Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/10

Error 403 and lots of display errors with photos that no longer load

Hello, I'm currently having issues viewing images on Commons as of tonight, but not on my phone. The error message:

Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical issue

If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below.

Request served via cp6005 cp6005, Varnish XID 81203505 Upstream caches: cp6005 int Error: 403, Too many requests. (22714d4) at Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:35:05 GMT

Do you know where this could come from? And am I the only one? Did I make too many server requests? It's still strange, isn't it? Thank you in advance Sebring12Hrs (talk) 18:49, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

The issue is solved. Sebring12Hrs (talk) 19:57, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

It was a larger issue. Even the upload and publishing were impossible at that moment .--PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:37, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 14:06, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Help needed identifying photographer

Hi all. I recently came across this photograph of Marie Goldsmith, and I'm having difficulty attempting to identify the photographer or photography studio that created it. The photograph was taken in Paris in 1916, and it is currently archived in the archives de l’État de Neuchâtel. From what I can parse of the signature, it seems to say "Bournoff" or "Gournoff" or something similar, but I haven't been able to find anything by this name from searching around. Could someone here help me try and identify this photographer? Thanks in advance. --Grnrchst (talk) 21:07, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

en:Pierre Choumoff. --Rosenzweig τ 23:10, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

You are a star, thank you so much! --Grnrchst (talk) 08:01, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:33, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2025-10

In September 2025, 1 sysop was appointed; 4 sysops were removed. Currently, there are 175 sysops.

Appointment:

• User:VWalters-WMF was appointed sysop on a temporary basis on 10 September.

Removal:

• User:A.Savin was removed on 10 September by User:EPIC. He had served as sysop from 25 October 2007.
• User:BrightRaven was removed on 13 September due to inactivity. They had served as sysop from 9 September 2014.
• User:Holly Cheng was removed on 13 September due to inactivity. She had served as sysop from 1 June 2006.
• User:Billinghurst was removed on 16 September due to inactivity. They had served as sysop from 26 January 2010.

We thank them for their service.

---

Edited by RoyZuo (talk).

---

Commons Gazette is a monthly newsletter of the latest important news about Wikimedia Commons, edited by volunteers. You can also help with editing!

--RoyZuo (talk) 20:22, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Photo challenge August results

Home interiors: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Time to milk the cows.	Old style Chinese decoration	Contemporary blue and white bathroom
Author	Magnolia677	Pauloleong2002	OKJaguar
Score	10	9	7

Bark: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image			File:200130 D 9059.CR2.jpg
Title	Andrews Mare, Lyndhurst, New Forest, Hampshire, England, UK	Willow trees on the bank of the river Windrush at Witney, Oxfordshire, UK	Tree on Lake Gunn Nature Walk in Fiordland National Park in Southland on South Island of New Zealand
Author	JoanaImages	Scampz	Karel Stipek Austria
Score	17	14	10

Congratulations to JoanaImages, Magnolia677, Scampz, Karel Stipek Austria, Pauloleong2002 and OKJaguar. -- Jarekt (talk) 04:13, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

image licence

Hi, is this in public domain or something similar please:

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/092354.shtml?radii#contents

Thanks Gryllida (talk) 02:19, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

@Gryllida: it looks to me like at least most of what is on that page would be {{PD-USGov-NOAA}}. Is there some specific image you are asking about? NOAA is usually (but sadly not always) explicit about content on their pages that comes from a third party. - Jmabel ! talk 03:14, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

I mean the "Surface Wind And Warnings" map contents, @Jmabel, -- Gryllida (talk) 09:32, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

@Gryllida: {{PD-USGov-NOAA}}. - Jmabel ! talk 14:55, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 14:55, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

The problem with Golden hour

Hello everyone, I wanted to hear what you have to say on this topic. Currently, the category Golden Hour is categorized under both sunrise and sunset. I'm wondering if that's correct, or whether the golden hour shouldn't be considered its own "time of day." Or does one follow the definition, which is also clarified by the brackets in the category name "photography," that it's more of an aesthetic state than a time of day like day, twilight, or night? In that case, I would again remove this category. I don't think it's appropriate to categorize it both as a time of day and as part of sunrise and sunset, not to mention that it contradicts our overcategorization policy. But that's just a side note. Regards Lukas Beck (talk) 12:38, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Commons categorization isn't mainly about ontology, it's about helping people find things. Clearly, from its name, this is a category about photography, more than about a time of day, but it is certainly related to those two times of day. Perhaps this should just be a {{Cat see also}} from those categories, but there certainly should be a connection. - Jmabel ! talk 03:44, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

I looked at your opinion and simply implemented my idea. I think it's more correct now. Lukas Beck (talk) 05:24, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Golden hour is when the lighting is typically the best for photographs, its not time based at all. But normally it is near sunset. THEBOSS40 (talk) 19:48, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

or sunrise ;-) Lukas Beck (talk) 09:50, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

This is about natural light when the sun is low in the sky. Depending on your latitude and season this can be all day in the arctic spring or a much briefer time at dawn and dusk in the tropics. Of course here in England it is more of a mythical time when it is neither raining nor cloudy, legend has it that at such times the sky over London can even be blue, though I'm skeptical. WereSpielChequers (talk) 10:57, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

at such times the sky over London can even be blue I have seen it. Summer of 1976, I believe. - Jmabel ! talk 01:25, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

I remember that year, rather warm, far too warm to be sitting in an exam hall as I was. Don't remember any unusual sky colours though. WereSpielChequers (talk) 09:15, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Confused categories

I do not know why there are two different categories for Category:Books from London by year and Category:Books published in London by year, but what strikes me is the strange way they behave.

The Category:1915 books from London seems to be categorized in Category:Books from London by year at the bottom of the page. However, when clicking that category, it is not found there – but it can be found in Category:Books published in London by year, although such a category is not listed at the bottom of the page.

The same applies to some other categories, like e.g. Category:1918 books from London, while others of this kind behave as expected. I suppose there must be some bug in the template {{Books from London by year}}. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:07, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek: have you asked any of the people who created these categories there intention and, in particular whether they intended a distinction? - Jmabel ! talk 01:30, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Well, I was more interested in the strange way in which the categories are distributed into superior categories than in the purpose of the two categories, which I wanted to discuss somewhere else once I understand this. Nevertheless I am pinging @Enyavar and AnRo0002: . --Jan Kameníček (talk) 09:51, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi, there are two parts of the category tree that are not in accordance: "Books published in London" "(Books published in Paris", "Books published in Cincinnati, Ohio", whatever). These pre-existing categories were categorized by place of publication, which was enough until we recognized that it's a bit unhandy to group 200'000 files in the same category. That was the starting point to break them up by year; and the process is far from done. (We/I could appreciate your help, if you'd like). In my opinion, it makes sense to start subcategorize by place+year IF you can expect most of the by-year categories having more than 10 titles.

However, there were also pre-existing "1866 books from the United Kingdom", "1866 books from Germany"... and so on, and that led me to create "1866 books from London" and similar categories in the first place. Eventually, more cities were added with the same scheme (the big centers of publication in the 19th century: London, New York, Paris, Philadelphia, Boston, Leipzig, Berlin, Rome, St. Petersburg... according to current numbers of files), and I would think that "<year> books from <city/or US state/or country>" is the preferred scheme. That is my opinion just based on the amount of categories that already exist, I'm open for a debate if necssary. So far, I hesitated to start a debate to rename the parent category that is still "published in".

The "Books published in London by year" seems to be an early error. I was not aware; but would suggest to create a redirect to "books from London by year". All my best. --Enyavar (talk) 22:14, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Diagrams by language

Here's an idea of how Commons categories could be useful for a translation campaign (to internationalize open knowledge in the Wikimedia system and make data/knowledge in Wikipedia more accessible):

• A scan with the Glamorous could show which diagrams in English are used in a specific-language Wikipedia like Spanish Wikipedia
• Users of that Wikipedia (or who speak that language well) could hold a campaign or media-edit-a-thon (or just act individually) to translate all those files
• This would mean that people reading Spanish Wikipedia can then (better) understand what those images say even if they aren't good in English or can't understand it at all (note: one could also scan for any language other than the language of the given Wikipedia but realistically that's going to be >99.0% English ones for most WPs)
• The same could also be done for data graphics like charts, like those in Category:Our World in Data (around 99.9% of these are in English but they're used heavily across many Wikipedias)

There are multiple challenges here (these aren't only about this specific problem):

• Here is the glamorous scan. Issues: One can't select which language Wikipedia to scan – one could modify the output of the tool or just jump around it via ctrl+f and a search phrase like es.wikipedia but that's not a good option. Moreover, the height per diagram is too large, making it very cumbersome to go through it and move from one diagram to the next.
• Here is the glamorous v2 scan. Issues: one also can't select which language Wikipedia to scan – I've created an issue here but the issue is not even showing in the Issues tab of that hard-to-find repo let alone being worked on and there doesn't seem to be any interest in getting volunteer devs to find and help out with the project.
• Many or most diagrams aren't yet in their language category – This is a Commons search scan one could use to categorize these starting with SVG diagrams. There are many thousands of files so many users would need to help out with this or a bot could do this, for example based on other categories of the file or via OCR. (If I just create a request at Commons:Categorization requests only very few may see it.)
• There are many files in that category that aren't diagrams. That's often because of miscategorizations that need fixing. Often, a tool to see the categorization path from the file to the diagrams category is needed or would be useful for that.
• Lastly, SVG files in specific have often been translated already to more languages than the language in the thumbnail and original first version so shouldn't just have one language category. This is generally done using the SVG Translate tool. However, that tool doesn't add any category or alike when a new language is added despite that this could be done. I've proposed this (no reaction yet) at Adding translations should automatically add the respective lang cat & other version on its talk page. Note that this is specific to SVG files and doesn't apply to PNGs; I just used the SVG diagrams search as example because it shows more files that are actually diagrams in case that some users don't know what diagrams are and/or are confused why there's so few diagrams in the results.

The challenges may seem like it would be supper difficult to do but I think it may partly sound more difficult than it is – for example one could throw very many files at once into Category:Diagrams in unspecified languages and then go on from there. Moreover, these issues would be valuable to solve in general; this is just a problem that helps illustrate these problems and why solving them can be useful.

Help with this would be appreciated. tl;dr The short and simple summary is: please help moving diagrams not yet categorized by language into Category:Diagrams in unspecified languages or from there or the search into their language category. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:23, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Note that the links above can already be used to find other/English-language diagrams (or charts etc) in your native language Wikipedia so that you can translate them if you're motivated or skilled in quickly and accurately translating such images so that these are more accessible to readers of your native language. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:11, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Categorization of colors on flags

There was an extensive discussion on categorization on flags on my talk page. My argument is a category named for certain colors should contain all files that visually contain those colors, regardless of European heraldic rules. As far as I know, categories are intended not to serve custom regional rules, but to help users from around the world search for media. This is an international site, and the rules for flag subcategories should be universal.

