Commons:Village pump/Archive/2026/05

Movie player

Please remind me where to find the tool that acts as a steaming-service like interface for the movies we have on Commons? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:03, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: https://wikiflix.toolforge.org Belbury (talk) 11:43, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Wikiflix: https://wikiflix.toolforge.org/#/

I requested it to be synced with Category:Videos of films by year and since that cat now contains most films in Commons and is largely included (last time I checked at least) in wikiflix, it should also show most films on Commons. An alternative is WikidataGalleries/WikiFlix/Documentary films. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:45, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. I made {{WikiFlix}} to link to it translations welcome. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:48, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:43, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

My image

My image File:DoveKHepburn.jpg of me I uploaded for my own Wikipedia sandbox. I do not give consent for its deletion on Wikimedia Commons as it's my own work. --DoveTheEditor (talk) 13:42, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

@DoveTheEditor: Hi, and welcome. You want to keep it, then? Your language is confusing. Who snapped the photo? How did you acquire the copyright, since you wrote that it is your own work? You may need to use the Monty Python quote "I'm not dead yet". See also COM:HR.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 14:15, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

I've tagged the enwiki sandbox for speedy deletion there as a blatant hoax. (It claimed, among other things, that she died last year and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.) Omphalographer (talk) 15:50, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Looks like a hoax all around, and a pretty transparent one at that. This may be a reason to block the account. - Jmabel ! talk 17:03, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

 Comment I deleted all files as abuse of COM:WEBHOST, and sent 2 warnings. Yann (talk) 17:23, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

It's just making this place toxic. Aren't editors meant to be polite and not arrogant? --DoveTheEditor (talk) 17:42, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

@DoveTheEditor: Please read Commons policies, starting with COM:SCOPE and COM:L, and stop talking nonsense. Thanks, Yann (talk) 18:25, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:58, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Unmerge files / Undo overwrite

Could someone please unmerge the two photos in the history of File:Мост через Элистинку.jpg (translation of file name: "Bridge across the Elistinka [River]")? Not sure why one photo was overwritten with a different one.
The resulting two files can be named File:Мост через Элистинку 2013.jpg (if that's the year in which the original was taken) and File:Мост через Элистинку 2015.jpg. Nakonana (talk) 19:13, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

@Nakonana: The first thing to do is a revert (done), then downloading the second version and re-uploading with a new file name, using the diff as licensing evidence. As I'm currently using my tablet, I can't do that. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 19:42, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the instructions. I've uploaded the other file under a different name (got the year wrong, it's 2016, not 2015). Nakonana (talk) 22:03, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:00, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Please help clean up Category:Art

There are currently 3,416 files on Commons which are categorized generically as "art". This is a lot - particularly given that the Art category is a disambiguation and should be empty!

Please help us make this number smaller by:

• Removing the category from files which already have more appropriate categories.
• Diffusing files to more specific categories, e.g. to categories for the artist, or for the subject matter of the work.
• Nominating files for deletion which are unlikely to be of educational use. There is a lot of personal artwork in this category which can probably be speedily deleted as F10.

Omphalographer (talk) 23:12, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Google Lens and TinEye does not function anymore

Lately, I have been having trouble with Google Lens and TinEye checking for copyright issues with images. For example, with File:MISS MONDE.jpg "Something went wrong. No image at the URL. Try again with a different URL or image" in Google Lens, and "TinEye could not read that image url. This may be due to an unsupported file format". What could be the cause? I use Firefox 140.10 on Mac. Wouter (talk) 19:04, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

The page you linked isn't an image. If you click on the image itself tin eye copes with it. [1] Secretlondon (talk) 19:53, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

You can also go into Preference > Gadgets, and enable the "Reverse Image Search" tool, which will place automatic search links to common sites in tabs above the image (different skins may have them in other locations). — Huntster (t @ c) 20:03, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

@Wouterhagens: Are these lookups using only the thumbnail steps listed on https://w.wiki/GHai, as they are now supposed to? See also MediaWiki talk:Gadget-GoogleImagesTineye.js#Reverse Image Search - Google and TinEye failing to retrieve source images from Commons.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 20:12, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Errrr the WMF messed up thumbnail URLs and inadvertently broke our gadget. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 20:15, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: It seems that they settled on only using certain sizes for performance reasons, and our gadget doesn't use any of them. Our gadget needs to be fixed.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 20:19, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Our gadget does need to be fixed but sizes are not the problem. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 20:56, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Surprise. It's working again now. Wouter (talk) 07:56, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

