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COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES (index) Commons Help desk Village pump (general discussion) Copyright Proposals Technical Graphics and photography discussion Photography critiques Image improvement Illustration workshop Map workshop Photography workshop Video and sound workshop Categories for discussion Undeletion requests Deletion requests Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard Translators' noticeboard Work requests for bots Contact administrators Vandalism User problems (Dispute resolution) Blocks and protections Bureaucrats' noticeboard CheckUser requests Telegram IRC webchat Commons mailing list (archive) Commons' bugs on Phabricator Welcome to the Village pump This page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2021/09. Please note: If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias. Have you read our FAQ? For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming. Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer). Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam. Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page: Please do not make deletion requests here: use the relevant process for it instead. For technical support and graphics talks (PNG, SVG, GIF, etc.), please post on the Graphics village pump. To ask for image improvement, see: Graphic Lab/Photography workshop for photographs. Graphic Lab/Map workshop for maps. Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop for other illustrations. To ask for video or audio improvement, see Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop. For translation requests, please post at Commons:Requests for translation. For media requests, please post at Commons:File requests. Search archives:   Start a new discussion

Centralized discussion See also: Village pump/Proposals • Archive Using imagery from VOGUE Taiwan (21 August 2021) Copyright law change in the European Union: do we need a new PD-EU-ToO tag? (6 June 2021) Copyright law change in Mainland China (4 May 2020) Deprecating Template:PD-Switzerland-photo (18 April 2021) Revise the COM:FOP Sweden section (1 February 2021) Future of file metadata (2 November 2020) Indonesian laws on copyright (21 August 2020) Remove text from Commons:Rollback. (20 August 2020) Template: View • Discuss  • Edit • Watch

SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 1 day and sections whose most recent comment is older than 7 days.

September 06

Scuplture i

some of categories are misspelled Scuplture → Sculptures--Albedo (talk) 18:53, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

@Albedo: You can rename such categories using "Move"->"Move" in the top right. – BMacZero (🗩) 16:25, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

but files remains in old category. Also misspelled Numer 7349 on objects --Albedo (talk) 10:42, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Consumer behaviour (−) (±) (↓) (↑)Human behavior --Albedo (talk) 12:33, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

The files remain in the old category until their tags are switched. You can do this by hand, or you can use Cat-a-Lot. DS (talk) 17:47, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

--

Educators from Israel and Educationists from India --Albedo (talk) 10:57, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

September 19

Verified accounts

SCNAT (talk · contribs) is verified on de:User:SCNAT. i think the verification could also be applied to the account on other wikis. would it be a good idea if the verification is added to the local user page here, or to its meta user page so it's visible on all wikis? (@Olaf Kosinsky:).--RZuo (talk) 10:00, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

• @RZuo: There is Template:User Personal acquaintances. - Jmabel ! talk 18:41, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
  • @Jmabel, RZuo:, I think that template is only to verify an account whose operator you have met in person. Verification through VRT/OTRS needs to be templated by authorised users with {{Verified account}}. Since Olaf Kosinsky was blocked indefinitely, someone else should check ticket:2021012110004263 and apply the template. @AFBorchert, Raboe001, Mussklprozz: fyi. De728631 (talk) 18:53, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
    • @De728631: Sorry, I missed the context in which RZuo was talking about verification. - Jmabel ! talk 21:31, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
  • I would like to understand why I am standing here, I am currently not (very) active and I can no longer read the ticket. What do I have to do? Thanks very much
  • ich würde gerne verstehen warum ich hier stehe, bin momentan zwar nicht (sehr) aktiv und ich das Ticket nicht mehr lesen kann was muss ich tun? vielen Dank Tschüß -- Ra Boe watt?? 11:43, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

• @Ra Boe: In dem Fall dann einfach zurücklehnen und ignorieren, da kannst du eh nichts machen. "fyi" = "for your information" = "dir zur Info". --El Grafo (talk) 12:19, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

General scenario

should it become a rule that such evidence of verification of identities be confirmed by VRT on commons or meta wiki user pages?

another account, User:ZDF Terra X Redaktion, which happens to be also a german account, had the verification added on its commons user page. i think this is better practice.--RZuo (talk) 21:40, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

September 22

ggbain.34249

When I search for "ggbain.34249" here at Commons, I only come up with the image I just loaded. But looking through the category, the image already existed as File:A. Santos Dumont LCCN2014714401.jpg with "ggbain.34249" in the text. Why didn't I find it? Is my search only returning the string when found in the title? --RAN (talk) 18:21, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

You should use Special:Search. Ruslik (talk) 07:00, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@RAN: Thanks for reporting this, I've taken the liberty of copying your comment over to the Mediasearch talk page so that the developers can evaluate whether that's something they want to work on (sorry, no time to fiddle around with phabricator right now). --El Grafo (talk) 09:14, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

You are correct! Special search looks at all the text, while the default search appears to limit the search. There does not appear to be any way to change the settings in preferences. I imagine this has been why every once in a while I cannot find a Bain image searching for the ggbain number, despite User:Fae saying they should all be loaded. I will use special search. It also appears that Google Search misses the images too. --RAN (talk) 18:08, 23 September 2021 (UTC)ggg

Show search results in the Special:Search interface in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-searchoptions. Ruslik (talk) 08:06, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

September 23

HÉV Budapest 1979 images

I have uploaded several Budapest 1979 images. See Category:HÉV stations in Budapest. I dont remember the locations after 42 years. Could someone help me in subcategorising? Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:19, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

I now starting to doubt the date. Only File:Budapest HÉV stations in 1979 5.jpg has a Kodachrome frame marked OCT 1979. The other slide frames are unmarked and could be much later. The HÉV network was a discovery for me in 1979 and I would decide to explore the HÉV network more fully in a later trip. In 1979 I only spend few days in Budapest (my first communist country visit), before I continued to Istanbul, Athens and back trough Italy (those where my wild Interrail years). I uncertainly did not visit Hungary again until after the fall of the wall (1989). The other images could be the 1990's. There is the same problem with File:Budapest rail 1979 3.jpg.Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:54, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Update

Only one files remain with a unidentified HÉV station:

in 1979

Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:31, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Newbie to Adding Images to Wikipedia Article

Hello,

I've never added an image to a Wikipedia article. I understand that the process starts here at Wikimedia Commons. The image I'm looking to add is an Internet Archive copy from a volume of work produced by an organization that is over 100 years old. Would this image meet the 'public domain' standard for images? Thank you --Tchula65 (talk) 16:02, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@Tchula65: Hi, Can you give a link to the image in Internet Archive please? Thanks, Yann (talk) 16:23, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Yann https://archive.org/details/cardiffrecordsbe05card/page/n539/mode/2up. Thank you --Tchula65 (talk) 18:05, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

At worst, {{PD-old-assumed}} should apply. I know that is not a complete answer, just passing it on for whoever tries to help further. - Jmabel ! talk 18:21, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

This volume was published in 1905, so PD-old-assumed wouldn't apply yet. You're going to have to try and figure out the author, or figure out if it is truly anonymous.-- Prosfilaes (talk) 23:51, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I took the 1898 date at face value. - Jmabel ! talk 00:24, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Jmabel Prosfilaes Yann Thank you all for your help and feedback. Looks like I have more work to do. Tchula65 (talk) 15:27, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Tchula65, you seem to have understood that more research was necessary to determine the copyright status, but then you uploaded File:Mayoress' badge and chain.png from that book. Can you explain? Pack My Box (talk) 20:55, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Pack My Box I wanted to see what feedback I would get from the process. I understood that the image would be deleted. Thanks. Tchula65 (talk) 21:15, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Pack My Box Jmabel Prosfilaes Additional research determined that the photo is a product of M'Lagan (McLagan) and Cumming, Edinburgh. The business was formed in 1872 and was closed between 1960 and 1965. The proprietors, M'Lagan (no first name determined, so far) and Mr David Cummings died in 1895 and 1922, respectively. The business did pass along to a son of Mr Cumming and an associate but that's as far into the succession that I've researched. It is not known yet if the business shuttered or was sold. That leads me to more questions. 1) Would the copyright of the image cease along with the original business entity or does it continue on, in the case that the business was sold or 2) does copyright end with the death of the last remaining proprietor and not to the business? Thanks. Tchula65 (talk) 15:41, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

For your first question: end of a business never destroys copyright. Typically there is a successor organization; sometimes copyright is orphaned. In no case does copyright go away.

For your second: not sure, but in most jurisdictions where a death is relevant, copyright ends 70 years after the death. SO... if the copyright was really associated with an individual who died in 1922, it should now have expired. - Jmabel ! talk 16:09, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I have asked for the image to be deleted. You can upload it if and when the copyright is known. Pack My Box (talk) 16:41, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

September 24

Category:Murals in Invergordon

Having added my own pictures from yesterday to this category I realise that everything in is it probably a copyvio because GB FoP doesn't include 2d artworks. Is this the correct position and should the whole category be deleted? Railwayfan2005 (talk) 22:17, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

September 25

Adding the reason why the sources for the DW are asked

Hello. I noticed that Template talk:Dw image source does not give one the possibility to put why it is suspected the image uses uncredited DW. A similar note can be put in Template:Speedydelete or Template:Copyvio. I have had this problem with this image; for this image, I resorted to create a normal DR to give my reasons, but those DRs are often open for months.
Do you think a way to add the reasons for putting the template could be added to Template talk:Dw image source? Veverve (talk) 07:38, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

i always use copyvio and fill in the reason as "derivatives of ...".--RZuo (talk) 21:40, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

How to make sure that the image isn't already here

I searched for this World War II (two) era image on the Wikimedia Commons as using multiple keywords but couldn't find it, I know that The MediaWiki Upload Wizard doesn't recognise duplicates if there are only minor differences in metadata.

Is there a reverse image search tool for the Wikimedia Commons where one can look for images already uploaded here? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:52, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi, Best tool is probably Google with site:commons.wikimedia.org. Regards, Yann (talk) 20:06, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

How to edit TemplateBox?

there's a problem with the spbot that performs auto archiving: User talk:Euku, so i think a good solution to pre-empt this failure, is to arrange the parameters shown in the examplar in Template:Autoarchive resolved section/doc such that "timeout" appears first, but i cant figure out how to edit that doc with the TemplateBox. 😡

i want the examplar to look like this:

{{Autoarchive resolved section
|timeout =
|age =
...

--RZuo (talk) 21:40, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

September 26

Thumbnail not displayed

File:Punt-construction.png which I imported from the English wikipedia yesterday is not displayed properly on wikipedia pages, the commons file page, and the commons category page. Instead there is an image icon along with a link in case of commons. Clicking on where the image should be displayed does show what should be shown i.e, an enlarged view, so its not that commons failed tp receive the file data itself. Does anyone have an idea what's happening or what should be done? Thank you.--YTRK (talk) 00:30, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Something is clearly wrong with the system: Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive_86#Picture_of_the_Day. In my opinion, a Phabricator ticket should be filed. 4nn1l2 (talk) 00:35, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Reported at phab:T291763. Thank you for the advise.--YTRK (talk) 01:30, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

September 27

Seriously, who benefits from this?

While looking for ancient Vietnamese texts to import to the Wikimedia Commons I came across this page from the National Museum of Vietnamese History in Hanoi, it contains scans of the official history of the Nguyễn Dynasty with huge ass watermarks, now if this was an extremely common thing like a banknote I would understand, but this is a rare book.

