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COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES Commons Help desk Village pump (general discussion) Copyright Proposals Technical Graphics and photography discussion Photography critiques Image improvement Illustration workshop Map workshop Photography workshop Video and sound workshop Categories for discussion Undeletion requests Deletion requests Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard Translators' noticeboard Work requests for bots Contact administrators Vandalism User problems (Dispute resolution) Blocks and protections Bureaucrats' noticeboard CheckUser requests Oversight requests Telegram IRC webchat Commons mailing list (archive) Commons' bugs on Phabricator Welcome to the Village pump This page is used for discussions of the operations 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/2026/09. Please note: If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias. Have you read our FAQ? For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming. Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer). Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam. Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page: Please do not make deletion requests here: use the relevant process for it instead. For technical support and graphics talks (PNG, SVG, GIF, etc.), please post on the Graphics village pump. To ask for image improvement, see: Graphic Lab/Photography workshop for photographs. Graphic Lab/Map workshop for maps. Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop for other illustrations. To ask for video or audio improvement, see Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop. For translation requests, please post at Commons:Requests for translation. For media requests, please post at Commons:File requests. For questions about copyright, 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

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A village pump in Cork, Ireland [add]

Centralized discussion See also: Village pump/Proposals   ■ Archive Proposal to promote COM:TAIV as policy (8 September 2026) Policy update for Renaming of Pdf and DjVu files (14 August 2026) Policy update for AI content (23 June 2026) Template: View   ■ Discuss    ■ Edit   ■ Watch

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January 02

History maps of Europe

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)

@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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

@Stefan Kühn: , I have not responded before since I am not sure how this constitutes a similar problem, or what action you expect other users to take on behalf of your project. My own case is less about the exact nationality of specific locations; and more about hatnote definitions of these categories in general.

As nobody has yet voiced any opinion on the subject matter, I'm resolved to wait a bit longer. --Enyavar (talk) 11:29, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

February 22

Maps from Our World in Data

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.

Thanks in advance. --Universalis (talk) 19:15, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

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)

+1 to Prototyperspective. - Jmabel ! talk 20:39, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

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.

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 <year>") or should it just be "of" ? --Enyavar (talk) 03:58, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

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)

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)

So what do folks want us to do? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:00, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

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)

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)

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.

Following that idea, we could go with Our World in Data maps of <region> showing <year> data. 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)

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)

[[: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)

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)

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)

Here is my suggestion: Maps of Oceania in the 1940s anro (talk) 22:18, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

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:

1. The template would be used for categories like Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data, right?
2. 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)

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 "<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)

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)

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)

@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)

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)

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)

• 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

I added the above request to Commons:Bots. --Enyavar (talk) 16:03, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

This does not need a bot and does not need to edit no file, because the categorization is already made by a template on these same files , File:Death rate smoking, World, 1991.svg is in Category:Maps showing 1991 and that category is not written in its wikitext, it comes from {{Map showing old data}}, which is unprotected, I checked it today, and transcluded on 1,374,067 files, so the template can read the page name and emit the right category alone and the job queue does the rest. I have made the test with #invoke:String|match through action=parse and the names give what they should, World and 1991, North America and 1764, Africa and 1021, and no match for a file outside this corpus, but there is a trap, the covid files like ,Covid cases, Europe, Dec 11, 2020.svg, return Dec 11 as the region and there are more than half a million of them, so it needs a guard that the year in the name is equal to the |year= parameter, which kills them because they carry year=2020-12-11. And there is a second thing that worries me more than the first one, the bot request says to work over the files of Category:Our World in Data maps of Asia, which has 72,558 files, while there are 190,443 files that carry the template and have Asia in the name, and two that I took at random, File:Sugar cane yields, Asia, 1991.svg and File:Tomato yields, Asia, 1961.svg, are not in that category, so if a bot runs as it is asked in first place it does only a part of the work and everybody believes it is finished. I do not propose to save this directly, editing a template on 1.37 million pages queues 1.37 million link updates and the community has to agree before, so I can put the tested code in Template:Map showing old data/sandbox and somebody who knows this corpus better than me confirms the region names. @Enyavar, Reinhard Müller, Doc James, Prototyperspective, and Universalis: Wilfredor (talk) 18:38, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

August 26

Colombian judicial decisions: Article 41 of Law 23/1982 and JEP court rulings

I would appreciate some guidance regarding the copyright status on Commons of official judicial decisions issued in Colombia.

The specific case concerns judicial rulings (autos and potentially judgments) issued by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), Colombia's transitional justice jurisdiction. These are official judicial decisions issued by its judicial chambers and Tribunal for Peace and published by the JEP itself.

We are exploring the long-term preservation of this corpus and would like to determine whether faithful copies of the official PDFs may be hosted on Wikimedia Commons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AmiGueko (talk • contribs) 22:47, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Colombian law

Article 41 of Colombia's Law 23 of 1982 states:

Es permitido a todos reproducir la Constitución, leyes, decretos, ordenanzas, acuerdos, reglamentos, demás actos administrativos y decisiones judiciales, bajo la obligación de conformarse puntualmente con la edición oficial, siempre y cuando no esté prohibido.

In English, approximately:

Everyone is permitted to reproduce the Constitution, laws, decrees, ordinances, agreements, regulations, other administrative acts and judicial decisions, under the obligation to conform exactly to the official edition, provided that it is not prohibited.

The Colombian National Copyright Directorate (Dirección Nacional de Derecho de Autor) describes Article 41 as a limitation allowing any person to reproduce these materials.

This seems different from the general regime for works created by Colombian public employees. Government works in Colombia are not automatically in the public domain; Article 41 creates a specific rule for legislation, administrative acts and judicial decisions.

The Andean Community's Decision 351 does not appear to contain an identical exemption for judicial decisions, although Article 21 permits Member States to establish copyright limitations and exceptions subject to the three-step test. Article 22 also contains specific permitted uses.

Article 2(4) of the Berne Convention additionally provides that it is a matter for national legislation to determine the protection granted to official texts of a legislative, administrative and legal nature.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by AmiGueko (talk • contribs) 22:47, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

United States

The U.S. side appears clearer.

Section 313.6(C)(2) of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices states that government edicts include judicial decisions and further states that the Copyright Office will not register a government edict issued by a foreign government.

Commons already reflects this in {{PD-EdictGov}}, which states that an edict of a local or foreign government is in the public domain in the United States and explicitly includes judicial decisions.

Therefore, it appears that {{PD-EdictGov}} could cover the U.S. copyright status of an official JEP judicial decision.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by AmiGueko (talk • contribs) 22:47, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Question about Colombia / Commons policy

The point on which I would particularly appreciate community input is the Colombian side.

Article 41 gives everyone an express statutory right to reproduce judicial decisions, but it also requires the reproduction to conform exactly to the official edition.

Would this statutory status be sufficient for an official Colombian judicial decision to meet Commons' requirement that a work be free in its country of origin?

More specifically:

1. Should Article 41 be interpreted for Commons purposes as making official Colombian judicial decisions sufficiently free for hosting on Commons, when combined with {{PD-EdictGov}} for the United States?

