This page is used for technical questions relating to the tools, gadgets, or other technical issues about Commons; it is distinguished from the main Village pump, which handles community-wide discussion of all kinds. The page may also be used to advertise significant discussions taking place elsewhere, such as on the talk page of a Commons policy. Recent sections with no replies for 30 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; recent archives: /Archive/2026/04/Archive/2026/05.
Dear all technical users, Commons (as well as all other projects using files from Commons) has experienced a persistent 0x0 image size error for PDF files. In short, the system fails to generate thumbnails of pages for certain PDF files (typically larger ones). This has seriously affected works on Wikisource, where "Failed to initialize OpenSeadragon, no image found." is displayed on affected pages. OCR is also disabled.
While Yann reported that purging and uploading dummy files (then reverting to the old file) sometimes work, it is not effective for other cases. He also mentions that the problem worsens in the few days. While a Phabricator report is created, it has stalled for many weeks.
Comments from experienced users are appreciated, and follow-up measures on Phabricator are even more appreciated, thank you.廣九直通車 (talk) 11:45, 8 April 2026 (UTC)
There is no point in uploading pdf-files if they ar not usable. That raises the question if Commons should host pdf-files or stop allowing upload of new pdf-files. --MGA73 (talk) 08:50, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
@MGA73: (1) Most PDF files still work fine. (2) Even if not viewable on Commons, they can still be downloaded. (3) The problem here will presumably eventually be fixed.
So this is clearly not a reason to stop hosting PDFs. - Jmabel! talk 18:43, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
Image size issue
I just noticed that, apparently, on images, the links for "880 x 522 pixels" and "640 x 441 pixels" versions of images actually both link to the same size image ("960px-[imagename stuff]"). This can't be intentional, can it? The Bushranger (talk) 16:04, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
@The Bushranger: since not all files are going to have the same aspect ratios, can you link to a file that is an example of what you are talking about? - Jmabel! talk 20:16, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
@Jmabel@The Bushranger The software only renders a fixed set of common sizes to reduce server loads - see mw:Common thumbnail sizes. Any usage of images loads one of these sizes and scales it in-page to the desired size. That's a change from a few months ago IIRC. It is somewhat frustrating that most of the default sizes listed on file pages don't match those sizes, so (as you experienced) the links are rather misleading. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:34, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
In short, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
Do we have any control over what sizes are offered on file pages, or do we have to wait for one set of WMF engineers to finally notice what another set of WMF engineers are doing? (If the latter, a phabricator report might speed this up.) - Jmabel! talk 22:06, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
This is a known issue, but it's one of those where we were mostly waiting for the dust to settle on the other changes wrt to file sizing before dealing with it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:39, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
@Pi.1415926535 so someone changed how thumbs are created a few months ago and now we see a lot of problems because of that? I wonder if #Persistent 0x0 image size error for PDF files is one of the results. This problem pretty much closes down the use of pdf on Wikisource. --MGA73 (talk) 09:01, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
No it is not. it is totally unrelated. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:24, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-16
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Experienced editors are invited to test the Article guidance feature, designed to help less-experienced editors create well-structured, policy-compliant Wikipedia articles. Testing instructions are available. Also, after reviewing the outlines, please provide feedback on the project talk page. Based on your input, the feature will be refined and transferred to the pilot Wikipedias to translate and adapt. Check out the video explaining the feature.
The Growth team has launched an account creation experiment to evaluate whether adding an account creation button to the mobile web header increases new account registrations and encourages more mobile users to contribute to the wikis. The experiment is currently live on Hindi, Indonesian, Bengali, Thai, and Hebrew Wikipedia, and targets 10% of logged-out mobile web users.
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where VisualEditor could get stuck loading on Windows devices with animations turned off, has now been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
Starting later this week, Abuse filter editors who have the ⧼codemirror-beta-feature-title⧽ beta feature enabled will have CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor as the editor at Special:AbuseFilter. This is part of the broader effort to make the user experience more consistent across all editors.
Tools and bots that access the Notifications API (action=query&meta=notifications) will need to update their OAuth or BotPassword grants to also include access to private notifications.
Due to a library upgrade, listings on category pages may be displayed out of order starting on Monday, 20th April. A migration script will be run to correct this, and will take hours to days depending on the size of the wiki (up to a week for English Wikipedia).
