History maps of Europe

Hi, I would like to discuss the description in all categories of the scheme "Maps of <country> in the <x>th century" (see for example Italy, Belgium, Spain, Poland). There are three different points about the current system I would like to invite comments on:

• the wording of the definition in the first paragraph of the hatnote
• whether or not to include "you may also be looking for similar maps" (second and third paragraph) of the description
• whether or not to re-include a distinction between history maps (in this category group) vs. old maps (not in this category group)

For the first point, there are two proposals, the first is the current "Maps showing all or most of the territory (geographic area) of modern-day <country> - as the lands were in the 8th century (701-800 CE)" which I would prefer to replace with a simple "This category is about maps of the history of <country> in the 8th century (701-800 CE)", given that "modern-day territories" are not always the same as they were in the respective century. Another critism of mine is that "all or most" excludes history maps that only cover smaller parts of the country in question.

For the second point, my argument is that these paragraphs are not necessary, since the links to the Atlas project should be included in the respective parent category (i.e. "Maps of the history of <country>"), which is also linked via template.

For the third point, I find it essential to point out that Commons has always distinguished "current", "history" and "old" maps, formulated in Template:TFOMC: "history" maps include this map of Poland in the 16th century (created recently, depicting the past) but "old" maps include this 16th-century map of Poland (created to depict the present, back then). There are certain grey areas where these categories DO overlap, especially "old history maps", but in quite many cases they don't. The respective category names are quite similar and can be confused, so I would suggest to mention this right in the category description.

I've put my own opinion in italics to explain why I think this requires debate, but I would like for people to check out the scheme examples for themselves, and judge on their own. Peace, --Enyavar (talk) 08:11, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

@Enyavar: I'm trying to understand the first point. A couple of questions that may help me understand:

• Would there be no such thing as "maps of Germany" for any date before 1866? Or would we take "Germany" before that date to mean the German-speaking world (and, if so, would that include areas where the rulers spoke German, but most of their subject did not)? or what? (Similarly for Italy.)
• Similarly: would there be no such thing as maps of Poland or Lithuania between 1795 and 1918? If so, what would we call maps of that area in that period?

I could easily provide a dozen similar examples, but answers to those two will at least give me a clue where this proposes to head. - Jmabel ! talk 18:49, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for that question, our categories about "history of" do not really care for nation states existing. Germany's history begins quite some time before it became a nation in the 19th century, and Polish history did not stop during the times of division: Poland in the 19th century is unquestionably a valid category. Our history categories generally imply that people know the limits of a subject without exact definitions.

Your question is getting to the reason why I am uncomfortable with the current hatnote/definition of these categories. I have not checked for all countries in Europe, but I'm quite confident: We do not define the subject of "Maps of the history of Poland" with a hatnote. We do not define "Poland in the 16th century" either. So why would we define the combination subcategory of the two so narrowly and rigidly, that only 6 out of 26 files currently in the category even match that (unreasonable) definition? (And of course, Poland/16th is just a stand-in here, I would argue the same for Spain/12th and Italy/8th and all others)

I would even be okay with no definition at all, besides a template notice (my third point) that "maps of <country> in Xth century" is about history maps, and old maps have to be found in "Xth-century maps of <country>". --Enyavar (talk) 04:53, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Categories denoted as old, or historic, are not terribly useful. Much better to put dates on them. Rathfelder (talk) 17:05, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Please read the original post, that is not a comment on the actual questions of this topic. Old maps are not the topic here, this is about history maps (i.e. Maps showing history of specific countries/centuries) regardless of when they were produced.

The term "historic maps" that can denote both, has rightfully fallen (mostly) into disuse. --Enyavar (talk) 16:23, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

In our Commons:WikiProject Postcards we have the similar problem. Is this a "old postcard of the German Empire" or a "Postcard of Germany". There we are mostly agree, that today people often search for postcards be the locations of today. So many former German towns are now Polnish towns and so we are categorized this postcards under the polnish name of the town. See also Commons:WikiProject_Postcards#Categories. Best regards --sk (talk) 12:29, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Maps from Our World in Data

A suggestion in regards with the maps from Our World in Data: remove from each map the category <year> maps of the world.

These maps weren't published in the years referenced. In addition, it could make the categories of <year> maps of the world more easy to browse.

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

As with other files in these categories, that's the year of the data. This categorization has large usefulness to find and update outdated images used on Wikipedia. And the category title does not imply that's the year the map was made. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:13, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

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

I have been meaning to say something about these maps, and this is a good occasion. User:Universalis is right that these maps were not created in that year, and it IS practice on Commons to understand "<year/decade/century> maps" being the maps created in that timeframe, not the maps showing that timeframe - the latter would be better placed under "maps showing <year/decade/century>".

User:Doc James, who is creating the majority of recent OWiD maps that concern what might be called history, is producing them by the thousand each day, at least as far as I can observe. For 2026-02-24 I just checked and saw 5000 edits, most if not all of them creating and categorizing OWiD statistics/maps usually looking like this (1947), this (1664) and this (1800). That is an enormous output and just for example 1764 maps of North America is currently dominantly OWiD maps and I suspect that this is true for basically all year-maps-of-world/continent right now. Case in point: the categories for 1444 maps of Africa, 1445 maps of Europe or 1446 maps of Asia don't even exist right now, but they are already filled with OWiD maps.

With at least 300'000 OWiD maps already existing and no end in sight, I would really like to delegate all of these maps into specific OWiD-categories for each continent and year. My suggestion for File:Annual co2 cement, North America, 1764.svg would be Our World in Data maps showing North America in 1764 or Our World in Data maps of North America in 1764. These year-categories would themselves be categorized under Our World in Data maps showing 1764 and Our World in Data maps of North America in the 18th century.

The titles I suggest above are up for debate. Is it more practical to use "Our World in Data maps" or can it be shortened to "OWiD maps" ? Also, should it be "showing" (as per our category branch "maps showing <year>") or should it just be "of" ? --Enyavar (talk) 03:58, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Sure we can adjust the categories however folks wish. We have additionally build a tool to help with more fined toned mass categorization. See Help:Gadget-CategoryBatchManager.

With respect to numbers, yes have uploaded about 600K so far and it looks like I am maybe a third done, so maybe 1.2 million more to go. Will likely not finish until this fall. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:03, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

and it IS practice on Commons to understand "<year/decade/century> maps" being the maps created in that timeframe, not the maps showing that timeframe this is an inaccurate statement. Look into any of these categories of years of the recent few decades and you'll notice how what you said is false. What you said applies to old maps and there usually the data shown is not known better than year of map made or the same. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:47, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

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

In 2014, it has been decided that "<year> maps" should essentially be empty disambiguations, and we should use "maps created in <year>" and "maps showing <year>" instead. Practically, this rule has never been enforced, and has lead to many simmering debates ever since. I'm striking my quarrelsome nitpicks from my previous comment, in order to focus on the suggestion at hand: Creating special categories for OWiD maps. Okay? --Enyavar (talk) 11:04, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

If you'd like to these could be subcategorized in the maps by year cats...I tried to keep them as flat as possible to enable viewing all the relevant files on one page, have easier to understand standardized cat names, and not start deep nesting that can cause queries and scans to break. Many hundreds of files would be moved. If there is agreement and no objections, should they be named Category:Our World in Data maps of the world showing 2014 data or Category:OWID maps of the world showing 2014 data or Category:Maps of the world showing 2017 (OWID) or Category:Our World in Data maps of the world showing 2014 or Category:2014 Our World in Data maps of the world or Category:2014 maps of the world (OWID) or sth else? (It's mostly maps of the world that I'd move.) Prototyperspective (talk) 12:40, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Doc James has stated above that we are going to have about ~1'800'000 maps once the current run of creating these files is finished. And I don't even think that will be the end of it. So I agree, we need to have a good standardized cat structure, and I am willing to hear if Doc James also has input on good names, or input on which names are less good. With that lead:

As far as I can see, we do have the following seven regions over which these maps are distributed: "the world", "Africa", "Asia", "Europe", "North America", "Oceania", "South America". These are the seven most common frames I noticed so far, please correct me if there are more. "World" is probably going to be a bit larger, but I don't think we should neglect the other regions, which are all going to be equally densely filled.

Now, thinking about the best name structure. I would prefer to pre-fix the data source, similarly to how we do it with other major map providers like "OpenStreetMap maps of...", "USGS maps of...", "ShakeMaps of earthquakes in...": The most important qualifier gets frontloaded. For easy manual input, I would prefer the name "OWiD maps of...". However, the categories are unlikely to get assigned manually, and it is much easier to understand what the acronym means when it is written out. So right now, I would tend to go with the general Our World in Data maps of... as the prefix, then followed with the seven (?) regions identified above.

Afterwards comes the suffix. Prototypeperspektive suggested ... showing <year> data, my own ideas leaned towards ... in <year> or ... showing <year>. These suggestions all look equally good to me. Prototype's suffix has the advantage of pointing out that these maps are data-driven and not cartography-driven. So I think that would be best.

Following that idea, we could go with Our World in Data maps of <region> showing <year> data. Taking an existing map like File:States involved in state based conflicts, Oceania, 1947.svg, one would assign Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data instead of the current three categories Our World in Data maps of Oceania, Maps showing 1947 and 1947 maps of Oceania. That new category would itself be categorized directly under the existing three categories it replaces.