1. Or is Article 41 only a copyright exception permitting faithful reproduction, while leaving other exclusive rights — particularly adaptation/derivative works — intact, making the documents incompatible with Commons unless the relevant rights holder provides an additional free licence?

1. If Article 41 is sufficient, would it make sense to create a specific template such as a Colombian government-edict / judicial-decision tag rather than using {{PD-Colombia}}, which appears to concern expiration of copyright terms?

1. Would the answer differ between the judicial text itself and additional material embedded in a PDF (for example photographs, maps, illustrations, or other third-party material)?

Our intention would initially be to upload only faithful copies of the official judicial decisions published by the JEP, together with their original source URLs and provenance information.

Before uploading anything at scale, we would like to establish the correct copyright analysis and template combination.

Relevant legal provisions:

• Colombia, Law 23 of 1982, Article 41.
• Andean Community, Decision 351 of 1993, Articles 21–22.
• Berne Convention, Article 2(4).
• U.S. Copyright Office, Compendium, §313.6(C)(2), Government Edicts.
• Commons: {{PD-EdictGov}}.

Thank you for any guidance, particularly from editors familiar with Colombian/Andean copyright law or the treatment of foreign judicial decisions on Commons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AmiGueko (talk • contribs) 22:47, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

@AmiGueko this seems similar to the Indonesian status on government works. See Template talk:PD-IDGov#References to recent discussions. Simply put, like the statuses of government works from the United Kingdom and from Indonesia, the Colombian government works are not in the public domain. Moreover, if there is no exemption for "official texts of administrative, legislative, or legal/judicial nature," then we have to rely on the possible copyright exceptions. Indonesian law grants a limitation to copyright that users of certain types of government works can use (but not all types of government works). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 08:57, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

By the way, one part of COM:Licensing states Commons only accepts media "that are in the public domain in at least the United States and in the source country of the work.." JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 08:58, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

September 20

Are galleries still useful?

From time to time I come across galleries while I'm trying to access the corresponding category. Most of those that I encounter haven't been updated in the last 10 years, if not longer. Are they still useful, or could we consider mass deleting them? Are there any examples of useful galleries that are still being actively maintained? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:41, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Mohandas K. Gandhi and John Ruskin may not have been updated recently, but I believe that they are still useful. Yann (talk) 21:43, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

They're showing photos from >70 years ago or so, and they are hiding many photos from the categories (I'd look at Category:Mohandas K. Gandhi by year and Category:Portraits of John Ruskin for most of what those galleries are showing). If the summaries are useful, couldn't we just move them to the top of those categories? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:48, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

The vast majority are not useful, and never were. Their only real usefulness is in providing a guide to larger categories to aid navigation; even then, galleries on the category page are often better. The Gandhi gallery page is not particularly useful; it seems to be a random collection of image without any clear relevance, and it does not provide subcategory links to help navigate the main category. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:59, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Agree with @Mike Peel, they're pretty useless, as they almost never get updated with new, usually much better, photos. Because wikipedia links to commons are usually to the galleries, it means that wikipedia editors often don't realise there are newer better photos that they're not seeing. They also rarely get updated for inaccuracies (e.g. photos of misidentified organisms, the category usually gets corrected when the photo is re-identified, but any gallery page use frequently doesn't). So they are not just superfluous, but are also actively harmful. Delete the lot, particularly for categories where new photos are regularly being added (e.g. plant and animal species, places, etc.). @Yann's examples of deceased people (where there are not going to be new photos) are the only cases where galleries could remain useful. - MPF (talk) 22:59, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

I hadn't seen the "gallery on the category page" pattern before - and I like it. Perhaps we should experiment with applying that to more gallery pages? Omphalographer (talk) 23:09, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

They're certainly not for every scenario, but I agree they certainly could work on more categories. Two caveats:

• They work best when there's a clear division into subcategories for which a single image is useful for identification or finding a relevant file. Two good examples are Category:MBTA Green Line rolling stock and Category:Bridges by type. Categories where most important files are not in subcategories, where the subcategories are obvious (such as by-color subcategories), or where a single image would not be sufficient/useful (such as by-year subcategories) would not work well.
• Because users need to be able to get to the category contents easily, more than ~10 images starts to get very clunky. A partial-width gallery like on Category:Bridges by type can mitigate that, but it requires scrolling to see all the images, and seems to have to be hard-coded.

Pi.1415926535 (talk) 00:39, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

No, I do not agree: gallery pages are certainly not useless at all and the use of gallery pages is much broader than only providing a guide to larger categories to aid navigation, even if they are not updated on a regular basis. I use them also to find proper categories, they might not be even a subcategories of the same main category. As a not native English speaker, I often have trouble to find categories about specific subjects and words we did not learn at school, for instance about architectural elements or herbs and spices. Or to find a castle in a file with only "castle somewhere in the Netherlands" as a description. Or find the correct categories for members of our royal family who have the same name (many Willem van Oranje-Nassau, 2x Prins Hendrik, 2x Wilhelmina van Pruisen). See my User page for examples. And someone else has set up a gallery page to use it as a slide show during a real life presentation.

So please, let's keep them. Or propose a stricter set of rules for deleting useless ones. Otherwise this discussion will not get a clear conclusion. JopkeB (talk) 14:28, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Mohandas K. Gandhi and John Ruskin cannot be replaced by current categories. They show a selection of the best images ordered chronologically. There is no way to do that with current MediaWiki categories. Yann (talk) 07:41, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

• The header question cannot be answered with a blanket yes or no. Legacy galleries from early Commons that aspired to be what categories became are generally not useful. Galleries with explanatory text illustrating specific points sometimes are quite useful. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 00:46, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Even if not maintained, this is not a justifiable cause for deleting any content (galleries included). Possible solutions are updating them, or, if not feasible, adding a template to warn the user that the content is not up to date. As for examples of good, useful galleries, just look here, here or here. In addition, Wikimedia Commons Atlas of the World is based on galleries (in my opinion, this would deserve its own Wikimedia project, but that's another story: it's at Commons, it's based on galleries, and it's needed, though it should be better known and have a better quality).