In the description of some pictures, you can see a wiki code. How can I fix this? Futbollo (talk) 09:22, 14 April 2026 (UTC)
I've put in 10 minutes and cannot tell where this text ultimately comes from (maybe somewhere in Data space?). The means by which this page is implemented is pretty abstruse. If someone can find it, but doesn't have the rights to edit, let me know and I can probably fix it.- Jmabel! talk 18:43, 14 April 2026 (UTC)
@Футболло, @Jmabel, @Nemoralis: fixed for now. We will look into the gadget at our earliest convenience and update accordingly if necessary. Regards, ZI Jony(Talk) 06:02, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
@Футболло, thanks for finding, instead of fixing individual file, we will fix it in the script. @Ingenuity, "remove any html elements (including nested) from the description" dose not work well currently, could you please have a look, and arrange to fix it at earliest convenience? Regards, ZI Jony(Talk) 06:45, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
That's an error I noticed before, but it's not significant enough to warrant changing in the middle of the contest, potentially breaking other things; I'll fix that after. Ingenuity (talk) 15:02, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Thanks! Regards, ZI Jony(Talk) 16:21, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Fixing Commons Commander
Could someone try to fix the Commons Commander tool to work? It would be an incredibly useful tool to visually categorise images (for example selecting black and white portraits from a large batch of images), and it seems more user-friendly than Cat-a-lot. However currently it is not able to load larger categories and seems to be broken in general when it comes to adding the categories. Tagging a few people who worked on the code: @Jon (WMF), @Ladsgroup, @Krinkle. Adam Harangozó (LSE WiR) (talk) 12:56, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Also the "Just try it without installing" button at Help:Commons Commander leads to a broken page. - Jmabel! talk 22:42, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-17
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
After two years of development, ⧼codemirror-beta-feature-title⧽, also known as CodeMirror 6, is to be promoted out of beta on Tuesday, April 21. It brings better code and wikitext readability, reduction in typing errors, and other benefits to all users of the standard syntax highlighter. A huge thank you to volunteer Bhsd who developed many of the new features, including code folding, autocompletion, and linting.
A major update to the Wikipedia app for iOS is now rolling out, redesigning the interface to align with Apple's latest "Liquid Glass" visual design. Download the latest version and explore the update.
Updates for editors
Reading lists is a feature which allows readers to save articles to a list for reading later. This feature is now in beta on Arabic, French, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Chinese Wikipedias and by default for all new accounts on all Wikipedias.
An experiment which explores extending Page Previews to mobile web will be launched in the week of April 20 on Arabic, English, French, Italian, Polish, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Page Previews are pop-ups that display a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and a link to open the full article of a blue link, thereby improving content discovery. The feature is already available on desktop and in the apps. Read more about this experiment and others.
On several wikis, logged-in editors who haven't confirmed their email addresses can now see a banner encouraging them to do so. Having the email address confirmed allows a user to restore access to the account if they lose it. Learn more.
View all 15 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where editing very large wiki pages in the 2017 wikitext editor caused slow loading, preview and scrolling lag, and performance issues when selecting, cutting, or pasting content, has now been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
As part of the promotion of CodeMirror from a beta feature, all users will use CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor for syntax highlighting when editing JavaScript, CSS, JSON, Vue and Lua content pages.
The mirrors.wikimedia.org service for Debian and Ubuntu users will sunset and stop working on May 15. The resources for the service will be replaced with new and better options. Some users may need to switch to a different server which should take about a minute. You can read more.
The image and oldimage table will be removed from wikireplicas. If your tools or queries access image or oldimage directly, please update them to use the file and filerevision table before 28 May.
Following the recent implementation of global API rate limits on unidentified traffic, the Wikimedia Foundation will continue efforts to ensure fair use of infrastructure by applying global limits to identified API traffic beginning the last week of April. These limits are intentionally set as high as possible to minimise impact on the community. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits and Frequently Asked Questions.
The Attribution API is now available as a beta. The API fetches information for crediting Wikimedia articles and media files wherever they are used. Reference documentation is available through the REST Sandbox special page available on all Wikimedia wikis (such as the REST sandbox on English Wikipedia). Share your feedback on the project talk page.
use the default files app to select photos and upload
some time between 11 April and today 20 apr, this behaviour changed. now following the same workflow, my android 15 phone strips coords on all these files.
i think i can confirm the problem is on the phone / app, because i tested using an older upload to commons. it was uploaded with coords in the past, but now when i try to upload it again, commons doesnt reject it for being a duplicate. that means, it is now stripped of the coords so it appears to commons as a new file.
