Help choosing scanning resolution for photos

I am writing to get advice on what resolution I should use to scan film photos, and an explanation for how to make that decision. It is costly to scan at the highest resolution, and if I use high resolution, I want that choice to make sense for the photos that I have.

Are low, medium, and high resolution scans different in this case?

I see guidance throughout the Commons documentation that users should upload content at the highest resolution, but I am questioning that advice.

• Commons:Why we need high resolution media
• Commons:File_types#Highest_resolution

I am scanning physical film taken in 1993 from a camera. The time difference to scan low / medium / high resolution is significant. As I look at the different outcomes, I personally cannot identify great differences in detail. The photo File:Aerial view of five Parkmerced apartment buildings.jpg is elsewhere used as an example of why uploaders should use high resolution photos, and I understand that because by zooming in, it is easy to see more detail. That file zooms in nicely, but is only a small 8mb. With my photos, high resolution makes 25mb files, and to me it appears that zooming in just makes the pixels larger without clarifying anything. Any computer can zoom in on photos regardless of resolution, and when I zoom in with my device, I see no difference between low resolution and high resolution scans. I am not sure when the benefits diminish for higher resolution scanning.

I uploaded three resolution versions in a single Commons file. Here they are -

• File:Freaks for Freedom.jpg - low, 1mb file
• medium, 5mb file
• high, 25mb file

Please advise - what is the difference in value for archival scans at these three resolutions? Bluerasberry (talk) 22:43, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

It can depend on the scanner but I have an Epson Scan 600 and have found that scanning at 1200 DPI and saving the images as Jpegs is the best way to do it. I use to scan images at 1200 DPI and save them as TIFF files but they ended up being to large and I don't think people are using images for print much these days anyway, which is the only justification for TIFF files. Really, you could probably get away with scanning 600 DPI jpegs and you'd be fine. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:58, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

If all of the photos were taken with the same camera and type of film, your "medium resolution" scan should be sufficient for all of them. The film grain is already clearly visible at that resolution - there's unlikely to be any more detail left to capture in the original photos. Omphalographer (talk) 23:09, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

e/c

I'll approach it from a different perspective.

If you want to print something at a size of 8 by 10 inches, then you want to have a resolution of at least 8 megapixels.

If you want to print something at a size of 4 by 5 inches, then 2 megapixels is enough.

Many photos taken on 35 mm film are suitable for 8 by 10 inch prints. If you want to go larger, then one needs a very fine grain film or a larger than 35 mm film format.

The Freaks photo does not seem suited for 8 by 10 reproduction. It is either grainy or blurred, so the medium resolution (6 MP) is enough. The large banner does not have a uniform color, and some text on a white sign is not sharp. I do not know why. I did not see a place in the photo that has substantially better focus than other. The film may be grainy, old, or a long exposure with camera movement. Colors on old prints would bleed.

I am not happy with the Parkmerced photo either. The cars at the upper left look like they are double exposed: steady for half the exposure and then a jump movement to another steady half. That seems an unlikely circumstance.

When I was using film, there was a huge difference between Plus-X and Tri-X. With Plus-X one could get fine details. Not so with Tri-X.

I had seen the black and white movie Arsenic and Old Lace on TV, but several years ago I saw a 35-mm print at a theatre. I was blown away by the resolution.

Resolution is not everything. Compare

• File:Sir Winston Churchill - 19086236948.jpg 6 MB 45 MP with
• previous version 1 MB 11 MP

The smaller size, lower resolution is sharper. Look at the weave of his shirt.

Glrx (talk) 00:22, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

A higher resolution image can carry more information than a lower resolution one, but that's not necessarily always the case. Commons policy acknowledges this - somewhat - for example COM:OVERWRITE states that images shouldn't be overwritten with artificially upscaled versions. The higher-resolution version of the example above is indeed of lower quality than the lower resolution one, so I've reverted it. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:43, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

In short: The best quality available. Scanners usually allow choices like 1200dpi or more, in theory. But above a certain border, a scanner cannot achieve more details when increasing the dpi rate. Many scanners reach their physical resolution at 800dpi, which means that scans of 1200dpi or more don't achieve better quality. A research can be useful, depending on the model --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:48, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

The answer depends strongly on what kind of camera and film were used, what the lighting conditions were, and how sharp the focus is in the image. There's no point scanning a blurry or noisy photo at 1200 dpi. Personally, for non-professional photographs I don't think scanning at higher than 600 dpi is usually necessary. In the examples that you present, I would choose something higher than medium, but lower than high. Nosferattus (talk) 05:20, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: The simple answer is to use the most resolution one can get their hands on. However sometimes when scanning low quality image, high resolution will not get you better quality image, so more nuanced answer would be depending on what you are scanning. For scanning sharp photo prints I would use the highest resolution I can, prints in a book would require lower resolution, and scanning bad newspaper prints would require the lowest resolution. --Jarekt (talk) 22:59, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Analog stuff is harder than digital, but if you're scanning a 640x480 pixel image, you need at least a 1280x960 scan to be able to reproduce it, theoretically (w:Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem), and I'd want at least 2560x1920 to get it exactly. If someone wants to work on your example image, I'd say that newspaper print is scanned at too low a resolution; I'd want at least double that resolution to try and remove the half-toning.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:51, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Pick the highest resolution that gives a visual benefit over a lower one. Scan at 300 dpi and at 600 dpi, zoom up both photos on your screen, and pick some interesting details (for example text). Are there details that look better at 600 dpi than at 300 dpi? It is crucial to focus on details, looking at the complete photo does not give any useful hint. Based on 300 dpi vs 600 dpi, try even higher or even lower. Stop going up AFTER quality has ceased to improve, or stop going down BEFORE quality has started to worsen.

Blurry photos in an absurdly high resolution constitute an efficiency problem. Many current mobile phones give something around 6'000 x 4'000 pixel, but the useful resolution is barely 1/4 in terms of length or 1/16 in terms of area of that ie ca 1'500 x 2'000. This is an illusion of improvement, and in fact just wasting storage space and processing performance. Why is it like that? Pressuring people to buy new mobile phones an computers, and to subscribe to a more expensive internet connection. This is just business. Taylor 49 (talk) 08:45, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

details What I can see is that all 3 verions are remarkably noisy. Next step worth to try is to scan at the highest resolution (ca 6'000 x 4'000) and subsequently zoom down by factor 4 (in terms of length) using a good program. So scan at the highest one, but then zoom down trying different factors, stop going down BEFORE quality has started to worsen. Taylor 49 (talk) 09:08, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Naming conventions for flags (for example Flag of Honduras)

Given the ongoing discussion of the Syrian flag, and by request of User:Panam2014 on my talk page (and discussed with User:Jmabel briefly), I wanted to discuss further our naming conventions of recently changed flags and Honduras's flag in particular because that may be one of the least controversial to discuss. Abzeronow (talk) 23:02, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

@Abzeronow: Are you saying you want to discuss it here (in which case, start by laying out the issues) or that you want people to participate in a discussion elsewhere (in which case, link)? - Jmabel ! talk 23:07, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

You're right, I should have been more clear, I wanted to start the discussion here and I didn't want to forget to do it. Basically, as evidenced on the of Syria (2025-) talk page], there is an idea that "Flag of Foo" (where Foo is a country) should always be a redirect so our templates can always stay up to date when they just want the country's flag. Regimes and flags can change within some of our lifetimes (my country the United States has last updated its flag in 1960) and we obviously also want a stable name for the current flag of a country, which is why the current flag of Syria is named File:Flag of Syria (2025-).svg. Some are resistant to this idea and always want the current flag to be a file. Since we are doing this for Syria, there is the question of "renaming the flags who have been adopted recently, like Honduras, Kyrgyzstan, South Sudan, Mauritania, Malawi, Myanmar, Libya, Turkmenistan, Iraq, DR Congo, Georgia, Rwanda" that was posed on talk page. Of course, we should start where the discussion would be least controversial. Honduras in 2022 changed the color of its flag from navy blue to turquoise in accordance to a 1949 decree that had never been carried out as en:Flag of Honduras explains. The file File:Flag of Honduras.svg shows revisions with the old navy blue flag and the new turquoise flag. So if the Honduras flag file should be a redirect, should the file be split and then older versions merged with the file depicting the old flag? Should all revisions be moved to a File:Flag of Honduras (2022-).svg file? Basically, it would be a good idea to hammer out what we should do when flags of countries change so the disruption to various Wikimedia projects is minimal and have a good idea of how to "futureproof" flags of countries. I hope I've started to lay out the issues that make for a fruitful discussion on these matters. Abzeronow (talk) 22:09, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

@Abzeronow: as you know, I'm on the side of moving toward having File:Flag of FOO always be a redirect. Then we can tell sister projects that if you want an article (e.g. about a particular city, or the national football team) to just show whatever is the current flag, use File:Flag of FOO; if it is important that it show a particular flag and not change over time (e.g. you are writing about a particular event, and want the article to retain the chronologically accurate flag for that event) you use something more like File:Flag of FOO 1928-1972 or File:Flag of FOO 1972-.