My argument is based on Commons:Categories policy, which states that files should be placed in the most specific category that fits them. Therefore, a flag with visible color should be in a category named with that color. It is not helpful for a user searching for flags without a color to have to navigate through flags that contain that said color.

So I ask the community here, do black outlines, borders, and other similar design choices count as color on a image of a flag? Nebula84912 (talk) 00:31, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Categories for colors on flags should probably only include colors which are present as the primary color of a figure or of a field (background). Incidental colors, like black or white outlines around figures or colors present in fine details, shouldn't be included. For flags defined in heraldic terms, this should probably only include colors which are described in the blazon, or which are clearly implied with terms like "proper". Consider, for instance, the state flag of New York - the coat of arms at the center includes a complex landscape which can contain bits of many different colors. (I'm not certain if the landscape is even standardized.) Categorizing the flag based on every fleck of color present in that landscape is impractical, and dilutes the value of the color categories for more prominent colors. Omphalographer (talk) 02:13, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Nebula84912's heading to this discussion, "Categorization of colors on flags", is misleading. The issue at hand is not the categorisation of colour palettes in flags as such, the issue is the categorisation of colours in heraldic designs as represented in flags. Obviously, not all flags are heraldic in nature, but a preponderance of insignia used by territorial public bodies such as municipalities, French départements, German länder, Swiss cantons, as well as other such territorial bodies across the globe, are indeed heraldic. Such insignia can interchangeably be represented as either coats of arms or flags, and it doesn't make sense for such flags to have their colours described in colour palettes other than the ones they were created from, which are heraldic palettes.

Black is a recognised colour in heraldic palettes, but only if a field partition or a figure is coloured in it. In heraldry, black is also used stylistically to bound off adjacent fields or to distinguish figures against their repective ground more emphatically. However, such stylistic use of the colour black is not considered part of the substance of a design and conventionally has never been reported in a heraldic design's formal description.

In effect, Nebula84912 demands that all flags, including heraldic flags, must have their colours categorised as if they were instances of graphic design, which they are not. Moreover, historically, colour categorisations on Commons have followed the long-established rule that heraldic flags have their colours described in the conventional heraldic fashion. Nebula84912's innovation of describing these artifacts in terms of graphic design would therefore involve a pointless exercise of overhauling a large body of existing work.

Nebula84912 has started this work by recategorising a large number of heraldic flags that were previously categorised the conventional way. The flags thus recategorised are now in categories that include black among their colours, which their corresponding coats of arms do not. There is no point to creating this division between coats of arms and their respective flags, least of all when it would require a large amount of work to undo firmly established practice.

I propose that Nebula84912 be asked to stop this project immediately. Thanks! ARK (talk) 08:03, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree with both previous, and ping, at least, @Arrow303, Baseluna014, Doc Taxon, Erlenmeyer, Jpgibert, Lokal Profil, Mrmw, Snow Lion Fenian, and Thom.lanaud: since they may not receive notifications from here. --Kontributor 2K (talk) 12:36, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree too.

In heraldry, we don't really use colors but concepts represented by a palette of colors. The "azure" concept covers all blue nuances. If we categorizes with color, which number of blue can we have? Is cerulean is categorized like "navy", "teal" or "turquoise"? Must we have a category for each color?

Regarding the black used as delimiter for the figures' shapes, it is only a convention not explicitly described. So it must not be taken in account. This is a choice done by the illustrator.

Jpgibert (talk) 13:57, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Jpgibert: we actually are categorizing flags with those colors. Category:Navy blue flags and Category:Teal flags exist, along with Category:Saffron flags, Category:Maroon flags, etc. We generally don't use heraldic tinctures to categorize flags; we use primary colors like black, blue, red, and white. This is about flags, not heraldry. Why should flags of Asia be categorized under heraldic rules? Heraldry is an European tradition, not Asian. Nebula84912 (talk) 14:36, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

@Jpgibert: "In heraldry, we don't really use colors but concepts represented by a palette of colors." So, these next flags are actually based on European heraldry, and we should categorize them according to traditional European heraldic rules?: [1] [2][3][4] [5]

Is that what you are saying? That we should rename the color categories to those of heraldy and classify these flags as such? Nebula84912 (talk) 17:39, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

You keep talking about an imaginary consensus that simply wasn't there. For example, these flags are marked as black, and not by me: [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]

There are thousands more examples that I can give. I see them categorized as such all around Commons. Therefore, that "implicit" consensus never existed. The established consensus is the explicit consensus of Commons:Categories. Nebula84912 (talk) 15:38, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

"In effect, Nebula84912 demands that all flags, including heraldic flags, must have their colours categorised as if they were instances of graphic design, which they are not" Nebula is correct. If I am looking for grey flags, I don't care if it contains a heraldic element in the center based on medieval European standards. I care if it's got a grey background or stripe or star or something. I agree that very small incidental colors may be omitted, but omitting a flag that has a huge orange chevron because it also includes a seal/coat of arms/blazon that looks similar to an arbitrary standard is not helpful for navigation. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:30, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

@Koavf: Just to be clear and avoid any confusion. The claim that I'm demanding things is totally unjustified. I'm arguing for something, not demanding something. I'm suggesting that the way we categorize flags should be comprehensive, clear, and universal. "Universal" means it must account for the international nature of the Commons project. It should also be user-friendly, meaning it should not be based on convoluted rules; one shouldn't need to be well-versed in regional heraldic or vexillology rules to find what a user is looking for.

Whatever the consensus, I think it shouldn't contradict Commons:Categories, as that could confuse users. Categorization should be intuitive.

If we decide that small details not visible at a simple glance should be ignored, I'm totally fine with that. However, it needs to be clear how small they need to be. Should they be invisible in the thumbnail, on the file page preview, or at the file's original size? I  Support that if they are visible at the full original size, then they should count. But I'm  Neutral if it is decided that only what is visible on the file page is considered. However, I  Oppose considering only what is visible in the thumbnail. I don't think a thumbnail defines a file; to me, it is just to give an idea of what the file is for navigating purpose. And that is my position. No more nor less. Whatever is the consensus here I will respect it. Nebula84912 (talk) 19:33, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

"I'm suggesting that the way we categorize flags should be comprehensive, clear, and universal... It should also be user-friendly, meaning it should not be based on convoluted rules". Could not agree more, and I've tried to represent these two principles below. These simple and clear principles should be obvious. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:38, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

@Omphalographer: How big does the figure have to be? Do small figures and inscriptions count? Do the primary colors of the boats and the sun on the New York state flag count? And what is the primary color of the boats? Is it white or brown? Or we should have to take the whole coats of arms as a figure and do not categorize the figures that form part of it at all? If we are doing that, what is the primary color of that coat of arms?

My primary concern is with colors that are clearly visible. As I said in my talk page, why users should be forced to navigate through images of flags (like this ones [19][20] [21] [22] [23][24] [25]), that clearly contain black when they are specifically searching for flags that do not? (like these ones: [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35])

Should this flag be categorized as black because it has a black acorn, i.e a figure? Nebula84912 (talk) 14:17, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Elementary, my dear Watson: As suggested above, read the blazon!

The coat of arms of Westernsee is blazoned thus in German:

Von Silber und Blau schräg geteilt. Oben ein sitzendes, in den Vorderpfoten eine schwarze Nuss haltendes rotes Eichhörnchen, unten fünf silberne Wellenfäden.

This may be translated into English as follows:

Per bend argent and azure; in the argent field a squirrel sejant gules holding in its forepaws a nut sable; in the azure field five barrulets wavy argent.

Observe that blazons use technical heraldic language, which is optimised for brevity and will take a bit of getting used to. The term "sable" stands for black. so a "nut sable" means a black nut.

Therefore: yes, the Flag of Westernsee should be described as having black among its heraldic colours. Kind regards, ARK (talk) 14:50, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

So this flag is black (sable) because a black cross is part of the coats of arms. That's correct? Nebula84912 (talk) 15:44, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

And this flag is purple because it has a purple flower on one of its coats of arms. Is that accurate? Nebula84912 (talk) 16:23, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

And that flag wasn't categorized as black. So according to the consensus on the file, that means the presumed consensus, that flags wasn't a black flag. So clearly, because of that example and the other examples that I gave, the "implicit" consensus that we categorize flags according to heraldic rules wasn't a real thing. Nebula84912 (talk) 16:50, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi everyone. I distinguish between a flag and the figures it may contain. For me, the Albanian flag is red, not red and black. It can also be categorized as a black eagle on a red flag. The Japanese flag is white and a red sun on a white flag. The black lines on the figures are not part of the flag, but rather part of the figures. Sorry for my English.--Erlenmeyer (talk) 17:24, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Category:Flags with black animals and its subcategories are part of the broader Category:Black flags. This is based on the Commons guideline, Commons:Categories, which states: "The page (file, category) should be put in the most specific category/categories that fit(s) the page (not directly to its parent categories). A category can have more parent categories."

Therefore, those flags are still considered and categorized as a black flag due to the relational and hierarchical structure of the category system. If an file is considered a black flag, it should be categorized as such. The most specific subcategory for flags that contain black in this category, for example, is this category.

As I mentioned on my talk page, if we want to create more specific categories, we could create subcategories like "[Colors] flags of Germany with black outlines" or "Black outlines in [colors] flags of Germany." However, for now, the existing categories are the most specific ones available. Nebula84912 (talk) 18:08, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

And according with your logic, this flag actually is not a black flag, it is just a white flag. Nebula84912 (talk) 18:56, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you: this is a great example. If I am looking for flags with a white background, I want to find this flag. I don't care if it has a European conventional blazon animal on it or whatever. I care that it's got a field of white with stuff on top. It's beyond bizarre to hold every flag from all time and culture to some hyper-specific arbitrary ruleset. Just use common sense and make flags find-able by the features someone would expect to use to find them. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:33, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

ːːːIndeed, for me, this flag is white with a black eagle, like this one, fleur-de-lis black on a white flag, not a black and white flag.--Erlenmeyer (talk) 22:47, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

The colours of the flag of the Swiss municipality of Seengen are not a matter of opinion. As in most heraldic flags throughout the world, they are a matter of public record, issued by an official publisher in the form of a blazon. In this case, please refer to the corresponding coat of arms of Seengen and read the blazon given and referenced to the official source in the file description:

In Weiss rot bewehrter und gezungter schwarzer Adler.

Which may be rendered thus in technical heraldic English:

Argent, an eagle displayed sable, armed and langued gules.

Which may be rendered thus in non-technical English:

On a white field, a black eagle with red tongue, beak, and claws, its wings and legs spread.

So, per the blazon,the colours of the flag are white, black and red.

Therefore, the flag of Seengen is correctly filed under c:Category:Black,_red,_white_flags_of_Switzerland.