i copy pasted the files (which were stripped of coords when uploaded from phone) to my laptop and then tried uploading them. coords are intact this way.
i am not sure what happened that caused this change. my phone's system last updated on 2 apr (before 11 apr), and i dont think my camera app or files app got updated after 11 apr.
sharing in case someone else also runs into the same problems. RoyZuo (talk) 20:25, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
This is android files app problem probably did you select from "Recent" or "Download" or go in Device storage to a folder the first 2 ways can cause plenty problems REAL💬⬆ 20:59, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
i selected from "images" -> "camera".
it's the same workflow i've been doing for a few years. nothing i did was different from before. last normal upload was only days ago on 11 apr. RoyZuo (talk) 21:24, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
i found discussions. yes it's a new android problem. not sure if other OS also behave like this.
afaicu, the only ways to upload with coords are either make an app that asks for that permission, or copy the files to computers thru usb cables.--RoyZuo (talk) 22:36, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Did you try uninstall updates to android files app in settings? REAL💬⬆ 22:55, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
i dont want to keep my apps outdated either. also i dont think it's caused by an update (because i dont think i got an update last week), and i dont think it's easy to roll back certain versions of these system apps. RoyZuo (talk) 05:55, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Commons:Mobile app devs seem to be aware of this problem so the app still uploads photos with coords.
as of now, i tried chrome, firefox, opera, brave. uploading thru them all strips coords. i dont know if any android mobile browser will ask for this location permission so files can be uploaded with coords. RoyZuo (talk) 06:33, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
One way to get around this is to use a different file manager. I use Ghost Commander (which is on F-Droid). Go to select a photo, open up the files picker, tap the ☰, select the alternate file manager, then select the file. In my testing, it uploads as a raw file - that is no geolocation stripping.
I agree this is a hacky workaround. Edent (talk) 13:01, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Error with Template:Wikidata Infobox
For some reason today the button to toggle the collapsed state in the 'Has part(s)' section of {{Wikidata Infobox}} is not displaying correctly. It shows [{{int:show}}] when collapsed and [{{int:hide}}] when expanded, instead of just [Show] and [Hide] as it should (and as showed here in the preview before I added the nowiki tags to the two examples there, so it appears to not be something in int:show and int:hide themselves?). - The Bushranger (talk) 22:22, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
This is still going on. Any ideas why? - The Bushranger (talk) 18:40, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Best auto-transcription web-app? (subtitles)
Animated video machine-transcribed and then machine-translated to English & Spanish with no adjustments other than to the timestamps & 1 bug-fix
Auto-transcription tools are a great help with transcribing videos that may be of interest to speakers of another language that likely don't understand the video's audio language.
So far I found the free open source SoniTranslate tool the best. But it has two major downsides:
it's not actively developed anymore and I don't know why people don't like to have an open source transcription tool that benefits everybody (it can also be used for dubbing videos and has some issues that need fixing)
one first needs to painstakingly download and install that tool and then start it first every time one would like to transcribe something on localhost which is a substantial obstacle.
It's much easier to just use a web-app. There, one can just enter the URL of a video or upload it and get it transcribed in usually seconds. Which tool in your experience is best for this purpose?
So far I found https://turboscribe.ai/dashboard best since one can use it for free with not signup required, it works fast, and one can export to the format needed for TimedText: SRT with timestamps. One can also specify the max words per segment and one other webapp I've tried had way too long texts when exporting as SRT.
However, it's not perfect either for this purpose: you can see in this diff which changes I had to make. Specifically, it sometimes displayed text too shortly or didn't keep displaying longer subtitles for the available time until the next segment starts.
For example, it displayed a longer subtitle for just 4 seconds and then displayed just 2 words for 4 seconds instead of either combining both or showing the long one for long and the short one for a short time. It also added a segment where no subtitle should be displayed but the TimedText can't handle it and displays the timestamp instead.
Additionally, is there some way to avoid the numbers above the timestamps? Requiring these seems unnecessary and for example if one merges two text segments early in the video then one has to manually adjust all the later numbers manually.