In theory, the redirect between File:Flag of FOO and, say, File:Flag of FOO 1972- could go either way. I favor having File:Flag of FOO be the redirect, because it seems to me to leave the histories clearer when the flag might later change. If File:Flag of FOO is a redirect, and the flag of FOO changes in 2027, we just:

• upload the new File:Flag of FOO 2027-
• use the usual means to move File:Flag of FOO 1972- to File:Flag of FOO 1972-2027 (keeping the resulting redirect)
• make File:Flag of FOO redirect to File:Flag of FOO 2027- (so its history will show where it used to redirect).

If the redirect is the other way around, we have to do something like:

• move File:Flag of FOO to File:Flag of FOO 1972-2027 (deleting the resulting redirect)
• change the redirect File:Flag of FOO 1972- to point to File:Flag of FOO 1972-2027
• upload the new flag as File:Flag of FOO (note that this will have no record of the history of what was at this name)
• create a new redirect from File:Flag of FOO 2027- to File:Flag of FOO so people have some way to refer to this specific flag that will be stable over time.

There are other ways to do it, but I think they all leave behind confusing file histories. - Jmabel ! talk 03:47, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

I think we should not have such naming guidelines and redirects. The template use case is exactly what Wikidata is for. If the templates just use the current flag from Wikidata the name of the file on Commons does not matter. GPSLeo (talk) 05:11, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

@GPSLeo: are there any Wikipedias that currently do this through Wikidata? (Let me guess that if there is one it is de-wiki, because so much of the Wikidata expertise is in Germany.) I know en-wiki does not. - Jmabel ! talk 17:53, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

I do not know. Dewiki is also one of the wikis using the lowest amount of Wikidata. Not even simple info boxes use Wikidata as fallback for photos. Wikipedia and Wikidata community in Germany are quite separate. During the introduction of structured data we even had discussions if it would be better to get rid of the file names entirely and use the M-ID instead. We should not support using a system of file names and wikitext page redirects to keep old templates working. Instead we should encourage everyone to use a more reliable solution using modules and Wikidata. GPSLeo (talk) 18:28, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes we should get rid of filenames and use m id. i had the same thoughts special:permalink/1026118809#thoughts. also cat titles, all page titles in general. RoyZuo (talk) 12:37, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

for 2 obvious reasons:

1. we shouldnt and cant decide what's the "correct" title for a file or which file is "correct" for a title.
2. we can host a myriad of different versions and leave what they should be called to people who use those files.

RoyZuo (talk) 06:04, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

I support the changes. We should split the current file and transfer the pre 2022 versions to File:Flag of the Republic of Honduras (1949-2022).svg. Panam2014 (talk) 10:55, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

If no objection, I will start working on that tomorrow night. Abzeronow (talk) 02:14, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

I've moved the 2022 version with history. I'll do the history merge of pre-2022 version tomorrow. Abzeronow (talk) 00:15, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2025-05

Are we nearly there yet? 5000 media of 2018 needing categories, please

We need your help, please, to categorise 5,000 files from "M" to "W", or by adding categories to more obvious candidates in between. We started on 6 November 2024 at 43,242 files, but now it is getting more and more difficult. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 04:09, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Keeping up the momentum. We need your help, please, to categorise 4,000 files from "O" to "W", or by adding categories to more obvious candidates in between. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 10:25, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Now, we need your help, please, to categorise 3,000 files from "R" to "W", or by adding categories to more obvious candidates in between. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 09:23, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Unsure how Canadian and USA copyright law interact here regarding AI fan art

I have used AI to create an image of the character Jirel of Joiry, and would like to upload it here. However, I'm not sure how Commons treats the interaction of the copyright laws of Canada (where I live) and the USA (where Commons' servers are located).

The description that I intend to use is:

AI-generated fan art of the character Jirel of Joiry as she appeared at the beginning of the story "The Black God's Kiss" by C. L. Moore.

"The Black God's Kiss" was published in the October 1934 issue of Weird Tales, which is stated by the Internet Archive to be in the Public Domain. This, there is no copyright issue with making a derivative work based on a story published in that magazine issue.

The image was created by User:Robkelk using Google's ImageFX tool, with the seed 999660 and the description "A realistic image of a tall woman in her mid-30s, with an athletic build and a face that is more handsome than beautiful with an expression of barely-contained anger. She has short red hair and hazel eyes. She wears a sleeveless chain-link tunic over a long-sleeved doeskin leather shirt, doeskin leather leggings with Roman-style greaves, and leather boots. Her belt has a sheathed dagger, and she carries an old but sharp shortsword. She stands in front of a simple wooden throne that is sized for her to use." That prompt is the sixth iteration of the prompt used to create earlier versions of the image, so the creator assumes that this counts as human-guided creation rather than sole AI creation.

Canadian law is silent on the copyright status of human-guided AI-generated images. Assuming that the AI tool is just that – a tool – Rob Kelk claims copyright of this image and licences it under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.

I would tag the upload with the template "Fan art" and the categories "AI-generated fan art" and "Jirel of Joiry".

Is it permitted to upload the image here? If "yes", is there anything else that I need to add to the description and licence texts?

--Robkelk (talk) 14:25, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

@Robkelk: The character itself would be in the public domain, so any copyright of fanart would transfer over to the creator of the image without it being shared by other copyright holders. Whether Canadian law says this author is you, or considers it to have no author due to the image being AI-generated, Commons should be able to host the image either way. ReneeWrites (talk) 14:58, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Don't be surprised if it gets nominated for deletion. Uploading AI generated fan art of something that's already PD is super pointless and goes against the guideline that Commons isn't a personal file host. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:34, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Given that, I think that perhaps I should wait until there's a decision as to the status of AI works under Canadian copyright law. (If somebody's going to think this is using Commons as a personal file host instead of being me sharing a work, that would be two possible strikes against Commons keeping the file.) Thanks for the help anyway. --Robkelk (talk) 21:50, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

There is no "decision" to be made. If it's not covered already then it's not protected by copyright Trade (talk) 13:20, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

That is not how the copyright law works in Canada. --Robkelk (talk) 13:58, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

There's no evidence of any court ruling that AI pictures are inherently copyrighted by someone other than the prompter. I wouldn't let Canadian legalities stop you from uploading it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:42, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I live in Canada. I must take into account Canadian legalities, just as you appear (from the content of your User page) to need to take into account legalities of the USA. --Robkelk (talk) 14:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Making a picture of a PD character that we have no visual representation of is useful in many contexts; it is certainly not super pointless. I'd certainly use it over the cover of the magazine that does not depict her on w:Jirel of Joiry.--Prosfilaes (talk)