If the above suggestion seems agreeable... how difficult is it for Doc James to change the automated exports and the templates that are currently in use? And would you be able to do an automated re-categorization of all the already existing files? Would you need help? --Enyavar (talk) 18:54, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Yah I think doing this in an automated fashion should be fairly easy. This would be subcategories of what main category? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:01, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

[[:category:Our World in Data maps of <region> showing <year> data]] would be subcategory of [[:category:Our World in Data maps of <region>]], [[:category:Maps showing <year>]] and [[:category:<year> maps of <region>]]. At a later point, I would like to reshape the last of the three parent categories to bring the OWiD maps under the 20th-century/1940s branches of <region>. With the example above, there is currently no sufficient subdivision of Maps of the history of Oceania, but the idea is creating Maps of Oceania in the 20th century and Maps of Oceania in the 1940s, and that would again be a subcategory of Oceania in the 1940s... But I think that work would not affect the OWiD-maps and their templates itself. --Enyavar (talk) 19:13, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Plan was to categorize once the initial uploads are completed, which will not be until this fall. And work on the 1.8 million or so files at that point. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:18, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

You are currently categorizing them upon upload by two mechanisms, one is the template:Map showing old data, the other is assigning regular categories. Right now, neither of these mechanisms is a bespoke template designed for OWiD content.

I can imagine a template that works like {{OWiD maps showing|Africa|1758}} that would create the categories we contemplated above, including links to skip forward/backward and also links to skip to the other continents/world extent. If we used such a template to create the category framework discussed above, couldn't you adapt your exporting automatism once that exists? I can only image it would take less work later.

Before I attempt working on such a template myself, I'm asking a few users who I suspect have more routine in templating, @Clusternote, AnRo0002, and Reinhard Müller: My question is how you would go about it: templates for the file descriptions; templates for creating these categories; or both? Are there pitfalls I am not aware of? We are talking here about ca. 2 million standardized files ranging from very few around the year 1021 to an abundance of such files for 2021, with hundreds of files per year per continent in 1834 already. The maps are optimized to be used in slider-frames elsewhere; for Commons I'm more concerned with handling the categorization. Thanks in advance! --Enyavar (talk) 21:51, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

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

I can happily come up with a suggestion for a template based on the Navigation by system. But first let me make sure I understand correctly:

1. The template would be used for categories like Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data, right?
2. Would we also have Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1940s data (decade) and Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 19th-century data (century) as parent and grandparent of the year category?

Thanks --Reinhard Müller (talk) 09:07, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks Reinhard, regarding #1 yes that is idea.

{{OWiD maps showing|Africa|175|8}} --> Our World in Data maps of Africa showing 1748 data

{{OWiD maps showing|Oceania|194|7}} --> Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data

As for #2 I would have suggested "... showing the 1940s" and "...showing the 20th-century" as parent categories. But you're right, I talked above about "<year> data" so "<decade>s data" and "...<century> data" would be the logical consequence. Now I'm less sure about the format. I am not married to the idea of requiring the "data" suffix, but as long as the template could be made, I see no real problem. @Prototyperspective: , what do you think about "Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 20th century data being the respective category on the century level? Enyavar (talk) 19:11, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

I have now created:

Templates

• {{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and century}}
• {{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and decade}}
• {{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and year}}

Example use

• Category:Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 20th-century data
• Category:Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1940s data
• Category:Our World in Data maps of Oceania showing 1947 data
• Category:Our World in Data maps of the world showing 1947 data

The usage of the templates is super easy, no need for any parameters specifying the continent or the year, they take everything they need to know from the name of the category they are used in.

The names of the continents are automatically translated using Wikidata labels. The first part of the title and the text above and below the navigation blocks are just examples. These can be used as an explanation for the category which is centrally maintained and must only be changed once if something should be changed, and if the texts are final, we can also make them translatable.

Please let me know what you think. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 09:52, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

P.S. Looking at the currently existing category tree about maps, I really think that the OWiD categories shouldn't be in Category:1947 maps of Oceania or Category:1940s maps of Oceania. For centuries, we already have Category:Maps of Oceania in the 20th century, and I think it might be a good opportunity to introduce these categories also on a decade and year level. If you want, I can also create the templates for "Maps by continent and century/decade/year shown". And/or whatever you consider useful for building the correct parent structure for the OWiD categories. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 14:37, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

@Reinhard Müller: Thanks a lot! This is even easier to apply than I thought. I populated three continents for the 1940s (Africa, Asia, Oceania) and also the world.

The decade-template for the world in the 1940s did not work (lua template cannot find "the world"), I hope this can be fixed. Aside from that it looks pretty great. Sorry, two more nitpicks, some links only appear once some other part of the structure has been fully built up. The year-ribbon only shows up once the decade-category is in place; and it seems as if the decade template only shows up once the century-category is in place? Also, I think that the subcategories could be sorted with a space (" ") instead of the "@".

I agree with your proposal that instead of "1947 maps of Oceania" we should have "Maps of Oceania in 1947" which would be the "maps showing"-version. "Maps of Oceania in 1947" would be a subcategory of "Maps showing 1947", "Oceania in 1947", "Maps of Oceania in the 1940s" respectively. This category would then hold the OWiD maps and all maps that show Oceania in 1947 through the historian's lens, similar to how we already have Maps of Poland in the 16th century (see also one thread above...) and Maps of the world in the 1940s.

@Universalis, Prototyperspective, Jmabel, and Doc James: when you check the bolded links... does this new structure look okay? --Enyavar (talk) 15:22, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Very nice. Are you using a bot to apply this? Or have you tried Help:Gadget-CategoryBatchManager? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:46, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback!

• I fixed "the world" (ooh, it feels good to write this ;-))
• It is generally true that the template works best when the categories are created top down (i.e. first the centuries, then the decades, then the years). Still the navigation ribbons should appear even if the parent category does not exist (yet), I will have to investigate why they don't. But for the addition of the correct parent categories for new categories, it is important anyway that the parents pre-exist.

FWIW, this is now also fixed. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 19:51, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

• I have (years ago) thought a lot about the question of logical sort keys, currently they are used very inconsistently across commons. I've even made a page summarizing my thoughts which you may or may not agree with. About this specific case, I think the space is widely used for meta categories (Blah blah by xyz) and should be reserved for that, and that the @ has the advantage of being sorted after all the other special characters, so if for example the category key "*" is before the alphanumeric subcategories, it is also before the numeric subcategories if the numeric are sorted as @. In the end I don't think in our case it makes much of a difference as long as all the subcategories use the same key so they are sorted correctly - which is taken care of by the template.
• About the "Maps of Oceania in 1947", would you want to also create them right now? Should I create a {{Category description/Maps by continent and year}} (and decade and century), and adapt the OWiD templates to the new parents?
• I don't use a bot, and I think that the CategoryBatchManager can add parent categories, but not a template. But since you don't have to change a single letter when copying the template from one category to a similar one, it can be done very fast. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 18:02, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

About the "Maps of Oceania in 1947" - yes, you could create a template for that, as well. We already have parts of that, but right now they were created in a manual fashion: North America/1770s and Asia/18th and Europe/11th. I'm not yet fully eager and ready to apply this structure as long as the other treat about #History maps of Europe is still unresolved. But having the templates prepared now might help later. Once those maps-per-continent-shown-by-year exist, the OWiD template would be switched from "1940s maps of Asia"+"Maps showing the 1940s" --> "Maps of Asia in the 1940s" and so on. --Enyavar (talk) 19:51, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

I have created:

• {{Category description/Maps by continent and century shown}}
• {{Category description/Maps by continent and decade shown}}
• {{Category description/Maps by continent and year shown}}

I have not (yet) changed the parent categories for the OWiD categories. Please just let me know when I should do that.

Also please don't forget that the texts above and below the navigation ribbons are just placeholders (in the OWiD templates and the new templates), and they should be finalized before the templates are widely used. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 22:02, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Looks great; thanks very much. I just don't know how complete these cats currently are and will be. They could be made complete via deepcategory category intersections and moving files with cat-a-lot. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:22, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

But first, we need to categorize the OWiD maps. I populated the 1940s structure with a few hours of Cat-a-lot, but there is a catch: all these maps currently have the template {{Map showing old data|year=1942}}. For the 1940s alone, removing that template means manually editing 17'500 files. We must use a bot to do these edits, I think. The algorithm, for all ~75'000 maps of Asia would be roughly as follows:

• for all files in [[Category:Our World in Data maps of Asia]]
  • if "{{Map showing old data|year=YYYY}}" occurs in the file:
    • take the YYYY as a variable to insert "[[Category:Our World in Data maps of Asia showing YYYY data]]" //** a single category for the location and year of the map **//
      • if that inserted category does not yet exist: create it with "{{Category description/Our World in Data maps by continent and year}}" //** (as helpfully provided by Reinhard)**//
    • take the file name as the variable topicname and strip File: and , Asia, YYYY.svg (or ,Asia,YYYY.svg) from that variable
    • insert "[[Category:Our World in Data maps showing ||topicname]]" //** for example Category:Our World in Data maps showing Absolute change co2, neatly collecting ~1800 files like this one or ~200 files like this one: a single category for the topic of the map, to have them all easily assembled **//
      • if that inserted category does not yet exist: create it with "[[Category:Our World in Data maps by topic]]" //** in many cases, better names might be found, but that cleanup can be handled afterwards manually where needed **//
    • remove all occurences of "{{Map showing old data|year=YYYY}}", ""[[Category:YYYY maps of Asia]]" and "[[Category:Our World in Data maps of Asia]]"
  • (else leave the file alone)
• repeat the same with "Africa", "Europe", ["North America" or "NorthAmerica" would need to be mapped onto "North America"], "Oceania", and so on.

I do not know how exactly to program a bot, but I think this would do the trick, not only to create and populate the categories for continent-by-year, but also to have distinct categories for each topic. Right now, I don't think the latter exist yet. --Enyavar (talk) 19:51, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

For the 1940s alone, removing that template means manually editing 17'500 files: I haven't been following all of this, but why manually? - Jmabel ! talk 20:53, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

True, the bot run would also touch those files. I just wanted to emphasize that so many files cannot be realistically processed manually, and then formulated how I think this could be automated. I struck the word in my earlier response. --Enyavar (talk) 22:21, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

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

Help needed to close 6,323 Category for Discussion cases

There is a large and growing backlog of open CfDs. It would be great…

• if more people would participate in these discussions to move them toward closability and
• if more admins or CfD/backlog-experienced users would to go through CfDs to close closable discussions (if there is a way to filter these for discussions with 3+ participants, that would be useful)

The oldest open discussions are from 2015. If you have any ideas how to increase participation or more easily solve more CfDs, please comment. For example, maybe there is a way to see CfDs for subjects one is interested/knowledgable in or users could identify users relevant to CfDs and ping them from there to get these to participate (e.g. top authors of the linked Wikipedia articles identified via XTools).

