Commons:Village pump/Archive/2026/04

How many people categories is too much?

If we had the image of a historical list with 1,000 people, that we also had wikidata entries for, would we create 1,000 categories for that list? RAN (talk) 04:49, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, everything that has a Wikidata item should also have a category. GPSLeo (talk) 06:02, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

No. If something has a valid wikidata item, then that's a justification for having it here too, against any questions of 'notability' [sic]. However it's not a requirement to have one, if it's not considered useful to Commons' own goals. Two obvious examples of this might be a highly notable topic where we just don't have any Commons content for it. Another one (which we've encountered previously) was for team photos, where the team had a wikidata item, as did each individual, but the only Commons content was a single photo of the entire team.

We certainly should not bulk auto-create a bunch of empty Commons categories (that are likely to stay empty) from a script run over Wikidata. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:05, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

No, a photo of some list with people's names on it shouldn't be in the categories of all those people but instead a broader category/ies like 'group xy', and/or 'zy lists of people', or 'characteristics zv', etc. Or if you want to categorize lists with merely people's names on it, there's no need to discuss hypotheticals here. There's more than enough challenges and backlogs without discussing hypotheticals and I consider this thread solved. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:02, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

+1. The fact that a name appears in a document is not, in and of itself, a good reason to create a category representing that name. Omphalographer (talk) 18:26, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

• How is it solved with two contradictory replies? Is the assumption that your answer is correct, and the other answer is incorrect? --RAN (talk) 15:12, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  Maybe I misunderstood your question as to be about which categories to set on an image of a list while you're asking about whether we should create categories for wikidata items. If the latter is the case, then categories still should not be empty. In either way, this seems to be about hypotheticals and there's more than enough nonhypothetical things to discuss. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:48, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  • And if this is not hypothetical, it would be useful to have a concrete example. But I will venture slightly into hypotheticals. If we had a photo of the entire U.S. Senate of the moment, I would oppose adding a category to that photo for each individual Senator. If we had a picture of a list of 1000 names of individuals, I would certainly not add categories for the all people named in the list, any more than I would add, for a PDF of a book, a category for every place mentioned in the book. - Jmabel ! talk 18:55, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

• Maybe not places, but what about people? In that book pdf, there might be mentioned "Jim Smith" that we have a category already as "James H. Smith". How would someone refind it once the connection has been made? People have synonyms and researchers need a way to aggregate all the information on a person. I can see not needing to index every mention of George Washington in a book, but some people are more obscure. --RAN (talk) 21:12, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
  • If the book has substantial coverage of the person, sure, but (for example) I would not want to tag a history of European art with the categories for 583 artists. If anything, flooding the category with content like this makes it harder to find actually relevant material. - Jmabel ! talk 21:25, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

How would it make info more difficult to find? If I have no interest in the index of a book, I don't look at it. If I need to find someone, I use the index. Text searching has made most indexes redundant, but as pointed out people have synonyms. --RAN (talk) 02:01, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

+1, I think this issue is covered by Commons:Overcat, is it not? My favorite example (not with people, but locations) is that a world map should not be categorized into all hundreds or thousands of location-categories of the places that are shown and/or labelled in that map. Just because one dot in this map is labelled "Lhasa", does not turn that map into a "map of Lhasa", at least in my opinion. The same logic goes for the hypothetical group photos of large-crows, for long name lists, or bound collections of short-bios. There are reasonable exceptions, but I think that most files with way over 10 categories are cases of overcat/miscat. --Enyavar (talk) 22:05, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Commons:Overcat deals with redundant categories such as adding Category:Albert Einstein and Category:Physicists from Germany to an image of Einstein, not about properly identifying everyone in an image (or I assume list). --RAN (talk) 01:38, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

If that is so, then I think we should add a point to the Categories' policy about not adding hundreds/thousands of categories to files. Even if we could identify each of the people in this painting by name, I argue that we should only do so in respective crop-outs where those are needed... but not in the larger picture. --Enyavar (talk) 11:52, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): flooding a category with tangentially relevant files makes genuinely relevant files harder to find. - Jmabel ! talk 20:18, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Brixton riots, 1981 (enwiki)