The question is if there's a cover of the magazine that depicts her. If so, then its pointless to upload a generated image of her to Commons. I don't see why there wouldn't be a normal one but the burden should be on whomever wants to upload an AI generated version of an exiting character to at least look first and upload a non-AI generated verison instead if one exists. Otherwise there's no point in doing this. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:50, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Or, you know, we can be less stressed about it and not demand one true solution. If someone wants to upload a picture of a PD character with limited available art, we could let them and not slap them down or demand they do in depth searching first. Build up instead of tear down.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:03, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I think there's two solutions there 1. Look for an image 2. Upload an AI generated one if that's all there is. I'm just saying people shouldn't skip the first step because its easier to push the "AI go burr" button then it is to look through search results. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:24, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

There is a cover image that has fallen into the Public Domain in the USA (File:Weird Tales October 1934.jpg), but it's what I would call a "cheesecake" image of the character that does not match the character's personality as described in the story itself. --Robkelk (talk) 14:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Poland bans photography of military and critical sites, including bridges, tunnels, viaducts, port facilities and the National Bank

Apparently Poland now (since April 17, 2025) “prohibits photographing or filming Polish military facilities and critical infrastructure without authorization”. About 25,000 sites nationwide are concerned, including bridges, tunnels, viaducts, port facilities and the National Bank. Sources: , , . I'm not sure how that affects already existing photographs taken before April 17, 2025. --Rosenzweig τ 12:47, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Not a copyright issue, not our problem Trade (talk) 13:18, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

It's only "not our problem" if we're okay with Commons being banned in Poland. Robkelk (talk) 15:24, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Also understandable, as the Ukrainian war nears. I should always be carefull in photographing militairy transports or anything related. I would not want to inadvertently inform the Russians, as they certainly scan all Commons files.Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:21, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Even the BBC is barely aware the site exists seperately from ENWP. I would not be too worried Trade (talk) 19:01, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm aware it's not a copyright issue, that's why I posted it here and not at COM:VPC. “not our problem” is a rather shortsighted view however IMO. The ban might very well be or become a problem for anyone taking photographs in Poland, including our users. I think we do have some users living in Poland or visiting there. The German foreign office specifically issued a travel advisory because of this issue. --Rosenzweig τ 15:09, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

As someone who photographed and filmed a few bridges last year in Poland when I went there for Wikimania 2024, that might have been a problem if those rules were in effect. I don't know if a footbridge in Katowice or bridges over the Odra river in Wroclaw are part of that list but it certainly could make future trips to Poland an issue since I would want to film landmarks that catch my attention (I would not purposely film military facilities though for the reasons Smiley.toerist gave.) Abzeronow (talk) 18:42, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I wonder if these rules will take effect as desired. I assume there will be many tourists who don't know or don't care. Might be hard to control --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:39, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

It'll probably be like many other laws which are on the books but only enforced when the authorities wish to do so. --Rosenzweig τ 20:29, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

It might at least be worth having a warning template for images like there is for ones containing Nazi symbols. Otherwise it kind of puts re-users at risk. Let alone photographers. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:36, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

At what point were it suggexted that re-users were at risk? Trade (talk) 20:50, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Just speculation on my part. Realistically I don't think there's anything that can be done about it on our end outside of that. People obviously can't be stopped from uploading images of Poland to Commons. So it seems like the only options are having a warning or just ignoring it. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:25, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

@Rosenzweig, you wrote, "The German foreign office specifically issued a travel advisory because of this issue." Can you please provide a link? Thanks, -- Ooligan (talk) 01:51, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm jumping in: https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/service/laender/polen-node/polensicherheit-199124 . Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 06:53, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

In the Cold War, Russian maps of England were more accurate than English maps, because English maps left out details that might help the Russians. It's the 21st century; everyone has access to satellite data, certainly including the Russians, and tiny video cameras in glasses that would have made 20th century spies drool are available to everyday Joe to film YouTube videos in Goodwill. Why do governments continue to make these rules?--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:37, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Security theater. - Jmabel ! talk 04:04, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. Satelite views cannot always replace detailed ground level views. The militairy value of most images, is very time limited. Its no use to to know where your enemy (personel or equipement) was a month ago.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:44, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

If I understand it correctly, Rosenzweig, the plan is to indicate affected objects with clear signs (Tagesschau says at the end of the article "Zu Missverständnissen dürfte es kaum kommen, schließlich sind die Schilder groß, rot und eindeutig", that is: "There should be little chance of misunderstandings, after all the signs are large, red and clear.") So, personally, I would avoid photographing objects marked with such a sign, but otherwise, we should be fine. I can't imagine that typical tourist sights (like a historical bridge in a city) would be affected, but of course, we are interested in more than that. Haven't seen anything about retroactivity. Gestumblindi (talk) 08:52, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

The German foreign office says „die Kennzeichnung kann jedoch unter Umständen schlecht sichtbar oder nicht eindeutig erkennbar sein“ (“However, the marking may be poorly visible or not clearly recognizable under certain circumstances”). So ... take your pick :-) --Rosenzweig τ 08:58, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Speedy deletion criterion

This arose at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Gatley-WikiBio-P.pdf. We have speedy-deletion criterion Commons:Criteria for speedy deletion#GA2 if someone basically writes an article and puts it in gallery space. Is there any reason we don't have a comparable speedy-deletion criterion if they do the same and upload it as a PDF? Deletion in such a case is pretty much certain, as far as I can tell. Why should we have to leave discussion open for a week (or at least until COM:SNOW)? - Jmabel ! talk 04:20, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

No objection from my side to introduce such a criterion. In fact, I looked into COM:CSD at first and was mildly surprised to see that there was no fitting rationale, making me settle for this standard DR. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 05:06, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, a CSD criterion for that would be helpful. It shouldn't be specific to PDF, though; I've occasionally seen people write encyclopedia articles and upload them as images.

It'd also be nice if this could encompass web browser "print to PDF"s of wiki pages. I don't know why people upload these, but they do sometimes, and they're never useful. (Wikibooks shouldn't be affected; I believe they use LaTeX to render their PDF books.) Omphalographer (talk) 17:17, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

So does this need to go to Commons:Village pump/Proposals? We're talking about changing a policy page. - Jmabel ! talk 19:35, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Proposal: New set of categories for UK and IoM

I've been advised that this is the best venue to raise this. The United Kingdom is mapped by the Ordnance Survey. There is a National Grid Reference system to locate places.

So, my proposal is that we creat a new set of categories to cover the UK by Grid Reference. Heirarchy would be National Grid Reference system > 100 km square (e.g. TQ) > 10 km square (e.g. TQ35 > 1 km square (e.g. TQ 3574). Individual locations are generally expressed in 100m coordinates (TQ 351 749) or 10m coordinates (T3517 7492), but we don't need to go that far. As can be seen, the new categories would cover the whole of England, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man. I would suggest that the NR and NW squares only be categorised outside of Northern Ireland, as there is a different system which covers the whole of the island of Ireland and could possibly be a future project. I realise that this would be a big project, which is why I'm bringing it up to see whether there is interest, rather than boldly creating the categories. Mjroots (talk) 06:09, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I'd worry that this was a case of doing something just because we can. What would be the usefulness of categorizing this way? What would be in the categories? Populated places, structures, geographic features, other? How would this add to what we get by including latitude and longitude? -- Auntof6 (talk) 06:35, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

What would be in the categories would be pretty much every image in the area covered. I've recently been doing work on category:Oasts in Kent and its subcategories. Where an individual oast has a category, I've added a description with the grid reference (preferably to 10m squares). This will assist future imports of images from the Geograph website to be correctly identified. Many house converted oasts are given fanciful names which are totally unrelated to their historic farm connections. Mjroots (talk) 06:58, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

This seems like pointless duplication. Either that or you'd be categorizing images in ones for the areas of Oasts when their actually outside of them. I don't think most people know or care about the grids anyway. There's plenty of different ways that geographical locations are delineated and it's not worth having specific category systems for all, or most, of them. Otherwise things would just get to convoluted. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:29, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I think it would be better to have the geocoordinates of images added in some way that is searchable and filterable. There's for example this wikimap thing where one can see files in a category on a map Category:Drone videos from unidentified countries. Don't think it's a good use-case of categories at first glance but if it is, I think it would need to be set by some bot based on the set coordinates and other categories of the file (like the city) – a flat category system could actually be quite useful because then one could use these category together with deepcategory to filter photos by location which often is not possible with other location-categories because they're so large. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:18, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

The reason some files are in unidentified country categories is that they don't have any information that identifies where the subject is. I don't think having the new categories would help that -- if we don't know where the subject is, we can't identify the location, the latitude and longitude, or the grid. -- Auntof6 (talk) 11:32, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Makes sense but I don't know how it relates to my comment – that category is just there for an example of a wikimap (see top right of the category). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:41, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I meant to say that we can't categorize by grid if we don't know the location.