By contrast, the flag of the Swiss municipality of Schafisheim has been incorrectly moved from the from Category:Red and white flags of Switzerland to Category:Black, red, white flags of Switzerland because the black outlines in the visual representation of the flag are accidental to the design rather than constitutive. For proof of this, read the blazon given by the same official publisher of the coat of arms of Schafisheim:

In Rot schreitendes weisses Schaf.

Which may be rendered thus in technical heraldic English:

Gules, a sheep passant argent.

Which may be rendered thus in non-technical English:

On a red field, a white sheep walking.

So, per the blazon, the colours of this flag are red and white. No black.

Coats of arms and their corresponding flags are instances of the same underlying heraldic design. Categorising their colours by two separate rulesets is a mistake.

I propose that this mistake be called out for the nmistake that it is and that Nebula84912 be asked to stop spreading it around any further. Thank you. ARK (talk) 09:56, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

About the response from Koavf:

“In effect, Nebula84912 demands that all flags, including heraldic flags, must have their colours categorised as if they were instances of graphic design, which they are not" Nebula is correct.”

First, this stance implies that if this principle is applied to vexillology, there is no justification for not applying it, later or not, to heraldry.
In both cases, this would amount to reducing a sophisticated science to a simple “wysiwig” concept, and for what reason? Enabling as many people as possible to access an image as quickly as possible, based on the simplest possible criterion, the candor of the criterion going hand in hand with this claim to democratize science; an approach that can straightforwardly be likened to the notion of “leveling down”.
In other words, by accepting this definition, it becomes unnecessary to know the basic rules of heraldry in order to quickly access an image through a search.
The said heraldry rules define, for an example, that in this image, there is no black/brown/pink/white, but only white (“argent”), on which an element specified as “au naturel” is placed. That is how it is.
And, as a matter of fact, this principle is already within everyone's reach, although it does require, it's true, a minimum of effort and circumspection — the minimum that is probably essential in all things — which makes the option of categorizing flags or coats of arms “as if they were instances of graphic design”, based on the will of accessibility to the greatest number of people (“I don't care if it contains a heraldic element in the center based on medieval European standards. I care if it's got a gray background or stripe or star or something”), very, very questionable.
Not to mention that if it were decided to go down this this route, it would also be possible, if not essential, to take into account the foreground gradient sometimes present in these images, which result, on the screen in front of our eyes, in several shades of the same color, which one could just as easily take the trouble to specify by categorization — for search results to be increasingly accurate, fast, without the need for refinement, or reflection, i.e. instantaneous.
I make a brief aside regarding the message inserted here, which contains (too?) many examples, three of which I will comment on:

1. File:Flag of Bangor University.svg
2. File:Flag of the British Army.svg
3. File:Flag of the Sons of Glyndwr.svg

- The first one does indeed contain black, since at least the “claws” and some “tongue” elements are filled with it.
- The second one does too, since the contour at the underside of the crown contains black ermine spots, on a white field, but as for the underside of the crown being filled with black, it's potentially resulting from an unfortunate choice by the illustrator; the other version is the one to be considered in regard of this. Let's note by the way that on these flags, possibly, there are also no green or blue, but a crown “au naturel”.
- The third example does not contain black at all: it's simply a categorization error, since what was qualified as black is actually blue — unless I have eyesight problems. That being, I corrected the category while I was at it, based on the visual and assuming that the coat of arms is correct, assumption being the only thing that can be relied on in this specific situation, since none of the associated files provides any reference.
More generally, it can be said that the implicit consensus is shared by users who have an approach based on the knowledge they have acquired in the field to which they contribute, and categorization errors are widely the result of contributors who are ill-informed, overly hasty, or overly confident.
This being, it goes without saying that, as the latter contributors are in the majority, it is very likely that the question will arise again someday, and it is even possible that the principle of categorization based on colors displayed rather than on specific rules will be accepted here in record time. in accordance with the rule of the majority.
Depending on what, in the long run, logically, this should also apply to heraldry.
In any case, the prime consideration here seems to have been diluted, as the conversation often strays off course and tends to go off in several directions, with sometimes many, many examples given simultaneously, which complicates the reading and makes it difficult to provide a truly concrete answer on any specific point.
First, it is said in the conclusion of the introduction to this topic, that therefore defines the core of the discussion: “do black outlines, borders, and other similar design choices count as color on a image of a flag?”
Here, it would be difficult not to consider that this wording could be a source of confusion, encouraging future debates to stray from a specific point, since that question concerns three elements, the first two of which (“outlines, borders”) may be distinct from each other, while the third (“other similar design choices”) is rather vague, and above all dilutes the primary concern, which is whether or not to take into account the outlines when categorizing the files in colour categories.
Indeed, it was this particular point that initially led ARK to start a discussion on Nebula84912's talk page, opening that I transcribe below:

“European municipal flags use heraldic colours. Black is one of these colours, but only if a figure or a ground are coloured in it: if a black outline is drawn around an element, that black outline does not count as one of the heraldic colours used in a flag or a coat of arms. Therefore, please stop categorising flags as containing the colour black when that colour is only used for outlines. The Flag of Hergiswil, for instance, contains only three colours: white, yellow and blue (that's "argent", "or", and "azure" in heraldic terminology). The black outlines do not count as a colour.”

“The black outlines do not count as a colour” is the primary point to discuss, before anything else including small elements, so that the discussion is not flooded.
It can already be seen here that many examples have been given, many points have been discussed, many points except this one.
From which it appears that so far, nobody has yet expressed an argument against the facts first exposed by ARK, namely “the black outlines do not count as a colour.”
I will add two very simple examples, in the form of coats-of-arms, the shape here being irrelevant and the outlines of the shield not to be taken into account, only those of the elements (for the example).
The principle proposed by Nebula84912 amounts to considering that two files representing the same figure, such as the examples below, are not composed of the same group of colors, and therefore categorized as such, meaning that both examples should no longer stand together in Argent and gules in heraldry, despite the fact that only a personal choice, linked to aesthetic constraints, or a consensual one, such as in the files of the Blazon Project of the French Wikipedia, defines the presence of this black color, which is in no way an element of the coat of arms definition, thus taking it in account for the description, or the colour categorization, is totally irrelevant in an encyclopedic concept.

• 
• 

One could also mention this flag, which in no way contains black, since it shows a red lion debruised by a green bend, in no way it has to be categorized in Black on flags with white fields, or simply in any wrong category.
I don't need to recall that I fully support the current categorization process, based on this principle, process that is respected by all experienced contributors, however, I would like to point out again that so far, nobody has yet expressed an argument against this process, i.e. an argument favorable to Nebula84912's way, so it seems reasonable that all subsequent arguments should not stray from this subject.
And, not only do I propose too that Nebula84912 be asked to stop this project immediately, but also that they restore all the files that were wrongfully moved.
Thank you. --Kontributor 2K (talk) 16:05, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Is this post a joke? You wrote a preposterous wall of text and then ended that "nobody has yet expressed an argument against this process, i.e. an argument favorable to Nebula84912's way". Yes, I have: a normal person looking for a flag with a white field would want to find File:CHE Seengen Flag.svg. It's like you're deliberately not paying attention to very simple arguments and then you expect someone else to read a novel. And, also Nebula pointed out that there are a lot of flags that just don't follow European heraldic conventions in any way. Why would we apply these rules to them? It's just silly and not helpful. If you haven't noticed these arguments, it's because you're not paying attention on purpose. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:13, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, in the context, “nobody has yet expressed an argument against this process, i.e. an argument favorable to Nebula84912's way” was in regard of the reason for the initial intervention on Nebula84912's talk page, namely: currently, the black outlines do not count as a colour.

• 
  red & white
• 
  red & white?

• 
  Black, green, red, white + black/red on flags with white fields?

A question that remains wide open,
Thank you. --Kontributor 2K (talk) 20:25, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Whether or not black as used in an outline is included in the colors of a flag is secondary to the primary points that Nebula made, which are "I'm suggesting that the way we categorize flags should be comprehensive, clear, and universal... It should also be user-friendly, meaning it should not be based on convoluted rules". These two principles are correct. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:32, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that the question of the outlines is secondary, nor the current rule convoluted.

This said, as long as the question remains open, at least things don't get any worse. --Kontributor 2K (talk) 20:45, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Let's get to the bottom of this.

Heraldry is an ancient art that is nearly a thousand years old. Over the centuries of its existence it has evolved a set of rules that continue to govern the often legally binding insignia of a large number of territorial bodies worldwide. One of the most fundamental heraldic rules concerns the question of what the object of description should be: should individual instances of a design be described, or should the source code be given, the specification from which any number of different renditions and representations can be created, all of which will be valid as long as they conform to that specification? Heraldry has a very clear-cut, non-convoluted answer to this question: it's the specification of the design that should be stated, it isn't an individual representation of the design that should be described. Such specifications are laid down in technical notation called blazon. Blazons enjoy legal protections in many jurisdictions, where governments either issue or approve them, or delegate their approval to chartered professional bodies.

The relevant point for our discussion is this: the colours of a heraldic design, which is to say a coat of arms or, interchangeably, its corresponding flag, are stated in the design's blazon.

To illustrate the practical application of this point, let's look at a heraldic design that Nebula84912 has brought up for discussion, the flag of Canillas de Albaida in Málaga, Spain. That flag features the municipal coat of arms, which depicts, among other elements, a chapel with a cross atop its steeple. As that cross is coloured black, should black therefore be counted among the colours of this flag?

No, black should not be counted among the colours of this flag because neither the cross nor its colour are specified in the blazon of the coat of arms therein contained.

The stand-alone version of the coat of arms on Commons has a detailed file description that includes the blazon:

Escudo terciado en barra: 1.º y 3.º, de plata; 2.º, en barra de oro, la villa andaluza ascendente a la siniestra terminada en la ermita. Sobre el todo, una rama de albaida en flor. Al timbre, corona real cerrada.

In English, this means that the design shows an Andalusian village rising toward the top right and ending in a chapel.

The cross isn't mentioned, let alone its colour specified. Spain is a catholic country, so it is simply presumed that the chapel would be topped by a latin cross. The depiction of the chapel and the cross atop its steeple is left to the discretion of the artist turning the blazon into a visual representation.

This degree of artistic leeway is demonstrated in an alternative representation of the municipal arms in which the cross on the steeple is coloured white.

Per the blazon, both renditions of the arms are valid, as the blazon only specifies a white chapel which artists are free to interpret as they see fit.

Once we accept the rule, which prior to Nebula84912 has always been accepted on Commons, that the object of description in a heraldic design isn't a specific implementation but its original specification, it becomes clear that the colour black should not be included in the file's categorisation.