Thanks, I actually had that webapp open somewhere in my tabs but it drowned in them before I got to giving that tool a try again since the first time I tried it the button didn't work. The button works now but the tool does not transcribe the video but it seems like the tool where transcription could be implemented. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:44, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Hi @Prototyperspectiveand @Tvpuppy, I'm half the human behind Subtitler. It originally started as an experiment as we identified as a need for our own language documentation and archive work in 2024-2025. Since we have been focusing on low-resourced languages, which mostly lack ASR, we started building it ourselves. The alpha release it out as @Tvpuppy has linked and @Ranjithsiji, who is the other half human and the lead developer, is working on a stable release. We've taken into account something @Prototyperspective had suggested earlier and a few bugs we identified ourselves as we prepare for the release. But we dearly want to incorporate an ASR API that works for large number of languages. Psubhashish (talk) 06:13, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
@Psubhashish I'm assuming the blocker for this would be the cost of most of such models? I'd like to thank both of you btw. I had been looking for an open source solution for a long while, and it simply didn't seem to be out there. It's good we now have an interface for this that will facilitate this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:44, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
@TheDJ You're welcome!:) Indeed - cost is a major factor. I personally haven't researched about ASR for larger languages but going though @Prototyperspectiveand's notes gives a fair sense that Whisper-based models will work well. I tested a video and the output seems good. For low-resourced languages, we will go slower based on community requests, and will need to figure out available fine-tuned models for a language closer to the target language. Psubhashish (talk) 03:59, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
Link to abstract Wikipedia
Can anyone explain to me where the link to the Abstract Wikipedia comes from in Category:Diablo, Washington, and why it is there? I think it is placed there by {{Wikidata Infobox}}, since it seems to go away if I remove that from the page, but I don't see anything in the documentation of that template suggesting that it should do such a thing. Why wouldn't a link to Abstract Wikipedia belong in the left or right nav, just like any other interwiki link drawn from Wikidata? - Jmabel! talk 06:30, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Indeed, comes from {{Wikidata Infobox}}. Same thing on Category:Earth. If the Wikidata item has an Abstract Wikipedia interwiki link attached to it, the infobox outputs it.
I think I found the culprit code: See this diff on the Module:Wikidata_Infobox sandbox. Commenting out that code removes that Abstract Wikipedia link. I guess for some reason we output multilingual interwiki links here? Not sure what the use case is. ~Kevin Payravi (talk) 14:11, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Perhaps we can added abstract-wiki to the excludedProjects function at line 1217? That should remove the interwiki link for abstract-wiki. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 14:41, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Ah yes. Done in the sandbox module. That seems to do the trick. Thanks, ~Kevin Payravi (talk) 15:01, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Conversely, though: shouldn't this show in the UI like other sister projects? - Jmabel! talk 19:02, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Added with this diff, to make a link to Abstract Wikipedia appear below the other interwiki links in the infobox. ~Kevin Payravi (talk) 20:41, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Though still trying to figure out the use case of that interwikis() function that outputs that plain Abstract Wikipedia link in the body. Anyone know when that's used? The comment in the code mentions Category:Moore_(surname) as an example but I don't see any links being output. CC @Mike Peel ~Kevin Payravi (talk) 20:48, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
The interwiki links are located in the left sidebar (or the Main Menu sidebar) under the "In Wikipedia" section. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 23:24, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
@Tvpuppy: I'm not sure who that was addressed to, but if it is addressed to me, that is certainly where I would expect it, but not where it is. - Jmabel! talk 00:53, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
Answers my question! Kind of forgot that section existed since I've started using Vector 2022 (it's there, but in the sidebar that I never toggle on). I assume Abstract Wikipedia links aren't considered "Wikipedia" on the backend, so it doesn't get slotted there and instead just shows up as a link in the body. ~Kevin Payravi (talk) 05:16, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
@Kevin Payravi: If it's not considered a "wikipedia", shouldn't it show up under "In other projects" (as I just noticed it does on this project page right here). - Jmabel! talk 06:09, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
Former featured pictures show when filtering by "Featured pictures" on Mediasearch
Small bug: I was searching for featured pictures of tigers to make sure they were all included in the category. I searched "Tiger -incategory:"Featured_pictures_of_Panthera_tigris"", and set it to filter for featured pictures. I noticed 2 images as the first results, and added them to the category. I then noticed they were actually former featured pictures, and removed them.
