Commons:Village pump - Wikimedia Commons
Jump to content
From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Latest comment:
11 minutes ago
by Magnus Manske in topic
Undelete some of my files
Shortcut
COM:VP
Community portal
introduction
Help desk
Village pump
proposals
technical
Administrators' noticeboard
vandalism
user problems
blocks and protections
↓ Skip to table of contents ↓
↓ Skip to discussions ↓
↓ Skip to the last discussion ↓
Village pumps for other languages
COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES
Commons Help desk
Village pump (general discussion)
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 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/2026/04
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
For questions about
technical matters
, or
help
that does not relate to the general Commons community as well as
proposals
, please see the other discussion boards linked in the blue panel at the top.
Search archives:
Start a new discussion
💭 Title
🙋 Last editor
(UTC)
History maps of Europe
Stefan Kühn
2026-02-12
12:29
Maps from Our World in Data
30
Enyavar
2026-03-12
16:03
Help needed to close 6,323 Category for Discussion cases
22
Prototyperspective
2026-04-20
12:33
Office action: Removal of file
66
23
Abzeronow
2026-04-22
02:50
Way to find categories with number of files over certain threshold?
25
Prototyperspective
2026-04-19
11:34
Category for the act of surrendering / piling up weapons
RoyZuo
2026-04-17
14:59
Mathematics → Data visualization images
12
Prototyperspective
2026-04-22
17:51
How to categorize 49,000 media needing categories as of 2021?
Prototyperspective
2026-04-20
22:08
Category:Logos of political parties in Peru
Jmabel
2026-04-21
16:39
10
Model release template
Nosferattus
2026-04-20
23:28
11
Android phones strip coords before upload, since April 2026
Nakonana
2026-04-22
19:48
12
Wiki Loves Bangla 2026 has started, Join Now!
Moheen
2026-04-21
20:56
13
A question of curiousity
Prototyperspective
2026-04-23
13:44
14
Advice on COM:Permission requests
TEMPO156
2026-04-24
01:48
15
Template:Opmcm.gov.np
Jmabel
2026-04-23
18:46
16
webp vs png
Bawolff
2026-04-24
00:49
17
Any other options left to hold non-free files centrally?
George Ho
2026-04-23
20:36
18
Undelete some of my files
Magnus Manske
2026-04-24
10:19
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.
It can only be speculated that, like the modern office
water cooler
, the
village pump
must have been a gathering place where dwellers discussed ideas for the improvement of their locale.
add
Centralized discussion
See also:
Village pump/Proposals
Archive
Commons:Village pump#Help needed to close 6,323 Category for Discussion cases
(9 March 2025)
User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands#Replace images with .svg version
(5 August 2025)
Category talk:Heroes' Cemetery in the Philippines#RfC: Cemetery name
(18 July 2025)
Hosting of free fonts in Commons
(18 July 2024)
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.
January 02
History maps of Europe
Latest comment:
2 months ago
6 comments
4 people in discussion
Hi, I would like to discuss the description in all categories of the scheme "Maps of
Italy
Belgium
Spain
Poland
). There are three different points about the current system I would like to invite comments on:
the wording of the definition in the first paragraph of the hatnote
whether or not to include "you may also be looking for similar maps" (second and third paragraph) of the description
whether or not to re-include a distinction between history maps (in this category group) vs. old maps (
not
in this category group)
For the first point, there are two proposals, the first is the current "
Maps showing all or most of the territory (geographic area) of modern-day
" which I would prefer to replace with a simple "
This category is about maps of the history of
", given that "modern-day territories" are not always the same as they were in the respective century. Another critism of mine is that "all or most" excludes history maps that only cover smaller parts of the country in question.
For the second point, my argument is that these paragraphs are not necessary, since the links to the Atlas project should be included in the respective parent category (i.e. "Maps of the history of
For the third point, I find it essential to point out that Commons has always distinguished "current", "history" and "old" maps, formulated in
Template:TFOMC
: "history" maps include this
map of Poland in the 16th century
(created recently, depicting the past) but "old" maps include this
16th-century map of Poland
(created to depict the present, back then). There are certain grey areas where these categories DO overlap, especially "old history maps", but in quite many cases they don't. The respective category names are quite similar and can be confused, so I would suggest to mention this right in the category description.
I've put my own opinion in
italics
to explain why I think this requires debate, but I would like for people to check out the scheme examples for themselves, and judge on their own. Peace, --
Enyavar
talk
08:11, 2 January 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Enyavar
I'm trying to understand the first point. A couple of questions that may help me understand:
Would there be no such thing as "maps of Germany" for any date before 1866? Or would we take "Germany" before that date to mean the German-speaking world (and, if so, would that include areas where the rulers spoke German, but most of their subject did not)? or what? (Similarly for Italy.)
Similarly: would there be no such thing as maps of Poland or Lithuania between 1795 and 1918? If so, what would we call maps of that area in that period?
I could easily provide a dozen similar examples, but answers to those two will at least give me a clue where this proposes to head. -
Jmabel
talk
18:49, 2 January 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Thanks for that question, our categories about "history of" do not really care for nation states existing. Germany's history begins quite some time before it became a nation in the 19th century, and Polish history did not stop during the times of division:
Poland in the 19th century
is unquestionably a valid category. Our history categories generally imply that people know the limits of a subject without exact definitions.
Your question is getting to the reason why I am uncomfortable with the current hatnote/definition of these categories. I have not checked for all countries in Europe, but I'm quite confident: We
do not
define the subject of "
Maps of the history of Poland
" with a hatnote. We
do not
define "
Poland in the 16th century
" either. So
why
would we define the
combination subcategory
of the two so narrowly and rigidly, that only 6 out of 26 files currently in the category even match that (unreasonable) definition? (And of course, Poland/16th is just a stand-in here, I would argue the same for
Spain/12th
and
Italy/8th
and all others)
I would even be okay with no definition at all, besides a template notice (my third point) that "maps of
Enyavar
talk
04:53, 3 January 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Categories denoted as old, or historic, are not terribly useful. Much better to put dates on them.
Rathfelder
talk
17:05, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Please read the original post, that is not a comment on the actual questions of this topic.
Old maps
are not the topic here, this is about
history maps
(i.e.
Maps showing history
of specific countries/centuries) regardless of when they were produced.
The term "historic maps" that can denote both, has rightfully fallen (mostly) into disuse. --
Enyavar
talk
16:23, 17 January 2026 (UTC)
Reply
In our
Commons:WikiProject Postcards
we have the similar problem. Is this a "old postcard of the German Empire" or a "Postcard of Germany". There we are mostly agree, that today people often search for postcards be the locations of today. So many former German towns are now Polnish towns and so we are categorized this postcards under the polnish name of the town. See also
Commons:WikiProject_Postcards#Categories
. Best regards --
sk
talk
12:29, 12 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
February 22
Maps from Our World in Data
Latest comment:
1 month ago
30 comments
7 people in discussion
A suggestion in regards with the maps from Our World in Data: remove from each map the category
These maps weren't published in the years referenced. In addition, it could make the categories of
Thanks in advance. --
Universalis
talk
19:15, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
As with other files in these categories, that's the year of the data. This categorization has large usefulness to find and update outdated images used on Wikipedia. And the category title does not imply that's the year the map was made.
Prototyperspective
talk
20:13, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
+1 to
Prototyperspective
. -
Jmabel
talk
20:39, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I have been meaning to say something about these maps, and this is a good occasion.
User:Universalis
is right that these maps were not created in that year,
and it IS practice on Commons to understand "
showing
that timeframe - the latter would be better placed under "maps showing
User:Doc James
, who is creating the majority of recent OWiD maps that concern what might be called history, is producing them by the thousand each day, at least as far as I can observe. For 2026-02-24 I just checked and saw 5000 edits, most if not all of them creating and categorizing OWiD statistics/maps usually looking like
this (1947)
this (1664)
and
this (1800)
. That is an enormous output and just for example
1764 maps of North America
is currently dominantly OWiD maps and I suspect that this is true for basically all year-maps-of-world/continent right now. Case in point: the categories for
1444 maps of Africa
1445 maps of Europe
or
1446 maps of Asia
don't even exist right now, but they are already filled with OWiD maps.
With at least 300'000 OWiD maps already existing and no end in sight, I would really like to delegate all of these maps into specific OWiD-categories for each continent and year. My suggestion for
File:Annual co2 cement, North America, 1764.svg
would be
Our World in Data maps showing North America in 1764
or
Our World in Data maps of North America in 1764
. These year-categories would themselves be categorized under
Our World in Data maps showing 1764
and
Our World in Data maps of North America in the 18th century
The titles I suggest above are up for debate. Is it more practical to use "Our World in Data maps" or can it be shortened to "OWiD maps" ? Also, should it be "showing" (as per our category branch "maps showing
Enyavar
talk
03:58, 25 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Sure we can adjust the categories however folks wish. We have additionally build a tool to help with more fined toned mass categorization. See
Help:Gadget-CategoryBatchManager
With respect to numbers, yes have uploaded about 600K so far and it looks like I am maybe a third done, so maybe 1.2 million more to go. Will likely not finish until this fall.
Doc James
talk
contribs
email
06:03, 25 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
and it IS practice on Commons to understand "
this is an inaccurate statement. Look into any of these categories of years of the recent few decades and you'll notice how what you said is false. What you said applies to old maps and there usually the data shown is not known better than year of map made or the same.
Prototyperspective
talk
13:47, 25 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
So what do folks want us to do?
Doc James
talk
contribs
email
09:00, 26 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
In 2014
, it has been decided that "
Enyavar
talk
11:04, 26 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
If you'd like to these could be subcategorized in the maps by year cats...I tried to keep them as flat as possible to enable viewing all the relevant files on one page, have easier to understand standardized cat names, and not start deep nesting that can cause queries and scans to break. Many hundreds of files would be moved. If there is agreement and no objections, should they be named
Category:Our World in Data maps of the world showing 2014 data
or
Category:OWID maps of the world showing 2014 data
or
Category:Maps of the world showing 2017 (OWID)
or
Category:Our World in Data maps of the world showing 2014
or
Category:2014 Our World in Data maps of the world
or
Category:2014 maps of the world (OWID)
or sth else? (It's mostly maps of the world that I'd move.)
Prototyperspective
talk
12:40, 26 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Doc James has stated above that we are going to have about ~1'800'000 maps once the current run of creating these files is finished. And I don't even think that will be the end of it. So I agree, we need to have a good standardized cat structure, and I am willing to hear if Doc James also has input on good names, or input on which names are less good. With that lead:
As far as I can see, we do have the following seven regions over which these maps are distributed: "the world", "Africa", "Asia", "Europe", "North America", "Oceania", "South America". These are the seven most common frames I noticed so far, please correct me if there are more. "World" is probably going to be a bit larger, but I don't think we should neglect the other regions, which are all going to be equally densely filled.
Now, thinking about the best name structure. I would prefer to pre-fix the data source, similarly to how we do it with other major map providers like "OpenStreetMap maps of...", "USGS maps of...", "ShakeMaps of earthquakes in...": The most important qualifier gets frontloaded. For easy manual input, I would prefer the name "OWiD maps of...".
However
, the categories are unlikely to get assigned manually, and it is much easier to understand what the acronym means when it is written out. So right now, I would tend to go with the general
Our World in Data maps of...
as the prefix, then followed with the seven (?) regions identified above.
Afterwards comes the suffix. Prototypeperspektive suggested
... showing
, my own ideas leaned towards
... in
or
... showing
. These suggestions all look equally good to me. Prototype's suffix has the advantage of pointing out that these maps are data-driven and not cartography-driven. So I think that would be best.
Following that idea, we could go with
Our World in Data maps of
. Taking an existing map like
File:States involved in state based conflicts, Oceania, 1947.svg
, one would assign
Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data
instead of the current three categories
Our World in Data maps of Oceania
Maps showing 1947
and
1947 maps of Oceania
. That new category would itself be categorized directly under the existing three categories it replaces.
If the above suggestion seems agreeable... how difficult is it for Doc James to change the automated exports and the templates that are currently in use? And would you be able to do an automated re-categorization of all the already existing files? Would you need help? --
Enyavar
talk
18:54, 28 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Yah I think doing this in an automated fashion should be fairly easy. This would be subcategories of what main category?
Doc James
talk
contribs
email
19:01, 28 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
[[:category:Our World in Data maps of
Maps of the history of Oceania
, but the idea is creating
Maps of Oceania in the 20th century
and
Maps of Oceania in the 1940s
, and that would again be a subcategory of
Oceania in the 1940s
... But I think that work would not affect the OWiD-maps and their templates itself. --
Enyavar
talk
19:13, 28 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Plan was to categorize once the initial uploads are completed, which will not be until this fall. And work on the 1.8 million or so files at that point.
