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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/2026/05 /Archive/2026/06.

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Flickr2Commons not working

I can get right up to starting the file upload, but after a few seconds it returns "Origin https://flickr2commons.toolforge.org is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.". It was working fine just 2 weeks ago.

Not sure if related, but I also tried to upload a video from Flickr using Video2Commons, and that also returned an error. LetmeEditit (talk) 10:46, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Just tried again, still not working. It also hangs on "running" for 2-3 minutes after I enter the URL, but lets me through eventually. The error shows after I hit "Transfer selected files to Commons". LetmeEditit (talk) 10:10, 31 May 2026 (UTC)
Same issue, I also got “Load Failed” when I hit "Transfer selected files to Commons". 6D (talk) 02:53, 5 June 2026 (UTC)
Still not working... is there anywhere I can report this? I assume it's run by a volunteer who has better things to do than sit around tinkering all day... but worth a shot. LetmeEditit (talk) 13:38, 12 June 2026 (UTC)
Still not working, but I found a copy that works! https://flickr2commons-ng.toolforge.org/ — see Commons talk:Flickr2Commons#Tool down, use this copy. LetmeEditit (talk) 13:26, 16 June 2026 (UTC)
But it don’t support CC 4.0 licenses… 6D (talk) 11:39, 17 June 2026 (UTC)
I was wondering why it wasn't working for one specific user! Well, at least it's something. LetmeEditit (talk) 12:50, 17 June 2026 (UTC)
a month later, still not fixed… 6D (talk) 15:45, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Tool to download file and its metadata on commons？

is there a tool that downloads the file, as well as the metadata (wikitext of the file page; com:sdc; and possibly entire file page history) in a machine readable format (json/csv/readme.md...?)? requiring as few clicks as possible? one click on one button, or two clicks on two buttons? and a batch download tool for multiple files?

the use is, i save a bunch of files, but i also want to keep track of what each file is and the url they come from. RoyZuo (talk) 21:10, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

before a solution is found i'm just taking screenshots of the wikitext and save them together on my pc. RoyZuo (talk) 21:11, 31 May 2026 (UTC)
gallery-dl should be able to download files within a cat and JSON files with their respective metadata. You may add a sleep timer parameter to avoid too many requests --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:07, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Attribution error resulting from commons design

i've noticed that people quite often copy the url when they "preview an image in a category" for attribution purpose, e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tsai_Ing-wen_in_2009#/media/File:Tsai_Ing-wen_2009.jpg . if commons is serious about "protecting reusers" by "ensuring hassle-free attribution", this should be prevented. RoyZuo (talk) 07:37, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

What do you mean ? 1. we can't stop what people do. 2. links are how all our images are attributed throughout all the wikis. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:50, 1 June 2026 (UTC)
🤷‍♀️ you could fix this design that leaves room for error? as simple as by for example not making these "preview links" when "Media Viewer" is used? then dummies will not see such links to copy from in the first place? RoyZuo (talk) 10:44, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Reducing expensive function count on Module:Countries

I proposed some changes to the Module and am looking to hear opinions on that: Module talk:Countries#Reduce expensive function count -- DaxServer (talk) 19:28, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-23

MediaWiki message delivery 21:05, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Request of a little correction

Per a little discussion on Village Pump, I would like to request the change the prefixes of the units mentioned on Special:MediaStatistics. Although units like MB, GB or TB (soon PB) are used, they have the base 1024, and not 1000, like SI prefixes should have. So we should change them to MiB, GiB or TiB, as described in Byte#Multiple-byte_units. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:19, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

See the related Phabricator task and its extensive discussion here: phab:T54687. It appears currently your request is unlikely to be accepted. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 09:38, 2 June 2026 (UTC)
it's just not that important. the page isn't a wikipedia article and most people know what it means. MediaStatistics is also just an approximation to begin with. There's a lot of issues to deal with and correcting this is not very high on most peoples todo list, sorting out peoples opinion about this topic is even lower on that list, and thus things stay the way they are for a little longer. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:23, 3 June 2026 (UTC)
People have been flamewaring about these units since the 90s. You don't need devs permission to change it on commons though, you can just edit mediawiki:size-megabytes and related pages. Bawolff (talk) 22:53, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