I wonder if Wikidata would be a better place for this data. -- Auntof6 (talk) 12:54, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes but then I don't know why you replied to me and not OP. Even then: these categories would be for files for which we know the location. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:53, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I wonder whether anyone outside of the Ordnance Survey uses this system. Wikivoyage has a good rule of thumb that I recommend using here: ignore what governments do when classifying locations, and use the systems that actual people actually use. If we do this, we don't need to teach every new user how we do things, because we do things the same way that people in real life do things. (For example, is a hypothetical location in SC or NX? Who cares, it's on the Isle of Man.) --Robkelk (talk) 15:18, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Many people in the UK use Ordnance Survey maps. Grid references are used in many articles about UK locations, as a search for {{gbmappingsmall| will show. My proposal is not intended to replace any other method of categorisation, but to be an additional method of categorisation. Mjroots (talk) 08:03, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Unusual process

This discussion about a category was speedy closed, then all the categories manually removed by the user Sbb1413. Some of the files not re-categorized. Finally the main category tagged for speedy deletion. Ping Andy Dingley. Could we please have more opinions? -- Basile Morin (talk) 22:41, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Seems to me to be inappropriate in process terms. Generally, if a category is under discussion, it is OK to work on fixing problems with it in order to keep, but not in destroying it because you think it should go away. - Jmabel ! talk 04:09, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

The discussion had 4 participants, 3 of whom argued for deletion (or at the very least questioned the merits of the category existing) and one to keep (not counting the person who closed the discussion, which would make it 4 versus 1). It's hardly unusual to see a discussion be closed under those circumstances, especially if no new comments have been added for more than half a year. ReneeWrites (talk) 21:19, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I count Pigsonthewing (as nominator) and JopkeB and (less clearly) Omphalographer voting to remove, apparently joined by non-admin closer Sbb1413; Dronebogus as saying "keep, but examine contents"; oddly, nothing there from Basile Morin, who came here to object. So, I take back what I said earlier—this wasn't particularly out of process—but I'm still not convinced it was a good decision, and it was definitely not followed through well: there were a lot of subcats that were not ever linked to this discussion, that did not necessarily have the same issues, and that were also implicitly included in the follow-up without much apparent thought being given to what really should happen to their contents. - Jmabel ! talk 19:47, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, over-categorizing hundreds of files by deleting important information in each was out-of-process. Thank you. -- Basile Morin (talk) 03:55, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Enabling Dark mode for logged-out users

Hello Wikimedians,

Apologies, as this message is not written in your native language. Please help translate to your language.

The Wikimedia Foundation Web team will be enabling dark mode in this Wiki by 15th May 2025 now that pages have passed our checks for accessibility and other quality checks. Congratulations!

The plan to enable is made possible by the diligent work of editors and other technical contributors in your community who ensured that templates, gadgets, and other parts of pages can be accessible in dark mode. Thank you all for making dark mode available for everybody!

For context, the Web team has concluded work on dark mode. If, on some wikis, the option is not yet available for logged-out users, this is likely because many pages do not yet display well in dark mode. As communities make progress on this work, we enable this feature on additional wikis once per month.

If you notice any issues after enabling dark mode, please create a page: Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Reporting/xx.wikipedia.org in MediaWiki (like these pages), and report the issue in the created page.

Thank you!

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team.

UOzurumba (WMF) 00:08, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, that's great news! However, the dark mode is just black – that may be suitable on mobile but on desktop that's I think not good. Most dark modes are some dark grey for a reason. It's not good to the eyes, not convenient to use basically and many won't use it. Could you please add a dark-grey dark mode like the one that is available in the Wikipedia app (the third of the four in the color schemes settings)? Again, see how the dark mode looks like for most other large websites and desktop apps, most of these are tones of grey. If there already is an issue about this, please link it, thanks. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:06, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Hi there!

If I understand correctly you are requesting additional modes be added similar to the native apps. While my team discussed expanding the available options on web during the construction of this feature to include additional themes such as sepia, at the current time we have no plans to add additional modes so that we can focus focus on the roll out of dark mode.

Dark mode requires various on-wiki changes across wikis (that no doubt you'll somewhat aware of as thankfully Commons have adhered to!) but other projects still need to make the recommended changes. When all projects are supporting dark mode, we can consider adding additional modes, which hopefully will not be as difficult thanks to the roll out of dark mode (since we can use CSS variables to theme now!).

As always I encourage experimentation with additional modes via gadgets (dark mode itself started off this way!) and am happy to support developers as needed. Let me know if I can help with that! Jon Robson, WMF 19:41, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Copyrighted material deliberately being uploaded and deleted

I was recently made aware that it is standard practice for Commons admins to upload copyrighted works, delete it and then restore the material once copyright has expired. This seems highly problematic under copyright law, under title 17 only copyright holders have the specific right to distribute or reproduce their work. By copying the works to our servers, we are distributing the work for later use. It's not important whether we are holding onto the work until copyright expires - until this occurs, we may not reproduce or redistribute the material.

Has this practice been vetted by the WMF's legal team? This seems incredibly dangerous from a legal point of view! When did this become Commons policy? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 01:22, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

@Chris.sherlock2: It is also universal practice that except for CSAM, we never hard-delete anything, and it remains available to admins. Are you also suggesting that Legal is unaware of that? - Jmabel ! talk 04:11, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't know what legal are or are not aware of. But if we are intentionally uploading images knowing that we are storing them for good and just to restore them when copyright has expired, this appears to violate title 17 of the U.S. Code. Specifically, 17 U.S. Code § 106 which grants copyright owners the exclusive right to "distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending". We are technically distributing the works - notice that it doesn't say anything about publishing a copy of the works.

The bit that will absolutely get us, however, it that we are reproducing the material. Under section (1) we cannot reproduce their work without their permission. We are 100% storing their work on our servers for the purpose of later restoring the material. We have not asked them for their permission to do this.

So, no, on the face of it, we are not allowed to do this. I would be interested in hearing WMF legal counsel's opinion on this. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 06:34, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

This procedure is absolutely legal this is what every library does. We could even make some of the material available under certain conditions but we do not do so because of our own rules not because of legal reasons. GPSLeo (talk) 05:42, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Except we are not a library. You are referring to 17 U.S. Code § 108(d), which specifically allows for digital distribution and reproduction where a user makes a specific request for the item in the collection. We don't have such a mechanism in Commons. In fact, the archive is not being loaned at all, it is being kept in storage and no user has the right to access it till copyright expires. So no, this is not the same situation that covers libraries as we are categorically not a library.

Furthermore, do you think libraries don't have costs? A library relies of first sale doctrine to loan out the item. This means they have purchased the material. Archive.org got into trouble on this matter in Hatchett v Internet Archive. Hatchett got an injunction against IA that required them to remove any commercially produced books. We have not paid for any of the material we have been deleting. We don't have first sale doctrine to fall back on.

