, feel free to cite is as a negative example.

Obviously, I don't think there is an issue to provide a literal translations in the description.

For the cemetery, I agree we should have a proper discussion on CfD, especially as the previous name was the result of one.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:51, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

In the UK, the German prime minister is always referred to as the chancellor, as is his Irish equivalent the Taoiseach. Broichmore (talk) 13:18, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

In passing, I've just looked at Category:General Wali Kothi, who would believe this is actually a building aka Star house, Tara Khothe, Tara Khothee, andd Lucknow Observatory. There will be other names and spellings too. Never mind the Hindi variants, and counting. You can bet your bottom dollar, that the locals call it Star House, or the old Observatory, terms not officially used since 1947.

Almost every Indian category suffers from the same malaise, and exemplify reasons why, English is the standard here. Broichmore (talk) 13:26, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

•  Comment, personally, I think that the solution is really simple, we need to reform the way category redirects and title displays work on a technical level. We simply change Wikidata's notability guidelines to include any and all Wikimedia Commons categories, then integrate each and every Commonswiki category with Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons (SDC), then have a robot automatically create redirects based on alternative names in different languages based on what is listed in Wikidata, then make title display names based on the settings of the viewer. Congratulations, now the Wikimedia Commons is truly a multilingual project rather than an Anglocentric one.

How do we prevent vandals from deliberately adding wrong terms and / or insulting words and phrases in translations? Simple, we limit who can add these translations, it's a special but very easily acquired new right at Wikidata that any administrator could bestow upon someone based on either a local (at Wikidata) or Commonswiki endorsement.

How do we integrate this at every level? Simply upgrade the MediaWiki Upload Wizard to properly integrate category redirects like Cat-a-lot already does, this way redirects become useful and someone can theoretically only ever contribute using French or Japanese without ever seeing a single word in English and not even notice that the Wikimedia Commons is in a language that they don't understand.

These changes would solve a lot of issues overnight, all we need is for Wikidata to slightly adjust its notability guidelines (something user "Mike Peel" and I have been advocating for for years), then the rest can be 90% (ninety percent) done by robots, and humans can simply do quality checks and focus on more important things like finding educational content and checking if that educational content is licensed in a free way. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:40, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

This is probably a hot take but I've been a fan of how people use redirects for essentially everything on here. There's a point where it just kind of defeats their purpose and usefulness if everything is redirected multiple times and with multiple different variations of the word, concept, or whatever. Like create a redirect for something that clearly needs one, but do we really need redirects for every random misspelling of a name or redirects for every name in every niche language on the planet? Probably not. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:58, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Every misspelling rather not, but "reasonable" alternative yes. That would definitely solve most category issues with "Lenin Street", "Lenina Street", "Ulitsa Lenina" and "улица Ленина". Wikidata entries don't usually have all that many alternative spellings listed. Even if we would just use an English category name and one native language name for a category, that would already help a lot. Nakonana (talk) 18:47, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Insofar as additional spellings are valid, adding them to Wikidata is helpful all around. - Jmabel ! talk 18:55, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Where do I sign? Nakonana (talk) 18:48, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

August 23

{{Large image}}

What file size on commons is now regarded as being very ‘’high-resolution’’, and should, therefore, be marked with {{Large image}}? Does this vary by file type. Broichmore (talk) 13:08, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

This is a good question... Some years ago, files with 50 megapixels were considered large. Today, I would see large images as images with higher resolutions than the common ones (70 megapixels and more), of course with respective level of details. AFAIK "large" refers to the amount of pixels, not to the file sizes in MB, GB or whatever --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:42, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Would that advice apply, anywhere in the world? This is the image that raised the question. It's less than 21 megapixels. I find it, just a tad slow if you fully open it up, where I am (UK). However it presents no problems on wikipedia, or the front end of commons. Broichmore (talk) 10:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I would say, yes. When we compare this 21 MP image to the largest 5 or 1 %, then this image is of course not large (I would not consider it as large), and the largest 5 % are. As it is a JPEG, the filesize is also not large. If it is a TIFF with 32 bits per channel, then it may qualify as large image. Of course, having a low internet connection, it may take long to load, but the larger ones take longer of course. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I'd put the line on photographs at over 50 MP or over 65 MP. Modern phones, even cheap ones, frequently have 50 MP cameras, and 100 or 200 MP sensors in smartphones seem to work best when taking 50 MP or smaller pictures.. Even professional cameras top out at 60 MP, with the exception of $4K Fujifilm cameras or $35K Hassleblads. So that's the line between normal photo and multi-shot merges or extremely high end equipment, IMO.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:19, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't take the 50MP thing at face value. My phone has a 50MP camera and it's impossible to take sharp pictures with. I suspect they're basically just upscaled versions of the default 12MP camera, which does take sharp pictures. ReneeWrites (talk) 18:17, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Isn't this about browsers freezing not actually image size? I dont think it should matter what the average image size is, only what does or does not freeze a browser. I guess someone should test various sizes and see. Bawolff (talk) 17:15, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

August 27

Thank you to all the 2024 Summer Olympics photographers!

And this is my first "Quality Image" here on Commons. --FreCha (talk) 12:03, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you to all the Commons contributors who went to the 2024 Summer Olympics, took pictures and uploaded them to Commons! Thanks to your work, a lot of Wikipedia articles now have photographs of events and sportspeople. These contributors are: @Aeltegop, @AlSepPhoenix, @Anthony Levrot, @Bruno Barral, @Chabe01, @Citizen59, @Daieuxetdailleurs, @DarDarCH, @Eponimm, @Felouch Kotek, @FreCha, @GFreihalter, @Grunn050, @Ibex73, @Jmmuguerza, @Kuberzog, @Kyah117, @Like tears in rain, @Lomita, @MFonzatti, @Nicolas22g, @Pronoia, @Ruyblas13, @Rz98, @Sebleouf, @Superbenjamin, @Titlutin, @VVVCFFrance, @Xenophôn, @Xfigpower, and @Zen 38. And I've likely missed a few. Feel free to add to them to this thread. Cryptic-waveform (talk) 13:40, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

You're welcome. --FreCha (talk) 17:42, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Didn't have any effort to do as I'm working close to it. With pleasure ! Kyah117 ^{[Let's talk about it!]} 21:38, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

You're welcomeǃ Hope there will be a lot of great pictures on Commons for Paralympic Games tooǃ MFonzatti (talk) 21:00, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Massive backlogs are now the norm

Looking at Commons:Deletion requests, there are currently nearly three thousand deletion discussions that are past due for closure. Commons is teetering on being a failed project due in part to the lack of administrators. There simply is too much work for the available pool of administrators. This problem isn't getting better. It's getting worse.

So, why are we allowing new uploads to the project from anyone which just exacerbates this problem? The status quo is failing. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Category:Items with disputed copyright information is another example of backlogs. And it's hard to tell how well new uploads are reviewed. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:14, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

This is a real problem. Aside from more administrators, what do you propose? What should be done to limit bad uploads (for copyrights or other reasons)? JopkeB (talk) 15:37, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe more agressive and pro-active use of CheckUser? Trade (talk) 17:18, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

I forgot where I read it, but I think CheckUser has to be extremely rare because of the nature of the thing. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Then almost every other Wikiproject should have the same high rejection rate. Except they dont. Its just Commons Trade (talk) 20:44, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

I haven't participated in Wikipedia for at least a few years but from what I remember they have pretty high standards to. But then they also have way more users and bad actors because of that. Plus it's just seems easier to come up with evidence of socking on there. So it just makes sense that they would have a higher CheckUser rate. I know from my own experience that there's been at least a couple of times where I wanted to file a CheckUser report on here but ended up not doing one because there just wasn't enough of a paper trail in both cases to justify it. I feel like there probably would have been if it had happened on Wikipedia either time though. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:50, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

The larger Wikipedia projects are in my experience much more strict in almost all areas compared to Commons. ReneeWrites (talk) 18:12, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

There's been at least a couple of discussions lately about expanding and/or improving the criteria for speedy deletion. It seemed like none of them went anywhere at the time, but I think that would a lot with the backlog. As would making it easier for people to nominate images for speedy deletion to begin. As I guess its not an option on the side panel right now outside of clear copyright violations when it really should be. We could also use more admins, but I the standards are currently to high and I doubt they would work in that area anyway. Really you could argue current admins not dealing with deletion request is as much of or more of an issue then us just not having enough of them. There's no point in having more admins if they aren't going to work in the areas where they are most needed to begin with though. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:54, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

The backlog was much lager some month ago. If we need an urgent action we should block IP edits to prevent their spam and get time to work on deletion requests. GPSLeo (talk) 15:56, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

I had thought about that but it doesn't seem like there's any support to block IP edits on here. I totally agree that they should be blocked though. IP editors are a massive time suck in general. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:23, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

How exactly is blocking IP's supposed to help in any way? The issue is with people uploading copyvio. IP's obviously cannot upload anything in the first place Trade (talk) 17:16, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

But if we need 6 admin hours per day to check and clean up IP edits we can not use these 6 hours to handle deletion requests. It is simply a question of admin time availability. GPSLeo (talk) 17:50, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Aside from what GPSLeo says I work in the area a lot and IP editors tend to either create a lot of meritless deletion requests or troll DR discussions. Obviously it would be a lot easier to deal with the back log if there weren't as many clearly pointless deletion requests being created to begin with. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:53, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

It's a bit odd for random IPs new to Commons to be so familiar with the DR procedure Trade (talk) 20:46, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Most of the time their comments amount to something along the lines of "not own work?" Otherwise I'd agree with you. There are some times where there's clearly socking involved or the IP editor is probably a previously blocked user though. Both of which is all the more reason to block them IMO. It's purely conjecture on my part, but I highly doubt most IP editors on here are participating in the project that way for legitimate reasons. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:13, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Agree with Adamant1. I also see too often violation and other non-constructive contributions by IP adresses, also in discussions. It takes a lot of time to fix them. Why do IP's have nearly the same rights on Commons as accounts have? My proposal: Restrict their rights. They should just be allowed to read things on Commons and have no possibility for violation. They are already excluded from uploading, why not from editing as well? If they want to start or join discussions, nominate files for deletion and so on, then they should use an account, like the rest of us. JopkeB (talk) 06:36, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

The deletion requests would be much easier to close if more people participated. Trade (talk) 17:19, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Less than 3.000? Good job then, just a few years ago it used to be over 6.000. --Rosenzweig τ 15:59, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

3000 sounds like what @Yann does in a blink. ;) Thanks btw.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 20:48, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Is the problem really getting worse? As in, are the various backlogs growing faster than they're shrinking? This argument came up on enwiki with regard to unsourced articles recently and it turns out that though there are an enormous number of those, they are being taken care of faster than new ones are being created.

