Commons:The Commons Log
• Friday, 17 April 2026 •
 | The Commons Log is an ad hoc record of notable events on Wikimedia Commons. It may be updated by anyone, as rarely or as frequently as desired. The guideline for whether events are suitable for inclusion is (i) that events are of sitewide interest and (ii) that the events are reasonably significant in the context of Commons events in that year. The Log is intended to be archived only once per year. |
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2014
Fast Category Intersection
January 2014: Deployment of the FastCCI button, an interface to a powerful tool for fast Commons category operations such as loop detection, deep traversal, category intersection and category subtraction.
Request for comments on MP4 support
January 2014 The Wikimedia Foudation starts a community discussion on whether or not to support the MP4 video file format on Wikimedia projects, which is rejected by the Wikimedia community (see Commons:Requests for comment/MP4 Video)
20m files
25 January 2014 : Milestone of 20 million hosted files.
URAA redux
February 2014: Four Wikimedia chapters publish open letters to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees regarding Wikimedia Commons policy on files affected by the URAA. Together with the Board answer, they lead to a community debate on whether files deleted on URAA grounds should be massively restored.
Media of the Day debate
8 May 2014: The stil frame displayed for the media of the day, a video of the Buchenwald concentration camp, sparks a debate on the Wikimedia-l mailing list.
Picture of the Year
Winner of the 2014 Picture of the Year vote is File:A butterfly feeding on the tears of a turtle in Ecuador.jpg by the Dirección de Información Turística del Ministerio de Turismo del Ecuador.
2015
Mobile app
The Commons app maintained by community volunteers is launched based on the then abandoned official Commons app that was launched in 2012 and abandoned in 2014
25m files
11 March 2015 : Milestone of 25 million hosted files.
Freedom of Panorama threatened in Europe
July 2015: Commons:Freedom of Panorama 2015
Picture of the Year
Winner of the 2015 Picture of the Year vote is File:Pluto-01 Stern 03 Pluto Color TXT.jpg by NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
2016
30m files
13 January 2016 : Milestone of 30 million hosted files.
Release of Pattypan upload tool
May 2019: First release of Pattypan, a desktop upload tool using spreadsheets, intended especially for small-to-medium GLAMs.
Picture of the Year
Winner of the 2016 Picture of the Year vote is File:Jubilee and Munin, Ravens, Tower of London 2016-04-30.jpg by Colin.
2017
40m files
21 June 2017 : Milestone of 40 million hosted files.
Picture of the Year
Winner of the 2017 Picture of the Year vote is File:Perereca-macaco - Phyllomedusa rohdei.jpg by Renato Augusto Martins.
2018
Deployment of the 3D extension
20 February 2018: Deployment of the the 3D extension, allowing the upload and rendering of 3D files in the STL format (note).
50m files
7 October 2018 : Milestone of 50 million hosted files.
GFDL-1.2 license phase out
15 October 2018 : The {{GFDL-1.2}} license is phased out for new media (decision)
Picture of the Year
Winner of the 2018 Picture of the Year vote is File:Evolution of a Tornado.jpg by JasonWeingart.
2019
Wiki Loves Broadcast
With meta:Wiki Loves Broadcast educational videos on diverse subjects from public broadcasters such as by ZDF's Terra X get uploaded (as of 2024 largely of German-language but increasingly being dubbed to other languages)
Deployment of File captions
11 January 2019: Deployment of the file captions, first feature part of the Structured data project.
Deployment of Depicts
24 April 2019: Deployment of depicts, second feature part of the Structured data project.
Picture of the Year
Winner of the 2019 Picture of the Year vote is File:Mud Cow Racing - Pacu Jawi - West Sumatra, Indonesia.jpg by Rodney Ee.
2020
MediaSearch
MediaSearch, a modern search / explore interface is developed
60m files
18 March 2020: Milestone of 60 million hosted files.
Structured Data spreads
August 2020: Half of all files (32,8M out of 64,5M) have at least one Structured data statement.
Picture of the Year
Winner of the 2020 Picture of the Year vote is File:Alcedo atthis - Riserve naturali e aree contigue della fascia fluviale del Po.jpg by Luca Casale.
2021
70m files
16 March 2021 : Milestone of 70 million hosted files.
Picture of the Year
Winner of the 2021 Picture of the Year vote is File:Holy SURP Hovhannes Church.jpg by Farzin Izaddoust dar.
2022
80m files
11 January 2022 : Milestone of 80 million hosted files.
Picture of the Year
Winner of the 2022 Picture of the Year vote is File:Phalacrocorax carbo, Egretta garzetta and Mareca strepera in Taudha Lake.jpg by Prasan Shrestha.
2023
90m files
11 January 2023 : Milestone of 90 million hosted files.
100m files
16 November 2023 : Milestone of 100 million hosted files.
500 TB
November 2023 : Commons' total media file storage volume exceeded 500 terabyte (455 tebibyte) for the first time between the 22nd and 25th of November
2024
20th anniversary
20th anniversary of Wikimedia Commons (nothing was done but a logo change was proposed)
Category:Commons archives Category:Commons community Category:Wikimedia history