Doc James
talk
contribs
email
19:18, 28 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
You are currently categorizing them upon upload by two mechanisms, one is the
template:Map showing old data
, the other is assigning regular categories. Right now, neither of these mechanisms is a bespoke template designed for OWiD content.
I can imagine a template that works like
{{OWiD maps showing|Africa|1758}}
that would create the categories we contemplated above, including links to skip forward/backward and also links to skip to the other continents/world extent. If we used such a template to create the category framework discussed above, couldn't you adapt your exporting automatism once that exists? I can only image it would take less work later.
Before I attempt working on such a template myself, I'm asking a few users who I suspect have more routine in templating,
Clusternote
AnRo0002
, and
Reinhard Müller
My question is how you would go about it: templates for the file descriptions; templates for creating these categories; or both? Are there pitfalls I am not aware of? We are talking here about ca. 2 million standardized files ranging from very few around the year
1021
to an abundance of such files for
2021
, with hundreds of files per year per continent
in 1834 already
. The maps are optimized to be used in slider-frames elsewhere; for Commons I'm more concerned with handling the categorization. Thanks in advance! --
Enyavar
talk
21:51, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Here is my suggestion:
Maps of Oceania in the 1940s
anro
talk
22:18, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I can happily come up with a suggestion for a template based on the
Navigation by
system. But first let me make sure I understand correctly:
The template would be used for categories like
Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data
, right?
Would we also have
Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1940s data
(decade) and
Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 19th-century data
(century) as parent and grandparent of the year category?
Thanks --
Reinhard Müller
talk
09:07, 4 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Thanks Reinhard, regarding
#1
yes that is idea.
{{OWiD maps showing|Africa|175|8}} -->
Our World in Data maps of Africa showing 1748 data
{{OWiD maps showing|Oceania|194|7}} -->
Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data
As for
#2
I would have suggested "... showing the 1940s" and "...showing the 20th-century" as parent categories. But you're right, I talked above about "
Prototyperspective
, what do you think about "
Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing
20th century data
being the respective category on the century level?
Enyavar
talk
19:11, 5 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I have now created:
Templates
{{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and century}}
{{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and decade}}
{{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and year}}
Example use
Category:Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 20th-century data
Category:Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1940s data
Category:Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data
Category:Our World in Data maps of the world showing 1947 data
The usage of the templates is super easy, no need for any parameters specifying the continent or the year, they take everything they need to know from the name of the category they are used in.
The names of the continents are automatically translated using Wikidata labels. The first part of the title and the text above and below the navigation blocks are just examples. These can be used as an explanation for the category which is centrally maintained and must only be changed once if something should be changed, and if the texts are final, we can also make them translatable.
Please let me know what you think. --
Reinhard Müller
talk
09:52, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
P.S. Looking at the currently existing category tree about maps, I really think that the OWiD categories shouldn't be in
Category:1947 maps of Oceania
or
Category:1940s maps of Oceania
. For centuries, we already have
Category:Maps of Oceania in the 20th century
, and I think it might be a good opportunity to introduce these categories also on a decade and year level. If you want, I can also create the templates for "Maps by continent and century/decade/year shown". And/or whatever you consider useful for building the correct parent structure for the OWiD categories. --
Reinhard Müller
talk
14:37, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Reinhard Müller
Thanks a lot!
This is even easier to apply than I thought. I populated three continents for the 1940s (
Africa
Asia
Oceania
) and
also the world
The decade-template for the world in the 1940s did not work (lua template cannot find "the world"), I hope this can be fixed. Aside from that it looks pretty great. Sorry, two more nitpicks, some links only appear once some other part of the structure has been fully built up. The year-ribbon only shows up once the decade-category is in place; and it seems as if the decade template only shows up once the century-category is in place? Also, I think that the subcategories could be sorted with a space (" ") instead of the "@".
I agree with your proposal that instead of "1947 maps of Oceania" we should have "Maps of Oceania in 1947" which would be the "maps showing"-version. "Maps of Oceania in 1947" would be a subcategory of "Maps showing 1947", "Oceania in 1947", "Maps of Oceania in the 1940s" respectively. This category would then hold the OWiD maps and all maps that
show
Oceania in 1947 through the historian's lens, similar to how we already have
Maps of Poland in the 16th century
(see also one thread above...) and
Maps of the world in the 1940s
Universalis
Prototyperspective
Jmabel
, and
Doc James
when you check the bolded links... does this new structure look okay? --
Enyavar
talk
15:22, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Very nice. Are you using a bot to apply this? Or have you tried
Help:Gadget-CategoryBatchManager
Doc James
talk
contribs
email
16:46, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Thanks for the feedback!
I fixed "the world" (ooh, it feels good to write this ;-))
It is generally true that the template works best when the categories are created top down (i.e. first the centuries, then the decades, then the years). Still the navigation ribbons should appear even if the parent category does not exist (yet), I will have to investigate why they don't. But for the addition of the correct parent categories for new categories, it is important anyway that the parents pre-exist.
FWIW, this is now also fixed. --
Reinhard Müller
talk
19:51, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I have (years ago) thought a lot about the question of logical sort keys, currently they are used very inconsistently across commons. I've even made a
page summarizing my thoughts
which you may or may not agree with. About this specific case, I think the space is widely used for meta categories (Blah blah by xyz) and should be reserved for that, and that the @ has the advantage of being sorted after all the other special characters, so if for example the category key "*" is before the alphanumeric subcategories, it is also before the numeric subcategories if the numeric are sorted as @. In the end I don't think in our case it makes much of a difference as long as all the subcategories use the same key so they are sorted correctly - which is taken care of by the template.
About the "Maps of Oceania in 1947", would you want to also create them right now? Should I create a
{{Category description/Maps by continent and year}}
(and decade and century), and adapt the OWiD templates to the new parents?
I don't use a bot, and I think that the CategoryBatchManager can add parent categories, but not a template. But since you don't have to change a single letter when copying the template from one category to a similar one, it can be done very fast. --
Reinhard Müller
talk
18:02, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
About the "Maps of Oceania in 1947" - yes, you could create a template for that, as well. We already have parts of that, but right now they were created in a manual fashion:
North America/1770s
and
Asia/18th
and
Europe/11th
. I'm not yet fully eager and ready to apply this structure as long as the other treat about
#History maps of Europe
is still unresolved. But having the templates prepared now might help later. Once those maps-per-continent-shown-by-year exist, the OWiD template would be switched from "1940s maps of Asia"+"Maps showing the 1940s" --> "Maps of Asia in the 1940s" and so on. --
Enyavar
talk
19:51, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I have created:
{{Category description/Maps by continent and century shown}}
{{Category description/Maps by continent and decade shown}}
{{Category description/Maps by continent and year shown}}
I have not (yet) changed the parent categories for the OWiD categories. Please just let me know when I should do that.
Also please don't forget that the texts above and below the navigation ribbons are just placeholders (in the OWiD templates and the new templates), and they should be finalized before the templates are widely used. --
Reinhard Müller
talk
22:02, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Looks great; thanks very much. I just don't know how complete these cats currently are and will be. They could be made complete via
deepcategory
category intersections and moving files with cat-a-lot.
Prototyperspective
talk
18:22, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
But first, we need to categorize the OWiD maps. I populated the 1940s structure with a few hours of Cat-a-lot, but there is a catch: all these maps currently have the template
{{Map showing old data|year=1942}}
. For the 1940s alone, removing that template means
manually
editing 17'500 files. We must use a bot to do these edits, I think. The algorithm, for all ~75'000 maps of Asia would be roughly as follows:
for all files in
[[Category:Our World in Data maps of Asia]]
if
{{Map showing old data|year=YYYY}}
" occurs in the file:
take the YYYY as a variable to insert "
[[Category:Our World in Data maps of Asia showing YYYY data]]
" //** a single category for the location and year of the map **//
if
that inserted category does not yet exist: create it with "
{{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and year}}
" //** (as helpfully provided by Reinhard)**//
take the file name as the variable
topicname
and strip
File:
and
, Asia, YYYY.svg
(or
,Asia,YYYY.svg
) from that variable
insert "
[[Category:Our World in Data maps showing ||topicname]]
" //** for example
Category:Our World in Data maps showing Absolute change co2
, neatly collecting ~1800 files like
this one
or ~200 files like
this one
: a single category for the
topic
of the map, to have them all easily assembled **//
if
that inserted category does not yet exist: create it with "
[[Category:Our World in Data maps by topic]]
" //** in many cases, better names might be found, but that cleanup can be handled afterwards manually where needed **//
remove all occurences of "
{{Map showing old data|year=YYYY}}
", ""
[[Category:YYYY maps of Asia]]
" and "
[[Category:Our World in Data maps of Asia]]
else
leave the file alone)
repeat the same with "Africa", "Europe", ["North America" or "NorthAmerica" would need to be mapped onto "North America"], "Oceania", and so on.
I do not know how exactly to program a bot, but I think this would do the trick, not only to create and populate the categories for continent-by-year, but also to have distinct categories for each topic. Right now, I don't think the latter exist yet. --
Enyavar
talk
19:51, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
For the 1940s alone, removing that template means manually editing 17'500 files
: I haven't been following all of this, but why manually? -
Jmabel
talk
20:53, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
True, the bot run would also touch those files. I just wanted to emphasize that so many files cannot be realistically processed manually, and then formulated how I think this could be automated. I struck the word in my earlier response. --
Enyavar
talk
22:21, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I added the above request to
Commons:Bots
. --
Enyavar
talk
16:03, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
March 06
Help needed to close 6,323 Category for Discussion cases
Latest comment:
3 days ago
22 comments
8 people in discussion
There is a large and growing backlog of open CfDs. It would be great…
if more people would participate in these discussions to move them toward closability and
if more admins or CfD/backlog-experienced users would to go through CfDs to close closable discussions (if there is a way to filter these for discussions with 3+ participants, that would be useful)
CfDs over time – this chart was made possible by generative AI and uses data of scraped from Wayback Machine archives of
Category:Categories for discussion
via a new tool
The oldest open discussions are from 2015. If you have any ideas how to increase participation or more easily solve more CfDs, please comment. For example, maybe there is a way to see CfDs for subjects one is interested/knowledgable in or users could identify users relevant to CfDs and ping them from there to get these to participate (e.g. top authors of the linked Wikipedia articles identified via XTools).
CfDs shouldn't be closed for the sake of it prematurely though – the reason for why they have been started should really be solved before they're closed – sometimes this requires some restructuring, renaming or categorization work. For info about CfDs, see
Commons:Categories for discussion
Prototyperspective
talk
13:55, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
A backlog like this is a disgrace. Will nobody think of the poor nominators?
Laurel Lodged
talk
14:10, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Perhaps we can categorize CfDs like we categorize DRs, so people who are only interested in a specific subject can browse CfDs relating to that subject more easily. Thanks.
Tvpuppy
talk
15:19, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Good idea.
Joshbaumgartner
had already set up
Category:Category discussions by topic
in mid 2024. However, it can be difficult to categorize CfDs into these as these topic categories probably would need to be and are very broad where deepcategory fails. This probably is part of the reason for why the current subcategories are very incomplete and contain just few CfDs (which means that cat is currently not very useful and also doesn't seem to be used much so far). For example, when trying to find more than the 1 CfD currently in the Culture-related CfDs,
this search
does not show any CfDs and neither does
this search
Prototyperspective
talk
18:38, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Indeed, it was an attempt to do exactly that, but as a manual process it isn't going to be useful unless broadly adopted as part of the CfD process and probably needs some better gadgetry to make it user friendly for nominators to categorize their CfD from the start.
Josh
talk
01:11, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Agree. Adding some functionality to a widely-used gadget or a gadget in general may not be needed for this to be broadly adopted: one could have a bot auto-categorize the CfDs and then then better-populated by topic cat could maybe be made more visible in various ways so more people use these. Since the deepcat queries break, I don't know how that could be done theoretically – maybe via petscan or quarry or the Commons SPARQL query service.
Prototyperspective
talk
12:46, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I agree that categorizing CfDs could be useful, both for users to find them to comment, and for admins to find them to close. (That's especially true where the discussion hinges on specific knowledge bases, or is conducted in non-English languages.) I don't love the idea of canvassing users, even by neutral/automated criteria, unless it's strictly opt-in.
Like many other tasks, the CfD backlog is mostly due to a shortage of admin time. (Experienced non-admin users can also close discussions, and I think it's a great place to learn admin for those considering the mop, but obviously they are not able to delete categories when needed.) There's also a notable lack of tools to efficiently work with CfDs, which means that the workload for a given CfD is substantially higher than a DR. I can close DRs or process speedies on my phone in a few spare minutes on the bus, but closing CfDs requires my laptop and a longer block of time.
