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This page is used for technical questions relating to the tools, gadgets, or other technical issues about Commons; it is distinguished from the main Village pump, which handles community-wide discussion of all kinds. The page may also be used to advertise significant discussions taking place elsewhere, such as on the talk page of a Commons policy. Recent sections with no replies for 30 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; recent archives: /Archive/2026/06 /Archive/2026/07.

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Flickr2Commons not working

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

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

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

HotCat gadget suddenly really slow today

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

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

Large unused SVG files

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

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

Template:Navbox dark mode

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

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

Tech News: 2026-25

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

Files exist on commons, but cannot be embedded in articles

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

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

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

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

Google lens still not working

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

Юрий Д.К., probably similar to phab:T425850 and we're still waiting on that one. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 05:08, 4 July 2026 (UTC)
OK. Юрий Д.К. 11:32, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

Last month in technical changes

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

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

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

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

Hello,

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

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

It's Thursday...

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

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

Tech News: 2026-26

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

Removing incorrect SDC coordinates

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

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

A month later, Flickr2commons still not fixed…

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

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

Tech News: 2026-27

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

Video2commons

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

  • @The Smart Star: Convenience link: File:The Mothering Heart (1913) Better Picture Quality.webm (please link files when referring to them!). Is there anything wrong with the file as you uploaded it? Is the issue just that you see it incorrectly in the queue when you use Video2Commons, or is it something more than that? - Jmabel ! talk 04:43, 30 June 2026 (UTC)
    Thanks for the response!
    That file is fine as it is, because when the other one kept buffering in the cancelled mode, I simply uploaded the file again with the same title, so that file is another one, although with the same name.
    "Is the issue just that you see it incorrectly in the queue when you use Video2Commons"
    Exactly, this is the issue. It just keeps in the queue without dissapearing, and makred with red. The Smart Star (talk) 12:01, 30 June 2026 (UTC)
    Anyone knows the solution or where to ask? The Smart Star (talk) 00:25, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

Get list of files uploaded by user

Can I get a list of current filenames of files uploaded by $user from the API?
I tried https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=query%2Blogevents but this returns filenames as they were when uploaded, so results include redirects. Does this have to be done in two steps? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 05:06, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

you can also use list=allimages https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allimages&aisort=timestamp&aiuser=Bawolff . If you want to use logevents, did you consider using it as a generator? Bawolff (talk) 07:40, 4 July 2026 (UTC)
Bawolff, thx, list=allimages worked!
I didn't want to use logevents, I just looked at how COM:VFC accomplished it. I don't know what "use as a generator" means. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 10:33, 4 July 2026 (UTC)
Its kind of a moot point, as i didn't realize, but logevents cannot be used as a generator. In general though, the generator parameter of the api lets you feed the results of a list module into one of prop modules. Bawolff (talk) 17:30, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

Is it possible to significantly change an SVG source code without changing the visual output visibly?

I mean the output would be identical or visually imperceptible to most. I just want to know if this is possible. Candidyeoman55 (talk) 09:42, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

Candidyeoman55, yes.
Why? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 10:34, 4 July 2026 (UTC)
There were a few discussions regarding some high profile logos which I ended up in on English Wikipedia (the NBA logo and the Chicago Bulls logo). These logos are now labeled as fair use, but the discussion was about whether those logos (American logos published before 1978) had a copyright notice or not, therefore making them public domain in the US.
However, three users (999real, Based5290 and Howardcorn33 - which I think may be sockpuppets or co-ordinating in another way) pushed the discussion into uncomfortable territory for me: Whether SVG codes could be possibly "copyrighted". I mentioned this page to them to see if this would convince them, as my argument is that we should use the official vectorizations (if properly done and available) for logos (due to my concerns inspired by the case of when Tesla tried to get their logos removed from Wikimedia Commons), but these three users insisted. I can see the damage they can do to Wikimedia projects: If they get their way, rasters and improper SVGs (such as autotraced) could end up being used in high profile pages instead of the official properly done one, and that to me is unacceptable. I hope any damage they do or might do to the projects is reverted quickly.
We should use the precedent we have for paintings in my opinion. Candidyeoman55 (talk) 11:15, 4 July 2026 (UTC)
And one even uploaded an auto-traced version to Commons, which was done, according to him, on vectorizer.ai, which is a paid service of AI autotracing, which is not consistent to me. I'll nominate the file for deletion. Also, two of these users now have "retired" as their label on their user pages and the other doesn't have a user page. Candidyeoman55 (talk) 11:19, 4 July 2026 (UTC)
Actually the Tesla image WMF deleted was on the grounds of it being the exact same as with the copyright office, so keeping those does not seem smart. See Commons:Office actions/DMCA notices/2025#c-Jrogers (WMF)-20250603140300-Odder-20250530171800. You could try to make a claim about derivitive work on a redrawn logo, but that argument will not work on the original. Writing that and knowing how AI is coded and trained, I would not dream of calling any of it´s works derivitive.
Also note that Coats of arms are free because they are drawn from descriptions of the coat of arms. The original is not free. Snævar (talk) 15:59, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

Delinker log not working?