I'm looking forward to the time when Commons returns to the long-established principle that the object of description in a heraldic design isn't a specific implementation but its original specification. The colours of heraldic designs such as coats of arms and their corresponding heraldic flags will then be categorised under a single, non-convoluted ruleset again, ending a wasteful conflict between two competing rulesets. Regards, ARK (talk) 09:00, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Names of churches

Do we have some official policy on names of churches? Is it required that the official name of the church be used as the category name instead of the common name? For example, this one. Ping involved editor Sanglahi86 for this discussion. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 10:03, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

I have created categories for hundreds of churches, and I rather hope we don't become too prescriptive here. Sometimes when I create a category I'm aware that there is or could be a school of the same name unless we include the word church, or that we need separate categories for the new and old churches of that name in that village. Other times I add the county or state because St Mary's or Holy Trinity is a common church name and every Hereford is likely to have one - by contrast St Barnabas is pretty safe unless your city is as ubiquitous/large as Birmingham. But churches, especially interesting ones, do change their official names - and category redirects are a good solution if the current name for a church building isn't the name it had when lots of photographs were taken of it. Very occasionally we will find that we need to rename and disambiguate a church category because we now have images of two St Barnabas, Birminghams. But in my experience that's rare enough that we can do that as and when we find that our category is ambiguous and receiving images of different buildings that may be in different continents. WereSpielChequers (talk) 10:42, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm never sure whether we should use St Barnabas Church, St Barnabas' Church, or Church of St Barnabas. Then there's St. Barnabas, Saint Barnabas...

Same goes for naming Wikipedia articles, BTW. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:54, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing@WereSpielChequers for example, for the category I linked: Category:Saint Vincent Ferrer Parish Church (Bogo) vs. Category:Archdiocesan Shrine of Saint Vincent Ferrer (Bogo, Cebu). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 00:19, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

I've not yet been to the Philippines, and I don't know how they name their churches, and looking at the names in our images "Bogo City Church" has less detail than I'd like. The key details that would differentiate it from any other church in Bogo would be Saint Vincent Ferrer, so I would have likely started the category as St Vincent Ferrer church, Bogo assuming either Bogo is an unusual city/town name or Vincent Ferrer is a rare saint name. St Vincent Ferrer church, Bogo, Cebu is probably overkill, based on a quick Google image search. Most of my categorisation of churches has been in England, and there we have the problem that local photographers will use names that are clear if you also know where the photograph was taken. My assumption is that the category name needs to work globally, which is fine if there is only one place called Bogo, but more detail is needed if you are in a place called Perth, Newcastle or Boston. However as long as the name works for people and other names are included in category redirects I'm not concerned as to which is the category name and which a redirect. WereSpielChequers (talk) 09:08, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers what I meant is which of the two I mentioned is preferrable: the usual name "Saint Vincent Ferrer Parish Church (Bogo)" or the very formal name that highlights its status as a shrine: "Archdiocesan Shrine of Saint Vincent Ferrer (Bogo)"? I would prefer the former since it is aligned with the names of other churches in other countries (like "Eglise de Saint-XXX (PLACENAME)" for those in France). IMO there is no need to highlight the church's status as a shrine through the category name, and it's best to transfer such detail in the category itself as a note (using {{En}} or other language templates). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 11:03, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Basically? IMHO, if there's a name on a sign at the church, use that name, unless there is a very clear commonly used alternative that you're aware. Consistency among names is good but it's not a be-all and end-all. - The Bushranger (talk) 06:29, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm broadly with The Bushranger here, but beware of local names that may not be unique on a global site. Boston Baptist Church is a genuine church name. But in the real world, you tend to assume that anyone looking at that sign knows whether they are in England or the USA, and you'd usually be right. Here on Commons we sometimes need to add something to the category name so that it is unique globally rather than unique nationally, when we don't, things can go wrong. So I've just created category:Boston Baptist Chapel, Lincolnshire WereSpielChequers (talk) 10:02, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Category:Scans from the Internet Archive/unverified

The category explains what to do. Essentially all files in the category need a license review, to check they really are under the correct licenses, and unencumbered by copyright restrictions on any contributor to them (including illustrations and contributions.)

Commons can mobolise to resovle this :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:07, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

• OK. How do I remove items from this category? I first checked Category:Prominent Jews of America; a collection of biographical sketches of Jews (1918) - which looked like an easy case as published in US in 1918, {{PD-US-expired}}. I added that. The "unverified" category remained. I looked at categories, and at the text on the file page, and didn't see how to remove it. Please pardon my ignorance, what is the specific procedure to fix this? -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 15:16, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Add - |reviewed=pd to the {{Internet Archive link}} or {{IA}} templates as indicated in the instructions for the categoryShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:28, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I see how you edited that one. Seems to me neither obvious nor intuitive, but now I know. Cheers, -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 16:41, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Should we split by-camera categories by subject matter of photos

I am posting here to call attention to Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/10/Category:People taken with Nikon D5200. The question here is basically whether it is desirable or not to split large categories of images taken with a particular model camera along lines of the subject matter of the images. - Jmabel ! talk 20:36, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

By-camera categories should be deleted and replaced with structured data. Otherwise we will just reproduce the entire Commons category tree but suffixed with "taken with Nikon Q100" and "taken with Canon XYZ". That way madness lies. Nosferattus (talk) 03:57, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

By-camera categories should not be split into subcategories, certainly not by subject matter. Some allowance may be made for technical subcategories of camera+lens but I am not convinced even they are needed. MKFI (talk) 06:53, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

These categories shouldn't be split by subject matter, no. I added a comment in the CfD. ReneeWrites (talk) 09:35, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Please pay attention to Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/09/Category:Cars taken with Canon EOS 5D Mark III too --XRay 💬 13:42, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

WMC users user group

Is there a WMC user group? I thought its CPUG, but now I am hearing "we are only photographers" and I am even reading it on their main page, they deal with photographs, but the problems with file curation on WMC is not mentioned there. So who represents broad WMC curator community? Because WMC photographers, have to curate also, like many others who contribute with other type of files. Juandev (talk) 09:50, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

There is not. I raised the possibility of creating one at the 2023 Wikimedia Summit in Berlin and was told by several people from the Foundation that they would not like there to be user groups tied to the various "sister projects", so I dropped the idea. I still think it would be good, but expect a fight if you try to establish this. - Jmabel ! talk 14:29, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

I see. I wonder why they dont like it. Juandev (talk) 19:52, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

United Kingdom authority area restructuring and how that will impact Commons categories

I'm not sure if this has already been asked, but the government of the United Kingdom plans on restructuring all "two-tier councils" into unitary authorities. (See [36]) I was wondering to what extent this would impact categories, i.e. whether or not existing categories for the old counties (for example, categories for when specific files were taken) would remain or if the files in those categories would be reorganized for the new established areas. Aethonatic (talk) 15:45, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Does anyone know the name of this type of shirt collar or the name of the fasteners?

Does anyone know the name of this type of shirt collar or the name of the fasteners? File:George Dewey Sanford (1898-1965) in 1925 at 63 Concord Avenue, Jersey City, New Jersey.png RAN (talk) 18:19, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

• Is there a better place to ask this question? --RAN (talk) 18:48, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

  Probably either the Fashion WP on EN-Wiki or the Reference desk (or the versions in other languages on other Wikis). This question seems a tad too niche for anyone here to plausibly know the answer. 19h00s (talk) 21:10, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Code formatting issue

I really have no clue where else to post this. I'm going to bring up the issue here considering this is where JSON data for maps and charts are chiefly stored.

When editing Scribunto modules on any wiki, tabs are used for indentation rather than spaces, and this is fine. When you publish the edit, the module is saved as-is, tab indentation included. However, when you edit .tab files on this wiki, tabs are used for indentation as before, but publishing an edit forcibly modifies the format of the file to be in a specific form and also converts tabs to four spaces or something.

I don't like this at all, and I don't understand why the two differ like this. They use the same code editor. Why does the server need to muck up my JSON when I finish writing it whereas my Lua code is always unscathed?

Again, I'm not able to think of a potentially more appropriate or relevant place to post this as it concerns a part of the software whose specifics, and therefore place to adequately question it, are completely unknown to me. If there is a better place to ask this question, I'd be happy if you could point me there. — rae^5e <talk> 16:56, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

@Theki It's probably somewhere deep in the serverside code. The reason is because someone made it once so, either intentionally or because no one else had an opinion on it. "I don't like this at all".. sure... but does it create a problem ? Cause I don't think many people will be jumping with enthousiasme spending an hour or two figuring out where and why a whitespace decision was made. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:32, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

You're not wrong, I just take minor issue with it and thought I would ask about it out of curiosity. It seemed strange and counterintuitive and I've been very confused about it, nothing more... I'm not necessarily jumping at the opportunity to "fix" the discrepancy, although I would if I knew where to look. I'm a pedant about these things...and files taking up 4x the amount of space because the software thought it knew better about how I should indent my code makes me sneer. Note that it very much doesn't have a clue as to how I should indent or stylize my code at all, even if other people will potentially come around and edit them themselves (which is still not a good argument for forcing code formatting on one specific part of the website when, again, modules are still left untouched). It randomly expanding my intentionally compacted list of datapoints to have no more than one value for line, so a series of [x,y,z] becomes [<LF>x,<LF>y,<LF>z<LF>]<LF>, making it far more tedious to go back and modify the data because it singlehandedly and unnecessarily ballooned the line count from tens of lines to hundreds; and me having to press the left arrow key at least four times because it expanded my very intentional use of the TAB key to four spaces for no reason when I already have a good reason to indent my code the way I do and I find it fairly annoying – negligible, perhaps, but still annoying – that the software, using TABs in the editor and not touching then when submitting Lua modules, now desperately wants me to use four spaces. It's just plain obnoxious. I can see things that way, right? — rae^5e <talk> 14:46, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Data pages

Neither Commons:Deletion policy#Speedy deletion nor Commons:Criteria for speedy deletion give any explanation how to tag a Data page for speedy deletion. In the absence of any guidance, I used HotCat to add Data:Sdksjdksdhj.map, a test page, to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, but the edit was summarily reverted by @Johnj1995: . Could anyone in the community consider adding text to one or both pages to explain the proper process? This, that and the other (talk) 09:00, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I think we never defined a method. I think the way to go should be to put the template on the talk page. GPSLeo (talk) 09:27, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

+1 - Jmabel ! talk 13:51, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Note that there was a recently closed phabricator ticket T242596 that addressed the addition of categories in the data namespace. Hotcat and similar tools still seem to require an update to work with this, my guess is that speedy deletion categorization would need to leverage this capability. Hotcat has support now. That being said, I think the data page documentation likely needs some updating as well. I think for speedy deletion we would need to agree on a process. Milliped (talk) 15:03, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I feel a bit that user communication would make it preferable to show templates (such as deletion/merge/contentious content) on the item itself rather than the talk pages, but that would likely mean some adaptation of the json as has happened for the categories. Milliped (talk) 15:30, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata also does not have templates on items for deletion. They use a Javascript tool for marking these pages. GPSLeo (talk) 21:57, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Why do I not see the surname category?