Another question is for some specific galleries, especially if they have a really bad, simple content and their name matches with a category. But definitely, no, not all galleries deserve being deleted, that idea sounds really terrible: any deletion must be case by case. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:00, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

This is a recurring bad idea that shows up here from time to time, and it's always rejected (for very good reasons). Should it be added here? MGeog2022 (talk) 13:08, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

I support adding it to Commons:Recurring proposals.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:12, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

I support adding it to Commons:Recurring proposals as well. Each time it feels like an attack to a precious thing I value much. JopkeB (talk) 15:58, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

I think the are wildly underutilized and potentially very useful. If you haven't already done so, have a look at Commons:Galleries and, especially, at the examples given there. We could use a lot more like those. - Jmabel ! talk 21:55, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps reviving Commons:Featured galleries? We "only" need criteria. JopkeB (talk) 16:01, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

A system of sticking notices on gallery pages like "This gallery page has had no new content for 10 years" might be useful. It could be illuminating to create a view count report, as galleries of historic artworks might effectively be created and finalised years ago, but seen by large enough numbers to be of 'realistic educational value' in its own right. A page that nobody has looked at for 5 years, yes that could be worth marking as "This gallery page is no longer in use/archived" notice but I doubt there's any appetite to delete these. Fæ (talk) 10:49, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

It depends on the type of gallery. Some of them don't need any updating (a certain book or work of art, a closed collection of items, etc), while for some others, updating can make them better, but it's not strictly needed (for example, List of dog breeds: while new breeds may be recognised, I think that, in 21st century, it's highly unlikely that someone could eventually consider this gallery as outdated). MGeog2022 (talk) 12:25, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

I would find a notice like This gallery page is basically just a bunch of random images very useful. A notice like that would probably end up doing away with a considerable number of our current galleries. Hjart (talk) 12:43, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

I feel the same for numerous galleries, and I am likewise wondering about their purpose when they are the primary target of wikidata (instead of the corresponding category). There exist, however, also useful galleries that provide some overview that is otherwise hard to achieve. Here are some examples (all created and maintained by myself): Les vitraux de l'église Notre-Dame de Saint-Lô (this is not a selection but the whole set in properly sorted order), Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery (provides references for various numbering schemes and sorts all pictures accordingly, this is helpful when trying to identify new uploads), East Window of St. Nicholas's Church of Ireland, Dundalk (stained glass window with a very complex history). --AFBorchert (talk) 11:15, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Is there a way these galleries can be better highlighted? They sort of just hide on the Commons. I've only ever seen these when I stumble upon them through a given files 'usage on Commons' section. Let's look at an example, Gallery/Toronto is a pure time capsule from 15-20 years ago. I'd be happy to keep it up to date, but if no one is going to be able to easily find it what's the point? Could galleries be promoted in categories, the same way the gallery promotes the category at the very top? The link to the gallery in the category is hidden under 'Pages in category "Toronto"'. Most people probably have no idea this is a link to a gallery, as there is zero mention of so. If we want people to use these and browse them, we have to make them easier to find. I'd agree that they are underutilized and have potential for many cases. PascalHD (talk) 23:31, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

I think a template to bring people from a category to an appropriate gallery or galleries when they exist would be fine; I would very much hope, though that if we introduce that it only gets added when the gallery is at least moderately good.

I would be all for introducing a notion of Featured Galleries. I think it would probably get some people who are driven by getting things up to "featured" level to think a bit more about galleries. - Jmabel ! talk 07:55, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Galleries definitely are still usefull. People just need to understand which purposes they're actually good for, and unfortunately lots of our past contributors did not. Galleries which are basically just a bunch of random images are admittedly not usefull, while galleries which helps me understand and navigate complex category trees definitely are usefull.

I've created a fair number of galleries, primarily to aid my own need for a quick overview over various things. Examples are Niels Hansen Jacobsen, Kongens Nytorv, Skibbroen (Ribe) and Løgumkloster. Hjart (talk) 12:34, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't think they are generally useful (though they could be). Personally I wish the wikis allowed more images and the gallery would live there. Don't see the value in deleting them without a replacement though. BrokenSegue 22:54, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

@Mike Peel Considering the considerable number of touristy photos all named "At London..." and similar, that you're currently dumping into Category:London and other base categories, why do you really care about a few galleries? Hjart (talk) 14:32, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses, but I'm still looking for a good example of a gallery here. There have been some nice examples here for very specific topics, but none of the examples so far have good multilingual support, and none of them are up to date with the best photos that Commons has available. The best examples I've seen here would be good Wikipedia galleries, but they still hide the richer collections we have here in categories. They also don't match the quality of the galleries that I normally encounter here, where they haven't been updated in a decade or so. So the examples raised here are probably the best we have, but not the average? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:26, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

For history or visual arts, there're definitely many useful galleries: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cappella degli Scrovegni (Padua), Villa of the Mysteries (Pompeii). They indeed have issues, but most of them should not be mass-deleted. It's hard to find super-fancy galleries, as galleries are not featured, so there's little motivation for users to put effort in them. Even if the gallery is outdated, it serves some purpose by arranging images in certain way, such as by room or section in the museum, something the categories don't provide without manual sort keys. New quality images don't arrive fast enough to make this serious issue. In other areas, like cities or nature, outdated or useless galleries might be more problematic. MSDN.WhiteKnight (talk) 11:22, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

they still hide the richer collections we have here in categories: this is unavoidable: galleries can't include all the files we have (they can't even include all the better ones). But their existence should never be interpreted as "you don't need to look at related categories at all". {{Gallery page}} template should do a good job in preventing this. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:30, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

• I personally think it will never be useful, and we have to make plans of doing away with it. It is unnecessary work to maintain and keep up to date; effort that could be used elsewhere. And even if a magician of a Wikimedian somehow does keep everything up to date, we should ask - why? Who is the audience for these random galleries hidden in Commons? Commons users themselves? I have been here since 2008 and have never found them useful. With automated capabilities coming in (like structured commons), in addition to existing Categories, this is just unnecessary work and maintenance. Mass tagging galleries that it needs to be updated is just going to reduce the quality of Commons as a whole. I hope this wont be dumped as a recurring proposal, because it is about time something is done about it. Cheers, Rehman 12:59, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

  Just look at many of the comments above, and the examples they provide. The argument for mass deletion is like mass deleting all JPEG images because some of them are bad, copyvios or out of scope: destroying everything because some problems exist. For example, where do we place the only wiki atlas Wikimedia has, then? The fact is this already is a recurring proposal that has always been rejected. I'm thinking about a good recurring proposal that keeps being rejected in Wikipedia. Changes to policies are generally rare here: if they are not changed for the good, I hope at least they are also not changed for the bad. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:28, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

  And I can't know who (other than me) is the audience of such galleries, but I can tell you that it does exist: look here or here (or the visits counter for any other gallery). In fact, their number of visits is higher than for the categories with the same name (it could be argued that it's because the gallery takes attention away from the category, though): see here and here, respectively. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:38, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

• I find them useful when they sort documents or images in chronological order. --RAN (talk) 23:04, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

  Another advantage of galleries over categories is when putting files together as part of a whole. Categories are attributes of files: you can't know what files belonged to a category in the past by looking at the history of the category (in fact, you can't in any way, as far as I know). If you have a fixed set of files and want to present them as a whole, galleries are far better way to ensure the integrity of the whole. If somebody improperly adds or removes an element from the set (mistake, vandalism, etc), fixing it is as easy as reverting to the previous version of the gallery (it could even be done by someone who is completely unfamiliar with the collection). With a category, you would need to know the full set of elements that belong to the category, and their respective file names in Commons, to be able to solve the problem. So galleries have a good advantage over categories when integrity of a collection matters. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:53, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

  I made some edits to Commons:Galleries to highlight their advantages and to try to express more clearly that they are not in conflict with categories. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:18, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Gallery pages do not have to be multi-lingual to be useful. Commons is multi-lingual itself, so the creator of a gallery page is alowed to create gallery pages in any single languge, or two (for example mother tongue and English), or put links to Wikidata-items to be multi-lingual (I have seen the last type, but do not remember were; and it is quite a lot of extra work, so I did not yet use them). It depends on the purpose of the gallery page which language(s) you use. JopkeB (talk) 14:44, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Wouldn't the 'better' (but monolingual) galleries being mentioned here better serve readers if they were on that language version of Wikipedia rather than on Commons? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:32, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

