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COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES Commons Help desk Village pump (general discussion) Copyright Proposals Technical Graphics and photography discussion Photography critiques Image improvement Illustration workshop Map workshop Photography workshop Video and sound workshop Categories for discussion Undeletion requests Deletion requests Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard Translators' noticeboard Work requests for bots Contact administrators Vandalism User problems (Dispute resolution) Blocks and protections Bureaucrats' noticeboard CheckUser requests Oversight requests Telegram IRC webchat Commons mailing list (archive) Commons' bugs on Phabricator Welcome to the Village pump This page is used for discussions of the operations and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2026/01. Please note: If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias. Have you read our FAQ? For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming. Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer). Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam. Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page: Please do not make deletion requests here: use the relevant process for it instead. For technical support and graphics talks (PNG, SVG, GIF, etc.), please post on the Graphics village pump. To ask for image improvement, see: Graphic Lab/Photography workshop for photographs. Graphic Lab/Map workshop for maps. Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop for other illustrations. To ask for video or audio improvement, see Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop. For translation requests, please post at Commons:Requests for translation. For media requests, please post at Commons:File requests. For questions about copyright, technical matters, or help that does not relate to the general Commons community as well as proposals, please see the other discussion boards linked in the blue panel at the top. Search archives:     Start a new discussion

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December 30

Do you want to help, to categorise 34,000 media needing categories as of 2020, please?

We are currently categorizing all media needing categories as of 2020. Progress is good so far, as shown on Category talk:All media needing categories as of 2020, but the task is getting increasingly more difficult, because the 'low hanging fruit' have been harvested by now. Do you want to help us? If so, please leave a comment about your approach or your achievement either here or on the discussion page.--NearEMPTiness (talk) 08:21, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

One way is to categorize the trees in the pictures. Example File:954I8789 نمایی از زن و مرد گردشگر در درکه - تهران.jpg and File:954I8790 زن و مرد گردشگر در درکه - تهران.jpg. However I cannot read Arabic, so I dare not place it in a country category.Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:44, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

But, please, if all you can do with an image that is clearly supposed to depict a place is to categorize a tree, don't remove it from Category:All media needing categories as of 2020! - Jmabel ! talk 19:22, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

A few months ago I went there, categorized a few images (spent quite some time geolocating them), provided some ideas at the talk page which were fully, totally ignored by that community as if I do not exist. Not going to do it again. Ymblanter (talk) 19:33, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that you should feel ignored, keeping in mind that "no criticism is praise enough." Implementing procedures to fight the backlog will take some time. It's a task for unsung heroes, who are sufficiently self-motivated to categorise files or to motivate uploaders to to it themselves. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 20:15, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I completely agree with the comment “don't remove it from Category:All media needing categories as of 2020!“, but the problem is that when using Cat-a-lot it automatically removes it. Wouter (talk) 07:54, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

This is false – in the preferences there is the setting "Remove {{Check categories}} and other minor cleanup" which one could uncheck. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:33, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot makes it easy to add the category Unidentified people to all photos of people, for example. The user can be proud because now so many images have a category added. Another user has then to solve the problem with "Unidentified people" with over 31,000 images. I've personally noticed that there are images with the person's full name in the description and that also have a Wikipedia article. Wouter (talk) 10:10, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

This is a very good comment, indeed. I have subsequently categorized some of these people and found that this is easier than categorizing those grouped by dates. Thus, I think it is helpful, to put them temporarily into this category. You may skip the mass uploads starting with a number, if you want to categorize them manually. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 03:50, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

You can combine the research of several people and get a result: File:Bakkikayam.jpg The description is in the Malayalam language. This limits the picture to the Indian state of Kerala, or the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district). This is a dam on some river. But I dont want to speculate.Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:58, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

Sometime the research is incomplete. File:Bernard Becker & wife Janet.jpg, There is an Wikipedia article about Bernard Becker. One problem is that he died in 2013, so this picture cannot have been taken in 2017.Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:20, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

Based on the metadata and image quality, I have the impression that the photo was not taken in 2017, but that a scan of a photo was made in 2017. Wouter (talk) 19:25, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

I have added a before date.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:54, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for this effort. However, I think it's not nearly as useful and needed as for example categorizing files in Category:2020s maps of the world in unidentified languages (complete) or Category:Renewable energy charts with unspecified year of latest data (under construction) or Category:Diagrams in unspecified languages (under construction) or Category:Renewable energy charts in unspecified languages (complete) for example or any of the requested tasks in Commons:Categorization requests.

There also is the issue that most of the files in these needing-categories cats are of low quality and/or low usefulness/relevance so what categorizing them does is

• cluttering categories
• creating work for those contributors who keep these categories clean and well-subcategorized

Prototyperspective (talk) 18:41, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

We are making good progress: 20,750 media needing categories as of 2020, but we need more volunteers, to clean the backlog by reviewing these files one-by-one or by semi-automated procedures. NearEMPTiness (talk) 10:04, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

Does someone know what the Italian phrase 'Coletti Gino' means? I categorized the first one, but maybe better if some Italian works on this.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:46, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

• 
• 
• 
• 

It seems to be some Italian person: it:Gino Coletti Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:50, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

Warning: These four images are modern pictures taken with an i-phone, so the actual location is incorrect and all of the same place.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:45, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

This file has been overwritten and categorized by now. NearEMPTiness (talk) 09:45, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