I created Category:Denise Lioté, but I don’t see the category “Lioté (surname)” although in the wikidata page the surname is mentioned. What can be the cause? Wouter (talk) 18:15, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

There is no such category on Commons? Nemoralis (talk) 19:03, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Normally, a category is created via Wikidata. That category doesn't yet exist in Commons and is therefore highlighted in red. I then create the category for the surname using the red link. Wouter (talk) 19:07, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

You can create the category now. It needs P373. Nemoralis (talk) 19:16, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Wouter (talk) 19:26, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 10:38, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Images from the National Museum of Wales

The National Museum of Wales (Amgueddfa Cymru) has released over 2000 images under CC-0 or CC-BY-SA licences (website here), with resolutions up to 4000px. There are many images already uploaded (e.g.) that can therefore be upgraded to a higher resolution.

Is there a centralized list of GLAM file resources that this should be added to? Dogfennydd (talk) 21:26, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Small side note: Actually, if they are photographs of paintings, we should either totally ignore their cc license (since they are not the copyright owners according to how the WMF views COM:PD-ART), or we can be "nice" and use {{Licensed PD-Art}} as this. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 21:38, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

 Comment I am uploading some: Category:Pictures from Amgueddfa Cymru Images. Yann (talk) 20:12, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

I would suggest, when uploading images from such sources, including {{Do not crop}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:57, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Have your say: vote for the 2025 Board of Trustees

Hello all,

The voting period for the 2025 Board of Trustees election is now open. Candidates are running for two (2) seats on the Board.

To check your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.

Learn more about them by reading their application statements and watch their candidacy videos.

When you are ready, go to the SecurePoll voting page to vote.

The vote is open from October 8 at 00:00 UTC to October 22 at 23:59 UTC.

Best regards,

Abhishek Suryawanshi
Chair, Elections Committee

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:47, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

(This message was sent to Commons:Txokoa and is being posted here due to a redirect.)

If only the candidate i wanted to vote for didn't randomly get disqualified at the last moment for no clear reason. Bawolff (talk) 16:25, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

who was that Gryllida (talk) 02:20, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Category:Barker College

Would someone have a look at Category:Barker College please? The first 9 pix are OK, but the rest appear to be archival, but the uploader has claimed them as his own. Sardaka (talk) 09:26, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Convenience link: Category:Barker College. - Jmabel ! talk 13:10, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

I've started two mass DRs (the headmasters & the crests). If anyone thinks more of these are problematic, feel free to DR those as well. - Jmabel ! talk 13:21, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Contrast and brightness

Is there a free online one-button contrast and brightness optimizer? There were several free ones that mimicked the tool in Photoshop, but all are no longer free, that I am aware of. RAN (talk) 23:06, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

CapCut image editor is still free it doesn't even need sign up just go directly on https://www.capcut.com/editor-graphic. Although I find the lighting settings are not as good as some of the other features  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   02:08, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

WMF board reform

I'm trying to increase the visibility of m:2025 WMF Board reform petition because it's not just something that affects enwiki. People active here may be interested. Clovermoss (talk) 11:19, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Can anyone work out the name of this photographer?

File:Colonel Alfred Jean-Marie Joseph Piales-d'Astrez (1858-1925).jpg RAN (talk) 23:27, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

• Not sure, but Photographie Lortet seems a possibility. [37]. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 23:39, 10 October 2025 (UTC)
  • Ah, 55 Rue Cler - we have a match. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 23:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)
• They certainly deserve a Wikidata entry. I see now the "e" I thought was at the end was just a flourish at the end of the name. --RAN (talk) 00:43, 11 October 2025 (UTC)
• https://portraitsepia.fr/photographes/lortet/ Glrx (talk) 00:47, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

But the other Jean-Louis Lortet https://portraitsepia.fr/photographes/lortet-3/ considering the possible year of the photo. -- Asclepias (talk) 13:48, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Mailboxes

Hi, It seems Category:Mailboxes by country is redundant with Category:Post boxes by country. Opinions? Yann (talk) 08:58, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Are they synonymous or are they referring to two different things, i.e. state-run boxes where you throw in your mail to send it somewhere vs. private boxes where the letters you receive are thrown in? Nakonana (talk) 09:50, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

In Category:Mailboxes in France, there is a mention Letter boxes are for incoming mail and Post boxes for outgoing mail. Yann (talk) 10:18, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

• Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/10/Category:Mailboxes in England

Yet again, CfD on a category tree fails because there is no visibility of it up or down the tree, thus no engagement with or resolution of it. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:56, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

I need confirmation that this .gif of animal torture is allowed here

(don't click) File:Crush_Fetish.gif

I am disgusted. Aloysius Jr (talk) 15:54, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

You're somewhat mistaken. A en:roach (member of the en:Blattodea) is an invertebrate, where cruelty is most often not really recognised by laws (exceptions are possible when thinking about the boiling alive of molluscs and crustaceans). The imagery does not depict a roach (en:Rutilus rutilus) which, as vertebrate, is indeed a possible subject of cruelty.

That said, the GIF is in my opinion, momentarily, in scope, pending a better quality illustration of such a fetish. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 16:33, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Very informative. Thank you. Aloysius Jr (talk) 21:53, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

• The insect crushed is w:Gromphadorhini. You can buy them at pet stores for feeding lizards, and they are used in most movies to impersonate a German/American cockroach. Gromphadorhini moves slowly, so can be caught on film. --RAN (talk) 03:57, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Aloysius Jr (talk) 21:53, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

A new help desk has opened and needs volunteers!

After a successful proposal, Commons:Permission requests has been launched! This is a desk where users can request experienced contributors reach out to rightsholders to secure the release of specific media works via the VRT process. It's a great new way to make information on the web more open, and will help less-experienced contributors navigate releases without having to make contact, explain WMC licensing, and execute the VRT process.

This desk could use VRT-literate volunteers to respond to requests! Zanahary (talk) 14:20, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Images of toys

Hello people, I have recepntly uploaded two pictures of toys: 1 & 2. Both have received a VRT notice, but I am not sure whether these pictures should require an authorization form from the manufacturer as these are just mass produced toys. Yes, it may contain tons of logotypes and some part of artist work but, these are simply household items, which have been built by the thousands. It would be the equivalent of this picture of an F1 race start requiring permission from all teams, all designers and the copyright holders of all logotypes and brands that appear on the car liveries... Do these pictures (And many more to come with similar subjects) really need a permissión? If so, a manufacturer email granting permission to upload photos of all their products will do, or do they need separate permissions? --JJ - Schumi4ever (talk) 22:52, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Please see COM:Toys --Isderion (talk) 23:01, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

So, from my understanding, I read:

• "A toy model that is an exact replica of an automobile, airplane, train, or other useful article where no creative expression has been added to the existing design" is not eligible for copyright protection in the United States.

These two pictures I have uploaded are more or less exact replicas of these Audi TT DTM, Audi Quattro & Lancia 037. I guess they do not require any kind of permission, as no extra creative expression has been added and the toys simply represent real life objects. I am currently improving articles in Spanish about slot cars and really would like to illustrate them. --JJ - Schumi4ever (talk) 23:16, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

From my point of view, there is no need for a permission --JJ - Schumi4ever (talk) 03:18, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Furthermore, I have found this article online (Sorry, it is in Spanish). It states Red Bull sued the manufacturer because it was using their image, but no such claim was valid. --JJ - Schumi4ever (talk) 14:56, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

@Didym: at a first glance this looks good to me. Would you remove the no permissions-tag or should this be handled via a regular deletion request Isderion (talk) 18:36, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

After User:Didym did not voice an opinion despite engaging in other discussions, I converted this into a regular deletion request, see Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Schumi4ever Isderion (talk) 19:17, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

References

What is an "earth church"?

The caption of today's (October 14, 2025) Picture of the day says "Reformed earth church in Scuol". What does "earth" mean in this context? I'm a protestant myself, but I have never heard of any protestant or reformed church that had any special relationship with "earth". Kind regards, MartinD (talk) 09:23, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

The first thing came to my mind is w:soil. Soil can be used as a construction material. Nemoralis (talk) 12:06, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Some churches in Afrika are built underground, maybe this? --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:51, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @Agnes Monkelbaan as the photographer, who also wrote the text description that's being used here. Belbury (talk) 14:34, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Answer: It's probably a translation error. Because I don't speak English, I have to translate everything. I can't edit the photo at the moment. But I will change the text. Best regards,--Agnes Monkelbaan (talk) 15:50, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, Agnes! Kind regards, MartinD (talk) 18:08, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm guessing a combination of a typo and a machine translation from Dutch or German, "reform aarde", "reform erde". -- Asclepias (talk) 15:58, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Edward Alfred Hopkins

Hi, I am looking for more information about this photographer (Category:Edward A. Hopkins), particularly place of birth and nationality. And whether these pictures are by the same person. The dates seem to match, and I could not find any other photographer named Edward Hopkins. Thanks, Yann (talk) 16:43, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

So far I've got "Edward Alfred Hopkins (1902-1992) was employed to dismantle the rides at Luna Park in Glenelg, South Australia for transport to Sydney in 1935. Once in Sydney, Hopkins remained associated with Luna Park, eventually as its manager, until he retired in 1969. During his career he photographed the park and its rides." I'll see if I can find more. Geoffroi 17:01, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Here's a good source from Australia. Still searching. Geoffroi 17:05, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

The Luna Park website refers to him as Ted Hopkins and states that he was an engineer. Geoffroi 17:29, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Here's an aricle about Luna Park that has a likely photo of Hopkins (one of the two men on the left). Geoffroi 17:39, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Here's a nice photo of Hopkins. Geoffroi 17:43, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Here's a photo of "Edward Hopkins" dated 1979 that looks like the same man in the photo just above. I'm not finding any bio details earlier than Luna Park. @Yann: These photos at the Getty link above might be by him. I've added appropriate categories to Category:Edward A. Hopkins. Geoffroi 18:16, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

@Geoffroi: Thanks for this research. You added the category "Photographers from Adelaide". How do you know he was from Adelaide? Yann (talk) 15:59, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

We don't know how long he was in Glenelg or where he was before that, so the Adelaide category is iffy at best. If you want to remove that until we can figure out where he was born or how long he was in Glenelg or the Adelaide area before Luna Park was moved to Sydney, that might be best.

I'd like to see if we can figure out where he got his engineering degree. He maintained dangerous rides and helped in their design for 30 years, so he had to be a very good engineer and draughtsman. Geoffroi 19:19, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

@Yann: I've removed the Adelaide category. I created Category:Photographers from New South Wales and added Hopkins to it. The majority of his photographic work was done at Luna Park in Sydney, where he worked and lived for over thirty years, so perhaps this fits. Geoffroi 20:10, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Simplest rules on Commons with which policy?