Who benefits from these huge watermarks? Because it is not a simple design it can't be imported. If people were to discuss it most people would find that one of the copies copies are in the hands of this archive. What I find odd is how common this practice is, are museums so afraid that their scans of rare public domain images get "stolen"? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 06:39, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Well, many museums sell high-quality versions of their images so yes, they do worry. It may be worth sending an email requesting a copy and asking about them accepting it in return for a link back. Obscurity is the greater problem for them than copyright to me but it's not my time and money that was spent collecting and digitizing these images. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:01, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

These institutions all operate using tax payer money, none of them are private institutions yet they all act as if their first and foremost loyalty is to their own wallets. They are not selling these images either. It just seems to me that these public institutions look into the private sphere and emulate private behaviour, or they hire people with "private experience" that are simply unable to switch their mentality to serve the public. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 13:00, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

All the digitized manuscripts from the Vatican Library have giant papal watermarks all over them; perhaps someone should write to his holiness and ask him to unclutch his hands from the filthy lucre such manuscripts apparently engender for the Holy See and to spend less time worshipping Mammon and more time helping out Wikimedia. Presumably the profits from licensing public domain manuscripts for the production of astronomically expensive facsimiles outstrips even the sale of indulgences ... GPinkerton (talk) 09:01, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

The Vatican City is a sovereign state which purports to exist representing over a billion Roman Catholics globally, yet it (as a profitable endeavour) can't make public domain information readily accessible to their billion+ adherents. How many people actually buy digital copies of those manuscripts to justify such watermarks? (assuming that they even are for sale). Many people are unpaid volunteers for the Roman Catholic church, if money is so important to them why not pay them? Small grassroots projects and small archives are often more likely to share scans of public domain books and documents without giant watermarks than large companies (regardless of how many they publish online). I wonder why that is... --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:01, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Flicker uploads with pointless file names and categories

I'm sure this question must have been asked here before but I'm struggling to find an answer as to what the point of some of the bulk uploads from Flicker is and whether these meet the Commons:Project scope. I have come across them time and again without quite getting it. The latest of many examples is the 50-odd ones (quite a small number in comparison to the previous time, when somebody dumped almost 1400 images into Category:Australia) that were dumped into Category:Australia by User:Matlin. The file names are all structure like File:Australia-105 (47825679281).jpg, the files lack all description, lack structured data and are only categorised under Australia. Now, to take that file as an example, would anybody really look for an image of a Red Panda under the category Australia and, if searching for a Red panda image, would File:Australia-105 (47825679281).jpg show up? Now, its a great image and potentially quite useful if categorised and named correctly. In there current form however, I just can't see how Commons benefits from these uploads and I can't say I have come across any such bulk uploader who is willing to categotrise and name their uploads correctly (also, I do hope some are out there). I would be grateful if somebody point out to me what the benefit of this uploads for Commons is and whether these really meet Project scope. Calistemon (talk) 08:04, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Some of the animal photos, such as the Red Panda, seem to be from a zoo in Arizona. I assume they are in scope, but lacking decent descriptions or categories. --ghouston (talk) 08:32, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I've changed categories of Australia-105 (47825679281).jpg to "Red pandas". It is not clear at all if the picture was taken in Australia, Arizona (hint: it's in a list called "Arizona") or Armenia. We just don't know. The bicho looks like a red panda, so I put it into that category (BEWARE: I'm no zoologist and I can be wrong). Dumping stuff by the truckload and giving no information about what it is -or even worse, giving just random (?) names- does not help anybody. B25es (talk) 10:35, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, you are right, having a look at the album on Flicker, quite a lot of these images from the Australia category are in the Arizona album. In my opinion, it is up to the uploader, in this case @Matlin:, to use the Flicker upload function responsibly and name and categorise the images correctly, rather then dumping the load in Commons and walk away, expecting somebody else to do it. Calistemon (talk) 13:37, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ghouston, B25es, Calistemon, Matlin: this red panda photo was taken somewhere close to sydney, because https://www.flickr.com/photos/137802499@N06/47036207784/ was 2019:03:31 20:10:31 and the red panda was 21:21.

some other photos like https://www.flickr.com/photos/137802499@N06/47741093232/ in that flickr album were in arizona.--RZuo (talk) 23:06, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

In principle, that is what the automated artificial intellegence google automated desccription structued data commons suggestions are for. At least it is the idea of the MW devbelopers to fill SDC with information from image recognition suggestions by google. So the flickr immages should be enriched with meta data really soon now... --C.Suthorn (talk) 13:43, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

• We've kept badly named uncategorised files on the Wikimedia Commons for years and more often than not another user comes along and adds more appropriate categories or requests renaming to make it more descriptive. Educational media files should be judged on them being that, educational media files. Categories are important but they exist to organise educational images, not as a part of their Educational value itself. File names should preferably be descriptive but it's better to have a non-sensical file name than one that is actively misinforming. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:19, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Fantasy Vs. Disputed symbols

This is just a general request for clarification regarding the status of disputed symbols (flags, coats of arms, emblems, Etc.) in which the status of a symbol is disputed (as in it's not clear if it's a fantasy or factual). Current practice (as far as I can tell) favours deletion meaning that any discussion on authenticity has to take place elsewhere.

The discussion that inspired me to ask this was an undeletion that ended in "Not done" and while I expect my comments below it to be deleted as "no discussion should take place after a request has been closed", this UnDR is systematic of a larger issue, namely that content disputes (not copyright © disputes) should always favour deletion. I would argue that this is the wrong position to take, just a few months ago fantasy flags were allowed (and while there was clear consensus against blanket deletions, those that wished for deletion still pushed for it and persevered), but even during those discussions the adherents for deleting fantasy flags constantly claimed that the burden of proof lay to the uploader but with cases of disputed symbols evidence can be contradictory.

As an example I would note "Commons:Deletion requests/File:Drapeau de la République Autonome de la Cochinchine.png" this flag has been claimed to be a fantasy by multiple reliable sources, this flag has been deleted through DR once and speedily deleted outside of DR multiple times as "a fantasy", I managed to get it undeleted through the undeletion requests in March 2021 because at the time the culture wasn't as hostile to the mere assertion of a file being fake, or well, fantasies weren't automatically "out of scope". Note that I got the flag undeleted because constantly I kept finding sources claiming that it was accurate, later while doing research I found a lot of contemporary photographs displaying the flag, so not only did this disputed flag not turn out to have been a later made fabrication, it turned out to have been an official national flag for years.

Relying on external sources that claim that there was "never" a coat of arms for something is faulty, plenty of flag charts show variation between flags, should we delete one flag of China because another flag chart depicted it differently? The categories mentioned by the closing admin were literally created in response to the UnDR and the original DR because the assertions made by the original nominator were simply not true and multiple sources described a coat of arms, insignia, or emblem. Defaulting to "delete" simply means that nobody can discuss the files because nobody (other than Commonswiki admins, who specifically want discussions to take place on other websites) can see the things being discussed.

Another example here would be that in the realm of Vietnamese heraldry and vexillology things aren't always documented for the simple reason that it makes no political sense for the Communists to accurately document their ideological allies, so very little pre-Communist symbols are ever discussed in Viet Nam, and Overseas Vietnamese anti-Communist organisations are known to spread misinformation that even gets quoted in academic papers, such as a number of fantasy flags being cited in academic papers or or Vietnamese nationalists reporting other historical Vietnamese flags in actual trustworthy museums. The issue of fantasies in Vietnamese symbolism is multilateral and systemic. I created a list of fantasy and misattributed flags specifically to debunk these myths, but you can't debunk myths about fantasy flags if fantasy flags aren't even allowed to he hosted. On multiple Vietnamese educational websites there are claims of supposed "Vietnamese National flags" centuries before such a concept even existed, free versions of these flags existed on the Wikimedia Commons but were deleted for being fantasies, how can I debunk what I cannot illustrate, how will the readers know what is being debunked?

I would say that defaulting to "delete" on the basis of fantasies being "out of scope" is a major fallacy, it doesn't help to spread misinformation, it only facilitates it. If a reader goes to Wikipedia and doesn't see a coat of arms but then goes to another website and does see it then they will simply think that "Wikipedia doesn't have all the information" but if the fantasy is listed on Wikipedia with the origin of the fantasy to debunk it then the readers have just been educated on the subject.

The most often cited issue here is "Scope" and if content issues exist I would argue that it wouldn't be out of scope to host disputed files as they could be used to illustrate such content disputes. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 08:29, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

As an example of how obscure Vietnamese historical symbols from this period can be, no coat of arms for Vietnam in 1948 was reported by any book on coats of arms, but I found a French website that digitised old documents from this period that prominently displayed a coat of arms. Just because no European book has reported on it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. A large number of Vietnamese historians, such as Liam C. Kelley, also say that a lot of Vietnamese history is "just hiding away in archives" and nobody is looking at it. So unless content could be specifically debunked I would argue that deleting does more harm than good, but that we shouldn't allow them on Wikipedia's without sufficient evidence. In fact the template "{{Disputed coat of arms}}" literally exists for this.

Note that while I am in favour of undeleting this sockmaster's uploads I'm not a fan of them as they are constantly telling me to go "fuck my mother" and vandalising a number of Wikipedia articles I contributed to with insults, so I have no positive relationship with the person that uploaded most of these files. However, in a fairly large number of cases they turned out to be accurate, this is because their strategy is essentially "Upload everything I find and see what sticks", but I haven't found a single instance where one of their uploads was a fantasy specifically created by them (as in invented by them), they just never provide sources. My bad, that was a completely different user, they just added the image to different Wikipedia's. My criticism on the original nominator still stands, as they filed DR's based on sources that have been proven to be wrong in multiple cases.

Also note that in multiple cases I asked admins for a simple description of how the deleted file looked but not a single admin gave a description, perhaps one can write how it looked so I actually know what I have to research for accuracy. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 08:38, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

•  Comment, until today I thought that the uploader was Musée Annam, apparently it is @Shibo77:. Please comment on the source of the original image as you didn't comment during the DR. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:04, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Comment: as I wrote on my user page:

As far as I am concerned, flags which should be kept on WCommons and use {{Fictitious flag}} should only be flags of fictitious countries (e.g. File:The Man in the High Castle (Ridley Scott's series).svg) - fictitious flags which exist in media (e.g. w:Molvanîa's flag) or in real life (e.g. File:003 Protest gegen Acta in Munich.JPG) - or fictitious flags created by users who are COM:INUSE (e.g. File:Flag of the Facebook United States.svg) or serve some Wikipedian humorous purposes among the community (e.g. File:Drapeau franglais.svg, see also Category:Wikipedia humor). (source)

My opinion on flags also applies for symbols. If there is no external source preceding the creation of the historical symbols to support it, then it should be deleted. One must keep in mind that what is put on WCommons is often taken uncritically, at face value by readers, hence why I feel fantasy or unsourced images should be removed. Also, one must always be afraid of creating a en:WP:CITOGENESIS. Veverve (talk) 09:54, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Veverve:, the problem with such deletions is that it essentially means that nobody can research anything, note that admins are unwilling provide any basic descriptions so nobody can actually research if a work is fantasy or not. For example, the same user that uploaded this particular image didn't provide a source for "File:Emblem of the Republic of South Vietnam.svg" either but later through his own research he found the image to be "largely" accurate, but because he (successfully) nominated the Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina COA for deletion I don't have the luxury of merely looking at the image to determine what it was. Again, this image may simply be a misnomer, it could have been a military crest or insignia that was badly named, defaulting to deletion doesn't leave space for any corrections. The Wikimedia Commons community is notorious for being difficult to work with. Meanwhile, "providing sources" isn't always evidence, for example user "Trương guy" uploaded "File:Standard flag of Lê dynasty (1428-1788).png" with the source stated as being "Extracted from Lam Kinh royal dish, Own work drawing." but no evidence of either this dish nor this flag exists. I would say that deleting it would be a major disservice as if it would ever prove to have been accurate would mean that someone would have to start drawing this flag from scratch (which is a complicated flag, like how almost all coat of arms tend to be very complicated), but if it's allowed to stay up and is properly tagged then if it later turns out to be true we don't need to re-create it.