I hope not to many files land in broad unknown categories. There are stil some frustrating files without location: example: File:Italy- handbook for travellers. First Part, Northern Italy and Corsica (1869) (14597135680).jpg. It could be in France (Corsica or Massilia? (in Provence?)).Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:12, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Would it be useful to start with the 6,991 images that are currently used in Wikipedia? -- Vysotsky (talk) 22:28, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

@Vysotsky: Thanks, this is a very useful link, indeed. It is relatively easy to categorize these files, especially those of people. However, I am also interested in finding high-quality photos that are not being used, because they cannot be found, because they aren't well enough described. NearEMPTiness (talk) 08:54, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Completely agree. Even more: categorizing photos not being used might be more important. At the same time, I think it is good to also look at the ones heavily used. Your call has worked fine so far: 34,000 uncategorized images brought back to 19,139 within one month. Thanks. Vysotsky (talk) 14:24, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

January 02

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)

January 22

Visual disambiguation

Should disambiguation categories also contain images of the people listed? When looking for the correct person, sometimes it is easier to visually identify the correct person, rather than just looking at occupations and birth and death dates. Disambiguation categories currently read: "This category page should not hold any files." I think they should contain a single image of each person being disambiguated, preferably a close crop of the face. RAN (talk) 18:56, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

Neutral, but if we do this it should be a <gallery> element after the text. Absolutely opposed to categorizing images in a disambiguation category, almost guaranteed to be a maintenance nightmare. - Jmabel ! talk 19:54, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

Do we already have a bot that removes all images from the disambiguation categories? If so, your solution would be perfect. I find uncategorized images of people, where the name of the person in the title or description, and have been trying to assign them to the correct person. Visually this is a lot easier. Think of how many John Smiths we have. As we grow, the number of uncategorized people with similar names grows. Anyone that does category maintenance on people, knowns the problem of people assigned to the wrong category, because they have a similar/same name. --RAN (talk) 20:07, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

There isn't a bot that removes images from disambiguation categories as it's uncertain which category they belong to, but disambig categories with media do get put in a maintenance category for manual (human) review (Category:Non-empty disambiguation categories). There are bots that move content from redirects, though. ReneeWrites (talk) 20:21, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

To categorize people, I first search Wikipedia for their name. If the description is in Spanish, I search the Spanish Wikipedia page. Based on the estimated age of the person in the image, I can select the most likely candidates and view the corresponding pages. If there's an image, it's easy. Otherwise, the sources can provide a clue. Wouter (talk) 20:39, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

Galleries for visual identification for subcategories aren't uncommon - see Category:Categories with a gallery for a better choice of sub-categories. I don't see any reason why we couldn't extend it to disambig pages, though I'm not sure how useful it would be. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:08, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

There are no pages or files in this category is superfluous. Can the mediawiki software recognize Template:Disambig? --Henrydat (talk) 18:22, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Should people be even indentified, if the identity is irrelevant in the image? For example: the toddler in File:Baby Andrea met grootouders op strand 1933.jpg is my mother with her grandparents. The picture itself tells a story of grandparents (born 1878, 1882) being outside their comfort zone on the beach.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:51, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

I think that's a different case than the one that is being asked about here. The case here is about individuals who share the same name. One could create a disambiguation category with the text "Alexander Popov" is the name of the following individuals:, then follows a list of individuals: Category:Alexander Popov (ice hockey), Category:Alexander Popov (Moskovskiy), Category:Alexander Popov (musician), Category:Alexander Popov (painter). RAN is asking whether the disambiguation category should not just list the names of the individuals but also contain an image of each individual by the name "Alexander Popov", so that someone, who is trying to find the correct category for an uncategorized image "Alexander Popov.jpg" but does not know any of the listed individuals, could easily identify whether the depicted "Alexander Popov" is the ice hockey player, musician, or painter, etc. Nakonana (talk) 16:31, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

January 24

Proposal to change default display of galleries on category pages

I think this has been proposed in the past (including sort of one time by me a decade ago), I wanted to try and bring it up again. Part of the reason to bring it up now is that WMF is working on a lot of image stuff right now, so its a good time to ask for a change if we want it. (I have no idea if WMF would allow this change as in the past there was concerns about changing the size of so many images at once. However with changes going on with how images are rendered, i suspect that may be less of an issue now. In any case, can't hurt to ask). I also think expectations on the internet have changed and people expect larger images now a days then they did a decade ago.

Currently category pages display images quite small. I am of the opinion they are displayed too small, especially when taking into account how much whitespace there is between images. I think it would be better to make them larger so that people can see the images better.

I made a comparison of options at User:Bawolff/different_gallery. I think if we are sticking to the traditional gallery, then a size of 180px would make more sense then the current 120px

Alternatively, I think the "packed" gallery mode actually looks nicer, so my actual proposal would be to change the mode type and keep the current size. You can see what that looks like here. This would also look somewhat more similar to the output of Special:MediaSearch. The main downside to this is that for very narrow images, the caption containing the file name might get cut-off due to lack of room.

As a note, currently MediaWiki only has an option to change the default gallery settings everywhere. This would affect everything: categories, Special:NewFiles, the <gallery> tag (if other options aren't specified), etc. If there is consensus to change it just for categories and not other places, that would require additional changes to MediaWiki, but I suspect would not be difficult to get added.

Thoughts? Bawolff (talk) 08:05, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Please see (and vote on if you agree) Wish413: Larger thumbnails in category views.