The purpose of the better gallery pages is to aid other commons contributors and wikipedians, not ordinary readers of wikipedias. In 2024 I created Børsen for exactly that purpose. During the first month after the fire, it reached almost a thousand views, and I'm convinced that it helped a lot of wikipedians gain a much better idea of what this was all about, than they would have had from merely trying to make sense from the content of the categories. It has a bit of Danish text, because at that time I still didn't have sufficient experience to avoid that. Hjart (talk) 07:56, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

@Hjart, that's your personal opinion, but, for example, I don't share that view, and I don't know what the community thinks about this on average. In Wikimedia projects, all content that is not in user or talk pages, or in pages whose name begins with the project's name as a prefix (that is, in Wikimedia Commons, pages prefixed with "Commons:"), is supposed to be for the public, not only for internal community use. I had never thought about galleries as mainly for internal use (for example, some of them are linked from Wikipedia articles). One thing is that they can be very useful for the community, and a very different one is to think this is their only purpose. MGeog2022 (talk) 10:19, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

@MGeog2022 All galleries that I create or contribute to, are squarely aimed at giving (mostly German) tourists to i.e. Thisted a quick idea of what to see here and where to put their photos as well as give wikipedians a basic starting point for new and/or expanded wikipedia articles. I don't have a problem with wikipedia end readers accidently stumbling upon them, but I don't really see a point in trying to present anything to them. Hjart (talk) 11:50, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

@Hjart, it depends on the type of gallery and other factors. Wikipedia readers who are curious about more images about a place or a topic, may browse the associated category from Wikipedia's link to Commons, and, from there, they may arrive to the gallery. In fact, for a quick view of a selection of images, the gallery would usually be better than its associated category. But there is no problem: a well-made gallery created with Wikipedia editors in mind, will also be a good one for Wikipedia readers. MGeog2022 (talk) 19:15, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

@MGeog2022 "Usually"... Only maybe a handful of the gallery pages in i.e. Category:Gallery pages of churches in Denmark are actually worth visiting. The vast majority of them are straight-up nuisances and really just good for hiding the underlying categories.

Creating a good gallery page requires serious experience and effort. Hjart (talk) 06:49, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

@Hjart, for galleries not hiding their associated categories, {{Gallery page}} template can do a good job. MGeog2022 (talk) 09:00, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

@MGeog2022 That template doesn't make them worth visiting at all. Hjart (talk) 09:07, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

@Hjart, obviously not, but at least it allows the reader to know that additional images are available in the associated category, so the category isn't "hidden" anymore. MGeog2022 (talk) 09:24, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: at least for en-wiki, gallery pages like this are not in scope. I believe the same is true for es-wiki and probably most others. Would I like to see people make these more multi-lingual? Absolutely. Is that on my persona list of priority work? No, it is not, I am majorly backlogged, plus bogged down with admin and quasi-admin tasks. - Jmabel ! talk 14:37, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

@Mike Peel, it depends on the case. A small number of images is likely to be accepted in Wikipedia as a gallery, but Wikipedia usually rejects larger galleries, while these ones can find a place in Commons. In addition, it's easier to maintain and update a gallery in all its supported languages when it is at a single, centralized place, such as Commons, when compared with doing the same across multiple Wikipedia editions. MGeog2022 (talk) 10:29, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: In es.wikipedia photo galleries are generally frowned upon, since according to their rules they should be hosted in Wikimedia Commons instead («Evita insertar excesivas imágenes en un mismo artículo. Las galerías deben añadirse en Commons y no en los artículos, y deben enlazarse desde el artículo usando la plantilla {{commons}}.»). Strakhov (talk) 13:44, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

It is always interesting how quickly Commoners say "Wikipedia should do this" and how quickly Wikipedias answer in kind. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 11:30, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

@Gone Postal A lot of contributors are both Commoners and Wikipedians. Hjart (talk) 14:25, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

September 26

Clarification on PD India

Hello, Would this document fall under PD India? Please help, bit confused.CC:@Yann: --Abhinav619 (talk) 05:56, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

I can't access this URL. Yann (talk) 08:50, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

@Yann: you may check this here.The press note released on Wednesday, 23rd September, 2026.

https://www.eci.gov.in/issue-details-page/press-releases

--Abhinav619 (talk) 10:47, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Clarification on Commons:Deletion requests/Category:NuniCult

Per my experience this set of pics should still be deleted. I guess it depends on if Wikipedia has changed it's rules and protocol from when the same thing happened with me. It seems almost identical. Tennis legend Margaret Court had no photo to use for her profile here at Wikipedia/Wikimedia. I'm in the US and I emailed and snail-mailed her a letter asking for a photo to use. She was over 70 years old in 2014. She sent me a snapshot and posted on her website that she did so, and that she wrote that she releases it in the public domain to use on Wikipedia. I uploaded it. Well, Wikipedia would not accept it. They said she had to be the one to contact them and do the uploading. She was in her 70s and couldn't do it herself. The uploaded photo was taken down from commons. Now again, maybe Wikipedia rules have changed but I recall how upset I was in doing the legwork and to actually contact her to no avail here. It was probably a picture her sister took of her and Wikipedia also needed her sisters permission. Too many hoops so I apologized to her for getting her hopes up and moved on. We don't know who took the actual camera shots of these pics. How is this different from my situation? Is it because we take the word of NuniCult but not a Christian Minister? Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:28, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Reminded me of list of religious leaders convicted of crimes. It's probably best to put aside assumptions about the person and stick to sources and evidence to make the point. COM:UNDEL is the place to raise a case for undeletion, based on the evidence. Fæ (talk) 14:41, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

But it's not an undelete request, but rather the reverse. It was under discussion for deletion and was suddenly stopped because of an instagram post. The deletion process should go forward. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:55, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

I think Fæ meant regarding your picture of Margaret Court. The pictures of NuniCult have a publically verifiable copyright release. Arlo James Barnes 20:03, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

With Margaret Court it needs a confirmation from COM:VRTS first. Posting an undeletion without it is likely to be denied. I guess the problem to discuss with VRTS is their privacy, as people naturally are not going to specify their home adresses for snail mail. There should be an VRTS volunteer that can pick up a letter from an Wikimedia affiliate office or privacy friendly PO box. Snævar (talk) 14:20, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

September 27

New post

I’m trying to create a wiki page about an art movement created by a local community art teacher and font creator Steve Mehallo. The movement is called “Flomm” and the community is called “Flommists.” It’s kind of like Dada, where it’s difficult to define, but it’s supported by artists around the world and is popular on social media platforms with hashtags. I have permission to use images and websites that document the movement. I’m looking for feedback on how to publish this.

This is the document I have been working on: Flomm verb. An avant guard educational art movement like Dada that promotes learning.

History It started as a game app where different art movements battled for survival. Flomm expanded into art, design, blogs, events, games, zines, exhibitions, music, comedy, Flommism. It gives artists a platform to express themselves.