I suspect something similar is going on here, especially since there is over a decade's worth of files to go through. To use another backlog as a comparison point, there are roughly 128,000 uncategorized files uploaded in 2024. Which is bad, but more than 128,000 files have been removed from the uncategorized backlog from 2021 and 2023 alone. Gnomingstuff (talk) 00:24, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

" Commons is teetering on being a failed project" if backlogs mean a project is teetering on the edge of failure, the virtually all Wikimedia projects have been teetering on the edge of failure since their inception. Yes, it would be good to do better. No, this is not a crisis, let alone a death knell.

• I opened this CFD 1,983 days ago. Just sayin'. Just Step Sideways (talk) 19:45, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Do not forget you need a native English speaker who is at the same time a railway fan (not necessarily a railway expert, but has knowledge above the average) to close this discussion. I just looked at it and I can not close it. I can not say a difference between "close" and "closed" in this case. Ymblanter (talk) 21:02, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

More admins would help, the issue is really active admins. Among the 183 admins, only 129 have done any admin action during the last month, and only 64 have done more than 20 admin actions during the same period. Yann (talk) 21:10, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

A CFD is not a Deletion request, so I think it is out of scope of this discussion. CFD's cannot be closed just by administrators, but every experienced editor can do so. JopkeB (talk) 06:07, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

When deletion discussions remain open essentially forever, when backlogs remain in the thousands across a number of types, when copyright violations are allowed to sit on the project indefinitely, then yes I would call this a failed project. We are not able to effectively police ourselves, and the incoming level of problematic files overwhelms existing ability to deal with it. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:36, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

maybe you can become a com:sysop and help? would you accept a nomination? RZuo (talk) 18:55, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm not active enough. I've seen various requests here, and noted concerns about activity levels. I doubt I'd meet expectations. Regardless, adding another administrator to the mix, especially at my activity levels, isn't going to help. I have other reasons as well, but this is really getting out of the scope of this discussion. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:18, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't think we're teetering on anything, but we should all be able to agree the backlog is too big. Here's another reason it exists: DRs are often hard. Most admins aren't IP lawyers in one country, let alone every country, and there are a lot of really rough calls. Scope-based and people-based debates are also often hotly contested and difficult to assess. Beyond that, AfD on enwp is contentious and results in a lot of grief for closers, especially from newer users who don't understand the process. On commons, even many of the experienced users (or experienced users from other projects) routinely misunderstand the basics and make life sadder for commons admins. Back to the main point, however, there are definitely a lot of DRs that aren't that complicated which wait a long time to be closed, too, so more admins would help, at least. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  17:59, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

The same thing applies to CfDs. It just took me 2 days to deal with 4 of them because they all involved moving thousands of files and deleting hundreds of categories. Then there's ones that are extremely simple and can be closed in a couple of minutes. But its near impossible to deal with the later to any meaningful degree because of the time it takes deal with the former. Then there's a bunch that are clearly just complex to deal with for whatever reason. But its such a big mishmosh. Anyway, these things don't really scale. For them to be managable you'd need to have everyone on here participate and inforce clear time limits on how long the discussions can be open for. As well as cnsistantly keep the back logs down to a week or two. Otherwise its just going to be an unworkable mess. Its hard to say something should be closed a certain way after a week or two when it has a low turn out and an unclear outcome though. Sometimes it takes years just for someone to comment. So I don't know. There really is no single, easy solution. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:46, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Just adding an example to go with my "DRs are often hard" comment above. I started looking through the oldest DRs and saw Commons:Deletion requests/Files in public domain featuring various Indian film artists post-1945. Taking action on that DR would involve a few dozen images and an understanding not just Indian copyright or US copyright but the interplay between the two. Even if we get more admins, the number of people who would feel confident weighing in on something like that are very few. Let's not have a discussion here about the correct outcome, though -- I'm just highlighting that these are hard, and while the act of closing a discussion may not take much time, attaining the level of understanding required to parse such a case would be very time consuming. It's no wonder nobody wants to do it. I wonder if there's a potential project for the WMF to undertake that would effectively create charts like COM:HIRTLE for media published outside the US and uploaded to Commons. Maybe even an interactive tool. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  20:56, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I think for reusers and uploaders the open request signals there is a complex issue. Highly problematic uploads get nuked within hours.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 22:15, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Reredos or reredoses?

We have Category:Reredos and a number of subcategories; many of the latter used to use "reredoses", but have been renamed.

Wiktionary and a number of other online dictionaries give the plural as "reredoses", and not "reredos". Which should we use? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:54, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Google gives only 17,200 hits for "reredoses" vs. 221,000 for "reredos". For Spanish it is 166 vs. 12,900 (which suggests that plural is very uncommon in its native Spanish; for English 23,000 vs. 321,000, so apparently it is actually more common for English-speakers to pluralize it this way.

Make of that what you will. I suspect that a prescriptivist would favor reredoses; I am not sure I've ever actually heard anyone say that rather than just use the singular form when they mean the plural. Then again, every time I need to distinguish reredos and retablo, I need to look it up. - Jmabel ! talk 00:36, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Thats two of us that think reredos is both singular, and plural, if that's the case then wikitionary needs updating. The OED doesn't specifically give a plural. A few examples imply it is both. The billets were heaped against the reredos, or plate of iron fixed against the back of the chimneys. In practicality there is only one for every item, be it an altar, a brazier, backing of a fireplace, a rood screen, or rear of an army. I've queried it with the OED. Regarding useage for in the 1600s it gives a variant of reredoes. I would leave it as reredos.Broichmore (talk) 12:26, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

How many of the 221,000 G-hits for "reredos" are for singular uses? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:03, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

No way to work that out. But I think the Spanish-language result is more revealing: only 166 uses of this supposed plural in the native language of the word. - Jmabel ! talk 18:46, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

But I think the Spanish-language result is more revealing: only 166 uses of this supposed plural in the native language of the word: Reredos isn't a Spanish word: the Spanish word is always retablo. Being a native Spanish speaker, I've never heard or read it in Spanish. All mentions to reredos in retablo Spanish Wikipedia article are English words (citations or etymology). Multilingual English Wiktionary only includes reredos for English language. As for retablo, the plural is retablos and is very commonly used. MGeog2022 (talk) 19:06, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

@MGeog2022: Ah, you are right: reredos is originally French (and originally had an a in front of it); I always mis-assumed it to be of Spanish origin. And I do see now that Spanish doesn't make the reredos/retablo distinction. Not a word that I have much day-to-day use for, not being a Catholic (or even a Christian), and I guess if I ever used it in Spanish no one corrected me. So my Google counts above are irrelevant, my apologies. (I still say reredoses doesn't exactly slip off the tongue, but I guess I won't object if there is a consensus to use it.) - Jmabel ! talk 19:26, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

And I do see now that Spanish doesn't make the reredos/retablo distinction: that's just why I was so surprised when I learned that English made this distinction :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 12:28, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

August 28

Uncategorized categories, except infobox

Report Special:UncategorizedCategories provides additional information to Special:UncategorizedCategories. Ideally it would be updated daily. Regular updates seem to make it easier to maintain it.

Report UncategorizedCategories with infobox has categories that don't appear there as they are in Category:Uses_of_Wikidata_Infobox_with_no_item, meaning, there is only an empty {{Wikidata Infobox}} on the category, but no other parent categories. Eventually the two reports might be merged.

For both Intro Special:UncategorizedCategories lists ways to take care of these categories.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:28, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Awesome! This is very useful. It implements one part of the two I requested here. Could you also create a report for categories with only redcategories? Then all categories practically without categorization would show up on some report. A next step thereafter I think would be to have some bot identify cats missing cats and making e.g. Suggested Edits category suggestions, for example using data of the corresponding WP article in a way that makes these suggestions constructive. Such bots would be especially useful for experienced users adding categories to the categories on these reports and greatly reduce the time required for that and the backlog size.

Some change proposals:

• could you rename "top users" to something like "users creating most uncategorized categories"? (this feature also ties in somewhat with the gamification-like feedback mechanisms discussed here)
• it would be good to link to these reports from here and other places where Special:UncategorizedCategories is linked from
• it would be good to link to these reports from Special:UncategorizedCategories itself

Prototyperspective (talk) 12:46, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. Feel free to link the reports from places you think it's useful. I made an edit request to add it to Special:UncategorizedCategories at MediaWiki talk:Uncategorizedcategories-summary.

For actual implementation of additional reports, you might want to use Commons:Bots/Work_requests. Special:WantedCategories exists and seems to be long (5000 categories wanted 14 and more times). It also has the advantage that it gets updated when a category is created.

