Shortcut: COM:VP

#	💭 Title	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	I'm unable to use the image I just uploaded.	0	0
2	New designs for logo detection tool	26	9	Jmabel	2024-07-04 19:03
3	Disease-related deaths in Beijing	1	1	Broichmore	2024-07-01 18:14
4	Why are we doing this? (Reasons why WMC is useful)	7	3	PantheraLeo1359531	2024-07-04 18:02
5	A new research report on Cross-wiki uploads have been published	27	11	Enhancing999	2024-06-30 10:35
6	Example of SVG with hyperlinks	3	2	Scott	2024-07-03 08:53
7	Engravings and Lithographs etc.	3	2	Broichmore	2024-07-01 18:03
8	GLAM uploads	6	4	Enhancing999	2024-07-01 20:07
9	YouTube has stopped displaying CC lincenses	16	8	PantheraLeo1359531	2024-07-04 17:58
10	New York Public Library	5	3	Broichmore	2024-07-06 10:34
11	Finding my own "published" content	4	2	Jmabel	2024-07-05 16:08
12	Identifiable employee	12	10	Belbury	2024-07-03 06:46
13	Technical needs survey proposals	6	3	Enhancing999	2024-07-05 07:53
14	Japanese figures/mask in trains	7	5	HyperGaruda	2024-07-02 19:47
15	Template for categories that only contain other categories	4	3	Omphalographer	2024-06-30 21:18
16	How do I request the speedy closure of a deletion nomination?	7	4	Jmabel	2024-07-01 21:53
17	What's the best title for the category	6	4	Sinigh	2024-07-02 16:24
18	Commons Gazette 2024-07	1	1	RZuo	2024-07-01 21:23
19	Suppression d'un visuel	6	4	Pere prlpz	2024-07-03 08:17
20	Acceptableness of having a source template also provide author information	6	5	The Editor's Apprentice	2024-07-02 20:06
21	Discussion on UAE copyright law before 1992	1	1	JWilz12345	2024-07-02 02:49
22	[Month] [Year] in [Place] - photos taken on, or photos of events that occurred	2	2	Jmabel	2024-07-02 19:10
23	Categories by day: date format?	12	5	Broichmore	2024-07-07 09:35
24	Script for deletion sorting?	2	1	Rhododendrites	2024-07-06 13:26
25	Template:Swiss Government Portrait	2	2	Geohakkeri	2024-07-03 05:53
26	We need someone to maintain CropTool	12	5	Enhancing999	2024-07-05 18:06
27	The Community Wishlist is reopening July 15, 2024	1	1	STei (WMF)	2024-07-04 14:36
28	German currency files without machine-readable license	4	2	Rosenzweig	2024-07-05 13:55
29	POTY (Picture of the Year) competition needs help!	3	3	Rhododendrites	2024-07-06 11:35
30	Long term preservation of media files	1	1	MGeog2022	2024-07-06 13:04

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.

Centralized discussion See also: Village pump/Proposals   ■ Archive How do we organize categories by date (14 May 2024) Proposal to prohibit political restriction templates (5 February 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.

Hi I don't seem to be able to use the file https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M_F_Gervais_Holy_Roman_Empire.pdf It show up in Commons but in Wikipedia I'm not able to use it. Why? It happened for my last file and someone 'did' something... I don't know what was done but it worked. What should I do to fix it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by M F Gervais (talk • contribs) 18:45, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@M F Gervais: It is there and it functional however due to how big and unwieldy it is as a pdf it takes a while to render, especially whern it has to develop the image cache first:

Now because PDFs are typically multipage document it can need extra formatting if you are trying to do it through standard wiki formatting. mw:help:images. PDFs should not be used if you want to display an image, please upload an image file per Com:File types — Preceding unsigned comment added by Billinghurst (talk • contribs) 07:59, 1 June 2024‎ (UTC)[reply]

Hello all! We're happy to share that we will work on logo detection in the following months and that we defined an initial approach for this.

You can read more at the project page and you can have your say in the project's talk.

We want your feedback on it, and we need your insights on how to further tune the detection tool.

Thanks for your attention! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 13:54, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm rather confused. The general feed back seemed to me to amount to "logo detection isn't very useful." I was told by a couple of people when I asked informally, "Don't worry, it isn't like logo detection isn't the goal, this was just a side effect of work on something else that someone thought might be useful." And now you say that further work is proceeding on this front? What, exactly, put this on the front burner, especially given that we are constantly being reminded that dev has very limited resources for Commons? What is the problem we are trying to solve? - |Jmabel ! talk 22:25, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel Our impression, to be fair, was quite the opposite: that it was something that could be useful in dealing with the third-most frequent rationale for requests for deletions (the first two being copyvios and FoP, which we found it was impossible to tackle in an automated way). There was more difficulty in defining how this could be implemented, but not on its usefulness. This is why we are re-opening the feedback period, to understand how it could be implemented. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:36, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sannita (WMF) "third-most frequent rationale for requests for deletions (the first two being copyvios" - This doesn't make sense at all. The only reason we would delete a logo is because it's a copyvio, not because its a logo. There are scores of logos which are in the public domain, either by age or by lack of creativity, while others get licensed under free licenses. I'm not sure why we should discourage people of uploading that specific content with such a warning, when those exact same rules apply to everything else. As it is, I tend to not support that implementation. And as JMabel mentioned, it's disheartening to see that resources were wasted developing such an apparently useless tool, when there are clearly established priorities (see the old wish lists, for instance). Darwin ^Ahoy! 16:16, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sannita (WMF), Jmabel, and DarwIn: I'll leave others to decide on the best or most suited UI for the logo detection. As for the feature, I am supportive of this, but conditionally. Suggest this feature should be mandatory for users who do not have the appropriate user rights; I suggest users who are not admins/sysops, license reviewers, and/or autopatrolled. Users who are under these three tiers of user groups are free to upload logos and should not be slapped with this filter, since they are already aware of copyright issues and TOO considerations for logos. If possible, the feature should effectively block uses of "FileExporter" and other cross-wiki file transfer tools. And one more thing, I suggest the filter can prohibit new users (those who are not autoconfirmed) from uploading or importing logos (even photos showing logos that are non-de minimis/non-incidental). Hopefully, this will trim down at least a third or less (my guess) of deletion requests that contribute to the perennial backlogs. There are many more areas in Commons that also need attentions and resolutions, like Commons:Categories for discussion/Older (some open discussions were from before the lockdown era of 2020). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 08:30, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@JWilz12345: I think the plan is for this to become a secret feature. It has no effect on the upload itself and nobody but the uploader will know about the warning. Possibly, the same effect could have been achieved by merely editing the current interface and noting "if it's a logo, follow logo guidelines". Enhancing999 (talk) 08:43, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just my opinion, but having a specific warning to the uploader saying the image might be a logo seems rather pointless. If not borderline condensing towards users. People generally know what they are uploading images of. The less clear thing is what license to use in any specific instance and I don't really how this deals with that. A better thing would probably just be a specific checkbox for logos that automatically adds a license and puts the image in a specific category for images that need reviewing on upload. Otherwise people are just going to just ignore the warning just like they are already ignoring guidelines by uploading the image to begin with. What we really need is better ways to review and deal with problematic images on our end though. Not try to unload that on uploaders by over complicating the UploadWizard with a bunch of warnings, extra boxes, and the like. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:52, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Adamant1: anything related to copyright is already complicated enough. That's perhaps a price to pay for establishing/creating a free media repository site like Commons, or more so, Wikipedia itself way back more than 20 years ago. Something that founders Wales and Sanger likely did not forseen or anticipate. (Note: just a part of my thoughts, and not a representative of my general perspective on Wikimedia movement, which I still support in the context of mandating global FoP). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 21:12, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everyone for your comments! @Adamant1 about the checkbox, we thought of that option too, but ultimately decided against, because we didn't want to clutter too much the UploadWizard and make it more complicated for legitimate uploaders to upload a legitimate logo or fall into the "I'll just ignore that" kind of case. Anyway, our scope is to get to a better and more seamless way of uploading medias, but this will take more designing, prototyping, and testing, so it won't happen overnight.

