Commons:VP/T

Shortcuts: COM:VP/T COM:VPT

Welcome to the Village pump technical section
Technical discussion
Village pump/Technical
 Bug reports
 Code review
Tools
 Tools/Directory
 Idea Lab



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/2026/07 /Archive/2026/08.

Please note
 
Category:Commons maintenanceCategory:Commons centralized discussion
SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 1 day and sections whose most recent comment is older than 30 days.

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)

Issues with Google on Search by Image gadget

The search by image function for Google hasn't been working for quite some time now. I'm not quite sure whats up with it. Aplucas0703 (talk) 01:15, 16 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 (talkcontribs) 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)

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)

Closest thing I could think of would be to disable $wgRestrictDisplayTitle, but MediaWiki's manual page discourages that practice. Alternatively, the Translate extension could be used to create internationalization variations for categories, similar to what's already in place for pages in the Commons namespace. ForeverFlying (talk) 18:11, 5 August 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)

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 (talkcontribs) 18:59, 12 July 2026 (UTC)
Great, that's one problem less. But I'm still looking for someone who would generally know what they're doing, especially if some kind of autopatrol rights have to be requested, it's better to have a user who has some kind of prior experience. Seeing as nobody has answered me here yet, could you maybe suggest some users that I could contact directly and ask if they are ready to do it? Apologies if I'm being intrusive, but I really need help here. Joonas07 (talk) 09:36, 15 July 2026 (UTC)
Are the files other than the actual audio small enough that you can pack them all into an archive (eg. a zip file) and upload them to somewhere we can look at? I think seeing the real data would help us prepare for this task.
It intimidates me that we'll have to derive the upload filenames according to conventions of dictionary in a foreign language that I'm not familiar with. So you'll probably have to explain these transformation rules and proofread the derived filenames, possibly in multiple passes until we get all the names right.
Also please tell us about the legal parts, as in licenses for copyright and database rights. I know this can be annoying, but I think anyone who wants to help will want to be really sure about them before uploading tens of thousands of audio files. Though of course we won't upload all of them at the same time, instead we'd upload a smaller selection first and then allow users some time to tell us what we did wrong. – b_jonas 03:45, 22 July 2026 (UTC)
Sorry for not replying, fortunately, I found a user already who can help me, but thanks for offering! Joonas07 (talk) 16:19, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
But I'll keep you in mind, in case it won't work out with that other user after all. There's the issue of bot permissions and when it comes to converting the names, I'm not sure if it can just be done with find and replace. So I might still contact you at some point, if you are okay with that. Joonas07 (talk) 16:30, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
For the record, all the files including the index are packed into three zip files, and the files are CC-BY-4.0, so we can use them for educational purposes. Joonas07 (talk) 16:37, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
Wait, “psv_00931.wav → enآ´ergiline → Et-en"ergiline.ogg”? There's a letter from arabic script in the middle of that one! I hope there's a semi-reasonable explanation for this one, like it's an old database from back when Unicode wasn't as prevalent as now and some characters got replaced by inappropriate ones during the conversion. – b_jonas 05:07, 22 July 2026 (UTC)
Yes, I noticed that too, but I don't know where it came from. Seems like it appears only before the symbol ´, so probably some Unicode stuff like you said. Joonas07 (talk) 16:28, 28 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)

Pinging @ForeverFlying who made the edit in question. – Howardcorn33 (💬) 16:58, 5 August 2026 (UTC)
@Rsteen I have removed the extra white spaces, so the template should be displaying properly now. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 17:31, 5 August 2026 (UTC)
My apologies for messing up the line-spacing! @Tvpuppy Thank you for the fix! And thank you @Rsteen for bringing up the issue. ForeverFlying (talk) 17:40, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-29

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

Inappropriate rejection of a file name

Initial report and section title (the latter now modified) appear to have been wrong, but there is still apparently a problem here. - Jmabel ! talk 06:49, 19 July 2026 (UTC)
Santiago Brra. reports that he tried to upload a file with the name "Sala de la colección principal de la Biblioteca Popular Solidaridad Social, Rosario, Argentina. Julio de 2026.jpg" and got the obviously inappropriate message "Please write a more informative title". Anyone have any idea why this would happen? - Jmabel ! talk 22:29, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

OK, it was an inaccurate report on his part, though there is still an issue. The message he received was entirely different, and in Spanish. It was "Algo salió mal: El nombre de archivo que estabas intentando subir ha sido incluido en la lista negra..." So it was saying something in this file name was blacklisted. Offhand, I have no idea what is wrong with that filename. Nothing in the filter log at all for that account. Reading what he later wrote at Commons:Help desk#Título para imagen de Wikimedia, I'm pretty sure it was a cross-wiki upload from es-wiki, if that helps. - Jmabel ! talk 06:49, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-30

