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January 02
History maps of Europe
Latest comment: 1 month ago6 comments4 people in discussion
Hi, I would like to discuss the description in all categories of the scheme "Maps of <country> in the <x>th century" (see for example 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 <country> - as the lands were in the 8th century (701-800 CE)" which I would prefer to replace with a simple "This category is about maps of the history of <country> in the 8th century (701-800 CE)", 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 <country>"), which is also linked via template.
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 ! talk18:49, 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 <country> in Xth century" is about history maps, and old maps have to be found in "Xth-century maps of <country>". --Enyavar (talk) 04:53, 3 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.
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: 26 days ago30 comments7 people in discussion
A suggestion in regards with the maps from Our World in Data: remove from each map the category <year> maps of the world.
These maps weren't published in the years referenced. In addition, it could make the categories of <year> maps of the world more easy to browse.
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
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 "<year/decade/century> maps" being the maps created in that timeframe, not the maps showing that timeframe - the latter would be better placed under "maps showing <year/decade/century>".
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.
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 <year>") or should it just be "of" ? --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 "<year/decade/century> maps" being the maps created in that timeframe, not the maps showing that timeframe 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
In 2014, it has been decided that "<year> maps" should essentially be empty disambiguations, and we should use "maps created in <year>" and "maps showing <year>" instead. Practically, this rule has never been enforced, and has lead to many simmering debates ever since. I'm striking my quarrelsome nitpicks from my previous comment, in order to focus on the suggestion at hand: Creating special categories for OWiD maps. Okay? --Enyavar (talk) 11:04, 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 <year> data, my own ideas leaned towards ... in <year> or ... showing <year>. 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.
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
[[:category:Our World in Data maps of <region> showing <year> data]] would be subcategory of [[:category:Our World in Data maps of <region>]], [[:category:Maps showing <year>]] and [[:category:<year> maps of <region>]]. At a later point, I would like to reshape the last of the three parent categories to bring the OWiD maps under the 20th-century/1940s branches of <region>. With the example above, there is currently no sufficient subdivision 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
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
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 "<year> data" so "<decade>s data" and "...<century> data" would be the logical consequence. Now I'm less sure about the format. I am not married to the idea of requiring the "data" suffix, but as long as the template could be made, I see no real problem. @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
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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
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 ! talk20:53, 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
Help needed to close 6,323 Category for Discussion cases
Latest comment: 5 days ago15 comments8 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
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
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.
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.
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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
Uncategorized files over timeWith the increasingly large numbers of uncategorized files, I think there needs to be some thought and work on how to address this at scale / effectively without consuming so much volunteer time. One idea is to better aid and facilitate uploaders to categorize their files at upload as outlined in Commons talk:WMF support for Commons/Upload Wizard Improvements#Guidance/facilitation of categorization; another idea would be to have tools suggest categories based on file-title, description, metadata, and content, similar to User:Alaexis/Diffusor.
On a related note, ultimately all of this is largely a two-stage process where adding initial category/ies is stage 1 and diffusion into more specific categories is stage 2; categorization can be improved a lot if initial category/ies are set if the one/s set is/are about the main topic/usefulness/uniqueness of the file. Probably both stages need some development.