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the Wikimedia Foundation office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file:

• en:File:Brixton_riots,_1981.jpg

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Brixton riots, 1981 (enwiki). Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 12:37, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Dragon Bravo Fire Pyrocumulus

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the Wikimedia Foundation office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file:

• File:Dragon Bravo Fire Pyrocumulus 7.28.2025.jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Dragon Bravo Fire Pyrocumulus. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 12:48, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Broken Wikimedia image (sizes)

This semester and last the embedded Commons images I've long used have been broken. I was fixing them ad hoc, but today tried to figure out what was going on. It appears that a lot of the sizes that used to be served offsite no longer are?

I have a python script, which might've fixed most of the issues, but though I looked I can not find the discussion of what changed and why.

❯ wikipedia-image-embeds-fix.py talks/
Updated 1 links in talks/180-privacy.md
    1024px to 960px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/CPT-Proxy.svg/960px-CPT-Proxy.svg.png
Updated 1 links in talks/056-brown-learning.md
    1024px to 960px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Laurentius_de_Voltolina_001.jpg/960px-Laurentius_de_Voltolina_001.jpg
Updated 5 links in talks/075-darknet.md
    512px to 500px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Digital_signature_schema.png/500px-Digital_signature_schema.png
    512px to 500px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Bitcoin_Block_Data.svg/500px-Bitcoin_Block_Data.svg.png
    512px to 500px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Onion_diagram.svg/500px-Onion_diagram.svg.png
    1024px to 960px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Iceberg_of_Webs.svg/960px-Iceberg_of_Webs.svg.png
    128px to 330px : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Iceberg_of_Webs.svg/330px-Iceberg_of_Webs.svg.png

Reagle (talk) 20:22, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Custom thumbnail sizes got entirely removed because of massive crawler traffic. See mw:Common thumbnail sizes for the available sizes. GPSLeo (talk) 20:38, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Proposing the removal of the previous version of a file

Shortly after uploading a picture, I noticed a visibile license plate in it and so I uploaded a new version with said license plate blurred. Is there a way to propose the deletion of the precious version?

If not, what is the correct method to solve this sort of issue?

I suppose something like:

1. Ask for deletion first;
2. wait for the file to be removed;
3. Upload the file with license plate blurred.

Thanks in advance,

--Marco (talk) 06:54, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, see COM:REVDEL.

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:42, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Prototyperspective (talk) 12:42, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Action Required: Update templates/modules for electoral maps (Migrating from P1846 to P14226)

Hello everyone,

This is a notice regarding an ongoing data migration on Wikidata that may affect your election-related templates and Lua modules (such as Module:Itemgroup/list).

The Change:
Currently, many templates pull electoral maps from Wikidata using the property distribution map (P1846), combined with the qualifier depicts (P180): electoral result (Q19571328).

We are migrating this data (across roughly 4,000 items) to a newly created, dedicated property: apportionment diagram (P14226).

What You Need To Do:
To ensure your templates and infoboxes do not break or lose their maps, please update your local code to fetch data from apportionment diagram (P14226) instead of the old distribution map (P1846) + depicts (P180) structure. A list of pages was generated using Wikimedia Global Search.

Deadline:
We are temporarily retaining the old data on distribution map (P1846) to allow for a smooth transition. However, to complete the data cleanup on Wikidata, the old P1846 statements will be removed after May 1, 2026. Please update your modules and templates before this date to prevent any disruption to your wiki's election articles.

Let us know if you have any questions or need assistance with the query logic. Thank you for your help! ZI Jony using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:11, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments UK upload tool broken

Hi all. https://wlmuk.toolforge.org/ has not been working for several days. It just says "Loading..." and gets no further. I use it frequently (even outside the WLM competition period) to upload photos of historic buildings as it does some useful pre-filling of identifiers etc. Anyone know what the problem is? Dave.Dunford (talk) 12:54, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

@Richard Nevell (WMUK) might be able to help. Ciell (talk) 15:02, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

It now appears to be working again. Thanks, if it was down to manual intervention. Dave.Dunford (talk) 16:05, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Prototyperspective (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Idea for tool: "Other versions"

Category:Plain black Pinhead SVG icons

It would be useful to have tool, perhaps a user script, which would allow the user to select (in the manner of selection in Cat-a-lot) two or more images in a category view, like the above, and then add a thumbnail or link to each of them, from the other as |other versions=.