The "en:WP:CITOGENESIS" argument fails because unlike most websites, things on Wikimedia websites are properly dated, we know when things were first created and/or added here, if a fantasy flag was created here in 2010 for a historical country, then deleted (with ALL admins refusing to give even a basic written description anywhere on the Wikimedia Commons), and someone who saw it on Wikipedia years ago having saved it publishes it in an otherwise reliable source in 2015 then someone will re-create the flag in 2018 and the flag will appear to be properly sourced in a badly researched academic paper (which exists, or could be otherwise correct with minor errors) and nobody will be able to point the WP:CITOGENESIS because as far as anyone can tell, the oldest online version of the flag is from 2015 and it didn't appear on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons until 2018. Keeping such files and tagging them as fantasies would be the best way of fighting WP:CITOGENESIS.

Note that the user likely used offline sources which aren't available online, anyone can claim this, did "Trương guy" mean these "royal dishes"? Deleting files doesn't fight misinformation, it just means that it's harder for researchers to find information about possible origins. This is also exactly why I am documenting widespread circulating fantasy flags of Viet Nam and explaining where the origins of the misinformation lie, simply saying "it's fake" and then deleting a file does as much to stop misinformation as covering one's ears when one hears misinformation, it doesn't do anything to convince people that believe it that they're wrong, it simply shows that the person covering their ears is unwilling to discuss it. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 11:09, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Donald Trung:  Comment there doesn't appear to be anything resembling a dish in the Ecosia search results you linked to. GPinkerton (talk) 10:47, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: 1) I admit that the fact WCommons admins are unwilling to provide in some way deleted images is a problem. WP has en:Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to provide copies of deleted articles, and I feel WC should have an equivalent, maybe only to be used by trusted users if admins do not feel confortable letting anyone request deleted images.

I have encountered a few times images reusing other images a DW without crediting them, e.g. File:Byzantine empire flag or eatern roman empire.png, File:Download.1.png, File:CoA of the Ecumenical Patriarchate Constantinople (St. George's Cathedral of Istanbul version).png. If the images used as DW are deleted, then those images will still remain and be able to create an endless cycle of reuse without anyone being able to track down the original, deleted images.

2) The citogenesis argument still holds. Imagine someone copy-pasted false information from a a website to put in a WP article without crediting or changing anything, thus committing copyright violation. Imagine those information stay on the WP article for a few years. At one points, an admin en:WP:REVDEL the revisions which contain the copyright violation and no archive is made of the website, or the service hosting the archive is dead. By that time, the information are floating on the internet everywhere and can even be found on some reliable sources. This means that there is no way to know where this information came from, and the information may still be part of the citogenesis cycle. The only way to know if the information is true would be for experts in the field to do their work properly and for users to consult those experts; but, this is the way all expert work is supposed to be conducted, and how information are supposed to be gathered on WP and more or less on WC since the beginning!

As a sidenote, the proper dating does not prevent people - even the creator of the image on WC! - from making claims using citogenesis. Moreover, if one does not have an archive of the source for the image from before the image was uploaded on WC, it is not enough to conclude citogenesis.

3) I do not feel the benefits from keeping wrong information outweights the benefits of removing them. WCommons is widely use and will spread more misinformation than correcting it, as most users never go past the image to see if there is a {{Fictitious flag}} or any other template present on the image's page. Also, I feel that if there is no source publicly available or readable to support the alleged digital recreation of a historical image, then this recreation should not be on WCommons. Veverve (talk) 06:43, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Veverve:, regarding "The only way to know if the information is true would be for experts in the field to do their work properly and for users to consult those experts; but, this is the way all expert work is supposed to be conducted, and how information are supposed to be gathered on WP and more or less on WC since the beginning!" the problem is that this is not how Vietnamese academics work, Vietnamese academics basically work like "Did a trusted name say this? Yes, then it must be true" and that "trusted name" doesn't even have to be consistently right, just someone who is (politically) influential. For example a false flag of the Nguyễn Dynasty was attributed in a 2005 by an Overseas Vietnamese who likely invented it for political reasons, this flag was repeated in a number of academic theses and now flies at the tomb of the Emperor that supposedly invented it. A number of flags were invented for Vietnamese dynasties going back a thousand (1000) years and a number of them hang in prestigious museums and are used at festivals related to them. In some cases these flags were invented during the 1970's and in some cases they were "born on the internet" but enough reliable sources have cited them that in Vietnam and among Overseas Vietnamese they have become "acceptable". While Wikipedians did question the validity of these flags and they were ultimately deleted here (not all though), but these still keep circulating on the internet and many websites think that their exclusion from Wikipedia means that they have "a scoop" (they don't). Debunking false information is better than ignoring it and regarding citogenesis investigators and researchers require access to information, today we might not look at it like this, but many researchers in the future will try to investigate where something comes from, if a lie is born on an unarchived website then it's difficult to track down and the main reason I even filed this undeletion request is primarily because I couldn't find any preserved copy of it in the Internet Archive (despite being heavily reliant on the Internet Archive Wikipedia's notoriously don't like to archive there).

The question to me has always been about research, because no admin is willing to give a description if I actually do happen to come across a coat of arms of the Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina and it's identical to the deleted file I won't be able to know, I can neither verify the original nor verify that a copy of it is "stolen" from the Wikimedia Commons. They uploaded a total of three (3) South(ern) Vietnamese emblems of which only one (1) was deleted based on perceived factual inaccuracies, they didn't provide a source for any of them and the others were later verified through independent research by other contributors.

Many fantasy symbols actually find their origins in very real historical sources that simply misinterpret information. Basically any world flag chart published before the year 1900 (nineteen-hundred) contains a lot of fantasy flags, yet we don't delete those, I would argue that alleged symbols are a different category from pure user fiction, though the line is blurry. In case of the above invented flag the uploader claims that the flag is based on a real offline work, as he provides no image I cannot verify it and the flag is not unrealistic, very few users would actually be able to point out that it's a fantasy but those who researched it more could. As the flag was essentially "made for Wikipedia" and I have already seen it circulate on the Facebook and YouTube (in one instance by an otherwise reliable channel) deleting it here wouldn't really benefit any future researchers into the origins of the flag. In fact it is precisely because archives from the University of Washington exist that we could find the origin of a number of fantasy flags.

Regarding "Also, I feel that if there is no source publicly available or readable to support the alleged digital recreation of a historical image, then this recreation should not be on WCommons" most sources are copyrighted and not everything gets published online, most of Wikipedia is built on books that aren't online and one can't verify without first purchasing it oneself. As we've established that actual photographs aren't sources and copyrighted heraldric encyclopedias that aren't online cần't be used it leaves little room for the uploading of symbols based on reliable sources that aren't online. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:10, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: Again, I agree that WCommons admins should be more collaborative on those points if possible.

If the Vietnamese media or academic institutions do not take into account the existence of internet hoaxes and do not properly check their sources, it is not up to WCommons to adapt to those problems, since most academics throughout the world take more care when looking at sources. Maybe a kind of en:RIGHTGREATWRONGS applies her, but I am not sure.

I would keep for example a version of the CoA of the Byzantine empire (or is it of the city of Constantinople?) as found here or here; I would do so, because while disputed, those symbols are historically sourced. They are not a fantasy symbols made by the user for reasons such as "Would it not be cool if the flag of Canada had a big purple square instead of the red leaf?"

"Publicly" does not always mean online. You raise an interesting point concerning private sources. My opinion is: if your source is not a publicly available document which one could find in a library or online, then the historical image should not be allowed. For example, to state "I have copied this coat of arms from a plate I have in my attic" and not provide any image of said plate could be used to propagade hoaxes. It would be the same as saying "I have historical documents no one has ever heard of or ever found, I will reveal only some parts and not hand them to a museum", which is how most forgeries start. I am being very generous there by allowing the symbol to stay if we have pictures of the private source, as the private source could very well be fake, as we have seen recently with User:Sibinia (see the discussion here).

I think in cases where the copyright of the original symbol has expired (COM:ART), heraldry in recent heraldic encyclopedia can perfectly be used either a) scanned if the images in the encyclopedia are scans of old manuscripts, or b) as models for others to very faithfully remake if the images in the encyclopedia have been made by an artist, as I feel a scan would be copyright infringment in this case. Veverve (talk) 11:04, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@Veverve:, I very much agree that we should be fighting hoaxes but I simply don't think that blanket deletions of this sort of content is the answer. Namely in the above example of the fantasy Vietnamese flag it is sourced to a royal dish, now I have seen a number of these royal dishes and while some look similar to the flag I haven't seen the flag, the user likely can't upload the example here because the photograph of it is copyrighted, or..... They just invented it, this is simply difficult. Also proving a negative is difficult and hoaxes usually aren't spread about big things, but small things. Someone could have sneaked in a hoax historical coat of arms of a village into a public library and people can start believing it, in my time in the Netherlands I traveled from village-to-village and have come across an enormous amount of "hoax etymologies", in one instance a man from Heiligerlee (Holy Lee) told me (in all seriousness) that the town thanks its name to a Chinese man that caught a spear or arrow for Count Adolf and that Adolf said "you are holy, Lee" (which makes no sense due to "Lee" being an anglicised spelling and it actually being old Germanic) and many people in Winschoten believe that the village's old name was "Vinschotte" due to an old map, but a local historian told me that that map was likely made up by the owner of a bar. Stuff like that, my impression is that if something isn't properly sourced that we can't verify it. But folk etymologies and non-sense still find their ways into books. "If the Vietnamese media or academic institutions do not take into account the existence of internet hoaxes and do not properly check their sources, it is not up to WCommons to adapt to those problems, since most academics throughout the world take more care when looking at sources." Many Western academics just "trust" Vietnamese academics on their assertions, Professor Liam C. Kelley literally built his career on challenging those assertions and as such many hoax flags from Việt-Nam are circulating in Western circles. The story behind the Dai-Nam Quoc-ky for example was fabricated by Nguyễn Đình Sài, a former member of the anti-Communist organization Việt Tân, who wrote the article "Quốc Kỳ Việt Nam: Nguồn Gốc và Lẽ Chính Thống” (The National Flag of Viet Nam: Its Origin and Legitimacy) in September 2004. To back up his claim, Nguyền Đình Sài cited a webpage from Worldstatesmen website by Ben Cahoon, an American researcher affiliated with University of Connecticut. This webpage was poorly sourced, but Sài's paper was later quoted by people both at the University of Washington and the University of California.

"My opinion is: if your source is not a publicly available document which one could find in a library or online, then the historical image should not be allowed." the problem is that this wouldn't actually stop hoaxes, a dedicated hoaxster could craft false sources that are impossible to verify. Note that every library is unique and some libraries and archives that contain certain documents contain unique documents that (unfortunately) have no online copy. I know for a fact that a lot of Vietnamese government documents with Vietnamese government symbols were published in the Bulletin du Colonies Française, but I can't find a single copy of this bulletin online, not even in Gallica. If someone claims "I found this in this bulletin" then I cannot personally confirm its authenticity and a clever hoaxster can lie by using realistic sources. My guess is that both Wikipedia's and the Wikimedia Commons are full of hoaxes nobody is pointing out because they appear to be well-sourced. Again, the above fantasy flag of the Later Lê Dynasty.