Tool to close CfDs - it should be one click to add
{{Cfdh}}
{{Cfdf}}
, etc, just like it is with DRs.
Tool to rename all categories in a category tree, and move associated files
Tool to add/remove CfD notices on all categories in a given category tree
There are some other less common but time-consuming CfD closure tasks that would benefit from tools. For example, sometimes we decide to merge two category trees with identical structures but different names, or to upmerge a large swath of categories. Having to work through these can make a single CfD close take hours.
Some of these may exist in some form on enwiki or other wikis, which could reduce the work required from "write from scratch" to "localize to Commons". Given the importance of the CfD process and the limited capacity of volunteer developers, I really think these should be developed and maintained by the WMF.
Pi.1415926535
talk
20:31, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Opt-in notifications of CfDs aren't feasible I think – a related idea however would be to maybe post about categories of CfDs on WikiProject pages about that broad subject.
Regarding the shortage of admin time maybe an approach could be to get more sufficiently experienced users to help with closing CfDs. Only a fraction of CfDs involve cat deletion and one can also delete these by renaming the category without leaving a redirect in many of these cases.
More tools for CfDs would be great – or probably CfD-features in existing tools like Twinkle. To your useful list of missing features, I'd add a tool to modify many category pages at once similar to VisualFileChange. I've asked about it at
Commons:Village pump/Technical#Editing many categories at once
and this could also be used for the add/remove CfD notices on all categories in a given category tree functionality. I'd like to note though that afaik most CfDs are not held back by this but rather by a lack of user input or nobody closing the closable CfDs.
Prototyperspective
talk
14:27, 16 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Prototyperspective
I believe you can edit multiple cats at once with AWB, but I don't recall that I've ever done it, not a tool I've used recently. -
Jmabel
talk
20:47, 16 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
some are just missions impossible unless the right person interested and capable in that task can be found.
for example
Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/01/Category:Gothic jewellery
seems pretty straight forward. we just need 2 categories, 1 for gothic as a style and 1 for the things related to goths the ethnic group, but it contains many files and subcategories. to distinguish and separate them takes a lot of time for people without that specific knowledge.
RoyZuo
talk
15:31, 7 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
also the problem plaguing many cat names will vanish when cats can be like wd items which can take on multilingual labels, descriptions and aliases.
we dont need to settle on a single title.
technical solutions and infrastructure upgrade are much needed for commons.
RoyZuo
talk
15:40, 7 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Since the thread was started, the backlog has been reduced to
6311
– not much of a change but it's good to see that the direction currently is downward, not further up. Maybe what could help are summaries of the outstanding issues/question for bundles of stale CfDs. However, that probably doesn't scale above a hundred or so CfDs and most CfDs are rather short. A way to connect people knowledgable/interested in a certain topic with open CfDs in that area seems like a better way forward. If CfDs were categorized by broad topic, this would however still require users to proactively go to that category and see if it has any CfDs of interest to them.
On English Wikipedia
there was a recent thread about CfDs
(started by
Pppery
) and there there are only about
250
open CfDs. Maybe one could see if they're doing some things to get more CfDs closed faster other than ENWP simply having more category-pageviews and more contributors.
Prototyperspective
talk
13:06, 22 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
At least Commons' backlog is going down. Enwiki's has been going up overall and briefly exceeded 300 several times over the last few days.
* Pppery *
it has begun...
15:04, 22 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Maybe this is useful and maybe we could/should have a page like this on Commons too:
en:User:Qwerfjkl/How to close CfD discussions
Prototyperspective
talk
15:39, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Things are going down again – it's at
6,271
categories that have a CfD now. Thanks to everyone involved, and I'd like to thank especially
Deltaspace42
who is doing a remarkable effort on the CfDs as far as I can see (seeing many closes of CfDs I have watchlisted). Will update the chart soonish.
An issue with the applied quantification is that it does not show the 'number of open CfDs' but the 'number of categories with open CfDs' and some CfDs relate to lots of categories with tags being on each. However, some users also create lots of separate CfDs about the same topic for each of the affected category so the number of open CfDs wouldn't necessarily be better, even more so since prioritizing the CfDs that have hatnote tags on lots of categories makes some sense and nothing is stopping contributors to close or participate in these first. I'll probably rename the chart to make it clearer which count it shows. Nevertheless, if somebody knows of a way to get data of the number of open CfDs over time, please comment. It looks like every month back to Dec 2015 has at least one open CfD except for a few months in 2017 which have been finished.
I encourage everyone to take a glance over one or a few months of CfDs to see whether there's any you have some input for. It's often not discussion that are specific to some subject where barely anybody other than people interested/knowledgable in that topic could say something constructive but also various other types of complications and issues that need resolving.
Prototyperspective
talk
23:10, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Preliminary top CfDs by number of categories affected:
Counties of Northern Ireland
: 196
GLAM dashboard reports
: 163
Historic views
: 148
Setsumatsusha
: 100
Saint Catherine
: 84
University and college yearbooks
: 72 – "closed" but not actually closed
Rendered names of countries
: 63
Photographs of dance
: 54
Built in Leeds by year categories
: 53
Help with closing these CfDs would be very welcome.
Prototyperspective
talk
01:20, 8 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Now I've compiled this list of CfDs sorted by number of affected categories (via a new script I'll put on gitlab):
Commons:Categories for Discussion table
Maybe it can be useful to find CfDs, and enable seeing or prioritizing those that affect many categories. Note that if these get addressed first the
Category:Categories for discussion
will become better navigable as it's not cluttered with dozens of cats from one CfD and the note can be removed from more categories where readers can be confused by them. There could maybe be other columns for other data like the year. Would be nice if these could get closed and it would most effectively reduce the number tracked in the chart.
Looks like there are about 2579 open CfDs currently. However, it doesn't look like the total number has been tracked (it is/can be only tracked starting now). Thus, a chart for the count of CfDs can't be made. If the total number of CfDs (not cats affected by CfDs) has been tracked somewhere, please comment. On English Wikipedia if I'm not mistaken, these numbers have been tracked –
en:Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Awaiting closure
. Numbers there have been low throughout.
Prototyperspective
talk
01:08, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Added a column for the year and fixed missing entries as well as it showing some entries that don't have the template. It seems like the API returns some items multiple times, unlike the mediasearch and specialsearch – or so I thought.
There still is a gap between the count of categories per the category page (or the
incategory:"Categories for discussion"
search results) and the count of deduplicated search result page titles. The count of undeduplicated titles (6,175 at last run) is quite close to the current content count of the category (6,207 but some get recently closed) so I'm wondering whether maybe there are duplicates too given that in one run, it did find
Category:1976 in County Antrim
and in another run (without changing the script) it didn't, as can be seen at
Special:Diff/1194380520
. Something seems off. The script is at
and if somebody is interested one can use it with
node main.js --pages 2
I'll probably look into it again at some other point if I can identify the issue but as far as I can see currently, the search API not only fails to properly apply the
insource
search operator but also shows some pages multiple times.
Prototyperspective
talk
14:41, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Investigated further and now dumped all the json API responses (linked on the page). There really does seem to be an issue with it and this may also affect other tools and gadgets and may cause developers to debug for long without seeing that the issue may be in the API response. The returns are always different and this is especially hard to see since the undeduplicated found count is similar to the category count; petscan nevertheless shows a count like the category. Here is an example:
this query
shows 21 categories affected by a closed-but-still-open CfD; the API replies had
Category:Wendy Whoppers
and
Category:Jessie James (porn actress)
twice each but did not contain
Category:Kaitlyn Ashley
. Deduplication is handled by the script but the count of affected cats is too low in the table because some are missing. In an earlier scan I noticed
Category:Kayenta Mine
is included while in a later one it wasn't. Another potential cause could be the way of pagination with the API since that comes even before the json is dumped but it seems fine – it's at
sroffset = j.continue && j.continue.sroffset;
. I'll put this to rest for now (unless there is some feedback/info at least).
Prototyperspective
talk
18:13, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Reported the API issue at
phab:T422891
(also relevant to other tools using the Commons API) and completed the Categories for Discussion table via enabling multiple runs of loading all the pages (the script can also be adapted for diverse other purposes where one loads Commons search results and retrieves data such as template parameters from the results).
I've noticed a low-hanging fruit to reduce the number of categories with CfDs is by completing the closures of
incompletely closed CfDs
such as the "University and college yearbooks" CfD linked above. These categories are still in
Category:Categories for discussion
and have the CfD hatnote at their top. Somebody could find and complete these. AWB/
wAWB
can be used for that; can't do it myself because it needs some permissions.
Prototyperspective
talk
17:18, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Well below the 6k now:
5,974
categories with open CfDs now – thanks to everyone helping to get the numbers down! The line in the chart now goes steeply downward. Please provide inputs for one or some of the CfDs at the top of
Commons:Categories for Discussion table
Prototyperspective
talk
12:03, 14 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
The count is not rising but also not declining,
5,978
as of now. Lots of these CfDs are on important subjects that need resolution asap.
Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/03/Counties of Northern Ireland
is the CfD affecting most cats and involves Counties of Northern Ireland after 1972. "According to
en:Counties_of_Northern_Ireland#Government_and_modern_usage
, for the most part, Northern Ireland has been organized under districts since 1972, 26 created in 1972 consolidated into 11 after 2015. […] It seems mighty odd to figure out which portions of Belfast would constitute County Atrium versus County Down because it was a split used almost 40 years ago." – how to proceed?
Prototyperspective
talk
12:33, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
March 19
Office action: Removal of file
Latest comment:
2 days ago
67 comments
23 people in discussion
Hello all,
Today, the Wikimedia Foundation removed the file
File:An illegal Cuban migrant beheads a motel owner in Dallas, Texas (10 September 2025).webm
from Wikimedia Commons in response to a legal order from the Australian government. Our attorneys determined that the order applied to the Foundation under
our policy for determining applicable law
This video consisted of security camera footage of a graphic murder, reuploaded from a shock site. It was not in educational use on the Wikimedia projects. The video title suggested that its creator (on the origin site) may have originally attempted to link the violence to illegal immigration, but there was no evidence of it actually being used as political speech.
Our preferred approach is to first give community members an opportunity to evaluate content under your own policies, e.g.
COM:EDUSE
, but circumstances didn’t permit that in this specific and thankfully very rare case. In the future, we will endeavour to ensure the regulator understands and can accommodate that kind of community governance.
Please note that, as an
Office action
, we ask that you not reinstate the file and instead address questions to the Legal team via email, at
legal
wikimedia.org
. Thank you. On behalf of the Legal team,
-- Wikimedia Foundation office
talk
22:22, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
WMFOffice
: Thank you. The public upload log for that file seems to have gone missing. It would be useful to know what else the uploader uploaded. — 🇺🇦
Jeff G.
please
ping
or
talk to me
🇺🇦
22:30, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Will the letter/email the WMF received be added (even if it has to have redactions?
Bidgee
talk
22:49, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Jeff G.
, it appears the file page was archived over at Internet Archive, so you can check who was the uploader using the archived page. Thanks.
Tvpuppy
talk
23:37, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Tvpuppy
: Thanks, per
this link
the uploader was
Illegitimate Barrister
, who got the video from watchpeopledie.tv. Perhaps that domain is one worth blacklisting. — 🇺🇦
Jeff G.
please
ping
or
talk to me
🇺🇦
02:08, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I don't think any policy allows us to blacklist domains in the absence of any copyright issues
Trade
talk
17:43, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
While removing the footage in this case seems like the obvious choice, given its lack of use in articles and very questionable educational value, it does raise questions about the place of other footage on Commons that graphically depicts recent murders whose value isn't necessarily so clear-cut. A pertinent example is
File:Hamas members attacking civilians in Kibbutz Mefalsim, Israel (October 2023).webm
, showing a man (with his face blurred) killed by being shot in the head at close range and subsequently profusely bleeding after falling to the ground. This file was kept after a deletion discussion due to the widespread view that the footage was public domain due to being CCTV
Commons:Deletion requests/File:Hamas members attacking civilians in Kibbutz Mefalsim, Israel (October 2023).webm
, and is now used in over 20 Wikipedia articles in over a dozen language versions. If the Australian government had requested that this file had been deleted instead, would the WMF reaction have been different? Should footage like this be hosted on Commons to begin with?
Hemiauchenia
talk
23:26, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I'm personally curious why the Australian government thinks they have jurisdiction over a CCTV video taken from the US. For transparency reasons, I would also love to see documentation of their reasons for the takedown.