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I've created the chart on the right a few days ago using some new tool that I coded with the help of AIs – does somebody know how to get data for between mid 2015 and early 2024 or why there is this quick rise from 2012 to 2015 but a decline by 2024? Prototyperspective (talk) 12:58, 10 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
The "two-stage process" that you describe is certainly helpful, e.g. by using Category:Unidentified by topic, but I am even more proud about files that I can categorize to their final location. In many cases, this might involve creating a new category for a person, of which a Wikipedia article exists in any language. This new category will, initially, most often contain only one file, but it can be inter-wiki-linked to the relevant Wikipedia articles via Wikidata. GLAMorous is a powerful tool, to find uncategorized photos of persons, of which a Wikipedia article exists. Until a suitable bot will be programmed, these photos have to be categorized manually one-by-one, please. NearEMPTiness (talk) 02:29, 11 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Just my two cents... I think it is the job of the uploader to choose a suitable category/categories. The "penalty" for not doing so, is that an image will remain unnoticed, and is unlikely to be used in a Wikipedia article. Trying to think of a suitable category is a nice way to pass the time, certainly. But we're looking at about 1000 uncategorized images per day, and I consider myself lucky if I can find a category for more than a handful. Regards, MartinD (talk) 20:27, 12 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
If we find 200 volunteers, who will categorise at least 5 files per day, we will proceed faster than the uploaders of uncategorized files, especially if some of the volunteers will do more than 10 files a day. NearEMPTiness (talk) 20:31, 13 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Good point but there's also good counterpoints to this. These include that 1) many of these files are copyvios or would be good to delete for other reasons (like being blurry) so going over them is useful 2) often, categorization is hard depending on the file so it may need some Commons contributor to cat it properly 3) many of these files were just transferred from Flickr or other sites – these aren't just original content of the uploads so it's not the file creator who failed at that and many of especially these files are quite useful but missing in the cats which is a disadvantage to Commons and in Commons' interest to address.
The aforementioned guidance in the UploadWizard could involve showing the info that the image is less likely / easy to be found and used if there is no proper category set. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:23, 16 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
And also while the uploader should do it, they don't necessarily know why or what a fitting category may be. Thus, better guidance/help with categories within the UploadWizard would be beneficial.
Additionally, it doesn't have to be specific categories or changes on individual files – instead of concluding contributors should not categorize uncategorized files, a better skeptical conclusion I think would be…
to limit things more to or prioritize categorizations of whole batches. For example, one can enter search terms and categorize dozens of files at once and more patterns like that would be great on the project page marked in yellow above.
and to categorizes lots of files at once at a glance without going into the details of the specifics – for example maps into Category:Unidentified maps and photos of landscapes into Category:Unidentified locations (here note that the photos should be about the locations, not about other things like specific events or specific objects that just happen to be at locations that are unidentified)
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.
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 Jazzping plz03:47, 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 Jazzping plz05:33, 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:
@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 ! talk19:41, 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
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
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
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
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
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? — Rhododendritestalk | 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
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.
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
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
March 21
User license-reviewed their own uploads
Latest comment: 1 day ago16 comments6 people in discussion
I just came across many files uploaded by user DarwIn, but their license were also reviewed by the same user, DarwIn.
Per Commons:License review#Instructions for reviewers, it states "reviewers may not review their own uploads unless the account is an approved bot...Reviews by image-reviewers on their own uploads will be considered invalid.". Perhaps I am missing something, since I understand the user is an admin here and also a VRT member, so maybe there is an exception to this restriction for admins and VRT members?
Fortunately, the license of the files I checked appears to be valid, and I trust the licenses were reviewed by DarwIn correctly, so I don't think there should be any files that needed to be deleted. The issue is just that possibly the license review on these files are invalid.
Not sure how many files are affected by this issue, but I think there is potentially a lot, since a quick search seems to show the user has reviewed more than a thousand videos. This is why I am asking here for advice on what to do. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 02:56, 21 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
I suppose someone could go through and re-review them. I am not volunteering.