CfDs shouldn't be closed for the sake of it prematurely though – the reason for why they have been started should really be solved before they're closed – sometimes this requires some restructuring, renaming or categorization work. For info about CfDs, see Commons:Categories for discussion. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:55, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

A backlog like this is a disgrace. Will nobody think of the poor nominators? Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:10, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps we can categorize CfDs like we categorize DRs, so people who are only interested in a specific subject can browse CfDs relating to that subject more easily. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 15:19, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Good idea. Joshbaumgartner had already set up Category:Category discussions by topic in mid 2024. However, it can be difficult to categorize CfDs into these as these topic categories probably would need to be and are very broad where deepcategory fails. This probably is part of the reason for why the current subcategories are very incomplete and contain just few CfDs (which means that cat is currently not very useful and also doesn't seem to be used much so far). For example, when trying to find more than the 1 CfD currently in the Culture-related CfDs, this search does not show any CfDs and neither does this search. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:38, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Indeed, it was an attempt to do exactly that, but as a manual process it isn't going to be useful unless broadly adopted as part of the CfD process and probably needs some better gadgetry to make it user friendly for nominators to categorize their CfD from the start. Josh (talk) 01:11, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Agree. Adding some functionality to a widely-used gadget or a gadget in general may not be needed for this to be broadly adopted: one could have a bot auto-categorize the CfDs and then then better-populated by topic cat could maybe be made more visible in various ways so more people use these. Since the deepcat queries break, I don't know how that could be done theoretically – maybe via petscan or quarry or the Commons SPARQL query service. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:46, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree that categorizing CfDs could be useful, both for users to find them to comment, and for admins to find them to close. (That's especially true where the discussion hinges on specific knowledge bases, or is conducted in non-English languages.) I don't love the idea of canvassing users, even by neutral/automated criteria, unless it's strictly opt-in.

Like many other tasks, the CfD backlog is mostly due to a shortage of admin time. (Experienced non-admin users can also close discussions, and I think it's a great place to learn admin for those considering the mop, but obviously they are not able to delete categories when needed.) There's also a notable lack of tools to efficiently work with CfDs, which means that the workload for a given CfD is substantially higher than a DR. I can close DRs or process speedies on my phone in a few spare minutes on the bus, but closing CfDs requires my laptop and a longer block of time.

• Tool to close CfDs - it should be one click to add {{Cfdh}}, {{Cfdf}}, etc, just like it is with DRs.
• Tool to rename all categories in a category tree, and move associated files
• Tool to add/remove CfD notices on all categories in a given category tree
• There are some other less common but time-consuming CfD closure tasks that would benefit from tools. For example, sometimes we decide to merge two category trees with identical structures but different names, or to upmerge a large swath of categories. Having to work through these can make a single CfD close take hours.

Some of these may exist in some form on enwiki or other wikis, which could reduce the work required from "write from scratch" to "localize to Commons". Given the importance of the CfD process and the limited capacity of volunteer developers, I really think these should be developed and maintained by the WMF. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:31, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Opt-in notifications of CfDs aren't feasible I think – a related idea however would be to maybe post about categories of CfDs on WikiProject pages about that broad subject.

Regarding the shortage of admin time maybe an approach could be to get more sufficiently experienced users to help with closing CfDs. Only a fraction of CfDs involve cat deletion and one can also delete these by renaming the category without leaving a redirect in many of these cases.

More tools for CfDs would be great – or probably CfD-features in existing tools like Twinkle. To your useful list of missing features, I'd add a tool to modify many category pages at once similar to VisualFileChange. I've asked about it at Commons:Village pump/Technical#Editing many categories at once and this could also be used for the add/remove CfD notices on all categories in a given category tree functionality. I'd like to note though that afaik most CfDs are not held back by this but rather by a lack of user input or nobody closing the closable CfDs. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:27, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: I believe you can edit multiple cats at once with AWB, but I don't recall that I've ever done it, not a tool I've used recently. - Jmabel ! talk 20:47, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

some are just missions impossible unless the right person interested and capable in that task can be found.

for example Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/01/Category:Gothic jewellery seems pretty straight forward. we just need 2 categories, 1 for gothic as a style and 1 for the things related to goths the ethnic group, but it contains many files and subcategories. to distinguish and separate them takes a lot of time for people without that specific knowledge. RoyZuo (talk) 15:31, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

also the problem plaguing many cat names will vanish when cats can be like wd items which can take on multilingual labels, descriptions and aliases.

we dont need to settle on a single title.

technical solutions and infrastructure upgrade are much needed for commons. RoyZuo (talk) 15:40, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Since the thread was started, the backlog has been reduced to 6311 – not much of a change but it's good to see that the direction currently is downward, not further up. Maybe what could help are summaries of the outstanding issues/question for bundles of stale CfDs. However, that probably doesn't scale above a hundred or so CfDs and most CfDs are rather short. A way to connect people knowledgable/interested in a certain topic with open CfDs in that area seems like a better way forward. If CfDs were categorized by broad topic, this would however still require users to proactively go to that category and see if it has any CfDs of interest to them.

On English Wikipedia there was a recent thread about CfDs (started by Pppery) and there there are only about 250 open CfDs. Maybe one could see if they're doing some things to get more CfDs closed faster other than ENWP simply having more category-pageviews and more contributors. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:06, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

At least Commons' backlog is going down. Enwiki's has been going up overall and briefly exceeded 300 several times over the last few days. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:04, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Maybe this is useful and maybe we could/should have a page like this on Commons too: en:User:Qwerfjkl/How to close CfD discussions. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:39, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Things are going down again – it's at 6,271 categories that have a CfD now. Thanks to everyone involved, and I'd like to thank especially Deltaspace42 who is doing a remarkable effort on the CfDs as far as I can see (seeing many closes of CfDs I have watchlisted). Will update the chart soonish.

An issue with the applied quantification is that it does not show the 'number of open CfDs' but the 'number of categories with open CfDs' and some CfDs relate to lots of categories with tags being on each. However, some users also create lots of separate CfDs about the same topic for each of the affected category so the number of open CfDs wouldn't necessarily be better, even more so since prioritizing the CfDs that have hatnote tags on lots of categories makes some sense and nothing is stopping contributors to close or participate in these first. I'll probably rename the chart to make it clearer which count it shows. Nevertheless, if somebody knows of a way to get data of the number of open CfDs over time, please comment. It looks like every month back to Dec 2015 has at least one open CfD except for a few months in 2017 which have been finished.

-

I encourage everyone to take a glance over one or a few months of CfDs to see whether there's any you have some input for. It's often not discussion that are specific to some subject where barely anybody other than people interested/knowledgable in that topic could say something constructive but also various other types of complications and issues that need resolving. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:10, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Preliminary top CfDs by number of categories affected:

• Counties of Northern Ireland: 196
• GLAM dashboard reports: 163
• Historic views: 148
• Setsumatsusha: 100
• Saint Catherine: 84
• University and college yearbooks: 72 – "closed" but not actually closed
• Rendered names of countries: 63
• Photographs of dance: 54
• Built in Leeds by year categories: 53

Help with closing these CfDs would be very welcome. Prototyperspective (talk) 01:20, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Now I've compiled this list of CfDs sorted by number of affected categories (via a new script I'll put on gitlab):

• Commons:Categories for Discussion table

Maybe it can be useful to find CfDs, and enable seeing or prioritizing those that affect many categories. Note that if these get addressed first the Category:Categories for discussion will become better navigable as it's not cluttered with dozens of cats from one CfD and the note can be removed from more categories where readers can be confused by them. There could maybe be other columns for other data like the year. Would be nice if these could get closed and it would most effectively reduce the number tracked in the chart.

Looks like there are about 2579 open CfDs currently. However, it doesn't look like the total number has been tracked (it is/can be only tracked starting now). Thus, a chart for the count of CfDs can't be made. If the total number of CfDs (not cats affected by CfDs) has been tracked somewhere, please comment. On English Wikipedia if I'm not mistaken, these numbers have been tracked – en:Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Awaiting closure. Numbers there have been low throughout. Prototyperspective (talk) 01:08, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Added a column for the year and fixed missing entries as well as it showing some entries that don't have the template. It seems like the API returns some items multiple times, unlike the mediasearch and specialsearch – or so I thought.

There still is a gap between the count of categories per the category page (or the incategory:"Categories for discussion" search results) and the count of deduplicated search result page titles. The count of undeduplicated titles (6,175 at last run) is quite close to the current content count of the category (6,207 but some get recently closed) so I'm wondering whether maybe there are duplicates too given that in one run, it did find Category:1976 in County Antrim and in another run (without changing the script) it didn't, as can be seen at Special:Diff/1194380520. Something seems off. The script is at https://gitlab.com/prototyper-apps/wikicfdstablecreator and if somebody is interested one can use it with node main.js --pages 2 I'll probably look into it again at some other point if I can identify the issue but as far as I can see currently, the search API not only fails to properly apply the insource search operator but also shows some pages multiple times. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:41, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Investigated further and now dumped all the json API responses (linked on the page). There really does seem to be an issue with it and this may also affect other tools and gadgets and may cause developers to debug for long without seeing that the issue may be in the API response. The returns are always different and this is especially hard to see since the undeduplicated found count is similar to the category count; petscan nevertheless shows a count like the category. Here is an example: this query shows 21 categories affected by a closed-but-still-open CfD; the API replies had Category:Wendy Whoppers and Category:Jessie James (porn actress) twice each but did not contain Category:Kaitlyn Ashley. Deduplication is handled by the script but the count of affected cats is too low in the table because some are missing. In an earlier scan I noticed Category:Kayenta Mine is included while in a later one it wasn't. Another potential cause could be the way of pagination with the API since that comes even before the json is dumped but it seems fine – it's at sroffset = j.continue && j.continue.sroffset;. I'll put this to rest for now (unless there is some feedback/info at least). Prototyperspective (talk) 18:13, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Reported the API issue at phab:T422891 (also relevant to other tools using the Commons API) and completed the Categories for Discussion table via enabling multiple runs of loading all the pages (the script can also be adapted for diverse other purposes where one loads Commons search results and retrieves data such as template parameters from the results).