Abzeronow
talk
03:34, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It's because the material on Wikimedia is published/viewed in Australia. The government of a country rules what is published or otherwise happens in that country. Commons often deals with matters of copyright, which is special because treaties establish a fiction that, in matters of copyright, material on the internet is deemed published in the country of the server, which is why Wikimedia often ignores copyright other than the U.S.
(It's more complex. Also, courts have found ways to circumvent that by using tort laws.)
But in matters other than copyright, there is no such fiction and the normal principle remains. It is then a matter of the ways by which the country enforces its laws. If nothing else works, it can require the service providers to block access. --
Asclepias
talk
14:08, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
If this is a particular case in that the Australian government ordered the takedown just because it could be viewed in the country, then the file should be restored as Wikimedia should not be bowing to censorship requests from any government. If it is a case that an Australian national or an Australian affiliate would face legal troubles if not removed, then obviously that is a defensible takedown. It would still be reprehensible behavior from Australia's government but then I wouldn't think in that case that restoration would be right. So we should have more details about the reasons for the takedown so this doesn't seem like WMF meekly acquiescing to a tyranny, which would have a chilling effect on the speech of Wikimedia.
Abzeronow
talk
03:33, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It's certain that the Australian body required the removal of the video because it could be viewed in Australia. See
section 109(1)(c)
of the Act: "
(c) the material can be accessed by end-users in Australia
". The other conditions of section 109(1) also apply. "
(a) material is, or has been, provided on [...] a designated internet service
" ("
"service" includes a website
" per the definition in section 5 of the Act). And ""
(b) the Commissioner is satisfied that the material is or was class 1 material
". The Commissioner was likely satisfied since at least a one-minute video of the matter was banned by the Australian Classification Board on 29 September 2025 in the case number "esafety INV-2025-05602". In a FOIA release (see at the bottom of
this pdf
), the specific reasons are redacted. The unredacted part of the decision merely quotes the criteria from the classification scheme. In short, the relevant part is likely that it depicts "
cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults
". The Wikimedia version of the video was 5 minutes. With that, the Commissioner likely gave Wikimedia a "removal notice" per section 109 of the Act. So, at least, we can guess reasonably that that was the context. From there, the WMF, applying its policy, apparently evaluated that there were risks. As you say, absolutely, the WMF should give more details.
— Preceding
unsigned
comment added by
Asclepias
talk
contribs
10:45, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Asclepias
, so if the UAE complains about
Category:Alcohol advertisements
everything in that category will be oversighted? I agree with Abzeronow. If any country takes issue with content on Wikimedia that is legal in the US and which the community refuses to remove, that country will have to filter their own internet (and several do).
Alexis Jazz
ping plz
03:47, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
So if Iran demanded Commons to take down highly illegal "Zionist Imperialist propaganda" would Commons obey that as well?
Trade
talk
17:52, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
A request from the
w:Australian government
! So errr it came from
w:Anthony Albanese
personally? Since you're not mentioning any particular department or subdivision..
WMFOffice
, so why exactly was the file deleted? Was it a copyright violation? Seems unlikely, you have no reason to take that down without a DMCA takedown request, which the Australian government probably didn't file. Did it fail
COM:EDUCATIONAL
? Who knows, but if WMFOffice were to start vetoing community decisions we'd have a serious problem. Did the file violate some US
COM:PERSONALITY
right? If that was the issue, you'd have told us. Did this particular video end up on
w:en:List of films banned in Australia
which states
the sale, distribution, public exhibition and/or importation of RC material is a criminal offense punishable by a fine up to A$687,500 and/or up to 10 years imprisonment. Such penalties do not apply to individuals, but rather individuals responsible for and/or corporations distributing or exhibiting such films to a wider audience
? In 2025 they banned "Videos featuring deaths of Charlie Kirk, Iryna Zarutska and Chandra Nagamallaiah". So I guess
File:Charlie Kirk Assassination View.webm
(NSFW) was maybe illegal in Australia (they banned two particular clips, I don't know which ones, and the ban for the clips of Kirk was later lifted)
Barrister
is the UK/NZ/Ireland/Australia term for lawyer. But
the user page of the uploader
doesn't seem to declare their country of residence. If this is the reason, how did the AU government work out that Illegitimate Barrister fell under their jurisdiction? Is this why Legal is so vague, because they can't disseminate personal info? Or is this just coincidence?
This would explain why the
upload log
was scrubbed though.
Edit: what was I thinking, linking to their enwiki upload log??
Our attorneys determined that the order applied to the Foundation under
our policy for determining applicable law
That doesn't mean anything, does it?
but circumstances didn’t permit that in this specific and thankfully very rare case.
I know you think you're explaining yourself but you're really not.
we ask that you not reinstate the file and instead address questions to the Legal team via email, at legal@wikimedia.org.
Directing questions to your email (which will simply be answered with "we can't talk about that" - been there, done that) is just a transparency pretense.
If the reason is what I think it is, I'd have preferred a notice from WMFOffice like: "We deleted
File:An illegal Cuban migrant beheads a motel owner in Dallas, Texas (10 September 2025).webm
in response to a request from authorities to reduce the exposure of the uploader and local Wikimedia chapters to legal consequences. This is an office action, do not reinstate"
Alexis Jazz
ping plz
05:33, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I'm wondering if it was from the
eSafety Commissioner
(eSafety)?
This page
highlights what is illegal and restricted but why just this file? There are others here that fail eSafety's illegal and restricted online content classes (1 and 2). The vagueness from the WMF leaves us with more questions than answers.
I'm certainly not saying this file should have been kept, but I just find it odd for a foreign government to get involved with something that didn't happen within that country, nor hosted there. This is a concern as what other content could be treated like this? The files (photographs/videos) from the wars that are currently happening overseas next?
Bidgee
talk
12:00, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
" but I just find it odd for a foreign government to get involved with something that didn't happen within that country, nor hosted there." Why not? If Commons obeys the order then there is literally any reason for them not to do that
Trade
talk
17:53, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It likely has to do with something like
this
, or more generally
this
. I'm guessing the WMF received something like a removal notice described there and that, according to their policy, the WMF considered that there might be "
risks of project blocking [...] and/or monetary risks
" in case of non-compliance. The Australian document hints that compliance can be required within 24 hours of the notice, which may be what the WMF alludes to by "
circumstances didn’t permit
". --
Asclepias
talk
12:34, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
The thing is, EDUSE is sometimes explained as files in use in any of the Wikimedia sites. Those files are in minority of the total files on commons. Even if we just counted files in categories where none of the files are in use, in order to facilitate choice of a different picture of the same subject, I am predicting a 54% removal rate of all files on commons. This is based on the first 1000 results from this query:
select
lt_title
count
cl_from
from
linktarget
join
categorylinks
on
cl_target_id
lt_id
and
cl_type
"file"
left
outer
join
globalimagelinks
on
gil_to
lt_title
where
lt_namespace
14
and
gil_to
is
null
group
by
lt_title
Snævar
talk
20:39, 25 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I'm sorry, but this is just plain retarded. Why would we care about a request from a country where neither the Wikimedia Commons servers are located nor the video was taken? Though graphic, the video has obvious educational purpose on the article
w:Killing of Chandra Nagamallaiah
. Per
w:WP:NOTCENSORED
and
COM:NOTCENSORED
, the file should be restored as soon as possible, Australian Government be damned.
Dabmasterars
EN
RU
] (
talk
uploads
15:28, 29 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Dabmasterars
Why would we care about a request…
: If you rephrase that as "Why would we care about possibly being the subject of legal action in Australia, and how would we weigh that against one file of, at best, marginal educational value?" I think the answer as to why we would care becomes self-evident (even if the decision which way to go does not). Clearly this was a legitimate question, whatever you think of the answer. -
Jmabel
talk
19:41, 29 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
As much as i never want to view these files, it does seem like NSFL files can sometimes serve an educational purpose, more so if they are documenting an atrocity that people deny happened.
Bawolff
talk
15:52, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Bawolff
Is "NSFL" in that last paragraph a typo for "NSFW", or is it a term I'm not familiar with? -
Jmabel
talk
20:48, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It stands for "Not safe for life". Sometimes its used as a term for images you don't want to look at because they are disturbing or violent or something else other than sexually explicit vs NSFW which commonly means the image is pornographic.
Bawolff
talk
20:50, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I will add that to the glossary in
Commons:Editor's index to Commons
. -
Jmabel
talk
21:11, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It's objectionable how large that educational value is and whether it outweighs the problems of the file. Specifically, I think such files are much more likely for the value/benefits/plausible-use to outweigh the issues if things in the area
#Blurring NSFW images
are implemented/improved so that one does not accidentally stumble upon such videos (or even autoplaying gifs) and maybe doesn't see it without first unblurring.
I think it has already been mentioned that the file could be renamed if the title was found to be inaccurate or missing important info or otherwise inappropriate.
Prototyperspective
talk
11:03, 22 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
How does only showing the video when explicitly requested protect the personality rights of the people depicted in the video?
GPSLeo
talk
11:50, 22 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Fair point but misaddressed to my comment to which this issue/point does not really relate. Instead of addressing this in detail or arguing in one way or another, I'd just like to note that there's all kinds of war photography and -videos that document the horrors of wars as well as war crimes that depict dead people as well as people getting killed on Commons.
Prototyperspective
talk
12:50, 22 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
But we only should host these files if they do not violate the rights of anyone. This means that in many cases we can only host a partially blurred version anyways. That we might want to save the original version to make it available in some decades, when they are old enough, has the same challenges as undeletion when copyright expires.
GPSLeo
talk
13:20, 22 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
The video of Iryna Zarutska was already heavily blurred and Commons deleted it anyways though
Trade
talk
17:44, 22 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Like the inflammatory title or not but this is very clearly a relevant file depicting a highly publicised and notable event. This could severely harm our ability to host CCTV files of high-profile crimes --
Trade
talk
17:42, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It's worth pointing out the the upload log was not intentionally scrubbed. It's just under an old name prior to a move.
see the upload and rename here
* Pppery *
it has begun...
19:55, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
community should decide that it is educational or not. you should undelete the file.
modern primat
ඞඞඞ
----TALK
20:29, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Internet has made applicability of national laws a legitimate grey area. See the two examples I listed at
meta:Talk:Wikilegal/A changing legal world for free knowledge#Probable EU examples to note for
(although both cases concern French court decisions and concern intellectual property matter).
JWilz12345
Talk
Contributions
07:12, 25 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Which is why it's so vital for WMF to fight for Wikimedia Commons rather than immediately rolling over
Trade
talk
18:40, 26 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It's been a week now and Wikimedia Foundation office is still ghosting us...--
Trade
talk
18:42, 26 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Fr this is just plain out embarrasing. I've seen users get called out for refusing to show up on their AN complaints thread and you can't even be bothered for an entire week
WMFOffice
--
Trade
talk
00:54, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I don't know what you are even expecting here. There isn't any questions here waiting for WMFOffice's response.
Bawolff
talk
08:57, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
On the office action, I agree with those above that we could use some additional details about the justification. On the educational value of clips depicting graphic violence, IMO unless the file documents an incident with clearly documented public interest, it does seem like there's a good case for deletion on
COM:PEOPLE
grounds if not
COM:SCOPE
. Like
[CONTENT WARNING]
a non-notable police shooting
. Others are more complicated, like
someone apparently being accidentally killed by a brick
, which happens off-camera, but with disturbing audio and the names of those involved in the description. That one is probably an EDUSE problem first and COM:PEOPLE second. As an aside, I found these by searching for the website name and not user uploads, but the same user uploaded all of them. Possibly this could be solved with a request not to import any further files of non-notable incidents from sites like watchpeopledie? —
Rhododendrites
talk
02:51, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I think the fact that Commons is now governed by Australian law is a much bigger deal than a couple of probably out of scope videos. Considering this isn't a DR, this feel rather off topic--
Trade
talk
05:44, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Hi all - I was one of the several lawyers and Trust & Safety staff that worked on this notice from the Australian eSafety Commissioner.
Some of you have justifiably asked whether the outcome would have been the same if the files or the jurisdiction had differed. The answer is: no, it often wouldn’t be (and you can see that for yourselves in the
Transparency Reports
). We look at each case individually, balancing merits and risks.
Commons is an educational project; we’re an educational charity. That means having to think carefully about how any action we take (or inaction) would affect the viability of the Projects, and their value to society. We consistently deploy vast resources (at least vast for us; our whole team is dwarfed by others) to defending takedowns (again as the Transparency Report will attest, as does some of our blogging, e.g.
here
and
here
), but we also have to think clearly about the actual merit of defending each one: Are we likely to lose, and what would be the short term and long term consequences of that, for everyone? And is it worth that, from a human rights perspective?