In my defense, it should be noted that the license was actually reviewed by the video2commons tool, or else they wouldn't be uploaded at all, as the tool blocks uploads with an invalid license. So I supposed a second review was not needed (as a bot had actually already reviewed it), and since the Youtube reviewer bot, which used to mark those here, was not working at the time, it would only add to the backlog unnecessarily, so I marked them as reviewed myself, something which from what I recall didn't use to be problematic some time ago. DarwinAhoy!01:38, 29 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Video2Commons can check that someone claimed a license on YouTube, but signoff by a human reviewer suggests they found that claim at least plausible. It's not hard to see why we stopped allowing people to self-review. (Personally, I'm not sure that was necessary for admins, but I still understand the logic.) - Jmabel ! talk19:47, 29 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
In recent years we've had several deletion requests for files claiming that the license was done unintentionally or without approval. Are human reviewers supposed to take consideration for that too? Trade (talk) 03:44, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Trade: They're supposed to do the best they can, and competence is required. If, for example, you see that a Disney YouTube site operated from Papua New Guinea has offered a license for an entire song sequence from Frozen, you should probably find that highly suspect. I would say that anyone who did not find that suspect is probably not qualified to be a license reviewer. - Jmabel ! talk04:37, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Comment until some time a decade or so ago, this self-review was actually allowed for admins, so I guess it is possible that DarwIn, who has been around for a long time, might not know current policy for this. I could probably make a similar mistake about policy on en-wiki where I am an admin, but not particularly active. - Jmabel ! talk04:14, 27 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the info, I think your explanation is very plausible. By the way, I have now created the category Category:Files self-reviewed by DarwIn (re-review needed) and added the problematic files to it. I have started to go through them and re-reviewing these files, but as you can see, as of writing, there are 1,729 files in the category, so if anyone wants to help out, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 19:56, 27 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Tvpuppy Hello. That episode happened years ago, but from what I remember, the review bot stopped working for some reason, so I started reviewing those myself, as they were not controversial and were actually already also verified by the video2commons app. I don't think any of those should be controversial, and those uploaded with video2commons, which should be the vast majority, were already verified by the tool used for the upload. At the time I didn't think it would be controversial in any way, but apparently it is, so I apologize for it. It was totally in good faith (and I doubt anything controversial will come out of that). DarwinAhoy!01:30, 29 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Jmabel hello, that was the case indeed. I used to review those myself as they were not controversial cases, to not add to the backlog, as it was the use some time ago. Apparently it changed, so I'll leave it to others to verify the license. DarwinAhoy!01:21, 29 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
March 27
Leave a ] when reviewing
Latest comment: 7 days ago14 comments6 people in discussion
My feeling, looking at those IDs, is that not just the ] is misplaced but actually the majority of the |id= shouldn’t be there – instead of |id=SUARTgpCaNw?si=jvFt1sM7AU7d2wzu Deguchi Natsuki at Biore] it should probably just be |id=SUARTgpCaNw? But I haven’t yet figured out where the gadget is taking this from. Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 13:07, 28 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think in this part, index6 needs to account not just for \n but also for ? (and probably &), to slice off the si= tracking parameter? But I don’t know the gadget, so I’m hesitant to just try editing it without knowing how it works. Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 13:10, 28 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
I also think that var index6 = idtemp.indexOf('\n'); asumes the line ends with a \n but in this case the end is the ]. So we might need to stop at both variants ']', '\n'. --MGA73 (talk) 11:49, 29 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
yes. i think there're very rare instances where that si tracing parameter should be retained. a bot should be created to sanitise youtube links wherever this was not removed. RoyZuo (talk) 18:46, 29 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
@RoyZuo: you say there are "rare instances" where it should be retained, but a bot should remove it. How will a bot identify those "rare instances" and leave them alone? - Jmabel ! talk19:50, 29 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
I don't think there is any reason to keep it. But it could probably check if someone manually added it back and then not remove it REAL💬⬆17:43, 31 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Okay I tried but it did not work. So perhaps we should use a regex instead since the ID should always be 11 char long. So either (/v=([A-Za-z0-9_-]{11})/) or if we want to catch alternatives (/(?:v=|youtu\.be\/|embed\/|shorts\/)([A-Za-z0-9_-]{11})/). I suggested it on MediaWiki talk:Gadget-LicenseReview.js so feel free to Comment. --MGA73 (talk) 15:56, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
March 30
{{US states}}
Latest comment: 7 days ago8 comments4 people in discussion
Would anyone complain if {{Clickable map of USA Category}} was added to this template? Commons is a site with a large international audience and i feel showing people where the state they are looking for is located would make the site more user friendly towards those outside of North America Trade (talk) 04:14, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
I lean against this (it could get pretty cluttered, have a look at Maryland), but it might be OK if the map could be placed inside the box, justified either left or right. - Jmabel ! talk04:42, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
If you'd like the situation to change, you could support the wish. If you have other feedback on the wish, that's welcome too. Note that a large fraction of Commons visitors is already on mobile and the problem described here is not limited to Commons categories but also all or most uses of <gallery> in Wikipedia articles and elsewhere (including when viewed through the Wikipedia app). Prototyperspective (talk) 18:08, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
I experimented a bit during the recent hackathon, with modifying the category view. You can find video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkC7_HTIYhA I used a packed view, with full width images in mobile. I moved the other link types to the bottom and made the description collapsible. It was very much a hack, but i wanted to spur some people to reconsider what the category view should be. overall reaction was enthusiastic. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:00, 31 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Interesting; thanks for doing this and I like this too except that I think the file titles kind of need to be shown by default with just an option to hide these (so they only show when hovered). Note that the titles could be trimmed to only display the full title at hover so they take only little and consistent page height.