Maybe Category:Pages with coordinates also includes categories that aren't categorized otherwise. Possibly a few other categories are similarly suboptimal.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:01, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Briefly, as for Special:WantedCategories those only show the redcats but not categories with only redcats. This is very different and doesn't really address the same problem but if it did then in a very different way. For example, many of these cats only have a nonexisting category that is used only once (namely in that category) while this shows the top XYZ by number of use and currently only shows categories with at least 14 items. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:14, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh, something like this (except that 4 of 13 exist).
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:21, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

That's a separate subject and not necessarily a problem. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:24, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

If it's something else, do you have a sample?
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:26, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

It's categories that have nothing but nonexisting categories. I don't have an example now but could add one if I find one but I'd suggest simply categorizing a category missing categories in such a way for a test-case. There's many of these. Also note that categories having nothing but nonexisting categories and Wikidata infobox meta categories should also show up in some report. The two examples I listed here (this and this) apparently are not included in your report so I think it still needs further work so it also includes these. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:34, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh, it seems with "nonexisting categories" you mean categories that have the "hidden category" attribute set (visible on the second line). Generally all categories that are not topical categories. Category:Sinauli has four such categories (Uses of Wikidata Infobox, Uses of Wikidata Infobox with no image, Uses of Wikidata Infobox with maps, Pages with coordinates). The infobox sets 3 of them, MediaWiki the last one.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:40, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

No I don't!
The categories it has are all just meta categories set by the Wikidata Infobox and I thought that's what your report is about. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

The second report is about empty infoboxes only.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:47, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, all the samples I looked at didn't have any normal categories so can this report also be used for that and if not the title of the report is flawed and doesn't match what the report is about. It could be named "Report UncategorizedCategories with empty infobox" but I'd suggest changing it so it also shows items with non-empty infoboxes or creating and additional report "Report UncategorizedCategories with non-empty infobox". Prototyperspective (talk) 13:54, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

The intro defines the exact scope. For your request, maybe the infobox itself can determine if there are any other categories available. It's conceivable that a category with an infobox is correctly only in "hidden cats", so checking those isn't sufficient.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 14:00, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean with "isn't sufficient"? There simply are many cases like the two examples that are practically without categories / missing categories but don't show up in reports because they have a few meta-categories set by the Wikidata Infobox. If there are cases where this is fine these are very rare and one could think about what to there once there are some examples of that where one can see how such can occur and maybe how they could be excluded from the report. The infobox itself can't determine that, it can at most add or suggest a few more categories but that's basically a separate subject and doesn't solve anything. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:37, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

BTW the "last user who edited the category" may not be the one who created it. Also, for the second report, it may have been disconnected from Wikidata since the last edit.

The default sort is by page_id, meaning newer categories appear first. The categories can be sorted by last edit date.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:14, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

I'd say that the report is quite useful. Few (if any) false positives, so pretty much anything that shows up there needs some work. - Jmabel ! talk 18:48, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Updates are a bit complicated as infoboxes don't necessarily update when a category is connected to an item.

Commons:Report Special:UncategorizedCategories is now down to reasonable length (469 categories):

• only 52 categories with 10 files or more (cat_size>9)
• only recent empty categories (cat_size=0)
• most users with many creations on the list have been made aware of the issue

∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 10:03, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

August 29

Category descriptions

I'd like to establish some community consensus on what constitutes an appropriate amount/use of category descriptions. Categories that have to do with North Brabant often have large, self-referential descriptions with all manner of interwiki linking and use of external linkage that is not appropriate, for example Category:Geertruidenberg or Category:Heusden, North Brabant, or any of the places linked in the template above. Compare that to famous cities like Category:London or Category:Chicago, which have minimal descriptions by comparison.

Then there's subcategories. Category:Van Goghkerkje mentions it's at the Vincent van Goghplein 1, 4881 DG Zundert in the municipality of Zundert in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands. This information is then repeated in almost every single subcategory, including the metacat Category:Van Goghkerkje by year.

Category:Streets in Geertruidenberg mentions in the category description that this subcategory is for pictures of streets in the municipality Geertruidenberg in the province of North Brabant in the south of in the Netherlands. Category:Nature of Bergen op Zoom mentions in the category description that this subcategory is for pictures of nature and nature reserves in and around Bergen op Zoom in the province of North Brabant in the south of in the Netherlands. The category Category:Geography of Moerdijk mentions in the category description that this subcategory is for pictures of the geography in de gemeente Moerdijk in the province of North Brabant in the south of in the Netherlands.

Thousands of categories are like this, almost exclusively those in North Brabant. I'd like to start cleaning these up, but before I do I want to establish community consensus on where the line is drawn when something turns excessive so I know what to trim and what to keep.

My opinion is this:

• No repeating of information that can be found in the category name ("The category "Streets of Geertruidenberg" is for pictures of streets of the municipality of Geertruidenberg...")
• No repeating of information that can be found in an infobox
• No repeating of information that can be found in a parent category
• No external linking to personal websites, or other sites that would not be considered reliable sources on other Wikiprojects

ReneeWrites (talk) 07:36, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I guess most categories where the description would be relevant have {{Wikidata Infobox}}, which has all necessary information. Ymblanter (talk) 09:11, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe we miss something, but both Category:London and Category:Chicago currently have tons of category description, most can be found elsewhere, compared to Category:Van Goghkerkje. The later mentions an essential point that seems odd to mention without including a basic description before including stating the category name in the description itself.

Not sure how Category:Geography of Moerdijk can be compared negatively to Category:Chicago except when there is some bias involved. Stating the topic in local language(s) is fairly important.

Category:Chicago seems relatively bad as it has a large seal image in the center. It mentions "largest city in Illinois," which is marginally helpful.

A nice thing about Category:London is that it has that collapsed list that helps sorting. I find such Commons specific pointers fairly important.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 12:02, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I was comparing the categories of Geertruidenberg and Heusden with those of London and Chicago, the latter of which have very succinct descriptions. London's is just one line of text. This is not about the navigation templates.

My critique of Category:Van Goghkerkje is that this information is repeated in most subcategories like Category:Van Goghkerkje by year and Category:Van Goghkerkje in 1969, etc.

And I was not comparing Category:Geography of Moerdijk to any of the above categories. I was making a stand-alone critique (that applies to Category:Streets in Geertruidenberg and others) that the category description just says what's in the category name, and that this is superfluous. ReneeWrites (talk) 12:26, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Sorry about that then. Contentwise Category:Geertruidenberg or Category:Heusden, North Brabant don't compare that badly, though I don't think there should be two descriptions in Dutch and English.

If there are Wikipedia articles on the topic, references would generally not be needed. There was some discussion about this at Commons:Categories_for_discussion/2024/07/Category:Harp_Guitar_Form_3a.

The repetition at Category:Van Goghkerkje by year seems suboptimal, but that applies to the entire "by year" tree as well.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 12:52, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

There seem to be two types of descriptions (maybe one more popular than others), for a sample Category: "ABC":

• 1. "ABC" is a ..
• 2. This category is about media/photos/images related to/about "ABC", a ..

Personally, I prefer (1.), but 2. is not uncommon.

Content-wise, there are three types of descriptions about "ABC":

• 1. no description
• 2. Just repeat the title literally ("ABC")
• 3. State something about ABC

Personally, I prefer 1 or 3.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 12:38, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Ymblanter, wikidata supplies this info.

In the case, of all things North Brabant wikidata may be insufficient. I more than suspect, what you have here is an editor set in their ways since 2008, who finds Wikidata impenetrable, or even superfluous and persists without it. The cats are cluttered, I agree, and few (if any), will use these links. However, there’s no harm done here.

After all, this is supposed to be a project that anyone can edit.

I've beaten this drum about over complication, before, and I contribute to Wikidata (4000 edits), and it falls on deaf ears.

There's too much of high tech people here, making subject matter complicated and difficult to edit. I'm still waiting for Category:Gartenlaube (Magazine)'s open architecture to be restored. All new uploads there, are incompatible with the established closed off format.

Even today I discovered a source template for a major library that is no longer viable, because the library changed its catalog system rendering our source template into a link to an enormous pile of link rot. I fail to understand how people, make templates or such, then not put in place the mechanisms for continuous maintenance, or just walk away from them. Broichmore (talk) 13:21, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I think I disagree with some premises here. Respectively, to the bullet list of opinions given by User:ReneeWrites:

1. Don't forget the multilingual aspect of this. Repeating the category name in other languages can be very useful.
2. I get what you say about the infobox, but sometimes a tight piece of prose is easier to skim quickly.
3. Not everyone will be navigating down the hierarchy. I think it would be ridiculous, for example, for someone navigating up from a village to have to navigate many, many layers up the hierarchy to find out what country it is in.
4. I could perfectly well accept the last point, with one possible exception: on topics where there is a serious limitation on commercially available material, it can be useful to have a link to a trove of NC content on (for example) Flickr. Not sure whether that is even an exception, maybe more of a clarification.

I'd also add: I think somewhat longer than usual descriptions are often useful for topics not likely to get a Wikipedia article. Example: Category:Court in the Square.

Further: the main problem with the subcats of Category:Van Goghkerkje is that there are this big batch of "by year" categories, mostly with one or two photos, and with little or no differences from year to year to suggest that is a useful way to subcat this. - Jmabel ! talk 14:03, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Re. "the multilingual aspect" - surely that should be handled by Wikidata? Wikidata already has extensive support for multilingual desriptions of entities, and those descriptions should get pulled in by the Wikidata infobox. Writing those descriptions locally on Commons shouldn't be necessary. Omphalographer (talk) 19:16, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe you could explain how it should be happening for the samples where Renee writes that [Dutch] is super-flous.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 19:25, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Regarding 4, I think this is a good point and a good way to add nuance to the topic. I'm not against removing all external links, though I didn't really clarify what I meant with "personal websites", and I think the exception you mention is reasonable. The website in particular I was thinking of was https://breda-en-omgeving.nl/ which you can find linked numerous times in the categories above (6 times in Geertruidenberg, 7 times in Heusden, as well as many other categories linked in the navigation template at the top). I'll also ping @Prototyperspective: because this is relevant to a thread below. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:45, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

•  Support ReneeWrites opinion about it. Although I think Jmabel makes some good points, but I don't see them as mutually exclusive or applicable in every situation. Just to give an example from Jmabel's comment, don't forget the multilingual aspect of this, I'd say it depends on the topic of the category and what level down it is. For instance if we're talking about shoes and the person is browsing through Category:Shoes to find images of them then I don't think it's necessary or helpful to have the word "shoes" translated into every single language possible just because this is a multilingual project or whatever. It's a pretty good bet that most users know what a shoe looks like and has heard the word in English before. So there's zero reason to translate it or to have a description, in English or any other language. "Shoes are things you wear on your feet." No really? We don't need that in English, let alone 10 other languages.

Maybe you'll say that's a bad example since the category for shoes doesn't have a description to begin with though. But there's plenty of categories for extremely obvious universally known subjects out there that have totally pointless descriptions in multiple languages. So essentially I agree with ReneeWrites opinion about it. Although I think Jmabel makes a few good points, but multilingual thing shouldn't be a free pass to create descriptions that are otherwise totally pointless for whatever reason. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:22, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: Again, though, you are assuming they got there by following the category tree from a more abstract category. They could just as easily have arrived from a category on an individual photo. - Jmabel ! talk 18:51, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Sure, but if someone gets to Category:Shoes from an individual photo of something that's not a shoe then there's other problems involved that categories having descriptions or not has nothing to do with. The only way to deal with people confused about where they are in the category structure at any given time is to categorize images properly. You can't make up for or fix that by putting "chaussure" at the top of a category. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:59, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: "other problems involved" Well, yes. And if they are, for example, a Chinese-speaking editor, it would be useful if they don't have to to running way up the category hierarchy to work out that it was an error.