To everyone, we're open to ideas for eventual moderation of logos in general, given that we don't want to unload a new bunch of work on volunteers without there being consensus. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:08, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to provide some context on @Sannita (WMF)'s post above ... what we're working towards here is an automatic process by which we reliably estimate the likelihood that an uploaded image will be deleted for any reason

If we had that process we'd be able to inform users that their upload is likely to be deleted (and why) during the upload process, which would be a better (and more educational) user experience than we have now. Also moderators would be able to find (and deal with) potentially problematic uploads much more easily

Our initial experiments with machine learning showed we can detect logos reliably, and they're a pretty common reason for DRs, so logo detection seemed like a promising place to start CParle (WMF) (talk) 14:36, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There may be a misunderstanding here: being a logo is not a reason to delete. We have tens of thousands of logos legitimately on Commons. Laying aside logos that are PD because they are very old, or created by certain governments that don't claim copyrights, etc., an enormous number of logos are below the threshold of originality for copyright, especially in countries like the U.S. where that threshold is quite high. False positives -- discouraging or (worse) preventing upload of content that could legitimately be hosted on Commons -- is at least as bad, and arguably worse than false negatives, letting a "bad" file through. We can always delete a bad file; we cannot conjure a file we don't get to see. - Jmabel ! talk 19:36, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

> being a logo is not a reason to delete

Absolutely, but being a logo is a signal that the upload is more likely to get deleted. We're not proposing to prevent logo uploads, just to alert the user if what they've uploaded looks like a logo, and attempt to educate them about the copyright implications (and also flag possible logos so that patrollers can check them) CParle (WMF) (talk) 10:56, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure logos are actually among the things where the highest percentage get deleted. But maybe they are. Do we have any available statistics on this? - Jmabel ! talk 19:24, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel Sure, the most recent statistics we have are available at phab:T340546. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 16:15, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sannita (WMF): I may be missing something, but I don't readily see anything there that even suggests what percentage of logos are deleted, compared to what percentage of uploads in general. Is it there and I'm missing it, or is it just not there? - Jmabel ! talk 18:22, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel In this comment there is a direct quote of the last part of the analysis that breaks down reasons for deletion. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 09:14, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sannita (WMF): yes, I saw that. It says, in effect, "lots of logos are deleted" but with no indication of how many are kept, and how that ratio compares to other categories of files. - Jmabel ! talk 21:42, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To use an old joke, I'm pretty sure that roughly 90% of bad uploads are by right-handed people... - Jmabel ! talk 21:43, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see, this could be in fact an improvement in data collecting, that I will be sure to share with the team. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 13:34, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel, DarwIn, JWilz12345, Adamant1, Enhancing999, Alachuckthebuck, and SCP-2000: First of all, thank you for your comments, and apologies for pinging you directly. Considering the possibility of moving forward on this topic, we have a couple of questions to ask you about it:

1. Do you think the user interface notice in the UploadWizard about detecting a potential logos should be limited only to certain classes of users (i.e. exclude explicitly autoconfirmed users and higher)?
2. Do you think a template should be created and added automatically when a logo detected by the logo detection system is uploaded to Commons with an “own work” option selected for the ease of moderation?

Let me know what do you think about it, and thanks in advance for your time and patience! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:04, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sannita (WMF): Hi, Just a comment regarding data from phab:T340546 (P49530 Commons deleted pages most frequent edit messages, only the 20 most frequent reasons). I summed up the deletions by reason, and I get: 94,459 for copyright violations (lines 3+10+12+13+14+16+17), 76,385 for "Personal photo by non-contributors (F10)" (lines 2+5+9), and only 6,693 for logos. So logos are far down among the reason for deletion. This also reflects my personal experience as an admin. "Per COM:SPEEDY" usually means empty categories. Yann (talk) 10:41, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Yann Thanks for your consideration. Logos might be down among deletions, but they can also be a stepping stone towards finding a solution to other, more frequent reasons for deletion. For now we decided to focus on a limited but easily detectable part of the deletion process, and we got a tool that can provide a more than decent result at that. With the experience built on this section, we can try to tackle other reasons for deletion. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 16:48, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sannita (WMF): IMO there is an even easier target for detecting copyright violations: all files with an external link as source (or anything like Google, Facebook, etc.). They should be included in a category for checking if the uploader is not an experienced user. Yann (talk) 17:05, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What we would need is some kind of AbuseFilter that adds categories or templates after the upload process. One of the many parameters the filter can use could then be the result of the logo detection tool. Many parts for already exist the only the ability of the AbuseFilter to make edits would be needed and the new logo detection tool needs to hand over the information the AbuseFilter. GPSLeo (talk) 18:12, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We hadn't thought of this @Yann, it's a really good idea. Added phab:T369273 CParle (WMF) (talk) 10:42, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure who the "we" is, but at Commons talk:WMF support for Commons/Upload Wizard Improvements/Logo detection I proposed 11 April of this year that what we want here is tagging, especially for logos claimed as "own work". - Jmabel ! talk 19:03, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Everything, I sampled in Category:Disease-related deaths in Beijing, is complete bollocks.

Executions, airline crashes, and old age are not Disease-related. Looks like vandalism to me. What to do? Broichmore (talk) 18:14, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the context of discussions relating to Commons:Media knowledge beyond Wikipedia I created an initial version of a list of reasons why Wikimedia Commons is useful or ways it could be used for. You're invited to participate at Commons:Why Wikimedia Commons is useful and add any usecases/reasons that are currently not on the page.

Adding more concrete illustrative examples or barriers usefulness-types would also be helpful. I think such a list could make WMC more useful than it already is, communicate the value of it to relevant people (e.g. people considering freeing their collections or contributing), and raise awareness/activities of users that eventually raise WMC's value and our work here to the world. Things can also be discussed on its talk page. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:26, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It has grown a lot recently and probably needs subsections now. Maybe another place would be better to ask about this. I think identifying and improving upon reasons for usefulness is pretty important so it would be best if more users contributed to the list. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:09, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Prototyperspective: I'm not exactly sure where to put it on your list or if it's already been covered, but I've been using galleries to create catalogs of postcards by particular publishers. For instance Postcards published by Edward H. Mitchell. I think this might be the only website doing anything like that. As well the only one where it would even be fusible due to it being a repository of media from a large number of multiple sources across the globe. I guess there's similar things on here like galleries of stamps, but I think the ones for postcard publishers are fairly novel. Logos of postcard publishers is a similar project. It's possibly the biggest gallery of logos for postcard publishers in the world and I'm sure it couldn't have been created anywhere else. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:19, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's covered mostly by "Central repository of collaboratively organized structured media" and also "Enabling finding lots of or highly specific media". In general the subject is how what people are doing or making available is useful, not that itself (as in aggregation and organization).

So one would have to think about and specify how such galleries/catalogs may be useful to users (that could be entertainment, research, educational purposes, and so on)...e.g. this is not about unique valuable things available or enabled by WMC but how (why) these are useful. The usefulness of the two mentioned ways is elaborated next to these points and probably still needs further expansion, these are not as clear/specific as many of the other cases such as "Finding media for illustrating a given Wikipedia article". Prototyperspective (talk) 11:33, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Uuuhhh...OK. That makes sense. Sounds like it could be elaborated and expanded. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:36, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are sections now and sooner or later I'll (most likely) will also add some studies there. Uncommon use-cases however will be hard to identify so if you ever used in WMC in some way not included there please add it or describe it on its talk page.

I think the more media there is on WMC, the more gaps of media are filled (especially various illustrations or simple things like brief videos/animations of how to execute particular fitness exercises) and the more organized it is, the more usecases there will be or the more valuable these will become. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:57, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It feels like we could add some other languages --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:02, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello all! I'm happy to announce the publication of the UX research report called "Cross-Wiki Uploads on En and Ar Wikipedias". The research, conducted in collaboration with the Structured Content team, was aimed at understanding how users were interacting with the Visual Editor upload tool. We hypothesized that the UI may contribute to users uploading files as "own work" when the work is not theirs. What we found is, indeed, users are erroneously uploading files as "own work".

Some of the findings of the report are:

• 14 of 16 users interviewed from English and Arabic wikis uploaded others work as their own, and only a few of those files had been moderated. So the problem is much larger than documented.
• This is partly because users interpret "own work" differently, so many believe they have the authority to upload when, according to copyright rules, they do not. This is also because the UI does not present alternative options in a way that users understand (the text on the UI is very confusing to them).
• There is widespread confusion about what is/isn't allowed to be uploaded, what constitutes copyright, who holds the copyright, and how does that relate to Creative Commons licenses. The image policy is not accessible or known to users.
• Interestingly, we found that most uploaders were either marketers (editing/uploading on behalf of another entity such as their employer), or they were self-promoters (creating pages about themselves, unaware of the "notability" requirement).