HotCat gadget suddenly really slow today

It was incredibly fast, but just today it's slowed to a crawl — about 1 file every 3 seconds. Were there any changes? LetmeEditit (talk) 13:49, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Seems to be fixed today. Strange... LetmeEditit (talk) 13:24, 5 June 2026 (UTC)
HotCat is client-side application. It might be because of your internet connection. Nemoralis (talk) 21:14, 5 June 2026 (UTC)
Suddenly slow again today. It's so strange, my internet seems to be working fine. All other editing etc is snappy as usual. LetmeEditit (talk) 11:26, 12 June 2026 (UTC)
Sounds like you're talking about Cat-a-lot, not HotCat. Am I right? Ponor (talk) 09:49, 14 June 2026 (UTC)
If it is Cat-a-lot then it will slow down if there is high database load and it will switch to sequental editing instead of parallel which could cause effect described. In any case, please report Cat-a-lot slowdowns here MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js also. --Zache (talk) 09:58, 14 June 2026 (UTC)
You're right, sorry! I do mean Cat-a-lot. LetmeEditit (talk) 10:05, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Information about a VisualFileChange bug report

Hello,

I just wrote MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-VisualFileChange.js#Blocking_bug_in_VFC,_existing_since_2025-03-08_at_least. I'm posting this info here for possibly raising broader awareness. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 00:40, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-24

MediaWiki message delivery 21:27, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Large unused SVG files

I'm not sure if these files are eligible for deletion or some other remedy, but it seems like there's some issue with the unused files File:Location of Baixo Alentejo in 1936.svg and File:Location of the Baixo Alentejo Province in 1936.svg, which are very large at 2,211,320 × 6,148,917. They don't seem to render properly on my device. One is marked as having invalid SVG and the other is not. — Wracking ( talk / contribs / uploads ) 23:58, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

For me, in both cases, Commons fails to give me a usable PNG thumbnail (I just get a blank) but if I click through to the "Original file" it renders fine. Obviously if someone can make them render better, that's good, but I don't think deletion is in order, since they aren't useless. - Jmabel ! talk 03:12, 12 June 2026 (UTC)
I fixed File:Location of the Baixo Alentejo Province in 1936.svg by uploading a new version manually edited from File:Portuguese Provinces in 1936.svg (and tagged File:Location of Baixo Alentejo in 1936.svg for deletion as a duplicate). the wub "?!" 07:59, 12 June 2026 (UTC)
Those dimensions would make whopping 13,597,223,140,440 (13.6 terapixels) :O --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:06, 12 June 2026 (UTC)
Note that the SVG has no size (and definitely no pixels). It has a coordinate system and it scales infinitely. But the renderer to png DOES need a size and it likely takes this SVG ‘size’ as its initial starting size, before it scales down to whatever you requested. Dividing all coordinates and ‘sizes’ of the SVG by a factor of a 1000 might actually make this SVG work, by reducing the starting drawing surface for the png renderer. But I don’t know if there are any SVG authoring tools that allow you to do that easily. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:39, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Template:Navbox dark mode

vte buttons in Template:Navbox are invisible in dark mode. i could trace the problem only to Module:Navbar but not any further. RoyZuo (talk) 11:52, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Not sure what the cause of the problem is, but I think the CSS styles for the navbox are defined in MediaWiki:Common.css. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 14:56, 15 June 2026 (UTC)
Whenever a background color is defined, so should be the text color. But in Special:Permalink/576723076#L-87 that's not the case. I don't really see the need for having the bg color set here to anything TBH. Ponor (talk) 16:28, 15 June 2026 (UTC)
Module:Navbar clearly states that it is imported from English Wikipedia. English Wikipedia moved it´s css to templatestyles. It has been 12 years since it was updated, someone needs to go over the parameter changes, whether the arguments are handled differently and whether they are all still there. If not, some navbox usage might break. Only when that is okay it is safe to update it. Snævar (talk) 10:13, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-25