That analysis is especially important in the current legal environment
we spoke about, here
and earlier,
here
, which has become quite different from the one we all grew up in.
And as we said originally: the community should be the main assessor of educational value. We’re sorry that in this case you didn’t get a chance to specifically consider it. Instead, we had to look at indirect factors, like the video’s lack of current, meaningful educational use. This sometimes happens, but we strive to keep it to a minimum. We're looking at options to ensure more time for a community review. There may be cases where some of you think something does have some educational value, but our legal assessment of the broader situation still weighs in favour of an Office Action. But those cases should be extremely rare, so long as EDUSE is being diligently defined and applied by the community. That’s because community standards are often stricter than legal standards.
PBradley-WMF
talk
10:14, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Won't this just encourage the Australian eSafety Commissioner to take down even more files from Commons?
Trade
talk
11:57, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Thank you for the additional context. However, I want to stress that actions like this risk creating a chilling effect on the Commons community. When content is removed via Office action without sufficient transparency, it becomes difficult for contributors to understand where the boundaries lie in practice. That uncertainty can discourage uploads and discussions around borderline but potentially educational material, especially in areas such as documentation of violence, war crimes, or other sensitive but historically relevant events. In that regard, I would strongly encourage the Foundation to publish the underlying takedown request, in redacted form if necessary, similar to how DMCA notices are routinely disclosed. Greater transparency would allow the community to better assess both the legal reasoning and the broader implications for Commons' scope and governance. I would also appreciate clarification on a forward-looking scenario: if the community were to determine, now or in the future, that this specific file (or similar material) does in fact meet the educational use threshold, would that assessment carry any weight against such legal requests? Or would the existence of an applicable removal order effectively override community consensus regardless of educational value? Relatedly, it would be helpful to understand how such cases should be treated in downstream contexts, for example if the removal itself becomes notable as part of broader discussions around Foundation governance, legal compliance, or government pressure. In such a case, could the material be reconsidered for inclusion under a clearly contextualized, encyclopedic purpose? --
Jonatan Svensson Glad
talk
12:09, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Thanks @
Jonatan Svensson Glad
- we're raising the transparency point (amongst others) with the eSafety Commissioner, and we'll revert back once we've made a decision on this. To your (and other commentators') points: 1. We'll refrain from committing here and now to action/inaction on hypotheticals, because the analysis factors we mentioned above can vary substantially between cases, and over time. 2. We don't want to discourage discussions, nor valuable uploads - quite the contrary. To your question "would [the community's educational use] assessment carry any weight against such legal requests", that was already answered in earlier posts: the community's carefully-balanced views about educational value vs possible harms (including to vulnerable users) are
very
relevant, but they will also not be the
sole
consideration when there's a legal dimension. 3. To the last question you raised: we're aware of the argument, and we have tried it at least once, recently; but that was an extraordinary case, and so far, it's unclear how successful it will be. Note that courts might not always be very receptive about such arguments (more common in journalism privacy lawsuits), out of concern about encouraging artificial attempts to exploit the Streisand effect. So we're sympathetic to the argument, but at the same time, it's not always the case that things can go from "illegal" to "legal" just because people talked - even very loudly - about them.
PBradley-WMF
talk
10:17, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
You mentioned you are raising the transparency issue with the eSafety Commissioner. Could you share (even approximately) when you expect a response, and whether WMF has also considered or initiated an internal merits review or appeal under section 220 of the Online Safety Act? --
Jonatan Svensson Glad
talk
11:57, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Yes, we certainly considered the provision, and others besides. We have not initiated those processes.
With apologies, I'm not able to offer a reliable time estimate for a public authority's response to extra-statutory queries.
PBradley-WMF
talk
13:18, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Thanks for your responses. Looking forward to the transparency report.
Abzeronow
talk
03:14, 8 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Bumping to prevent this from being archived.
Abzeronow
talk
03:19, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
good
modern_primat
ඞඞඞ
----TALK
15:09, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I would strongly encourage the Foundation to publish the underlying takedown request, in redacted form if necessary, similar to how DMCA notices are routinely disclosed.
that should certainly be published in full. why is the government issuing an order that curbs public interest and that order can remain secret?
by this time, has there been a petition or some collective civil action in australia started about this? who does the esafety person answer to? who appoints them?
RoyZuo
talk
14:55, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I am confused as the others. You say it was an external take down request, but your arguments are that the file was deleted as the community was not able to enforce the terms of use. Of course external requests can inform you about files they should be deleted as terms of use violations anyways. Was this file deleted as a terms of use violation or because of an external take down request? If it is the second one why is the conversation not published as usual?
GPSLeo
talk
14:54, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Re: "
your arguments are that the file was deleted as the community was not able to enforce the terms of use
": We're sorry if that was the impression given by our post - that wasn't what we aimed to get across. We're informing the community that we removed a file before the community had an opportunity to consider its own policies first, and that this is something we regret, because it's a very valuable function. If something we said in particular gave you the opposite impression, let us know and we can perhaps clarify it.
PBradley-WMF
talk
17:26, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This no answer to my question: Is the deletion based on our terms of use or based on an external demand?
GPSLeo
talk
18:20, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Question: If Australian eSafety Commissioner demands File:Charlie Kirk Assassination View.webm taken down would you comply with that as well?
Trade
talk
00:04, 28 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
PBradley-WMF
I also agree with Jonatan that there needs to be a publication of the Takedown request. Allowing a government ministry to take down a file without any discussion from the community is a free speech violation and will have a chilling effect on our contributors especially those who live in countries with repressive governments. If you won't release the takedown request (in redacted form is fine if privacy is a concern), then I will ask what my venues of appeal to overturn this decision are. (So far I have refrained from taking this to social media)
Abzeronow
talk
02:59, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
How does deleting one file have a chilling effect? This is just an absurd claim.
Nosferattus
talk
00:02, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Because if we delete one file based on what a government official says is not educational, we open up a whole bunch of contentious files to be taken down by any government. The Pentagon Papers, maps that don't comply with Indian law, the Charlie Kirk video mentioned above, any file that depicts Muhammad. Censorship never ends with one file. As Sir Patrick Stewart said as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in an episode of
Star Trek: The Next Generation
: "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Abzeronow
talk
03:41, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This is frankly an embarrassingly naive post. This is a random gruesome crime against an identifiable person who is not notable, whose relatives are still alive, not the Pentagon Papers for christ's sake.
Commons:Dignity
is policy as well, and there is a good case for deleting the file on that basis even without a takedown order. There are files that it would be worth the legal hill to die on to defend keeping on the site, but this file just isn't it.
Hemiauchenia
talk
10:49, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
While I don’t disagree with you that that file had no place here (as a TOS or community view), it is just concerning that a foreign government that had no jurisdiction of the video had issued a takedown notice.
Bidgee
talk
11:01, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This is simply the legal reality that the WMF lives in now, for better or worse, and requests like this are going to become more and more common. It has to pick its fights carefully, and if it is going to make a legal stand against an order like this, it needs to be about a file where there is far more merit in keeping it. Ultimately, Commons users can cry "censorship!", but they don't have any skin in the game or liability for hosting the file.
Hemiauchenia
talk
11:27, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
The problem is, the WMF doesn’t have servers in Australia, so no legal issues for hosting such content. eSaftey Commissioner should have issued a notice to RSPs (Retail Service Providers/Internet Service Providers) to block access to the URL (it has done before).
The action taken now has set a precedent that a foreign government can demand a take down of content that it deems to be violating its laws, even if said content has nothing to do with the said country’s jurisdiction.
I don’t dispute that the file in question doesn’t belong here on other grounds but this was outside of Australia’s jurisdiction.
Bidgee
talk
16:03, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
i think many govts' arguments are that as long as a website can be accessed in that country they have jurisdiction over it.
china was probably one of the first to claim "internet sovereignty".
project gutenberg got sued in germany.
uk ofcom fined 4chan.
here australia took down wikimedia commons files.
RoyZuo
talk
16:21, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Did 4chan pay the fine? Exactly. Then why should we care?
Dabmasterars
EN
RU
] (
talk
uploads
16:33, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Because the hosting of the file on Commons has to be weighed up against 1. Having the WMF engage in a legal fight against the Australian government, which would be lengthy and expensive. 2. Commons and possibly Wikipedia likely being blocked in Australia (blocking Commons on its own would likely disable images for Australian Wikipedia users) 3. Bad PR when newspapers report on the legal dispute and Commons hosting the file, which could cause cascading legal pressure against the WMF from other countries for other Commons files. All of this for a file that really shouldn't be on Commons anyway. It's easy to complain about stuff when you don't have to deal with the consequences.
Hemiauchenia
talk
19:33, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Unlikely, WMF has no presence in Australia and the Australian chapter is completely independent from the foundation.
x/Twitter left Australia and the case eSaftey had was dropped.
eSaftey would be doing itself bad PR if it requested that the whole of the WM projects to be blocked. It can just request the URL to the video be blocked.
Bidgee
talk
20:58, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Wikipedia nor Commons are not major outlets of government communication, unlike Twitter/X, for better or worse, which means that the WMF has far less leverage over the Australian government and less way to strongarm out of a block. Your claim that
It can just request the URL to the video be blocked.
is completely wrong. Individual pages cannot be blocked on a site using HTTPS like Commons does
[1]
, meaning that the entire site has to be blocked to enforce a block request.
Hemiauchenia
talk
22:28, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
COM:DIGNITY
is, in my opinion, stupid and should've been overturned a long time ago, but that's a topic for another day.
Dabmasterars
EN
RU
] (
talk
uploads
14:35, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
While I agree that this probably wouldn't have survived a DR under
COM:DIGNITY
, the community making that decision is far less coercive than the Australian government doing it (and are likely emboldened to do in the future.) This will not be the last time a government will be able to take down a file if this decision stands, and the next case might be a file that the community would decide to keep. WMF cannot offer any excuses now to prevent government censorship if this stands.
Abzeronow
talk
02:50, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
April 02
Way to find categories with number of files over certain threshold?
Latest comment:
4 days ago
26 comments
6 people in discussion
Apart from manual patrol, is there a reasonable way to find categories with number of files over certain threshold? I sometimes like to unwind performing different patrol actions in Wikipedia. For example I would like to deep search category Churches in Poland to find all categories that have over 200 files, so that I would clean up main categories of specific churches. I thought PetScan tool might be able to do this, but so far no success.
— Preceding
unsigned
comment added by
Tupungato
talk
contribs
15:02, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Tupungato
: there is
Category:Categories requiring diffusion (200-item threshold)
, but it requires a category to be manually tagged first with the CatDiffuse or Diffuseat template. --
HyperGaruda
talk
06:50, 6 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I know about this category (I even have a link on my user page, because I visit it regularly), I also patrolled categories to add this template. I'm looking for ways to up my game in patrolling categories for diffusion.--
Tupungato
talk
08:23, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Special:WantedCategories
Special:MostLinkedCategories
RoyZuo
talk
17:36, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Tupungato
You can use Quarry to find these types of things, an example for Churches in Poland would be
. I know the syntax is a bit confusing, but you should be able to make it work for any category you chose by just altering the first line with a different category name.
Bawolff
talk
21:49, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I'm really confused: why does somthing like
Category:Wymysorys pronunciation (Józef Gara's version)
show up in those results? (Yes, it's a big category, but what does it have to do with
Category:Churches in Poland
? -
Jmabel
talk
05:44, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
You can see the deep path going from category to category in the right column. The category depth is set to 12. Setting it to something like 5 helps mitigate the situation.
Tupungato
talk
08:37, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
...Interior of the Poznań Cathedral →
Category:Buried in Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Poznań
→ Boleslaus I of Poland → Wendish Crusade...
as
Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2025/12#c-RoyZuo-20251217184100-Category:Burials
discussed before, all these relations -- which are not very relevant for most of the files contained, but represented as categories -- lead to these wild cat trees.
RoyZuo
talk
09:15, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Preventing that sort of semantic drift was one of the motivations for SDC i think. Its one of the things that make the category tree really hard to work with as its super hard to get all the subcats of essentially the same thing without subcats that are totally different creeping in.
Bawolff
talk
15:35, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
When it comes to deepcat views, one could filter off such offtopic cats via
this
(incl premade filters for a compiled list of cat-types that contain offtopic files such as
Burials in…
subcats). And more broadly, categories that are not really about the subject such as Burials in… subcats containing cats about people could be converted to other solutions with two ideas being: 1. list/gallery pages (could even be maintained by ListeriaBot) and 2.
{{Seealsocat}}
which often is better to use in place of categorizing.