In case of the deleted coat of arms, the user uploaded 3 (three) such South Vietnamese coats of arms, all without sources and other users found sources for the other ones. The thing about the Wikimedia Commons is that nobody owns pages (you may own the copyright © of the content hosted on a page, but not the page itself) and other users verified their work. A correct flag of French Cochinchina was deleted around a dozen times uploaded by different users because a few West-German and Dutch books said that the flag was fake... It turned out to be true, in some cased the uploaders even provided public domain photographic evidence but these were sometimes deleted because they were sockpuppet uploads and sometimes because of insufficient information in the sourcing (mostly by incompetent users). Deletion here was very detrimental, what is worse is that a number of Wikipedia's even contained sources that mentioned this flag but were still locally deleted here, essentially meaning that these deletions violated "COM:INUSE" as such content disputes should probably not be "solved" here. The evidence surrounding a number of Vietnamese flags were "done deals" on the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia but are actively still being discussed on the English-language Wikipedia with new evidence. The Wikimedia Commons should not be the arbiter of what other Wikimedia websites should be allowed to discuss. The Vietnamese-language Wikipedia already lists a number of public domain flags locally because they keep getting deleted here due to "fake flag hunters". A few of those discussions linked above. Fighting hoaxes is important and I think that proper labels are more important than outright deletions. In fact, I would argue for the creation of new tags like "{{Historical misconception}}" and "{{Commonly held false belief}}" to debunk more. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:22, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

• My problem is that it took three (3) months just to get a dismissive closure and absolutely minimal interaction nor any hint of the image that was deleted, if I would find another coat of arms of this Republic I would be forced to go to the Graphics Lab and have a WikiGraphist spend time on making what is possibly a duplicate (something which has already happened several times with these types of deletion requests). In fact in all these three (3) months an admin could've chosen to simply spend five (5) minutes of their time to write a simple description of the image, but "Wikimedia Commons is not a source" so I should "stop asking how the image looked like", which says volumes about the admin class, almost as much as "Commons:Deletion requests/File:VPP-flag.png", "Commons:Deletion requests/File:Flag of Vietnam Reform Party.png", and "Commons:Deletion requests/File:VRP flying-flag.gif" where user "AnonMoos" brought up actual photographs of flags which the nominator claimed were "unsourced fantasies" and said that photographs of of an event organised by those political parties weren't sources.

It isn't uncommon for images to be deleted as "Unsourced" for other users years later to have to re-create these same images. This just wastes volunteer time by an apathetic admin class that can't spare a few minutes of their time to actually describe things, users who claimed to be elected to fight backlog but can only create it by not actively collaborating with others. In multiple instances I showed possible candidates for what the deleted image could have been including other claimed coats of arms of the Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina or the insignia of its military, not in one instance did any admin confirm or deny it. Why is it so difficult to just take a few minutes to describe what an image looks like? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 16:21, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Also, did anyone other than user "Antemister" even see the claimed West-German source that specifically stated that the coat of arms never existed? I can't find ít anywhere online, how can we trust the word of a user that thinks that actual photographs "aren't sources"? This basically means that anyone can say "Well, this one source says that this is fake" and things should be deleted with no chance of undeletion on sight. "File:Flag of the Provisional People's Committee for North Korea.svg" also has no source in sight, what if the original user used a source they used for Wikipedia and simply took it for granted that people knew the authenticity? Most widely used images of symbols have no sources because it's taken for granted." File:Flag of Poland (1919–1928).svg" is equally unsourced. Why are these files allowed for inclusion but not others? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 16:47, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Note that in the cases of "Commons:Deletion requests/File:VPP-flag.png", "Commons:Deletion requests/File:Flag of Vietnam Reform Party.png", and "Commons:Deletion requests/File:VRP flying-flag.gif" several of the flags nominated by this same user have been re-uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons with sources, meaning that if someone simply added a "Citation needed" tag so to say no volunteer would have been forced to re-create these images from scratch and one of these flags is locally uploaded to the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia meaning that when admins say "Discussions about this fictional or real coat of arms could imho better take place between on the projects" they mean that useful free educational files should only be uploaded locally to Wikipedia's. There is no reason for "VPP-flag.png" to not locally exist here but have a Viwiki version falsely claimed as an "unfree" image, in fact almost all the images from "Namkhanh02" deleted here have at one point be locally uploaded to the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia, unsurprisingly because a user tried so here and saw that it was "previously deleted" and didn't bother here. This just means that nobody can use these images at the English-language Wikipedia. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:02, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

•  Comment Donald Trung appears to be arguing that the mere fact that people abuse Commons by uploading all sorts of made-up rubbish should be grounds to simply allow all such material because it's all too difficult not to remove the abusive material. This seems like the opposite of a good argument. If local Wikipedias want to upload made-up images to suit their own predilections, let them. There is no excuse for such time-wasting fantasy on Commons, it only perpetuates and facilitates cross-pollination of fake images across languages. Invented flags, coats of arms, maps, micronations, and anything else similarly bogus and unusable should not be kept on the off-chance that somehow somewhere an accurate image exists in the morass of disinformation. GPinkerton (talk) 18:18, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

• I am already very tired of your combative and pejorative dismissal of any content that you personally disagree with. You refuse to accept that there is any intermediate state for content between "flying over the UN" and "terrible fantasies that must be deleted with prejudice". Your attitude makes it impossible for anyone else to work when you persist in describing others as a "morass of disinformation." Andy Dingley (talk) 18:33, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: Please do learn to read sentences before vituperatively responding to what you imagine they have said. The lie that I have somehow been "describing others as a "morass of disinformation"" is characteristic of the failures in logic commonly applied by users such as yourself in discussions such as this. Your tiredness is no concern of mine, and if you repeatedly make personal attacks such as you have frequently done in expressing your view that policy should be changed or ignored or doesn't apply to fake symbols such as you have been defending then I shall have no choice but to ignore you. GPinkerton (talk) 08:15, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

You make numerous (separate) DRs as "COM:SELFIE", which is nonsensical. You nominate the same content over and over, because you know that simple dumb persistence is likely to win out over the patience of others. Your actions here are themselves disruptive, whatever the merits of the flag arguments might have been. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:19, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: Your claim "You make numerous (separate) DRs as "COM:SELFIE", which is nonsensical is an absolute lie. Retract it at once or furnish some kind of justification for your claims. Once could more logically say that your own blanket and policy-free opposition to deletion faked and hoax images is the real disruption at hand, leaving aside the repeated personal attacks and denigrations on your part. GPinkerton (talk) 09:38, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: I see you have decided to reiterate your false accuastions ... and then add more! You have 1.) failed to indicate how and why your claim that these are nonsensical is correct and not a mere personal attack, and 2.) added to your bungled list dozens of deletion request that have nothing whatever to do with me! This incompetent harassment has to stop! GPinkerton (talk) 13:27, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

That's not what I've been arguing at all, there should be a difference between uncontroversial fantasies made up by users and possibly authentic content. A lot of historical sources from the 19th (nineteenth) century and earlier provide wrong information about flags and have been used countless of times as sources of information that later turn out to be false, tagging them as fantasies saves everyone time as it's very likely that people think that they have "a scoop" and will re-upload wrong depictions from old sources. Likewise, old sources that claim that no flag existed should be treated with the same level of skepticism. We shouldn't treat content disputes like user-invented fantasies. The "flag of Fascist Maurya India" is not the same as the "Coat of arms of the Mughal Empire" (which could potentially be taken from a bad source and used to illustrate historical misinformation). --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:12, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

And who is saying 19th century images should be deleted? Anyone suggesting the Mughal Empire had a coat of arms may be dismissed, such claims are not to be treated a content dispute, but as disinformation. What is the purpose of thse far-fetched hypotheticals? GPinkerton (talk) 14:18, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

So Thomas Roe should be dismissed? This banner has inspired many such claims. This is the difference between a misinterpretation and a fantasy. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:47, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: Where have I indicated any such thing? My comment immediately above this strawman argument (another one!) states exactly the opposite of the argument you're trying to pin on me ("who is saying 19th century images should be deleted?"). GPinkerton (talk) 15:17, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Again, any user could base a fictitious coat of arms on it, this is a fantasy and should be attributed as such. If a user doesn't provide a source then it is impossible to tell what source they based it on, if nobody even gets a basic description of what the coat of arms looked like then nobody can judge where it came from. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:46, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I am sorry for all the trouble that this has caused you. On Commons, we should adopt a philosophy similar to the English Wikipedia's: "just because you can't find a source online doesn't mean it doesn't exist". Flags are not hoaxes just because Google can't find them for you.  Mysterymanblue  09:15, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mysterymanblue: Your "Flags are not hoaxes just because Google can't find them for you2 is a particularly saucy strawman argument. No-one has suggested anything of this kind, and yet you are suggesting that spurious reasoning like this is being applied in entirely valid deletion requests which you appear to oppose on principles not grounded in policy. For instance in this edit here, you appear to demanding an impossibly high standard of proof that a flag is a hoax (literally demanding a logically impossible proof of a negative) when the uploader has all but admitted it is exactly that. GPinkerton (talk) 09:35, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm sitting here expressing my sympathy toward another contributor and you come and start accusing me of this and that. Not everything is an argument to be bludgeoned.  Mysterymanblue  09:42, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mysterymanblue: Oh I'm sorry I thought 80% of your comment was nothing to do with expressing sympathy and was more about making grand claims like "Flags are not hoaxes just because Google can't find them for you" which a curious way of expressing sympathy. To me it reads more like contempt. GPinkerton (talk) 09:45, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

To be fair, a lot of information is "hiding" in offline sources and other information that isn't (currently) available online, as I noted above a number of high profile flags don't have sources because they are already familiar to everyone working with them such as the flag of the Second Polish Republic. The issue is that content disputes are a lot more complicated than mere user-generated fantasies and treating them indiscriminately makes research more difficult. While researching Vietnamese flags I found multitudes of dozens that were deleted that shouldn't have and have uploaded multitudes of dozens with correct sources, but simply because they weren't properly sourced didn't mean that they were false, had I come across these flags while researching and they were still online I could add sources. Another thing is that misattributed flags can also be a form of a content dispute and renaming them is a better option than deleting them. If a file is named "Flag of Germany (1930-1945)" but should be called "Flag of Germany (1936-1945)" it is easy to rename it. In the case of coats of arms many family arms are often misattributed as national coats of arms and military coats of arms may be misattributed as arms of military junta's. Deletion for content disputes should be a last resort not a first one. Especially not if one wants to claim that "local projects should discuss content" but then literally deprive them of the content they should be able to discuss. The Wikimedia Commons should not act as "content police" in non-obvious cases where it is not immediately clear if it's a fantasy or not. For clear fantasies deletion should be preferred, where controversy exists tagging should be preferred. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 13:48, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

No-one is depriving anyone of anything. If flags and emblems exist in the real world, as flags, as photographs of flags, or on paper, or online, then no-one is deprived of anything if a file is deleted on Commons. The image will still exists and can be undeletd or recreated. The problem comes with the hundreds of images that never existed anywhere except Commons, such as File:AflagforIraq.svg‎. The problem with such files is that people come along and get the impression that the image was something other than an idle doodle created by a Wikimedian, and then oppose deletion requests based on on-wiki hearsay alone. As a result disinformation is perpetuated. A lack of information is better than wrong information; an absent file is better than a wrong file. Unless someone can allege a source, online or otherwise, for an image, it should really be deleted. File are no supposed to be uploaded without sources anyway. If flags and emblems do not exist in the real world, then there no harm in Commons purging such harmful trivia. GPinkerton (talk) 13:57, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