See the full report for details, more key findings, and recommendations. Also feel free to comment on it in this thread. Hope this will help in your work! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sannita (WMF) a good research! It is timely, considering that I opened a similar issue regarding some problematic cross-wiki uploads (also through the regular VP forum, I think it is still here – not archived as of this posted comment).

Some two thoughts of mine. Re: "The 'upload page on Wikipedia' statement is the most confusing of all," I think it is due to the general public perception that both Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons are same, as a single platform for educational content, even if both are different websites that happened to be under the umbrella of Wikimedia Foundation. No matter how we try to educate people about the differences in policies and scopes of the two websites, a layman will still treat both as identical; or, as one website. Even the anti-Wikipedia group ADAGP who opposes FoP does not use "Wikimedia Commons" in their presentation to the EU Parliament in 2015; they used "Wikipedia" instead. Perhaps the upload forms should use understandable, layman's language.

Re: "Participants don't know what to do with files that are not their own creation," I guess a massive copyright education campaign is needed. Explanations should not use excessive legalese or technical terms. For Wikimedia groups and affiliates, reforms to copyright laws must be pushed to simplify things. Much of the complexity of copyright for an average layman is due to the complex copyright laws. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 16:42, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

10 out of 11 English users were promotional - 5 self-promotion and 5 marketing. Only one of those 10 was notable enough to be in scope, and even then it appears there were copyright issues. The problem here is not the UI; the problem is that the entire cross-wiki upload system makes it much easier for spammers without providing much benefit to anyone else. At minimum, cross-wiki upload needs to be turned off from the User: and Draft: namespaces (where most of the spam comes from). Pi.1415926535 (talk) 18:52, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would also say before investing much time and therefore money in improvements for the cross-wiki upload we should discuss if we want to give cross-wiki upload a chance or if we want to block it entirely to not approved (autopatrol or similar on other wikis) accounts. GPSLeo (talk) 18:59, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Second in motion to @GPSLeo's suggestion. Cross-wiki uploading had good intentions, but is easily abused. Perhaps only allow cross-wiki uploading to users who are among one of these user groups: admins/sysops, license reviewers, and autopatrolled users. Cross-wiki feature should be treated as a right with burden of responsibility to the uploader. I'm not in favor of axing out the feature entirely. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 02:44, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@JWilz12345: How would that work with people having different privileges depending on the site? --Adamant1 (talk) 02:46, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Adamant1 Commons user rights will be the basis for it. Users should have familiarity on Commons policies and project scope. Their uploads should comply our house rules. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 02:54, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We really, really need some process and tools such that, when files are cross-wiki uploaded and don't remain on the page they were uploaded for (e.g. because the edit adding them was reverted, the page was deleted, or the user never completed an edit adding the image), those files can be identified and deleted from Commons with a minimum of hassle. Right now, there's no good way to spot those images, and deleting them will usually require a DR. That's a lot of overhead to get rid of a file which the uploader may not have ever expected to persist on Commons. Omphalographer (talk) 19:11, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Omphalographer sometimes DRs aren't needed at all. Speedy deletion tag is the key, if evidences gathered from Google Lens and TinEye searches are convincing. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 02:51, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For images which are copyvios, sure. But that's an orthogonal concern. Omphalographer (talk) 03:33, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Omphalographer: there is something like that but it is currently limited to only en-wiki rejected drafts: https://heber.toolforge.org/drafts/filter/20240624. MKFI (talk) 07:39, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The problem isn't the process, the problem is the backlog of likely millions of files that violate existing, sensible policy (no copyvios, no unusable personal photos) scattered around the project. Identifying these and checking for prior usage/checking user contribs takes time. Gnomingstuff (talk) 05:27, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

cross-wiki upload should probably just be blocked outright at this point. As it's clearly an issue that has no easy, implementable, solution. At least not in the short-term. IMO there really needs to be a more clear separation between the projects for something like cross-wiki uploading to work. It's never going to "fixed" if everyone using it just thinks Commons is a glorified subdomain of Wikipedia though. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:28, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Would also solve almost every problem mentioned in this thread at once. ReneeWrites (talk) 19:20, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just about the logo question: maybe the study sees this too much from a Commons' perspective, despite studying English Wikipedia and people contributing to articles there: personally, I think the default recommendation should be to upload a logo for "fair use" directly at enwiki. Enhancing999 (talk) 22:46, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. Possibly combined with a "logo" branch in a Wizard that tries to work out what is the relevant country, then describes the relevant threshold of originality and asks whether it is clearly above (keep it local), clearly below (go to Commons) or just plain unclear (keep it local, which is safer). Also, logo + "own work" is almost always wrong, though of course it is very occasionally correct. - Jmabel ! talk 23:08, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, some Wikipedias don't allow "local"… - Jmabel ! talk 23:09, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't seem like English Wikipedia wants to host images of logos going by the number we have, but that would be the better solution. Although it would then screw over the ability of other projects to use the files in a lot of cases. So maybe it's not the best way to go about this. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:16, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

en-wiki routinely hosts logos that are over the threshold of originality, if they have an article about the organization in question. - Jmabel ! talk 23:29, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I was mainly saying it in jest, but we do host a lot of logos that have been sent over from Wikipedia for one reason or another. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:11, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

About the "personal images": not sure how the study gets to that conclusion of it being a big issue. If in a sample group people were writing autobiographies about their not-Wikipedia notable selves, why should they consider that their image isn't suitable to be uploaded despite serving as an illustration to the article? If the article actually exists, the image can be uploaded. Also, the subject of an article is the most likely person to have access to correctly licensed or licensable images. Obviously "personal images" can be an issue at Commons, but this may be unrelated to enwiki articles. - Enhancing999 (talk) 09:30, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Enhancing999 may be because images that show the uploaders themselves are only falling within the house rules of Commons, if they serve real purpose like Wikimedia-related activities, uses on user pages in all wiki sites, and in an article (if the article survives the review process of other editors). Assuming an image does not have the purpose of documenting Wikimedia-related events, and it is not used on a userspace page, and it is being used in an article on English Wikipedia. The article is then slapped with AfD request. The article is found to not comply with w:en:WP:GNG (especially on BLP house rules there) and is "sentenced to death". With the article deleted, the image then becomes an "out of scope image" or "unused personal image". JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 12:15, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where is that in the study? Enhancing999 (talk) 05:33, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

•  Comment I hate to have a hot take here, but this (and the whole thing with using AI to identify logos) assumes uploading COPYVIO is even a problem to begin with. It's not like we can't (or don't) delete copyrighted images pretty regularly. Maybe it's secondary to the core principles of Commons, but doing so has the benefit of being able to document artists and dates works become PD. There's as much value in that IMO then automating to the point of stopping people from uploading COPYVIO or really anything because they are so turned off by the warnings. Regardless, we are here to document, preserve, and "maintain" a media repository. Which inherently to some degree depends on people uploading COPYVIO once in a while (if not regularly). The important thing, and I'd argue the current issue that things like this are getting at, is that we should be able to deal with it in a timely manor. Not that it shouldn't exist in the first place. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:05, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I get what you're saying, but we're very much at "regularly" and arguably at "frequently." The copyvios that are uploaded, and certainly the ones talked about this thread, are usually recent enough that they won't enter public domain within any of our lifetimes. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:58, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Related to this, but not really mentioned in the study, I was wondering if the mere upload function of "cross-wiki uploads" is technically superior to the other upload tools. Please see Commons:Village_pump/Technical#Upload_functions_used_by_various_tools (you may want to comment there). Enhancing999 (talk) 10:29, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• For a proposal following the study and its review in this thread, please see Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Deactivate_cross-wiki_uploads_for_new_users. -- Enhancing999 (talk) 10:35, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, can anyone give me an example of an SVG with hyperlinks in so that I can check the syntax? Thanks. — Scott • talk 10:37, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

File:SVG Gradient.svg has a use element.

SVG 1.1 uses xlink:href. WMF uses an SVG 1.1 rasterizer, so SVG elements such as use must employ the xlink namespace.

SVG 2.0 allows either xlink:href or href. Most browsers are compliant with SVG 2.0, so viewing the SVG directly in a browser will work with either form.