MediaWiki message delivery 16:45, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Files exist on commons, but cannot be embedded in articles

There is currently a strange problem in de.Wikipedia: for some reason File:Mühlgrabenmündung.jpg and File:Mühlgrabenquelle.jpg cannot be included in articles. What makes the situation even more confusing: Parsoid always fails, while the Legacy Parser can sometimes load the files. Here is a comparison using the migration tool. Purging (action=purge) is not fixing the problem. Is this a known problem that can be fixed here on commons? Kallichore (talk) 21:11, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

It seems like some sort of cache on the parsoid side. I haven't heard of anything like this before. I would suggest filing a ticket in phabricator Bawolff (talk) 01:16, 16 June 2026 (UTC)
Ok, I created a task.--Kallichore (talk) 18:18, 16 June 2026 (UTC)
@Kallichore looks more like a commons problem.
when i visited File:Mühlgrabenquelle.jpg, "No file by this name exists, but you can upload it. If a file used to exist, try to purge this page's cache"
even though https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/M%C3%BChlgrabenquelle.jpg/250px-M%C3%BChlgrabenquelle.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/M%C3%BChlgrabenquelle.jpg could be accessed.
so i purged the file page, then the file appeared again.
not sure how long it takes until de:Mühlgraben (Aubach) shows it. or maybe it needs to be edited and saved to force it? RoyZuo (talk) 20:23, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Any idea why File:09.06.2026 – Vizita de studiu a Comisiei pentru integrare europeană la București - 55324258433.jpg is still displayed in Category:Photos from Parlamentul Republicii Moldova Flickr stream to be reviewed in spite of said category being deleted a while ago? Gikü (talk) 14:15, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

All I had to do is ask :) Can't see it anymore, although like I mentioned it was there for a week. Gikü (talk) 15:15, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Google lens still not working

Is Google bans requests from Commons directly or there is some technical error here? As Google lens not working, categorizing files and searching copyvios becomes harder. Is there is a chance that the issue will be fixed? Regards, Юрий Д.К. 17:45, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Last month in technical changes

I decided to give another overview of some of the technical changes that have happened in the media support corner of MediaWiki. This is mostly an overview of activity since may 15th.

  • The reduction of allowed thumbnails sizes (to deal with excessive scraping and storage problems) is still ongoing, but most rough edges have now been tackled. The peak disruption of 429 error you might have experienced should be mostly dealt with. Still to do are: T56035 and T401668. Over 22 other tickets have been solved in this area.
  • The foundation is implementing a way to keep track of what part of MediaWiki has generated a media url. This is called media provenance. Because of it, you might notice utm parameters in the urls of images
  • Work on the migration towards new database tables T28741 for the media files remains ongoing. A few Wikipedias now read from the new tables, and several bugs have been fixed or are being fixed in preparation for the larger switchover.
  • Media viewer has seen a lot of action. Myself, simon04 and Krinkle worked on simplifying the existing code and removing lots of legacy code. There were changes for the new thumbnailsizes and the WMF Growth Team has been working on the Image Browsing-feature.
  • An issue arose with excessive usage of storage due to uncompressed TIFF uploads that is still under investigation. T427949 There is also an active discussion on the Village Pump about this topic.
  • UploadWizard can now make use of captchas (usually this is an invisible captcha) T426126
  • A longstanding bug where some of the information in the imageinfo api was missing if a filerevision was missing, has been fixed T239213
  • Zoomviewer has been down for several months T428524. If you are interested in picking up maintenance of this tool, you might want to indicate your interest.
  • Most devices now support native decoding of our video, and thus the support for software decoding was removed. Software decoding was in place from the very first support of video in 2007 and was actively in use on especially Apple devices all the way up to 2021 T376842.
  • And many improvements to keep things working with newer versions of php and MediaWiki itself, code maintenance and technical debt that all have to be done but that are invisible to most users (I estimate some 80+ changes, excl translations).