"The image will still exists and can be undeletd or recreated." Admins don't undelete things for inspection, otherwise this thread wouldn't exist. "No-one is depriving anyone of anything." possibly valuable information for research is being deprived, I talk to a lot of people with offline works I don't own that might be able to verify things if I can give them basic information, which I can't if I don't have any descriptions. "Unless someone can allege a source, online or otherwise, for an image, it should really be deleted." So "File:Flag of the Provisional People's Committee for North Korea.svg" and " File:Flag of Poland (1919–1928).svg" should be deleted? Sources can also be provided on local Wikipedia's and not in the included file, nobody can look up a source if one cannot see a file, deletion prevents a file from ever being seen by anyone that actually can research it. "A lack of information is better than wrong information" How is a flag tagged with "{{Fictitious flag}}" and clearly described as not being a real flag and categorised as such "wrong information", do you assume that re-users can't read? The Wikimedia Commons should not hampering information in content disputes by always taking the side of exclusion. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:55, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Admins don't need to undelete anything if we can learn what the image is like in the real world. If the only evidence of an image is on Commons, then its deletion will not only not harm anyone, it is actively required by policy. Faked images are not instance of a "content dispute" as you keep claiming, but are flagrant violations of policy. And yes, the template does abolutely nothing whatsoever to prevent people thinking the flag is omsthing other than a private fantasy uploaded by an abuser of Commons. If the fictitious flag template worked at all, one wouldn't find thousands of hoax images in use in various Wikiepdias. Abusive images should be deleted. Hosting hoaxes in perpetuity is not within Commons scope. See COM:NOTHOST. Commons is not a permanent repository for hoax images for the convenience of those interested in the history of flag hoaxes on Commons. No-one needs to see a file if the flag does not exist outside Commons. If it does, then there is no impediment to its recreation. Just as Imaginarydinosaurus drawings can all be deleted; if an Imaginarydinosaurus fossil comes to light in future, there will be no need to consult a fake image to know what the taxon looked like because the fossil will exist. Deleting such images will not affect palaeontologists. Illustrations of undiscovered creatures, illustrations of unattested flags, user-generated coast of arms, are all pointless policy violations and all such material is out of COM:SCOPE. GPinkerton (talk) 15:27, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

In response to "No-one needs to see a file if the flag does not exist outside Commons." people do if they wish to verify its information or what it was, if someone claims that something is "The flag of the 4th (fourth) division of the Navy" but turns out to be "The flag of the 4th (fourth) division of the Army" then a very basic description of what the file look(s/ed) like is important in any undeletion request, if admins fail to gave any description it likely is a sign that the image was something that can be proved to have been in scope but that they have ideological reasons to deny this (the ideology that deletion is preferable over all else or that all admin actions are infallible and should never be questioned). "If the fictitious flag template worked at all, one wouldn't find thousands of hoax images in use in various Wikiepdias." templates could be added later and the validity of sources require discussion, not blanket deletion. Per "COM:SCOPE" "It should be stressed that Commons does not overrule other projects about what is in scope. If an image is in use on another project (aside from use on talk pages or user pages), that is enough for it to be within scope." the file was in use on other Wikimedia websites and nobody there even had a chance to take place in any discussions (as it was nominated before the Community Tech Bot left talk page messages, something people voted on specifically because deletion requests like these), while I agree that preferably all symbols are properly sourced the Wikimedia Commons should not dictate what content other Wikimedia websites can or can't use based on content assertions. In fact, that is already against policy. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:43, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

"No valid reason for deletion"

Can someone explain to me how File:Mur12.JPG is not a copyright violation? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:46, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I think per "Commons:Freedom of panorama", check the table for Germany, everything except for public interiors is allowed, which would make graffiti acceptable as a permanent public artwork. Just my guess. This is not legal advice, but just for educational purposes. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:59, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Yup. If that's in public space in Germany, it's fine. - Jmabel ! talk 16:11, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

That's what's being claimed for File:Doppelhausfassade in Hagen-Westf. IMGP8309.jpg and probably others in Category:Astérix as well. Didn't keep INeverCry from deleting a bunch of them, though. --El Grafo (talk) 08:57, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

So if we wish to display copyright artworks or characters in future, all we need to do is paint them on wall, somewhere with FoP? Will this work for Disney characters, also? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:41, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I think Andy's point is that the mural itself is a derivative work of an album cover and thus a copyright violation. A photograph of the mural is covered by FOP, but the resulting photo is a derivative-work-of-derivative work. Andy: it would really help if you mentioned what the mural is a derivative work of. MKFI (talk) 17:42, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I haven't been able to find much in this respect, I found this FOP review. I don't think that this is something that is explicitly covered, generally speaking I would go with the PCP but if FOP laws are so vaguely worded that it doesn't differentiate between "original artwork" and "derived artwork" it might be something that we won't know the answer to until we see a lawsuit in this direction (which further strengthens the PCP argument in this favour). Again, not legal advice. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:20, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes; my bad, I'm so familiar with the subject that I forgot that not everyone would recognise it - though it is in Category:The Wall. It is a copy of Pink Floyd album artwork (very much non-free) by w:Gerald Scarfe. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:53, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

The Wall. A featured picture and ... copyright violation?

@Pigsonthewing: Is every graffito with such imagery copyright? What about the featured picture of the actual wall with presumably-somehow-copyrighted marching hammers? GPinkerton (talk) 13:02, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Not sure whether this has bearing but: if, for example, a record store in Berlin had a copy of Pink Floyd's The Wall in the window, I'm pretty sure that would be OK to photograph under the German approach to FOP. Certainly would be if there was some context in the photo, not just the artwork itself. - Jmabel ! talk 17:09, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

That would be de minimis; this is not. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:08, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

A copy of Pink Floyd's The Wall in a window store wouldn't be OK, because it is not permanent. A graffiti is permanent: it is displayed until it is overpainted or the wall is destroyed. Regards, Yann (talk) 20:33, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

"resulting photo is a derivative-work-of-derivative work" but - as far as I know - this does not really matter, and is overriden by FoP (at least in some places! Note that 2D artworks are exempt in some countries and this loophole is closed there) Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:42, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

"overriden by FoP" do you have a citation for that, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:56, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

"So if we wish to display copyright artworks or characters in future, all we need to do is paint them on wall, somewhere with FoP?" - note that FoP in at least some cases applies to "works on permanent public display". So it would be also necessary to keep this mural for quite long time. Note that someone who made such mural may be committing a copyright violation, but it seems a viable and interesting loophole. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:39, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Interesting ancillary issue; do we have any evidence that the mural depicted in Mur12.JPG was "kept for quite a long time"? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:56, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Two very similar categories of maps

We have:

• Category:Maps showing history by William R. Shepherd

and:

• Category:Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd

Should these be merged? The categories have different descriptions but I don't think that has governed their contents over the years. Having separate categories make it harder to see all the maps available. GPinkerton (talk) 18:10, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: i suppose Historical Atlas was the title of a book by him, so the cats are not similar. one is a general container of all his maps. the other is a specific book.--RZuo (talk) 23:06, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@RZuo: While that might have been the idea originally, it's certainly not the case today. Images from one of many editions of Shepherd's atlases appear in both, and there does not appear to be any way of determining which images are taken from which book. More useful would be to have all the man's maps in one category. Additionally, the main difference in the way the categories are described is that one's images are said to be taken from one website, while the other's are described as coming from a different one. Some different scans of the same maps appear in both categories. GPinkerton (talk) 08:03, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

The confusion might be resolved by renaming one category to "Historical Atlas (1911) by William R. Shepherd", making it a subcategory of the other and sorting images accordingly. The sources should probably be on file pages, not categories Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:57, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: that would probably require determination of which images came from which book/edition of which book. There is often little to indicate this and what information is available is not necessarily reliable. GPinkerton (talk) 15:30, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

merge duplicate categories

I really tried but somehow I couldn’t find a FAQ entry for the following problem: Category:Gyula Donáth and Category:Julius Donáth are about the same person, with Julius being the German equivalent of Gyula. They should be merged (we can’t merge them at Wikidata with two Commons categories). What should I do? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emu (talk • contribs) 20:40, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Emu: Here's what I would do. Pick which of the categories you want to keep. Choose the one with the more appropriate name, or the older one if they're equally good. I'll call the category to be kept "K" and the other one "O". Copy any useful information and parent categories from O's category page to K's. Then replace O's category page with a category redirect to K: {{Category redirect|K}}. Finally, move all the files and subcategories from O to K. If there are a lot the Cat-a-lot might help. --bjh21 (talk) 20:55, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

And if you don't feel like using Cat-a-lot, there is User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands; also, I think even without that a bot should eventually follow up with the move of images based on {{Category redirect}}. - Jmabel ! talk 17:12, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

September 28

"Barnstars are not educational"

I have been noticing a trend here that official policy like "COM:INUSE" is repeatedly being ignored for the Wikimedia Commons to become some sort of "Content police" that censors what other Wikimedia websites are allowed to see, a good recent example would be "Commons:Deletion requests/File:Hot sex barnstar.png" this barnstar had been in use for years and earlier widely discussed deletion requests ruled in favour of its inclusion but all of the sudden "Barnstars are not educational".

So should we just start deleting all "wiki-files" like barnstars, template images, Etc. and tell local projects to upload them locally now? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 06:34, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

From the contents of that deletion discussion, the barnstar alluded to included nude or lewd photographs and, despite the claims made above, was not in use. Extrapolating from this one discussion that something is "repeatedly being ignored" seems wholly specious and wrong. "So should we just start deleting all "wiki-files" like barnstars, template images, Etc. and tell local projects to upload them locally now?" is a straw-man argument that veers onto ridiculous pearly-clutching. If you are concerned about files being deleted, then you should make you concerns known during the deletion discussion; I don't see any reason to overturn such a discussion simply because you are applying a "slippery slope" logical fallacy. GPinkerton (talk) 08:10, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

The Barnstar was in-use and two (2) previous deletion nominations ended with it being kept, how is "Barnstars are not educational" not a slippery slope? The nomination claimed that the barnstar wasn't in use in an educational way (as in it was only used on user talk pages) "the barnstar alluded to included nude or lewd photographs and, despite the claims made above, was not in use" including nude material doesn't automatically make it less educational. Also, it was transcluded per this page here:

• User talk:Paddy (transclusion) ‎ (← links | edit)
• User talk:Niabot (transclusion) ‎ (← links | edit)
• User talk:Spermasklave (transclusion) ‎ (← links | edit)
• Template:The Hot sex barnstar (redirect page) ‎ (← links | edit)
• User talk:Paddy (transclusion) ‎ (← links | edit)
• User talk:Niabot (transclusion) ‎ (← links | edit)
• User talk:Sinnamon ‎ (← links | edit)
• User:Sinnamon ‎ (← links | edit)
• Commons:Deletion requests/Template:The Hot sex barnstar ‎ (← links | edit)
• Commons:Deletion requests/Archive/2013/05/10 ‎ (← links | edit)
• Commons:Administrators/Requests/Fæ2 ‎ (← links | edit)
• User talk:Spermasklave (transclusion) ‎ (← links | edit)
• Template:The Erotica barnstar (redirect page) ‎ (← links | edit)