Glrx (talk) 15:39, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! — Scott • talk 08:53, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have a gigantic epidemic of people overwriting existing Engravings and Lithographic images with different versions of the same image. Also, the same for cropping off captions and border, without creating new files.

18th and 19th century Lithographs and engravings are all unique, even if they come from the same book and edition, they are different, in terms of condition, printing, edition source, and hand painting, and they should not be overwritten by anything other than the exact same print, from the same book, from the same museum or owner.

Lately, I try and protect them with Template:Border is intentional, but I'm overwhelmed at the amount of damage done. It's a losing battle.

These images need the artwork template and we need to some means of ensuring that files are not overwritten with similar, but different images. Are there other templates that can be used.

Can we put in bot measures to protect them, from these oafs? It's bad enough with these people omitting descriptive detail, using dubious sources (that steal images from elsewhere in the net), and claim false ownership. Not to mention all the AI crap, that’s, no doubt on its way.

What extra measures can we employ? Broichmore (talk) 14:54, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Even when overwritten, they are still there. --RAN (talk) 17:07, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  That's not the point, if they are overwritten, they are unavailable for use! Also, they cannot be easily assessed, for use, as they are hidden and require drilling down to see.

  Sometimes end users want a unique image for their website, variety is a desirable thing. Broichmore (talk) 18:03, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are GLAM uploads always once off? Or does Wiki commons have functionality to allow synching of a GLAM database?

Automated interfaces tend to have functionality -

• At Origin : a trigger job waiting for a change,
• Data cleansing - rules, error handling
• Trigger for transmission - every week, every n records..
• Mapping- a mapping tool of Origin to Target, reuse of maps from the same system, mapping version, envelopes with sequence numbers
• Transmission - path, passwords, encryption, confirmation of receipt, checksums
• At Target - transmission triggers upload into target, error checking
• Error checking that database matches

(Asked a similar question about wiki data with no answer) Wakelamp (talk) 06:06, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most likely it depends on uploader and tool used as most GLAM databases are different in terms of content, interfaces etc. Afaik most uploads are made by custom scripts and and solutions are made in upload tool level. Wiki commons itself doesn't have functionality to sync with external GLAM repositories. --Zache (talk) 18:56, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Repeated uploads from the same GLAM are quite common. Synching is actually a bit trickier than you might think. I have some experience with this from the point of view of curating the content brought in from a GLAM by a bot. I'll try to get back here and share my thoughts in that in a day or two if no one else has something solid. @Wakelamp, feel free to hit my up if this slips my mind. - Jmabel ! talk 23:50, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A few considerations:

1. In deciding whether to upload automatically, you don't just want to consider whether the file is on Commons. You should track what has already been uploaded, because if the bot uploaded it before and it is not on Commons now it was probably deleted and, rather then upload, you would want a report to a human who can make an informed decision.
2. If metadata has changed at the GLAM and the original upload has never been touched on Commons, then it is reasonable to bring the corresponding data on Commons up to date. However, if the corresponding data on Commons has been modified in any way, again we are into a situation where a human should make a decision. It is possible that the change/correction on Commons is better than the one at the GLAM. For example, a GLAM may have made a minor correction in a description where someone on Commons has done a good job of fleshing it out.
   • This one gets complicated if another bot is (for example) copying data from wikitext to SDC, one of many reasons why it is good if the upload bot can fill in both wikitext and SDC where both make sense to use.
3. I would recommend always having at least two hidden categories added to every file uploaded by a bot from a GLAM:
   1. A source category (e.g. Category:Files from Southern North Dakota History Museum), with at least Category:Source categories (flat list) as a parent
   2. A second category (e.g. Category:Files from Southern North Dakota History Museum (check needed), with at least Category:Files by source to be checked as a parent

User:Dominic has done a fair amount of uploads along these lines. I don't know how well his uploads conform to what I've written above, but I imagine still that he will have some useful things to say if he chooses to weigh in. - Jmabel ! talk 04:26, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Wakelamp btw, why do you ask? (ie. do you have some specific use case like you would like to do uploads or are you just curious to know what kind infrastructure there is) --Zache (talk) 19:16, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As mentioned above, be careful not re-upload already deleted files. Also, you might need to keep track of file renames and possible tags for problems on these files (some may be about trivial issues, others not). Enhancing999 (talk) 20:07, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have just found today that YouTube changed the page layout and CC lincenses are no longer being displayed. --トトト (talk) 06:42, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Uugghh well that sucks. I think I nominated a couple of videos for deletion a few days ago because the link to YouTube didn't say they were CC licensed even though that was the claim. Great. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:48, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@トトト: That's curious. When I go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYCjGfQJ4kw (a video I happen to have uploaded a screenshot from) and click "...more" at the end of the description, the expanded description still contains "Licence Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed)". Does it appear on that video for you? Have you got a different example where it doesn't? --bjh21 (talk) 09:53, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean? I still see the license just like before at the bottom of the video description next to License and one can search for videos with that license using filters.

On a related note, sometimes I think youtube deboosts videos with CC-licenses (maybe because they aren't monetized as much) but nobody knows since the algorithms are not transparent. If that's the case, it discourages users to license their videos this way and I think some articles on this suggest first uploading nonCCBY videos to first get popular before licensing any under CCBY. Please let me know if anybody has any sources/info on this. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:54, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I clicked on a video from Commons a while ago that was supposedly CC Licensed and nothing showed uo for me. Maybe its a bug on their end or I just missed it though. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:01, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes the license gets changed. CC-licensing can't be revoked but there are many cases where removal of that license should mean the video also needs to be deleted here...for example the video may contain nonCCBY clips that the uploader only became aware of later or the account was under control of somebody else. When uploading with V2C, there is an link to the archived site so one can check if it was CCBY at time of uploads and its adds a License review needed template so a user checks the current video (people don't seem to be doing this anymore). Prototyperspective (talk) 10:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it annoys me a lot... But it depends on if you're logged in afaik. Anyway, you can retrieve the CC-BY note by looking into the website source code and by searching for "Creative Commons". This is where V2C gets his information from. It sucks and I assume there will be several deletion requests because of this misunderstanding --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:24, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how you access youtube but for me it's still displayed in the video description (after clicking "…more"). Prototyperspective (talk) 21:50, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's a new design that is currently being A-B-tested, I can confirm that the new design doesn't contain the CC license. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 22:32, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Internet Archive versions of Youtube links since 2023 have been unable to load the full description to display the CC license. If we had more reviewers, or at least a bot to note the status, this issue would be more manageable. Joofjoof (talk) 23:05, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative Youtube frontends can be a solution to display status, as long as Youtube does not try to block them. Joofjoof (talk) 23:09, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can see the license (example). Maybe video2commons shouldn't add a link to the archive.ph archived site since it doesn't task it to actually archive it and the IA page seems to be sufficient. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:11, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's one of the reasons why I proposed a file verification feature in Commons last December, but it gained little support. MGeog2022 (talk) 10:29, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It proposes to "Implement a mechanism to verify uploaded files" – I would think a technical mechanism would be better than having people manually review lots of files, in particular archiving the source page at upload. This is already done for uploads made via video2commons as described above, what about adding this to other uploads? (Another thing is that only the description needs to be archived, apparently IA even archives the video file itself for a while). There's so much things to do where people's time is needed so I think things like this shouldn't be added on top (especially since even currently there's not enough reviewers, I think nearly none of my V2C uploads have been checked so far) but rather there could be bots that do the opposite of this: flag (e.g. categorize) items as "Likely copyvios to review manually". Prototyperspective (talk) 10:57, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, probably the exact proposal could be better, and that's why it didn't receive many votes. I mean that I think that some kind of mechanism (better if it's automatic, of course) is needed to avoid losing content due to mistakes. There are many files in Commons, with very different quality levels, and randomly losing some of them is very sad, I think... this is as a kind of library, it's really sad to think that knowledge about some particular fact or document can be lost forever due to a change in YouTube's layout or similar seemingly minor reasons. Also think about the usage of images in Wikipedia: it's terrible to think that some decades from now, people may not be able to know how certain street of some relatively unknown city looked alike in 2001, because somebody stole a photo from Commons and uploaded it elsewhere under a non-free license, so it got deleted from here. I think these things are not being taken seriously enough. We have to think about next week's users first, but without neglecting those of 20 years from now. After all, Wikipedia was already there 20 years ago, and we continue to enjoy images that have been there ever since then, thanks to the fact that they have been preserved for all this time. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:17, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

+1 --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:58, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know what accession number we should be using for items from the Collections of the New York Public Library? I'm using this image as a template example. -Broichmore (talk) 11:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, just for one example, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/225503f5-ae89-40e1-91e3-2f8cf6cc8297 gives three identifiers: RLIN/OCLC, NYPL catalog ID (B-number); and a UUID.