Some of this can be solved if there is a corresponding Wikidata item, but the more narrow the category, the less likely to have a Wikidata item, so the more important mere translation of the category name may be. - Jmabel ! talk 19:53, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I don't even disagree with that, which is why the used an extremely general topic like shoes as an exmple. It's certainly a different thing altogether the further down in the categories some goes. I'm not sure what the solution to that is but I still think ReneeWrites' proposal still makes sense with broader topics. Maybe there could be a cavit to it about how to handle categories for more obscure topics though. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:00, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

•  Support what ReneeWrites wrote. In the vast majority of cases, categories either have a Wikidata infobox that makes the subject clear (and can support multiple languages far more cleanly than Commons), or the subject is obvious from the category name. Descriptions should be reserved for categories where additional clarification is useful (eg Category:Granby station and Category:Trolley Brook Trail) and where descriptions provide important context for subjects without Wikidata items (eg Category:Central Subway shuttle trains and Category:South Ashburnham switchback). Pi.1415926535 (talk) 19:13, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

 Comment Generally agree except for the point 4. For example a link to a github repo may not be a reliable source at WP but still relevant and useful in a category about the software without a Wikidata infobox. Another problem is that several links in the Wikidata item don't show up in the infobox and something should be done about it there instead of adding a link also to official website (example: links to mediawiki.org in the "Multilingual sites"). Another caveat is that I don't know how Web search engine indexing works and that "No repeating of information that can be found in a parent category" is ambiguous – if you mean useful info that is not self-explanatory should be excluded in a category just because it's already in the parent category then I disagree (e.g. people may have gone directly to that cat from search results or a file instead of having seen the parent cat earlier). Prototyperspective (talk) 19:46, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't think Github is a very good example. A Github page isn't a personal website, and it's perfectly acceptable to use as a source on Wikipedia (there's even a template for it: Template:GitHub). Github can't be used as a source to establish notability however. ReneeWrites (talk) 08:03, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I think it's a good example because it illustrates well how websites considered nonreliable can be very appropriate and useful to have there. You agree that it can be appropriate so it's evidently a good example. That Wikipedia template is about external links, not references. I think it's used sometimes as a reference when the article subject is the software but it's not generally considered reliable. There are more possible examples like a category about some small organization linking to the organization's website and so on. There are many more cases where some website that would be considered unreliable would be very useful so at a minimum one would need to change that part, especially be considered reliable sources on other Wikiprojects, but I think it may be best if this point was removed or turned into a recommendation about what is usually (instead of always) the case. I'm still unsure what is meant with repeating info already in parent cat. However, I haven't seen any cases of such anyway but it doesn't seem like a good requirement. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:22, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

 Support Most of what has been said before. Thanks for starting this discussion. Maybe the four points of ReneeWrites just need some nuance. My remarks:

• This does not concern only categories about the province of North Brabant, but for many location categories of the Netherlands. I have seen many of those descriptions elsewhere too.
• For me they are redundant and annoying, but I am not the target group: perhaps to occasional visitors they might give useful information, especially if they are foreigners.
• To limit obvious redundant information: No repeating of information that can be found in an infobox. But then there should be a Wikidata infobox. For subcategories like "in" categories (for countries, "streets in" and so on) and years, there usually are no, and should not be either (except for when there is a Wikipedia article).
• I prefer "ABC" is a .. as well. The shorter, the better.
• I agree with Jmabel: Repeating the category name in other languages can be very useful. Ever since I discovered in an English discussion about a Dutch subject that a Dutch participant had trouble discussing in English, I translate categories about the Netherlands into Dutch (unless there is a Wikidata item or it is a "by" category). And sometimes there is more explaning to do because the English word has no equivalent in Dutch (see for instance Category:Estates in the Netherlands) or the English word looks like a Dutch one, but means something else.

So in general:

1. Every topic category should have either a Wikidata item or a description. Exceptions: if the category name is about a universally known subject (like "shoes"). In case of doubt: add a description in English, other languages are allowed too.
2. No repeating of information that can be found in a corresponding Wikidata infobox.
3. If there is no Wikidata item: Add descriptions to categories for countries that are not native-English speaking countries, preferably in their native language.
4. Keep descriptions as short as possible. Add a link to the corresponding Wikipedia article in the native language if that is appropriate (especially in case of country categories). You may add links to other relevant websites that you trust if there is no Wikidata item and the website is within the scope of Commons (no avertising, and so on).
5. Repeating of information that can be found in the category name ("The category "Streets of Geertruidenberg" is for pictures of streets of the municipality of Geertruidenberg...") should be avoided as much as possible. But sometimes it can be useful, even in this case: Geertruidenberg is a municipality AND a populated place. It is good to know for which one the category is (though it would be better to have it in the category name).

--JopkeB (talk) 07:41, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

What do you think of the samples Chicago and London?
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 10:21, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

BTW, if anyone wants to see a good example of major overkill when it comes to a category description check out Category:Louvre Museum - Room 185 and scroll down past the infobox. I assume everyone here would agree that something like that is way to excessive. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:49, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Not only is that wildly excessive, it seems like an unreliable basis for categorization. The museum can reorganize their collection; Commons shouldn't have to shuffle a bunch of categories around (or argue about what objects used to be where) when that happens. Omphalographer (talk) 06:15, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Category instructions

There are descriptions, but sometimes instructions are also usefull. Examples: Category:Rail vehicle doors: Please place images of closed train doors only if they are prominent. All passenger trains photografed from the side have train doors. There are subcategories for open doors. Other example: Category:Rail vehicle sliding-plug doors: The door slides outside the vehicle by closing is pulled in at the last moment inside (plug). There is no supporting structure outside the dooropening and a closed door is flush with the vehicle surface. animation and rail door systems. This category is sorted by country. (Spain and Sweden under the letter 'S'). Train material door types can be determined as soon as there are enough good examples of 'open' doors to classify. In the Commons the definition of train doors is broader than in the NL article nl:Treindeur. Outside doors not used by passengers are excluded (for example drivers or loading doors) or aisle doors.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:45, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

French summer camp

• 
• 

These are children travelling to summer camp in organized fashion. The parents drop of the children at the station. Are there any categories for children traveling in groups?Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:31, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

This cerainly falls under Category:School trips, supervised by teachers. Broichmore (talk) 11:19, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Not certain schools are involved. Quite a lot of organisations organize this in France (School kids have long vacations, the parents not so long): ucpa ufcv.fr capjuniors Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:29, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Probably calls for some broader new category that would be somewhere under Category:Travellers and would have Category:School trips as a descendant. I agree that these are not typically school trips. This hypothetical new category should probably be broad enough to also include evacuations of children such as Category:Kindertransporte. - Jmabel ! talk 13:51, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Organized children's trips? Trip, in the UK, would include the equivalent of summer camp. The original question was about a Summer camp, which is a destination, so travel, in this case. It's still a school trip, unless there is more background to change it. Broichmore (talk) 16:32, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

A school trip in the middle of the summer holidays? Sounds unlikely to me. Also, requiring the children to wear a piece of clothing that makes them easily recognizable in a crowd is something I have for more often encountered with summer camps than with school trips (the teacher being "expected" to be able to recognize their students). So, for me, this would rather be a category under Category:Summer camps in France. (Kudos for taking pictures of people actually using the Lorraine-TGV train station, especially with it being as remote as it is!) Poslovitch (talk) 19:50, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

When I was in the station, the guides where calling out the names from a list for the children to present themselves. So not school teachers. I asked the station staff and this station is often used for groups. Very accessible by road (highways) (And they dont have to drive to a centre of a congested town) There are public transportation buses going to the station, but these are little used. I myself travelled with a bus from Luxembourg city (minibus with 8 places and obligatory reservation) By the way the SNCF has a guided travel service for children travelling alone. They are dropped of by a parent/relative and on the destination picked up by another parent/relative (whose identity is checked). A service appreciated by parents.Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:02, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

The children are waiting for the TGV5470 (10:40 departure) to Rennes. This train stops at every station on the high speed line from Strasbourg to Massy TGV and then only stops at Mans and Rennes. The final destination is probably somewhere along the Atlantic coast. I put the pictures into Category:Summer camps in France. In the category there are no pictures of playing children, but only old buildings. I suspect that the European privacy rules and protection of children rules make pictures unavailable for the commons. Parents have to give permission to take group pictures of their child. There are more pictures of child activity in Category:Summer camps in the United States.Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:11, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

"people wearing an identital cap and travelling as a group" looks like a kind of group tour (package tour). RZuo (talk) 00:03, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

When questioning "own work"

I see images tagged with {{No permission since}} when clearly the issue is "I don't believe this is 'own work'." Shouldn't we have a distinct tag for that? - Jmabel ! talk 21:51, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

+1 I've noticed this as well. It is currently the closest to correct tag that we have, but it's still not really correct. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:58, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

How about {{No source since}}? An obviously invalid claim of own work fits the description of "...appears to have an invalid source listed". I agree that a more specific template would be helpful, though - something along the lines of "please update with the correct source/license, or send permission to VRT if it's really your own work". Omphalographer (talk) 01:03, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I view {{No source since}} as having more or less the same problem (though per the phrase you cite, a bit less so). I still think a more specific template would be better, since this particular situation comes up so often. - Jmabel ! talk 04:52, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps some template like "dubious source" could be even better, since there could also be misattributed files to other sources (source present in the file page, but it isn't the true source), not only for own works. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:24, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I'd be OK with that; no reason for the template to be specific to "own work". - Jmabel ! talk 17:04, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

That sounds good -- DaxServer (talk) 17:57, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

The semi-speedy deletion templates should only be used for obvious cases that are recent uploads. For the "I don't believe this is 'own work'.", a regular deletion request should be used. Multichill (talk) 12:03, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