Indeed and thanks for the note; on mobile there could be a few pixels of screen height reserved for the title (similar to the Commons app screenshot) that can be trimmed to prevent it to be longer than eg needing more than 1 linebreak where one would need to tap on it on mobile to see the full title. There's images for which the title is redundant but usually or at least often it's useful.
A complication are file-titles in languages other than the one(s) the user understands but this problem is unspecific to mobile and for these cases one could show the caption if available in the user's language (however this still needs/would greatly benefit from language of file titles to be parsed). Note that captions are often not substitutes for file-titles, eg used similar to subheaders (eg info on the legend of a map instead of title a second time). Prototyperspective (talk) 13:45, 2 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Is this an android problem? On iOS hovering is possible with specific finger movement. It is of course not super reliable and sometimes results in an accidental click. GPSLeo (talk) 14:58, 2 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
On the left [...] On the right [...] — those directions are a bit ironic given that this thread is about Commons' appearance on mobile, because, obviously, there's no left or right but only a "top" and "bottom" ;). As a mostly mobile user I'm used to the category looks by now (although I'd love to see more info being displayed (like license and author or even categorization) and the thumbnails being a bit larger).
As for, gallery pages, I don't really use them and have no opinion on them. However, when it comes to the gallery template (as it is used for the photo challenge and in some wiki articles) I'd really love to see this issue fixed:
Indeed, thanks for pointing it out. As for, gallery pages I didn't mention gallery pages but maybe they should be mentioned in the wish idk – I don't use them much either so broken uses of the gallery tag at places like the one in your screenshot are what I was primarily referring to with elsewhere at uses of <gallery> in Wikipedia articles and elsewhere.
I don't know if your screenshot should be included in the wish; probably better not (mentioned maybe?). But there should definitely be a bug report on phabricator about it. I haven't seen this yet since I don't use my smartphone much; will check on mobile later if that also occurs on my device. Could you create the bug report on phabricator?
As a mostly mobile user I'm used to the category looks by now (although I'd love to see […] on a related note, things would be much better already if one could conveniently open a Commons page in the Commons app. With most apps one can choose which app to open a link or open a website with if one has an app installed – for example one can easily open Wikipedia articles currently open in the mobile web browser in the Wikipedia app by selecting Open with -> Wikipedia app. Then one could switch to the Commons app view of whatever Commons page one is viewing in less than a second.
I'd just like to remind everyone that if we want to change the default gallery type for categories (in general not just mobile) to one of the other existing gallery types like "packed" we can. All we need is some sort of vote to deonstrate that it is the will of the community. Bawolff (talk) 19:45, 2 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
April 01
How many people categories is too much?
Latest comment: 5 days ago15 comments7 people in discussion
If we had the image of a historical list with 1,000 people, that we also had wikidata entries for, would we create 1,000 categories for that list? RAN (talk) 04:49, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
No. If something has a valid wikidata item, then that's a justification for having it here too, against any questions of 'notability' [sic]. However it's not a requirement to have one, if it's not considered useful to Commons' own goals. Two obvious examples of this might be a highly notable topic where we just don't have any Commons content for it. Another one (which we've encountered previously) was for team photos, where the team had a wikidata item, as did each individual, but the only Commons content was a single photo of the entire team.