Even worse is the current display of categories on mobile Web; I intend to make a separate wish about that soon. Agree with what you said; you may want to add some of that to the talk page of the wish. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:49, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

It would be helpful to have consensus here (assuming people agree with the idea) as that would allow me to push this through non-wishlust processes. Bawolff (talk) 16:29, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

The 180px packed gallery mode looks very nice. Long captions should be collapsed. All of them should be optional. Less frequently used options will be removed. We don't need to think too much about them. What do you think? --Henrydat (talk) 19:49, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Maybe then it would be better to post/move this to Commons:Village pump/Proposals and making the questions and their options more clear than they already are.

I like the display of the 220px or 320px but with the packed mode and for all of these options I don't like how the file-titles are displayed: they take up too much height so maybe it would be good to trim the title and display the full only at hover or some solution like that (but still enabling ctrl+f searching the parts of titles that are not shown).

Basically, I like how the search results in the MediaViewer are displaying except that there the file-titles are missing and I like how the categories are shown in the Commons app except that the app still only shows captions when both title and caption(s) exist instead of both or just the title.

In any case, I think it should be made possible for the user to easily adjust the size which kind of negates the need to agree on any size and which can cover more use-cases. For example, I may generally prefer smaller thumbnails but enlarge them when categorizing lots of files in a category based on the language of the labels on the map images. Such a size adjustment option is proposed in the wish linked above. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:18, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

My main gripe with the standard gallery isn't the default thumbnail size, as it can manually be adjusted, but the lack of mobile-friendly (or even mobile-compatible) options. ReneeWrites (talk) 16:43, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

To be clear, I am talking about the galleries that are automatically added at the bottom of categories. It is not possible for a user to manually adjust the thumbnail size of those galleries. Bawolff (talk) 16:01, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

I'd love to see packed height:160px —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:39, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

January 26

See: Category:Unidentified photographers from Italy

I am not sure what the category was intended for. It has a few photos of people where the photographer has not been identified. There are also categories with people in them, they look like they are identified, I am confused. Are the people pictured photographers that we are looking for more info on them, or are they more images where we do not know the name of the photographer? I can see having images where we have the photographer's name and need more info, like the case above with "Cav. V. Simone". --RAN (talk) 02:41, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

It seems to originally be about photos of unidentified photographers. Either way: could you start a category for discussion thread (CfD)? Prototyperspective (talk) 09:15, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

After creating the category, the user did edits like these: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], on photos of identified photographers. It doesn't seem to make much sense. Unless the user was challenging the gender identification of the photographers. -- Asclepias (talk) 12:13, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

The diffs support that this was intended as a category for photos showing photographers. The photographer of the first diff is not identified: whether or not the person is identified refers to the categories set on the file, not e.g. the file title. An issue with the gender identification could have been a motivation for the user; in the first diff I think the cat should only have been added in addition instead of replacing Category:Male photographers from Italy. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:39, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

What? A person who is clearly identified in the description (and/or the title) is not unidentified. Commons has a lot of portraits of identified persons who do not have a specific category to the name of the person. Does that justify categorizing them as unidentified persons? I could understand if, by removing the gender category, the user wanted to make a sort of statement against categorization by gender, but even then they should leave the files in the parent category, not categorize the persons as "unidentified" when actually they are identified. -- Asclepias (talk) 18:25, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

I think it's about the categories but this may need broader discussion and may vary per case/type. For example, the language of files in Category:Unidentified language is often clear from the file description and at least via the file contents but it's not identified via a category. Category:Drone videos from unidentified countries contains the files that are not yet in any country category of Category:Drone videos by country even when the country name is in the file description. One topic here is whether to have such Unidentified categories when it's not wanted and/or not feasible to categorize the subjects. We generally like to have things categorized by the city depicted or the country located in so it makes sense there to set such a category but here we probably don't want categories for photographers or do we? (And it's not unlikely we usually would like to have categories about photographers as these can be used to sort/find their photos with; that's probably just different for photographers with essentially no photos on Commons which makes this not so simple.)

if, by removing the[…] I don't disagree with you. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:17, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

• Was the gender thing part of the crusade a few years ago to remove all gender identification? I remember there was a small group arguing for the removal of gender in categories. --RAN (talk) 04:11, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

About Template:FoP-China

Could the technical staff add "|author1=|author2=" to the "Template:FoP-China", similar to the "|deathyear=" in "Template:PD-Art" ?--Huangdan2060 (talk) 08:38, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Note: better fit for Commons:Template requests than this global general Commons board. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:14, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. Huangdan2060 (talk) 15:04, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Unidentified French port in 1948

This is from a family album with no description of the picture. I suspect Marseille.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:32, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Please do not post to this board just to identify categories of an arbitrary unimportant file out of tens of thousand of files that lack categories / location-identification. There are other places for this such as Category:Ports and harbours (unidentified). This board isn't really for lots of extremely narrow-topic requests like this. The linked cat contains over 130 files and nothing is even special about the one you asked about. Thanks, Prototyperspective (talk) 12:17, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

I have also had good results, on Reddit, at r/wherewasthistaken. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:38, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it is probably the Old Port of Marseille. @Smiley.toerist: You may get a better answer on Commons:Bistro. @Prototyperspective: Please do not be so antagonistic. Thanks, Yann (talk) 12:29, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

I agree and found the church tower. I have asked for a rename.Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:39, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