August 30

inconsistent database state

Hi, source Category:Files with coordinates missing SDC location of creation (49° N, 11°E) was moved (in May 2024) to target Category:Files with coordinates missing SDC location of creation (49° N, 11° E) by User:Multichill, but there are still >50000 files shown in the source category. Strange enough, this is not reflected by the file description, where the target category is shown, nor is a move reflected in the version history, e.g. [6]. A miracle I don't understand. A touch / nulledit helps to remove misscategorized files. Is there a way to fix this in a bulk operation for all files? Can someone fix this issue? best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 08:10, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

It's usual for categories added by templates or mediawiki itself.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 10:18, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Ok, the behaviour is caused by {{Location}}. And it's usual, that the cache invalidation will happen within 4 months when changing templates. But it didn't. I prefer a solution over an explanation. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 11:33, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

It's a question for WMF.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:35, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Herzi Pinki: Working on 50,796 files with COM:AWB applying {{subst:void}} at ~15-30/min (with time off for RL)...   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:31, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

There isn't just one such category: Special:WantedCategories.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 14:48, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Enhancing999: Can anyone do this with touch.py?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:28, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the solution Herzi Pinki is asking for, as they state it in their question.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 15:39, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Enhancing999: Either is "a bulk operation for all files".   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:45, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I can also write a phab-ticket to the database admins, not sure, whether this will help. Jeff G., thanks for your try but even with AWB this will take days for all categories that Enhancing999 mentioned. I will try touch.py. Herzi Pinki (talk) 16:06, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I managed to run touch.py (via pwb.py touch), but I'm slow (sleeping 10 sec. between each touch). Will take approx. 14 hours for Category:Files with coordinates missing SDC location of creation (53° N, 4°E). anything that can be done better? --Herzi Pinki (talk) 16:10, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

ok, pwb.py touch -pt:1 makes it faster. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 16:25, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Enhancing999: All such categories have now been addressed. VFC is faster than AWB for things it can do, but only on files.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 10:10, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

@Herzi Pinki:  Done, finally. Along the way, Windows decided to reboot and AWB displayed "stopped" and had to be killed. I finished with VFC, but the 100 limit is painful to get around and it no longer displays a visual indication while it is processing and no longer auto-activates "more" at the bottom.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:10, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

one touch per second works, even two jobs in parallel (meaning 2 touches / sec). We have about 1390000 entries in categories listed in Special:WantedCategories. Root cause is the change by User:Multichill on 8 May 2024 [7]. Touching all the 1.4 millions files will take 1400000/60/60/24 = ~16.2 days (1 per sec). --Herzi Pinki (talk) 21:49, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T373722

It seems that recurring changes to Module:Coordinates do not trigger the invalidation of cache. But a change in {{Location}} might (as a workaround). Anybody with admin rights who dares to make a nulledit on this template? best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 22:17, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Herzi Pinki: That template is currently transcluded 28,638,450 times. Template Editors are also allowed to edit it, but "edits should be kept to a bare minimum" after discussion on the talk page Template talk:Location.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 01:08, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: yes I know all that, but if we don't fix problems, because of such performance guidelines, we are doomed. btw, I think something is wrong with the statement of the category, that SDC location is missing. I made a few samples, and all had SDC coordinates. So maybe there is just a flaw in the implementation of these maintenance categories. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 07:27, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Did you check that coordinates was in same property (location of creation (P1071)) than tracking cat function expects? Zache (talk) 08:31, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

No, never heard of location of creation (P1071). What is the difference between the location of creation (of a photo) and the camera location? Ah, it is not just coordinates. So it only makes sense, if this means the location of creation of the depicted object, a property for the vast majority of depicted objects we don't know (think of persons, where they have been created in most cases not even the parents know for sure; a work of art was created in some atelier, but not on the location of final placement). Just another maintenance category that wise men have created and nobody will do the necessary maintenance for. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 08:56, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

AFaik P1071 is most specific item of place where image has been taken (ie. position of photographer). Ie. it can be administrative area, island, building etc. It is useful expecialy when there is no known coordinates. --Zache (talk) 12:49, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@Herzi Pinki: usually it takes a while for cache to pick up, but this is quite extreme. I'll have a bot flush it out. That will be fairly quick.

As for the usefulness: Please assume good faith for the things you haven't heard of before. We're talking about photographs here. Photographs have been taken from some location. See for example File:Grote Kerk an Vleeshal building Harlem.jpg: Here we have coordinates and location of creation (P1071) -> Grote Markt (Q1083850).

In the future this could be used for faceted search: You search for a topic, for example "church", and the search engine will give you options, like location to drill down. In this case by location Europe (Q46) -> Netherlands (Q55) -> North Holland (Q701) -> Haarlem (Q9920)

To break the chicken and the egg problem, I'm adding the location of creation (P1071) based on several sources one being reverse geocoding so that hopefully, we can do a faceted search pilot in the future. Multichill (talk) 11:50, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Multichill: thanks for caring - it seems to me that your quota is much better than mine. Thanks for the explanation, was expecting something like this. As for AGF, I'll try to trust everybody here (without much individual difference in weigth btw.), but if things get contradicting, I'm lost. For me still it is not clear, that location of creation (P1071) (I also trust the property description) is about the photo itself and not the object depicted on the photo. Maybe you can make that clearer in the description of the categories {{Missing SDC location of creation}} mentioned here and maybe we should add something to location of creation (P1071) like most accurate place a photo was taken. May I mention, that openstreetmap nominatim can do this mapping of coordinates to place names out of the box. best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 12:59, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

mostly done by collective endeavour. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 18:55, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Old version of the picture should be a separate file

Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:37, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

The overwritten version is also a good picture of the same locomotive and place.

overwritten version

@Smiley.toerist: see Commons:History_merging_and_splitting#History_splitting --Herzi Pinki (talk) 09:14, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Why bring it to our attention? Both images are uploaded separately, and correctly per COM:OVERWRITE, they are both catted in Category:Midi E 4100 → SNCF BB 4100. The uploader had uploaded both in 2011, but initially had overwritten the other in error, and re-uploaded both in 2011 to correct that. Since then catting has varied, because they have been treated separately, they were never linked, which I just did. So there's nothing to do here.

Meanwhile, I have found an established and prolific uploader who has violated :COM:OVERWRITE., probably 100's, perhaps a 1000 times, unchecked since early 2019. What to do about that? Broichmore (talk) 12:12, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

File:BB 4162 au dépot de Miramas (BdR) en Septembre 2010.jpg looks more like a glitch. The two versions were uploaded in the same minute and only one appears in the file history.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 12:20, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, but fixed the next day as you say. Broichmore (talk) 12:27, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: The images are catted as being in the station, but they are actually in a local depot? Broichmore (talk) 12:36, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

There is a whole railcomplex in Miramas and probably a local depot. It has an turntable but no building around it. In https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=standard&lat=43.581970504642214&lon=4.993975460529327&zoom=18 I see a smaal depot with two tracks.Smiley.toerist (talk) 20:55, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

August 31

Disambiguating categories

From what I've seen there appears to be two or three main ways that categories are disambiguated at this point. Usually it's done by using brackets or a comma, but I've also seen them disambiguated using other symbols. For instance the Russia symbol for "<" and "<." Having multiple ways of doing it seems to go against the universality principle. Plus at least with commas they aren't super intuitive since plenty of normal names contain commas. Nor are they that easy to see in the first place. "John Malkovich (actor)" makes way more sense and is much easier to see then "John Malkovich, actor", "John Malkovich <<actor>>", or any of the other alternatives I've seen. So at least IMO round brackets should be the de-facto way to name disambiguated categories. Thoughts? Adamant1 (talk) 01:21, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Round brackets (parentheses) are the normal way to do this, but U.S. and Canadian place names (and, I suspect, some others) are rather universally written with commas when including the state/province. I think anyone from those countries would find it very odd to see, for example, "Columbus (Ohio)" or "Stratford (Ontario)" rather than "Columbus, Ohio" and "Stratford, Ontario". - Jmabel ! talk 01:54, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: That's probably one the few places where a comma is fine, if not expected. There's a lot of categories for streets in Germany its like "X street name, Y location" Which I don't think is a good way to do it. I don't have a problem with a comma being used for something like "city, state" as long as its the norm for similar categories. Its annoying to see a common in cases where the norm is circular brackets, visa versa, or no disambiguating of similar categories to begin with though (Its tangential, but a lot of disambiguation seems to be totally pointless in the first place). --Adamant1 (talk) 02:22, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Pretty sure Mexico also shares that North American convention. - Jmabel ! talk 01:57, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: What do you think about something like the subcategories for streets in Category:Streets in Lutsk? Would you disambiguate them using a comma, circular brackets, not disambiguate them at all, or just leave them as is with "in Lutsk" at the end of the street names? --Adamant1 (talk) 05:11, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I'd certainly want to see them consistent with one another, whatever is chosen. "in Lutsk" seems awkward, but it's also apparently what the most active categorizer here has chosen. I don't much care between comma and parentheses (circular brackets) as long as it's consistent. I'd have no objection to a site-wide standard, but we should at least be consistent within a city. Without a site-wide standard, if you really wanted to work on this for a particular city, I'd make sure to have consensus from the (presumably few) people who most work on images of that city. - Jmabel ! talk 16:18, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I changed my mind from ()-notation to comma-notation for Category:Streets in Vienna for two reasons: 1) to make names uniform and 2) acc. to Commons:Language policy category names (except proper names) have to be in English. In English for me does not only mean to translate words, but also to use the structure as it is used in :en:WP. Which is for geographical names (I consider street names as such) "Columbus, Ohio" or "Stratford, Ontario". But uniform name schemes are prior to that, and I try to follow naming schemes already found, sometimes change to the more widely used scheme. best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 13:49, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Deletion category update as a step in closing DRs?

I recently had cause to look for all DRs about a given topic and was glad to find our deletion sorting categories. I started to try to add DRs to categories but there was no easy way to choose from a list or quickly cross-reference what options are available, so I made a script which is far from perfect but works well enough for me.