For the images in the above screenshot, it would be equal to these two edits: 1; 2.

It would need to detect and gracefully fail if the link is already present.

Does such a tool exist, and if not could someone please make one? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:55, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Note: it's not very common that the other versions or all of them are in some same category and even when they are due to many other files being there too and them being named differently, it can be difficult to select files that way and seems rather impractical. Making it easier to add other versions of files could nevertheless be impactful. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:09, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Shouldn't that typically use {{Other version}} rather than just a thumb? - Jmabel ! talk 21:49, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Photo challenge February 2026 results

First aid: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	A labrador retriever of the search and rescue dog unit of the Austrian Red Cross. Vienna 2025, Austria.	Lifting a person in a rescue basket.	REGA rescue team
Author	Aciarium	Julian Herzog	Roy Egloff
Score	20	12	9

Orange: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Woman in traditional orange dress called Buhara sun, Buhara, Uzbekistan	Fire burns, but makes you warm and relaxed	People viewing trees across the pond, illuminated by the setting sun.
Author	PetarM	Maryam Yazdanisheldareh	Ka23 13
Score	14	11	9

Congratulations to @Aciarium, @Julian Hendrawan, @Roy Egloff, @PetarM, @Maryam Yazdanisheldareh and @Ka23 13. This is Taiwania Justo speaking (Reception Room) 11:43, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

"Cosplay"

Could someone clarify our working definition of "cosplay"? In particular, is there any wearing of costumes that does not qualify as "cosplay", and if so what? I am increasingly seeing the term applied by others to my photos in contexts where I would never use that word. - Jmabel ! talk 22:13, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Well, for me, as cosplay (costume and character play) is wearing a costume of a fictional character, like Link, and acting like him. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:34, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

So if we have a category of kids doing trick or treat, that would be nested under cosplay? And actors in a theatre play ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:30, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Some other examples where it has been applied where I find it dubious:

• File:Elvis dog costume for Halloween 2012 (8106438179).jpg
• File:2015 Fremont Solstice cyclists 232.jpg (NSFW)
• File:2015 Fremont Solstice cyclists 183.jpg
• File:Say No To Trump Demo (43401912921).jpg
• File:Moscow car meet 2025-07-12 NKVD cosplay 07.jpg

For most of these its a matter of people (or a dog!) in costume, but no indication of "play" beyond simply wearing a costume. Jmabel ! talk 21:47, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

To borrow the definition from the English Wikipedia:

A cosplay (a portmanteau of "costume play") is the activity and performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character. Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture, and a broader use of the term "cosplay" applies to any costumed role-playing in venues apart from the stage.

(The subculture in question is, more often than not, fandom). This is a pretty broad definition, but also states that stage-play actors are excluded, answering an earlier question. It also gives a definition that doesn't include (role)playing specifically, but puts the focus on the costume to represent a character, which squares with my personal experience having attended cons where people cosplay characters by dressing up as them, but aren't always (or even usually) in-character.

Wikipedia states that "It is generally considered different from Halloween and Mardi Gras costume wear, as the intention is to replicate a specific character, rather than to reflect the culture and symbolism of a holiday event."

Within the context of e.g. a kid dressing up as Batman for Halloween, are they not trying to also replicate Batman? Can it not be both an expression of fandom and something you do to go trick-or-treating? Children don't tend to pick characters at random to dress up as. We could make a separate category for people who dress up as certain characters for Halloween and it would be a pretty unambiguous separation, but the question is also if that's worth the effort. I personally don't see it as that big of a deal to categorize all of these as cosplay, even if "People dressed up as..." might be a better/more accurate way to categorize these photos (except for the dog). The Moscow car meet photo shows a historical reenactor (generally not considered cosplay), and is appropriately categorized as such. ReneeWrites (talk) 23:24, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