Hey! I'm currently having a discussion with a user who doesn't understand why street and building categories initially have nothing to do with each other. That is, Category: Street x (Location y) shouldn't be sorted into Category: Buildings in Location Y. The user is asking for a written guideline. It's simple logic to me, but other users seem overwhelmed. Can someone please tell me if we have this basic understanding written down somewhere on Commons? Thanks. Lukas Beck (talk) 05:30, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't know whether there's a guideline but to my knowledge, buildings belong in street categories (not the other way around). Here's a comment by an admin from a 2024 discussion that states this in a somewhat different context: [38]. Nakonana (talk) 15:47, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. I completely agree with you. The user in question has now realized it and hopefully understood it. I also think there's no need for a policy for this. It's just logic. :-D Lukas Beck (talk) 15:51, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Abuse of Permission pending

Hi, While patrolling Category:Media without a license, I see that there is large abuse of the {{Permission pending}} template. Quite a number of people (mostly new users), upload files with "Permission pending" with or without a license. This template is supposed to be used when the copyright holder is contacted, and the permission is forthcoming. It is obvious that in many cases, nobody was contacted (unknown, wrong, or nonsense author, etc.). So we have many plain copyright violations which are here for weeks while they should be deleted immediately. Any idea how to fix that? Thanks, Yann (talk) 10:17, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

• Agree a time limit, speedy deletion after that if unresolved, and make this clear beforehand from both the template docs and the template text. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:41, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

  I think the only solution (if we do not want to block new users from using this template) would be a clear warning that misuse of the template will result in a block and then also strictly enforcing this. GPSLeo (talk) 10:58, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

  • "Without a license" is going to happen a lot until they fix the Upload Wizard. See step 12 at Commons:Uploading works by a third party#How they can grant a license (and how you upload). It's a tricky workaround, and we cannot expect new or occasional users to be aware of it until someone tells them directly. - Jmabel ! talk 14:24, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

  • One of my backburnered tasks is to upload a bunch of 100 year old photographs my grandfather took. Sifting through them will take ages, but some of the miscellaneous warships may not have photographs already on commons, and if I can identify the music hall artists there may be some notable ones. I'm sufficiently patient that I might actually send an email well in advance explaining how I am in a position to release his copyright.; but I'm not a newbie. When a newbie does this sort of thing I think the worst threat we should make for first or third time offenders is that their content is likely to get deleted. What might speed up the process, apart from extra volunteers assessing such emails about copyright permissions, is to reduce the default from one month to something rather less. We already have {{tl:Permission received}} where one of the options is that we have received the email, but not yet assessed it. How about adding the option email not yet received after 7 days which could trigger reminders and encouragement to send the promised email. Then if the email has still not been received after 14 days someone with volunteer access can update the template again and start the deletion process. This shouldn't add work for the existing volunteer response team - instead it is an opportunity for a deletionist to join them and just focus on whether such permission emails have been received. If the template is updated to show that we have received an email then the urgency goes, or rather the onus is on the volunteers who are processing the email, not the uploader. If the volunteer response team doesn't have time to do this then the 30 day limit still applies, but hopefully someone would then replace the template with a {{tl:Permission received}} one with the parameter set to show we have received the email and it is waiting to be assessed. Also we need to remember that this is not a system for people who are uploading other people's copyright and requesting them for permission they can forward to us. This is a system for people to upload other people's copyrighted material where they already have permission and need to email that to us. IE I will send an email explaining how I have control of this person's copyright, not I have asked the copyright holder for permission and will email you if they say yes. WereSpielChequers (talk) 09:01, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
    • @WereSpielChequers: 100 year old photographs my grandfather took: there are several possible cases here that would be very simple to handle and wouldn't involve VRT. If you can say what country these would have been taken in, what was his country of residence, what year he died, and whether you are legally the heir to his intellectual property, I can tell you the best way to approach this. As I say, it may be very simple. - Jmabel ! talk 01:39, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

      Thanks Jmabel, mostly in Britain, he lived in Britain but he took some photos abroad. He was in France and or Belgium circa 1915/19 but I doubt he had his camera with him then. He did go abroad to Kandersteg in the early years of the boy scout movement so there are some Swiss photos. He died nearly 60 years ago and his estate went first to my grandmother then my mother and now I'm a joint inheritor but I can probably get them into my share of her estate. One of his brothers went to what is now New Guinea and took some photos there in the 1930s, some of them were given to my grandfather, but I don't know if the copyright was formally given. WereSpielChequers (talk) 08:11, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

      • @WereSpielChequers: All his unpublished works will still be in copyright almost everywhere until 70 years after his death. If there are works that are previously published, the situation gets more complicated for the U.S. (some could have fallen into public domain; some might be copyrighted longer; it's a mess). But none of that is an impediment if you are the inheritor and want to grant a license. At worst, you will redundantly provide a free license for something that has actually fallen into the public domain.
      • If you are the inheritor, or can arrange within the family to be allowed to be considered so, and if the materials are not previously published, then the simplest thing would be for you simply to upload from your own account and give an "heirs" license, such as {{Cc-by-4.0-heirs}}. You should list your grandfather as author, and also should be explict in the license about the attribution you want (e.g. {{cc-by-4.0-heirs|attribution=THE ATTRIBUTION YOU WANT}}.
      • Do me a favor and hit me up after the first one you upload, so I can check that you are doing it all correctly before any problems get propagated. - Jmabel ! talk 17:45, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Help needed with Categorization Requests

There are many open requests at Commons:Categorization requests, which is a new request board for categorization tasks. It would be good if more people participated in implementing these. It seems like currently nobody else is working on them. Maybe the page could also be linked at some place to make it more visible.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 17:30, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

One of the subpages linked there, Commons:Database reports/Category cycles, hasn't been updated in a year, and many of the categories linked have since been fixed. Is there a way to poke the person who made the bot to update the categories, or to have it be done automatically every few months or so? ReneeWrites (talk) 18:21, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Here is the thread that launched this Commons report. @SD0001: Thanks again for doing that, could you update it?

A bot updating it regularly would be best. One could request it at Commons:Bots/Work requests. But I think chances somebody could build this are fairly low and if people write which of the pages they check, I think the fraction of categories where the cycle has been fixed would be relatively low so there may be no big need for frequent updates.
This report is also not getting updated as of now: Commons:Report UncategorizedCategories with redcats (ie only red categories, no normal categories). Prototyperspective (talk) 21:41, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Mass Renaming Required for Images under the "Sunan Shuofang International Airport Station" Category

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 09:37, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi, I made a mistake while uploading the photos of the aforementioned metro station. This station actually belongs to the Wuxi Metro system, not the Suzhou Metro system. So the file names of the following picture

File:Exit No. 2 of WUX Station of Suzhou Metro Line 3 20251012.jpg File:Exit No. 3 of WUX Station of Suzhou Metro Line 3 20251012 04.jpg File:Exit No. 3 of WUX Station of Suzhou Metro Line 3 20251012 05.jpg File:Exit No. 4 of WUX Station of Suzhou Metro Line 3 20251012.jpg File:Platform of WUX Station of Suzhou Metro Line 3 20251012.jpg

need to be renamed to

File:Exit No. 2 of WUX Station of Wuxi Metro Line 3 20251012.jpg File:Exit No. 3 of WUX Station of Wuxi Metro Line 3 20251012 04.jpg File:Exit No. 3 of WUX Station of Wuxi Metro Line 3 20251012 05.jpg File:Exit No. 4 of WUX Station of Wuxi Metro Line 3 20251012.jpg File:Platform of WUX Station of Wuxi Metro Line 3 20251012.jpg

Since this operation involves renaming of multiple files, is it OK that I request the renaming here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4084470 0.smil (talk • contribs)

 Done Geoffroi 19:51, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Moving without leaving a redirect

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 19:32, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

This move seems like an error. Could anyone fix without leaving a redirect? Thanks. 迴廊彼端 (talk) 07:38, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

It seems the error to move a category to an event was already fixed. I added a speedy delete tag to the event page as it was moved there in error, and the category page already exists. If it's about the nature of the redirect itself, that's a question best left on the talk page of MILEPRI. ReneeWrites (talk) 09:36, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

How can I list uploads from one user without categories?

How can I list uploads from one user that do not contain categories? Regards, --Polarlys (talk) 12:15, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

@Polarlys: depends on how you define uncategorized. As you can see on Special:UncategorizedFiles, that list is nearly empty. This is because all files will have some hidden category.

You can search for files tagged with {{Uncategorized}} combined with username, results will vary.

Files that only have hidden categories and no {{Uncategorized}} are hard to find. Multichill (talk) 13:05, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, files only with hidden categories and no template are my problem here. Gruß, --Polarlys (talk) 13:41, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

I think it is possible with Commons:SPARQL query service. Nemoralis (talk) 14:01, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

@Nemoralis: how? I don't think the SPARQL database contains the categories. All the examples at Commons:SPARQL_query_service/queries/examples#Exploring_Commons_Categories use the Mediawiki API. Multichill (talk) 16:37, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

@Lucas Werkmeister is the SPARQL wizard. Maybe he can help. Nemoralis (talk) 20:47, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

@Nemoralis: I can’t do magic though :P as far as I know @Multichill is correct and the needed information isn’t readily available in SPARQL. (I think you could get the hiddenness via Wikidata Query Service/Categories, but to access the categories of a file you’d need Wikidata Query Service/User Manual/MWAPI, and neither would be at all efficient.) But it’s probably quite possible in Quarry – @Polarlys, do you have an example user name? That way it’ll be easier to write the SQL query. (I doubt any of my own uploads are uncategorized, so I can’t use myself for testing.) Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 18:44, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

I worked on files by User:Shaun92, but I as far as I can tell right now no upload is uncategorized anymore. Regards, --Polarlys (talk) 09:15, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

@Polarlys: Okay, I think this query should be correct: quarry:query/98183 – if you fork it and substitute Shaun92 in line 6, you should get a few files back (currently 15; I checked two and both indeed had no non-hidden categories). Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 20:34, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

If the uploads are all own work, you could adjust the search query Multichill linked and instead of just the username use insource:"|author=xyz" (check one file page to see what exactly that field value is).

Also see phab:T188125 Make it possible to search by page author /contributor/ uploader. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:53, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Gun drawn at Wikimedia North America conference in NYC

https://www.amny.com/news/armed-man-custody-union-square-civic-hall/

I'm glad our friends there are reported to be unhurt. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:53, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Glad to hear no one was hurt, hope the perpetrator can get the help they needed. Tvpuppy (talk) 18:49, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Help with Category structure

this is an exemple

(This is an exemple) I want to categorize the file "Heiffel Tower at dusk.jpg" but I don't have and don't want to create a "Dusk in Paris" category. Should I categorize it as "Dusk in France" (green) or "Twilight in Paris" (red), or both? thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by JotaCartas (talk • contribs) 00:33, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps I’m missing something but Category:Dusk in Paris already exist and File:Heiffel Tower at dusk.jpg doesn’t exist?