Flomm is a trademark of Steve Mehallo, of Sacramento California, a teacher, font designer, and social media influencer. Steve Mehallo is a charismatic person who has carved a niche for himself as a social media presence that combines humor and education of the arts and music. I first met him at American River College taking a course on typography and another about art history. I became a teaching assistant for a few of his classes where I found out that people who hung around after class were actually interested in learning more than just what was being taught, he had developed a group of creative artists he calls “Flommists.” Finding other creatives from around the world He then takes and promotes artwork by Flommists on his many social media accounts with music and artwork that are unique. Inspired from his passion to create many events brings flommists together with “happenings”with music and art creation.

http://mehallo.com/about/

https://fonts.adobe.com/foundries/steve-mehallo

https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/professor/490765

http://www.identifont.com/show?4JL --ThegeniusEric 06:12, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

@ThegeniusEric: Wikimedia Commons is not the right place for this. You can propose a draft article on Wikipedia, see en:Wikipedia:Drafts, but this will certainly be rejected unless you have established independent sources (not self published) discussing Flommists. Remember to sign your posts in discussions, see the welcome notice on your user talk page. --Fæ (talk) 06:09, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

New Tool: https://content-descriptor-labeler.toolforge.org/ (NSFW)

I made a tool that lets you add content descriptors to images the model(s) thinks are likely NSFW.

• https://content-descriptor-labeler.toolforge.org/

Curious if people have feedback on it. I think having this data widely hand labeled could be very useful for commons (even if it isn't used on commons.wikimedia.org)

BrokenSegue 23:03, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

Feedback:

• Having to click through a "blurred - click to reveal" for every single image in the labeler is ridiculous. A single disclaimer at the start of the labeling process should suffice.
• Can you take some steps to screen out classical artwork from the set of images to be labeled? (Three examples that popped up: File:The Birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1879).jpg; File:Angelo Bronzino - Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time - National Gallery, London.jpg; File:Le Bain Turc, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, from C2RMFFXD.jpg.) There seem to be a lot of these sorts of files in the set, and basically none of them need to be labeled.

Omphalographer (talk) 23:52, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

thanks for the feedback. yeah it should save that you have chosen to unblur. i'll add that right now. i don't know a good/simple way to filter out classical works like that? but i'll think about it. it does save the "clean" reportings so it should never should be shown again (though it doesn't write anything to structured data). BrokenSegue 00:12, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Re. classical artwork, I'd look at the Commons file description page and check for a {{Artwork}} template with a date parameter before 1900. They may be worth a second look at some later time, but not now. Omphalographer (talk) 00:31, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

good idea. BrokenSegue 00:44, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Not sure what I think of this all but I'd look at the Commons file description page and check for a {{Artwork}} template with a date parameter before 1900 doesn't seem entirely like a great idea. Consider Category:L'Origine du monde (Gustave Courbet), or Caricatures of Saint Teresa of Ávila, or this one from India where I think I'm going to leave even the filename less visible, all pretty clearly NSFW. - Jmabel ! talk 08:54, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

As I said, "these may be worth a second look at some later time". This is a heuristic process; the goal is to get some content labels in place, not to label every applicable image. (And a lot of these artworks hover right at the edges of the labels - the Saint Teresa and the Indian painting certainly depict "sexual acts", but whether L'Origine du monde is "sexualized nudity" or simply an artistic nude is debatable.) Omphalographer (talk) 18:10, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

I think genitalia or bodily functions (Q140680764) would be nice as a descriptor. In particular, penis pics don't really fit into any of the four options currently listed. Thanks, Nutshinou (talk) 22:25, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

oh I didn't know that existed! is there a list of them all somewhere? BrokenSegue 00:22, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

ok i added it. would be good to have a commons page offering guidelines for these BrokenSegue 00:40, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

To be added in which property? depicts (P180), main subject (P921), or something else? - Jmabel ! talk 07:51, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

this is all about uses of Wikimedia Commons content descriptor (P14416). i made a page for it at Commons:Commons content descriptor BrokenSegue 15:16, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

I think there should be categories for buttocks, nonspecific nudity, and images that might be considered nonspecifically disturbing. Dronebogus (talk) 12:56, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

yeah. do we want to just make new categories? BrokenSegue 15:17, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

I've made a new page at Commons:Commons content descriptor to list/describe the existing descriptors. I'm not sure if there is another place defining exactly what is meant by each category. E.g. does toplessness apply to images of "masc" people (or should we avoid that morass). BrokenSegue 02:33, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

No, toplessness does not apply to masculine people because no culture I know of considers topless men indecent. We would be censoring for no-one in the name of political correctness. Dronebogus (talk) 12:34, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't see how adding a content descriptor constitutes censorship. Arlo James Barnes 18:09, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

i agree. but that's what I meant when I said "avoid that morass". BrokenSegue 18:40, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

The 2023 White House Pride controversy and Idaho House Bill 270 are illustrations of legal and political leveraging for "toplessness", including men. Fæ (talk) 10:27, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Apologies if this is not the correct place to bring this one up (there have been a lot of separate but related threads), and feel free to aim me elsewhere, but is File:2017 Fremont Solstice Parade - cyclists 040.jpg (NSFW)) really genitalia or bodily functions (Q140680764)? It is nudity, but it is certainly not sexual activity or "bodily functions", so I assume the claim is that it shows genitalia. Does this mean that all showing of female public hair counts as "genital"? Or is there something else I have failed to spot in my own photo? - Jmabel ! talk 14:26, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Ditto, pretty much, for File:2017 Fremont Solstice Parade - cyclists prepare 382.jpg, File:2015 Fremont Solstice cyclists 059.jpg (both NSFW, but I would not describe them as depicting genitalia). - Jmabel ! talk 14:40, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

in the first image is the vulva not visible? probably not for the two new ones. BrokenSegue 15:21, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

@BrokenSegue: For some reason the Falconsai nsfw model really like to flag maps, like File:"Canadian" ethnic or cultural origin.png (score: 0.990) and File:Frequency distribution maps for mtDNA haplogroups K.png (score:0.983). Nosferattus (talk) 06:09, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

And sheet music: File:Land der Berge, Land am Strome.jpg (score: 0.974). Something is definitely wrong with that model. Nosferattus (talk) 06:22, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

yeah these models weren't trained on the diversity of images we have here and so sometimes exhibit weird behavior. I don't think the model is just generally bad though. maybe i should sort by the median score though. BrokenSegue 14:23, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

September 29

Files in Category:Photographs by Peter Klashorst

I seen there is some concern over the age of some of the nude models and their release of the photograph of some of the files in Category:Photographs by Peter Klashorst. There is currently:

• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Back Tattoo.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Male performing cunnilingus (Klahorst).jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Hello Kitty - 20120214.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:African nude female at home coming out 20110607.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Naked woman wearing Converse sneakers (crotch shot).jpg. Issac I Navarro (talk) 03:02, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Peter Klashorst was a pretty noted artist and photographer. This seems an odd allegation to make on no particular evidence. - Jmabel ! talk 07:55, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

He went to third-world countries and took photos of women who were almost certainly sex workers rather than professional models. Do you really think these women were vetted for their age or would want explicit photos of them published? And do you think he would have gotten away with publishing these kinds of images in the post #metoo era? Dronebogus (talk) 11:24, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

@Dronebogus: those of us paying attention to recent proposals could question how pointy these deletions are. Considering the exhibited artist/photographer died 2 years ago, and the photographs have been hosted on Commons for over a decade (one hosted for 18 years!) despite featuring nudity and sexual content, please consider withdrawing these. It would be helpful to have case studies of deletions but it would be far more realistic to have discussions about non-professional uploads and content where there might be more obvious doubts about model consent.