But the Moscow one refers to "cosplay" in its title. - Jmabel ! talk 05:59, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

In the file name, yes. Do you want me to change it? (And do the same for others in that set). ReneeWrites (talk) 18:12, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

@ReneeWrites: probably a good idea. And I'd really love for Category:Cosplay to have a much clearer description. The one there now would include theater, reenactors, etc., and the "many other outlets" is hopelessly vague. - Jmabel ! talk 22:19, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Would this: Special:Diff/1122831921/1192847283, be acceptable? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 22:26, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

I think that's a much better description, thank you for adding it. ReneeWrites (talk) 08:35, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Definitely a step in the right direction. Still unclear on reenactments, and somewhat unclear (at least to me) on whether simply wearing a costume is enough vs. the "play" aspect. - Jmabel ! talk 19:34, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Is it workable to nominate for deletion most (If not all) files in a category?

Okay, this might be a bit rage-driven but... As per this guideline about derivative works, unfortunately most pictures of toys are not acceptable in Commons. I know, I am talking about deleting thousands of images. It that feasible? Or is it better to do it on a case-by-case basis? --JJ - Schumi4ever (talk) 01:02, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

@Schumi4ever:

• In my experience, mass DRs should take on a group of files that will almost certainly stand or fall together. It's OK if there might turn out to be a few outliers, but (for example) you would not want to mix Raggedy Ann dolls with chess sets, because the facts of the case may be completely different. Similarly, you would not want to mix closeups of toys with an image where the presence of the toy might well be de minimis. And you need to watch out for cases like a well-licensed photo of a U.S. toy from the 1960s that might never have been properly copyrighted. So, while it is reasonable to do these in batches, a mass DR containing hundreds of photos will often be semi-quickly closed as a "procedural keep" for presenting too many different cases.
• For the technical side of how to do this, see Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request. I strongly recommend that you use the method described there using VisualFileChange, not the more manual method. - Jmabel ! talk 02:59, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Gadgets not working

As of approximately midnight today, the controls of gadgets (HotCat, Cat-a-lot) have stopped appearing on the pages. Can anyone solve this? ŠJů (talk) 04:34, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

@ŠJů, hello! Gadgets are working (at least for me) right now. Deltaspace42 (talk) 10:04, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

@Deltaspace42: Unfortunately, the problem still persists. It makes work very difficult. --ŠJů (talk) 12:59, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

@Deltaspace42: Maybe, it can relate with the last update of Firefox (149.0.2)? In Google Chrome, gadgets work normally for me. --ŠJů (talk) 13:15, 9 April 2026 (UTC) In MS Edge, the HotCat works, and the Cat-a-lot control is not available on pages. --ŠJů (talk) 13:31, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

@ŠJů, I don't think so; both in Chrome and Firefox gadgets work normally for me. Deltaspace42 (talk) 13:22, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm on Firefox (149.0.2) and not having this problem. - Jmabel ! talk 20:43, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Gadget-UTCLiveClock.js disappeared for me.

dont notice problems for other gadgets. RoyZuo (talk) 11:05, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Same, UTCLiveClock disappeared for me as well. Deltaspace42 (talk) 12:06, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

The problem lasted about 24 hours and has now gone away on its own. I have no idea what could have caused it. --ŠJů (talk) 23:21, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Template:Glamorous

it appears that https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous/ just got updated and the permalinks to queries changed, so the template needs to be updated soon to fix the link. RoyZuo (talk) 21:18, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Convenience link: Template:Glamorous. - Jmabel ! talk 21:55, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Fixed it. Also added default parameters. Adjust or remove as adequate, thanks. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:49, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Lots of other pages also link to glamorous v1 scans. The site of version 1 was down at time of thread creation but it's back up again. I don't know if a version switch is planned or if other pages need to be or would benefit from having their glamorous links changed as well. Version 2 has some major advantages over version 1 but it also has major downsides, one of which is that pagination seems broken (the issue is now visible after migration to codeberg): https://codeberg.org/magnusmanske/glamtools/issues/110 Prototyperspective (talk) 17:06, 10 April 2026 (UTC)