If you are just using this as an example, then in that case, your proposed method (categorizing into its 2 parent categories when a category doesn’t exist) would be fine in my opinion. Sometimes it might not make sense just to create a category for one image, if the category will likely be used only by that image for the foreseeable future. However, it really depends on the type of category you are referring to. Tvpuppy (talk) 01:01, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, and you're right, I should have started by stating "this is an example." I really want to know if there is an Commons policy for similar cases. JotaCartas (talk) 01:45, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

IIC both except if you think it's not useful in either category / doesn't belong into either (if somebody added the cat, there's no reason to remove the cat currently so it's open to the categorizer). I'm not sure about this case and think it may not be a good example as the two named categories are barely useful, likely very incomplete, and probably not really used much but I could definitely be wrong on that. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:05, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: I've never seen "IIC" before, and Google is no help. What did you mean there? - Jmabel ! talk 14:20, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

If I understood correctly. I thought there was an abbreviation for it and not just for if I remember correctly (iirc) but maybe not or it's a different one. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:20, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: I've seen "IIUC" for that, but never "IIC". - Jmabel ! talk 21:57, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Note that you should name it "Eiffel Tower" with the correct orthography, which comes from the name of its creator (also the name of his former construction company, now a subsidiary of a larger group that owns the brand, even though it is now a public property of the City of Paris, used commercially by contractors under licence). Note however that the quite recent illuminations of the Eiffel tower are still copyrighted by its author, and there's no freedom of panorama if the tower is the central element of images taken when the tower is illuminated in a early part of the night or during some large events. verdy_p (talk) 21:12, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Months and seasons

I would like to talk with you about a common practice when working with categories on Commons and, ideally, bring about a change. The way things are currently done contradicts all logic and sense. It’s about the connections between seasons and months. Why are months assigned to seasons? I criticize this for two reasons.

1. There are images—many interior shots of buildings, for example, but also many other subjects—that have no relation to any season. Why should I have to place such images in a seasonal category when the picture could just as well have been taken in another season? I think this unnecessarily clutters our categories. When I open a seasonal category, I expect to see images that show something typical for that season. Images should always be categorized as precisely as possible. So, if I upload a picture showing, say, a tree in autumn foliage, I shouldn’t leave it in the autumn category but should instead file it under the monthly category. There, however, my image gets lost among many other non-autumn pictures. Categories are supposed to help make images findable—but in my opinion, this does the opposite.

2. Take my home country, Germany, as an example. There are several months that cannot be clearly assigned to a single season. Either I leave out one season, which would be incomplete, or—more commonly—both seasons are assigned. That might simplify things, but it’s sloppy work and a bad habit that is often seen here on Commons. In practice, the problem might look like this: I upload a photo that I took at the end of September, that is, during autumn. However, the September category is also linked to summer. So my photo is also assigned to summer, which is clearly incorrect.

I hope I was able to express myself clearly and that my reasoning will be taken into consideration. Thank you. Lukas Beck (talk) 14:18, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

For easier context, this is in regards to Category:Seasons by country, example Category:Autumn in Germany. --Cart (talk) 14:36, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

I would populate the season categories purely on visible vegetation phenology and weather phenomena. If there is a snow storm in central Europe in November I would put these photos in the winter category despite the date is clearly not winter. Photos sowing no vegetation or naturally vegetation free areas these photos should not be in a season category. But I would include categories of events liked to seasons like Christmas or Easter. GPSLeo (talk) 15:35, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

On the one hand I agree, but on the other hand I wonder about the educational usefulness of such an approach. For example, imagine a climate researcher who wants to study climate change based on photo evidence. Wouldn't it be of interest for such a researcher to see that, let's say, winter 2050 in Germany was full of blooming trees instead of the expected snow? If we'd only put images of snow in that category, we'd give the researcher a false impression of what winter really looks like in Germany. (Currently there's hardly any snow during winter in most parts of Germany, so if we define "winter = snow", then the winter categories of Germany wouldn't have all that many photos except for photos from the mountain areas.) Nakonana (talk) 16:24, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

The seasons commonly used are based on astronomical events, just like our calendar. There are other definitions for seasons, but they are not really relevant on Commons. In seasonal categories, I assign photos that are visibly dependent on the seasons, for example plants. However, I do so in accordance with the actual seasons. So, to stick with the example mentioned above, snow in November is also in autumn. And I consider months and seasons to be independent of each other—even in the categories. --XRay 💬 16:41, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Commons categories should be geared towards the typical needs of users searching for images, not for esoteric and unlikely needs like a hypothetical climate researcher. Omphalographer (talk) 17:09, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

If someone is looking for images of snow in particular, we have Category:Snow in Germany, so it's not like they won't find what they are looking for. Winter does not necessarily mean that there's snow. The global south might never see snow even if it's winter. Category:Snow in Zimbabwe might not be a thing, but vegetation in Zimbabwe still goes through different seasons like blooming in spring or trees losing leaves in autumn/winter. Winter would look rather different in Zimbabwe than in Germany, so the assumption that winter = snow isn't really universal even in a non-hypothetical scenario. Nakonana (talk) 18:08, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

I did not say that winter requires snow. The federal weather service of Germany defines the start of the winter as the date where the oaks start loosing their leaves. This is usually in early November (File:PhänologischeUhr 61-90 91-19 Deutschland.png). GPSLeo (talk) 18:30, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't mind having months in the season categories, since it is often very subjective how people define seasons and it might be better to see the seasons as just temporal markers, as is the case now. But if done correctly, it might be best to let the different months be defined by what each country defines as being in what season. Googling for instance about "Jahreszeiten in Deutschland mit Monaten", you get to sites like this, and that doesn't correspond with Commons categories at the moment. --Cart (talk) 18:50, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

• I would like to join Cart in her reasoning. Commons categories are not merely navigational aids; they are also, to some extent, taxonomic and semantic frameworks that reflect how we structure knowledge. This dual nature is what makes categorization both powerful and delicate.

While I fully understand the desire for factual accuracy and scientific consistency, we must also remember that Commons is not a scientific database but a visual archive that serves a broad, international community. Our categorization system therefore has to balance taxonomic precision with practical usability and accessibility.

The current way of linking months and seasons may not be scientifically perfect, but it offers a clear and practical system that works well in many countries and situations. Local adjustments are always possible, yet the overall idea keeps things consistent and prevents unnecessary confusion.

In my view, the strength of Commons lies in its flexibility and in the collaborative refinement of its structures, not in rigid enforcement. Let us continue this discussion with an open mind and a shared commitment to clarity, balance, and mutual respect. -- Radomianin (talk) 08:08, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

The intention that categories should contain the files that one might expect to find there is commendable. That's what I expect, too. But expectations vary, and one has to try to find a reasonable compromise. You'll never satisfy everyone. I've been with Wikimedia Commons for many years now and have experienced a lot during that time. I've spent a lot of time working with categories and have also become familiar with the ambiguities. I can often understand them, as greater accuracy can also lead to many categories that contain very few files. These small categories are anything but clear, but they also have the advantage that they can be placed in different category trees. As far as the seasons are concerned, I would like to deliberately cite an extreme example: Category:September in Africa. Thanks to the continent's special location, this month is assigned to all four seasons. Personally, I would separate the two category trees, months and seasons. This would also make sense from an astronomical point of view. However, there will probably be a lot of resistance to this, and even despite this discussion, the issue will not be resolved. To be honest, I have very little hope for change. --XRay 💬 09:58, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't think the discussion should revolve around useless categories like some in Category:Summer in Africa. That's just an example of taking categorization too far. It's about as useful as having a category for "Places with ice" in Category:Antarctica. You can't use season months for entire continents. It's a result of combining the countries by using continent templates. Some categories only have meaning if they are used on a regional level. --Cart (talk) 10:53, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

And in the Tropics don’t follow Spring, Summer, Autumn/Fall and Winter as seasons. For Australia, the Tropics has a Wet and Dry season[39] Bidgee (talk) 11:24, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

And Sweden, being a long country, there is hardly any real winter in the south, while the north part actually has eight seasons according to the Sámi calendar. [40] --Cart (talk) 11:44, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

 Support disconnecting seasons from dates, and instead having categories for seasons only be related to natural or astrological events. Seasons are a subcategory of "Nature", but this results in every photograph that is in a date or date-of-country subcategory (which is most of them, and ideally all of them) being in the "Nature" subcategory. --ReneeWrites (talk) 18:42, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Data-based SVG map graph creation

I'd like to create vectorized map graphs (such as this one) but without having to do it by hand by using Inkscape or similar. Ideally I would be able to generate a graph from data alone, and then embed the plaintext script/data used to generate the graph inside of the file on Commons itself. I'm effectively looking for something like gnuplot but for making map visualizations, i.e. there are no manual drawing instructions, as it takes in instructions and data to generate an image output dynamically. Is there any software that can do this? Again, I'd like to also be able to view the data used to generate the image as plaintext and embed it in the {{Igen}} template on the file itself so that the file can be easily recreated by others later. I'd also like the SVG output to be as simple as possible, preferably no extra cruft like interactivity or scripting... — rae^5e <talk> 23:57, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

I've realized that this question would most likely be better fit for the help desk or graphics village pump. Should I go about moving it there or is it okay for it to remain here for the time being? My apologies!! — rae^5e <talk> 15:41, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

@Theki: it depends. It is not clear what you are asking for. Are you asking for a new capability to be added to Commons, for recommendations of third-party software that can do this, or what? I can't make it out by reading what you wrote. - Jmabel ! talk 21:59, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I'm looking for some kind of software. I've heard of QGIS but I have yet to try it out. Do you know of any others? — rae^5e <talk> 00:26, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

@Theki: I'd guess your best bet for where to ask that is en:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing. The more clearly you focus the question on what you would want the software to be able to do, the better chance of an answer. - Jmabel ! talk 03:01, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

@Theki: Something like https://svg-map-maker.toolforge.org/? Nosferattus (talk) 05:16, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: This looks okay, but it seems to be US-only and it doesn't appear that I'm able to export and import data/configurations—although, this is still a good tool to have in the interim, so thank you. To reiterate, I'm looking for a tool that will let me create statistical maps (like the ones the tool you linked generates), both global (world) and local (countries, states, municipalities, etc.), without requiring me to touch Inkscape or edit the SVG output manually, preferably by taking in some configuration file or script that can be embedded as plaintext in the Igen template on the uploaded file on Commons so that it can then be easily re-generated with the exact same specifications by other users. Besides QGIS, the only other thing I can think of is ggplot2. — rae^5e <talk> 14:37, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

@Theki: No such tool exists, but the source code for https://svg-map-maker.toolforge.org/ is public and it doesn't look very complicated. Most of the work would just be finding or creating appropriate SVG maps to start from, as the various regions in the map would need to be tagged with appropriate place names or codes to match the data. Have you considered building such a tool yourself? Nosferattus (talk) 17:16, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: Oh, that's a shame. I suppose I could do that. Is there a centralized location on Commons for blank map graphs whose code is consistently laid out (i.e. similarly to BlankMap-World.svg with <g id="[ISO country code]">), or would I have to create such things myself? — rae^5e <talk> 14:38, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Btw, scribunto is now able to output SVGs, so if you do it in lua, you can do it directly from a template. For example w:Module:Sandbox/bawolff/programmableMap/doc. On the other hand it might not be the best idea to create maps this way. Bawolff (talk) 19:39, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Correct English?