"Hard cases make bad law".

Previous discussion may not be automatically linked, possibly because they have been hosted for so long. For photographs with a long Commons record, take care to check the file page histories before nominating.

The outcome of Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Photographs by Peter Klashorst (DR created in 2023) was kept.

One of the photos in the category was a locus for trolling and disruptive shenanigans, though many of the established Commons volunteers of that time have not been around for several years. See Deletion requests/File:Black genitalia.jpg. --Fæ (talk) 09:31, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

You are welcome to vote in the DRs. I will not be withdrawing them. user:Cecil’s excellent rationale at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Ebony lady.jpg should have been precedent; instead it’s been ignored for 17 years in favor of cries of “notable artist!” and “freeze peach!” We would not lose all of Klashorst’s photography, only the pornographic images that are not exactly unique or high quality. Why, when we are currently losing our minds over hosting explicit lolicon (i.e. fake CSAM) are we still hosting anything with even a plausible likelihood of being actual CSAM? Dronebogus (talk) 11:36, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Nobody should be creating public deletion requests for anything they believe is CSAM. Commons does not host CSAM and the *last* thing anyone should be doing is publicly drawing attention to illegal photographs on a village pump so that god knows who will look at it or download copies. Follow the correct WMF procedure please, otherwise it instead looks like trying to scare anyone from having a free vote on a Wikimedia Commons keep/delete discussion. Fæ (talk) 14:09, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

For full context, I asked a question over on meta here.

I asked this way, rather then doing COM:CSAM; as the files has been kept many times in the past with that same concern. Issac I Navarro (talk) 14:19, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

•  Comment Some allegations about Klashorst are made above and occasionally seen in comments on listings. I think actual linked information is preferred. After a few minutes web search, I found Living for the art in the face of death which has some suggestive language but not specifics. Some more details are in Peter Klashorst: Noir Artist In Phnom Penh (PDF, there is a free download option) which states "So off he went to Africa and then SE Asia where he connected with the raw unfiltered “3rd World” and its extremes of poverty, privilege, wealth, injustice, tragedy, chaos and Pure Drawinistic Survival. Often through his relationships with the Sex Workers he hired and used as Models. This became his Inspiration, what he would live and paint the rest of his life." (IMO hiring sex workers as artist models is not by itself something that demands deletion of related media; if it were such would apply to some works of the great artists of the Renaissance through 19th century Paris etc.). Later the writer states "Peter’s girlfriends were young but not too young, often lively & mischievous. He treated them well." This seems suggestive but vague, probably deliberately. More/better information would be welcome for making informed decision. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 13:47, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

@Issac I Navarro: Peter Klashorst was a professional. To suggest that he didn't have consent is ludicrous.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:05, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

@Jeff G., I was only made aware of Klashorst after going though a number of archive deletion requests for Commons talk:Nudity/children. Dronebogus, pointed out how their may be some concern with the lack of consent. Issac I Navarro (talk) 14:11, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

There have yet to be linked one source for a "concern", instead what I see is angry and argumentative comments which will scare anyone from voting keep in the deletion requests, for example "Just delete all Klashorst’s racist, misogynistic, exploitative, pedophilic garbage."

This gives a strong appearance of being part of a backlash from the deletion of cartoons by WMF legal, and considering the 18 year history of Commons hosting this artist's photographs, seems an exceptionally poor poster boy for a future attempt to change policies. A good deletion case book does not start with rehashing discussions so old that half of the participants have since retired from Commons. Fæ (talk) 14:22, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

As stated, I was going though a number of archived deletion requests that ended in kept for Commons talk:Nudity/children#Examples. Dronebogus, pointed out that one of the deletion requests seemed to be invalid. I wasn't sure if I should report by email as that file was kept many times in the past. I then proceed to ask a question over on meta what might be the best place to bring this matter up to. In this thread. Issac I Navarro (talk) 14:38, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Well "concerns" seems to refer to yourself and Dronebogus. Perhaps that ought to be stated clearly when using that language, especially if "concerns" is quite specifically not CSAM, because as you have stated you would have followed CSAM "Never post links to where CSAM can be found in a public setting, including on-wiki.".

Thanks for the clarification. Fæ (talk) 14:45, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

@Fæ, Ultimately, I just wish to do the right thing.

If this is problematic to COM:HOST, I would like that addressed. I am taking it to the village pump as many of thoses files have already been though deletion requests ending in kept. If there is a better place to take this matter to please let me know. Issac I Navarro (talk) 14:51, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

It's quite a jump from "paid for sex" to "had sex with underage girls" and/or "didn't care about consent." And, yes, expanding on what was remarked above, until some time in the 20th Century the largest pool of available nude models were people who also did sex work. Even now and even in the First World, there is definitely some intersection, especially in the case of nude photography. - Jmabel ! talk 17:53, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

But the photos in question aren't the ones taken in the Netherlands, but rather the ones taken in sex tourism hotspots in Kenya, Senegal, Thailand, and Cambodia. Perhaps places chosen for a more flexible legal regime. Or maybe not; but he'd hardly be the first European sex tourist and photographer to make trips specifically for sex and photos, which while not against Commons policy does raise questions about how permission to photograph was obtained. Arlo James Barnes 18:03, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

I went though some of the archives and found these various deletion requests. If I missed any feel free to add them;

• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Too hot.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Vulva 2.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Werkpauze (photo by Peter Klashorst).jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Can you lick it ! (Klashorst).jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Can you lick it ! (Klashorst).jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Young mother (Klashorst).jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Horny (nude by Peter Klashorst).jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Happy Dutch beauty.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Gesluierd3.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Gesluierd3.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Gerard Wessels.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Ebony Modi.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Dress (Klashorst).jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Cola bottle and vulva.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Cola bottle and vulva.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Black genitalia.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Black genitalia 2.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Black genitalia 2.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Bedpeace2 cut.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Nordela
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Back tattooed girl.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/Two Klashorst images
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Expirimental.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Aphrodite (genitalia).jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Photographs by Peter Klashorst
• Commons:Deletion requests/Nudity from Flickr by Avril1975
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Coming out !.jpg

Issac I Navarro (talk) 18:27, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps places chosen for a more flexible legal regime. Or perhaps places chosen because they are cheaper. I don't know a ton about Klashorst, but writer William Vollmann went through a portion of his life where he did a lot of the same (and wrote about it quite well); I don't get the sense from his writing that the draw had much to do with getting around laws, just getting around prices. I doubt he was unique in that. - Jmabel ! talk 19:09, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

The DRs that have been opened should be closed and if anyone seriously wants to flag CSAM, they should follow COM:CSAM and stop making public allegations. Public deletion requests are not the right place to flag CSAM as the community cannot "vote" keep/delete when if true then it is a legal matter not for public debate. Fæ (talk) 19:11, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

I just seen en:Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 216#Photographs by Peter Klashorst Issac I Navarro (talk) 01:17, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Just the fact photographer is professional does not mean any of photos attributed to him are safe to host. The files are sourced from Flickr, but some links give 404 now. Is it certain they are by Klashorst and were published somewhere in reputable venue that verifies consent and age of models? The deletion requests are probably in protest of recent WMF takedown of topless poster, but some of these files might be actually problematic. MSDN.WhiteKnight (talk) 07:46, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

I can only speak for myself; however, I’m not trying to make any protest. I just wish to do the right thing. If there is a better venue to take this matter to, please send me a ping.