Obviously if a picture has had it's featured picture status removed, it should no longer show up. LetmeEditit (talk) 17:54, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Should now be fixed, I have removed the "Commons quality assessment" = "Wikimedia Commons featured picture" statement from the SDC of the two images. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 22:01, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Oh, that makes sense! I feel like the SDC for that ought to be automated. Maybe a new bot task? LetmeEditit (talk) 08:52, 25 April 2026 (UTC)
There are very many things that are still in the SDC when already corrected in the categories or file description. One example is the copyright license. I made a thread about this here: Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2026/02#Wrong copyright license in structured data. A bot that keeps it in sync if either has been corrected by a user with say 100+ edits and puts remaining files with other metadata mismatching SD onto some backlog could be useful but on the other hand SD currently is barely used at all. Maybe somebody could put all the info about such a project in a new bot work request thread and maybe somebody could code it given that AI tools have made such software projects far more feasible. I just don't think just correcting the FP status would be good, also correct other things ...eg for another example aren't there also files with wrong featured media, quality image, etc status? Prototyperspective (talk) 13:15, 25 April 2026 (UTC)
Special search - sort order: by upload date (request)
Would it be possible to make sort order by upload date a persistent personal preference? In my experience sort order by relevance is totally useless and counter productive. (Which are the criteria of relevance used anyway?) I would like to always see series by upload date immediately instead of a list of randomly scattered files where files belonging in the same categories are miles apart. Would it be at least possible to make this choice a one click option instead of a four click sroll and pick and click? This would greatly be appreciated and very usefull to overview groups of files. Peli (talk) 20:56, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
I have thought about making a robust "search option" selector helper (a graphical interface to make many functionalities explained in mw:Help:CirrusSearch easily accessible without any technical knowhow). When I find time I will improve on this. RoyZuo (talk) 17:55, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
Very nice, it works well so far, thank you. I may come up with a review after some days of testing, like about the location where it now sometime overlays Cat-a-lot floater in right bottom corner. I like that the sort order picker can be used easily on categories too. Peli (talk) 20:59, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
You're right. I moved it to the left, which is usually empty beneath the left sidebar.
These designs are just temporary though. I am thinking what the best approach is in the long run. Floating, not floating, collapsed...
You could consider pasting to your common.js this code instead of the actual code of the script, then you don't need to manually update when the script is updated. RoyZuo (talk) 07:17, 25 April 2026 (UTC)
@RoyZuo: Thanks for the heads up, it works great!! If I may suggest, making it deployable like Cat-A-Lot, perhaps even positioned beside where C-A-L is when minimized, would be really nice. Floating on the left all the time can get in the way of some things. — Huntster (t@c) 17:58, 25 April 2026 (UTC)
@Huntster this is just a primitive prototype; I'm limited in coding skills; I'm quite busy this year; so I wont make a collapsible design soon.
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/575417-searchjoy I ported it to be a script that can be installed in the browser, so if you install it that way, you can switch it off when you dont use it often. This saves the trouble of editing common.js to switch on or off the script. RoyZuo (talk) 20:20, 25 April 2026 (UTC)
Thanks for getting that script done and +1 to what Huntster said: would be nice if it was collapsed to a small button by default. Additionally, I wonder why it's using SpecialSearch instead of MediaSearch (or both or a setting). Would be nice if you could get these 2 things fixed and also fix the bug in the related Help:Gadget-DeepcatSearch as noted on the talk page there. If not, I'll probably do it some day soon despite that I don't use/need sorting by upload date often. Peli could you clarify why you were asking about SpecialSearch in specific? Prototyperspective (talk) 21:07, 25 April 2026 (UTC)
It seemed smart to keep this request simple and specific, not fancy. It is about the ergonomy of a tool that I use a lot. (I like to be presented with lists of works with all of their edges and with their filenames next to them. I don't have any use for walls of nameless truncated images and neither for extra clicks to see info frames with buttons to "read more".) A real topic here could be "Do we have to worry about the load on the servers if people start playing with too many sort orders in short time? Not being able to set this in advance, as a fixed preference, seems to result in at least 2 hits on the servers for the same question. But the request is also inspired by a wish to help newbees who might not notice at first that the relevance of a single word is not measurable, is a farce and in fact equals "random". Peli (talk) 10:16, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Hi, I tweaked it w AI to a bar under search options with a few quick settings which will be saved. User:Pelikana/SearchImagesByDate.js. Pls. let me know what you think about it. Peli (talk) 22:41, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
Overwriting existing files is vague on AI removal overwrites
I've been having trouble seeing if Commons:Overwriting existing files has any clear rules on if reuploading a file (the file I'm looking to reupload is File:Atlas The ICBM (1957).webm and probably a couple other videos uploaded by the original uploader since they all use very unstable voice and video cleanup algorithms).