The delinker log has not been working for me over the last week at least (here is an example). Has anyone else been having a problem with it? IronGargoyle (talk) 15:54, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

IronGargoyle, CommonsDelinker hasn't edited anything since 26 June 2026. See User talk:CommonsDelinker#Where art thou? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 01:52, 5 July 2026 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: Are things getting delinked by another bot? Is there a log somewhere for this? IronGargoyle (talk) 02:39, 5 July 2026 (UTC)
IronGargoyle, on most projects nothing is getting delinked. File:Marguerite Moreau 2001..png and File:Stuart Townsend 2001..png were uploaded at 11:14 and 11:15 yesterday, nearly 18 hours ago. Watch w:es:Before I'm Dead for bot activity.
There's w:en:Special:Contributions/Filedelinkerbot which is still operational and active on enwiki, hewiki, kowiki and metawiki. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 03:02, 5 July 2026 (UTC)
That's really unfortunate that delinking isn't happening either. I hope the log can be retrieved at some point. Filedelinkerbot is fine for delinking stuff, but it didn't play well with the (now non-functional) delinker log. IronGargoyle (talk) 03:10, 5 July 2026 (UTC)
IronGargoyle, it has its own log: https://krdbot.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/Delinkerlog.php - Alexis Jazz ping plz 03:56, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

hCaptcha problem; more widely, privacy and surveillance

drawing more attention to Commons:Help_desk#c-~2026-37045-87-20260627102400-hCaptcha_system_broken.

i share @MGeog2022's concerns.

wiki is ostensibly protective of users' privacy (for example, revealing users' names is considered outing). but it records users' ip addresses, devices' fingerprinting data, etc.; and prevents most users from using vpn. also recently, it started requiring email for registration. and also these captcha systems.

here's my personal opinion. i have zero trust in all anonymous or pseudonymous users who hold sysop+ rights. i have zero trust in wmf either. the system as it is currently set up only serves to protect the small group of people in power from criticism and regulation, i.e. it is not far from bureaucratic dictatorship or tyranny, if it is not already one. RoyZuo (talk) 09:20, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

This link works. Yann (talk) 09:29, 5 July 2026 (UTC)
Whats the question you are asking? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:49, 5 July 2026 (UTC)
cc @EMill-WMF. Nemoralis (talk) 14:23, 9 July 2026 (UTC)
There's a lot going on at once in these comments. For the record, email is not required for registration. For accounts with no email address, there are conditions under which we'll load in the captcha system on login.
Some conditions under which that might happen are very similar to those that, for accounts with an email attached, will cause an email to be sent with a code to paste in to continue logging in. That email-based check is dramatically more effective at protecting an account from takeover than a captcha, but a captcha is one of the few things we can do for no-email accounts.
For both email checks and captchas, they can affect regular account owners as well, especially if the account owner changes IPs and clears cookies frequently. This can sometimes cause issues, but they are still meant to allow the account owner to login. EMill-WMF (talk) 03:03, 10 July 2026 (UTC)
thx for answering.
@MGeog2022. RoyZuo (talk) 15:09, 10 July 2026 (UTC)
As I've said before, I'm not against captchas at all: in fact, I feel my account far more protected from possible bot attacks, so I'm really happy with them. The big problem was when the captchas stopped working and didn't allow me to log in: it seems it was unintended and it is fixed by now, but I think the error was really serious and it took too much time to be addressed. MGeog2022 (talk) 11:16, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

File:Rothschild Extinct Birds.djvu does not render thumbnails

For some reason the File:Rothschild Extinct Birds.djvu fails to render thumbnails both here in Commons and in Wikisource. As a result it cannot be transcluded to the mainspace, see s:Extinct Birds. In other similar cases it usually helps when the cache of the file's page is purged, but here it does not help either. Any idea what is happening and how to solve it? -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:35, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