• I've noticed a low-hanging fruit to reduce the number of categories with CfDs is by completing the closures of incompletely closed CfDs such as the "University and college yearbooks" CfD linked above. These categories are still in Category:Categories for discussion and have the CfD hatnote at their top. Somebody could find and complete these. AWB/wAWB can be used for that; can't do it myself because it needs some permissions.

Prototyperspective (talk) 17:18, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Well below the 6k now: 5,974 categories with open CfDs now – thanks to everyone helping to get the numbers down! The line in the chart now goes steeply downward. Please provide inputs for one or some of the CfDs at the top of Commons:Categories for Discussion table. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:03, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

The count is not rising but also not declining, 5,978 as of now. Lots of these CfDs are on important subjects that need resolution asap.

Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/03/Counties of Northern Ireland is the CfD affecting most cats and involves Counties of Northern Ireland after 1972. "According to en:Counties_of_Northern_Ireland#Government_and_modern_usage, for the most part, Northern Ireland has been organized under districts since 1972, 26 created in 1972 consolidated into 11 after 2015. […] It seems mighty odd to figure out which portions of Belfast would constitute County Atrium versus County Down because it was a split used almost 40 years ago." – how to proceed? Prototyperspective (talk) 12:33, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

The count has gone up over 6,000 again. It's good that it currently goes rather sideways than further up but this isn't the needed progress. The larger the backlog becomes, the less reasonable it will be for users to discuss things together when the best solution is unclear and/or controversial etc. Instead, people may go to large project-scope boards like here to ask about individual specific categories, cluttering the board or just implement a suboptimal solution right away without discussion even when such is truly needed. The probably larger problem is that lots of cases in the CfDs are about substantial problems that need resolval, e.g. impeding people to find files, falsely-named categories, cluttering search results and other issues.

Is there a way to find open CfDs where people voted with {{Vsd}} (Speedy delete)? This may be a way to find lots of CfDs ready for closing such as cases where the category is empty. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:46, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Try something like Commons:intitle:"Categories for discussion" -"is now closed" hastemplate:vsd. A couple of false-positives due to transclusions, but at ~20 results not too much to search through. --HyperGaruda (talk) 18:08, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, Commons:intitle:"Categories for discussion" -"is now closed" hastemplate:vsd -insource:"CFD month header}}" -insource:"{{Commons:Categories for discussion" this query shows there's still 11 open CfDs of these. The total number of open-CfD-affected cats is now at 6,020 so clearly no effective progress is being made. Ideas for how this could be changed would be welcome. Again, many CfDs are not about relatively trivial matters and solving them is needed for closing various issues that CfD-creators identified. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:06, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Office action: Removal of file

Hello all,

Today, the Wikimedia Foundation removed the file File:An illegal Cuban migrant beheads a motel owner in Dallas, Texas (10 September 2025).webm from Wikimedia Commons in response to a legal order from the Australian government. Our attorneys determined that the order applied to the Foundation under our policy for determining applicable law.

This video consisted of security camera footage of a graphic murder, reuploaded from a shock site. It was not in educational use on the Wikimedia projects. The video title suggested that its creator (on the origin site) may have originally attempted to link the violence to illegal immigration, but there was no evidence of it actually being used as political speech.

Our preferred approach is to first give community members an opportunity to evaluate content under your own policies, e.g. COM:EDUSE, but circumstances didn’t permit that in this specific and thankfully very rare case. In the future, we will endeavour to ensure the regulator understands and can accommodate that kind of community governance.

Please note that, as an Office action, we ask that you not reinstate the file and instead address questions to the Legal team via email, at legalwikimedia.org. Thank you. On behalf of the Legal team, -- Wikimedia Foundation office (talk) 22:22, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

@WMFOffice: Thank you. The public upload log for that file seems to have gone missing. It would be useful to know what else the uploader uploaded.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:30, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Will the letter/email the WMF received be added (even if it has to have redactions? Bidgee (talk) 22:49, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

@Jeff G., it appears the file page was archived over at Internet Archive, so you can check who was the uploader using the archived page. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 23:37, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

@Tvpuppy: Thanks, per this link the uploader was Illegitimate Barrister, who got the video from watchpeopledie.tv. Perhaps that domain is one worth blacklisting.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 02:08, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't think any policy allows us to blacklist domains in the absence of any copyright issues Trade (talk) 17:43, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

While removing the footage in this case seems like the obvious choice, given its lack of use in articles and very questionable educational value, it does raise questions about the place of other footage on Commons that graphically depicts recent murders whose value isn't necessarily so clear-cut. A pertinent example is File:Hamas members attacking civilians in Kibbutz Mefalsim, Israel (October 2023).webm, showing a man (with his face blurred) killed by being shot in the head at close range and subsequently profusely bleeding after falling to the ground. This file was kept after a deletion discussion due to the widespread view that the footage was public domain due to being CCTV Commons:Deletion requests/File:Hamas members attacking civilians in Kibbutz Mefalsim, Israel (October 2023).webm, and is now used in over 20 Wikipedia articles in over a dozen language versions. If the Australian government had requested that this file had been deleted instead, would the WMF reaction have been different? Should footage like this be hosted on Commons to begin with? Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:26, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm personally curious why the Australian government thinks they have jurisdiction over a CCTV video taken from the US. For transparency reasons, I would also love to see documentation of their reasons for the takedown. Abzeronow (talk) 03:34, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

It's because the material on Wikimedia is published/viewed in Australia. The government of a country rules what is published or otherwise happens in that country. Commons often deals with matters of copyright, which is special because treaties establish a fiction that, in matters of copyright, material on the internet is deemed published in the country of the server, which is why Wikimedia often ignores copyright other than the U.S. (It's more complex. Also, courts have found ways to circumvent that by using tort laws.) But in matters other than copyright, there is no such fiction and the normal principle remains. It is then a matter of the ways by which the country enforces its laws. If nothing else works, it can require the service providers to block access. -- Asclepias (talk) 14:08, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

If this is a particular case in that the Australian government ordered the takedown just because it could be viewed in the country, then the file should be restored as Wikimedia should not be bowing to censorship requests from any government. If it is a case that an Australian national or an Australian affiliate would face legal troubles if not removed, then obviously that is a defensible takedown. It would still be reprehensible behavior from Australia's government but then I wouldn't think in that case that restoration would be right. So we should have more details about the reasons for the takedown so this doesn't seem like WMF meekly acquiescing to a tyranny, which would have a chilling effect on the speech of Wikimedia. Abzeronow (talk) 03:33, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

It's certain that the Australian body required the removal of the video because it could be viewed in Australia. See section 109(1)(c) of the Act: "(c) the material can be accessed by end-users in Australia". The other conditions of section 109(1) also apply. "(a) material is, or has been, provided on [...] a designated internet service" (""service" includes a website" per the definition in section 5 of the Act). And ""(b) the Commissioner is satisfied that the material is or was class 1 material". The Commissioner was likely satisfied since at least a one-minute video of the matter was banned by the Australian Classification Board on 29 September 2025 in the case number "esafety INV-2025-05602". In a FOIA release (see at the bottom of this pdf), the specific reasons are redacted. The unredacted part of the decision merely quotes the criteria from the classification scheme. In short, the relevant part is likely that it depicts "cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults". The Wikimedia version of the video was 5 minutes. With that, the Commissioner likely gave Wikimedia a "removal notice" per section 109 of the Act. So, at least, we can guess reasonably that that was the context. From there, the WMF, applying its policy, apparently evaluated that there were risks. As you say, absolutely, the WMF should give more details. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Asclepias (talk • contribs) 10:45, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Asclepias, so if the UAE complains about Category:Alcohol advertisements everything in that category will be oversighted? I agree with Abzeronow. If any country takes issue with content on Wikimedia that is legal in the US and which the community refuses to remove, that country will have to filter their own internet (and several do). - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 03:47, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

So if Iran demanded Commons to take down highly illegal "Zionist Imperialist propaganda" would Commons obey that as well? Trade (talk) 17:52, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

A request from the w:Australian government! So errr it came from w:Anthony Albanese personally? Since you're not mentioning any particular department or subdivision..
WMFOffice, so why exactly was the file deleted? Was it a copyright violation? Seems unlikely, you have no reason to take that down without a DMCA takedown request, which the Australian government probably didn't file. Did it fail COM:EDUCATIONAL? Who knows, but if WMFOffice were to start vetoing community decisions we'd have a serious problem. Did the file violate some US COM:PERSONALITY right? If that was the issue, you'd have told us. Did this particular video end up on w:en:List of films banned in Australia which states the sale, distribution, public exhibition and/or importation of RC material is a criminal offense punishable by a fine up to A$687,500 and/or up to 10 years imprisonment. Such penalties do not apply to individuals, but rather individuals responsible for and/or corporations distributing or exhibiting such films to a wider audience? In 2025 they banned "Videos featuring deaths of Charlie Kirk, Iryna Zarutska and Chandra Nagamallaiah". So I guess File:Charlie Kirk Assassination View.webm (NSFW) was maybe illegal in Australia (they banned two particular clips, I don't know which ones, and the ban for the clips of Kirk was later lifted)
Barrister is the UK/NZ/Ireland/Australia term for lawyer. But the user page of the uploader doesn't seem to declare their country of residence. If this is the reason, how did the AU government work out that Illegitimate Barrister fell under their jurisdiction? Is this why Legal is so vague, because they can't disseminate personal info? Or is this just coincidence? This would explain why the upload log was scrubbed though. Edit: what was I thinking, linking to their enwiki upload log??
Our attorneys determined that the order applied to the Foundation under our policy for determining applicable law.
That doesn't mean anything, does it?
but circumstances didn’t permit that in this specific and thankfully very rare case.
I know you think you're explaining yourself but you're really not.
we ask that you not reinstate the file and instead address questions to the Legal team via email, at legal@wikimedia.org.
Directing questions to your email (which will simply be answered with "we can't talk about that" - been there, done that) is just a transparency pretense.
If the reason is what I think it is, I'd have preferred a notice from WMFOffice like: "We deleted File:An illegal Cuban migrant beheads a motel owner in Dallas, Texas (10 September 2025).webm in response to a request from authorities to reduce the exposure of the uploader and local Wikimedia chapters to legal consequences. This is an office action, do not reinstate" - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 05:33, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm wondering if it was from the eSafety Commissioner (eSafety)? This page highlights what is illegal and restricted but why just this file? There are others here that fail eSafety's illegal and restricted online content classes (1 and 2). The vagueness from the WMF leaves us with more questions than answers.