@Wouterhagens: yes, my edit request that fixes it has been implemented. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 13:15, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! Wouter (talk) 17:56, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

I have the same problem since several weeks already. --Túrelio (talk) 08:07, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

@Túrelio: you shouldn't, it was fixed 3 hours before you said that. Did you clear your browser cache? - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 13:15, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:17, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Unexpected category related to my own uploads

I just ran across Category:Uploaded by user Jmabel, which has apparently existed for a decade and of which I was never informed. It contains 653 files, which appear to be some arbitrary subset of my probably 3000 to 6000 Flickr uploads (many of which are my own work first uploaded to Flickr, many of which are from Seattle Municipal Archives Flickr stream, and probably 100-200 of which are from other sources). I never asked for this category, I never was informed of this category, and the only users to edit it appear to be a a bot that has not edited in years, a user who has not edited in years, and a blocked user I have some vague memories of interacting with, but not about this. Can anyone tell me what is going on here and whether this is useful to anyone? (I have some other questions, but they'd depend on the answers to those.) - Jmabel ! talk 06:35, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

 Comment, I found discussions related to this in the bot's request page and a Village Pump thread from 2015. Basically, per the closing comment of the Village Pump thread, this user category was created to "delete uploader information from the source field" and the uploader information is "converted to an uploader category". Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 09:28, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I think the above info solves this. Probably, it would be fine if the user that the user-cat is about empties the cat using cat-a-lot and then has it deleted. If in doubt, one could create a CfD for it. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:31, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I see. So someone unilaterally decided that for bot-uploaded files that were uploaded at the request of a particular user, the only connection between that user and the file would be a maintenance category that they didn't name clearly (nothing related to the bot-upload aspect) or explain in a hat-note on the category, nor did they explain this to the users in question, nor get their consent to remove the explicit mentions that were previously there. Brilliant.

I guess I will leave it, or maybe rename it to something that says what it is. Not pleased. - Jmabel ! talk 17:33, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:17, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Featured galleries?

I see that the page Commons:Featured galleries proposed featured galleries nearly 20 years ago. It seems like it just slipped through the cracks and never got made? I for one would love to see this become an actual feature. I have been working on improving a lot of galleries and great galleries are few and far between — I think they ought to be recognised. Plus it would be very helpful to have community consensus on what makes for a top-notch gallery.

I think more focus needs to be placed on galleries, since they are the main namespace, and the most accessible part of Commons for casual users. LetmeEditit (talk) 18:24, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

@LetmeEditit: you may be a mile ahead of me here, but if you wanted to propose guidelines for featured galleries, you might extrapolate from Commons:Galleries, including from some of the examples there of good galleries. Also, if you think there are better examples, that would be helpful. - Jmabel ! talk 01:08, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I'll start putting some guidelines together now; when I'm done I'll put them up on Commons talk:Featured galleries. In fact, there's some old discussion on that page that may be useful.

I think the guidelines should be pretty open-ended, considering a lot can be done with galleries, so I think being too rigid would restrict creativity. I think something similar to the featured picture guidelines might be good — some sort of a vote based off personal preferences. Do you have any ideas of your own? LetmeEditit (talk) 11:48, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I just put together some basic guidelines: see Commons talk:Featured galleries#Guidelines proposal LetmeEditit (talk) 12:53, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Net sheds

Net sheds at Fishermen's Terminal, Seattle

Category:Net sheds is redirected to Category:Fishing huts, but that seems absurd for something like these industrial-scale net sheds at Fishermen's Terminal on the south side of Salmon Bay in Seattle. I would imagine other major fishing fleets have something similar, though if we have photos of them I have no guess how someone chose to categorize them. - Jmabel ! talk 04:45, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Introducing WISE: Semantic search for Commons (we’d love your feedback)

Hello everyone,

We would love to get your feedback on a tool we have been working on: https://wise.wmcloud.org/

This is a search tool for images and videos on wikimedia. Currently is searching only on media of the day (approximately 5000 videos). It searches only the visual content of the file (not on metadata, filename, or structured data). It also does face detection and recognition.