MediaWiki message delivery 05:44, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Outdated pictures of the day

I've been seeing reports that the picture of the day is sometimes showing POTDs from previous days. Are the caches for the Main Page not always getting updated? Clarinetguy097 (talk) 16:47, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

  • Here is an example where both POTD and MOTD are affected: the POTD and MOTD for 11th July are repeated in archive.org from 11-15th July: 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th July. Only on 16th July did POTD and MOTD get updated. --Tagooty (talk) 15:42, 22 July 2026 (UTC)
    i vaguely remember that @Schlurcher's bot purges the main page every day after midnight. sorry if wrong mention.
    2 potential problems:
    1. not sure when exactly the purge happens. might it help if it's done a few minutes after 00:00 instead of exactly midnight?
    2. still, i have a vague impression that pages quite often look different to logged in and logged out users, probably due to how the website is cached and delivered by wmf.
    RoyZuo (talk) 13:16, 23 July 2026 (UTC)
    @Clarinetguy097, @RoyZuo, @Tagooty: RoyZuo remembers correctly SchlurcherBot purges all the different language versions of the main page every day, around 1am. However, SchlurcherBot was down during time period noted. I did not see this before, but it seems this is a faily critical task to do, so maybe we need a second bot, that does the same or another backup solution. --Schlurcher (talk) 15:08, 23 July 2026 (UTC)
    thx a lot.
    i agree that having a 2nd bot to double tap is essential.
    but, maybe wmf should also purge the highest traffic pages? for pages that are frequently visited, or contain important info (such as legal stuff or time-sensitive stuff), maybe wmf should purge them so they make sure pages delivered to users are up to date?
    maybe a page should be automatically purged whenever it hits a certain view count? purged every 100k-th visit. or purged daily/hourly when a page accumulates 100k visits over 24h/3d/7d...? just some random ideas. RoyZuo (talk) 16:45, 23 July 2026 (UTC)
    Thanks for the explanations. Given the time-sensitive nature, I think the best solution is for the bot that updates POTD and MOTD at midnight UTC to purge immediately. Leaving the task to another bot that usually, but not always, runs 1 hour later is risky and imprecise. Tagooty (talk) 04:02, 25 July 2026 (UTC)
    see if the problem gets worked on. RoyZuo (talk) 11:12, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Automatic categories for Template:Translate

Scribunto now can return a list of languages translated in an SVG file (T259018), and so it's possible to automate the addition of files to Category:SVG by language (as requested in T407647). I'm not quite sure where the best place would be for this feature (maybe in Module:FileMedia, although that doesn't really deal with categories; then called from {{Translate}}), but something like the following should be possible:

    local langs = mw.title.new( 'File:Tulunadu.svg' ).file.languages
    local cats = ''
    for _,langCode in pairs( langs ) do
        local langName = mw.language.fetchLanguageName( langCode, 'en' )
        cats = cats .. '[[Category:' .. langName .. '-language SVG]]\n'
    end
    return cats

Pinging @Booksmurf who's working on related stuff.
Sam Wilson 02:07, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

I have created this module and its doc in relation to:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist/W528 @docjames
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Module:Translate
As per Sam's comment, I do not know where would be the place place for this, so if any admin could help figuring out the next step or giving recommendations, it would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you Booksmurf (talk) 09:27, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Last month in technical changes

Following Wikimania 2026, another overview of technical changes in the media support corner of MediaWiki, covering activity since June 17th.

  • A big new development: WMF has created a new dedicated Media Platform Team on July 1st, to own how we store, manipulate, stream, and display media going forward — Thumbor, file storage, and thumbnailing infrastructure all fall under it now. Their initial focus is thumbnail infrastructure sustainability.
  • The hCaptcha support added to UploadWizard has now also found its way to the Special:Upload page and there have been a few follow-up fixes, like a proper loading indicator T429322, T429287.
  • Failed uploads in UploadWizard can now be retried individually per file instead of only being able to retry the whole batch. An improvement contributed by @Amdrel. T410980.
  • The "Other resolutions" list on file pages, broken since the thumnbnail size limitations that I mentioned in the previous editions, should now be matching the actual available sizes. T401668
  • @Mimurawil added a new category suggestion framework for UploadWizard. This works towards Wishlist item W526. Geo- and full-text-based search suggestions are in active development T427047, T428065, T428066.
  • On mobile, you can now double-tap the left or right third of the video player to skip back or forward 10 seconds, similar to many video apps. This was wishlist item Wishlist item W468 and added by @Brooke Vibber. T432729.
  • I myself completed the changes for WebVTT subtitle support. Next week, it will be possible to create a Timed Text page with the .vtt file extension and you can use advanced styling and positioning of subtitles beyond what the SRT support already allowed for. T116154. If you want to help update the Timed Text documentation, that would be appreciated btw !
  • There has been some work on 3D models, with @Amdrel driving the latest changes. Thera are patches out for review across the extension, its metadata handling, and the thumbnailing backend. Without support of the foundation and people reviewing the patches, it is however hard to land these changes, so if you can help in any way with testing or reviewing, that is appreciated. T246901, T419711, T187844.
  • There were several Wikimedia Commons related projects presented at the Wikimania 2026 Hackathon closing ceremony, which you can watch back on Youtube