I'm certainly not saying this file should have been kept, but I just find it odd for a foreign government to get involved with something that didn't happen within that country, nor hosted there. This is a concern as what other content could be treated like this? The files (photographs/videos) from the wars that are currently happening overseas next? Bidgee (talk) 12:00, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

" but I just find it odd for a foreign government to get involved with something that didn't happen within that country, nor hosted there." Why not? If Commons obeys the order then there is literally any reason for them not to do that Trade (talk) 17:53, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

It likely has to do with something like this, or more generally this. I'm guessing the WMF received something like a removal notice described there and that, according to their policy, the WMF considered that there might be "risks of project blocking [...] and/or monetary risks" in case of non-compliance. The Australian document hints that compliance can be required within 24 hours of the notice, which may be what the WMF alludes to by "circumstances didn’t permit". -- Asclepias (talk) 12:34, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

The thing is, EDUSE is sometimes explained as files in use in any of the Wikimedia sites. Those files are in minority of the total files on commons. Even if we just counted files in categories where none of the files are in use, in order to facilitate choice of a different picture of the same subject, I am predicting a 54% removal rate of all files on commons. This is based on the first 1000 results from this query:

select lt_title, count(cl_from) from linktarget
join categorylinks on cl_target_id = lt_id and cl_type = "file"
left outer join globalimagelinks on gil_to = lt_title
where lt_namespace = 14
and gil_to is null
group by lt_title

Snævar (talk) 20:39, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but this is just plain retarded. Why would we care about a request from a country where neither the Wikimedia Commons servers are located nor the video was taken? Though graphic, the video has obvious educational purpose on the article w:Killing of Chandra Nagamallaiah. Per w:WP:NOTCENSORED and COM:NOTCENSORED, the file should be restored as soon as possible, Australian Government be damned. Dabmasterars [EN/RU] (talk/uploads) 15:28, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

@Dabmasterars: Why would we care about a request…: If you rephrase that as "Why would we care about possibly being the subject of legal action in Australia, and how would we weigh that against one file of, at best, marginal educational value?" I think the answer as to why we would care becomes self-evident (even if the decision which way to go does not). Clearly this was a legitimate question, whatever you think of the answer. - Jmabel ! talk 19:41, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

As much as i never want to view these files, it does seem like NSFL files can sometimes serve an educational purpose, more so if they are documenting an atrocity that people deny happened. Bawolff (talk) 15:52, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

@Bawolff: Is "NSFL" in that last paragraph a typo for "NSFW", or is it a term I'm not familiar with? - Jmabel ! talk 20:48, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

It stands for "Not safe for life". Sometimes its used as a term for images you don't want to look at because they are disturbing or violent or something else other than sexually explicit vs NSFW which commonly means the image is pornographic. Bawolff (talk) 20:50, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

I will add that to the glossary in Commons:Editor's index to Commons. - Jmabel ! talk 21:11, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

It's objectionable how large that educational value is and whether it outweighs the problems of the file. Specifically, I think such files are much more likely for the value/benefits/plausible-use to outweigh the issues if things in the area #Blurring NSFW images are implemented/improved so that one does not accidentally stumble upon such videos (or even autoplaying gifs) and maybe doesn't see it without first unblurring.

I think it has already been mentioned that the file could be renamed if the title was found to be inaccurate or missing important info or otherwise inappropriate. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:03, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

How does only showing the video when explicitly requested protect the personality rights of the people depicted in the video? GPSLeo (talk) 11:50, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Fair point but misaddressed to my comment to which this issue/point does not really relate. Instead of addressing this in detail or arguing in one way or another, I'd just like to note that there's all kinds of war photography and -videos that document the horrors of wars as well as war crimes that depict dead people as well as people getting killed on Commons. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:50, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

But we only should host these files if they do not violate the rights of anyone. This means that in many cases we can only host a partially blurred version anyways. That we might want to save the original version to make it available in some decades, when they are old enough, has the same challenges as undeletion when copyright expires. GPSLeo (talk) 13:20, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

The video of Iryna Zarutska was already heavily blurred and Commons deleted it anyways though Trade (talk) 17:44, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Like the inflammatory title or not but this is very clearly a relevant file depicting a highly publicised and notable event. This could severely harm our ability to host CCTV files of high-profile crimes --Trade (talk) 17:42, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

It's worth pointing out the the upload log was not intentionally scrubbed. It's just under an old name prior to a move. see the upload and rename here * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:55, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

community should decide that it is educational or not. you should undelete the file. modern primat ^{ඞඞඞ ----TALK} 20:29, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Internet has made applicability of national laws a legitimate grey area. See the two examples I listed at meta:Talk:Wikilegal/A changing legal world for free knowledge#Probable EU examples to note for (although both cases concern French court decisions and concern intellectual property matter). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 07:12, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

Which is why it's so vital for WMF to fight for Wikimedia Commons rather than immediately rolling over Trade (talk) 18:40, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

It's been a week now and Wikimedia Foundation office is still ghosting us...--Trade (talk) 18:42, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Fr this is just plain out embarrasing. I've seen users get called out for refusing to show up on their AN complaints thread and you can't even be bothered for an entire week @WMFOffice: --Trade (talk) 00:54, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't know what you are even expecting here. There isn't any questions here waiting for WMFOffice's response. Bawolff (talk) 08:57, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

On the office action, I agree with those above that we could use some additional details about the justification. On the educational value of clips depicting graphic violence, IMO unless the file documents an incident with clearly documented public interest, it does seem like there's a good case for deletion on COM:PEOPLE grounds if not COM:SCOPE. Like [CONTENT WARNING] a non-notable police shooting. Others are more complicated, like someone apparently being accidentally killed by a brick, which happens off-camera, but with disturbing audio and the names of those involved in the description. That one is probably an EDUSE problem first and COM:PEOPLE second. As an aside, I found these by searching for the website name and not user uploads, but the same user uploaded all of them. Possibly this could be solved with a request not to import any further files of non-notable incidents from sites like watchpeopledie? — Rhododendrites ^talk |  02:51, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

I think the fact that Commons is now governed by Australian law is a much bigger deal than a couple of probably out of scope videos. Considering this isn't a DR, this feel rather off topic--Trade (talk) 05:44, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi all - I was one of the several lawyers and Trust & Safety staff that worked on this notice from the Australian eSafety Commissioner.

Some of you have justifiably asked whether the outcome would have been the same if the files or the jurisdiction had differed. The answer is: no, it often wouldn’t be (and you can see that for yourselves in the Transparency Reports). We look at each case individually, balancing merits and risks.

Commons is an educational project; we’re an educational charity. That means having to think carefully about how any action we take (or inaction) would affect the viability of the Projects, and their value to society. We consistently deploy vast resources (at least vast for us; our whole team is dwarfed by others) to defending takedowns (again as the Transparency Report will attest, as does some of our blogging, e.g. here and here), but we also have to think clearly about the actual merit of defending each one: Are we likely to lose, and what would be the short term and long term consequences of that, for everyone? And is it worth that, from a human rights perspective?

That analysis is especially important in the current legal environment we spoke about, here and earlier, here, which has become quite different from the one we all grew up in.

And as we said originally: the community should be the main assessor of educational value. We’re sorry that in this case you didn’t get a chance to specifically consider it. Instead, we had to look at indirect factors, like the video’s lack of current, meaningful educational use. This sometimes happens, but we strive to keep it to a minimum. We're looking at options to ensure more time for a community review. There may be cases where some of you think something does have some educational value, but our legal assessment of the broader situation still weighs in favour of an Office Action. But those cases should be extremely rare, so long as EDUSE is being diligently defined and applied by the community. That’s because community standards are often stricter than legal standards. PBradley-WMF (talk) 10:14, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Won't this just encourage the Australian eSafety Commissioner to take down even more files from Commons? Trade (talk) 11:57, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the additional context. However, I want to stress that actions like this risk creating a chilling effect on the Commons community. When content is removed via Office action without sufficient transparency, it becomes difficult for contributors to understand where the boundaries lie in practice. That uncertainty can discourage uploads and discussions around borderline but potentially educational material, especially in areas such as documentation of violence, war crimes, or other sensitive but historically relevant events. In that regard, I would strongly encourage the Foundation to publish the underlying takedown request, in redacted form if necessary, similar to how DMCA notices are routinely disclosed. Greater transparency would allow the community to better assess both the legal reasoning and the broader implications for Commons' scope and governance. I would also appreciate clarification on a forward-looking scenario: if the community were to determine, now or in the future, that this specific file (or similar material) does in fact meet the educational use threshold, would that assessment carry any weight against such legal requests? Or would the existence of an applicable removal order effectively override community consensus regardless of educational value? Relatedly, it would be helpful to understand how such cases should be treated in downstream contexts, for example if the removal itself becomes notable as part of broader discussions around Foundation governance, legal compliance, or government pressure. In such a case, could the material be reconsidered for inclusion under a clearly contextualized, encyclopedic purpose? --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 12:09, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks @Jonatan Svensson Glad - we're raising the transparency point (amongst others) with the eSafety Commissioner, and we'll revert back once we've made a decision on this. To your (and other commentators') points: 1. We'll refrain from committing here and now to action/inaction on hypotheticals, because the analysis factors we mentioned above can vary substantially between cases, and over time. 2. We don't want to discourage discussions, nor valuable uploads - quite the contrary. To your question "would [the community's educational use] assessment carry any weight against such legal requests", that was already answered in earlier posts: the community's carefully-balanced views about educational value vs possible harms (including to vulnerable users) are very relevant, but they will also not be the sole consideration when there's a legal dimension. 3. To the last question you raised: we're aware of the argument, and we have tried it at least once, recently; but that was an extraordinary case, and so far, it's unclear how successful it will be. Note that courts might not always be very receptive about such arguments (more common in journalism privacy lawsuits), out of concern about encouraging artificial attempts to exploit the Streisand effect. So we're sympathetic to the argument, but at the same time, it's not always the case that things can go from "illegal" to "legal" just because people talked - even very loudly - about them. PBradley-WMF (talk) 10:17, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

You mentioned you are raising the transparency issue with the eSafety Commissioner. Could you share (even approximately) when you expect a response, and whether WMF has also considered or initiated an internal merits review or appeal under section 220 of the Online Safety Act? --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 11:57, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, we certainly considered the provision, and others besides. We have not initiated those processes.