If the WMF wants to start a library, then let them start a library. I'm sure they might want to speak to archive.org who are already doing this work. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 06:40, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

@Chris.sherlock2: I don't think the analogy to archive.org works because they weren't privately storing files. They were lending books to people. Know one is being loaned files that get deleted until the copyright expires on here. The files can be accessed by administrators in specific instances, but that's not lending to the public. People are illegally allowed to show copyrighted works to a small group of their friends, family, or coworkers in private. It's not a copyright violation to do so. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:35, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

You are correct in that this is quite a different situation. You are also wrong because actually, this makes it worse, we are reproducing copyrighted material without the permission of the original copyright holder. It very much is against the law to copy material without the permission of the owner of the copyrighted work. That's the clear reading of 17 U.S. Code § 106 and to do otherwise is, in fact, a violation of the copyright statute. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 05:15, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes we do not have a procedure to make some media available on request that is why viewing them is entirety limited to admins. The admins could be compared to employees of a library they are also able to view any media they have any time. Like employees signed in their contract admins are bound to the terms of use forbidding them the usage of hidden content. We are not a regular library but as it does not require a permission to run a library there are no special rules (unless for public libraries) they would not apply to us. GPSLeo (talk) 07:05, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I was actually going to ask about or comment on that. I assume admins can't just mass download hidden files or otherwise access them outside of their official duties. Like I have to believe the WMF would take action if an adminstrator downloaded hidden files and uploaded them to another website or something. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:12, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I think we're talking past each other a bit. The key issue isn't whether admins can access deleted content (we all know they can), but whether uploading material we know is copyrighted, with the intent to restore it once copyright expires—constitutes a violation of copyright law under U.S. Title 17.

The crucial word here is intent. This isn't a case of uncertainty about copyright status or acting in good faith with incomplete information. This is about knowingly uploading non-free content, knowing it is not permitted under Commons' licensing requirements, and relying on the ability to delete it immediately and retrieve it in the future. That is fundamentally different from cases where material is removed after copyright concerns are discovered. Here, the reproduction is deliberate from the outset.

The "we're like a library" argument doesn't hold up. Libraries operate under very specific exceptions, such as 17 U.S. Code §108, and the first sale doctrine. Commons doesn't purchase the works, doesn't restrict access under lending rules, and doesn't require individual requests. Admins are not staff in any legal sense, and they aren't bound by contracts that legally restrict their access or redistribution of such content.

This raises serious legal questions: Are we okay with deliberately creating a repository of copyrighted works that are, technically, only a deletion away from being public again? How is that different in principle from uploading the full Avengers movie, deleting it, and then saying it's okay because it'll be public domain in 95 years? --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 07:15, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't really see how intent matters here. Libraries obtain inventory through donations all the time. So I don't buy the idea that the first sale doctrine actually matters that much. Look at this way, if I buy a book, I put it my bedroom closet, then take it out to share with my family members once in a while is that a violation of copyright? If not, then does it suddenly become one if someone gives me the book instead of me buying it? --Adamant1 (talk) 07:35, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Because the scenario you give is what is known as an “unpublished” distribution. But this is largely irrelevant because under this scenario, you are not making a copy. The first sake doctrine allows you lend the book to a friend to read it. However, if this was an ebook, the law gets a little more murky but in general it is seen as a problem as you would be making a copy and this violating copyright.

The courts will not consider our intent when it comes to determining whether we violated copyright law or not - except if we argue wheat we are doing is allowable under Fair Use, but even here we will almost certainly hit an uphill battle convincing a bunch of impartial judges that we satisfy this part of the law (see my response to GPSLeo below for why). Intent will not be taken into consideration. Yes, this sucks, but that is the law of the United States. I’m not a U.S. citizen so I cannot change it no matter what I do, but even a U.S. citizen - or a group of citizens - will not change the law around this. We should not tempt the fates, as did archive.org, who partially lost a reasonably similar court case only some time ago. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:02, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't think making extremely limited copies of something that aren't being shared publicly violates copyright. Otherwise, essentially everything on the internet in general would be illegal. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:43, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Well, what you think and what is actually allowed are very different things. I can only urge people at the WMF and Commons to look at what the law says and hope they act accordingly. I don’t want to be in a position where things are ignored and we have a serious legal issue. - 20:34, 7 May 2025 (UTC) Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:34, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I do not know the exact definition of libraries and archives in US law. If there is no clear limitation to public archives I would consider Commons an archive. Additionally storing the files only visible to a very limited group of people until the copyright expires should be covered by fair use requirements. And there is no huge difference in accepting terms of use and signing a contract. GPSLeo (talk) 07:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I’m sorry, but to satisfy fair use doctrine you must pass a four prong test. Firstly, you must satisfy the court as to the purpose and character of the use of the copyrighted work. That we are a not for profit would help, but the purpose would likely not: we are in this case specifically storing a copy of copyrighted works for the specific purpose of waiting out copyright. I doubt a court would look too kindly on this as a reason. We would certainly have no argument we could provide to the court to convince them we are using the material in a transformative manner - it would be literally sitting on our servers and we would have mo arguments the court that we are fairly using the material in a transformative manner.

The court would also look at the nature of the material we are storing, and given the wide variety of material we may choose to store I think we would be on very shaky ground on a fair amount of images. I for one wouldn’t want to have to justify to the court why we are storing an image or video of a fictional character we are storing till copyright is expired.

The third prong is the amount and substantiality of the material being used. In our case, it would be the entire work, and so the court would not in any way look upon this favourably.

The fourth prong is likely the least concerning issue - we could show we did not impinge on the commerciality of the works as nobody had easy access to it.

What you need to understand about Fair Use doctrine is you must satisfy all four prongs. And we could not do so.

of course, the irony here is that you are saying Commons is now explicitly relying on Fair Use to store images, which we are absolutely virulently against, and rightly so. So it’s a nonsense to even try to use this legal doctrine to justify what we are doing here.

I also say, with the greatest of respect, that you do not appear to understand the U.S. copyright laws you are relying upon. It might be unwise to reference and rely on your understanding of these laws without checking what they actually say. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:17, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Sure, you might be able to make this argument if not for the fact that we have not legally purchased the copyrighted material. Libraries are actually dealing with some very interesting licensing challenges around loaning out electronic books. With a physical book, CD, DVD or video cassette then first sale doctrine applies - they have purchased the item and they can loan it out to others without any issues. For electoric works, however, you are literally making a copy when you loan it out. Libraries don’t delete the electronic version from their servers when they loan it out. Instead they sign up to licensing arrangements with publishers where they can loan out items under certain terms and conditions. I’m not entirely privy to how they do this - I am not a librarian, but the likelihood of any publisher letting us do this for every item we have deleted is 100% never going to happen.

Of course, this point is moot. We haven’t purchased any of this material. We haven’t been given permission to store it on our servers. If a publisher so wanted, they could easily get a court order through discovery to find out all the work we have in our servers, public facing or otherwise. I doubt this will ever be an issue, but if it became known that we are intentionally storing an electronic copy of their copyrighted material to immediately serve out to anyone once the copyright term has expired, then all they have to do is get a court order to find out when we made the copy of their copyrighted material material and I’d not want to be the WMF lawyer who must convince the court that we don’t owe them damages for the period of time we stored their copyrighted work on our servers whilst copyright had not expired.

And yes, there are a few publishers out there I can think of who might decide this is a valid way of making money. Do you want risk

this with Springer or Elsevier? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:45, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm going to take a specific example here. Last year in Bucharest I had the opportunity to photograph quite a few works of major Romanian artists who lived past 1954, and whose works are therefore still copyrighted in Romania. I did this at various museums, in all cases with the knowledge and permission of the museum, and in at least one case while walking around with a museum docent. (If we were to take Chris.sherlock2's argument at face value, the moment I took those photos I was harboring an illegal copy of the photo on the SD disk in my camera, and when I copied that to my computer I made another illegal copy, but neither of those involves Commons.)

I am 70 years old. Most of these works will not come out of copyright in the next decade, some of them not until the 2080s. Even for the ones that will emerge as soon as, say, 2040 (picking that year because it is when the works of Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck come out of copyright), it is frankly less than 50% probable that I will be alive at that date and in good enough health to upload them at that time. Plus, I would need to write down the documentation now, and store both photos and documentation in a manner that would make them still available to upload in 2040, possibly finding a successor who could upload them on behalf of my estate, fill out {{Artwork}} templates (or whatever may be their equivalent in 15 years) properly, etc.

So, I uploaded these with full documentation and immediately deleted them so that only admins can see them. The Cuțescu-Storck files are listed at Category:Undelete in 2040, the others in the various analogous locations depending on the date when they become "free".