I just tried to add a Kazakh FoP category to a DR by just typing "Kazakh FoP", but couldn't find a category. Turns out the category is called Category:Kazakhstani FOP cases. The word "Kazakhstani" sounds extremely unusual to me. Isn't "Kazakh" the correct word? It's Kazakh language and Kazakh people, so where did "Kazakhstani" come from? From "Pakistani"? But that's not done with former Soviet "-stan" countries. It's not "Tajikistani" or "Uzbekistani", but Tajik and Uzbek. Even with non-Soviet countries that is not how the adjective is formed (e.g. it's "Afghan", not "Afghanistani", and "Kurd", not "Kurdistani"). This affects the whole category tree of Category:Kazakhstani law deletion requests, and also categories regarding Kyrgyzstan, like Category:Kyrgyzstani FOP cases. There's no such word "Kyrgyzstani", the correct adjective is Kyrgyz. Or are those "-stani" endings actually a thing aside from "Pakistani"? Nakonana (talk) 11:53, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Wiktionary lists wikt:Kazakhstani as a synonym of wikt:Kazakh. While personally I have a preference for "Kazakh", and tend to see "Kazakh" used more in literature, the use of "Kazakhstani" isn't exactly poor English either. --benlisquare_{Talk•Contribs} 11:56, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

What about Kyrgyzstani, Uzbekistani, and Turkmenistani? Even wiktionary doesn't have those words, it seems. Nakonana (talk) 12:01, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

wikt:Kyrgyzstani, wikt:Uzbekistani, and wikt:Turkmenistani are English words. Again, personally if I were writing an article or something, I would prefer the use of wikt:Kyrgyz, wikt:Uzbek and wikt:Turkmen because these are the more commonly used English words.

However, in saying that, there is also a slight nuance that differentiates these words. This doesn't affect what name we use for category names on Commons (personally, I still prefer "Kazakh" over "Kazakhstani" for a Commons category name), but I thought I'd mention it in case people weren't aware of the distinction: some of these terms either specifically refer to a nationstate only or a culture/peoples only, or can refer to both but generally lean more towards referring to a nationstate, or lean more towards referring to a culture/peoples, in most contexts. I'll give a few examples:

• A wikt:Bosniak is a specific Muslim ethnic group from the Balkans. They wear Bosniak dress, follow Bosniak cultural norms, and there are Bosniak political parties. A wikt:Bosnian is a citizen of the country of Bosnia, who may or may not be ethnically Serb, ethnically Croat, or ethnically Bosniak; such a person may speak the en:Bosnian language, hold a en:Bosnian passport, and cheer on the Bosnian national football team.
• A wikt:Hindustani may refer to a citizen of India (called "Hindustan" in Hindi), however actual usage is more nebulous than that in literature, c.f. en:Hindustani classical music, en:Hindustani language. A wikt:Hindu is only a person who follows the Hindu religion, a Buddhist, a Muslim, or a Sikh cannot be a "Hindu".
• A "Kazakhstani" generally refers to a citizen of the country of Kazakhstan (though I have seen occasional edge cases where it doesn't). A "Kazakh" generally refers to the Kazakh ethnic group, its culture, its music, its traditions, its language (and again, I have seen occasional edge cases where it doesn't). If you want to be specific, you may choose to write that someone may have a en:Kazakhstani passport (the passport of the country of Kazakhstan), but speak the en:Kazakh language (the language of the ethnic Kazakh people). A citizen of Kazakhstan may not necessarily be an ethnic Kazakh, they may also be Dungan or Ukrainian. However, based on my observation of the use of the words in English, unlike Bosniak/Bosnian where the usage is more strict and concretely defined, both "Kazakh" and "Kazakhstani" can be used interchangeably to refer to both concepts, it's just that in most cases where there is a need to differentiate the two concepts, "Kazakh" will lean towards the ethnicity/culture while "Kazakhstani" will lean towards the nationstate.
• Likewise, with occasional edge cases, "Kyrgyz" generally pertains to the ethnicity while "Kyrgyzstani" generally pertains to the country; "Uzbek" generally pertains to the ethnicity while "Uzbekistani" generally pertains to the country; and "Turkmen" generally pertains to the ethnicity while "Turkmenistani" generally pertains to the country. Usage seems to be less strict and the terms can be occasionally seen to be used interchangeably, but the general trend is that the terms will lean towards ethnicity vs country.

In short, language is descriptive and I cannot fault people for using the words in a more nebulous manner, but for the most part there is some semblance of a rigid prescriptive structure that some people follow some of the time. In saying that, though, I have a personal preference for the Commons categories to be Kyrgyz/Uzbek/Turkmen on the basis that I see these the most often in literature, even if it breaks the systematic prescriptive "rule" mentioned earlier, as I'm a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist. --benlisquare_{Talk•Contribs} 12:46, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd also prefer we'd follow the common name since it's more intuitive. It's also a bit odd to have differing adjectives to refer to ethnicity vs. country for some ethnicities but not for others, e.g., Russia is a multiethnic state, but it's not like there are different adjectives for "Russian-Federational" passports vs. Russian language / people, it's just "Russian" in all instances, so using different words for a Kazakh and a Ukrainian "Kazakhstani" is some sort of othering that the English language seemingly only does for some people but not for others. And at least the Cambrdige Dictionary and Oxford Dictionary do not have any entries for any of the here listed "-stani" adjectives. Those seem rather unestablished or unofficial neologisms. Merriam-Webster has Kazakhastani and dates the first use to 1987. But even Merriam-Webster does not have any of the other "-stanis", like Uzbekistani etc. (and my spell-checking software marks them all as incorrect, too, including Kazakhstani). Nakonana (talk) 17:28, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Othering? I think the other way would be more othering. It'd be like calling everyone from the UK English; you're basically erasing the Scots, Welsh and Irish. I'm not entirely clear on the conditions on the ground, but making the distinction between an ethnicity and nationality seems important when making it clear that you can have the nationality without the ethnicity (really be part of the nation) and that you can have the ethnicity without the nationality (and not be a traitor to your country / need the ethnic country to return you and your land to the mother nation.)

Also, let's avoid the phrase "Oxford Dictionary", as there are many, many Oxford dictionaries. The Oxford Advanced American Dictionary has Uzbekistani. The Oxford English Dictionary is a slowly updated behemoth that finished its last complete overhaul in 1989. Given that these words would be first important after the Soviet breakup in 1991 and the online OED has not reached U in its systemic updates (it's slowly going forward from M, while making sporadic changes elsewhere), so I would not expect the OED to be reflective of reality here.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:36, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

you're basically erasing the Scots, Welsh and Irish -- No, I think what I'm talking about is rather "Scots" vs. "Scotlandians", "Welsh" vs. "Walesians", and "Irish" vs. Irlandians", because "Scots"/"Welsh"/"Irish" are like ethnicities, while "Scotlandians"/"Walesians"/"Irlandians" are citizens of the respective countries. In other words, if "Ukrainian Kazakhs" are not a thing, then "Ukrainian Scots" are also not a thing, because the supposedly correct terminology would be "Ukrainian Kazakhstanis" and "Ukrainian Scotlandians" because, according to the "-stani" logic, Ukrainians don't belong to the Kazakh/Scottish ethnicity, but they might very well be citizens of Kazakhstan/Scotland. That's not how national adjectives work, right? We don't have different adjectives for ethnic Germans vs. non-ethnic Germans. There's only the adjective "German", there's no adjective "Germanian" for "Ukrainian Germanians" or in the sense of Category:Germanian FOP cases. It's called Category:German FOP cases. So why isn't the category called Category:Kazakh FOP cases but Category:Kazakhstani FOP cases instead? There's also Category:Russian FOP cases, but not Category:Russian Federational FOP cases. If Scotland had its own FoP rules, then we'd call the category Category:Scottish FOP cases, not Category:Scotlandian FOP cases, right? So why is it "Kazakhstani" instead of "Kazakh"? It just doesn't make sense to me why there even are different adjectives for people from Kazakhastan in the English language when there are no different adjectives for people from other countries, like Germany or Russia. Nakonana (talk) 16:05, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

The words "Scotlandians", "Walesians", "Irlandians" simply are not English words. You have made them up. - Jmabel ! talk 13:37, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Side note: the wiktionary entries on all the "-stani" adjectives are all completely unsourced. Not a single reference listed in those entries. Nakonana (talk) 17:31, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

There are more affected categories:

• Category:Tajikistani FOP cases -> Tajik
• Category:Uzbekistani FOP cases -> Uzbek
• Category:Turkmenistani FOP cases -> Turkmen

Nakonana (talk) 11:59, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Strange behavior of rotation file

File:Metasequoia2.JPG was not rotated in the right position in Wikipedia pages as for example Watercipres. After using SteinsplitterBot (@Steinsplitter: ) the image is OK. The rotation in the Commons categories Category:Sequoiafarm Kaldenkirchen and Category:Metasequoia glyptostroboides (avenues) is OK, but the X and Y values of the file size has not been changed. On the Wikipedia page the rotation has not been taken place. How can that be solved? Wouter (talk) 11:55, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

You must be looking at a cached version of the file, I think? Because the image at File:Metasequoia2.JPG is displayed in landscape format instead of portrait format for me, which doesn't look right. I think the image rotation by SteinsplitterBot just needs to be reverted to display correctly, it seems. Nakonana (talk) 15:29, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

@Tvpuppy: has reverted File:Metasequoia2.JPG to version as of 09:03, 28 May 2010. The strange thing I observe now is that everything is OK when using the browser Firefox 140.3 on Mac 15.6.1, but when using Safari 18.6 File:Metasequoia2.JPG is rotated 270° (the thumbnail in the history not) as well as the images in the Commons categories. Also the images in the four Wikipedia articles are rotated. Wouter (talk) 13:04, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Have you tried purging the page or making a null edit to the pages? It's probably a caching issue. Nakonana (talk) 13:11, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I did both, but it did not help. Wouter (talk) 13:35, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I think I figured out what is causing this issue. In the EXIF metedata, it states "Orientation: Rotate 90 CW". This is likely causing it to display the image with a rotation of 90° clockwise. However, I'm not sure how to edit the EXIF here in Commons. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 13:39, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

@Tvpuppy: as with any other change to a file, download, edit, re-upload. - Jmabel ! talk 14:00, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

With {{Rotate|resetexif}}? (But I don't see the "orientation" line in the exif in the description page.) -- Asclepias (talk) 15:22, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for both of your suggestions, I went ahead and did it manually as Jmabel suggested. The file should be displaying correctly now, @Wouterhagens can you confirm if it's displaying correctly for you? Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 15:34, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

The file itself and both Commons categories now display correctly in Safari, but the images in the Wikipedia articles are still incorrect in Safari. Wouter (talk) 17:55, 20 October 2025 (UTC)