I care about Commons even when it sounds unfriendly (sorry if it does, it's not meant to be unfriendly). The user has been cluttering this board with many of these threads already. There are hundreds of these files and nothing is special about this one that warrants creating a thread about it but not any of the hundreds of the other files. I have hundreds of files, categories, and topics that would be more important but I don't spam them here because I have more respect for people's attention, time, and productivity. If this kind of posting is accepted here, users may just as well post about each and every image in Category:Drone videos from unidentified countries, Category:Unidentified caves and whatnot. Somebody has to say it imo. Please do not create these kinds of threads here. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:42, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

I should have used the French Bistro. There is enough local knowledge there.Smiley.toerist (talk) 17:12, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

I agree there need to be a balance, between endless threads about search puzzles and only business and efficiency. People can always skip them and not spend any time on them. But other people are curious and find a satisfaction solving puzzles and often learning new things doing it. Just dont tel people how to spend their time. By the way: In the background I also categorise, sort, correct, update and do many other usefull things, beside uploading files (more than 28000 uploads from 2008, without mass Glam uploads).Smiley.toerist (talk) 17:12, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Further above there is a thread about 34,000 media files needing categories as of 2020. You want a thread here about every 10th of these files? Please reflect on your practices. This is not okay, and I won't post threads here about dozens of files and categories I consider important either. I could and I'm sure many other users have lots of files and categories they'd like to talk about but they use the established ways for this such as adding the file to the respective Unidentified category. Please have some respect for people's time and attention and the value of the community being able to focus on genuine large-scale subjects such as "34,000 media needing categories as of 2020" which is a scope far above individual files. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:30, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Also it's unfair; e.g. to the contributors who populate the Category:Unidentified subjects categories without repeatedly asking about specific individual files thereof here. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:36, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

i concur with yann. there's nothing wrong asking any question here, the general discussion page for any topic. RoyZuo (talk) 19:36, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Then don't complain when I come here asking about random 434 individual files that are missing categories. In separate threads that clutter the page. What's the place to discuss topics concerning the Commons project? There's > 500,000 files missing categories, I'll just be making individual threads about one random file of these that I think looks nice /s Also 6,215 categories for discussion, I'll just make a new thread about one arbitrary individual case once a day.

If the community doesn't want to have a place where there's focused attention on unsolved tasks of which there are hundreds of highly-important ones that affect whole branches of categories and things of that scale that aren't even posted here then so be it. The value of not wasting community attention and focus and having such a place is pretty clear. Just saying "there's nothing wrong" without addressing anything that has been said and without any reason other than that this place is in your view for any topic isn't convincing and I don't see how it can be convincing. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:48, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

If there is certain pattern to the individual files, you can certainly use some examples to demonstrate and see if some general solution can be applied or tips found. I am afraid that in practice it is individualy resolved and the easy ones are resolved first, so it will get progressively harder. I am working on the files without categories, where I use my knowledge to resolve. I know a lot of trains/trams etc and using the geografic location some files have, one can give the rigth local categories (countries, region etc). However I dont think that some magical wand or procedure will come up from the discussions. It is just hard work. I just dont see why individual discussions over files, interfere with project discussions. Why not have both and let people contribute as they see fit and feel is the best use of their time. I have no problem with contributing to both types of discussions. Maybe I will spend more time in total to the Commons. Volonteers need to have satisfaction and pleasure in there work. Some fun elements contribute to that. This is not a compagny workplace where everything needs to work exclusively for the compagny defined targets. We dont get paid for that.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:19, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

To be fair, they are not asking about all the files in the Universe, or about all the files someone uploaded on Commons and did not know about the existence of the categories.They are asking about their own recent uploads. Nobody arguing here that this approach is scalable, and this noticeboard is certainly not for asking to categorize every single file. But I guess if people sometimes ask about their own uploads - well, this also will not scale well, but I think we are still in a situation where this is so far manageable. If you want to bring your own uploads, after making an effort to figure out what was the object 30 years ago when you took the picture - why not? I personally do not mind doing some OSINT once in a while, as soon as it is not overburdening and it is not compulsory for me to deliver. Ymblanter (talk) 06:34, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Basically, all I was saying is that the user is by now doing this too often, almost routinely.

Pointing out the issues with this – such as using up community attention of the many users watching this place that's needed much more for other issues – and trying to inhibit it at least somewhat wasn't really done before so I brought it up after the user made like 20 posts here of that kind and I think it would be great if users are generally expected to ask such things at other dedicated places if adding an Unidentified category isn't enough such as at least just the Help desk. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:51, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

• If the topic doesn't interest you just skip over it. I generally find that when asking questions on niche message boards of the WikiUniverse, they tend to go unanswered, too few eyes there. Note that the question was answered quickly, and the clutter is in debate about whether asking questions here is wrong. --RAN (talk) 19:44, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

  Many of these threads aren't answered quickly and even if they were this doesn't address other issues such as this being unfair to those who add such files to Unidentified categories instead of cherrypicking a random file out of these and posting about it here. What's the particular need for the location of the photo to be identified with lots of eyes here? It wasn't even used anywhere and isn't used anywhere nor is it in any way special or unique (same for the other photos of the 20+ threads the user is routinely posting about here as more or less the only user who keeps on shamelessly posting such trivialities here). Prototyperspective (talk) 19:52, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

• @Smiley.toerist: I hope they ask more questions, or even start a mystery of the day/week/month image for the landing page. The more people involved the better. The Library of Congress does the same thing. --RAN (talk) 03:30, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