Our own File:Great Falls of the Potomac, from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views.jpg gives three identifiers, but they don't seem to correspond to these in an obvious way: Catalog Call Number (which is clearly not a "B-number"), Record ID, and Digital ID.

https://archives.nypl.org/mus/24078#c1553136 gives IDs like "b. 164 f. 25" and "b. 110 f. 9-10"; it would not surprise me, though, if those were strictly IDs within the Lou Reed papers, and not in the NYPL collection as a whole, especially given the low numbers.

Looking at this, I'd be surprised if they have a single system that spans their entire archive.

@Broichmore: Have you considered contacting NYPL to see if they have a suggestion as to what we might use? - Jmabel ! talk 20:28, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, I haven't contacted them, as yet.

I suspect, that like the Library of Congress (LOC), this was one of the first GLAMs uploaded en-masse, consequently, it varies in the templates employed. So far, I've discovered that the accession number might be the NYPL catalog ID (B-number), think that's their shelf number.

There is a source template, I stumbled on, based on the image ID. Also, a default sort based on that NYPL catalog ID (B-number) again. See image for an example. - Broichmore (talk) 21:18, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Broichmore: I work at NYPL and am happy to help make sense of the identifiers as much as I can, although as Jmabel suspected there is a lot of variation in cataloging practices and identifiers between libraries, curatorial divisions, and systems.

Does Commons have a specification for "File information" metadata where "Accession number" is described? I was unable to find any documentation, but my initial sense is the call number (displayed as "Shelf locator" on NYPL Digital Collections records and "Research Call Number" in NYPL Research Catalog records) is the most akin to an "accession number," which is a term more common to museums than libraries/archives.

Some of the other identifiers mentioned by Jmabel are external to NYPL (RLIN/OCLC), system-specific (NYPL catalog ID (B-number)), or are not identifiers (the "b. 164 f. 25" and "b. 110 f. 9-10" displayed at archives.nypl.org is a box number and folder number that describes the location of a folder within a larger archival collection).

UUIDs and Image IDs are automatically assigned to any individual file available on NYPL Digital Collections and are (for now) the most reliable way to link back to the source of an file.

NYPL staff are not doing much work in Commons yet, and much of what was uploaded was done years ago/by the community, but we do have a WikiProject for Wikidata that may also be a useful reference. --Infopetal (talk) 20:45, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The official template is Template:Nypl, accessible from the front page at Category:New York Public Library.

It's not really suitable for casual, occasional use. That I need.

Using this image as a template example.

For accession number I'm now using the UUID number.

I have used a template for source/photographer employing the IMAGEID number. Clicking on it takes you only one step away from the PERMALINK url. So, I've added the PERMALINK url. It's not exactly ideal, but will do me for now.

Someone in the past has added a defaultsort using the b number with NYPL as a prefix, and the plate number or sequential number in a set as a suffix.

Until better comes along I'm inclined to use this as a temporary fix. -Broichmore (talk) 10:34, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any way to do a sane query for files that I've uploaded (and/or for files where my account name occurs as part of the wikisource text on the file page) and where the {{Published}} template is on the talk page? - Jmabel ! talk 20:17, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Still hoping for some ideas here. - Jmabel ! talk 19:19, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PETScan would be the obvious idea, and why it can find files whose talk pages contain certain templates, it does not seem to be able to find files uploaded by certain users. Maybe this is the kind of application that a hidden user category of your photos would be useful for? Felix QW (talk) 15:25, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Felix QW: I want to do this precisely so that I can mark these published files with a hidden category.

No, I do not particularly want to place all of my 70,000 or so photos here on Commons in a single hidden category. I can't even think of a way that would be done without the process of doing so becoming a problem. - Jmabel ! talk 16:08, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious about the image on the right: do we have a privacy guideline about photographs of employees in their workplace, without an indication that the employee has given their consent? I didn't find an answer in COM:IDENT, though maybe I missed something. Marnanel (talk) 11:39, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This totally depends on the situation. In most cases I would say you can make and publish a photo of someone who is working if this would also be fine if the person would be there without working there. The given example that looks like someone hit the shutter button accidentally should definitely become deleted. GPSLeo (talk) 11:59, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The flash was triggered, but may have been automatic. I tagged it {{Personality}}.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:10, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's enough there for definitive face recognition TBH. Broichmore (talk) 16:51, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, doesn't look problematic to me. And no, it doesn't look like someone hit the shutter button accidentally. It does a good job of showing what it's like to have to carry a tray of drinks in a chaotic environment. - Jmabel ! talk 19:02, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it's an interesting depiction, but the subject matter is mundane in the extreme, and this scene could easily be recreated at any place with anyone at any time, basically. Also, this image is technically of low-quality in a low-quality album, from a Flickr user of low-quality consumer-oriented point & shoot equipment.

Why even bother keeping this? If there's any question of personality rights or consent, why not delete it, and hold out for a properly-documented image of respectable quality? That would be so easy to obtain, whether it's candid or staged: simply obtain consent from the waitress and use high-quality equipment.

On enwiki we routinely reject low-quality images, and problematic or questionable images. It only makes sense to hold out for something that's really good, because, in the end, this is a very easy type of image to create. It doesn't depict a celebrity, an event, or anything special: just a night out drinking at a casino.

Apparently, the image is currently in use on exactly one article, on enwiki, regarding "complimentary drinks". The image itself really isn't connected to that particular topic at all: whether the waitress is charging for those drinks or not, we can't tell from the image itself. So I say, if we have any doubt of her consent to use this image according to Commons policies, let's delete it and hold out. Surely, some Commons user can go to Vegas this very weekend and make a dozen great photographs along with a signed model release? Elizium23 (talk) 02:16, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are hundreds of Wikiprojects. ENWP does not speak for all of them Trade (talk) 12:34, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt this would be ok in most of Europe. Enhancing999 (talk) 22:04, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Enhancing999: agreed. Do you have any reason to doubt that it is in Las Vegas (which is what it says in the description)? - Jmabel ! talk 02:03, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The question was about that image, but didn't appear specifically limited to it, Las Vegas nor even the US. Enhancing999 (talk) 10:21, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In terms of legality, it's probably legal. Casino-specific rules aside, the public areas of a restaurant or casino wouldn't bring with them a reasonable expectation of privacy. That said, this is a low quality image of someone which looks like it was taken surreptitiously while she was just doing her job. I don't know why someone would've uploaded this to Flickr. From the way it's used, I guess I understand why it was transferred to Commons (for a photo of a Vegas casino cocktail waitress), but there's probably a good case for COM:DIGNITY if not quality-based COM:SCOPE. Tough one, though. Courtesy ping to Belbury. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  21:00, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, the context here was just that the en:Comps (casino) article needed an illustration and from memory this was literally the only image I could find on Flickr that conveyed the concept, it seemed better than nothing. Belbury (talk) 06:46, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As somebody asked here, it would be fine to have any news about the plans for implementing the proposals selected in technical needs survey months ago. Seemingly, nothing new is publicly known after the survey finished. MGeog2022 (talk) 21:03, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. In the meantime, the annual plan for 2024/2025 was discussed and I don't think any of this was brought up. Enhancing999 (talk) 22:59, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This would be really disappointing, as some topics were already discussed for years --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:10, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't good news. I hope they are eventually implemented, and the survey ends up being worthwhile. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:16, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I try to annoy/bring up the topic until it's added :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:57, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if that would work well. For the next annual period, you could try to prepare something that can fit into the plan (with the level of generality required by the plan up to the level of detail that can bring actual change to the Commons community). Rather than requesting specific tools (which is a technical implementation question for devs), I'd attempt to phrase it in terms of functionality that should be available (users don't really care how it's done), highlighting how that fits into the general objectives.