Note that in the past it must have worked well, otherwise its indivudual pages could not have been proofread. See e. g. here where the page's thumbnail on the right is not rendered now, but it must have been rendered in the past as there is the transcribed and validated text on the left. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:58, 5 July 2026 (UTC)
Works fine for me. - Jmabel ! talk 01:51, 6 July 2026 (UTC)
Yeah, I have just noticed at another discussion that M-le-mot-dit reuploaded the file, and then it started working again. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 17:48, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-28

MediaWiki message delivery 13:54, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Solution idea for category name problem

before we finally get a system that allows multiple / multilingual category names, i just had an idea to patch on top of what we have now.

what if in addition to showing the actual cat names, a tool shows additional names above them (like ruby text)? the additional names could be, that category's wikidata label (in a language chosen by the user), or defined on the cat page itself by using

{{en|...}}
{{fr|...}}
{{ja|...}}
...

it's a solution for people quarreling over whether a category name should be english or other native latin-alphabetic language. example: Category:FC Bayern München. with this tool, if the cat name is english, users can see the german name above so german users still know what it is; if the cat name is german, non german users can see the english (or any other language user chooses) name above.

it appears like this on a parent cat page containing it.

　　FC Bayern Munich
> FC Bayern München (24 C, 88 F)

or

　FC Bayern München
> FC Bayern Munich (24 C, 88 F)

it's not just useful for multilingual name conflicts, but also if something has some very famous alternative names, e.g.

　Sears Tower
> Willis Tower (10 C, 35 F)

other considerations:

  1. if querying up to 200 pages every time someone opens a cat page is too much for the servers,
    1. the tool could query the page and show the alternative name only when the cursor hovers over the target.
    2. or there could be a cache set up on toolforge that stores cat pages queried and their alternative names, so if a page is queried recently, there's no need to query wikidata or commons again but the tool can directly fetch the cached data.
  2. this solution is ofc not compatible with current designs of hotcat, catalot, uploadwizard... which can only show the actual page name.

RoyZuo (talk) 15:20, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

PNG preview is creating WEBP

For some reason png preview, for example File:Flag of the United Kingdom (1-2).svg, is creating webp files. LoneShadow42 (talk) 19:34, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

@LoneShadow42 Yes, WMF recently changed the thumbnail logic to always use webp thumbnails for SVGs when possible. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/puppet/+/1306395 AntiCompositeNumber (they/them) (talk) 03:14, 8 July 2026 (UTC)
Thank you. I'm not sure where to report it, but, it still says "Size of this PNG preview of this SVG file:" below the image. LoneShadow42 (talk) 03:41, 8 July 2026 (UTC)
@LoneShadow42: I've opened phab:T431559 to track that. It's probably a short term situation, because ideally MediaWiki would always know what file type is being served. SWilson (WMF) (talk) 10:48, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

Media of the day missing from front page

See Commons_talk:Media_of_the_day#July_8,_2026_missing. TheFeds 03:02, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

Flickr2Commons

Not all OK with Flickr2Сommons, sadly. I've uploaded File:Sunset in Vernazza 2018.jpg and File:Sunset in Hehuanshan, Taroko National Park.jpg, they have been transferred without date and {{Flickreview}} tag. I've added them manually. It is possible to use an old version? Юрий Д.К. 09:34, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

@1Veertje. RoyZuo (talk) 13:45, 8 July 2026 (UTC)
sorry, should have tested more. Submitted a patch that should fix this Vera (talk) 19:25, 8 July 2026 (UTC)
  • Currently F2C adding Flickreview tag but date field is still empty. Юрий Д.К. 15:13, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Radio buttons missing from History pages

For the past couple of days, on every History page I’ve visited the radio buttons that allow selection of the first & last edits to compare are missing—each line showing just a blank space between the “(cur | prev)” links and the timestamp. This prevents the display of any diff between non-consecutive edits. I have not changed my preferences, scripts or styles recently. Any ideas what might have happened or, more practically, how I can get these buttons to show again?—Odysseus1479 (talk) 22:49, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