——TheDJ (talkcontribs) 12:33, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Can't wait to see the rollout of textured meshes on Commons :3 --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:15, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Thumbnail sizes

Still doesn't appear to be consistently matching available thumbnail sizes. See, for example, File:Seattle - Rainier Avenue overpass, 1954 (22651065004).gif. It offers a 1,920 × 1,481 pixel thumbnail of this 1,400 × 1,080 pixel image. - Jmabel ! talk 06:46, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Language missing

I don't know where to reach out about this, so I'll do it here.
It is not possible to create a VTT file through the TimedText page (example) when there already is an SRT for the same language. It doesn't come up in the list. I suspect it is the same the other way around too. It also isn't a translation, so the text is technically wrong. Thanks. // Kakan spelar (talk) 16:16, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Newsletter?

  • Hi @TheDJ: is this a regular newsletter summarizing media technology changes? Is there a way to subscribe to this on user talk pages and/or have it included in The Signpost? ↠Pine () 20:03, 2 August 2026 (UTC)
    @Pine it's just me doing something extra for the Commons community. I've done this for 3 months now. —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 21:03, 2 August 2026 (UTC)
  • @TheDJ: OK. It would be great to turn this into a newsletter which could have talk page subscriptions and/or be republished in places like The Signpost. Is that feasible? ↠Pine () 21:06, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

I searched for "english national football team" in Commons. The URL is https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=english+national+football+team&title=Special%3AMediaSearch&type=image. To my surpise, the result set includes File:Lions Family Portrait Masai Mara.jpg which makes some sense in that the logo for the English national football team is three lions, but the metadata for the lions family portrait file shows nothing about English football that I can see. What might have happened with the search tool that caused this result? I'm wondering if the search tool leverages data from additional sources beyond the search text string and the image metadata. ↠Pine () 19:20, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

I think the search uses Wikidata to try to match up words with concepts. My guess is that since "english national football team" is one of the aliases of Wikidata item England men's national association football team (Q47762), and so is "Three Lions", that those are considered completely equivalent terms by something within the search engine, and that picture has the text "three lions" in its description. That's a guess; I'm not sure where (or if) it's documented exactly how the search finds synonyms or related concepts. — PeterCooperJr (talk) 17:18, 31 July 2026 (UTC)
@PeterCooperJr: thanks for the comment. That may be what happened. See mw:Help:MediaSearch, mw:MediaSearch and Commons talk:Media search. By the way @JTweed-WMF: you appear to be a member of the newly-created mw:Media Platform Team, and perhaps can answer my question authoritatively as well as the unanswered questions and comments on those talk pages. Thanks, ↠Pine () 17:27, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Blank space on top of categories with navboxes

Some navboxen appear to be having mysterious blank spaces on top of the categories (in MonoBook on Firefox latest version, at least). See for instance Category:Snow in Florida, which has a significant gap between the navbox and the category title on top of the page. Compare to Category:Rain in Florida, which has the same navbox, but does not have the mysterious space. What gives? - The Bushranger (talk) 05:07, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

@The Bushranger: The first character of the page is an invisible en:Byte order mark. I removed it from Category:Snow in Florida. --Achim55 (talk) 07:11, 27 July 2026 (UTC)
Huh, wonder how that happened. Thanks for clearing it up! - The Bushranger (talk) 01:53, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-31

MediaWiki message delivery 18:46, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

TSE-Dados-Abertos

Hello,

I'd like to know if it would be possible to update the TSE-Dados-Abertos to improve the categorization. As it stands now, the main category have 18,915 files, with the categories by party and by year having to be added manually.

To empty the main category, could it be possible for the template to work like {{TSE-Dados-Abertos|party=(party acronym; example: MDB, PT, PDT...)|year=(electoral year)}}, with an warning message displayed if any or both options are missing? It would also be interesting if the template could link to the divulgacandcontas.tse.jus.br (as the source of the political party), as we can see here, for 2022. This could also help if this batch upload proposal ever happens. Erick Soares3 (talk) 16:22, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Redesign of photo navboxes

Deutsch: Hi! Ich habe länger darüber nachgedacht, und möchte es jetzt gerne zur Aussprache bringen. Die Navigationsboxen von Fotos eines Jahrzehntes, wie bei Category:2019 photographs of Bavaria, kommt mir etwas klein vor. Wäre es eventuell besser, die Schriftgröße zu erhöhen und die Box über die ganze Breite der Weißfläche zu ziehen oder zumindest in eine zweite Zeile zu erweitern? Bin gespannt auf eure Meinungen. Grüße!