Prototyperspective
talk
16:00, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
You can also order the results by depth of category, if that is helpful
Bawolff
talk
19:39, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Boleslaus I of Poland → Wendish Crusade
Pretty weird to put the crusade
under
a person, no? We wouldn't put WWII
under
the category for Hitler.
Preventing that sort of semantic drift was one of the motivations for SDC
talk about dropping an atom bomb on an ant! And missing, since SDC still doesn't describe the relation between any two Commons categories, and is way to computationally inefficient to be an at all likely substitute for Commons categories. It would have been infinitely easier to add a third field in category links after the category and sort key, describing the relation, with a set of potential values ("geographic narrowing", "instance of", "subclass of", "chronological narrowing", "notable because of", "gender narrowing", "by geographic areas", "by chronological periods", etc.); that also could be done in SDC, of course, but hasn't been, and would be less computationally efficient. -
Jmabel
talk
23:40, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I would agree that SDC has largely been a swing and a miss. I think the original idea was that you would have depicts statements that were Q numbers and then you could use wikidata to ascertain the relationship between the different depicts values. I suppose that technically exists now, but actually doing that type of query is hard, and SDC is largely unpopulated so its moot anyways. As a product, i think SDC spent way too much time just blindly bolting wikidata on to commons and not enough time asking how do we actually make this meet user requirements/what do the users actually need. A lot of that could probably be papered over with a better UI imo, but i digress.
Bawolff
talk
00:19, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I could go on for hours about what they got wrong with SDC, but two things head the list, and they both fall under a focus on theory rather than practice: (1) little or no concern about how data was going to be put into the database by humans and (2) a tendency to compare what the wikibase could do in a "frictionless environment" (no costs of computation, experts doing the modeling and somehow having everyone fall in line, plus a little bit of just plain waving away issues like the difficulty of modeling dates well in a rigid system)
vs.
what wikitext was achieving in the real world. That plus some arrogance about their ability to make a hierarchy of instances and subclasses that would be ontologically solid, whereas in fact they just ended up generating another folksonomy with only a slight edge on the once that Commons had developed with far less planning. Not that I think Wikidata + wikibase + SDC is useless: I love the resulting infoboxes, and it's done a very good job of managing interwiki connections and getting our various projects to line up their categorization better, and it's pretty good for describing things like artwork, books, etc. But not so good for describing photos, which is the bulk of what we do with metadata here. -
Jmabel
talk
04:47, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
While i think its far from the only issue, for me, the biggest issue is that SDC is hidden behind that pannel you have to click to get to. How can we possibly expect users to add SDC when they don't even see it? How could they possibly figure out the schema when we dont even have the most basic querying built in to see what other media with the same value is like? With categories if you dont know what should be in cat X you can just click on it to find out. Why would the user bother maintaining metadata when the only way to effectively query is a half maintained blazegraph instance off site that basically nobody even knows exists and you have to be an expert to use? Categories can actually be used to find other files by the average user.
Bawolff
talk
13:28, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Currently SD is visible on mobile Web and in the two Wikipedia apps, but not categories. Both should be visible. A way to easily see files with a given depicts may be useful...but not for setting the depicts because depicts is described on the SD help page and the subject defined on the hyperlinked Wikidata item (with a short desscription directly displayed). Also worth noting is that lots of files have wrong SD so seeing which files have it would be more useful for correcting SD rather than seeing which files should get the SD. Currently, SD is used to uprank and surface files in the MediaSearch search results so that would be the main motivation.
Prototyperspective
talk
13:37, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Agree with what you said basically and a further use of specifiers that are set quite like sortkeys currently are are timestamps/ranges for videos that are substantially showing/about a subject but the overall video is much longer as proposed
here
. And I doubt UI improvements would suffice to make SD better fit for that purpose and solve its issues which doesn't mean SD isn't useful.
Prototyperspective
talk
12:44, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Getting back on topic, "
It would have been infinitely easier to add a third field in category links after the category and sort key, describing the relation
". I suppose nothing is stopping commons from doing the lazy version of this ourselves and having a convention in the sortkey that something like :: is used to mean relation. So you could have [[Category:Poland|{{PAGENAME}}::Geographic narrowing]] for subcategories with that relation (probably in practise with the details hidden behind a template). Very much a "We have
SemanticMediaWiki
at home" sort of solution, but it would at least record the relation in a way that is at least accessible to quarry.
Bawolff
talk
13:46, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
i have very little knowledge of graph and algorithms.
one problem i think the "category tree" system has. cat tree is a
directed tree
, but in reality concepts are often interconnected (so not a tree) and it's difficult to say which direction the relation should be. example: a singer set up a company that organises a music festival that includes the singer.
instead of a tree system, what if categories are like "tags"? and the tags are connected in a graph? (so we can have
Cycle_(graph_theory)
.) then the "deepcategory" search could be instead searching x degrees from a starting vertex. i dont know if this will be too computationally difficult.
RoyZuo
talk
14:25, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Having a small number of cycles isn't as big a deal as it appears at first glance, because usually you are starting at some point and you keep track of what nodes you have seen before and skip anything you have already seen.
Bawolff
talk
15:27, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Btw, if you think that example is weird, consider Dogs → Dogs in religion → Dog deities → Dog gods → Ares → Offspring of Ares → Nike (mythology) → Nike (mythology) in art → Nike by medium → Nike in heraldry → World War II Victory Medal (United States) → World War II Victory Medal recipients → John F. Kennedy → Documents related to John F. Kennedy → Cuban Missile Crisis.
Bawolff
talk
04:26, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
There are 2 probable flaws or issues in that chain:
Nike in heraldry → World War II Victory Medal (United States) → World War II Victory Medal recipients
: files in
World War II Victory Medal (United States)
all display Nike so that doesn't warrant a subcategory for files actually showing the medal; however it could be inappropriate to categorize the recipients under the award since it categorizes the people under
Category:Awards established in 1945
and they are neither awards nor were established in 1945 – instead as with the other case, it should probably be a dynamic bot-maintained list/table
Dog gods → Ares
: looking at
Ares
there is no claim of a dog god or dog in general until
In Renaissance and Neoclassical works of art, Ares's symbols are a spear and helmet, his animal is a dog, and his bird is the vulture.
so the Dog god should be set on a subcategory about Ares as a dog god [in Renaissance and Neoclassical works of art]
Since such miscategorizations are currently hard to find and correct I can't stress enough the potential impact and need for
W397: In Commons category deepcategory view mode (wall of images), allow easily filtering offtopic subcats
as well as better tools to detect miscategorizations such as seeing the cat chain you gave under a file showing John F. Kennedy in a deepcat view of Category:Dogs, including especially
W393: A way to see why a file is somewhere underneath a specific category (tool to show cat-path)
. Since cat paths were not visible for such a long time, it will take quite some time until the rate of miscategorization goes down.
Prototyperspective
talk
12:30, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
In general though, it seems like commons likes also using categories to mean "Person (or entity) has property of parent category". I don't know that i think that is even wrong per se, but it is one (among many different) common sources for the tree to become quite wild. Even if you accept those as incorrect, whether Ares is a Dog deity, the real problem seems to be not that, but going from actual dogs, to deities that have a dog aspect, then going from a deity that has a dog aspect to their offspring which presumably doesn't, going from a medal with a specific deity on it to people who have received it, and then going to a category of pictures about a certain person to documents related to them and from there to a world event they are associated with. All of these steps seem like significant meaning shifts. Even if Ares was all dog, the rest would still be problematic. As an example, Artemis has always been associated with dogs (In as much that she has dogs not that she is a dog), and we get the same crazy chain with stuff relating to her like
Dogs → Dogs in religion → Dog deities → Dog goddesses → Artemis → Deeds of Artemis → Metamorphoses in Greek mythology → Metamorphoses (Ovid) → Events in the Metamorphoses by book → Ovid Metamorphoses Book 4 → Andromeda → Things named after Andromeda → Andromeda (constellation) → Andromeda Galaxy → Amateur photos of the Andromeda Galaxy
I think sometimes there is also ambiguity over how much categories are just a see also sort of link. e.g. in
Felis silvestris catus → Domestic cats → Domestic cats in art → Cats in art by medium → Cats in decorative and applied arts → Cat costumes → Catsuits → Catsuits by colour → Plug suits by color → Red plug suits → Asuka Langley Soryu → Cosplay of Asuka Langley Soryu → Cosplay of Asuka Langley Soryu by clothing → Cosplay of Asuka Langley Soryu wearing Japanese school uniforms
. The most obvious wrong part is Catsuits under Cat Costumes. But maybe the idea is see also Catsuits since the term was inspired by people thinking they looked cat-like. (Going from Red plug suits → Asuka Langley Soryu is also pretty bad, but i also sort of get the logic as that anime character is super famous for red plug suit, so its kind of like, see also the most protypical example).
Bawolff
talk
15:30, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Well again the two approaches to go about this would improve the situation. Maybe you're saying this also needs addressing at root cause where one changes how categories are thought of and used. If you have concrete ideas regarding that in terms of how to improve things I'd be interested to hear them. However, it needs to be said that often in cases like the one you described there are subcategories of the starting category that are more narrowly about the subject such as about biological dogs – so if one is interested in that specifically (depictions of actual biological dogs) one can use these categories and the way they are surfaced is via sortkeys. Simply go
Category:Dogs
Category:Dog types
or
Category:Views of dogs
and the immediate problem may well be solved, especially if you know how to exclude subcats via deepcategory when using the wall-of-images view. An issue there is that lots of files can be missing.
And as described in W397, there could be premade filters one can enable with a click in a category for subcats of common types of relations that introduce offtopics files, here 'Domestic cats in art' (and maybe one could also have the filter find the
Dogs in religion → Dog deities
subcat to filter out)
Prototyperspective
talk
15:57, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
My suggestion above was to append to the sortkey the relation "type" so that inappropriate relations could be filtered out. If i understand right, your idea is to use category naming conventions to filter out inappropriate category relations from deepcat. Both are kind of the same idea just different methods of figuring out what to filter. The sortkey idea has the con that it would require commons adopting it and updating everything which sounds like a huge amount of work. The naming convention thing has the downside of being less flexible. In principle, both are possible, using naming conventions generally, but using the sortkey hack as an override for things that don't fit the naming conventions. However the more i look at actual category tree, the less sure i am that category links can be so cleanly classified, so now i am less sure. In any case, if you had a list of all the category naming conventions you think should be excluded from deepcat, i'd be interested in hearing as we could at least do some experiments to see how well it works in practise.
Bawolff
talk
07:16, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I think it's a good idea and could be combined with the setting of the timestamp(s) when categories are set on videos where the category applies to only a part. One could also fill a lot of that data using scripts based on things like the category naming – so for instance
xyz in art
categories which I suggested to be in a default-available quick-filter could get that relation type specified this way. However, I think quite early on or from the start it would need a more intuitive user-friendly interface instead of setting [[Category:Poland|{{PAGENAME}}::Geographic narrowing]] – this could come in the form of a change to
HotCat
, eg in the form of a input field for the relation below the category (a tiny + button beneath the cat input field that expands an input field with autocompleting relation types to select from). Additionally, it would need some specification of how that's set on the category. Sortkeys are specified to be [[Category:cat name|sortkey]] and maybe it could be [[Category:cat name|sortkey//relationtype]] for example.
If one is able to see which categories are the top sources of files in a cat with an x button to filter any of these out (if likely introducing many offtopic files) then this would be
very
dynamic (a downside can be that this quires some user interaction and maybe some minor effort instead of showing the desired results right away to users unfamiliar with the site). As shown in the mockup image, the naming conventions are just used for selectable filters so one can filter out common sources of offtopic files quickly easily – so none are excluded by default but one can easily select one.
I guess one could also have a reverse-filter (whitelisting-like) where instead of filtering things out, one just includes cats with certain relation types for example – so when viewing
Category:Dogs
one can easily go to a view where it just shows depictions of dogs. However, I'm not sure that's desirable or needed – e.g. I think the ideal results would just all be on-topic and I'd find information graphics like charts and diagrams about parts/aspects of dogs more interesting than just plain photos or at least to make the overall results more diverse and interesting and likely to contain relevant/useful files. I don't have a list of naming conventions of categories commonly introducing offtopic files but the wish names "xyz in fiction", "xyz in art", and
Category:Named-after categories
. The more cat-paths one can see, the more such offtopic-files-introducing-cats can be listed and until now it was very cumbersome if possible at all to see the cat path and there was little activity on the wish so I haven't compiled a comprehensive list. Another commons source are cats of
Category:Letter combinations by letter included
and per this discussion it seems like Awards, Burials and, Births categories may also be commonly introducing such.