We certainly should not bulk auto-create a bunch of empty Commons categories (that are likely to stay empty) from a script run over Wikidata. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:05, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
No, a photo of some list with people's names on it shouldn't be in the categories of all those people but instead a broader category/ies like 'group xy', and/or 'zy lists of people', or 'characteristics zv', etc. Or if you want to categorize lists with merely people's names on it, there's no need to discuss hypotheticals here. There's more than enough challenges and backlogs without discussing hypotheticals and I consider this thread solved. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:02, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
How is it solved with two contradictory replies? Is the assumption that your answer is correct, and the other answer is incorrect? --RAN (talk) 15:12, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Maybe I misunderstood your question as to be about which categories to set on an image of a list while you're asking about whether we should create categories for wikidata items. If the latter is the case, then categories still should not be empty. In either way, this seems to be about hypotheticals and there's more than enough nonhypothetical things to discuss. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:48, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
And if this is not hypothetical, it would be useful to have a concrete example. But I will venture slightly into hypotheticals. If we had a photo of the entire U.S. Senate of the moment, I would oppose adding a category to that photo for each individual Senator. If we had a picture of a list of 1000 names of individuals, I would certainly not add categories for the all people named in the list, any more than I would add, for a PDF of a book, a category for every place mentioned in the book. - Jmabel ! talk18:55, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Maybe not places, but what about people? In that book pdf, there might be mentioned "Jim Smith" that we have a category already as "James H. Smith". How would someone refind it once the connection has been made? People have synonyms and researchers need a way to aggregate all the information on a person. I can see not needing to index every mention of George Washington in a book, but some people are more obscure. --RAN (talk) 21:12, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
If the book has substantial coverage of the person, sure, but (for example) I would not want to tag a history of European art with the categories for 583 artists. If anything, flooding the category with content like this makes it harder to find actually relevant material. - Jmabel ! talk21:25, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
How would it make info more difficult to find? If I have no interest in the index of a book, I don't look at it. If I need to find someone, I use the index. Text searching has made most indexes redundant, but as pointed out people have synonyms. --RAN (talk) 02:01, 2 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
+1, I think this issue is covered by Commons:Overcat, is it not? My favorite example (not with people, but locations) is that a world map should not be categorized into all hundreds or thousands of location-categories of the places that are shown and/or labelled in that map. Just because one dot in this map is labelled "Lhasa", does not turn that map into a "map of Lhasa", at least in my opinion. The same logic goes for the hypothetical group photos of large-crows, for long name lists, or bound collections of short-bios. There are reasonable exceptions, but I think that most files with way over 10 categories are cases of overcat/miscat. --Enyavar (talk) 22:05, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Commons:Overcat deals with redundant categories such as adding Category:Albert Einstein and Category:Physicists from Germany to an image of Einstein, not about properly identifying everyone in an image (or I assume list). --RAN (talk) 01:38, 2 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
If that is so, then I think we should add a point to the Categories' policy about not adding hundreds/thousands of categories to files. Even if we could identify each of the people in this painting by name, I argue that we should only do so in respective crop-outs where those are needed... but not in the larger picture. --Enyavar (talk) 11:52, 2 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Way to find categories with number of files over certain threshold?
Latest comment: 16 hours ago3 comments2 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
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
Broken Wikimedia image (sizes)
Latest comment: 5 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This semester and last the embedded Commons images I've long used have been broken. I was fixing them ad hoc, but today tried to figure out what was going on. It appears that a lot of the sizes that used to be served offsite no longer are?
I have a python script, which might've fixed most of the issues, but though I looked I can not find the discussion of what changed and why.