Once that prepared (ideally before the end of 2024), you could send it to the WMF board (a Commons contributor sits there) so they can request the staff at WMF to include it in the plan. Enhancing999 (talk) 07:53, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By using Google lens I find similar pictures (mostly with Japanese text and not out of the Commons) but not with any English explanation. I am looking for the correct category. Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:12, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Tengu masks. Omphalographer (talk) 21:23, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How is this OK with Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Japan#Freedom of panorama? Yann (talk) 10:26, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If this is considered artistic work. This is a traditional depiction of a Tengu. This is mass produced en put in several trains of the compagny. Mounting the mask on a board and mounting it in an unusual position on a train does not make it an art work. By the way: art work such as emblems etc on moving objects are usualy not protected. The figures in a carnaval procession can be freely photographed, while it is certainly the artistic work of (many) individuals. Can we photograph an individaul wearing an 'artistic' made mask?Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:22, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PS: The railway compagny uses the mask in more places: File:Demachiyanagi station Tengu masks 20200602.jpgSmiley.toerist (talk) 09:31, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Smiley.toerist: by "unsual" do you mean "usual" or "unusual"? The words are opposites, and either is imaginable here. - Jmabel ! talk 19:03, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

unusual.

Someone had to come up with and design this particular version of a tengu mask and its composition. Posters are also mass-produced and mounted everywhere, but they are most of the time still copyrighted. Regarding art work on moving objects like masks: see COM:COSTUME. You may be free to photograph a lot of things, but keep in mind compatibility with derivative works. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:47, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What is the name of the Template for categories that only contain other categories, and no images? I want to add it to Category:Vital records of the United States RAN (talk) 17:05, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are you thinking of {{CatCat}} or something else? - Jmabel ! talk 17:33, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is it, thanks! It looks like some above and below are using {{Categorise}}, they appear to give the same warning with different wording. --RAN (talk) 19:14, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Similar but not identical. {{Categorise}} is a request that files be diffused out of a broad category (like, say, Category:History); having files in such a category isn't necessarily wrong but could be improved. {{CatCat}} is a stronger statement that a category should only contain other categories by definition (like Category:Categories!), so any files in that category are miscategorized and should be removed. Omphalographer (talk) 21:18, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I have commented on the deletion nomination for an image of an Indonesian Government official. The original reason for the nomination was (in Spanish) "Who is it?". As far as I can figure out, simply not knowing who a person is, isn't a reason for a deletion nomination. So, I believe the nomination to be invalid, but can't find out how to get it reviewed and potentially shut down. In my opinion, it was possibly a bad faith nomination, because as soon as I categorised it (as it hadn't got any categories when uploaded), the nominator responded to say that he was "pleased to have drawn attention to the lack of categories" and would "thank me again when I added the correct ones". I'm not sure what to do with it. DaneGeld (talk) 12:38, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@DaneGeld: Why haven't you linked it in the discussion here? If everyone is now in agreement that it should be kept, including the original nominator, then any experienced user (not just an admin) can close it as a speedy keep by clear consensus. - Jmabel ! talk 19:25, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And ideally shouldn’t be closed by an involved user with the DR (other than the nominator). Bidgee (talk) 19:38, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel - I didn't link the discussion because I have fallen foul of being misconstrued as fishing for comments on discussions in the past, which is apparently frowned upon. I simply avoided it as I was asking for advice, rather than seeking others to comment on it. DaneGeld (talk) 21:48, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@DaneGeld: in the future: state what you are wanting as neutrally as possible, and link the mention on VP or similar page from the discussion in question, so that you are clearly not doing anything surreptitious. - Jmabel ! talk 21:53, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've closed this nomination. Omphalographer (talk) 20:18, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. DaneGeld (talk) 21:52, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Video game videos by name or Videos of video games by name--Trade (talk) 12:53, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like similar categories start with "videos", but "videos of video games" just sounds clunky. So who knows. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:58, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think you can get around repeating "video".

Also there is Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/04/Category:Video game videos. Enhancing999 (talk) 20:09, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another existing option is "Videos related to video games", which seems to be what the main category actually contains. "Video game videos" sounds like cutscenes and "Videos of video games" sounds like gameplay. Why "by name" and not "by game"? Sinigh (talk) 10:36, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We already use by name for "Indie video games by name‎" and similar others so i assumed we needed to be consistent? Trade (talk) 15:01, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but what I reckon is that "Indie video games by name‎" refers to the names of the indie games and, following the same logic, "Videos of video games by name" would then refer to the names of the videos rather than the names of the associated games. But I'm not sure, so take this with a grain of salt! Sinigh (talk) 16:24, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, there are 184 sysops.

---

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) 21:23, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bonjour,

Il y a plus de 11 ans, une personne a posté une photo de moi prise dans un cadre privé. Aujourd'hui, je souhaite vraiment qu'elle soit supprimée car elle peut me porter préjudice au travail. J'ai proposé sa suppression à plusieurs mais elle n'est jamais supprimée. Je ne sais plus quoi faire. Merci de m'aider. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sayamelyay5 (talk • contribs) 21:34, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sayamelyay5:

1. Is the picture in use on one of our sister projects, such as one of the Wikipedias?
2. Have you requested deletion as a personal courtesy or on some other basis?
3. You say the picture was the picture was taken in a private place. Was it with or without your consent?
4. Also, could you say what country, because issues about this vary widely from country to country.

Jmabel ! talk 21:56, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, having looked slightly further into this: are you sure the picture in question has not already been deleted? Please check. - Jmabel ! talk 22:06, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Commons:Deletion requests/File:Sandrine Lefebvre-Reghay photo.png. I deleted the file in question as F10. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:11, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mille mercis. Y a t il un délai de suppression dans Google ? Bien à vous Sayamelyay5 (talk) 22:20, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bonsoir,

J'ai vérifié. Je la vois toujours sur Google en tapant mon nom.

Bien à vous Sayamelyay5 (talk) 22:19, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Google takes some time to update its cache.

Anyway, the photo is no longer in Commons. If what Google shows is a problem, it should be dealt with Google. Pere prlpz (talk) 08:17, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, {{Web source}} is a template for providing links to the sources of files uploaded from other places on the web. It currently has two (undocumented) parameters which are set up to provide author information, |author= and |photographer=. This seems a little odd to me because usually in templates like {{Information}} author and source information is listed separately instead of on the same line. For this reason, I am wondering if the current set up with {{Web source}} is inline with general Commons best practices and if it would be worthwhile to deprecate the parameters. For reference, the |photographer= parameter is currently only used about a dozen times and I haven't been able to find any uses of |author=. Thanks for any feedback and take care. —The Editor's Apprentice (Talk) 00:49, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's probably why they aren't documented. - Jmabel ! talk 03:25, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The template was apparently thought primarily for artworks and to be used within template:artwork and similar templates and situations (although it can certainly be used in other contexts also). The template:artwork has a line "source/photographer", on the same line (which is somewhat strange and impractical, but it's been like that forever and unlikely to be changed easily). Therefore, it makes sense that template:web_source is compatible and includes relevant related parameters. I suppose that, in the line source/photographer of template:artwork, users may find practical to place the photographer inside the same template:web_source rather than outside it. Also, it must be noted that template:web_source is embedded in other templates, such as template:From_Google_Art_Project. Not sure about the parameter "author", but it might have a potential use in some such other circumstances. I would hesitate to just remove stuff from templates like that. Did you think of consulting the creator of the template (who is still active on Commons)? -- Asclepias (talk) 05:40, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, the |photographer= parameter does indeed mirror the set up of {{Artwork}}, so its not a complete anomaly and it would make sense for them to be compatible since they are often used together. I indeed share your hesitation to outright remove functionality from templates which is in part why I started this discussion. You're also right to ask about my consulting Zolo as the creator of the template. Usually in similar circumstances that is something I do, but since I was thinking about general best practices/acceptability, in this case I ended up going to a public forum first. That said, I would be interested in hearing about @Zolo's intentions and thought process, both for {{Web source}} as a whole and the |author= and |photographer= parameters in particular. Thanks to you both and please take care. —The Editor's Apprentice (Talk) 20:06, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The template:artwork displays at the front end, "source/photographer", but not within the code, presumably photographer intended there is the scanner, and not the original photographer. Scanners in that sense exist for any and all GLAM products we have. These days we enter the url there, only a few years ago that might have, had to be the GLAM or an individual by name.

Interestingly |photographer= can be added into the artwork template, so I'll use it from here. Before I was putting that name under artist.

I'm probably doing this the wrong way, but for author I sometimes put in the author of the book the photo came from, or the full name of the artist/ photographer, whereas in artist I might put in the shortened signed name from the piece in question. Then sometimes I want to use the author field to put in the full unabbreviated name.