Prototyperspective
talk
11:34, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
April 07
Category for the act of surrendering / piling up weapons
Latest comment:
6 days ago
8 comments
3 people in discussion
cat for this?
RoyZuo
talk
11:42, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Category:Disarming (events)
Category:Groups of weapons
Category:Stacked rifles
Nakonana
talk
11:53, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
disarming could happen to single persons and outside wars (like police disarming someone holding a knife). i was thinking how best to name this kind of massive disarming / laying down arms.--
RoyZuo
talk
21:52, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Previously you asked for the category, not how to name a category for this.
Prototyperspective
talk
12:38, 8 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Going by the dewiki article that is linked to
Category:Disarming (events)
, the category is rather meant to be about (military) mass disarmament, and is seemingly supposed to be different from
Category:Disarmament
Nakonana
talk
15:25, 8 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Disarmament refers to a country reducing its military, rather than disarming actual persons.
RoyZuo
talk
09:45, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
i'm gonna move
Category:Disarming (events)
to "surrendering weapons". hopefully it's clearer that this refers to the physical act of all soldiers giving up their weapons rather than
Category:Disarmament
the policy of reducing military.
RoyZuo
talk
14:59, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
An intersection category of
Category:Disarming (events)
and
Category:Groups of weapons
doesn't yet exist but could be created. Questions like this one (of type is there a category for XYZ or what's the category closest fitting for zw) could be asked a
proposed editor assistant tool
which would be especially useful for newcomers.--
Prototyperspective
talk
12:17, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
}}
Reply
April 15
Mathematics → Data visualization images
Latest comment:
1 day ago
12 comments
3 people in discussion
Jochen Burghardt
removed
File:Chart of number of works in the field of Mathematics in the OpenAlex database by year.svg
from
Category:Mathematics
with
explanation
per
COM:OVERCAT
via Statistics of global scientific publications / Literature statistics / Statistics by field / Statistics / Probability and statistics / Mathematics by topic
(see
Category:Probability and statistics
and
Category:Statistics
).
Mathematics
defines Mathematics as "a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, theories, and theorems that are developed and proved either in response to the needs of empirical sciences or the needs of mathematics itself. There are many areas of mathematics, including number theory (the study of integers and their properties), algebra (the study of operations and the structures they form), geometry (the study of shapes and spaces that contain them), analysis (the study of approximating continuous changes), and set theory (presently used as a foundation for all mathematics)."
Statistics
defines Statistics as "the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data."
The change to me raised the question whether that category path should be changed and if so how. (And if not it probably needs extensive categorization work of files.) I think random data graphics like charts showing one count number over several years (also numbers) in the form of a bar chart (one bar per year) don't belong into the Mathematics category. The category I think is bloated and there needs to be some work such as differentiation between things involving numbers and the field of Mathematics. Please help develop a good solution.
Note that many files in the Probability and statistics cat and its Statistics subcat indeed are about the subfield in terms of Mathematics such as about mathematical statistical methods. I thought maybe removing the link between
Category:Probability and statistics
Category:Statistics
would be a good solution but again lots of subcats and files there do relate to the subfield and if it was removed, the cat would be
uncategorized
Also note that they have some very broad subcategories that probably don't belong there in the current broad format such as
Probability and statistics
Category:Randomness
Application of and content of
COM:OVERCAT
as it relates to cases like this or similar to it (eg long chains where subcat has deviated far from original cat) may also be good to discuss at some point or here
There is an open CfD about whether
Category:English-language statistical charts
should be merged into
Category:English-language charts
(regarding that note that which category is chosen for charts so far seems rather random)
Note that cat Mathematics is in
Category:Academia
Category:Academic disciplines
Any input on what is best done?
Prototyperspective
talk
16:42, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
If there is a 7-removes connection to Mathematics because it is a statistical study, but it is
about
Mathematics, then it is not OVERCAT to also place it directly in
Category:Mathematics
(though
possibly
Category:History of mathematics
would be more appropriate). To give some examples each at only one remove, but also acceptable in terms of OVERCAT:
If the category for a person is a subcategory of the category for their more famous spouse, and we have a picture of them together, we would still put both people's categories on that picture.
If we have a picture that is mainly a picture of a street, but it prominently features a building that has its own category that is a subcategory of the category for the street, it is acceptable to use both categories for the picture.
Jmabel
talk
20:20, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Makes sense. The thread isn't much about the categorization of the file though but about the categorization structure of Mathematics→…→Data visualization images. Subcategorizing the file into a subcat like
Mathematics publications
for example would have been appropriate imo. Regarding your second point, that's how I thought about it when categorizing but now the file is just the context of what got me aware of this and an example for the issue(s) discussed here. It's not a simple problem; sooner or later the categorization path and/or how the files in it are categorized needs to be overhauled. One could start a CfD at
Probability and statistics
maybe (and tag some related cats with the link to the CfD) but it's a problem difficult enough that it needs more contributors to work out a solution(s) probably and also it's so broad that even this already-existing CfD is kind of tied to it. Maybe it would be good to amend the OVERCAT policy and how long cat chains etc are dealt with in regards to OVERCAT could be discussed here too (eg to have sth more concrete to summarize or draft at the Commons:Categories talk page).
Prototyperspective
talk
21:58, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It's not a matter of length of the chain. It's a matter of whether the relation of the ancestor category to the child category (or file) corresponds to the relation expressed by the hierarchy. Category inheritance can represent all sorts of thing: geographic narrowing, chronological narrowing, something being named after something else, etc. So in this case: sure, statistics inherits from mathematics, but statistics
about
mathematics also inherits from mathematics in an entirely different way. -
Jmabel
talk
06:02, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
That's a helpful clarification, making this part/aspect of the discussion much more ready to be discussed at Commons:Categories talk page.
Relating to this,
Mathematics→Mathematics by topic→Probability and statistics→Statistics→(all sorts of data graphics that don't really have to do with math as that term is commonly understood or narrowly defined in the quoted definition above)
has some flaw in it that makes it not a narrowing with the files relating to the high-level cat.
Prototyperspective
talk
13:05, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
As an aside, I would be in favor of treating data graphics (charts, diagrams, infographics, etc) as a special case and not categorizing them under "generic" categories like Statistics. These types of graphics are common enough, and relate to enough different topics, that it's not helpful to categorize them in relation to their identity as "data graphics". It'd be like categorizing all photographs under Photography.
Omphalographer
talk
18:14, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Not sure if I understand you correctly. First of all, charts, diagrams and infographics are very different things and of these three usually only charts show data with some exceptions where infographics include charts. The files are not all directly in the Statistics cat. Of relevance to the thread here are only data graphics.
Prototyperspective
talk
21:07, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
The issue is that e.g.
Category:Line charts
Category:Frequency (statistics)
Category:Statistics
, so all line charts in this category are transitively categorized as "statistics" regardless of their actual topic. Similar issues apply to many other types of charts.
Omphalographer
talk
23:04, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
All of which is related to
a comment I just made on another thread here
. -
Jmabel
talk
23:44, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Well hence this thread; it's what it's about. Examples:
Removing the subcategories like
Category:Line charts
from that page and instead listing these on the page as hyperlinks, not subcats, with the remaining files contained in the cat being about Frequency in statistics as a subject (
Frequency (statistics)
) or
Creating a subcategory for Frequency in statistics that's about files with that as a subject, not instances of line charts, pie charts, etc or
Removing
Category:Statistics
from
Category:Probability and statistics
and creating (and populating
) a new subcat of it that is for files about Probability and statistics as a subject
(any more good/better ideas?)
Prototyperspective
talk
12:56, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
The most problematic link in the chain, IMO, is the first one -
Category:Line charts
can be used to visualize many different relationships; they are not inherently related to the statistical concept of frequency. And in general what I'm trying to suggest is that categories for general types of visualizations like
Category:Line charts
Category:Sankey diagrams
etc
, should be kept isolated to category trees which describe the form of an image, like
Category:Information graphics
; they shouldn't be treated as a topical category.
Omphalographer
talk
20:31, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Good point; one could disentangle the two branches based on whether it's topical or about the form of the image. I'll remove Frequency (statistics) from Line charts but I don't think this solves the thread topic.
Prototyperspective
talk
17:51, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
How to categorize
49,000 media needing categories as of 2021
Latest comment:
3 days ago
4 comments
3 people in discussion
Are you experienced in categorization? If so, do you want to help, please, to categorize
49,000 media needing categories as of 2021
? Do you have a good idea, how this could be made more effectively or even automatically, for instance by sending a message to uploaders of uncategorized files? Some hints are shown on
Commons:WikiProject Minimum One Category
, but now we look out for more volunteers. --
NearEMPTiness
talk
23:52, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
An idea other than better aid with categorization in the UploadWizard would be to develop some tool that suggests categories for an individual image as well as especially sets of images.
For this it could read the file title, file description, exif metadata, as well as the file contents. It needs to work well and not make the edits itself but instead just display the suggestion to the user who can then select the cat to add or not and unselect images to which it should be added. (A simple example would be to identify portrait photos of people to add
Category:Unidentified people
but more users checking that Unidentified cat to at least identify the files that are in use would be good.)
Prototyperspective
talk
12:29, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
FWIW, this is now at 43,336 files. Making some progress, but not enough. At this pace, it would take the rest of the year 2026.
I can imagine some sort of bot assist, but we would have to deal with the fact that there is a definite history of users being much too willing to ratify but suggestions without verifying. They get the dopamine hit at a liability to the site.
I would suggest that if a bot does this, rather than work at all directly with adding categories it does something like what we do with certain tools that bring in Flickr tags, and uses "other fields" to make a list that would just be more data for any user who tries to do the categorization. -
Jmabel
talk
20:40, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Sure, that's good point – the same applies to things like AWB and cat-a-lot though. Things work out because they are revertable and one could make these tools only available to a subset of users or only on request. It wouldn't necessarily involve a bot but that seems like the likeliest way this could work well: a gadget on the user end would probably do too many requests for a cat of tens of thousands of files or just work on small sets of files which would be less beneficial; a bot wouldn't have to add visible flickr tags either – it could also add its suggested categories in the form of comments. That would work as well if one can search invisible html comments with the insource: search operator (haven't tested it). An alternative would be to add it via some template that is collapsed. However, that template or the comments should probably be removed upon categorization just like
{{Uncategorized}}
is. An idea for that would be to add the suggested categories to that template, e.g. {{Uncategorized|suggested=Unidentified lakes;;People hiking}}.
Prototyperspective
talk
22:08, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
April 17
Category:Logos of political parties in Peru
Latest comment:
2 days ago
6 comments
3 people in discussion
Hi
Did you know if all logos from
Category:Logos of political parties in Peru
are under the threshold of originality?
Panam2014
talk
11:04, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Of the ones directly in that category, I'd say about a 20-35% could arguably have a problem, though Peru has a high TOO, so even those might be fine.
File:Logo de Libertad Popular.jpg
, for example, looks to me like a stretch.
File:Logo of the Agricultural People's Front of Peru.png
looks awfully complex and creative to justify saying it is below TOO. I suspect that with their high TOO,
File:BlancoAR.png
and
File:Frente Independiente Moralizador.jpg
are fine.
File:Escudo del partido naciona democrata.jpg
is probably fine on simply being a minor variant on something quite old (even if not necessarily as the logo of that particular party):
a stretch for TOO
a stretch for TOO
probably fine with high TOO
probably fine with high TOO
probably fine with high TOO and historical precedents for the design
On several of the files there, the claims of "own work" and that the creator/uploader is somehow in a position to offer a CC license do not increase my confidence. -
Jmabel
talk
21:10, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Then again it always seems to be treated as no big deal so i can see why people do it
Trade
talk
13:36, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
In at least one respect it is no big deal: since the SVG is probably copyrightable, the license is appropriate for that aspect. But they seem to have forgotten that the visual aspect also matters. -
Jmabel
talk
20:47, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Jmabel
and
Trade
should
PPNPL
be verified?
Panam2014
talk
11:06, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Do we really care about verifying an account with 4 edits, all to one PD file? I certainly don't. -
Jmabel
talk
16:39, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
April 20
Model release template
Latest comment:
3 days ago
4 comments
3 people in discussion
Just yesterday I created
{{Model release}}
as I couldn't find anything like that already existing. (see
File:Two police officers on police bicycles in Noord-Brabant, Netherlands.jpg
for an example use)
Today while browsing maintenance categories I stumbled upon
{{Consent}}
which I don't remember ever seeing before, but it's used on 22551 files. It serves a similar purpose, but is quite different. Now I'm unsure what to do. Should they somehow be merged, co-exist, or something else entirely?