Please give it a go. Here's some taste example queries:

• for visual queries (select "Visual" on the dropdown menu next to the search box)
  • "man at a train station"
  • "एक व्यक्ति रेलवे स्टेशन पर" # this is "man at a train station" in Hindi (this tool handles multiple languages, so try on your language)
  • "horse in an airplane" # the first result is correct but it's a ogv file
  • విమానంలో గుర్రం # this is "a horse in aeroplane" in Telugu (again, try it on your own language)
  • man with a flower
  • pirate with a pistol

• for face search (select "Faces" on the dropdown menu next to the search box. Then click on the "Image" green button, and past the URL for an image)
  • https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Charlie_Chaplin.jpg (a photo with charlie chaplin face)
  • https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Neil_Armstrong_pose.jpg (a photo with neil armstrong face)

[warning: some videos are ogv videos and your brownser may not play them, so watch them on Commons, i.e., after clicking the search result, scroll down to the media metadata table, and follow the link to commons]

Key features include:

• Semantic search using natural language to find relevant images on Commons from the visual content only (not the structured data or description, only the image itself)
• Face search: upload or paste a face image, and the tool will try to identify and locate that person across images and videos, including timestamps where they appear
• Audio search: search within audio files to find relevant segments
• Multilingual search: supports queries in multiple languages

We are actively improving the tool and would really appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or ideas from the community. Here's some more immediate future plans:

• Search on all wikimedia images (instead of only videos / media of the day)
• Show similar images when uploading an image to suggest filenames, categories, and other relevant metadata

More technical details and a place to share feedback at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wise

Gopavasanth (talk) 23:53, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

@Gopavasanth: aren't there privacy issues around doing a face search? I would think that if applied to (for example) crowd photos at political demonstrations, the results could be pretty terrifying. - Jmabel ! talk 04:41, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

+1 Agree with Jmabel --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:31, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Face search without identifying person, there is person in photo, there are some persons in photo, there is lot of persons in the photo or generic there is males/females/childrens/adults/eldery people in the photo could be more useful and most likely more robust than trying to identify a specific person. --Zache (talk) 09:46, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

+1 to Jmabel. I would strongly oppose any tool that integrated facial recognition into search capacity. 19h00s (talk) 12:23, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I mean, if you are concerned about political repression, the police almost certainly have much better tools then this running on publicly available images on the internet. Bawolff (talk) 16:56, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

We can not prevent this and anyone should be aware of this when publishing photos. But we should not host such a tool, that also clearly would violate EU regulation, on the Wikimedia infrastructure. GPSLeo (talk) 13:06, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

This is cool and all, but I'm not sure its very useful unless it covers all the images (or at least a much larger subset). At the same time, it seems unclear there is a path forward to actually doing that. Bawolff (talk) 16:57, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Great initiative and a very compelling use of embeddings. I was wondering if you've got any ideas as to how to benchmark the retrieval quality when the corpus grows? Awinkler3 (talk) 07:57, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

It's exciting to see projects that make it easier to discover the great contents from Wikimedia projects.

I wanted to introduce a recent initiative that may be relevant for projects like Wise that are based on Wikimedia content. The Wikimedia Attribution Framework has recently been launched, and we are looking for early adopters to learn from their experience.

The Wikimedia Attribution Framework sets guidelines on how to provide sustainable attribution when reusing Wikimedia content. It is in an early beta stage, and we want to learn from those trying to apply the guidelines provided. We'll be adding more details to the project page, but feel free to share any thoughts on the talk page.

I hope this could be a useful resource to make the Wise project even better.

Thanks! --Pginer-WMF (talk) 10:34, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Note also that the Attribution API is also available to facilitate the application of the guidelines provided in the Attribution Framework. For the case of WISE, it can be particularly useful to show license info for images.