What I'm surprised by are the number of DRs that are closed but still in the /pending subcategory. Why isn't changing /pending to /kept or /deleted a standard part of closing a DR? — Rhododendrites ^talk |  03:02, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

It seems like administrators don't change the categories much when they close DRs. So I'll usually do it myself if it's one that I started or was otherwise involved in. Probably their time better spent doing other things anyway and I kind of feel like it's part of the process of completing circle so to speak for whomever opened it. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:32, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I presume admins use a script when closing discussions? In which case the script could just be modified. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  03:42, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh yeah. I totally didn't think of that but your probably right. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:46, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

While I believe there is a script available for closing DRs, I doubt that is how the majority are closed. - Jmabel ! talk 17:07, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: It's an official gadget, MediaWiki:Gadget-DelReqHandler.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:21, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: Yes, I occasionally use it, but it's got its issues. - Jmabel ! talk 23:29, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Then please feel free to discuss them at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-DelReqHandler.js.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:39, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

The main problem is that it puts a bunch of action tags on any file that gets mentioned in a DR and I doubt that can be changed. - Jmabel ! talk 23:57, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Wow, that's a really weird way to do it. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:28, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: That seems to be a way of weeding out trigger-happy Admins.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 00:35, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I guess much of it has to do with the fact that when you're working with the daily DR pages (which are presenting all DRs from a given day), you don't see these categories. You'd have to load the DR as an individual page to see them and change them. Some admins do that, some don't. You can close DRs really fast when working with the daily pages and using DelReqHandler, but the categories stay untouched then. --Rosenzweig τ 12:30, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Ohhh that's a good point. Maybe what we need is (a) demonstrated consensus that these sorting categories are indeed worth maintaining, and if so then (b) update deletion nomination scripts/gadgets to incorporate categorization, plus (c) a bot which can automatically update closed DRs... — Rhododendrites ^talk |  20:59, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

[SOLVED] Upload via OpenRefine: how to include the "description" for the Information-Template

Hello! Please excuse, if this is the wrong place for this question. I am preparing the upload of ca. 1900 images via OpenRefine, and this is my first ever upload of images on Commons (and use of OpenRefine). See my User:CalRis25 for more about these uploads. I have read quite a bit on Commons and been working through the course OpenRefine for Wikimedia Commons: the basics (WMF_GLAM001) and have solved (or so I think) most problems. However, I am still somewhat at a loss as to how to supply the description for the Template:Information. According to Commons:File captions this description is not part of the structured data. But how can I tell OpenRefine (or Commons) to use a certain column of the CSV-file, which contains the respective text, as the description for the Information-template? Can anyone help me? Thank you in advance, CalRis25 (talk) 10:06, 31 August 2024 (UTC).

1. you should make test runs of small batches (10-30) to check if there will be errors/problems.
2. you might need to consider applying for a bot account.
3. Commons:OpenRefine/Uploading files with OpenRefine#Use simple (minimal) wikitext!?

   if what you mean is you have prepared most or all data into com:sdc except the description, you could just do this {{Information|description={{en|1=...}}}} ?

RZuo (talk) 10:22, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Uploading 1900 files is nothing that requires a bot account. GPSLeo (talk) 10:34, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick answer! I am going to make a test-run with only two images, once I got this problem solved. I actually thought about including the description in the Wikitext. However, according to this Commons-page this is actively discouraged. Or do I misunderstand this page? I use a Python-script to generate the CSV-file, so changing things is not a big problem. Is there really no way to tell OpenRefine to use the content of one of the columns as the description for the Information-template? Or do you mean with {{Information|description={{en|1=...}}}} that there should be a column (separate from that with the simple wikitext) containing that bit of information? CalRis25 (talk) 10:48, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

• I made a test-upload of 1 image (see its page). The file was uploaded, but none (!) of the data I supplied (including various structured data items reconciled with Wikidata) was added. And I still don't know how to supply the Commons-description of the Information-template in OpenRefine. CalRis25 (talk) 09:07, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
• After quite a few trials I was able to create several test images. Including the description was only possible by directly editing the Wikitext. I am going to head over to the Help Desk and ask someone to have a look at the page of the test file. CalRis25 (talk) 17:56, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

September 01

Check copyright and remove if necessary

Hello, I'm sorry. I believe this image is not under permission and I'm just now realizing it. Mário NET (talk) 02:38, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Mário NET: it looks like that file page is a mess in terms of what it states, but if the image is from Adalbert Seitz (died 1938, which means PD in Germany) and was published in 1927 (which means PD in the U.S.) it should just be a matter of cleaning up the claims on the file page. And if it does come originally from the 1845 work mentioned there, then the case is even clearer. What has you concerned? - Jmabel ! talk 02:52, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I thought it would say "free copyright" in "Show Info" and it said "Copyright & Usage, Due Diligence"; so I couldn't interpret what it was. 03:18, 1 September 2024 (UTC) Mário NET (talk) 03:18, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Mário NET: "free copyright" makes no sense at all. Perhaps you are thinking "copyright-free" (meaning that there is no copyright)?

I'll try to fix the page myself, because I'm pretty sure your recent edit (which I reverted) only made this worse. - Jmabel ! talk 16:23, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Please correct me if I am wrong, but, it's not the case for public domain works such as the one here, but, for CC-licensed works, I believe that there is copyright in place, and there is a free license one (the requirement to cite the original author, or to redistribute the work under the same license, in the case of CC-BY-SA, is due to copyright law: the work's author has copyright ownership, and licenses the work to others under a CC license). So in some cases, not for public domain works such as this, but "free copyright" could make sense as a phrase. MGeog2022 (talk) 09:15, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

@MGeog2022: I couldn't fully follow some of your English, but if I follow you correctly you are describing "copyrighted free-licensed work", and I stand by my original statement. If I've misunderstood you, feel free to write in Spanish, which I read without difficulty. - Jmabel ! talk 22:25, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel, it's probably because how I chained one sentence after another, perhaps I did it in a too Spanish-like way. Yes, I'm talking about copyrighted free-licensed works, and, so, you're completely right, "free copyright" perhaps may never make sense, since there is this another way to say it. Sorry, but, some time away, I saw a misunderstanding in a Wikipedia talk page, where someone seemed to say that the mere presence of a copyright tag implied that a work could not be freely licensed, and I think it's a dangerous error, since it may lead to the removal of legitimate content, so I wanted to draw attention to it (not so much because you thought so, which seemed very unlikely, but because of others who might read it). MGeog2022 (talk) 09:23, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Wait, I'm confused, too. Where did the mention of an 1845 work come from? What is the source for that information? - Jmabel ! talk 16:35, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

This work is not from 1845, what happens is that I used a text from another image to construct this one and I didn't realize that the "1845" from the previous text had remained, I will correct that. Mário NET (talk) 01:55, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Native American fishing rights

We don't seem to have a category for Native American fishing rights (nor hunting rights, but offhand I don't have any content for that). I'm not sure how to bes get that into our category hierarchy: it's a matter of tribal treaty rights, not civil rights. We have at least File:Helix, v.4, no.5, Aug. 29, 1968 - DPLA - 841a1a68f4295fee3a912baf0c87caaa (page 9).jpg, File:Helix, v.4, no.6, Aug. 29, 1968 - DPLA - 73a8fb15a58855b090d500dba021b984 (page 4).jpg, File:Helix, v.4, no.7, Sep. 12, 1968 - DPLA - feeee1d59fc70ba359e15965679dafbf (page 6).jpg, and Category:Billy Frank Jr. that would belong there. I suspect there are a fair number of other files and possibly categories. - Jmabel ! talk 02:57, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Speedy because "File has no source" but what they are saying is "I want to see a url" instead of what is listed

@Winmyint998: See: Special:Contributions/Winmyint998 where they are sending images to speedy because the "File has no source" but what they are saying is "the source listed is inadequate". Should these images be going to speedy? A few years ago there was a problem with another editor using Speedy with: "File has no license" but what they were really saying was "I don't think this image has the correct license". Should these be going to speedy for auto-deletion and no further research, or through the regular process where the community does more research if needed? Should the normal deletion nomination process be so easy to circumvent? Should the "Speedy" be removed? RAN (talk) 07:39, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this is an inappropriate use of the speedy deletion tag and they should be converted to regular deletion requests. Speedy deletions should only be used for clear and unamibiguous copyright violations. Checking a few files that they tagged, despite lacking in sourcing the files appear to be old enough for their copyright to have lapsed in Myanmar. ReneeWrites (talk) 07:57, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Agree with RAN and ReneeWrites, but things are certainly not helped when (for example) [[User:History of the Burmese}} says source is {{Own work}}, date is three days before the upload, and the license is {{PD-Myanmar}}. Presumably it's the source and date that are wrong here rather than the license, but the source and date are not even plausible. - Jmabel ! talk 16:57, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

• If we deleted every noobie upload that used the upload date as the creation date for an historical image, we would not have many images. The new upload form is supposed to reduce those kind of errors. One of the risks of a nominator using speedy, I believe, is that you can just challenge "speedy" by just removing the tag and not forcing it to a standard deletion nomination. --RAN (talk) 00:38, 2 September 2024 (UTC)
  • Barring that the "speedy" tag is obvious vandalism, if you remove a "speedy" tag you should always start a DR. - Jmabel ! talk 03:54, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

     Done. The DR can be found here: Commons:Deletion requests/Files tagged by Winmyint998. ReneeWrites (talk) 23:31, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Question (in English) about categories in Chinese

Please see Commons:Village_pump/zh#Commons:Report_Special:UncategorizedCategories_in_zh.

I posted it there due to the (assumed) language of the categories, but it's unclear if that Village pump is actually read.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:08, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

looks like a perennial problem for chinese books.

you can dump this code on all of them whenever such categories appear in future.

{{Category for book|zh}}

[[Category:Chinese-language books by title]] RZuo (talk) 16:54, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Will do. Ideally the categories (and files) would have {{Book}} or at least an infobox.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 17:24, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

adding wdib without knowledge of the books only adds to maintenance backlog unnecessarily.--RZuo (talk) 23:29, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Abusefilter to prevent uncategorised pages？

are all pages in main and category namespaces supposed to be categorised? if so then perhaps an abusefilter can be created to prevent creation of such pages without any "Category" or "{{" in source? (pages are categorised either directly or by transcluding a template.) RZuo (talk) 11:12, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

The ones on Commons:Report UncategorizedCategories with infobox all have "{{".

To update the list I have to purge recent creations to ensure those connected to Wikidata, but without edits since don't end up there.