Now that being said, I do believe there is a legitimate concern. However, I have yet to send an email to the WMF, as I don't know all that much about Klashorst and from the little I have seen on the web, I am not confident in any perspective that I have.

Furthermore, I am not completely convinced that any of these are even underage. I’ve been going through a number of the archives, and it seems that many past deletion requests have also raised concerns about COM:PEOPLE. However, most were kept as the people were unidentifiable. Issac I Navarro (talk) 08:03, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

By protest i mean deletion requests by Dronebogus, he was recently complaining about WMF deletion of nude image, and then started these deletion requests on other old similar images. "However, most were kept as the people were unidentifiable." - Some has face partially visible, could be identifiable Commons:Deletion requests/File:Hello Kitty - 20120214.jpg, Commons:Deletion requests/File:Horny (nude by Peter Klashorst).jpg. Also, they depict a person not apparently posing for a camera, and composition/camera angle looks odd for professional photo, might be creepshots. COM:DIGNITY forbids non-consentual sexualized images, even when non-identifiable. MSDN.WhiteKnight (talk) 09:13, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Teasing this apart slightly, DIGNITY is a guideline and so is not intended as a system of hard rules. In the guideline though it's stated that Commons is not 'required' to host any image, in the section referred to it does point out that notability is a factor in assessing whether a subject's dignity is being affected, i.e. photographs of notable or identified subjects have a higher threshold compared to anonymous subjects.

Though folx are quick to dismiss it, the factor being a bit glossed over is that these are considered works of art by a legitimately established and deceased artist, and there's the not insignificant issue of age of the photographs and the fact that Commons has hosted these for nearly 20 years; in which time no subject has complained and no independent press article challenged the controversial artist on consent/creepshots as opposed to fairly normal candid photography. When the same photograph has had 5 deletion discussions and got kept outcomes every time, raising a sixth immediately after an attention grabbing case of CSAM has been acted on by WMF legal, does not seem a good use of the limited Wikimedia Commons capacity to discuss cases involving nudity.

If there are volunteers wishing to establish a better case book of deletion requests to support policy changes and build a consensus, re-opening old and well hashed past deletion discussions is not the best tactic.

As an aside in the VP proposal 1 year 9 months ago linked above, Dronebogus posted "regardless of whether they actually run afoul of any laws purging creepy, exploitative pornography of third-world women is no great loss", open public vitriol and inflammatory allegations, rather than evidence, does not make them the best lobbyist. I suggest keeping this in mind for future deletion requests they create. --Fæ (talk) 10:13, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

'Nothing happened yet' also isn't a good argument to keep. We as a project tend to observe our relative prominence among photo hosting sites and forget our absolute obscurity among the public at large. Arlo James Barnes 19:42, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Sure, the policy even says the equivalent of that. However the history here is not irrelevant, nor is the apparent lobbying context. If there are to be deletions of established content, i.e. not drive-by dumping of out of scope porn, they should be on solid policy and fact based grounds rather than what can rapidly degrade into decisions built on shaky rhetoric and grandstanding. Fæ (talk) 09:52, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

• As Jmabel notes above, "It's quite a jump from 'paid for sex' to 'had sex with underage girls' and/or 'didn't care about consent'." If there is actual indication that any media on Commons is from the latter, please share it. I'd advocate deletion of most (other than self-portraits and media demonstrably unproblematic) of Klashorst's work from Commons if shown evidence. I spent a little time doing a web search for info on Klashorst which might be relevant, linked above. I'm getting the feeling some very serious accusations here are based largely or entirely on "the vibe seems sorta decadent". If someone has specific info that the artist was involved in non-consensual &/or underage sexual photography please present here. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 21:00, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

dtMediaWiki made way easier to install and more LRMediaWiki-like

thanks to the work of user @Trougnouf there's a plugin for the Darktable RAW developer that allows direct upload of your images to Wikimedia Commons. Unfortunately it was a pain in the a... to install. Now there's a new version out that brings a big improvement: the three dependencies on external lua-libraries are completely gone and the entire mediawikiapi.lua now relies on curl, which is present on any OS via PATH . This makes the installation as easy as copying the directory to your local path of lua-scripts and setting it up within Darktable (i.e. entering your commons credentials for upload and some other commons related settings).

Another improvement was made by the introduction of specific Wikimedia Commons related entry fields for descriptions, Wikidata-QIds, Wiki-Templates and categories. The export dialog enables you to set global categories and templates so that it not neccessry to add e.g. {{Supported by Wikimedia Österreich}} to every single photo. Granada (talk) 11:59, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Excellent news! Arlo James Barnes 18:11, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

September 30

Wich station in Hungary?

As I was travelling in the direction of Slovenia, I suspect it could be Zalaegerszeg. I have two other station wich are unidentified: File:Hungary Bzmot 2003 1.jpg and File:Hungary GySEV 2003.jpg Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:36, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist The last image is from Budapest Déli station Google image. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:26, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Exporting image to Wikicommons

The German wiki has this photo. I want to export it to WikiCommons, but it won't let me. It says "This file may not be compatible with Wikimedia Commons policies" — but I'm pretty sure it is.

It's a photograph uploaded by the photographer themself, which are allowed. I think there's a concern that the artist who sculpted the sculpture has copyright on it — but there are plenty of other photos of sculptures on this cite, and I've never seen that as an issue before.

(Also, the author is mis-cited: The photo listing claims it's by Aka Høegh, but that sculpture is actually by Christian "Nuunu" Rosing. Online there are competing claims about who made it, so I emailed the Greenlandic National Board of Tourism, and they confirmed it's Rosing.)