English: Hi! I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'd now like to bring it up for discussion. The navigation boxes for photos from a specific decade, like the one at Category:2019 photographs of Bavaria, seem a bit small to me. Would it perhaps be better to increase the font size and stretch the box across the entire width of the white space, or at least expand it to a second line? I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Best regards!

--PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:20, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

@Reinhard Müller made a series of super neat templates Template:Category description. RoyZuo (talk) 09:27, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-32

MediaWiki message delivery 19:43, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

There was a problem during the HTTP request: 429 Too Many Requests

I've never encountered this message before. Just trying to upload some of my photos from Flickr as normal, but I'm getting cut off at around 50 photos. Normally I have no issues, but now it won't let me upload anything. Is there a way to increase the limit of photos I can upload? PascalHD (talk) 16:28, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

There is a related discussion here: Commons:Upload Wizard feedback#There was a problem during the HTTP request: 429 Too Many Requests. I also have encounter this same error couple days ago when I was trying to upload Flickr images, but I'm not sure what is the reason for this problem. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 18:03, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Need help to fix Template:Milim

Template:Milim has a "Search DVIDs" function which is broken. The link should bring up the search result based on VIRIN. e.g.

[https://www.dvidshub.net/search/2.0?q=170504-D-PB383-056 Search DVIDs for VIRIN 170504-D-PB383-056]

would produce a link Search DVIDs VIRIN 170504-D-PB383-056. However, replacing the value of VIRIN in the above URL, https://www.dvidshub.net/search/2.0?q=$virin, in this template doesn't produce the desired result. Help is needed to fix the bug. Happyseeu (talk) 02:57, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Convenience link: Template:Milim. - Jmabel ! talk 03:57, 5 August 2026 (UTC)
@Happyseeu: I'm not sure quite what you have in mind, but that "$virin" is definitely wrong. Maybe you have in mind "{{{virin}}}" or "{{{virin|SOMETHING ELSE HERE}}}"? - Jmabel ! talk 04:02, 5 August 2026 (UTC)
Thank you. I've fixed the bug with your help. Happyseeu (talk) 05:12, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Cleanup of bad pages created by broken template

I just wanted to notify that due to a missing pipe in the template Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request/header/i18n some bad pages got accidentally created such as:

I already fixed the template but Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request/header/i18n/en and Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request/header/i18n/de need to be updated accordingly.

The template had been broken since it got localized in 12 June 2026 by @Matrix, see Special:Diff/1230195948/cur & Special:Diff/1230196854. After checking all the deletion requests subpages from June till August I don't think any extra cleanup would be needed.


It's moon (talk) 14:05, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Moved the last one and deleted it. - Jmabel ! talk 20:30, 6 August 2026 (UTC)
The next needed step is to mark Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request/header/i18n for translation. I don't actually know how to do that. - Jmabel ! talk 20:36, 6 August 2026 (UTC)
Someone has already requested this in Commons:Translators' noticeboard#Mark translation for Deletion requests/Mass deletion request/header/i18n.
According to Commons:Preparing a page for translation, it appears you need translation admin rights, which appear to be separate from regular admin. It's moon (talk) 23:28, 6 August 2026 (UTC)
It looks like the translated subpages have been updated (Special:Diff/1257622398 & Special:Diff/1257622393) :)) It's moon (talk) 21:48, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

PAGESINCATEGORY stuck at 0 despite confirmed category membership

Hello,

I've got a category, that uses {{PAGESINCATEGORY:{{PAGENAME}}}} to show a photo count. It's displaying 0, but the category actually has files in it and it was confirmed via the categorymembers API (returned 500, API-limit-capped; true count is around 621) and via the "Hidden categories" list on the member files themselves, which correctly lists this category. I've tried:

  1. The action=purge on the category page
  2. Edit and save across the category's member files

None of it moved the count off 0.

A structurally identical category using the same template shows its count correctly (900), so seems to be specific to this one category's cat_pages/cat_files counter being desynced from actual categorylinks membership, rather than a template or caching issue on my end. Has anyone seen this before, or know how to trigger a recount server-side (e.g. via populateCategory.php)? I've also filed T434362 on Phabricator with the same evidence.

Thank you. Regards, Oleg (talk) 14:14, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps try {{PAGESINCATEGORY:{{#titleparts:{{PAGENAME}}}}}} instead. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 18:11, 8 August 2026 (UTC)
Thank you, Tvpuppy! This fixed the issue. I appreciate it! Thank you. Regards, Oleg (talk) 18:19, 8 August 2026 (UTC)