I fail to see how this was" not" in use. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 08:32, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: You say "including nude material doesn't automatically make it less educational" but that's not the point. Barnstars are not educational anyway; there are other reasons for them to exist, but they are not to be treated as though they have off-wiki educational value. According to COM:INUSE: "An otherwise non-educational file does not acquire educational purpose solely because it is in use on a gallery page or in a category on Commons, nor solely because it is in use on a user page (the "User:" namespace)". According to COM:SELFIE: "images that are being used on a talk page just to make a point can be discounted". Whatever the rights and wrongs of this particular deletion (the discussion was not broad-based in this instance), it can't be argued that files are educational because they are barnstars or that files are "in use" simply because they appear on talk pages or user pages. GPinkerton (talk) 08:56, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@GPinkerton:, literally every example you named could be cited to delete any barnstar, the reason for deletion also alluded to barnstars not being educational. You are literally making a case for my assertions. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:15, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, but your assertions appear to consist, in essence, of statements like "I don't like the policy to be applied" or "I don't like the policy at all" or "I don't like in this case the consequences of applying policy". My "examples" are merely quotations from the policy. If such reasoning is being used to delete files, then the policy is working properly, I don't see a problem. GPinkerton (talk) 09:28, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Under current policy the Wikipedia Teahouse logo should not be hosted on the Wikimedia Commons. Using the same rationale as the deletion request in question this logo can also be deleted. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』

You're missing the point entirely, why do we have barnstars here at all then, and this also goes for any local WikiProject files and other "Metapedian" content like files related to the presentation of wiki-specific pages. These policies essentially means that the Wikimedia Commons cannot host any files to be used outside of article space of other Wikimedia websites. Arguably, the logos of Wikisource, the Meta-Wiki, Wikinews, the Wikimedia Commons itself, among others would also fall under this (well, now they have their own Wikipedia articles, but these files were first invented here). For example the logo of the WP Teahouse has the same level of educational value as any barnstar. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 13:35, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

No, you're missing the point. The point is that the file was deleted because of gratuitous nudity not excused by any educational use. What have any of the other files got to do with anything? I explained before that a slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy. Bringing up the Treehouse emblem is completely irrelevant; no-one is suggesting deleting anything of the kind except you. If you want the file to be undeleted, request that. If you don't, don't. Its deletion has no bearing on any other file, why should it? GPinkerton (talk) 13:40, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Again, according to COM:INUSE: "An otherwise non-educational file does not acquire educational purpose solely because it is in use on a gallery page or in a category on Commons, nor solely because it is in use on a user page (the "User:" namespace)". According to COM:SELFIE: "images that are being used on a talk page just to make a point can be discounted" (to quote your quotes), the deletion rationale was that barnstars in themselves aren't educational, these policies reinforce this. The nudity depicted on the barnstar is irrelevant to its deletion. Everyone that has spent a day at "COM:UDR" knows that it doesn't exist to actually undelete files but to reassert deletions. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:06, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: The nudity depicted on the barnstar is irrelevant to its deletion is absolute nonsense. The second nomination stated "This is pornographic nonsense and denigrates the person depicted"; you yourself actually then said "I understand this argument". The third nomination stated "Image isn't used for educational purposes, therefore, it is in violation of COM:CENSOR". A comment on that occasion was: "COM:CENSOR notes that "Photographs of nudity including male and female genitalia are sometimes uploaded for non-educational motives, and such images are not exempt from the requirement to comply with the rules of Commons' scope." This is meant as a "trophy" of sorts to praise contributors for their work and not necessarily of educational value. Not to mention that by the looks of it, it's more like a crude and puerile collage of sex acts straight out of PornHub than a scholarly illustration of human sexuality". Your reading of this as irrelevant to its deletion is frankly highly tendentious. If you want to test your slippery slope fallacy theory go ahead and nominate the Treehouse image for deletion, see what a fallacy it is! If you want to relitigate that particular deletion discussion, go to undeletion requests and make these spurious arguments. Your problems in that venue are not a reason for policy to change. GPinkerton (talk) 16:26, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

It may have been discussed but it wasn't the cited reason for deletion, "Files relating to projects or events of the Wikimedia community, such as user meetings, are also allowed." barnstars are such things as they relate to Wikimedia contributions, users who upload a lot of sexual content sometimes received this barnstar. None of the people in the Hot Sex barnstar looked like they were "non-professionals" so such a derivative use wasn't violating their personality rights. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:33, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I am in agreement with Donald Trung. Wikimedia projects have long had a history of using barnstars. Wikimedia Commons absolutely should not be deleting barnstars and other images that are in general use in other Wikimedia communities because we deem them to be uneducational. The implications of this reasoning are problematic.  Mysterymanblue  09:11, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Of course, it will be recognized that "barnstars and other images that are in general use in other Wikimedia communities" does not apply in this case, since the image was not COM:INUSE. GPinkerton (talk) 09:14, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I am using the commonly understood definition of "in use", not the narrow meaning outlined in COM:INUSE. Clearly files that are in use on many user/discussion pages have more of a community endorsement than a single file used on a single user page. Policy should either be interpreted or changed to make this differentiation clear.  Mysterymanblue  20:15, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I have undeleted the image, as it met the literal definition of COM:INUSE on Template:Sexuality barnstar as of the time of DR closure; there is no exception for templates perceived to be "frivolous", but rather one should attempt to get such templates deleted before any images used on them can be deleted. Additionally, agree with the above that use on multiple unrelated user pages or talk pages meets the spirit of COM:INUSE as well. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:00, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the deletion done by User:Ellin Beltz and I strongly disagree with the undeletion by User:King of Hearts. This is just trolling junk from a banned user and has no place on Commons. Multichill (talk) 08:42, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I just found out that this barnstar was mentioned in an older post by The Daily Dot, someone on the Dutch Wikisage quoted it here on the talk page about their article about Russavia, namely "To understand just how inseparable pornography is from Commons culture, look no further than the “Erotica Barnstar,” formerly the “Hot Sex Barnstar,” an award given to Commons users who “tirelessly upload good sexual, nude, and erotic content to Commons. The star is adorned with three illustrations: a woman sodomizing a man with a dildo (otherwise known as pegging), an erect penis, and a spread vulva. All the source files are available on Wikimedia Commons, of course. The star was nominated for deletion in May, but the Commons community decided to keep it. There is a lot of porn out there to upload, and Commons users want to reward each other for their hard work: At one time, porn or explicit content account for 60 of the Commons 100 most-visited pages, including entire categories like “Autofellatio, “Facial cumshot,” and “Female genital piercing.” The exhibition culture is dominated by men, much like the rest of Wikimedia. There are so many dick pics uploaded to Commons every year, in fact, that the site actually calls out the practice in its community guidelines. “Commons does not need you to drop your pants and grab a camera,” it reads. “If you want to, try to fill a real gap in our collection.”" which specifically talks about this barnstar and the common nature of pornography on this website. This is not to say that the deletion didn't have any merit if it was based on the stated nomination that the nudity itself has been superseded by a more abstract barnstar, but since this barnstar has been mentioned in external media in a way to discuss the prevalence of "porn culture" on the Wikimedia Commons I'd say that its educational value has been extended to include discussions of this topic, note that it has existed since 2012 and in those years had been awarded without any issues until a more recent (perhaps dare I say "pornphobic" "pornophobic") change in the culture. Unfortunately I can't find the original Daily Dot article but I would highly doubt that this barnstar no longer has any educational value outside of the Wikimedia websites. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:41, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

First you say: "The nudity depicted on the barnstar is irrelevant to its deletion" and now you're claiming "a more recent (perhaps dare I say "pornphobic" "pornophobic") change in the culture is behind it. Make up your mind! GPinkerton (talk) 11:34, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Did you even read what I wrote? "This is not to say that the deletion didn't have any merit if it was based on the stated nomination that the nudity itself has been superseded by a more abstract barnstar" The deletion reason what not the nomination reason, the reason for deletion was "Barnstars are not educational" so my earlier comments still stand. If you want to be contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian you're free to do so, but but your comment should have substance rather than just another strawman argument by taking a quote out of context. Plus with this barnstar being discussed in Wikipedia-notable external websites it has gained more educational value for it, overriding the exceptions at "COM:CENSOR". --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 12:04, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Trying to argue the nomination and the deletion are somehow unrelated is tendentious as. Deletions take place after the discussion and the nomination and in all cases the latter are affected by the former. That this obvious fact was not noted in the deletion summary is irrelevant. taking a quote out of context is what one is doing by trying to claim the deletion was not affected by the nomination, a claim you reiterate above. GPinkerton (talk) 13:24, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

The reason for nomination don't have to be the same as the reason for deletion, files nominated due to scope issues can still be deleted due to copyright issues or vice versa, the reasoning for deletion is still "Barnstars" are not educational, plus before its deletion it was also used on other Wikimedia websites (at least I still need to check the delinker log) and that would have made it "COM:INUSE", there is a different between deleting an unused file and a used file, especially when the reason for the deletion is not copyright © related. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 18:51, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Note that this barnstar is no longer "a Commonswiki exclusive", I found a lot of mentions about this particular barnstar on other websites and while the Wikimedia Commons doesn't have any "notability" standards if it had then this barnstar would be "notable" (well, notorious). From the page "Topless image retention -don't give up" from the Narkive (Mailinglist Archive): "To give an example, Commons has a "hot sex barnstar", present on a number of user talk pages, which does not appear to have violated any Wikimedia policy, judging by its existence for more than a year now. The imagery is grossly pornographic, and would be unacceptable in almost any workplace outside of the adult entertainment industry" & "This allows editors to introduce everything to the work environment that is allowed in a porn shop. Hence the "hot sex barnstar" in Commons, which if challenged would no doubt be defended with gleeful jeers of NOTCENSORED.", (note while the Hot Sex Barnstar here is blamed for being one of the factors that contribute to the Wikimedian gender gap, these people are Sex Negative Feminists, for Sex Positve Feminists "Pornagraphy and sexuality are liberating for women" so they would likely argue the opposite, while Conservative Christian women, yes those apparently exist, would likely agree with the Sex Negative Feminists that such depictions of pornography are "gynophobic" or discourage women from participating, this advocacy for the exclusion / inclusion of pornography is more ideological), it was also discussed at Larrysanger.org at "Other weird stuff" (note that Larry Sanger is the co-founder of Wikipedia): "Consider also (as was recently pointed out to me) that the activists-for-free-porn on Commons have been awarding each other the new, outrageously gross, "Hot Sex Barnstar" (NSFW!) for their efforts. There are clearly some (to me) extremely unsavory characters involved who have made it their mission to make Commons, and Wikipedia as well, as free as possible to host the most explicit sorts of imagery on this tax-exempt, non-profit 501(c)(3) website.". It has also been mentioned on a number of websites and blogs critical of Wikimedia websites such as the article "Boycott Wikipedia - Monday, February 23, 2015 - Examples of Bias in Wikipedia" from the website boycott-wikipedia.blogspot.com the author wrote "Wikipedia Commons, which collects public domain images, has drawn extensive criticism for sexually explicit material, including nude photos and photos of various acts. The editors of Wikipedia Commons have created a "Hot Sex Barnstar" to reward those people who upload particularly explicit images. When a former member of Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee asked to have it removed, many people opposed his suggestion.", on the website "Wikipedia Sucks! (And So Do Its Critics.)" in the article "Thursday, February 4, 2016 - Vladimir Mozhenkov: an Overview" where the author wrote: "There was a lot of drama that spring, in the middle of which Vova created the "Hot sex barnstar" (NSFW) for his friends who supported his pornification of Commons, along with asking if Wikpedia could expand it's BDSM coverage. I kid you not." So this barnstar has been mentioned by multiple outside parties for a number of years now.