For files, everything just ends up in Category:All_media_needing_categories_as_of_2024. Do users still get notified when they don't categorize?
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:38, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2024-09

Volunteer staff changes

In August 2024, 1 sysop was removed. Currently, there are 183 sysops.

• User:Rubin16 was removed on 13 August due to inactivity. He had served as sysop from 14 November 2010 to 18 February 2018, and from 13 January 2021.

We thank him for his service.

Other news

• Gadget Cat-a-lot was modified to edit at a much slower rate due to website reliability problems.
• Commons:Report Special:UncategorizedCategories was newly compiled to provide a version of Special:UncategorizedCategories with more details.
• Commons:Report UncategorizedCategories with infobox was also compiled to list category pages without categories but only an empty infobox.

---

Edited by RZuo (talk).

---

Commons Gazette is a monthly newsletter of the latest important news about Wikimedia Commons, edited by volunteers. You can also help with editing!

--RZuo (talk) 23:04, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I suggest that the Commons community should take action in the event that Cat-a-lot is slowed down (effectively to the rate of 1 edit per second). I don't want to disagree with SRE-team's conclusions, but this unilateral change to the "coolest tool" has affected many users' workflows (including mine). — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 20:11, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Maybe you can propose a better implementation ? Or sprinkle some pixie dust ? As long as it doesn't cause all of Wikimedia to got down multiple times a week, any of it is welcome. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:21, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the bug was identified two months ago. Something in relation to a change WMF made to Special:Search.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 21:28, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

September 02

Announcing the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

Original message at wikimedia-l. You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

The scrutineers have finished reviewing the vote and the Elections Committee have certified the results for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) special election.

I am pleased to announce the following individual as regional members of the U4C, who will fulfill a term until 15 June 2026:

• North America (USA and Canada)
  • Ajraddatz

The following seats were not filled during this special election:

• Latin America and Caribbean
• Central and East Europe (CEE)
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• South Asia
• The four remaining Community-At-Large seats

Thank you again to everyone who participated in this process and much appreciation to the candidates for your leadership and dedication to the Wikimedia movement and community.

Over the next few weeks, the U4C will begin meeting and planning the 2024-25 year in supporting the implementation and review of the UCoC and Enforcement Guidelines. You can follow their work on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the U4C and the Elections Committee,

RamzyM (WMF) 14:05, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Help us learn about On-Wiki Collaborations

The Campaigns team at the Wikimedia Foundation is exploring how to expand it's work on campaigns, to support other kinds of collaboration. We are interested in learning from diverse editors that have experience joining and working on WikiProjects, Campaigns, and other kinds of on-wiki collaboration. We need your help:

• Take a survey about your experience with collaborations: on Google Docs
• Share examples of Collaborations or WikiProjects that have worked for you: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Campaigns/WikiProjects

Whatever input you bring to the two spaces will help us make better decisions about next steps beyond the current tools we support. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 18:53, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Japanese category

A Japanese-speaking editor is need to describe and categorise Category:Nagoya Location Navi, please.

As an aside, do we have a forum to find editors with certain language skills; or cultural understanding? On Wikipedia I would use a wikiproject, or WP:Embassy. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:32, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Could you use the Wikipedia embassy for this as well? That's what I would do, even if it's not 100% the right avenue. There are two editors listed for the Japanese language there, and BorgQueen is highly active. ReneeWrites (talk) 21:19, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but my question was whether we have a local forum. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:35, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing I described it. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 13:29, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

September 03

Have your say: Vote for the 2024 Board of Trustees!

Hello all,

The voting period for the 2024 Board of Trustees election is now open. There are twelve (12) candidates running for four (4) seats on the Board.

Learn more about the candidates by reading their statements and their answers to community questions.

When you are ready, go to the SecurePoll voting page to vote. The vote is open from September 3rd at 00:00 UTC to September 17th at 23:59 UTC.

To check your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.

Best regards,

The Elections Committee and Board Selection Working Group

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:13, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

In case you were wondering:

• the correct link seems to be: Special:SecurePoll/vote/385
• 8 candidates also contributed substantially to Commons.

 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:02, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Are amulets toys?

I am having some of the files I uploaded being proposed for deletion as toys, to my knowledge they are amulets, not toys, considered to have religious significance. Does that change things? Commons:Deletion requests/File:Okimono omikuji.jpg This overall applies to the entire category Category:Doubutsu mikuji Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 13:15, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

They are presumably not "toys", but uhey are certainly copyrightable in the U.S. I can't speak for Japan. - Jmabel ! talk 18:06, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel toys are not copyrightable in Japan. But would that mean we should delete the entire category? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 10:24, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@Immanuelle: Yes, unless the toys are licensed freely in the US.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 10:56, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I have many photos of a ship, but I do not know which one it is

In this category Category:Kyushu Yusen there are six operational ships. Of these ships, two are of one class, and 4 are of another class. I have many photos taken of and on each class, but I am not sure how to categorize them. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 13:18, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

You could add them in the categories for classes and Category:Unidentified ships.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:32, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

And it is certainly OK to create a category for each class. - Jmabel ! talk 18:07, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikiview visual search

Hi there! A colleague of mine has been working for many years on the topic of image searching. His focus is not just on finding images that are tagged with keywords, but also finding similar images for various definitions of similar. He managed to obtain 6 million images from Commons to demonstrate his technology, it is freely available at WikiView. He has tried to find someone at Commons who knows if an API for Commons exists and if it does, if it is possible to just pull new pictures and not have to pull a dump at regular intervals. It would be cool to offer this visual search (quite a different way of searching, try it!) from the home page and also to have it stay up-to-date. If you are such a person, please contact me in-wiki and I'll put you in touch with my colleague. Thanks! --WiseWoman (talk) 18:43, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

"He managed to obtain 6 million images" ... sigh. I trust they didn't clear this with anyone ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:18, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I was thinking about doing a similar thing to train an AI image generator but who knows how it work with all the different kinds of licenses on here. At least in that case the generated images would be different from the originals. It still seems questionable though to just take millions of images with different licenses and use them in a single product in mass though. I don't there's any way to follows the licensing terms for every image. Especially an in instance like this one. Let alone with an AI image generator. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:07, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't part of the project, but they did speak to someone. The problem is, that the people change and this is so difficult for people not in the Wikiworld to sort out who they have to speak with. But there is a link back to Commons when an image is found the license is clearly given in Wikiview. I believe they only used images that were usable according to the license, and that was the problem, being able to obtain new pictures but only those ones with a fitting license. The WikiWorld seems so difficult to people not active here, often because the tone is a bit rough. --WiseWoman (talk) 11:42, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Template:WiseWoman After I commented I noticed that they have a way to sort the images by license and that there's links back to the images on Commons. Both of which helps. I can understand why this would be difficult for people who aren't active in the project already. It can be a little rough and the sheer amount of different licenses with multiple variations per license based on the personal preferences of uploaders really doesn't help. I'd love to see them at least get rid personalized licensing terms. If not just the different defaults down to 1 or 2. There's like what, 7 different versions of the Creative Commons license on here at this point though? The whole things totally ridiculous. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:41, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Sounds amazing! Have a look at m:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Search Wikipedia with image or sketch search and maybe also comment on the talk page there. It didn't work so well with search terms but one can use WMC search for that anyway and it seems like the focus there is searching by image. I would suggest the asap it also shows the WMC categories by number of images in the results they contain, this way one can find relevant categories that contain more images. Also see my proposal about data dumps (and the link at the top there) which may make it possible to just pull new pictures which would also be great to improve WMC performance and reduce server load. I don't think it will be linked on the main page if it's not searching across all WMC images and is an external site but probably it could be linked at some other page not far from it – I don't know of use-cases where one would want to search by image and not via search terms or by browsing. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:21, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

They also have a tool that kind of sort of works with sketching (but used a different image collection for this one). It would be so important for the researchers in this area to speak with people at Wikimedia to sort out how to move forward on this. --WiseWoman (talk) 11:42, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

September 04

CfD for categories of nonexistent WikiProjects

Hi. I got in a little tiff with a another user earlier because I nominated some categories they created for nonexistent WikiProjects for speedy deletion. I don't really feel like relitigating it here. Except to draw people's attention to Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/09/Category:WikiProject Iran by city. Personally, I feel like it clearly violates the guidelines and consensus to create categories as part of a personal pet project for things that clearly don't exist. Apparently the user who created the categories thinks it's totally fine though. So I started a CfD to see what other people think about it. The categories seem totally pointless and unhelpful to me, but who knows. Maybe I'm missing something or there's a valid reason to keep them that I'm just not aware of. Adamant1 (talk) 08:43, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

To repeat it for fourth (!) time: these categories are not intended for existing WikiProjects, but for separating huge WikiProject Iran by particular city, although there are some individual projects like WikiProject Tehran on Persian Wiki. They serve as maintenance categories and exist for years. The issue here is Adamant1 yesterday planned to delete everything, without any proposal or discussion, making an utter mess with hundreds of related categories, so I reverted him. --Orijentolog (talk) 09:04, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

The CfD is a better place to discuss the particulars. I will point out though that Commons:Categories states "we should not classify items which are related to different subjects in the same category. There should be one category per topic; multi-subject categories should be avoided. The category name should be unambiguous and not homonymous." Maybe it's just me, but I really don't see how it isn't ambagious to have a category called "WikiProject Jahrom" when there's WikiProject Jahrom and it's just a maintenance category. I certainly thought it was a category for a real WikiProject at first. I certainly didn't know it was maintenance category for WikiProject Iran until you told me. So there's clearly some ambiguity here about the purpose of the categories and why exactly they exist. Just because it's clear to you as the person who created them that doesn't mean other people will understand it and they should. Otherwise the categories should be deleted. Period. There's absolutely zero justification what-so-ever to have categories that only make sense to the person who created them. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:13, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject Jahrom serves as a part of the WikiProject Iran and contains things related to the city of Jahrom. If it doesn't make sense to you, that's not my problem. --Orijentolog (talk) 09:27, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Then the category should be called something like "Category:WikiProject Iran in Jahrom" or "Category:WikiProject Iran (Jahrom)"; if you make categories that do not conform to our naming standards, that will very quickly become "your problem"". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:14, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: don't think I'm scared Andy, making 1,000 or 10,000 edits to correct something ain't an issue for me, and I'm a collaborative person. Only the messiness and lack of unification scares me. As I said to Adamant1 today, if there's a consensus to rename everything, I'll do it personally. I prefer keeping the status quo (yes, it's laziness!), but I would accept your proposal if others agree. Generally it's fine and I have only minor issues with it. Another thing, I don't see that strict naming standards apply to maintenance categories, there are a lot of uneven, non-English and even illiterate ones around. --Orijentolog (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't think you're scared at all. Why on earth would you say that? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:58, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: please don't take me literally, it was a jesting message that I'm always ready to massively correct my own errors. --Orijentolog (talk) 18:12, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

There are a lot of uneven, non-English and even illiterate ones around. The guideline for naming categories was improved last year (after an extremely long CfD that had more then enough support at the time BTW). So there's naturally going to be some uneven, illiterate categories at this point. It takes time to cleanup this stuff up once a guideline is changed and that's not helped or made quicker by the needless edit waring and discussion over it on your end.