  I remember someone started a page a few months ago exactly for these kinds of identification requests, but I have already forgotten how to get there. Perhaps it could benefit from clearer/easier ways to arrive on said page (e.g. link from main page/VP?). --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:58, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

  triaging might sound good for management, but as you correctly identified, firstly it sends questions to places hard to find in the first place, secondly those places are often unwatched ghost towns. we already have these problems with many of the separate Template:Lang-HD that were created but never watched so occasionally newbies post questions there that end up unanswered for years. RoyZuo (talk) 12:04, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

  Yes, the more people involved the better – that's why it would be perfectly fine and great if people posted about the subject of image identification. But posting about one individual case doesn't achieve that and is a far too narrow scope. One could also create a category of unidentified files of the week/… and then post about it here so these prioritized files get identified or embed a few files where identification is of particular importance (e.g. due to it being heavily used or due to this being required to save them from deletion or because they could be used somewhere). However, posting about one or so individual random files helps nobody and is a burden. Let's have threads about the subject files missing categories / in Unidentified xy categories, that would be great but a thread like this would only drown these out and makes it seem like we got no such problems/tasks except for rare cases of individual files.

  .

  Also and in part of relating to what I meant with "fair" – imagine what would happen if more people feel comfortable with and entitled to post here about arbitrary individual files they'd like to have categorized.

  This board would become wholly unusable.

  By now it's just 1–3 users doing this every now and then (mainly Smiley.toerist) and it's not that much of a problem because so few users are doing it but they are establishing a practice as acceptable and doing something others including those adding files to Unidentified categories or starting categories for discussion etc other users so far refrain posting about via similar threads about such super-niche super-specific things. I don't mean to sound unfriendly but it would be good if sooner or later somebody said something about this. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:01, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

• The Commons gets to many new files (a lot of mass uploads) with very limited/missing data. Whatever the community does later to categorize and add the missing data, its to much to keep up. One cannot limit the number of incoming files. The best solution is that the uploaders are encouraged to do the maximum on research so that the files are as complete as posible. It is much more effort to do the work later with people who are not familiar with the subject (and only interested in getting the numbers down / a job). If ones declines to help uploaders, the risk is that the uploaders will just dump the files. So there is a balance to be kept. The first tactic is to refer to more appropiate local platforms with many eyes and local knowledge. Its easy if the country speaks a non-English langauge. My next query I put in the Bistro: [7] Dedicated/specialized boards have an chicken and egg problem. They dont work until there are enough willing eyes. The other strategy is to ignore the question treads. If they are no reactions, they disappear fairly quicly and discourage the further questions. And if they are interesting threads they get reactions. This board is largely selfregulating. An one can always also react on the talk page of the user. As Prototyperspective says it is no problem, only a potential problem later. Wait and see. One can always start a new discussion then and have more support when more users experience this as a problem.Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:46, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

  "downloads" => "uploads" I presume; otherwise this makes no sense. - Jmabel ! talk 19:41, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

  • My mistake. I corrected the text.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:38, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

  This is great reasoning why we should have threads about the subject of Unidentified xyz files and/or categories of files thereof. It's not a reason to post about a random individual one file of such. I won't repeat the things I already explained in my prior comments but one thing I'd like to repeat is that such threads additionally "makes it seem like we got no such problems/tasks except for rare cases of individual files" so is not just taking up space that could be used to discuss any of the 10.000+ more important topics (really that many) but actively defeats the stated purpose.

  The best solution is that the downloaders[uploaders you probably mean] are encouraged to do the maximum on research so that the files are as complete as posible Things like this could be discussed in such a thread of broader scope; there's ideas for what could be done. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:44, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

  I agree to continue this discussion in a new thread. I wil start a new one shortly. @Prototyperspective: From the perpective of contributors who mainly work on reducing the backlogs this may be great reasoning, however not from the perpective of uploaders of old material (mostly not own work) with little documentation. The timescale is different. Uploaders want to finish the uploads in limited time and combine the information from the community discussions with whatever background information and/or documentation they have. This usefull combination is no longer posible once the file is uploaded and disappears into unidentified and very broad categories. Backlog catch ups are often much more work, than the work by the uploader. That is why facilitating the work of uploaders limits the risk that uploaders find extensive research to much trouble and just upload the files with limited research. And often when one research is resolved and lot more files can be uploaded with the results. For example: If with one picture the location/name of a church is found, all the interior and detail pictures can also be placed in the correct categories. Any information can often help to reconstruct a trip of many years ago. 1948 was 78 years ago and no one in the family pictures is living.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:27, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

  however not from the perpective of uploaders of old material (mostly not own work) with little documentation this is not the case – you could start a thread about the problem of old material with little documentation and/or create a backlog category and/or meta page about such. Basically, I recommend when looking at individual cases out of thousands to abstract / think about what the broader topic or issue is. Here you identified that as old material (mostly not own work) with little documentation so you could start a thread about that. This usefull combination is no longer posible then start a thread about that issue. I don't currently see how this then would not be possible anymore which further highlights how a thread about that would be needed. and disappears into unidentified and very broad categories there's thousands of files in these – why is this particular file so special or you so privileged to unfairly ask about one particular unused file thereof? Should all the other users adding files to these cats ask about their individual files (or even small sets of files) they added there too? So far we can just hope that nobody else or at least not more than 3 user do the same behavior or else this forum would be a cluttered mess that people would stop browsing & watching/monitoring and where threads about important subjects get even fewer than the already few replies. Moreover, you identified a problem of files disappearing into unidentified and very broad categories and then nothing being done – so why not start a thread about that problem. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:11, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Moving 560 categories

I previously suggested moving files from 560+ categories into 560+ new categories and leaving the previous categories 'permanently empty' of files. The motivation for the change is well-grounded and I think has reasonable consensus.