With apologies, I'm not able to offer a reliable time estimate for a public authority's response to extra-statutory queries. PBradley-WMF (talk) 13:18, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses. Looking forward to the transparency report. Abzeronow (talk) 03:14, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Bumping to prevent this from being archived. Abzeronow (talk) 03:19, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

good modern_primat ^{ඞඞඞ ----TALK} 15:09, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

I would strongly encourage the Foundation to publish the underlying takedown request, in redacted form if necessary, similar to how DMCA notices are routinely disclosed.

1. that should certainly be published in full. why is the government issuing an order that curbs public interest and that order can remain secret?
2. by this time, has there been a petition or some collective civil action in australia started about this? who does the esafety person answer to? who appoints them?

RoyZuo (talk) 14:55, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

They may want to redact some private information that would have no impact on the argument of the takedown request if there is some. Abzeronow (talk) 03:53, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

(small bump). Abzeronow (talk) 03:10, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I am confused as the others. You say it was an external take down request, but your arguments are that the file was deleted as the community was not able to enforce the terms of use. Of course external requests can inform you about files they should be deleted as terms of use violations anyways. Was this file deleted as a terms of use violation or because of an external take down request? If it is the second one why is the conversation not published as usual? GPSLeo (talk) 14:54, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Re: "your arguments are that the file was deleted as the community was not able to enforce the terms of use": We're sorry if that was the impression given by our post - that wasn't what we aimed to get across. We're informing the community that we removed a file before the community had an opportunity to consider its own policies first, and that this is something we regret, because it's a very valuable function. If something we said in particular gave you the opposite impression, let us know and we can perhaps clarify it. PBradley-WMF (talk) 17:26, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

This no answer to my question: Is the deletion based on our terms of use or based on an external demand? GPSLeo (talk) 18:20, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Question: If Australian eSafety Commissioner demands File:Charlie Kirk Assassination View.webm taken down would you comply with that as well? Trade (talk) 00:04, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

@PBradley-WMF: I also agree with Jonatan that there needs to be a publication of the Takedown request. Allowing a government ministry to take down a file without any discussion from the community is a free speech violation and will have a chilling effect on our contributors especially those who live in countries with repressive governments. If you won't release the takedown request (in redacted form is fine if privacy is a concern), then I will ask what my venues of appeal to overturn this decision are. (So far I have refrained from taking this to social media) Abzeronow (talk) 02:59, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

How does deleting one file have a chilling effect? This is just an absurd claim. Nosferattus (talk) 00:02, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Because if we delete one file based on what a government official says is not educational, we open up a whole bunch of contentious files to be taken down by any government. The Pentagon Papers, maps that don't comply with Indian law, the Charlie Kirk video mentioned above, any file that depicts Muhammad. Censorship never ends with one file. As Sir Patrick Stewart said as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation: "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Abzeronow (talk) 03:41, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

This is frankly an embarrassingly naive post. This is a random gruesome crime against an identifiable person who is not notable, whose relatives are still alive, not the Pentagon Papers for christ's sake. Commons:Dignity is policy as well, and there is a good case for deleting the file on that basis even without a takedown order. There are files that it would be worth the legal hill to die on to defend keeping on the site, but this file just isn't it. Hemiauchenia (talk) 10:49, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

While I don’t disagree with you that that file had no place here (as a TOS or community view), it is just concerning that a foreign government that had no jurisdiction of the video had issued a takedown notice. Bidgee (talk) 11:01, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

This is simply the legal reality that the WMF lives in now, for better or worse, and requests like this are going to become more and more common. It has to pick its fights carefully, and if it is going to make a legal stand against an order like this, it needs to be about a file where there is far more merit in keeping it. Ultimately, Commons users can cry "censorship!", but they don't have any skin in the game or liability for hosting the file. Hemiauchenia (talk) 11:27, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

The problem is, the WMF doesn’t have servers in Australia, so no legal issues for hosting such content. eSaftey Commissioner should have issued a notice to RSPs (Retail Service Providers/Internet Service Providers) to block access to the URL (it has done before).

The action taken now has set a precedent that a foreign government can demand a take down of content that it deems to be violating its laws, even if said content has nothing to do with the said country’s jurisdiction.

I don’t dispute that the file in question doesn’t belong here on other grounds but this was outside of Australia’s jurisdiction. Bidgee (talk) 16:03, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

i think many govts' arguments are that as long as a website can be accessed in that country they have jurisdiction over it.

china was probably one of the first to claim "internet sovereignty".

project gutenberg got sued in germany.

uk ofcom fined 4chan.

here australia took down wikimedia commons files. RoyZuo (talk) 16:21, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Did 4chan pay the fine? Exactly. Then why should we care? Dabmasterars [EN/RU] (talk/uploads) 16:33, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Because the hosting of the file on Commons has to be weighed up against 1. Having the WMF engage in a legal fight against the Australian government, which would be lengthy and expensive. 2. Commons and possibly Wikipedia likely being blocked in Australia (blocking Commons on its own would likely disable images for Australian Wikipedia users) 3. Bad PR when newspapers report on the legal dispute and Commons hosting the file, which could cause cascading legal pressure against the WMF from other countries for other Commons files. All of this for a file that really shouldn't be on Commons anyway. It's easy to complain about stuff when you don't have to deal with the consequences. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:33, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Unlikely, WMF has no presence in Australia and the Australian chapter is completely independent from the foundation.

x/Twitter left Australia and the case eSaftey had was dropped.

eSaftey would be doing itself bad PR if it requested that the whole of the WM projects to be blocked. It can just request the URL to the video be blocked.

https://theconversation.com/elon-musk-vs-australia-global-content-take-down-orders-can-harm-the-internet-if-adopted-widely-228494

https://theconversation.com/what-does-the-us-congress-want-with-australias-esafety-commissioner-270273

https://theconversation.com/elon-musk-is-mad-hes-been-ordered-to-remove-sydney-church-stabbing-videos-from-x-hed-be-more-furious-if-he-saw-our-other-laws-228380 Bidgee (talk) 20:58, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia nor Commons are not major outlets of government communication, unlike Twitter/X, for better or worse, which means that the WMF has far less leverage over the Australian government and less way to strongarm out of a block. Your claim that It can just request the URL to the video be blocked. is completely wrong. Individual pages cannot be blocked on a site using HTTPS like Commons does , meaning that the entire site has to be blocked to enforce a block request. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:28, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

COM:DIGNITY is, in my opinion, stupid and should've been overturned a long time ago, but that's a topic for another day. Dabmasterars [EN/RU] (talk/uploads) 14:35, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

While I agree that this probably wouldn't have survived a DR under COM:DIGNITY, the community making that decision is far less coercive than the Australian government doing it (and are likely emboldened to do in the future.) This will not be the last time a government will be able to take down a file if this decision stands, and the next case might be a file that the community would decide to keep. WMF cannot offer any excuses now to prevent government censorship if this stands. Abzeronow (talk) 02:50, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

webp vs png

This link:

https://static-assets.artlogic.net/w_1680,h_1680,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto:good/artlogicstorage/philipmouldgallery/images/view/b61e6237cc4f9a3d64e42ccc68908020p/philipmould-company-sir-thomas-lawrence-pra-portrait-of-sophia-lee-1750-1824-mid-1790s.png

appears to refer to a png file, but when I save it locally, I get a webp file. I have encountered many similar examples. What is going on here? Is there away to get the png file? Does it matter? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:07, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

It returns the original .png file when you remove the "w_1680,h_1680,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto:good/" from the URL ~TheImaCow (talk) 13:40, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

Does it matter? As far as I can see it doesn't. webp is widely supported and "WebP lossless images are about 26% smaller than PNGs". Prototyperspective (talk) 13:46, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, both. Now uploaded as:

• File:Portrait of Sophia Lee (1750-1824) by Thomas Lawrence.png—(2,500 × 2,952 pixels, file size: 12.29 MB
• File:Portrait of Sophia Lee (1750-1824) by Thomas Lawrence.webp—(1,423 × 1,680 pixels, file size: 271 KB,

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:58, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

Is the webp file of any use to us?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:26, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

How else are we supposed to compare them? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:43, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

Just to say what is literally happening, many websites will automatically convert files to webp if your browser signalled with the accept header that it supports webp. Bawolff (talk) 00:49, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Can that be turned off, in Firefox? Is there a plugin to toggle the setting? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:15, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I think you can adjust the image.http.accept setting when going to about:config in firefox. Bawolff (talk) 18:13, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Problematic AI and other manipulated images by A. C. Tatarinov

A. C. Tatarinov has for a long time uploaded a lot of AI upscaled versions of lower res images, which appears to now be discouraged by Wikipedia policy, and I've notified them of that here, so hopefully it will stop. Left is to figure out what to do with all these uploads, delete them or just tag them as AI upscaled?