In any event, if the photo came, from say, en:Life (magazine), I would have; Life under the author, after all, they probably commissioned it, the photographer being a staffer.

I'm sorry, I wouldn’t use this template for anything. It's far too glib. Most of the photographs I upload come from GLAM's, and I use the {{Artwork}} template for them. The GLAM collection information being important here, especially the accession number. I really don't see why we would want to encourage glib uploading of any item, ignoring attribution, and this template, by its brevity, does exactly that.

We face an oncoming rush of AI derived images of epidemic proportions. The provenance and sourcing of where images come from, and their legitimacy is something we need to beef up, and I fear the project is asleep at the wheel on this issue. – Broichmore (talk) 11:25, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Must admit. I'm getting tired of these author templates that takes up half my screen for no good reason other than to look fancy--Trade (talk) 15:06, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Kindly visit Commons talk:Copyright rules by territory/United Arab Emirates#‎UAE Copyright law before 1992 for the discussion. Regards, JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 02:49, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have a question regarding categories [Month] [Year] in [Place], e.g. Category:June 2024 in Kraków. If there's a subcategory belonging to it, does it mean:

• Photos are be taken on [Month] [Year], or,
• Photos of the event that occurred on [Month] [Year]?

For example:

• Category:2024 Jagiellonian University pro-Palestinian campus occupation‎

Category contains photos taken on June 2024, but the occupation event started on May 2024. Apart of the Category:June 2024 in Kraków, should it belong to Category:May 2024 in Kraków then?

Dwxn (talk) 11:16, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If a category like this belongs as a parent category of Category:2024 Jagiellonian University pro-Palestinian campus occupation‎, yes, I'd also include Category:May 2024 in Kraków. But my own feeling is that it should simply use Category:2024 events in Kraków, and the month-specific categories should be on individual photos. - Jmabel ! talk 19:10, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dates that clarify or disambiguate categories, such as categories for individual sports matches, should they be written as 6 October 2021 or 2021-10-06?

I would assume that the all-numeric format is the better option, since it automatically sorts similarly named categories by date, and since categories for specific days use that format (e.g. Category:2021-10-06). But both formats are in use and I haven't been able to find any instructions as to which one should be used in these cases.

Sinigh (talk) 11:38, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the HTML script stick with 2021-10-06 format. Broichmore (talk) 18:24, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, definitely! But what about the name of the category? Sinigh (talk) 18:33, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it's down to an individual day, I'd strongly favor ISO notation (2021-10-06 in this case). If it was just the month, then June 2021. - Jmabel ! talk 19:12, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Agree. I think both of those choices make the most sense for category trees. Sinigh (talk) 20:28, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've been using the format '2023-01 text' for categories where only the month matters (if not only the year). I think that is the most reasonable standard so that the cats are sorted chronologically on category pages. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:48, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can also solve that with a DEFAULTSORT. - Jmabel ! talk 22:45, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I know but they are (more) unreliable and why not simply use this format putting the verbatim month into the title isn't useful and just causes problems due to people not adding a sortkey and the title longer. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:40, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there are defaultsorting navigational templates for month categories. Sinigh (talk) 13:19, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"both formats are in use"

where is "6 October 2021" systematically in use?

in any case, prefer yyyy-mm-dd over other formats. RZuo (talk) 16:33, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good question, I should have provided an example in my first post. I'm referring to categories like those you'll find in this one: Category:Women's association football matches in Sweden. In this particular case, there seems to be a preference for a comma followed by "M Month YYYY", but dates in brackets are not uncommon elsewhere. (This category also showcases the typically arbitrary mix of "vs", "v", and hyphens both with and without spaces, and not a single unspaced en dash to be seen.) Sinigh (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tyresö FF-Umeå IK, 16 April 2013‎ should be the agreed format IMO. This is the date format used by Wikipedia too, in the main. The numerical date in reverse, can be hidden from view to force sorting. Broichmore (talk) 09:35, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If so, please note that the first punctuation mark should be an en dash: Tyresö FF–Umeå IK. As for the date format, that soccer game is actually a very good example for this thread. The category for the date itself is numeric: Category:2013-04-16, which contains two sports games with Day-Month name-Year dates, but also 60+ categories, in and including Category:Photographs taken on 2013-04-16‎, that instead use the all-numeric format. At the same time, there is indeed a general preference for the Day-Mn-Year format across Wikimedia. So you understand why I saw the need to ask my initial question.

Maybe it's intentional that date formats vary depending on the subject on the category? Sinigh (talk) 13:31, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a script/tool I can use to assist deletion sorting? I regularly come across DRs that should be categorized, or which were never updated with the result. There are a few such scripts on enwp, but deletion sorting works differently there. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  14:17, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently not, so now there's User:Rhododendrites/drsort.js. Still a work in progress. Please leave feedback/advice on the talk page. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  13:26, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could anyone proficient in German fix the dead link? --Trade (talk) 21:24, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am not proficient at all but I guess the links should be https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/bundesrat/geschichte-des-bundesrats/bundesraete-und-ihre-wahl/alle-bundesraete-liste.html and https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/bundeskanzlei/bundeskanzlerin/alle-bundeskanzler-liste.html. --Geohakkeri (talk) 05:53, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It would appear that CropTool is once again broken to the point of unusability. The person who got it working again in February 2024 did not take on responsibility to maintain it over time, which is of course their prerogative. We really need someone to maintain this quite valuable tool. - Jmabel ! talk 17:58, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I hope this comes across without any challenging or derisive tone, Jmabel, but I have no idea what you're talking about. I've used CropTool hundreds of times and very rarely had any problems. I've used it in the past 48 hours. What kinds of issues are you experiencing? Is this a browser thing? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:10, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf: A variety of issues, ranging from not getting it to load the image at all to going all through the process and not having it saved. I literally cannot remember the last time it worked for a rotate-and-crop (not counting a multiple of 90°), but it's been months. After half a dozen times in a row that it didn't work for me a couple of weeks ago, I've just switched to download, use GIMP, upload. We keep getting reports here and the VP (etc.) that it isn't working, and you are actually the first I've heard from in a month saying that is not a 100% experience; I'm actually a bit surprised to hear it is sometimes working. - Jmabel ! talk 20:12, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't use it very often, but I've used CropTool a few hundred times in the last year and never noticed any issue. However, most times I don't rotate the image. Pere prlpz (talk) 20:34, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For rotations, I just use a little tool to request User:Rotatebot make the change. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:13, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unless I'm mistaken, Rotatebot will only do multiples of 90°; it will not do (for example) a 1.27° rotation and corresponding crop, nor do I readily see how anyone could know that is exactly what they want without a visual tool. - Jmabel ! talk 22:25, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It can do rotations down to 1 degree. From the tool I have:

If you request a rotation by 90, 180 or 270° Rotatebot will do this in a few hours. If you request a rotation by any other angle it will probably take longer.

So as long as you can translate whatever you want into 360 degrees, then you should be good. (I should also point out that I've never asked for a rotation other than 90/180/270.) Again, I don't want to downplay if you or anyone else is having problems, but between CropTool cropping and the RotateLink gadget, I don't see the immediate issues. Agreed that long-term maintenance is certainly highly important tho, as these tools will break somewhere down the line. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:36, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I tried the CropTool again, since several people above said it was working. I started from a 4000 x 6000 px image already on Commons. The tool spent somewhere upwards of 30 seconds failing to fetch the image, then prompted me again for a URL. Repeated twice, at which point I'm comfortable in saying it is still broken for me. - Jmabel ! talk 03:34, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just tried to crop and rotate and image and it worked: File:Edifici Catalana Occidente (cropped).jpg. Maybe I was just lucky or maybe there is a problem related with the image you tried, your configuration or your equipment. What file did you try to crop?--Pere prlpz (talk) 08:43, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think mere corp is more likely to fail for larger file sizes and during busier hours. Other features are completely broken. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:13, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Recently I've been unable to overwrite using CropTool, getting the error "The overwrite option is disabled because this is a multipage file", for example when trying to crop File:Galerius Arch (Thessaloniki).jpg. I've never seen this error until recently. It seems to work correctly when saving a new file. Consigned (talk) 18:03, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Occasionally, I get that message (for single page files or files with a blank second page), but it still overwrites. Enhancing999 (talk) 18:06, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here’s what to expect, and how to prepare.