What browser are you using, on what OS? Have you looked at all with the browser debugger tools to see whether they are hidden by styles or actually missing from the HTML? - Jmabel ! talk 00:53, 9 July 2026 (UTC)
Safari v17.6 on MacOS 14. Sorry, I wouldn’t know what to look for in the page source or resources. I did try switching from my usual Vector 2010, for which I have custom CSS, to the default 2022 (and back) but it made no difference.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 02:02, 9 July 2026 (UTC)
@Odysseus1479: In the page source, you'd be looking for a section that begins with <ul class="mw-contributions-list"> and ends with </ul>. I happen to know that File:Capital in Cuxa Cloister (MET 25.120.617) 01.jpg, which I uploaded, is a page without too much history (6 versions). If you could reproduce the mw-contributions-list section of its history page here, we might learn something, or at least eliminate some possibilities. (As you can imagine, really hard to try to debug via a conversation like this.)
Or maybe someone else with a similar environment to yours might have some insight? - Jmabel ! talk 04:54, 9 July 2026 (UTC)
Thanks. I’m hesitant to dump all that in here—the tags in question cover almost all the ‘guts’ of the page. There are three such sections: the first comprises 69 lines of code (inclusive of the opening & closing) and corresponds to the most recent edit; the second, of 64 lines, is for the next most recent; and the third covers all four earlier edits in 191 lines. Perhaps most of interest, though, are the pairs of lines that look like this:
<input type="radio" value="1169030053" disabled="" name="oldid" id="mw-oldid-null">
<input type="radio" value="1169030053" checked="" name="diff" id="mw-diff-1169030053">
from the first section,
<input type="radio" value="1167684487" checked="" name="oldid" id="mw-oldid-1167684487">
<input type="radio" value="1167684487" name="diff" id="mw-diff-1167684487">
from the second, or
<input type="radio" value="1135352884" name="oldid" id="mw-oldid-1135352884">
<input type="radio" value="1135352884" name="diff" id="mw-diff-1135352884">
from the third. (As might be expected, the third section contains three more such pairs; they look just like the last example except for the diff IDs.) Does that tell you anything, or do you need more context?—Odysseus1479 (talk) 20:25, 9 July 2026 (UTC)
It tells me the problem is not in the HTML as such which, in this respect, is identical to what I see on my machine.
Most likely, if you can't see those buttons there is a stylesheet problem of some sort, but if no one else can replicate it and you are not comfortable using a browser debugger and don't have access to someone else who can, there is little hope of working out what the problem might be.
Less likely, but not impossible, is that your particular browser is somehow misinterpreting a stylesheet. That would be a serious browser bug. Is there someone else reading this who has Safari v17.6 on MacOS 14 and can either say that they do or don't have the same problem? - Jmabel ! talk 04:54, 10 July 2026 (UTC)
Thanks again. I’m pretty sure now something has broken in my browser’s UI resources: I had occasion to visit a government registry’s search page today, one I’ve used many times before, and the form did not display any of the checkboxes that are usually there (and do show in Firefox). OTOH the minor-edit and watch-page checkboxes in this edit window show normally, and I think they ought to be the same kind of control, which is puzzling. At any rate it seems unlikely to be MW-related, especially considering nobody else has reported similar problems AFAICT.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 20:18, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Post-processing professional photos?

I do a lot of fixing up of poor photos used in enwiki articles, most commonly just plain badly exposed images with deep shadows. Then I look at something like File:Supreme Court US 2009.jpg and I'm not sure what to do. My first thought is to just shove the shadow slider all the way to the right and be happy that I'm recovered the detail in the justice's robes. But this is an official photo taken by a professional photographer under studio conditions. Do I really want to mess with that? Maybe the underexposure of the robes is a deliberate artistic statement, not to be bludgeoned by a random slider-pusher? Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 15:43, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Don't do? Not because of assumed artistic statements, but on technical grounds. I most likely wouldn't try to recover shadows from a JPEG, it's dynamic range is too limited. And are those robes truly plain black (RGB 00 00 00) or are they only dark (didn't check the pixels or the histogram)? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 16:14, 11 July 2026 (UTC)
RoySmith, there's nothing wrong with that photo? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 03:13, 12 July 2026 (UTC)
RoySmith: File:Raikaia Salmon.JPG was taken too far. File:Alice Tangerini.jpg also. File:Frank Lloyd Wright - Barton House.jpg was not an improvement. You generally lean towards overbrightening. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 03:25, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Batch uploading audio files – bot or not?

Hello! I want to upload a large amount of audio files, approximately 33 000, to Commons (pronunciations of Estonian words, if you're interested). For the sake of my mental and physical health, I don't really want to click the Upload Wizard 33 000 times to upload each file individually. There's gotta be a more efficient way to do that, perhaps it's a job that a bot can do? I know there are tools other than the Upload Wizard, which can be used to upload many files at once, but there's a few additional catches which lead me to think it's a job better left to a bot or a user more experienced here than me, who would know how to tackle these issues and not end up in a mental hospital in the process.