—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:02, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Weird EXIF content in USN image, maybe a Commons bug? - EXIFTool doesn't corroborate

Hello,

the "UserComment" in File:US Navy 101018-N-0711P-005 Berthing spaces aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71).jpg looks weird. It looks like (mostly) nonsensical Chinese (at least, Google Translate doesn't translate it). I'm suspecting some bug in the software here: I downloaded the file and looked into it with the EXIFTool GUI, as I wanted to fix the thing. The corresponding EXIF field should, as far as I can tell, actually show: 101018-N-0711-005 Newport News, Va. (Oct. 18, 2010)- The berthing space is one of 59 that have been upgraded aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) to provide Sailors a higher standard of living. ( U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communications Specialist Seaman Sandra A. Pimentel/Released) What's happening to transform that into Chinese characters? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 08:10, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

The comment field is internally represented as ASCII text, but is being interpreted as if it were w:UTF-16. See also en:Bush hid the facts (!) for some further discussion of encoding confusion. Omphalographer (talk) 23:11, 18 June 2026 (UTC)
the user comment field in exif is weird because the encoding rules are different. I would guess the file has the encoding incorrectly set to utf-16 or jis, however its always possible mediawiki is in the wrong,the field is rarely used after all. Does the file work in other programs? Bawolff (talk) 14:03, 20 June 2026 (UTC)
Found another image with "damaged" EXIF: File:Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy 2.jpg, again a garbled "user comment". This time though, the "user comment" is rendered as " . " when looked at in EXIFTool. As told before for the USN image: Checking the data with EXIFToolGUI gave the plain text line I quoted. So, it worked in a specialised EXIF tool. Would that be worth a bug report? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 00:39, 27 June 2026 (UTC)
The Lightning McQueen photo looks like something (possibly the camera?) has used the "user comment" field to store some non-human-readable data. This is a somewhat common issue with Samsung phones; see File:Ambulanta, Bačinac 01.jpg for another example. There isn't any sensible way to display this text to users, so I wouldn't consider this behavior an error. Omphalographer (talk) 02:54, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

It's Thursday...

I assume "it's Thursday" i.e. the day 'Improvements' are rolled out is the explanation for why the little "pointers" next to subcategories are now one-third the size, meaning even my otherwise ordinary-vision eyes have to squint to properly make them out? - The Bushranger (talk) 23:09, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

See point 6 of Commons:Village pump/Technical#Tech News: 2026-24. The icon library has been updated, and part of it includes changing the triangle icon. There are the ongoing discussions at phab:T399175 and phab:T427868, which a user has already pointed out the issue about the visibility of the new "triangle" icon. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 23:52, 18 June 2026 (UTC)
note: Commons is a Wednesday wiki. Thursday is for english Wikipedia. Bawolff (talk) 13:56, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-26

MediaWiki message delivery 13:02, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Removing incorrect SDC coordinates

At File:2nd Avenue S. near Washington St., circa 1970s - Flickr - Seattle Municipal Archives.jpg I have corrected the location. The SDC contained coords from the prior, incorrect location. "No problem," I thought, "I'll delete those and let the bot repopulate them." It does not seem to be possible to properly delete them, though I have tried several times. The file still shows a warning about a discrepancy.

I'm not that concerned that I cannot readily enter correct coordinates in SDC, but surely it should be straightforward to delete bad ones. - Jmabel ! talk 00:57, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

A month later, Flickr2commons still not fixed…

It is a month later and Flickr2commons still not fixed, please the creator fix this tool as fast as possible. 6D (talk) 15:02, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, no one is currently maintaining this tool. - Jmabel ! talk 23:30, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-27

MediaWiki message delivery 11:45, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Video2commons

My Video2Commons job is stuck in “Aborted” for several days and won’t clear. Could someone remove it? The video in question is: The Mothering Heart (1913), Better Picture Quality The Smart Star (talk) 22:38, 29 June 2026 (UTC)