From "Re: Controversial content software status" from the website "Mailing List Archive":

"The other day e.g. I noticed that Wikimedia Commons administrators prominently involved in the curation of adult materials were giving or being given something called the "Hot Sex Barnstar" (NSFW) for their efforts:"

• http://www.webcitation.org/65yLm9XpJ
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hot_sex_barnstar.png
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Cirt&oldid=67901160#Hot_sex_barnstar
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Saibo&oldid=67973190#The_Hot_Sex_Barnstar
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AMattbuck&diff=67910238&oldid=67910067
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Stefan4&oldid=67980777#The_Hot_Sex_Barnstar

Now I am not saying that any of these mentions are positive, but this barnstar has often been cited as an example of the Wikimedia Commons' voyeuristic pornographic culture, so it could most certainly be used to illustrate this Commonswiki subculture. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:09, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Pretty much anything discussed by Larry Sanger is worthy of deletion, although of course that's not policy (yet). Everything he writes to denigrate Wikimedia is wrong-headed and inspired by envy and his politics. What is this information-gathering supposed to achieve? There are doubtless dozens of files whose existence has been noticed outside Wikimedia, I don't think that gives them permanent immunity from deletion. Why would it? Hoax articles are not kept on Wikipedia just because they've been noticed by non-Wikipedians. GPinkerton (talk) 13:24, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

"Pretty much anything discussed by Larry Sanger is worthy of deletion, although of course that's not policy (yet). Everything he writes to denigrate Wikimedia is wrong-headed and inspired by envy and his politics." Wow, that is extremely denigrating to the co-founder of Wikipedia who has plenty of well-thought criticisms of Wikimedia websites, a reason why these websites are slow to improve is because of such inarticulate dismissals of their critics. "There are doubtless dozens of files whose existence has been noticed outside Wikimedia, I don't think that gives them permanent immunity from deletion. Why would it? Hoax articles are not kept on Wikipedia just because they've been noticed by non-Wikipedians." Completely unrelated things, the educational value of this particular barnstar is unrelated to hoax articles (which obviously should be deleted). This barnstar is commonly used as an illustration of a pornographic voyeuristic culture that exists on the Wikimedia Commons. Barnstars are associated with Wikimedia websites as a form of reward editors receive, to quote "Some Wiki-based communities give their users an award called a "barnstar", as a continuation of the "barn raising" metaphor. The practice originated on MeatballWiki and was adopted by Wikipedia in 2003." - The English-language Wikipedia's "Barnstar" article sourced at "Zhu, Haiyi; Kraut, Robert E.; Kittur, Aniket (2016). "A Contingency View of Transferring and Adapting Best Practices Within Online Communities". Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. CSCW '16. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 729–743." So this means that this practice is well-known among wiki-communities, what makes this barnstar unique is just how absurd it is and what an absurd culture must have produced it, such a barnstar would be considered "pure vandalism" and "a denigration of barnstars" on literally any other website, but on the Wikimedia Commons administrators give them to each other for uploading pictures of their dicks, this is just such an absurd concept that to illustrate how such a culture can exist (and to be fair, a lot of users from the period when the Hot Sex Barnstar reigned supreme have since retired, think Russavia (WMF banned / SanFran Banned), Fæ, Saibo, among others are no longer among us). While I do think that this barnstar is "a relic of another time" it is an often discussed point in the history of the Wikimedia Commons that other websites have often discussed (namely that this is "just another free porn website") and while the community has changed, this image would still serve an educational purpose to discuss this culture. The idea is that this particular image has no educational value which is inherently false, in fact this is probably the only Wikimedia barnstar I've ever seen being discussed or even mentioned outside of Wikimedia websites. I don't think that any barnstar has more of an educational value than this one. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 18:46, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Just repeating "the co-founder of Wikipedia" doesn't make Larry Sanger less reprehensible. In any case, you've confused a handful of trivial mentions with "an often discussed point in the history of the Wikimedia Commons that other websites have often discussed" and then added a whole load of irrelevant material about barnstars and further exaggerations of this very niche file's importance "the period when the Hot Sex Barnstar reigned supreme". Your claim that "this is probably the only Wikimedia barnstar I've ever seen being discussed or even mentioned outside of Wikimedia websites" is hardly surprising, but I bet if you had looked specifically for trivial passing mentions of other wiki-trivia as you have apparently been doing for this thing, then I suspect more could be unearthed, though I say again, that wouldn't mean such items are to be permanently hosted forever. I ask again though, what is this supposed to achieve? GPinkerton (talk) 00:34, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Noincluding DR categories

A user has, in good faith, categorized over 100 DRs into Category:Fictitious symbol related deletion requests without noincluding the category. This erroneously categorizes the pages where the DRs are transcluded. Is there a way to efficiently noinclude these category tags?  Mysterymanblue  08:32, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Deletion requests should by default have "noincluded" added through some technical means, or a bot should do it. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 08:36, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

 Done Would be nice if COM:VFC could operate on non-file pages. I wrote a custom script and did it. – BMacZero (🗩) 16:41, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@BMacZero: Thank you!  Mysterymanblue  16:47, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --RZuo (talk) 07:26, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Special:MediaSearch broken?

When I use Special:MediaSearch and search for "mestgoot" I get two results. But when I use Special:Search with the same search term I get five results. All of them are images and one of them even contains the word in the title. To me it seems obvious that Special:MediaSearch should find all five of them.

Is this behaviour a known bug? I often look for images and I used Special:MediaSearch in the past. Sometimes I had the impression that Special:MediaSearch performs less than optimal, but it never occured to me to make the direct comparison with Special:Search. Now that I am aware of the behaviour, it feels like a dealbreaker for Special:MediaSearch. --Slomox (talk) 09:06, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

BSD-0-clause

Currently, there is a {{BSD}} license tag used for the BSD licenses. It does not include BSD Zero Clause License. Would it make more sense to create a new template for the BSD Zero Clause License or to add it on to the existing template? I'll note that the structure of the 0-clause is significantly different compared to the other three.  Mysterymanblue  09:32, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I am not sure that the 0-clause license is so different to justify a separate tag. Ruslik (talk) 20:53, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Well, we usually do use separate tags for different licenses... I guess the question would be why this license would be any different. I believe that the answer is that the 2-clause, 3-clause, and 4-clause BSD licenses have the same wording, verbatim; the only difference is that certain clauses are excepted from each one. Combining the three into one template is very easy because of this structure, and it roughly halves the translation work to do. With the exception of the copyright notice, the wording of the 0-clause BSD is different enough from the wording of the other BSD notices that completely new translations would be required. So there is really not much of a point in merging the two. I have gone ahead and created {{0BSD}}, which should work as soon as a translation administrator gets around to marking it so that Template:0BSD/i18n/en exists. I plan to then add a conditional to Template:BSD so that setting version = 0 will give {{0BSD}}.

If you disagree with this course of action, I fully encourage you to modify {{BSD}} to do what you are describing... I will then nominate {{0BSD}} for deletion.  Mysterymanblue  22:15, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Is there a way to see all images in category and subcategories?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T292061

I know that "Good pictures" in top right have dropdown next to them allowing to select "all images". Sadly it is broken and not working. At least when I tried it on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Speed_bumps Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 20:49, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

i made a new gadget that could do this job: MediaWiki talk:Gadget-DeepcatSearch.js, but it's still waiting for someone to create it. -- RZuo (talk) 22:26, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I've been requesting this feature for years, I wanted to create a new task for this but I didn't have the time yet (busy in a number of real life lawsuits), perhaps someone else can author a feature request in the Phabricator or I will try to do this now. I've seen users request this for a long time so I wonder why it hasn't been implemented yet. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 12:08, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Such a tool would be great. I can't stress enough what a benefit such a tool would bring to users, and in facilitating the in discovery of media. Commons tends to be good at segregating media into tiny isolated boxes: what is needed is a way to dump out all those boxes on the floor at once and visualize/sort/compare them in an intuitive fashion to find suitable images for a purpose at hand, and inspire new uses. Maybe some additional keyword searches can help in narrowing down especially large category trees. Humans are really good at visual comparison, while machines suck at it, and categories and structured data will always be lagging, incomplete, and inconsistent. Special:MediaSearch can do a pretty good job of showing lots of related images at once (e.g. 'Barack Obama speech'), but might overlook images lacking detailed descriptions, and precludes the serendipitous discovery of unexpected media deep within subcategories that might be perfect for a certain purpose (or lead to more discovery): a previously uncatalogued but noteworthy person in the background of a crowd, a flock of birds flying in a particularly aesthetic formation, or a particular expression on a face that can convey more nuance than a thousand categories and keywords. --Animalparty (talk) 06:25, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

My current workaround approach is PetScan - but it is quite annoying to configure. See say https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?common_wiki_other=&edits%5Banons%5D=both&interface_language=en&edits%5Bflagged%5D=both&cb_labels_any_l=1&since_rev0=&language=commons&edits%5Bbots%5D=both&categories=Speed%20bumps%20by%20country%0A&project=wikimedia&search_max_results=500&combination=union&cb_labels_yes_l=1&ns%5B6%5D=1&cb_labels_no_l=1&depth=100&templates_no= And https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T45424 is open since 2012 but WMF is not going to care about issues actually impacting users and editors (while spending millions on rebranding) Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 17:35, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

IA books

Hi, Would there be a consensus to move User talk:Fæ/IA books to Commons namespace? This project needs a lot of work, and it would help to be taken over by the community. Fæ is not active for nearly a month, and hasn't answered to my request. Regards, Yann (talk) 21:21, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

• Obviously, if Fæ objects, then we should abide by his wishes, but otherwise no objection. @Yann: Is there any indication that Fæ objected to a similar move in the past? - Jmabel ! talk 21:33, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

• Of course. I would not move the page if Fæ objects, but since he is not currently active, I think it can be moved if there is a consensus for that. Yann (talk) 18:05, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

• If moving it into the "Commons:" namespace isn't possible then copying might have the same effect, right? Copyright issues can just be solved through attribution per "By saving changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." (although I'm pretty sure that Alexis Jazz is screaming somewhere because someone just saved another edit with the GFDL license, a joke, obviously). I wonder what could have happened to poor user "Fæ" that they decided to suddenly quit, I really hope that they are both mentally and physically fine, and if people are willing they should be able to continue Fæ's wonderful work, so I would support any initiative that would help in this. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:05, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

The process is really simple, really.

1. First go to: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:F%C3%A6/IA_books&action=edit
2. Then click "Control + A", then click "Control + C".
3. Then go to: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:IA_books&action=edit
4. then click on "Control + A", then click on "Control + V", write as an edit summary "Copied from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:F%C3%A6/IA_books" (which is sufficient attribution), and then click "Publish".
5. Then come back to this forum and add "{{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}}".

This should resolve all the issues, I don't think that it's any more difficult than this as the author already gave permission for copying the moment they published their edits here. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 10:58, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

That's precisely what I'd like to avoid doing. The page history will be lost. Yann (talk) 18:02, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

The page history won't be lost, nobody is advocating for the deletion of Fæ's user page, the first edit is already a redirect to their user page and the copying would directly link to it, so the page history would be preserved at Fæ's IA Books, while a separate page would exist that links to it for attribution. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:13, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

• Why does it need to be moved? There is a talk page there so people could work there. If you want to create a separate Commmons page, maybe use the old one Commons:IA books. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:42, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

• I think that for the project responsibility to be taken over by the community, it should be in Commons namespace. Fæ did a great work, but the review and corrections are really too much work to be done by one person alone. Regards, Yann (talk) 18:02, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

• I don't really see the problem here. This is a wiki, nobody owns anything here. Be bold, leave Fæ a friendly message and then move it to where ever it's most useful. If Fæ returns and for some reason wants it back in their user name space, just move it back. --El Grafo (talk) 14:53, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Actually Fæ moved it first so we would need an admin to do the move I think. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:36, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

September 29

Hi.