❯ wikipedia-image-embeds-fix.py talks/
Updated 1 links in talks/180-privacy.md
1024px to 960px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/CPT-Proxy.svg/960px-CPT-Proxy.svg.png
Updated 1 links in talks/056-brown-learning.md
1024px to 960px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Laurentius_de_Voltolina_001.jpg/960px-Laurentius_de_Voltolina_001.jpg
Updated 5 links in talks/075-darknet.md
512px to 500px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Digital_signature_schema.png/500px-Digital_signature_schema.png
512px to 500px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Bitcoin_Block_Data.svg/500px-Bitcoin_Block_Data.svg.png
512px to 500px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Onion_diagram.svg/500px-Onion_diagram.svg.png
1024px to 960px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Iceberg_of_Webs.svg/960px-Iceberg_of_Webs.svg.png
128px to 330px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Iceberg_of_Webs.svg/330px-Iceberg_of_Webs.svg.png
Action Required: Update templates/modules for electoral maps (Migrating from P1846 to P14226)
Latest comment: 4 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello everyone,
This is a notice regarding an ongoing data migration on Wikidata that may affect your election-related templates and Lua modules (such as Module:Itemgroup/list).
Deadline:
We are temporarily retaining the old data on distribution map (P1846) to allow for a smooth transition. However, to complete the data cleanup on Wikidata, the old P1846 statements will be removed after May 1, 2026. Please update your modules and templates before this date to prevent any disruption to your wiki's election articles.
Latest comment: 5 hours ago11 comments5 people in discussion
Could someone clarify our working definition of "cosplay"? In particular, is there any wearing of costumes that does not qualify as "cosplay", and if so what? I am increasingly seeing the term applied by others to my photos in contexts where I would never use that word. - Jmabel ! talk22:13, 4 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
For most of these its a matter of people (or a dog!) in costume, but no indication of "play" beyond simply wearing a costume. Jmabel ! talk21:47, 5 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
To borrow the definition from the English Wikipedia:
A cosplay (a portmanteau of "costume play") is the activity and performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character. Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture, and a broader use of the term "cosplay" applies to any costumed role-playing in venues apart from the stage.
(The subculture in question is, more often than not, fandom). This is a pretty broad definition, but also states that stage-play actors are excluded, answering an earlier question. It also gives a definition that doesn't include (role)playing specifically, but puts the focus on the costume to represent a character, which squares with my personal experience having attended cons where people cosplay characters by dressing up as them, but aren't always (or even usually) in-character.
Wikipedia states that "It is generally considered different from Halloween and Mardi Gras costume wear, as the intention is to replicate a specific character, rather than to reflect the culture and symbolism of a holiday event."
Within the context of e.g. a kid dressing up as Batman for Halloween, are they not trying to also replicate Batman? Can it not be both an expression of fandom and something you do to go trick-or-treating? Children don't tend to pick characters at random to dress up as. We could make a separate category for people who dress up as certain characters for Halloween and it would be a pretty unambiguous separation, but the question is also if that's worth the effort. I personally don't see it as that big of a deal to categorize all of these as cosplay, even if "People dressed up as..." might be a better/more accurate way to categorize these photos (except for the dog). The Moscow car meet photo shows a historical reenactor (generally not considered cosplay), and is appropriately categorized as such. ReneeWrites (talk) 23:24, 5 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Definitely a step in the right direction. Still unclear on reenactments, and somewhat unclear (at least to me) on whether simply wearing a costume is enough vs. the "play" aspect. - Jmabel ! talk19:34, 7 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
April 05
A. J. Sawyer?
Latest comment: 2 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
It would be useful to have tool, perhaps a user script, which would allow the user to select (in the manner of selection in Cat-a-lot) two or more images in a category view, like the above, and then add a thumbnail or link to each of them, from the other as |other versions=.
For the images in the above screenshot, it would be equal to these two edits: 1; 2.
It would need to detect and gracefully fail if the link is already present.
Note: it's not very common that the other versions or all of them are in some same category and even when they are due to many other files being there too and them being named differently, it can be difficult to select files that way and seems rather impractical. Making it easier to add other versions of files could nevertheless be impactful. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:09, 5 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
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wikimedia.org. Thank you. On behalf of the Legal team, -- Wikimedia Foundation office (talk) 22:22, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
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Comment until some time a decade or so ago, this self-review was actually allowed for admins, so I guess it is possible that DarwIn, who has been around for a long time, might not know current policy for this. I could probably make a similar mistake about policy on en-wiki where I am an admin, but not particularly active. - Jmabel ! talk 04:14, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
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