However I've noticed other people, including the original creator of these categories, have been moving the categories themselves (rather than the files) to newly created categories, with the old name providing a redirection link (basically renaming them). There are as many as 24 such categories.

This alternative seems much simpler than my earlier suggestion, and given that it's already begun I think my earlier suggestion would only complicate everything further. The only benefit to my solution was to preserve the index from that particular book to the matching commons category. We can preserve that use case by linking to the original category from this pre-existing gallery page, which I've now done.

As such I'll follow what others have been doing, and I'll link to this discussion in the changelog when moving the categories.

BeakheadIntrados (talk) 16:21, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

January 27

360° panoramic viewer

Has there been some sort of change to the 360° panoramic viewer? When I uploaded File:Bucharest - Biserica Schitul Darvari pano 360.jpg, it worked fine. Now it seems to assume that, despite the aspect ratio, this file somehow represents a full sphere. - Jmabel ! talk 23:33, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Unsure why it wasn't displaying correctly with the Commons tool, but I managed to make it display correctly directly with Pannellum (the viewer used by the Commons tool), see this link [8]. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 01:34, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

@Tvpuppy: Thanks. May I assume it also shows wrong for you in the Commons tool, not just some glitch on my end? - Jmabel ! talk 01:39, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

The Toolforge-based pano viewer has been broken in that manner for a while now. Unfortunately the maintainer is no longer active. Maybe it would be possible to convert {{Pano360}} to direct Pannellum links? Pi.1415926535 (talk) 01:44, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

To create the direct link to Pannellum, it would have to obtain the thumbnail URL for the pano viewer, and also the image's height and width to calculate the vertical angle of view. Perhaps it is possible doing this in the template, but I'm not sure how. Maybe someone else more knowledgeable can figure this out? Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 01:59, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

I should clarify the part I'm not sure how to do is obtaining the image's height and width. The calculation for vertical angle of view (vaov parameter in Pannellum) should be simple, which is just 360*(height/width). Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 02:19, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Hmm, true. Width and height would be doable for images with those parameters added to structured data, but that's not true for all images. The thumbnail URL is apparently determined by an MD5 hash of the filename (see [9]) which wouldn't be easy for use to implement in a template, though Special:Filepath may work. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 02:26, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

I think the URL can be obtained with {{filepath:{{PAGENAME}}}} Antti T. Leppänen (talk) 17:18, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Definitely a good idea. I think the height and width is not needed if the file has Google Photo Sphere XMP metadata.

Also, I think then it does not actually matter (despite the name of the template) whether the image is less than 360° degrees also in the horizontal direction.

And does the viewer work for the File:Bucharest - Biserica Schitul Darvari pano 360.jpg exactly correctly, because it is in the cylindrical projection? I understood from Pannellum documentation that the viewer only works for images in the equirectangular projection (for single images). Antti T. Leppänen (talk) 17:31, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

@Jmabel Yes, your assumption is correct. The image you linked (and other similar images that doesn't show the full vertical view) wasn't displaying correctly for me as well. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 01:47, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

I had always assumed that the 360 panorama tool requires images to be seamless in their entirety, including at the top and bottom. The images in (for example) Category:360° panoramics in Japan all look (for a lack of a better word) distorted to create this effect, and the panorama viewer works on these images normally. While the "ring" Tvpuppy links to is not one I've seen before on Commons. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:31, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

@ReneeWrites: as recently as when I uploaded that pano, the viewer was working correctly in this respect. We have a lot more 360° panoramas than we have photospheres. The downward part of a photosphere is particularly difficult to create by stitching a series of imags take in any sane way with a conventional, handheld camera, and getting the entire sky right for an outdoor panorama is also very difficult. I have about an 80-90% success rate shooting panos handheld with no special tools; I cannot imagine having even a third of that success rate shooting photospheres. - Jmabel ! talk 20:06, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Ah, I had only seen the photospheres, I thought that's what was being discussed when people talked about panos. I haven't been able to make a photosphere myself and I'm unsure how to even do that, or how to test photospheres locally before uploading them to Commons. ReneeWrites (talk) 20:26, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

January 28

NASA images processed by third parties

Moved to Commons:Village pump/Copyright § NASA images processed by third parties

— Preceding unsigned comment added by SevenSpheres (talk • contribs) 18:12, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Digitized Sky Survey

Moved to Commons:Village pump/Copyright § Digitized Sky Survey

— Preceding unsigned comment added by SevenSpheres (talk • contribs) 18:12, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

When you nominate an image for deletion should you also !vote

When you nominate an image for deletion should you also !vote? Should you add a  Delete as well as nominate, or is that double !voting? I have noticed at some closures that the decision was made by counting the  Delete and the  Keep and the simple majority was enforced. RAN (talk) 15:41, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

I don't think so unless one has converted a speedy deletion request to a regular deletion request because otherwise it's generally implied that one is voting delete (with exceptions where the user makes clear they're unsure whether the deletion rationale applies). I don't think enforcing the simple majority is usually a good way to close controversial DRs without clear consensus but there the nominator is usually (?) counted as 1 person voting for deletion if they didn't clarify that they changed their mind or that they're unsure about whether deletion rationale applies (the latter is most commonly the case for copyright-deletion cases). Prototyperspective (talk) 15:54, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