A related problem is that A. C. Tatarinov has uploaded many manipulations (perhaps "hand-made" and not AI) of existing public domain and other images of one type of animal into other animals, which is problematic for a variety of reasons, and they are sometimes not even labelled as being manipulations (others had to add that info). See gallery below for examples.

• 
  Manipulation depicting the extinct Ara atwoodi, later mistakenly published in a research paper as if it was real
• 
  Original PD image of a modern Ara ararauna
• 
  Manipulation depicting the prehistoric penguin Palaeeudyptes
• 
  Original PD image of a modern penguin
• 
  Manipulation depicting the prehistoric carnivoran Kolponomos
• 
  Original PD image of a modern bear
• 
  Manipulation depicting the prehistoric koala Phascolarctos stirtoni
• 
  Original PD image of a modern koala
• 
  Manipulation depicting the prehistoric Parailurus anglicus
• 
  Original PD image of a modern red panda
• 
  Manipulation depicting Aktautitan
• 
  Original PD image of Megacerops
• 
  Manipulation depicting the extinct Piliocolobus epieni
• 
  Original PD image of the modern western red colobus

The problem with this is that it is misleading, enough that one research paper actually published one of these manipulations (Ara atwoodi) as if it was a true, historical illustration of a certain extinct parrot, while it was just a manipulated image of a different parrot, and that is extremely problematic that these now bleed into the literature spreading misinformation. So I would like to know whether it would be best to just delete all these manipulations, or if there is some policy that accepts their use? I think they're Commons:out of scope, if not worse. FunkMonk (talk) 22:31, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Hi, This is not my field of competence, but it looks bad. Yann (talk) 22:42, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

The COM:DR has some process making a mass multi-nom page. George Ho (talk) 23:57, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm aware, the issue is whether these are eligible for that or not, and whether we should prohibit the future creation of such images. FunkMonk (talk) 00:04, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

These aren't the first problematic AI-generated or otherwise manipulated paleoart images I've seen on Commons, but I don't think it's a common enough issue to need a specific policy at this point. If we're going to establish a policy about AI-generated historical reconstructions (beyond AI images of people), it should probably be targeted at reconstructions in general, not paleoart in particular. Omphalographer (talk) 00:27, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Note the examples below (not the AI upscaled images) may very well have been "hand-made" manipulations, but the problem of them being misleading remains regardless of how they were made. FunkMonk (talk) 00:35, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

If these were accurately described, with sources indicated and an explanation that the user had modified them based on his own conjectures, these might be in scope. Without that, they are actively misleading and the opposite of educational. Also: a 2013 work based on a 1913 work should not be dated 1913. That lends it a false patina of coming from an old academic work. - Jmabel ! talk 00:53, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

The one on the right for example a) looks very high quality and b) is heavily used across many Wikipedias / projects (see COM:INUSE) and c) was made in 2019 so I don't know which kind of upscaling/AIs you're referring to.

However, if input images were used this should be well-visible in the file description; same for other data/info the viewer may want to know. Warning templates could be added too. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:59, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

This section is about two different issues, 1 AI upscaling and 2 manipulating public domain images and passing them off as depicting extinct animals, as is the case for this monkey. FunkMonk (talk) 14:52, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

People seem awfully hang up about the images being upscaled and not at all about the fact that he deliberately lied about them being AI upscaled in the first place-Trade (talk) 20:01, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

No matter which tools were used, masquerading a 110 year old reconstruction of some extinct animal as a different reconstruction of a different extinct animal, is active academic fraud in my opinion.

Just for example, the Aktautitan image needs to be urgently removed from all project pages that deal with Aktautitan; and since it was manipulated to remove the horn, it can also not be used as an image of Megacerops. I'd have less problems if the manipulation had been detailed honestly as an adaptation in the file description, and with a link to the original... but the uploader did originally not even credit the real artist. --Enyavar (talk) 13:04, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I think they need to be removed from Commons so they don't get reused by unsuspecting editors after they're removed from articles. I've nominated the parrot manipulation and this AI upscale to test the waters, if they get deleted the rest can be mass nominated and the uploader hopefully gets the warning. FunkMonk (talk) 13:31, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

About a CropTool bug

When CropTool pasts an image from a djvu/pdf file it should copy its Book template. Unluckily, CropTool fails when one of Book template is a template; in such case, first rows of Book template (t.i. the template name and a variable numner of attributes) are cut away. Here an example: File:Buffon - Œuvres complètes, éd. Lanessan, 1884, tome I, partie 1 (page 165 crop).jpg.

Usually, the resulting pages are cotegorized by a bot into Category:Pages using Information template with parsing errors. No warning is sent to the uploader. The bug affects at least some hundred of nsFile pages.

I'm testing a script by my bot BrolloBot to fix faulty nsFile pages; the aim is to add do cropped page the lacking rows reading them from source nsFile page. The comment of bot edit is Fixing CropTool bug by BrolloBot. Here an example of the fix: File:Map and guide of Portland - 1918 (page 37 crop) - Canyon Road.jpg.

Please tell me any trouble. Alex_brollo Talk|Contrib 11:15, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

"When CropTool pasts an image from a djvu/pdf file it should copy its Book template."—I am not convinced that is the case. Sometimes, we are extracting in image of a photograph or artwork from a book, and it is the metadata about that photograph or artwork which is relevant, not the metadata about the book. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:36, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

There is disagreement about how croptool should handle book template. I can change croptool but there seems no agreement on what it should do. Bawolff (talk) 18:16, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

@Bawolff: Is there any possibility that when CropTool sees {{Book}} it would keep everything intact but add a maintenance template indicating that this is the book template used on a cropped image, and the uploader should edit accordingly? Ideally, add the uploader name and a timestamp as a parameter in that template, and if it's not dealt with within some period of time (24 hours?), a bot could remind them to deal with it. (Note even sure whether this should be done, and it might need to go through a proposal, but I'd like to know if it's possible.) - Jmabel ! talk 21:17, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

@Jmabel IMHO a good edit to CropTool would be, a preview of nsFile information page into a textbox, to fix errors if any or even to replace all the code with another one (I prefer to use Information template for cropped images). Book template isn't the best for a cropped image... nevertheless a fixed Book template is better than a wrong one :-) Alex_brollo Talk|Contrib 09:07, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

@Jmabel yes, what you are saying would be possible. Bawolff (talk) 14:39, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Continued at Commons:Village pump/Proposals#Cropping with "book" template. - Jmabel ! talk 17:52, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Featured galleries?

I see that the page Commons:Featured galleries proposed featured galleries nearly 20 years ago. It seems like it just slipped through the cracks and never got made? I for one would love to see this become an actual feature. I have been working on improving a lot of galleries and great galleries are few and far between — I think they ought to be recognised. Plus it would be very helpful to have community consensus on what makes for a top-notch gallery.

I think more focus needs to be placed on galleries, since they are the main namespace, and the most accessible part of Commons for casual users. LetmeEditit (talk) 18:24, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

@LetmeEditit: you may be a mile ahead of me here, but if you wanted to propose guidelines for featured galleries, you might extrapolate from Commons:Galleries, including from some of the examples there of good galleries. Also, if you think there are better examples, that would be helpful. - Jmabel ! talk 01:08, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I'll start putting some guidelines together now; when I'm done I'll put them up on Commons talk:Featured galleries. In fact, there's some old discussion on that page that may be useful.

I think the guidelines should be pretty open-ended, considering a lot can be done with galleries, so I think being too rigid would restrict creativity. I think something similar to the featured picture guidelines might be good — some sort of a vote based off personal preferences. Do you have any ideas of your own? LetmeEditit (talk) 11:48, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I just put together some basic guidelines: see Commons talk:Featured galleries#Guidelines proposal LetmeEditit (talk) 12:53, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Please help clean up Category:Art

There are currently 3,416 files on Commons which are categorized generically as "art". This is a lot - particularly given that the Art category is a disambiguation and should be empty!

Please help us make this number smaller by:

• Removing the category from files which already have more appropriate categories.
• Diffusing files to more specific categories, e.g. to categories for the artist, or for the subject matter of the work.
• Nominating files for deletion which are unlikely to be of educational use. There is a lot of personal artwork in this category which can probably be speedily deleted as F10.

Omphalographer (talk) 23:12, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

How to categorise the last quarter?

We started in February 2025 to categorise the 125,000 files in Category:All media needing categories as of 2021. Three quarters of the work have been done, but now the question arises: How to categorise the last quarter? I think, we need experienced volunteers, please, unless we prefer to wait for AI or useful bots:

• 30,000 media needing categories as of 2021

Do you have an idea, how to tackle this task, or could you even help us please, by manually categorizing some files? NearEMPTiness (talk) 04:40, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Only the suggestion that people try starting at pseudo-random places in the sequence. I was just able to knock off 5 of them pretty easily in about 10 minutes, down in the second page of the S's. I think there's (surprisingly) still a lot of reasonably low-hanging fruit no one has rally looked at. - Jmabel ! talk 19:04, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Jmabel is right: There are still quite some self-explaining images that can quickly be categorised. I can confirm from my experience with "letter D" files.

On the other hand, obviously there are also images where you've got an idea (or just a whiff) of what they probably show ... and then, it takes half an hour of work to pin them down.

Identifying "nests" of "same target category" images helps both speeding up and keeping the categorisation consistent. With files that have "serial" file names, this is rather obvious. Less obvious: When an uncategorised file is used in a Wikipedia article (such as w:fr:Michel Biot, in my case), there may be more uncategorised files in the same article. -- Martinus KE (talk) 09:27, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Introducing WISE: Semantic search for Commons (we’d love your feedback)

Hello everyone,

We would love to get your feedback on a tool we have been working on: https://wise.wmcloud.org/

This is a search tool for images and videos on wikimedia. Currently is searching only on media of the day (approximately 5000 videos). It searches only the visual content of the file (not on metadata, filename, or structured data). It also does face detection and recognition.