Thanks! :3 Whtwtr (talk) 17:11, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
@Whtwtr Kudos for the ":3". As the title refers to the movie itself, not a user-created work, I would overwrite this file if you have the source file in better quality. If you have manual corrections, I would suggest it as upload as a new file. Regards! --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:44, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
Sorry, I forgot to read the title D:. If you have the source file, you can overwrite the file, I would say. As stated in the template, AI reprocessing may encounter speculative content, so the pure file is preferred anyway. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:52, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-18
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
There is a change in how new users are autoconfirmed that will improve anti-vandalism protection. Currently, users who have had an account for a few days and made a few edits are automatically added to the Autoconfirmed users group. This configuration tends to be exploited by some vandals, who create accounts and start to use them only after some time. To mitigate this, the configuration will be updated next week so that – for the purpose of becoming autoconfirmed – the account age will be counted from their first edit, instead of registration date. The numeric value of the age threshold will remain the same. This change will be deployed only to wikis which require at least one edit as part of the autoconfirmation conditions.
All Wikipedia users with new accounts and those who activated the "automatically enable most beta features" option in their preference can now use the reading lists beta feature to save articles for later reading. This helps organize reading interests in one place for convenient access.
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where infobox images have huge padding in Firefox, has been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
As a reminder, the global API rate limits will be applied this week to identified API traffic. This is to help ensure fair use of infrastructure. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, including the actual rate limits, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits and Frequently Asked Questions.
When importing this file, an error occurred, causing it to appear corrupted. For whatever reason though, this only appears to the importer, and everyone else sees it normally (as evidenced here&here). Note that this isn’t a cache issue as purging both client & server cache doesn’t fix it. As evidenced by here, deleting it and then re‐importing it does fix the issue.ANOTHERWlKlPEDlANwɑit thɑt’s ɑ typo 09:51, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
Error while moving the page.
A detailed description of the error is shown below:
API request failed (backend-fail-notexists): The file mwstore://local-swift-codfw/local-public/7/7c/SStanko_Klinar_z_oskrbnikoma_Siegfriedom_in_Rose_Fellner_na_Villacher_Hütte_pod_Hochalmspitze,_april_1997.jpg does not exist. <i>at Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:35:06 GMT</i> <u>served by mw-api-ext.eqiad.main-75894796f7-9f4tt</u>
After waiting for a few hours, I still get the same error. Purging cache didn't help. Why do I get this error if the files actually do exist? Deltaspace42 (talk) 17:40, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
I notice that the "watch/unwatch" tab at the top of pages has now changed behavior, now spawning a dialogue box for "Organize Watchlist" with a dropdown to select watchlist time period and an "Unwatch" button at the bottom. This is extremely annoying; what used to be one click and done now not only spawns an annoying quasi-popup but it requires an additional click to make it go away, and when unwatching a page what used to be one click is now three (click tab, click 'unwatch', click to make box go away) (and thus, clicking 'unwatch' does not, in fact, actually unwatch the page anymore which has caught me out more than once). Is there any way to disable this and go back to the old way? - The Bushranger (talk) 22:08, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
Concur. Much preferred how this worked before. No objection to it being a settable option, if that would solve it. FWIW, I never put anything temporarily on my watchlist; if at some point I no longer care, I remove it at the next notification. - Jmabel! talk 22:28, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
Comment, please see the relevant phab task for this feature: phab:T417847. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 00:37, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
So this came entirely from a techie at WMF, with no indication of users wanting this? - Jmabel! talk 05:47, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
I agree, personally I don't use the watchlist labels, and even if I do, I don't think I will need to change the labels frequently, so this change is not helpful to me. As mentioned by Bushranger above, it would be great if they can add a setting to turn this feature off. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 09:31, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
@Jmabel Can you please be not so disparaging towards fellow wikimedians? Employed by the foundation or not? Not all information is in each ticket. And sometimes there are changes you might not like. If people stopped being so sour, maybe more people would be motivated to do something for Commons. But comments like these are not helping anyone. There’s a tech event going right now, if you were there you might make a difference, like 200 techie-people are doing right now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:00, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
@TheDJ: in terms of the remark, you're right. Just frustration on my part. - Jmabel! talk 23:36, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
I notice that when viewing a file description page, clicking either the "Original file" link, or the image itself (which does the same thing) results in the expected URL but with the following query string unexpectedly appended: ?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=index&utm_content=original - this didn't happen until recently, why is it now being done? --Redrose64 (talk; at English Wikipedia) 19:51, 2 May 2026 (UTC)
Thumbnail for orginal image and the revised image are the same?