I am quite confident that almost every archive in the world would consider this "best practice". I am unaware of any case law in any country that has ever deemed this practice to be illegal, and if there is I would like to see it cited here.

This is probably the last I have to say on this topic, unless specific questions are addressed to me. - Jmabel ! talk 17:02, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I can only urge Commons to look at U.S. copyright law and clearly established precedents such as Hachette et al. v. Internet Archive . What one would like and what is actually allowed are often at odds. Under U.S. law, your photographs could only be allowed to be uploaded to the Commons servers (located in a U.S. jurisdiction) if you argued you are using them under Fair Use. What happens before the actual upload is unknown, I don’t know Romanian law. But as you are aware, we don’t allow fair use on Commons, and yet that is what you are currently relying upon. Personally, if it were up to me, I would love to be able to give you my personal blessing to continue - if it were allowed it would be a worthy project, but under title 17 of the U.S. Code what os being done in this case is fairly clearly violating the law.

im not going to do anything more than publicly urge the community to see sense, but if I am to be ignore then so be it. I’ve tried and I’m satisfied that I have given appropriate notice and warning to the community that there is a real issue. Time will tell if my warnings are heeded.- Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:48, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

When researching something else, I came across a page at the Library of Congress website:

https://guides.loc.gov/fire-insurance-maps/copyright

That page states, "The Geography and Map Division will not scan or reproduce any material that may still be under copyright restriction without either the permission of the copyright holder or proof that the item is no longer protected."

Other details on the page confirm that the division does not scan a map, wait for the copyright to expire, and then publish the map on its website. Glrx (talk) 06:44, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

• I think that "pre-uploads" don't violate copyright because deleted files are exist only as a digital code and nobody to see them! Without pre-uploads it is a risk that some unfree files will be lost forever! Юрий Д.К 15:33, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

  Under title 17 of the U.S. Code, you may not make copies without the express authority of the copyright holder. I’m afraid this is a violation of U.S. copyright law, and the only arguments that might give an exception to this are all made assuming the doctrine of Fair Use would allow this, however such arguments misunderstand the law around Fair Use and are invalid. A court would not find any such argument persuasive and would likely find against us. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:40, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

• I apologize for returning to this when I said I wouldn't, but I think there is a confusion here of Commons' policy and law. U.S. law allows fair use. It is Commons' policy not to publish files on a "fair use" basis. It is not Commons' policy not to store files on a "fair use" basis. I think there is a pretty clear "fair use" argument for storing a file with the intention of publishing when it falls out of copyright. I'm not even saying that argument would necessarily win the day, or that we could store absolutely anything on that basis, but it is ridiculous to dismiss it out of hand, and I elieve that what we have, in fact, stored on this basis falls well within "fair use." - Jmabel ! talk 20:01, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

  And yet, you seem to have completely ignored my explanation as to why Fair Use is not satisfied. I don’t think you understand the law around fair use, and given that Commons never really has to rule on whether something is valid under fair use law I’m not at all surprised your understanding is lacking.

  If you can explain how my reasoning above is incorrect, it would be appreciated. You said you would not be engaging further, but now you are incorrectly saying this is all allowed under fair use. It is not, as I have already explained. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:34, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

  Sorry, but with this argument every cloud storage service would be illegal in the US. GPSLeo (talk) 21:03, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

  Indeed, if you are storing copyrighted material on a cloud service without permission, then this is indeed copyright infringement. There is no need to be sorry, I don’t like it either, but that’s U.S. copyright law for you. They prosecuted MEGA for it.

  Remember: just because you don’t like a law does not mean you can ignore it. That’s life in society. Don’t rag on me for it, I didn’t draft or vote for the laws, they’ve been around for a long time. Why do you think we need Commons? - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 23:42, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

  • @Chris.sherlock2: was there anything in Hachette v. Internet Archive that prevented the Internet Archive from retaining copies of these works internally? As far as I can see, the issue was entirely about making them available to the general public. - Jmabel ! talk 01:16, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

    Given that Commons administrators are volunteers from the general public, not Wikimedia employees, the boundaries of what exactly we can consider "internal" are a little fuzzy here. Omphalographer (talk) 02:49, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

    From Wikipedia:

    Judge John G. Koeltl ruled on March 24, 2023, granting the publishers' request. He held that the Internet Archive's scanning and lending of complete copies constituted copyright infringement and that the Internet Archive's fair use defense failed all four factors of the "fair use test". He rejected the Archive's argument that their use was "transformative" in the sense of copyright law. He further stated that "Even full enforcement of a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio, however, would not excuse IA's reproduction of the Works in Suit".

    I'm not clear if they ordered them to delete the works from their servers. You can, however, see that the court looked at all four factors of a fair use defense and, as you can see from above, a judge looking at our defense of fair use would likely have a similar view. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 04:32, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Historic Baltic ferry shedules

I took a ferry on the 27th may 2003 from Rostock to Tallinn. I cant find any ferry sheduled in 2025, from Rostock to Tallinn. See also: File:Ostseefährlinien.jpg. There does seem to be no ferry from Germany to Tallinn but lots of other Baltic destinations.

What is the ship and compagny (white and blue stripes)? Is there any websites for historic Ferry shedules?Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:51, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

It looks similar to File:Finnjet_IMO_7359632_F_Travemünde_1987.jpg. Ruslik (talk) 20:19, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

According to this ship spotter site, this ferry was active on the route Rostock - Tallinn - Helsinki from 1999 to 2005 (when it was retired), the images also fit, so I'd say this is it (99% confidence). --rimshot^talk 21:03, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

The corresponding Wikilink would be GTS Finnjet. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 21:42, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I assumed the departing port was Rostock as I had an hotel for two days (from there a made a daytrip to visit the narrow gauge railways on Rügen island), but File:Finnjet IMO 7359632 F Travemünde 1987.jpg, lets me think it may be Travemünde. On the other hand File:Rostock Tallinn ferry 2003 1.jpg looks as a temporary terminal to me.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:46, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

The Finnjet was sailing from and to Rostock in the early 2000's (cf. GTS Finnjet#1987–2005, between Rostock and Helsinki). The gantry crane in the background of File:Rostock Tallinn ferry 2003 1.jpg looks a lot like the one on the background of File:Neptun Werft new hall III.jpg, the Y-legs are characteristic. You have a vantage point (back towards the sea, looking up the Unterwarnow) towards the the shipyard (Neptun Werft) from the ferry terminal at Rostock-Überseehafen. So, it's safe to say that you were indeed in Rostock. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 11:59, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: I agree that it's the Finnjet. Congratulations for having the chance to travel on such a special, historic and, sadly, now scrapped ship! I see that there are extensive articles e.g. in English Wikipedia or in German Wikipedia, but not in Dutch, maybe that's something you could rectify? ;-) Gestumblindi (talk) 09:02, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

File:Mouth and gums of a lead-mill worker Wellcome L0062322.jpg

Is it fine the artwork is cropped? --Quick1984 (talk) 06:01, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

@Quick1984: Yes, CC BY 4.0 allows that.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:40, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

I think the question was about commons guidelines and there the overwrite was definitely not okay. I reverted it to the original version. GPSLeo (talk) 17:34, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Exactly. Thank you. Quick1984 (talk) 21:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:07, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Video Player

Hello, could active contributors in MediaWiki please request an update to the current media player on the wishlist? It feels like we are in 2010, the player is outdated. Regards Riad Salih (talk) 21:00, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Agree. However, for videos it's almost fine. I don't like that when clicking on play it disables you from continuing to scroll and read the page such as the file description and categories, but I think this could be changed with the current player. Is there something specific you don't like when playing videos with it? I think there are two main issues with the media player and created a Wishlist request for each:

• No support for video chapters (clickable timestamps) – see W:Video & audio chapters (jump to timestamp)
• Totally outdated audio player with e.g. way to small width, 2000s design, and no button to jump back x seconds which is needed for listening to Spoken Wikipedia article podcast audios – see W:A proper audio player