The simple majority might be a legit base for decision making if the DR is questioning whether a file is in project scope, but otherwise the decision is usually more a matter of arguments presented. It is uncommon for the nominating party to vote one way or the other except in cases like the ones listed by Prototyperspective. Nakonana (talk) 17:54, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

It's generally implied that, if you create a deletion request for a file, it's because you think there's a reason it should be deleted. Re. closure decisions, keep in mind that deletion discussions are not a vote - decisions are made on the balance of arguments, not by counting the keep/delete templates. Omphalographer (talk) 23:23, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Sometimes the nominator reconsiders his nomination, but its not his decision to terminate the nomination. An example of this in Commons:Deletion requests/File:De Haan, Belgium (Unsplash).jpg. Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:22, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Most used videos without subtitles

Does anyone know how to make such a list? Trade (talk) 21:44, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

"Most used" in what sense - view/play count, number of links, something else? Omphalographer (talk) 03:43, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Most likely it refers to the number of uses in Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia.

If there is a way for that then probably in quarry. Afaik, one can only separately scan for most-used videos using glamorous/GLAMorgan and for videos without subtitles, e.g. like so deepcategory:"Videos in Spanish" -deepcategory:"Videos with subtitles"

However, it would probably be more useful to scan for e.g. 'videos that are in another language than English that are used in English Wikipedia but don't have subtitles' and things of that sort. A large use-case I'd imagine for these categories is to enable people seeing which files not in the language of a Wikipedia are used in a language Wikipedia so that they can e.g. redub the video or add subtitles or translate the subtitles or translate the diagram labels etc etc. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:59, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

January 30

Categories for people born on a particular day

For example these. Is this a thing? I don't like it. Pinging @Mr-ahk since he is the one person I've seen on my watchlist using one of these, perhaps he'll have a clue what is going on here. - Jmabel ! talk 06:10, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Category:Births by year (btw this category has contradictory categorization) is I think narrow enough with making it more specific isn't useful and just adds extra work and overly incomplete categories etc so I would suggest nominating these for discussion/deletion. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:53, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

It's not that much different from categories like Category:Photographs taken on 2026-01-29 and Category:Videos taken on 2026-01-29 isn't it? After all persons are born on a certain day (their birthday). There are lots of people who want to know which celebrity they share their birthday with or whatever famous person died on that same day. Categories like Category:1942 births are not that useful then because who's going to take the effort to read all these thousands of entries? Let alone the bunch of politicians or whatever they are with only one picture and no Wikidata entry shown on (some of) these <random year>_births pages. Probably it can also be a solution to repair apparently abandoned projects like the red links on for example: January 10. Mr-ahk (talk) 22:36, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

People who are not notable for a Wikidata item should also not have a category about them. Such information should not be stored on Commons and especially not through categories as categories can not have references. GPSLeo (talk) 23:09, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

I agree with that last. The threshold for a Wikidata item is the lower of the two. - Jmabel ! talk 23:55, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

It's not how we currently categorize births (or deaths), but I see no issue with changing that, especially for categories that contain thousands of entries (and thus would have reasonably populated subcategories, as well). Diffusing crowded categories to more specific subcategories is in line with Commons policy. But the births-by-year (and deaths-by-year) categories are usually added via the infobox, so a change would have to be made to how that works. ReneeWrites (talk) 23:10, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

January 31

Central banner request for Wiki Loves Punjab 2026 contest

The first edition of the Wiki Loves Punjab photography contest will take place on Wikimedia Commons from February 1 to March 15, 2026, aiming to enrich content related to Villages of Punjab. A central notice request has been submitted to reach both registered and non-registered WikiCommons users from Punjab, India and Punjab, Pakistan. Thanks. -- Kuldeep (Punjabi Wikimedians) (talk) 04:43, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Alternative file extensions

what's the current situation with extensions like jpg, jpeg, JPG... all for the same type of files?

one thing i know, is that old uploads like File:Nature.jpg File:Nature.JPG still exist.

1. do the different extensions matter for new uploads?
2. is there a single preferred form? jpg for all jpeg? if there is, is it still possible to create files with names in other forms?
3. if nothing has been done about this problem yet, any progress, timeline or roadmap this will be tackled? phab task?

RoyZuo (talk) 17:21, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

This has recently been discussed here but there wasn't much participation: Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2025/10#Equivalent file extensions. So far, there isn't any preferred form per Commons:File types. It's not necessarily a problem or at least you didn't elaborate why it would be. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:53, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

File:BackFromPasture.jpg

At File:BackFromPasture.jpg the translation of the text in the image was deleted as an "hallucination". Can someone check the translation using other than Google AI, to see if it was accurate. If accurate could the translation be restored. The illustration may be a copy of an earlier work. RAN (talk) 19:19, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

February 01

Metadata gibberish

Stumbled onto this image File:"Slavery Memorial" Brown.jpeg and noticed the "User comments" in the file metadata. Just a bunch of strings of characters, no seeming logic - wondering if it was originally something legible and just rendered incorrectly, or if it's something else. Any ideas on what it means? /is there a need to fix it, or should I just leave it alone? 19h00s (talk) 20:36, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

They might have been written in a different script than Latin maybe. Sometimes I see stuff similar to this when trying to convert a scanned text page (=image) and saved in PDF format into an editable MS Word document with Word failing to decipher the script/text from the PDF file. I don't know whether something like this could also happen for meta data. Nakonana (talk) 22:01, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

The EXIF data for that file is corrupted. There's actually part of a video embedded in it, but not enough to be playable. Omphalographer (talk) 22:20, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

I tend to see this with Samsung models. Makes me wonder if it is related to the live/motion photo function. --HyperGaruda (talk) 06:42, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

February 02

The best overall strategy to limit the backlog of files with incomplete information/categories

This is a follow up discussion of the thread 'Unidentified French port in 1948'.