Hi
Today I tried to upload a better image for HondaCivicSi1990.Ignition.png but the two thumbnails in the history appeared identical. So I tried to revert the fresh upload. Now the duplicate of the original is displayed as current. Can the version timestamped "14:15, 3 May 2026" be deleted? How?
For future reference, is there a delay in updating the thumbnail?
Thx, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 14:53, 3 May 2026 (UTC)
@PeterEasthope, probably it's just cache. After uploading new version, reloading while holding shift (in Chrome) works. Deltaspace42 (talk) 15:03, 3 May 2026 (UTC)
Hi again,
Chromium here and did the cache reload.
In File:HondaCivicSi1990.Ignition.png, under "File history" I see three thumbnails. The two with timestamps 14:15, 3 May 2026 and 23:15, 8 March 2026 are identical. The image timestamped 14:08, 3 May 2026 is the better image where I've marked the ignition points.
Can an administrator remove the 14:15, 3 May 2026 duplicate so that the 14:08, 3 May 2026 image appears in the "Ignition system" article? If there's a formal process for the request please give a link.
@PeterEasthope: FWIW: any time you click through to an image in the file history and suspect that it may actually be showing an older image, add "?action=purge" to the URL. That should always bypass the caches. - Jmabel! talk 22:51, 3 May 2026 (UTC)
Also: presumably you could have reverted to your preferred version yourself, but I've done it for you. - Jmabel! talk 22:54, 3 May 2026 (UTC)
Thanks for the tips. I'm learning more of the intricacies of Commons.
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CAD & CADD are fairly significant now and support for DXF would be appropriate and it's mentioned in File_types#Unsupported_file_types . Is there a means to up-vote the priority?
I'm not sure this file format is a good fit for wiki content. w:AutoCAD DXF is a "project" file format used to represent designs in AutoCAD. These files can contain both 2D and 3D content, and don't have a single well-defined display form. If your goal is to upload 3D models, this is probably not the right format to use for that. Omphalographer (talk) 19:19, 7 May 2026 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. Primarily I think of 2D. Is DXF feasible for that?
@PeterEasthope: is there much free-licensed content in DXF format, or for which a conversion to DXF would make sense? - Jmabel! talk 21:31, 7 May 2026 (UTC)
SVG or PDF would probably be a better fit for 2D diagrammatic content. I expect that AutoCAD can export to one or both of those formats. Omphalographer (talk) 21:41, 7 May 2026 (UTC)
The only advantage of DXF over those would be if someone wanted to suck it into a CAD system and do further processing. A lot of information loss in converting to SVG or PDF - Jmabel! talk 06:04, 8 May 2026 (UTC)
Agreed with Jmabel and Omphalographer: I just can't see many applications in the Open-Source environment. Professionally, I've worked a lot with DXF and DWG as exchange formats between various planning agencies, mostly to iron out conversion errors between these agencies when they use incompatible CAD programs/settings. I have seen a lot of 'broken' CAD files.
Correct me if I'm wrong: although there is an increasing number of OS software tools that are usable, I don't know about universal browser extensions for CAD. Or would you imagine a serverside conversion tool? How difficult would that be to roll out so that (say) >80% of DXF files would be rendered as intended?
If one wants to mesh a DXF file with other data - and I think that would be a main goal here? - one must know which SCS is used and be able to convert accordingly, which limits interoperability. And granted, that is an issue with all geographical data.
So, is there a significant OS-CAD community? And would they rely on Commons to hold files for their sake? I don't think we should spend resources on a specialist niche at a time in which Commons doesn't even support structured data. --Enyavar (talk) 21:03, 8 May 2026 (UTC)
Some background.
DXF is a simple, well known, text-based, CAD format but it is very old. It was defined by AutoCAD. The format is still used. For example, we export 2D DXF to our water jet cutter. Most CAD programs can import and export subsets of DXF. Think of it as a lowest common denominator.
DWG is the successor to DXF. IIRC, it was initially proprietary, but its format was decoded and openly published. It is an old format, but it still has some support as an import/export format.
IGES was developed as a CAD exchange format. IIRC, it was required for military contracts. The basic format is 80-char IBM cards (an indication of age). The specification was open, but I am dubious about its support in low-end CAD systems of the era. For simple drawings, DXF interchange was probably enough. If a low end CAD program supported IGES, it probably only supported a subset that corresponded to DXF.
ISO 10303 (STEP) is the modern format for interchange. Many part vendors supply STEP files on their websites.