Prototyperspective (talk) 13:23, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Can you please describe what kind of features and behaviors you want, from audio player to thumbnail size, to fullscreen ? That's a lot more actionable. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:16, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Most basic stuff: left right keys to jump, up down keys for volume, remember volume setting. RoyZuo (talk) 19:05, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

btw, if the webm file is directly loaded in the browser, i think these four arrow key functions work for most browsers.

so mediawiki is worse than any browser built-in functions. that is very outdated. RoyZuo (talk) 19:51, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

The overall design is outdated and does not meet the expectations for a 2025 user experience. Even when having a strong internet connection, the player suffers from noticeable lag. Navigation between different parts of the video is sluggish, with prolonged loading times. The transition between video quality settings is far from smooth.. and the buttons as mentionned by RoyZuo. Riad Salih (talk) 19:08, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

also dont pop up out of the page. why do that? which website does that?

very often, people play the video and simultaneously scroll down the page to read descriptions, comments (on other video websites) or whatever other stuff there may be. RoyZuo (talk) 19:47, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Systemic flickerization of hrefs and anti-Latin OCR-ization, a case from 2014

When removing ancient bad OCR nonsense ("En ut Simia pafpulos catellosPufert omnibus, omniumque formasDeridet, nequefe videt mifellaNudam podice, dunibufque caham:Nos akerius <videmus omnesLynceis oculis jfuofque talpaGjwfquepr&tcrit) & videre non ^vuk-Quid m tergore Mantiae geratur.") from one image, I have also noted that:

A. Most of the unneeded hrefs there lead to Flickr, e.g. Authors: Schoonhoven, Florens, 1594-1648 Passe, Crispijn van de, d. 1670 -> https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/tags/bookauthorPasse__Crispijn_van_de__d__1670 (of course 404 by now)

Subjects: Emblems -> https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/tags/booksubjectEmblems

We are on Wikimedia Commons, not on a Flicker link farm.

B. Even the presumed author, "Internet Archive Book Images" (which is nonsense in itself), leads to ... Flickr and not to "https://archive.org/details/schoonhoviigouda00scho/page/180/mode/2up" or Wikipedia article about the same author.

-> We need a bot to clear up this mess methinks. Zezen (talk) 11:51, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

See Commons:Bots/Work requests (maybe move this thread there). Prototyperspective (talk) 13:17, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata links beginning with M

When I edit File:Newspaper_headings.djvu, it says at the bottom of the page:

Wikidata entities used in this page

• M163430529: Title

But Wikidata complains that the ID is invalid. What's going on? Marnanel (talk) 13:44, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

@Marnanel: I do not see any Wikidata usages on the file description page. MKFI (talk) 07:25, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @Tpt as maintainer of https://ia-upload.wmcloud.org/   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 08:25, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

When I edit the page, not on the page itself when you're viewing it. Marnanel (talk) 14:13, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

This is the page ID of the file . That the Commons page ID is listed as usage of a Wikidata item is definitely a bug. Every file page seems to have this. GPSLeo (talk) 14:53, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

It doesn't show up on all file pages, e.g. File:Pespot na Bellevue - panoramio.jpg (chosen at random) doesn't have it. I think it's being triggered by a template on that page. Omphalographer (talk) 00:09, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

That's probably just that page needing a linksupdate to record the usage. I agree though that this almost certainly comes from a template. I would assume {{Information}} or something has some fallback code to pull the description from SDC if its not directly specified, or something like that. Bawolff (talk) 09:45, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Just for completeness, the link should be Special:EntityPage/M163430529 so likely a module that tries to get local structured data, but incorrectly looks at Wikidata. I looked at the recent uploads of my bots. File:Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (5.3.1696 - 27.3.1770) - Das Martyrium der Heiligen Agathe - 459B - Gemäldegalerie.jpg has the issue, but File:Bales and manure near Green Lane - geograph.org.uk - 7669865.jpg doesn't. Both use a lot of structured data, difference is the template used ({{Artwork}} vs {{Information}}). I think the bug is likely to be in Module:Artwork or one of the underlying modules. @Jarekt: any idea? Multichill (talk) 19:06, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

@Multichill, Marnanel, and Bawolff: , I am searching for any files with "Wikidata entities used in this page" linking to M-id and I can not find any examples. For example I looked at the files mentioned in this discussion, new uploads by BotMultichillT and all new uploads. Are there some examples or did the issue fixed itself somehow? Most infoboxes, like Information, Artwork, Book, Photograph, etc. access SDC as Bawolff described, but that code has not changed in years and I never run into the issue described. --Jarekt (talk) 02:56, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

I see it at https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Giovanni_Battista_Tiepolo_(5.3.1696_-_27.3.1770)_-_Das_Martyrium_der_Heiligen_Agathe_-_459B_-_Gem%C3%A4ldegalerie.jpg&action=info . Tbh though i dont see how this is an issue. Bawolff (talk) 06:39, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

It still shows for me (e.g. on , which Omphalographer mentioned earlier). Marnanel (talk) 07:37, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T393997

I tested it using Module:Sandbox: Ever page that uses this module to get the caption gets these incorrect Wikidata links on the page information page. This is not a problem in the modules. The problem is withing MediaWiki. I created a bug report for this. GPSLeo (talk) 08:02, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Fuzhou Metro logos

Some people claim that the proposed ones do not meet the requirements of "TOO China", but why are there no problems with other ones such as: File:Guangzhou Metro logo.svg, File:Guangzhou Metro icon.svg, and File:Amoy Metro logo.svg? However, the person who proposed the deletion could not produce any evidence at all（Image Links:File:Fuzhou Metro logo.svg, File:Fuzhou Metro icon.svg）. --御坂雪奈 (talk) 17:27, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

@People who have participated in similar discussions:@User:TimWu007 @User:Ankry @User:Liuxinyu970226 @User:Sam_Sailor --御坂雪奈 (talk) 17:27, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

@御坂雪奈 You might have more success in asking in COM:VPC. Greetings :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:20, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

thank you!But the discussion has already begun. If you are able, could you please make an evaluation and judgment there? and .thank you very much! 御坂雪奈 (talk) 16:14, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:07, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Suggestion of merge (Potd)

Hello, because of the Picture of the day of today, I was searching for the wikidata item of the Ormož Basins nature reserve, Slovenia (Ormož basins nature reserve (Q108138093)), and its commons category, but we have both Category:Naravni rezervat Ormoške lagune and Category:Ormož Basins. It seems the same subject, am I right? In your opinion can we merge categories? I notify also the creators of categories @Sporti and @Yerpo. Una tantum (talk) 07:17, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

This is the wrong place to discuss this, please start a category discussion. Prototyperspective (talk) 08:51, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Prototyperspective: I am writing here because of the high visibility of POTD, to make the discussion faster than if I posted on the category discussion page. But yes, I will add the discussion in the talks of categories too.--Una tantum (talk) 09:24, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

@Una tantum: for now, you can add {{See also cat}} to both. - Jmabel ! talk 23:47, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:07, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Flickr searching closed again

Flickr have again (as they did back in March) closed searches behind a paywall. Last time (see Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/03#Flickr - possible change of licensing?), @Omphalographer: discovered that you could bypass the paywall then by using the 'Esc' key. Unfortunately this no longer works with the new paywall. Does anyone know if there is a new way round it? Thanks! - MPF (talk) 11:28, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Maybe we could use this to make a campaign to get users currently publishing their files on Flickr moving to Commons. Something like "Disappointed from Flickr? Learn how to publish your photos on Wikimedia Commons". GPSLeo (talk) 12:04, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

I think it should be "Disappointed by flickr" in English, but otherwise... yes, that could be a chance. Though our rustic to rusty interface will probably deter some users accustomed to flickr... - And also, of course, we have stricter policies, as you can't upload just any file to Commons (COM:EDUSE)... Gestumblindi (talk) 08:54, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Maybe it's just a test. I don't see any paywall when I try to search on Flickr. Nosferattus (talk) 14:13, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Óscar E. Duplán Maldonado (1890-1942) in 1915.jpg