Can someone confirm its permissibly and help me export it? Eievie (talk) 22:07, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

category:Sassuma Arnaa (Nuuk) is the category for the sculpture. COM:FOP Greenland is the relevant policy. w:de:WP:Administratoren/Notizen may help with dewp's side. Arlo James Barnes 22:28, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

The DE-WP image is not OK for Commons: there's no sufficient COM:FOP Greenland, in fact, the category is full of copyvios (I opened a DR). Such images can stay on the German Wikipedia, as there's a reliance upon the permissive COM:FOP Germany for local uploads - but Commons must use Greenlandic and Danish law. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 22:44, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Rosing is an 82-year-old man. In the least morbid way possible, not wishing any ill upon him, once he dies will the images be allowed? Eievie (talk) 23:03, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Once he dies and 70 years have passed, yes (that's the usual copyright duration: 70 years p.m.a.). See also en:Public Domain Day. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 23:07, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

But there's plenty of photos of public art by artists who only died in, say, 1990. Eievie (talk) 23:10, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Copyright is complicated. Have a read of the articles Commons:Freedom of panorama and Commons:Copyright rules by territory, these explain the different rules for these countries and what laws are shared across the continent. Some countries have freedom of panorama laws for things like permanent public art, others are less generous. Fæ (talk) 06:59, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

@Eievie: I took a look at your talk page, which gave me the feel that you're perhaps struggling with one of the mainstays of Commons, COM:Licensing and (differences and variants within) copyright laws worldwide. You also wrote half a year ago that you would like to have explained things clearly without a bunch of jargon words. As it stands, we do have informative documentations that are as concise as sensible/possible. Please read COM:Copyright rules by subject matter and COM:Copyright rules by territory; the relevant data is grouped in subsections. And if you're touching Flickr files, you might want to learn COM:Uploading works by a third party too. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 12:39, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

I assumed it would be fine because there are other pictures of public art in Greenland like File:Kaassassuk (25978546515).jpg and no one's deleted that in 6 years. Eievie (talk) 14:48, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

That is simply because it wasn't spotted by anyone who knew or cared about COM:FOP Greenland. I opened a DR now. (The images in Category:Hans Egede (Nuuk) should be fine, the sculptor died in 1916, making the sculptures PD-Old). Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 16:28, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

As a general rule: just because there's something hosted here, you can't assume that the same kind of imagery is always OK. The maintenance workforce is spread much much much too thin to review any and every upload, so especially in freedom-of-panorama cases (or when it's a borderline De minimis case), there are lots and lots of problematic, untreated images. Be especially careful when looking at sculptures, toys, mascots and street photography showing billboards. Fancy vehicle liveries are also often problematic to host here. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 16:42, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

October 01

Linking scans of Audubon and Gould plates to their Wikidata items

Every plate of Audubon's Birds of America (Havell edition) and of Gould's Birds of Europe, Australia, Asia and Great Britain now has its own Wikidata item (see d:Wikidata:Dataset Imports/Historical bird plates). I'd like to link about 1,050 existing scans on Commons to those items, adding digital representation of (P6243), depicts (P180) and main subject (P921), each pointing to the plate item, following Commons:Structured data/Modeling/Visual artworks. Every match is by BHL page, scan leaf or printed plate number. Crops, facsimiles and uncertain matches are left out. A 20-file pilot is done (batch 285175). I plan to run the rest with QuickStatements in small chunks over a day or two. Objections or suggestions are welcome. Wells.riley (talk) 00:36, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

For any that already use {{Artwork}} or {{Art photo}}, it would be good to get the Wikidata item number into the appropriate field of the template as well. - Jmabel ! talk 09:45, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Are the categories in “Pub signs by subject” and “Inn signs by subject” different, or should they be merged?

Just an example: Is this a pub sign or an inn sign? The German „Wirtshausschild“ is almost always translated as „inn sign“ (see categories), but actually today this is rather a pub.

Hi there, I just stumbled over two (possibly) overlapping groups of categories: Category:Pub signs by subject and Category:Inn signs by subject, both of them with quite some subcategories. I understand that a pub is not the same as an inn. But looking at the images in these categories I get the impression that users do not really distinguish between pubs and inns when they add such categories, but just use either subcategories of Category:Pub signs by subject or of Category:Inn signs by subject, depending on which group of categories they discovered first.

Therefore my question, especially to native speakers of the English language. Is it necessary to keep these two kinds of categories separate? (Then we would have to sort images carefully into the right subcategory, depending on whether each sign belongs to a pub or to an inn. Not easy: often former inns are just pubs today.) Or do you agree with my impression that these categories are not really different, but that the distinction is rather accidental? Then we should consider to unite these categories. In the latter case I ask native speakers to explain which names are better and should be used for the united categories.

Hint: I have reported this here and not on Commons:Categories for discussion because this is not a category deletion request etc. I just want to open an informal discussion in order to clarify the situation. Only if people agree that we need action a formal category discussion should be opened.

Thank you and all the best, – Aristeas (talk) 14:52, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

As you allude to, but do not state, an inn, properly speaking, offers beds for the night. If you go back a couple of centuries it didn't even necessarily offer proper rooms, but did offer beds. (The Spanish posada is similar, as is the Romanian han; I couldn't vouch for other languages.) Many historic inns are now pubs, and many of those retain "inn" in their name. Also, some places that were never really inns have "inn" in their name. Nowadays, when used for an actual hostelry, the name can still carry a bit of a rustic connotation, but that's been really undercut by its use in the names of some hotel and motel chains (Holiday Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, Radisson Park In, etc.) so it's gotten really muddy, especially in the last 75 or so years.

Still, there are definitely places that are well categorized as "inns" that are in no sense pubs: National Park Inn at Longmire, Washington in Mount Rainier National Park; Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park; Hobo's Inn in Elbe, Washington; Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; I'm guessing that is enough to make the point. - Jmabel ! talk 16:51, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

I would support merging these categories, as well as the analogous Category:Inn signs by country and Category:Pub signs by country. The distinction between an inn and a pub is quite slight, and is not at all relevant if all you're looking at is the sign. Omphalographer (talk) 16:51, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Category:Categories of Portugal by setting

Some Categories of Portugal by setting, are not refreshing—not even with a full refresh—and always show as empty, even though they contain categories and/or files

Uploading photos from an Iphone is a pain

Hi there, When trying to upload multiple photos from my Iphone, I get the impression the upload wizard is becoming increasingly flaky. The usual workflow for me has become to select photos that go together with a subject in the Iphone photos app, place them in a (temporary) album, open the Iphones native Safari browser, go to Commons, open the upload wizard and go through the motions there. The first bit works.. OK-ish. I would be very happy if there would be a way to set a preferred language when adding captions, but besides that it is fidgetty is sort of works. However things go wrong when uploading more then a few (<4) images. Either only a few files make it through the publishing, even though all uploads succeeded and got the green check, or actually the upload wizard breaks off altogether, and I need to restart all the work including the file naming, description, wikidata tagging etc. This is a pain. It does not appear there are any up to date apps to do this, but even the basic uploader fails. Any other ideas for workflows? Apps? Milliped (talk) 16:48, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

• There are other tech problems (unrelated to iphones) right now, like displaying negative number of entries in categories - perhaps a sitewide snafu. Retired electrician (talk) 18:54, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

This is what keeps me loyal as an Android user. Uploading from Android through Upload Wizard is similarly complex, annoying, and unreliable. However, the Android Wikimedia Commons App is the opposite, providing easy forms to fill out, and making reasonable guesses to some of the blanks in the form. If I didn't have that, I would still dodge the Wizard by using WikiShootMe, though that's not anywhere as good as the Android app. Jim.henderson (talk) 19:17, 1 October 2026 (UTC)