Please give it a go. Here's some taste example queries:

• for visual queries (select "Visual" on the dropdown menu next to the search box)
  • "man at a train station"
  • "एक व्यक्ति रेलवे स्टेशन पर" # this is "man at a train station" in Hindi (this tool handles multiple languages, so try on your language)
  • "horse in an airplane" # the first result is correct but it's a ogv file
  • విమానంలో గుర్రం # this is "a horse in aeroplane" in Telugu (again, try it on your own language)
  • man with a flower
  • pirate with a pistol

• for face search (select "Faces" on the dropdown menu next to the search box. Then click on the "Image" green button, and past the URL for an image)
  • https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Charlie_Chaplin.jpg (a photo with charlie chaplin face)
  • https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Neil_Armstrong_pose.jpg (a photo with neil armstrong face)

[warning: some videos are ogv videos and your brownser may not play them, so watch them on Commons, i.e., after clicking the search result, scroll down to the media metadata table, and follow the link to commons]

Key features include:

• Semantic search using natural language to find relevant images on Commons from the visual content only (not the structured data or description, only the image itself)
• Face search: upload or paste a face image, and the tool will try to identify and locate that person across images and videos, including timestamps where they appear
• Audio search: search within audio files to find relevant segments
• Multilingual search: supports queries in multiple languages

We are actively improving the tool and would really appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or ideas from the community. Here's some more immediate future plans:

• Search on all wikimedia images (instead of only videos / media of the day)
• Show similar images when uploading an image to suggest filenames, categories, and other relevant metadata

More technical details and a place to share feedback at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wise

Gopavasanth (talk) 23:53, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

@Gopavasanth: aren't there privacy issues around doing a face search? I would think that if applied to (for example) crowd photos at political demonstrations, the results could be pretty terrifying. - Jmabel ! talk 04:41, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

+1 Agree with Jmabel --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:31, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Face search without identifying person, there is person in photo, there are some persons in photo, there is lot of persons in the photo or generic there is males/females/childrens/adults/eldery people in the photo could be more useful and most likely more robust than trying to identify a specific person. --Zache (talk) 09:46, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

+1 to Jmabel. I would strongly oppose any tool that integrated facial recognition into search capacity. 19h00s (talk) 12:23, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I mean, if you are concerned about political repression, the police almost certainly have much better tools then this running on publicly available images on the internet. Bawolff (talk) 16:56, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

We can not prevent this and anyone should be aware of this when publishing photos. But we should not host such a tool, that also clearly would violate EU regulation, on the Wikimedia infrastructure. GPSLeo (talk) 13:06, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

This is cool and all, but I'm not sure its very useful unless it covers all the images (or at least a much larger subset). At the same time, it seems unclear there is a path forward to actually doing that. Bawolff (talk) 16:57, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Great initiative and a very compelling use of embeddings. I was wondering if you've got any ideas as to how to benchmark the retrieval quality when the corpus grows? Awinkler3 (talk) 07:57, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

It's exciting to see projects that make it easier to discover the great contents from Wikimedia projects.

I wanted to introduce a recent initiative that may be relevant for projects like Wise that are based on Wikimedia content. The Wikimedia Attribution Framework has recently been launched, and we are looking for early adopters to learn from their experience.

The Wikimedia Attribution Framework sets guidelines on how to provide sustainable attribution when reusing Wikimedia content. It is in an early beta stage, and we want to learn from those trying to apply the guidelines provided. We'll be adding more details to the project page, but feel free to share any thoughts on the talk page.

I hope this could be a useful resource to make the Wise project even better.

Thanks! --Pginer-WMF (talk) 10:34, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Note also that the Attribution API is also available to facilitate the application of the guidelines provided in the Attribution Framework. For the case of WISE, it can be particularly useful to show license info for images.

--Pginer-WMF (talk) 10:47, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Nice, thanks for developing this! I wonder if categories set on items could be used as clues as to the content of the files to improve performance and also whether this tool could be used to basically suggest categories that are missing (eg major content of video but no related set cat found). Prototyperspective (talk) 14:19, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Net sheds

Category:Net sheds is redirected to Category:Fishing huts, but that seems absurd for something like these industrial-scale net sheds at Fishermen's Terminal on the south side of Salmon Bay in Seattle. I would imagine other major fishing fleets have something similar, though if we have photos of them I have no guess how someone chose to categorize them. - Jmabel ! talk 04:45, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Google Lens and TinEye does not function anymore

Lately, I have been having trouble with Google Lens and TinEye checking for copyright issues with images. For example, with File:MISS MONDE.jpg "Something went wrong. No image at the URL. Try again with a different URL or image" in Google Lens, and "TinEye could not read that image url. This may be due to an unsupported file format". What could be the cause? I use Firefox 140.10 on Mac. Wouter (talk) 19:04, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

The page you linked isn't an image. If you click on the image itself tin eye copes with it. Secretlondon (talk) 19:53, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

You can also go into Preference > Gadgets, and enable the "Reverse Image Search" tool, which will place automatic search links to common sites in tabs above the image (different skins may have them in other locations). — Huntster (t @ c) 20:03, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

@Wouterhagens: Are these lookups using only the thumbnail steps listed on https://w.wiki/GHai, as they are now supposed to? See also MediaWiki talk:Gadget-GoogleImagesTineye.js#Reverse Image Search - Google and TinEye failing to retrieve source images from Commons.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 20:12, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Errrr the WMF messed up thumbnail URLs and inadvertently broke our gadget. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 20:15, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: It seems that they settled on only using certain sizes for performance reasons, and our gadget doesn't use any of them. Our gadget needs to be fixed.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 20:19, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Our gadget does need to be fixed but sizes are not the problem. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 20:56, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Surprise. It's working again now. Wouter (talk) 07:56, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

@Wouterhagens: yes, my edit request that fixes it has been implemented. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 13:15, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! Wouter (talk) 17:56, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

I have the same problem since several weeks already. --Túrelio (talk) 08:07, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

@Túrelio: you shouldn't, it was fixed 3 hours before you said that. Did you clear your browser cache? - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 13:15, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:17, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Unexpected category related to my own uploads

I just ran across Category:Uploaded by user Jmabel, which has apparently existed for a decade and of which I was never informed. It contains 653 files, which appear to be some arbitrary subset of my probably 3000 to 6000 Flickr uploads (many of which are my own work first uploaded to Flickr, many of which are from Seattle Municipal Archives Flickr stream, and probably 100-200 of which are from other sources). I never asked for this category, I never was informed of this category, and the only users to edit it appear to be a a bot that has not edited in years, a user who has not edited in years, and a blocked user I have some vague memories of interacting with, but not about this. Can anyone tell me what is going on here and whether this is useful to anyone? (I have some other questions, but they'd depend on the answers to those.) - Jmabel ! talk 06:35, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

 Comment, I found discussions related to this in the bot's request page and a Village Pump thread from 2015. Basically, per the closing comment of the Village Pump thread, this user category was created to "delete uploader information from the source field" and the uploader information is "converted to an uploader category". Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 09:28, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I think the above info solves this. Probably, it would be fine if the user that the user-cat is about empties the cat using cat-a-lot and then has it deleted. If in doubt, one could create a CfD for it. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:31, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I see. So someone unilaterally decided that for bot-uploaded files that were uploaded at the request of a particular user, the only connection between that user and the file would be a maintenance category that they didn't name clearly (nothing related to the bot-upload aspect) or explain in a hat-note on the category, nor did they explain this to the users in question, nor get their consent to remove the explicit mentions that were previously there. Brilliant.

I guess I will leave it, or maybe rename it to something that says what it is. Not pleased. - Jmabel ! talk 17:33, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:17, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Template:Incorrect Exif date

1. 1. Template:Incorrect Exif date was created as redirect to Template:Invalid Exif date by User:ŠJů, but User:Sarang made it a template. it's now a bit different https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ComparePages?page1=Template%3AInvalid+Exif+date&page2=Template%3AIncorrect+Exif+date . no idea why Sarang did that.
   2. i think the difference can be summarised as Template:Incorrect Exif date introduced parameter 1, but there are only 7 usage of it using any parameter https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=hastemplate%3AIncorrect_Exif_date+insource%3A%2Ff+date%5Cs*%5C%7C%2F . i also dont understand the meanings of the introduced parameters.
   3. therefore, can it be redirected again?
2. i have some photos that have the correct date but wrong time. technically the current phrasing of Template:Invalid Exif date "Date and/or time...are incorrect" is not applicable to my files. is there another template for right date wrong time? or should this template be modified?
3. also i think there can be better documentation of best practice when exif contains errors. how do we correct the errors, identify them and label them as such? i found this template in a complicated way: typing template:exif in search bar -> Template:According to Exif data -> Category:Time, date and calendar templates, scroll down until i see -> Template:Invalid Exif date.

RoyZuo (talk) 09:43, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

 Redirect {{Incorrect Exif date}} per above, functionally I don't see any substantial difference between the 2 templates. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 11:15, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

 Comment why does Template:Invalid Exif date say "There are two possible ways to use this template" and then list only one? - Jmabel ! talk 17:39, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I can see in the documentation, the supposedly second way has been struck and commented out. The text of the second way states, "Give the time difference of Exif as a parameter. The template displays the corrected date (localized by {{ISOdate}}) and renders the words "according to Exif metadata (corrected)" in the language specified in the user's preferences. (not available yet)".

As this method is "not available yet", actually only one method is possible, so I have edited the documentation to remove the confusing text. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 23:41, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Issues with FileImporter

See mw:Help talk:Extension:FileImporter#Failure to automatically add on local image page for the information and context. Regards, JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 09:02, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: Thank you for the alert. Use on enwiki should be {{Now Commons}}.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:37, 7 May 2026 (UTC)