Hello everyone, the new Community Wishlist (formerly Community Wishlist Survey) opens on 15 July for piloting. I will jump straight into an FAQ to help with some questions you may have:

Q: How long do I have to submit wishes?

A: As part of the changes, Wishlist will remain open. There is no deadline for wish submission.

Q: What is this ‘Focus Area’ thing?

A: The Foundation will identify patterns with wishes that share a collective problem and group them into areas known as ‘Focus Areas’. The grouping of wishes will begin in August 2024.

Q: At what point do we vote? Are we even still voting?

A: Contributors are encouraged to discuss and vote on Focus Areas to highlight the areas.

Q: How will this new system move wishes forward for addressing?

A: The Foundation, affiliates, and volunteer developers can adopt Focus Areas. The Wikimedia Foundation is committed to integrating Focus Areas into our Annual Planning for 2025-26.

Focus Areas align to hypotheses (specific projects, typically taking up to one quarter) and/or Key Results (broader projects taking up to one year).

Q: How do I submit a wish? Has anything changed about submissions?

A: Yes there are some changes. Please have a look at the guide.

I hope the FAQ helped. You can read more about the launch.

You are encouraged to start drafting your wishes at your pace. Please consult the guide as you do so. Also if you have an earlier unfulfilled wish that you want to re-submit, we are happy to assist you draft.

You can start your draft (see an example) and don't hesitate to ask for support when drafting by sending me a link to your draft/sandbox via Meta email to help/review it. Alternatively you can leave the link in the Drafts List. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 14:36, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Files with no license using PD-GermanGov-currency has 3,409 files which reside in Category:Files with no machine-readable license due to the fact that they use {{PD-GermanGov-currency}} ex-license which was decommissioned some years ago. Some previous discussions:

• Commons:Village_pump/Copyright/Archive/2012/07#German_currency (2012)
• Commons:Deletion requests/Template:PD-GermanGov-currency (from 2013)
• COM:CUR#Germany

Those files were nominated for deletion in 2013, but saved because it was determined that due "the response from the German government, which is now an OTRS ticket, it would appear that the hosting of these files is in line with Commons' policies." That is great, news but the files still have to have some valid license. Can some German speakers or people understanding nuances of German law help us determine if we need to create some new license templates, resurrect {{PD-GermanGov-currency}}, or delete those files? Jarekt (talk) 03:45, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Per COM:CUR#Germany, German currency units are "Not OK except for Deutsche Mark bank notes". They can still be ok though if they're some kind of PD-old or PD-ineligible. The Deutsche Mark bank notes would probably need some new specialised license tag. The others will need to be examined one by one if they're ok for PD-old or PD-ineligible reasons, else they will need to be nominated for deletion. This is an ongoing process, just like the one concerning German stamps. I've looked at files showing German currency every now and then and either nominated them for deletion (Category:Currency related deletion requests) or replaced the PD-GermanGov-currency tag with the proper license tags. --Rosenzweig τ 07:46, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Rosenzweig: That is a great work you are doing in Category:German currency-related deletion requests/deleted, and a bit sad, as nobody wants to delete good files. The issue is that last time we looked at this in 2013, people were debating about 500 files in Category:PD-GermanGov-currency but 11 years latter we have 3697 files in the same category, so it seems like we gain German currency files with no license much faster than we loose them. Maybe we can start with new PD template for Deutsche Mark bank notes. What would be the rationale behind it? --Jarekt (talk) 12:56, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've also removed the deprecated tag from quite a few and added proper PD license tags, so it's not just deletions. The problem is that the PD-GermanGov-currency tag wasn't really properly deprecated until November 2023, so uploaders kept using it and adding files. The DM bank note conditions seem to be in VRT ticket:2012081410006029, someone would have to look at that. Though reading through Commons:Deletion requests/Template:PD-GermanGov-currency I'm a bit skeptical if they would be enough for today's Wikimedia Commons. --Rosenzweig τ 13:55, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

POTY desperately needs new volunteers who can do the things required to run the competition. With the current state of the committee, it is likely that there will be no POTY this year, as the main member who ran scripts for the competition has burned-out from doing wikipedia tasks and isn't up for it. Others on the committee are also missing in action.

Check out the discussion here. Shawnqual (talk) 04:46, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the past few months there was a conversation on Commons with someone from the WMF about WMF prioritization of Wikipedias vs Commons this year. Does anyone remember who that is, could they be pinged to make them aware of this issue? I recall part of that conversation was on how Commons is not particularly focused on disseminating and sharing its content - POTY is probably the most visible initiative for Commons to share its top quality images, including outside Wikimedia, and widely engage with Wikimedia contributors across all projects (are there any stats on how many people engage with POTY, and from which wikis?). I'm sure resources for 2024 are already prioritized but visibility could help for 2025. cc @Rhododendrites who I believe was part of that conversation. - Consigned (talk) 10:11, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This has now come up in several places. The conversation you're referring to is probably this one. There's also some background on the POTY talk page, and on Jimbo's enwp page. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  11:35, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In relation to the point Long-term structured digital preservation of humanity's media that has been included here, I'd like to comment on a general idea. I know that it isn't feasible at the moment, but I think about it as a wish (or dream) for the future. There are new very promising storage technologies in development, that will be great for very long term data storage. Once they are available at an affordable cost, many people or institutions will use them to ensure their data is never lost. But what data deserves that more than... human knowledge put together? This goes beyond Commons: all Wikimedia text dumps should also be included there. Text dumps are currently "only" about 25 TB in size (even if including last 5 versions; each one of them covers full history for all Wiki pages). All media files in Commons are currently 543.48 TB in all. 5D optical data storage disks could store up to 360 TB of data, so 2 of them could store all Commons media files, plus full text history of all wiki pages from all Wikimedia sites (including Commons itself). I don't know when it will become affordable, but, once it is, I think is absolutely desirable that WMF produces, each year or each few years, those 2 (or 3 or 4, no more should be needed, even if total size grows a lot) disks of human knowledge. Each pair/group of disks could be stored in different places, so very long term preservation of all content is ensured. If cost ends up being really low, its use can also be very promising for Internet Archive, so the earthquake risk for its contents (that I have expressed several times, both here and in Wikipedia village pump, and even at their own forum) would be virtually eliminated. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:04, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is very important to think about how human knowledge and documents of it can outlast many Millennia. Right now, there are several researches going on, which media might be the best for storing many hundreds of terabytes of data like "Project Silica" or "Cerabyte". Researching takes a lot time until respective storage media is available for the market. For writing and using the said 5D medium, we need a machine with a femtosecond laser, which is very uncommon. We need storage media where writing and reading will also be possible in the far future. Preserving data amounts under 1 PB isn't that expensive and can be assured easily. Next to classic HDDs, files could also be stored on LTO tapes, which are rather cheap and are good for archiving. Apart from this, we need distributed archiving and redundancies, and storage media that is not exposed to (human) failures and errors, or malware, or other threats. But as storage medisa gets better from year to year, we already are to store many many Petabytes on small space (the Internet Archive has a high storage density with its petabox). And in theory, you would need only fourty 26 TB HDDs for one petabyte, which fit in any (smaller) room. :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:21, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But the biggest problems are errors made by human users, disasters, wars, and people who don't think about or don't care about archiving their works (photos or videos of events etc.) they created. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:22, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another problem is how organisations like Internet Archive or Google, or Meta or whoever cares about preservation. The Internet Archive stores very many petabytes that have to be managed and to be maintained. Companies like Meta or Google hold high relevant files (look at images contributed to Google Maps; many people use Instagram to post relevant scenes) alive. What happens after their liquidation? How are their files treated and how to handle issues like copyright and privacy? What about archives of administrations, of towns, of newspapers, etc. pp... Many questions, but unfortunately too few answers. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:27, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Watch some of the videos on Q109653742|Iron Mountain, Boyers, Pennsylvania facility storing digital and physical media and Granite Mountain Records Vault and compare to 2008 Universal Studios fire and w:Double Fold where archives discard/sell original material after microfilming. --RAN (talk) 15:15, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See: File:Onorio Moretti (1881-1939) obituary in The Boston Globe of Boston, Massachusetts on October 24, 1939.jpg in the structured data. I want to allow Distributed_by to be used in structured_data. AP UPI news articles are distributed to news outlets. Recordings and movies have distribution companies involved. I tried to make a change at Distributed_by but it did not work. RAN (talk) 15:05, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]