The above file formats can convey design information and have features such as associative dimensioning. They can separate model space (a model of the actual object) and paper space (a 2D scaled rendering of the model). There are other formats that are used, but they are not CAD files.
STL is used for 3D printing.
SVG is a 2D vector graphics format that can show a paper space rendering.
@Glrx: DWG is actually older that DXF. "DXF" originally stood for "drawing exchange file". It was the file that other CAD companies were welcomed to use for interchange with AutoCad systems. (I was working in that field in the mid-1980s.) - Jmabel! talk 22:00, 9 May 2026 (UTC)
Hi,
Thanks for the overview and discussion. CAD formats are relevant to history of technology and to "right to repair".
> STEP
Yes, large quantities of DXF exist and STEP is better. Include both?
> support?
Rendering would suffice. Analogous to rendering HTML and SVG.
> ... an editor adds [[File:Duck.dxf|thumb]] to a page - what appears on the page?
A rendered image analogous to rendering PNG.
> ... software to implement those interactions ...
Conversions from DXF and STEP to JPG, PNG SVG can be automated.
Interactive editing isn't required or appropriate.
I do not see a use case for our project. What kind of data do you want to upload to Commons? For spatial vector data geojson is sufficient for regular web application use cases. GPSLeo (talk) 19:40, 10 May 2026 (UTC)
I noticed that if I upload an after July 2025 YouTube screenshot, like File:Michael Kay 2026.jpg, it gets this category automatically. But if it's a before August 2025 YouTube screenshot, like File:Andy Sullivan, 2023.jpg, this doesn't happen, I'm guessing because different templates are used. Is this something that should be "fixed"? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:59, 9 May 2026 (UTC)
OnePlus photos contain hidden GPS data readable by Google Photos but not Commons/ExifTool?
After a recent OnePlus firmware update, photos taken on the device no longer seem to store GPS coordinates in the standard EXIF GPS tags. However, Google Photos still detects and displays the location correctly.
On Wikimedia Commons, the coordinates are lost on upload, while other metadata (date, camera model, etc.) remains intact, so this does not appear to be an EXIF-stripping issue.
Example file: photos.app.goo.gl/PeLpeY2eDWoQEYNo8
Could somebody inspect the file and determine where the coordinates are actually stored? My guess is that OnePlus now writes them into some non-standard XMP field, MP4 box, or proprietary metadata structure that Google Photos understands but ExifTool/MediaWiki currently ignore.
If the storage format can be identified, it may be possible either:
to teach Commons/UploadWizard to extract these coordinates, or
to add support in ExifTool/media handlers.
Technical analysis would be appreciated.
For my own use, I managed to restore normal EXIF GPS tags by changing a system setting, but the workaround is fairly non-obvious: location access must remain enabled while the "precise location" option is turned off. That does not really solve the problem for other users, though. Анастасия Львоваru/en 08:38, 9 May 2026 (UTC)
This in an interesting topic! I had something similar. I can imagine that they are in a format that Commons does not recognise. I can bring an example. This EXIF has N and E for coordinate directions, making it usable for Commons.Here, the letters are missing. These examples show that something little missing is causing a failing geotagging. In the example file, I couldn't find any coordinates (neither in Photoshop nor via Exiftool (as RAW values). I don't know if Google stores the GPS data externally (which would be weird), but at least in this case, I didn't find any hint on the coordinates. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 12:40, 9 May 2026 (UTC)
No, I don't think it is external - if I download them back on the phone I have coords again, and my phone is not a Google phone (okay, maybe it is not a strong argument, I am not technical enough). Maybe you know where to ask further? My ideas are over:( Анастасия Львоваru/en 12:52, 9 May 2026 (UTC)
Not quite, but maybe we get another answer here --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:41, 9 May 2026 (UTC)
Problems with SVG files validation
Resolved
I have some problems with SVG files. These files are valid, but they have problems passing validation:
When I purge the cache, they will pass. When I reload the page, they won't pass validation.-- Carnby (talk) 09:17, 10 May 2026 (UTC)
Would it be possible/useful to make an autocheck thing for cases like this, alerting user/file page "Hullo! The required license seems to be missing here!" or something like that? Some vids have the license there incorrectly, of course, but would it be a helpful thing to have? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:26, 10 May 2026 (UTC)
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where VisualEditor could get stuck loading on Windows devices with animations turned off, has now been fixed. 
Comment, please see the relevant phab task for this feature: phab:T417847. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 00:37, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
Resolved
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