Firstly, the files need to be renamed. Currently they are just numbered, for example psv_08693.wav. Their names need to be reformatted to Et-{{{term}}}.ogg. Fortunately, there is, at least for one portion of the audio files, a .txt file which connects every one of those numbers to the corresponding terms. I imagine that a bot wouldn't have a problem with reading that and renaming the audio files accordingly. The other portion of the audio files also have an additional file, but it's in the .ndx format, which I can't open, so I'm not sure if it can be used in the same way, hopefully it can. The fun doesn't end there though – not only do the file names need to be converted from a numeric value to a text value as per the .txt file, but these text values in turn need even more changing. Nothing too extreme though, mostly just converting some symbols, like ` to *, with some exceptions, such as the symbol being removed altogether for words of 4 or less letters (it's more complicated than that but I will not go into it). The reason being that these audio files are intended to be used on Wiktionary, and the template that converts Estonian text to IPA uses different symbols when respelling, and the audio files should, ideally, be equal to the respelling in the first parameter of the pronunciation template. But it will also allow manual input of the audio files, so if you deem making this shortcut possible to be too complicated and time-consuming, then it's not the end of the world either. A couple of examples: psv_08693.wav → t`el'k → Et-tel'k.ogg, psv_01396.wav → hilja → Et-hilja.ogg (no changes needed), psv_00855.wav → el`ekter → Et-el*ekter.ogg, psv_00447.wav → `asf`alt → Et-*asf*alt.ogg, psvalg_1721.mp3 → k`un'stn`ik → Et-k*un'stnik.ogg (here, again ideally, delete the symbol if the term ends in -ik, but as I said, no problem if that's too complicated, and there are a million exceptions to this anyway), psvalg_2109.mp3 → organisatsi`oon → Et-organisatsi*oon.ogg, psv_00931.wav → enآ´ergiline → Et-en"ergiline.ogg (´ becomes "), psv_00028.wav → abi+elu → Et-abi-elu.ogg (+ becomes -, compound words), psv_07746.wav → sini+m`ust+v`alge → Et-sini-must-v*alge.ogg (components of a compound word are treated individually, so the rule of removing ` from 2-4 letter words applies). Every other symbol other than letters, spaces, and those symbols mentioned, should be removed. A final note: some forms are exactly the same and have the same pronunciation, therefore they have only one file for all of the forms in question, but the .txt file lists them multiple times, although with the same file name, just on different lines.

The second issue is one of categorization. The files need to be categorized as [[Category:Estonian pronunciation|<first letter of the term>]] or [[Category:Estonian pronunciation|<term>]] (I think it's the same). This can probably be solved with some non-back-breaking code, but it should still be done by someone who knows what they're doing.

Thirdly, the files are either in .wav or .mp3 format. They need to be converted to .ogg. This doesn't seem like a nightmare on its own, I could probably do that by myself, but combined with all these other things it doesn't bring me much optimism.

So in conclusion, I'm looking for somebody who is willing to and able to help me with uploading these files. It would be fantastic if somebody could do it for me, and if not, then could at least explain to me the necessary steps, as I genuinely have no clue. I understand if this seems like a lot to ask, we can do compromises on the file naming part, if necessary, but I really hope somebody here has the necessary skills and readiness to take on this task in some format, either with a bot or not with a bot. Joonas07 (talk) 09:37, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

 Comment MP3 is now accepted. - Jmabel ! talk 18:02, 12 July 2026 (UTC)
Does require having the autopatrol right, which you will need to request (for you or a bot) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:59, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Android motion photos

When uploading photos that contain video data ("motion photos" on Android), would I be required to remove the video portion from the image if it is in a non-free format?

Android motion photos are simply JPEG files with MP4 video appended to the end. According to the specification, the video track may be encoded in AVC (H.264), HEVC (H.265), or AV1 - my phone encodes them in HEVC - and the video can also contain an audio track in AAC. Since these are non-free formats, strictly speaking the video portion should not be allowed under Commons:File types. But there's nothing technically stopping me from uploading the motion photo because it's in an allowed file type (JPEG). MediaWiki might just treat it as an ordinary JPEG file and ignore the MP4 data.

With iOS live photos, the device saves the photo and video as two separate files, so this doesn't seem to be an issue. Qzekrom (talk) 02:25, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Problems with Template:Citation

The Template:Citation seems to have been changed recently. This har resulted in lines of white space being inserted between the citations used in references in an artwork template, as seen here File:Martinus Rørbye, Arrestbygningen ved råd- og domhuset, 1831, KMS206, Statens Museum for Kunst.jpg. I have not seen this behavior of the template before and have no idea of how to correct it. Cheers Rsteen (talk) 12:45, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-29

MediaWiki message delivery 16:08, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Category:Commons centralized discussion Category:Commons maintenance