Can someone add his image to his Wikidata entry RAN (talk) 15:02, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ):  Done, see d:special:diff/2347472489.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:24, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:06, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Help with preparing a page for translation

I would like to translate the documentation page Template:Information/doc into German but I'm not sure how to prepare that page for translation. It seems it's not available in any other language than English as yet? The "language select" at the top of the page has only translated one sentence into Japanese and seems to be the wrong method for this page anyway ("should be used only when there are very few translations, and for translating a few sentences.[...] only intended for pages (like generated activity reports, or user pages) that will be rarely translated"). The only part that is translated into German and other languages is the box {{Documentation subpage}} at the top. I'd like to translate the full documentation into German (note, not {{Information}} itself which is translated at Translatewiki, I gather - where I don't have an account; apparently it's not part of Wikimedia's global account system). Gestumblindi (talk) 08:51, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Any help? ;-) Maybe {{Autotranslate}} should be used? But how, exactly? I'm not quite sure how this would be connected to the template itself which is translated at Translatewiki (apparently, I have a hard time even finding the template there)... Gestumblindi (talk) 08:19, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

I suggest to ask for help at Commons:Translators' noticeboard. Raymond (talk) 07:37, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, I copied my question over there. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:56, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — The Queen presents the 1966 World Cup to England Captain, Bobby Moore

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the Wikimedia Foundation office which should not be undone.

In this specific case, the DMCA was granted because the owner of the picture sent the Wikimedia Foundation’s legal department messages under penalty of perjury claiming that they had never licensed it to the original Flickr upload from where the image was originally taken from. The usage of this image may still be fair use in specific contexts, and the legal department encourages editors to do local uploads to that end with an appropriate non-free content justification under local policy, but it is currently too broadly used for that to be the justification the legal department provided in this case. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

• File:The Queen presents the 1966 World Cup to England Captain, Bobby Moore. (7936243534).jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#The Queen presents the 1966 World Cup to England Captain, Bobby Moore. (7936243534). Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Blessed Virgin Mary

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the Wikimedia Foundation office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

• File:Blessed Virgin Mary.jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Blessed Virgin Mary. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 20:14, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Can you figure out the word?

File:Complimentary Banquet in The Brooklyn Union of Brooklyn, New York on January 13, 1883.jpg Yard Honoring a Good Citizen and Selfless? Mechanic. --RAN (talk) 03:26, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Looks like "skillful" to me, with the final "l" floating up a bit (much like the "f" did a few lines below). Omphalographer (talk) 03:56, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

I think threads here could not get much more trivial. The text currently says "Selfless" but that word shouldn't be there since it seems fairly clearly not the one in the image. Agree that it seems to be skillful but and l seems to be missing (skilful). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:12, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

• Thanks! --RAN (talk) 15:17, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
  • Definitely "skilful mechanic". - Jmabel ! talk 03:11, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Jmabel ! talk 03:11, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Pronunciation files in topic cats or even worse in disambig cats

Cat:Envelopes (currently 24 files) -- Where are the pronunciation files supposed to be? Is there a categorization of pronunciation files by topic or a policy about such? Taylor 49 (talk) 08:26, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Is there a categorization of pronunciation files by topic See e.g. Category:Pronunciation by subject. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:14, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Classifying words into arbitrary "subjects" seems like a poor way of categorizing pronunciation files, particularly given that words are often polysemic (having multiple meanings). The way I would expect these files to be categorized is primarily by language, to optimize for the use case of "I need to find a recording of someone reading this specific word"; more granular categorization is only going to get in the way of this use case. Omphalographer (talk) 18:38, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Both are potentially important (and I agree with Omphalographer that "by language" is close to mandatory). Yes, there is also Category:Audio files of pronunciations by language and its many subcats.

Since the category originally alluded to in the question has now been emptied, I have no idea what files this was about, so I have nothing further to add. - Jmabel ! talk 03:16, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Category:Pronunciation by subject (very little content two days ago) turned out to be a dupe of Category:Pronunciation of words (more content two days ago, but less optimal name). Agree that lemmas should be categorized primarily by language, the cat Category:Audio files of pronunciations by language already exists and is heavily used. Taylor 49 (talk) 09:35, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

YouTubeReviewBot

why was this bot banned, again?--Trade (talk) 08:27, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Special:CentralAuth/YouTubeReviewBot Log/block Special:Diff/575750163 User%3AYouTubeReviewBot This was 4 years ago. Taylor 49 (talk) 09:13, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

LicenseReviewerBot, the bot that replaced YouTubeReviewBot have been dead for 3 years. Something must have happened--Trade (talk) 16:41, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

 Comment well ...

• Special:CentralAuth/YouTubeReviewBot killed 2021 operated by Special:CentralAuth/Eatcha stopped editing 2021-11-18 but NOT banned
• Special:CentralAuth/LicenseReviewerBot dead since 2022, deflagged 2024, operated by Special:CentralAuth/Bd9a119b5d05019d7c923207398ef3c3 reportedly sockpuppet of "Eatcha" and essentially inactive

• no operator -> no bot. Taylor 49 (talk) 17:25, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Taylor 49 (talk) 17:25, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Wrong infobox picture

Category:Catherine Wolfe Bruce has the wrong infobox picture (it should be no picture at all, not some random Australian). I nuked it everywhere I could but its the thing that wouldn't die. Where did they hide that value? Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 22:01, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

@Fountains of Bryn Mawr. I don’t see the image anymore, so I think it got sorted out. Sometimes you have to purge the page or make a null edit (submit edit without editing anything) to update the page. Tvpuppy (talk) 22:34, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, saw it disappear as well. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 22:38, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Concerns Regarding Cross-Wiki Conduct and Tone by Administrator Bedivere

Hello community, this is to notify that there is a request for comment on Meta that some users might be affected. You can join the discussion here.

Please do not reply to this message. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 02:00, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

WebP file format and copyright violations

Hello,

I busied myself again with looking at the latest file uploads. A few of them were in WebP format, but all of these images were also copyright violations. Blatantly so, being simple grabs from internet sites (example: File:Hanzade dabbag.webp from https://www.worldaquatics.com/athletes/1845366/hanzade-dabbag ). I do not actually recall cases where WebP files were genuinely licensed and "good" for us. What are the experiences of other editors, did they already developed a reflex "WebP = probable copyvio", as I did? If the ratio between good uploads and copyvios using WebP is too bad, I wonder if a filter could be set up to track WebP uploads made by users with a low edit count or recent accounts... I do not suggest to forbid WebP (that's certainly going too far and would only entice moving to another format where copyvios cannot be spotted as easily), but a tracking tool could be welcome. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 13:13, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree that most WebP uploads are copyright violations. I would suggest to introduce the same restriction as we currently have for MP3: Commons currently only accepts MP3 uploads by users with Autopatrol or higher rights, due to concerns about the capacity of the community to monitor for copyright violations. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:45, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

w:Natalya Arinbasarova or not?

A person who signed "Natalya Arinbasarova" wrote to the Error Reporting section of the Russian Wikipedia asking to remove a photograph (File:Natalya Arinbasarova 1966.jpg) described as the image of her, but which in fact depicts another woman. For sure, such a request does not allow us to establish the identity of the person who wrote, but we can discuss at least the facts available to us. Yes, the description of the photo in the source is completely unambiguous, this is not an error on the part of the Commons users. But I will share my doubts: a. It seems unlikely to me that the woman in the picture is 19 years old. b. There are a number of undisputed images from that very w:27th Venice International Film Festival in which Natalya looks different: . What should be done to minimize the possible adverse consequences? --Romano1981 (talk) 18:31, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree that the woman in the other pictures you provide looks different. But if the licensing status of the photograph is fine, it shouldn't be deleted but renamed, with changed description - like "Unidentified woman walking arm in arm with an unidentified man" (maybe they can be identified someday). This affects also the crop File:Natalya Arinbasarova 1966 (cropped).jpg and both files should be removed from the numerous Wikipedia language versions where they're currently in use as a depiction of Natalya Arinbasarova. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:52, 14 May 2025 (UTC)