More to the point, something like "Category:WikiProject Iran in Jahrom" or "Category:WikiProject Iran (Jahrom)" would be better. Although I still think the categories would be mostly pointless and not make sense. As a category like "Category:WikiProject Iran in Jahrom" still insinuates that there's a WikiProject in Jahrom or that Wikiproject Iran has a satellite group when neither one is true. If someone creates a category called "X business in Y location" then that business should have some dealings in that location or the category is fundamentally wrong. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:16, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

•  Comment Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/09/Category:Towers in Iran --Adamant1 (talk) 19:56, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Categories which should only contain media of a specific type

what have i just found 🧐

Category:Categories which should only contain media of a specific type. RZuo (talk) 11:37, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

@RZuo: This sentence no verb. (I'm not sure what you meant to discuss in this thread.) - Jmabel ! talk 12:42, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Image Annotator not working

Hi, is there a problem with ImageAnnotator ?--JotaCartas (talk) 16:05, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

OK, solved, I had "ImageAnnotator" disabled in Preferences-Gadgets, thanks and sorry for trouble JotaCartas (talk) 16:43, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

September 05

Wikitext weirdness in Commons:Editor's index to Commons

In Commons:Editor's index to Commons (a.k.a. COM:Glossary), there is some weirdness I don't quickly see how to fix. The display where the wikitext says Bots: <span id="Catbot"></span>{{Shortcut2|COM:EIC#Catbot}} surely cannot be what we want, and also can be really confusing about the alphabetical order when trying to look up anything else (looks like you are already to "COM", but actually is part of "Categories" and comes before "Censorship". Currently, I'm really tired and not at my sharpest after some travel SNAFUs. Could someone else please take a look at this? Thanks. - Jmabel ! talk 12:39, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Familytree

@Enhancing999: See: Category:Byington Ford A change was just made to collapse the family tree function in categories as the default. Now it isn't obvious that the navigation device is there. What are people's preferences? Which is the most useful? RAN (talk) 13:14, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't recall ever seeing this before and don't see the purpose of it here. If I want to know genealogical information, Wikidata and Wikipedia are appropriate for that. I guess that it's useful for navigating within the same family, but that is pretty niche and probably not something I would ever use. That said, I generally don't like auto-collapsing any actual content and the default should be for these to be uncollapsed. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:16, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

There was a bug in the classes used by the template, see Template_talk:Wikidata/FamilyTree#class="collapsible_autocollapse"_not_working. This was fixed today.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:19, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how that responds to what I wrote, but it does seem to respond to the original comment. How is what you wrote relevant to what I wrote? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:47, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

You write that you prefer it in an uncollapsed form. If you read my comment and its link to additional discussion then you discover that your preference leads to category pages being replaced by family trees. I think this response both to the original comment and yours.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 13:50, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:06, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I think it should be collapsed if it is to be included in category pages. That's not really what category pages are for, not how or where people look for such data and it hides category contents (mainly subcats and files) as well as cause UI issues. Another example. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:44, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

• The new template has been around since 2019, replacing the hand built trees that been around for a decade or more. You only see them where the person is a member of a large family such as in royal/noble lines. It isn't decorative, it is a navigation device. It sometimes is the only way to see that there is a disconnection in the family, caused by incorrect merges or the deletion of someone in the family when someone doesn't realize it has a structural need. The problem is that in the current collapsed state it is not obvious that a tree is present. --RAN (talk) 16:59, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

  The problem is that in the current collapsed state it is not obvious that a tree is present. Because the way it's wrapped into a collapsed box is having it show only the text "Byington Ford (Q5004096) [Expand]" (in this example) instead of e.g. "Show family tree [Expand]". The name is already in the cat so redundant and the Q number is not useful to the reader and also already on the page via the infobox. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:07, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

  I think "autocollapse" is the old version for collapsed state. It must have been designed to be collapsed.

  The header of the template should be improved. Merely using the name of a person and a quid doesn't really explain what it's meant to be. This isn't really better when it's expanded and covers the entire screen.
   ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 17:08, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

• See: Category:Thomas_Jefferson where consensus was to have the tree collapsed so a collapse function was wrapped around the tree, now it is doubly collapsed. --RAN (talk) 17:15, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

  Seems the problem was known, but incorrectly fixed.
   ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 17:19, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

One thing I like about the wrapper on Category:Thomas Jefferson is that it actually says "Family Tree". If that text got added in the template header it would already tell people a lot more on what the information is about before/without having to expand it. ReneeWrites (talk) 18:20, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Having it say "Family Tree" is great, having it doubly collapsed is probably something we should fix. - Jmabel ! talk 18:58, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the Thomas Jefferson example: do I understand correctly that the tree reads right-to-left, and that for the central figure there is no indication who is the other parent of their various children, nor is there any indication of legitimate vs. illegitimate offspring? - Jmabel ! talk 19:03, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh my goodness, this is heinous: now there are two collapsed boxes and you have to vertically scroll within a div?!?!? This is inaccessible and poor web design, folks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:11, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

• About the label issue, it's seems that the default text is "Family Tree (tree of ancestors and descendants)", but somehow this is overwritten sometimes by the QID. It seems that the template is just not used as designed: Sample at Category:Ulrica Christina Wellingk, the default is overwritten with |title={{Q|Q104549892}}.
   ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 19:15, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
  • Jeez. At least that could be |title={{Q|Q104549892}} family tree. - Jmabel ! talk 21:14, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

    For translation purposes, it would be better if that label came directly from the template. In the sample, |entityId=Q104549892|title={{Q|Q104549892}} could be limited to |entityId=Q104549892, if the QID isn't determined directly from the category.

    To sum it up: the following maintenance seems to be needed:

    • (1) fix the label in the template
    • (2) remove |title={{Q|Qnnnn}}
    • (3) remove the duplicate collapsing (as on Category:Thomas Jefferson)

    
     ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 08:28, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

September 06

The authorization information of two images is corrupted

The licensing information of these two images of the Moldovan Parliament Hall are damaged, but free licensing information can be found based on the image sources. Please help manually repair the licensing information, thank you!

• File:04.09.2024 Vizita Prim-ministrului Republicii Polone, Donald Tusk - 53970995746.jpg
• File:04.09.2024 Vizita Prim-ministrului Republicii Polone, Donald Tusk - 53971439265.jpg --Fumikas Sagisavas (talk) 12:23, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T374235

RZuo (talk) 12:46, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Categorizing Newspapers by date (YYYY-MM-DD)

Hi, there are a few newspaper collections here on Commons that are categorized by date, for example the Abilene Daily Reporter. Other newspapers are not categorized this way, which makes it harder to find contemporary news. With some newspapers, the amount of files is large enough that I think this work could be delegated to a bot. For starters, there is The Ohio Sentinel, with conveniently labelled files like File:Ohio Sentinel 1952-06-28 - DPLA.... Older files of the same newspaper from 1951 are less convenient: File:Ohio Sentinel August 11-August 18, 1951 - DPLA.... Then there is the Galveston Tribune with file names like File:Galveston Tribune. (Galveston, Tex.), Vol. 17, No. 100, Ed. 1 Tuesday, March 16, 1897 - DPLA.... More examples: File:Gazeta săteanului 1886-05-05, nr. 07.pdf, File:Epoca 1886-05-18, nr. 146.pdf, File:Bukarester Tagblatt 1886-05-02, nr. 095.pdf, File:Томские губернские ведомости, 1886 № 19 (1886-05-15).pdf, Journal de La Haye 03-01-1847 (IA ddd 010258178 mpeg21).pdf.

Is bot-processing feasible? --Enyavar (talk) 16:50, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

There seems to be {{Book}} (most likely) with {{{publication date}}} set to the date. Assuming it is correctly done, or corrected beforehand, a bot can easily categorize that info -- DaxServer (talk) 17:22, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Are court orders in scope for Commons?

Documents such as court orders like this are usually in PD (I hope everywhere). Are such docs in scope for us here in Commons? -- DaxServer (talk) 17:32, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

In the United States, all laws, proclamations, statutes, court decisions and opinions, etc. are all in the public domain. And in principle, any of them would be acceptable here at Commons. We need works to be appropriately licensed or in the public domain in both the United States and wherever it was originally created (if these are different). I assume that court decisions are in the public domain in India and our page on copyright rules states that the government can own a copyright (unlike in the United States, where all federal government publications are public domain), so it's not obvious to me that this is necessarily public domain in India. As a non-lawyer and non-India expert, I would guess that it's legit to uplaod here, but not for sure. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:55, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

That's actually not correct. Court orders and the like are matters of public record in the United States. That's different from them being in the public domain or not though. They are usually PD on the federal level, but every state has their own individual copyright terms for works created by the state government. So it really depends on if the court order was created by the federal government or which state it comes from. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:38, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

*emphasis added: "The Supreme Court held that the government edicts doctrine, which states that materials created by courts in the performance of their official duties belong to the public domain, also applies to “non-binding, explanatory legal material” that is created and published by a legislative body.". Cf. Edict_of_government and "Edicts of government, such as judicial opinions, administrative rulings, legislative enactments, public ordinances, and similar official legal documents are not copyrightable for reasons of public policy. This applies to such works whether they are Federal, State, or local as well as to those of foreign governments." —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:04, 6 September 2024 (UTC)