--Pginer-WMF (talk) 10:47, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Nice, thanks for developing this! I wonder if categories set on items could be used as clues as to the content of the files to improve performance and also whether this tool could be used to basically suggest categories that are missing (eg major content of video but no related set cat found). Prototyperspective (talk) 14:19, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Issues with FileImporter

See mw:Help talk:Extension:FileImporter#Failure to automatically add on local image page for the information and context. Regards, JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 09:02, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: Thank you for the alert. Use on enwiki should be {{Now Commons}}.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:37, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Images and categorization

Should images in Category:San Polo (Venice) need more precise categorization (I can do this) or is enough current categorization? --Green Wave (talk) 08:38, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

See the subcategories of that category. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:25, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

If you know of more precise categories for the images (and considering the available subcategories, this is quite likely), please do. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:14, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I would suggest to check out other comparable communes (like Rome or Milan?) and copy elements of the category structures there, to reach the level of precision you intend.

Some words of caution: Categories are intended to group similar things together, but in doing so, they may create uninteded divisions in other aspects. This file could be placed in a category for the specific church, but would then also need to be put into "Sculptures in San Polo" (or "...in Venice") and maybe "San Polo in the 2020s". If you create new and super-specialized categories, or chose names that deviate from regular category names, you should be able to explain your ideas in a debate. --Enyavar (talk) 21:39, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

New footage from Cleopatra (1917 film)

A couple years ago someone discovered 40 seconds of film from the famous lost 1917 film, Cleopatra, starring Theda Bara. This film is sometimes cited as the most expensive lost film of all time. Surprisingly, no one has uploaded this clip to Commons. The new footage can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwPZuyF2Th0. However, someone will need to remove the new audio track and the introduction. Unfortunately, the uploader decided to put a watermark on the footage, but I don't think there's anything we can do about that. It doesn't affect its public domain status regardless. Nosferattus (talk) 20:50, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Template:Incorrect Exif date

1. 1. Template:Incorrect Exif date was created as redirect to Template:Invalid Exif date by User:ŠJů, but User:Sarang made it a template. it's now a bit different https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ComparePages?page1=Template%3AInvalid+Exif+date&page2=Template%3AIncorrect+Exif+date . no idea why Sarang did that.
   2. i think the difference can be summarised as Template:Incorrect Exif date introduced parameter 1, but there are only 7 usage of it using any parameter https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=hastemplate%3AIncorrect_Exif_date+insource%3A%2Ff+date%5Cs*%5C%7C%2F . i also dont understand the meanings of the introduced parameters.
   3. therefore, can it be redirected again?
2. i have some photos that have the correct date but wrong time. technically the current phrasing of Template:Invalid Exif date "Date and/or time...are incorrect" is not applicable to my files. is there another template for right date wrong time? or should this template be modified?
3. also i think there can be better documentation of best practice when exif contains errors. how do we correct the errors, identify them and label them as such? i found this template in a complicated way: typing template:exif in search bar -> Template:According to Exif data -> Category:Time, date and calendar templates, scroll down until i see -> Template:Invalid Exif date.

RoyZuo (talk) 09:43, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

 Redirect {{Incorrect Exif date}} per above, functionally I don't see any substantial difference between the 2 templates. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 11:15, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

 Comment why does Template:Invalid Exif date say "There are two possible ways to use this template" and then list only one? - Jmabel ! talk 17:39, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I can see in the documentation, the supposedly second way has been struck and commented out. The text of the second way states, "Give the time difference of Exif as a parameter. The template displays the corrected date (localized by {{ISOdate}}) and renders the words "according to Exif metadata (corrected)" in the language specified in the user's preferences. (not available yet)".

As this method is "not available yet", actually only one method is possible, so I have edited the documentation to remove the confusing text. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 23:41, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

1. that offers a clue. Sarang might have planned to introduce the "time difference" parameter.

   i think, calculating the difference and then letting the template add that to exif time, is not a practical solution to correct the error.

2. i'm gonna change the wording to "Date, time, or both...are incorrect" so the template also works for right date wrong time.

RoyZuo (talk) 13:21, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Family tree date

Why does the tree at Category:Carl Suno Henrik Engström show "Category" in front of the name? --RAN (talk) 21:39, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) if you mean "Sune Engström", I added name at the corresponding Wikidata:Q131620023 page. Now the tree doesn't show "Category:" in front of the name. Deltaspace42 (talk) 22:36, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

• Thanks! Weird thing to happen. --RAN (talk) 03:14, 10 May 2026 (UTC)