Quote from the discussion: The Commons gets to many new files (a lot of mass uploads) with very limited/missing data. Whatever the community does later to categorize and add the missing data, its to much to keep up. One cannot limit the number of incoming files. The best solution is that the uploaders are encouraged to do the maximum on research so that the files are as complete as posible. It is much more effort to do the work later with people who are not familiar with the subject (and only interested in getting the numbers down / a job)Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:58, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Give people a barn star or some other kind of accolade on their talk page if they did a good job. ReneeWrites (talk) 15:59, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

See also Wish457: UI and badges for categorization requests. If you're referring to uploaders, lots of the files are from large numbers of different uploaders each not uploading a very large number. (Moreover, it would make little sense to send sth like that when they properly categorized one or a few files as an exception to most of the other files they uploaded.) Prototyperspective (talk) 17:17, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

To start the discussion it is best analyse how the problem files backlogs are reduced: (the role of uploaders has been discussed sufficiently in the past threads)

• Deliberate actions such as the thread 'Do you want to help, to categorise 34,000 media needing categories as of 2020, please?' and Would it be useful to start with the 6,991 images that are currently used in Wikipedia? by Vysotsky

• The random organic reduction, wich takes place anyway: When a Commons contributor comes across a problem file during his usual work (for example categorising, sorting categories, adding SD, etc), he/she does the research and the problem file is no more. The frequency of this happening depends on the number of eyes seeing the file. The problem with using 'unknown, undefined' categories is that it puts the problem files under the carpet, not to be seen again except for the workers of deliberate actions. The more categories the files have (not the unknown/undefined) the more visible the files are.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:58, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

I think before further measures, some things should first be done at the source, i.e. where and when users upload files; see Commons talk:WMF support for Commons/Upload Wizard Improvements#Guidance/facilitation of categorization. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:16, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Modified UK post boxes

Post box B42 243 - 2025-01-29

Royal Mail are starting to modify some post boxes to take larger packets, as shown in the above image. Do we have a separate category for these? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:26, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Isn't that Category:Post boxes in the United Kingdom by type->Category:Free standing post boxes in the United Kingdom where the file is already in the category (which at a glance seems to contain lots of files of similar postboxes)? Prototyperspective (talk) 14:36, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

No; most of those are not modified in this new fashion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:48, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Open questions about the 2026-2027 WMF Annual Plan

Hello, as per every year, the discussion on the Wikimedia Foundation's Annual Plan on Meta has begun.

This year, the questions focus on various topics that will be central to the Foundation's Product & Technology department's plans for the next fiscal year (July 2026-June 2027). They include global trends, experiments, new users and administrators, users who can control IP addresses, and even our readers.

Feel free to join the discussion on Meta. You can also participate in your own language, if English is a barrier for you. --Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:40, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Openly licensed propaganda/terrorist material

Hi, we need to have a frank discussion about mass uploads of propaganda material from terrorist organizations. Several Iranian "news outlets" have opened their licenses to allow more dissemination of disinformation on the Internet. I can give you a couple of examples. For example, w:Tasnim and w:Fars news agency which both officially and unofficially are the propaganda arm of w:IRGC (a widely designated terrorist organization). I find it somewhat funny an organization that has no respect for human lives (or many other things we take for granted) is somehow respecting international licenses and copyright laws but whatever. I don't have a problem is uploading some files from them as it might show examples of propaganda or portraits of the leaders of the Iranian regime that are hard to come by but the current scale of mass uploads doesn't make any sense to me. For example: 50K images from Mehrnews.com, 52K images from farsnews.ir, 9K images from Khameni.ir (the website of the supreme leader of Iran), Mizan, the news agency of the judiciary system (the organization that executes around 1,000 people every year), 63K from Tasnim (literally the propaganda arm of IRGC) and several more cases in Category:Images_from_websites_of_Iran. It has many problems: 1- Many of these images/videos are not really educational. 2- The "text" and in many cases, the image itself is pure propaganda (for example: the text of this image is quite a rubbing of salt on the injury when IRGC has killed 30,000 unarmed protesters, shot people in hospital beds, ran them over with fire trucks and here it calls the murdered protesters "rioters and terrorists" 3- It is causing us a lot of reputational damage in Persian media. For example: https://www.neutralpov.com/p/new-video-inside-wikipedias-hosting Can we please stop doing this? Amir (talk) 15:05, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Courtesy ping of @999real who uploaded a lot of images from these places recently. Amir (talk) 15:06, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

We should host these files as we can not make a decision on the line what kind of propaganda we host and what not. But we need better rules on how these files are described and that original descriptions from the source have to be labeled as such. One example where this is done in a good way are the files with original nazi descriptions in Category:Images from the German Federal Archive. GPSLeo (talk) 17:25, 2 February 2026 (UTC)