Alexis Jazz
ping plz
04:40, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Alexis Jazz
With all due respect,
{{Consent}}
seems more useful, and you might want to think of how your considerations might be added to the possible set of conditions there, or as an additional parameter. -
Jmabel
talk
21:02, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Jmabel
, some of the options of
{{Consent}}
seem not entirely clear. The difference between "basic" and "full" is the appending of "under a free license". But I'm not sure how that would affect something or why it would be relevant. If the original image is CC-BY and the consent type is basic, does that mean derivatives must use an unfree license? If the consent type is "full", does that mean derivatives
must
use a free license, is it like a ShareAlike clause? The "hosted" type doesn't actually include what the terms are, so it's susceptible to link rot. The "published" type is probably not really useful? The "public" type, isn't that the default and already covered by
{{Personality}}
? The "query" type should maybe just be a DR instead. I could be misunderstanding.
Alexis Jazz
ping plz
21:38, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
The
{{Consent}}
template is mentioned just a few sentences after discussion of model releases at
Commons:Photographs of identifiable people
, so I'm not sure how you missed it. Do you have any suggestions for how to make it more prominent or discoverable? "Basic" and "full" are different levels of subject consent, but they don't impact the licensing. The licensing is still whatever it says it is. I guess the distinction has more ethical implications than legal. Yes, "public" is basically the default, but it still needs to be an option as it's useful information to know that consent was definitely not given as this is important in some jurisdictions. That's a good point that "hosted" could perhaps be divided into several options (or a separate parameter).
Nosferattus
talk
23:28, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
April 21
Android phones strip coords before upload, since April 2026
Latest comment:
1 day ago
5 comments
3 people in discussion
posting here to raise awareness of this new problem, in case you also usually upload photos through android phone mobile browsers and want to
retain
the coords (gps / locations / geotags) in
exif
metadata
. to be more precise, any kind of file transfer thru any app that doesnt have the specific permission required for coords will strip the coords, so it affects not just "upload". see
Commons:Village_pump/Technical#c-RoyZuo-20260420223600-Phone_stripping_coords_/_geotags_since_April_2026!
for more info.
you can easily check your commons uploads by checking the presence of
{{Location}}
or scrolling down to the exif at the bottom. if you dont see the coords, then they are most likely stripped. you can also use online tools such as
to check the metadata.
RoyZuo
talk
11:37, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
RoyZuo
may I presume that transferring files to a PC and uploading from there should work fine? -
Jmabel
talk
16:41, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
yes "copying via usb cables" seems to be the most straightforward method.
"transferring files to a PC" should not go through a phone app though, which may result in coords stripped if that app doesnt have the relevant permission.
RoyZuo
talk
16:54, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
so can't have "coords" without "cords"...? -
Jmabel
talk
17:29, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It also works fine if one uploads using the Commons app. The app settings permit to choose whether one wants to include or exclude coordinates while uploading.
Nakonana
talk
19:48, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Wiki Loves Bangla 2026 has started, Join Now!
Latest comment:
2 days ago
1 comment
1 person in discussion
Hello,
We are excited to announce that
Wiki Loves Bangla 2026
has started! This year’s theme focuses on
Bengal festivals
, inviting participants to capture and share images and videos of the diverse cultural celebrations across Bengal.
Wiki Loves Bangla
is an international photography contest on Wikimedia Commons aimed at documenting Bengali culture and heritage worldwide. It is organised annually as part of the
Bangla Culture and Heritage Collation Program
, with a dedicated theme each year.
How You Can Participate
, it's easy and simple, and every upload contributes to the world's largest free knowledge repository:
Winning image from Wiki Loves Bangla 2025.
Attribution:
Ashraf747
CC BY-SA 4.0
Capture
: Take photos or videos of Bengal festivals.
Upload
: Share your files to Wikimedia Commons between
14 April and 15 May 2026
Win
: A total of
USD 1,100
in prizes.
Ready to get started?
Click here to upload your media
, or visit the
main project page
for full details.
Your contributions help document and preserve Bengal’s rich cultural heritage for the world.
For any questions, email us or join our
Telegram group
Warm regards,
Wiki Loves Bangla Team
#WikiLovesBangla
Moheen
(keep talking)
20:56, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
April 23
A question of curiousity
Latest comment:
20 hours ago
4 comments
4 people in discussion
Howdy! How did this
batch upload request
get approved without any discussion? I'm a little shocked as it contributes
about 10% of the total space used
TranqyPoo
talk
02:35, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Today I learned that all of Wikimedia Commons is a little less than 1 PB. Expected more for such global project to be honest.
Wayback Machine is 99 PB, Youtube has 5 PB of videos uploaded to it
daily
, etc.
Deltaspace42
talk
10:09, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
the "request" here is more a request for help (because batch uploading is often tricky and technical and the person wanting to do it may not know how), like requests on
com:gli
it's not a request for approval like
com:bot requests
RoyZuo
talk
10:42, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
without any discussion
people are very welcome to participate at the batch request page.
Prototyperspective
talk
13:44, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Advice on
COM:Permission requests
Latest comment:
8 hours ago
6 comments
3 people in discussion
Hello, I am a license reviewer so got the invitation to work on
COM:Permission requests
, which was launched in 2025. My understanding is that the level of experience to be able to handle these requests is a step below what it takes to work on VRT. I'd like to ask two things: 1) Is that a correct understanding? 2) Is this a process that we really want to get into greater use, or did it effectively become a dud? I've noticed there are still requests from 2025 on the main page, so it appears it's barely being used.
TEMPO156
talk
03:31, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I'm confident in my ability to handle requests (including not just understanding of the rules and copyright law but in providing helpful and respectful "customer service") but I want to make sure my help is actually wanted or even if this is something that is helpful to be spending time on.
TEMPO156
talk
03:50, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
What's the point of that page? It would be as quick or quicker to send a request by email, than to post there asking someone else to do so.
Andy Mabbett
Pigsonthewing
);
Talk to Andy
Andy's edits
14:33, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Some people are not comfortable crafting such an email, especially if they are not experienced on Commons themselves or are not native or near-native speakers of the relevant language for the request. -
Jmabel
talk
18:44, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
TEMPO156
Yes, in my opinion at least, if you can do this capably it is a good thing to do. -
Jmabel
talk
18:45, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Jmabel
Definitely, I have experience doing this for files I've personally wanted, and am great with license policy and various laws, and asking/answering the right questions respectfully, which I have picked up through this time on license review. So, I think it would be a nice way to gain more experience. I can have strong opinions on Wikipedia—not that I don't follow rules there—it's just that the Commons work for me is more about the fact that I am the kind of person who finds these dispassionate administrative tasks rewarding and almost calming. I want us to delete every file that doesn't belong, but also to try our best to help legitimate contributors help us build our library, since many are one-time contributors who just don't know how to go through the process well.
TEMPO156
talk
01:48, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Template:Opmcm.gov.np
Latest comment:
15 hours ago
4 comments
3 people in discussion
GeminiVern
have created
Template:Opmcm.gov.np
and
Template:Opmcm.gov.np/en
. But there are
no evidence
that such files are under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Panam2014
talk
11:26, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Jmabel
and
Túrelio
Panam2014
talk
11:27, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Probably this is best moved to
Commons:Village pump/Copyright
Prototyperspective
talk
13:45, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Not sure why I was pinged here, but I have no particular knowledge of Nepalese copyright law. -
Jmabel
talk
18:46, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
webp vs png
Latest comment:
9 hours ago
7 comments
5 people in discussion
This link:
appears to refer to a png file, but when I save it locally, I get a webp file. I have encountered many similar examples. What is going on here? Is there away to get the png file? Does it matter?
Andy Mabbett
Pigsonthewing
);
Talk to Andy
Andy's edits
13:07, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It returns the original .png file when you remove the "w_1680,h_1680,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto:good/" from the URL ~
TheImaCow
talk
13:40, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Does it matter?
As far as I can see it doesn't. webp is widely supported and "WebP lossless images are about 26% smaller than PNGs".
Prototyperspective
talk
13:46, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Thank you, both. Now uploaded as:
File:Portrait of Sophia Lee (1750-1824) by Thomas Lawrence.png
—(2,500 × 2,952 pixels, file size: 12.29 MB
File:Portrait of Sophia Lee (1750-1824) by Thomas Lawrence.webp
—(1,423 × 1,680 pixels, file size: 271 KB,
--
Andy Mabbett
Pigsonthewing
);
Talk to Andy
Andy's edits
13:58, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Is the webp file of any use to us? — 🇺🇦
Jeff G.
please
ping
or
talk to me
🇺🇦
14:26, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
How else are we supposed to compare them?
Andy Mabbett
Pigsonthewing
);
Talk to Andy
Andy's edits
14:43, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Just to say what is literally happening, many websites will automatically convert files to webp if your browser signalled with the
accept header
that it supports webp.
Bawolff
talk
00:49, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Any other options left to hold non-free files centrally?
Latest comment:
13 hours ago
8 comments
5 people in discussion
After two failed proposals—
m:NonFreeWiki
and
m:NonFreeWiki (2)
—and failed attempts for Commons to allow non-free files, what are other options left for us to do? If I create another NonFreeWiki, I dunno whether users would change their minds, but my version would be the start-from-scratch approach, i.e. very minimal or minimalistic. Then, if approved, the proposed repository project will grow and interact with other projects positively... but also negatively.
I may be aware of potential risks, like loss of central control. However, I'm doubtful about abilities of local projects, including big local ones like English Wikipedia, to maintain such images and determine consensus. I'm even doubtful that local projects are interested in images generally. Indeed, look at our DR discussions; most of them have either been easy cases or low amount of editors with skillful insight analyzing more complex matters.
If the two options—propose a new sister project and expand Commons's scope to non-free files—are out of question, then what else is there left that I'm unaware of?
George Ho
talk
15:40, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Is there any need for this as opposed to uploading & creating & using free files instead and asking uploaders of rare cases where the nonfree file is particularly useful but without alternative to relicense the file?
Prototyperspective
talk
17:07, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I'm not trying to repeat this perennial proposal that's been shot down to death if that's your interpretation. Well, I tried raising this at Meta-wiki (
discussion link
), but no replies there so far.
George Ho
talk
17:59, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
what else is there left
: Leaving things as they are?
What is the problem to which this is a proposed solution?
How can you legally have a site that is specifically hosting non-free content?
Jmabel
talk
18:50, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Jmabel
: As I understand it, the problem is that fair use files are currently maintained separately on each wiki that allows them. That means that enwiki and nlwiki and ptwiki might all have versions of the same fair use file, but they're uploaded and maintained separately with no coordination between wikis. The idea behind NonFreeWiki is simply to consolidate all of that onto a single multilingual wiki (very similar to Commons) to reduce duplication of work and provide more community oversight.
George Ho
: It appears there was fairly strong support in the second proposal. Why wasn't it able to move forward?
Pi.1415926535
talk
19:21, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Pi.1415926535
: I
undid my replies
to you because I now realized I didn't know what "second proposal" meant. Actually, when you said it, did you mean
m:NonFreeWiki (2)
or the idea to expand Commons's scope to allow "fair use" content? The latter is outta question as I've proven in the diff (of now-removed replies). If you mean the former, then the discussion "stalled" per current status there. As I see, a user
must've changed the status
, but the discussion still didn't go anywhere, anyways.
George Ho
talk
20:04, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I think this is not about hosting files against the will of copyright holders, but for files we do not host primarily because of our precautionary principle. One example are cases like unclear FOP application (train stations in Germany). Another type of cases are works where the copyright holder or the heirs of a copyright holder are confirmed unknown.
GPSLeo
talk
19:21, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Jmabel
Leaving things as they are?
I appreciate your sentiment, but I'm worried more about admin activities of local projects. Indeed, since Fastily's resignation after
petition against Fastily
, the admin activity of enwiki's local FFD venue... Well, it's not the same anymore. Many of them local FFD nominations still open, and I've yet to see an admin closing ones without replies, especially without requesting (IMHO) overdue closures. I'd like to discuss the activity first at FFD, but I'm unsure whether they wanna discuss FFD.
George Ho
talk
20:36, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
April 24
Undelete some of my files
Latest comment:
11 minutes ago
1 comment
1 person in discussion
I had uploaded some of my screen recordings for tools, and I thought I had given them a proper license, but apparently not because they were deleted. Can someone undelete them please, I don't have admin rights here.
File:Relator2 create new item.webm
File:Relator2 add relation manually.webm
File:Relator2 set manual relation by clicking on another entry.webm
They will all be
{{Cc-by-sa-4.0}}
. Thanks! --
Magnus Manske
talk
10:19, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Retrieved from "
Category
Commons community
Hidden category:
Commons maintenance
Commons
Village pump
Add topic
US