Where do I start?--Derpdart56 (talk) 15:55, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Derpdart56: Hello. To go where? Veverve (talk) 16:24, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Derpdart56: Assuming this relates to your stated interest in reverting vandalism, probably the two key pages to look at are Special:NewFiles and Special:RecentChanges. On the latter, you'll probably want to do some filtering, like hiding bots. I see you have not made a ton of edits on any of our wikis; my strong suggestion is that you start with pretty blatant vandalism and leave the controversial matters alone until you've got a good feel for the terrain. - Jmabel ! talk 19:27, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

File:All India Trinamool Congress logo.svg

Can anyone please revert back to the orignal version uploaded by User:MrDragonouv since User:VNC200 has uploaded third class low quality version as compared to previous version and it does not comply if you look at Commons:Overwriting existing files. 182.190.206.156 18:04, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

 Done Reverted and notified the user about overwriting. clpo13_(talk) 18:10, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Clpo13: or anyone Can please also do same on File:All India Trinamool Congress flag.svg as they have done thier also.182.190.206.156 18:28, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

 Done This file has also been reverted. De728631 (talk) 18:44, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --RZuo (talk) 07:26, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

September 30

What is wrong with PetScan?

Just hours ago this query was working fine. Has something changed or is it (hopefully transient) issue? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 08:03, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Works for me. Rodhullandemu (talk) 08:31, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Works for me too, but Petscan is infamously unstable for silently refusing to return anything.

Also I haven't seen it deliver thumbnails in ages. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:40, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Resolvedit works intermittently - and thumbnails work for me Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 10:15, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I opened https://github.com/magnusmanske/petscan_rs/issues/106 though I have no great illusions Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 10:23, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

How can I distinguish between "photo of speed bump" and "photo of speed bump traffic sign"?

I use PetScan to list Category:Speed bumps.

Is there some way to allow excluding cases like File:Henderson raised zebra.JPG - there is a speed table and a traffic sign. The problem is that Category:Bump warning road signs in New Zealand can be present without actual speed bump (as it is used also for speed tables, the same category would be used when both speed bump and its warning sign are on a photo).

Is there a viable, Commons-compatible way of categorizing images that would allow following search

• find images of speed bumps
  • limiting to ones where speed bump is the main focus would be fine
• exclude photos where there is a bump road sign, without bump being visible on a photo
• include ones where there is both bump road sign and a speed bump itself

?

Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:04, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

• @Mateusz Konieczny: Our category system is a pretty loose "folksonomy" and I doubt anyone has particularly thought through this part of it; I'm sure you'd be welcome to improve it if you have the tenacity to go through and re-categorize. Just make sure your re-categorizations don't lose any information that is already there (i.e., you'll need to follow it through to the "by country" subcats, etc.). Do I understand correctly that the problem is that the way things stand, Category:Speed bump signs is a subcat of Category:Speed bumps, so once an image is in Category:Speed bump signs we don't have a category to show that it also contains the "bump" itself, and adding Category:Speed bumps would be over-catting? - Jmabel ! talk 17:44, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Jmabel: I wouldn't consider it overcatting to classify an image of both a speed bump and a speed bump sign into both categories, as the relationship is non-diffusing. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:49, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Jmabel: I though about adding Category:Photos of speed bumps that would be inside Category:Speed bumps. But I have never seen something like that. Or maybe create Category:Speed bump related with Category:Speed bump signs and Category:Speed bumps inside, with Category:Speed bumps no longer containing Category:Speed bump signs. But I also have never seen something like that on Commons (so I want to ask before spending time on it just to get reverted). Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 21:45, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

  I don't think either of those is a great idea. We just have to use our common sense and accept that exceptions to COM:OVERCAT will occur from time to time. The German politicians example in "Exception for images with more categorized subjects" is relevant here. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:43, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

  • Yup. This probably just calls for ignoring COM:OVERCAT. It's also a case where Commons:Depicts might be genuinely useful, since you could distinguish images that actually depict a speed bump from ones that are related to a speed bump in some other manner such as depicting a speed-bump sign. - Jmabel ! talk 01:39, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Question about a category

This question regards a category discussion on File talk:Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar, India.jpg - whether the category Category:Bathing with regular clothes" is an appropriate category for a religious worker cleaning a temple pond in India. I feel it does not fit the category description, Wetlook and is an unnecessary category for this image. Krok6kola (talk) 15:34, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

The category suits the content of the image admirably. The man is clearly bathing with regular clothes; there's nothing unusual about the clothes (for Sikhs anyway) and the temple tank is used for bathing. What other activities might be accomplished while bathing in with regular clothes (cleaning, etc.) is not really pertinent. The category's name could be improved or simplified, but the category itself is clearly the right one: all the other images show people in water with clothes on doing whatever. GPinkerton (talk) 16:02, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Without commenting on the merits of the category, I don't think A.Savin should have protected the file description page on his preferred version. This is one of the key tenets of w:WP:INVOLVED. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:37, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I suspect this might be solved by having cats (either subcats or linked by see also) that more precisely describe the nature of the activity, if "bathing" is not entirely appropriate. And I agree that as an involved party, A.Savin should not have done this this way. Protection like that might be appropriate in dealing with a vandal, but clearly this is a legitimate dispute in good faith. FWIW, unless it is absolutely blatant vandalism, if I'm an involved party and want protection I go to Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Blocks and protections even though I'm an admin myself. Here's a recent example. - Jmabel ! talk 17:52, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@GPinkerton:Perhaps this is a language issue, American vs. British English. To me "bathing" means washing oneself, as in taking a bath while "ablution" would be the word for religious washing. The image of the man in question is described as working, and so is not "bathing" to me. He is not doing anything recreational, such as "bathing" in an ocean or a fountain as are the images of other people in that category. So should all the people in Category:People at the Harmandir Sahib who are in water also be in Category:Bathing with regular clothes"? And images of people in water in other temples also? Why only this particular image? Krok6kola (talk) 20:18, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@Krok6kola: I would say that anyone bathed in water with regular clothes (rather than a wearing a bathing suit) is bathing with regular clothes. "Ablution" is simply Latin for washing. As for the all the people in Category:People at the Harmandir Sahib who are in water I would say not, because all the pictures I could find of that description show men and boys with their shirts off, or just wearing lungi, or in some other way prepared for bathing and not "in regular clothes". GPinkerton (talk) 22:50, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Could not the file in question be in another category such asCategory:Ablution? (As to be consistent, should all images of people in temple ponds be in that category? (As noted above, other "bathing" people in Category:People at the Harmandir Sahib be in that category? Why only this one whose photographer initially objected to that category?) Krok6kola (talk) 20:18, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

If he's there as a worker, I'm not sure "ablution" is the right term either, but I wouldn't call it "bathing". I don't really have an overall answer here, but I do have a few thoughts:

• Sometimes two categories that are similar but distinct should be linked by {{See also}} rather than one being a subcat of the other.
• Category:Bathing is under Category:Body washing. Clearly that is not what is going on here.
• We have a Category:People in water. That seems more apropos here than its subcat Category:Bathing people.
• There seems to be quite a mess around Category:Bathing people vs. Category:Human bathing vs. Category:Bathing. - Jmabel ! talk 20:40, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

• Bathing as a subset of body washing is not appropriate; body washing is not the reason one wears a bathing costume or goes to the public baths. Sun-bathing is also not any kind of washing. Ablution, on the other hand, is a kind of washing but I agree clearly not what is going in that picture. GPinkerton (talk) 22:49, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

• (Edit conflict) Thanks Jmabel. That is much better. Yes, the categories on this subject are quite a mess. I implemented your suggestion Category:People in water as much better. than Category:Bathing with regular clothes" The image is described as "A Sikh volunteer performs seva or work by cleaning the sacred pond. In Sikhism, work is considered worshipping."Krok6kola (talk) 22:57, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@Krok6kola: how the work is considered in religion is not an essential part of the photograph's contents. How are users wanting to find an image of a man fully clothed in water going to find this file? "People in water" is too general. GPinkerton (talk) 23:12, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I have removed Category:People in water and added Category:Men in water as obviously better. I suggest re-adding Category:Bathing with regular clothes because there is no Category:Men in water with regular clothes. GPinkerton (talk) 23:19, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

+1. People in water in general are commonly photographed, but seldom people standing in water with regular clothes on. Regards --A.Savin 23:42, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Category:Bathing with regular clothes looks to me like quite a mess. Quite a bit of this is not what one would normally call bathing and quite a bit is not what one would normally call regular clothes. - Jmabel ! talk 01:44, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Category:Bathing is the act of washing one's body.

this man in this photo is not washing his body.

so this category is not accurate.

for those who say it is, just because the man is partially submerged in water, here is a question: are those people trapped in floods also "bathing with regular clothes"? 🤣 --RZuo (talk) 07:26, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

since there is Category:People_running_in_water, there could also be "People at work in water" for this kind of photos.--RZuo (talk) 07:26, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Croptool is broken

CropTool on Wikimedia Commons gives the error message Curl error: SSL certificate problem: certificate has expired Is this a lasting problem? /Yvwv (talk) 20:28, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I just notified the Commons:Village pump/Technical page. I got the same error message. This tool cannot be used. Thanks --Ooligan (talk) 00:36, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

October 01

Commons delinker mishandling links

Hi. An example is here.

That is, when I move a file on Commons, and Commons changes the name in all WPs linking to the file, sometimes (not always), the "file:" part get dropped, along with the first letter of the file name. This has happened with at least two files, and on multiple WPs for each, including those using Latin script (e.g. here, also French, Spanish, Swedish).

On some WP's (e.g. the Turkish one), my fixes are pending review, whereas the name change has gone through.

I don't know how to trace the changes, since the broken WP's no longer show up as using the file, but this has likely affected dozens of projects.

Kwamikagami (talk) 05:34, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Also, can you move File:Irene symbol.svg to File:14 Irene symbol.svg, to be consistent with other asteroids? The target is just a rd. Kwamikagami (talk) 06:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

• @Kwamikagami: usually best to request a move using {{Rename}} on the file page. But I'll do this one.
• I don't have a general answer on the part about the delinker, but you cans see your own global contributions at https://guc.toolforge.org/?by=date&user=Kwamikagami - Jmabel ! talk 17:25, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll check there for any cleanup. Kwamikagami (talk) 18:12, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately, 'Global user contributions' also appears to be defective. It doesn't show a single one of the errors, and only shows a fraction of the wikis that the global replace affected. I'm sure there are lots of fixes I need to make, since I only noticed them if I manually visited a page (and even then probably missed some), but this unfortunately didn't work. Kwamikagami (talk) 18:34, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

ਪਿੰਡ-ਕਾਂਝਲਾ(KANJHLA)

ਕਾਂਝਲਾ ਪਿੰਡ ਮਸਤੂਆਣਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਤੋਂ 5 ਕਿਲੋਮੀਟਰ ਤੇ ਸਥਿਤ ਹੈ। — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jashan sardar (talk • contribs) 15:33, 1 October 2021 (UTC)