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April 05

Copyleft enforcement - concern about stretching of a guideline

pings

I'm going to ping some past participants of these discussions. Pings from the DR (probably folks from that previous VP discussion should be pinged, too, but I think the DR covers most people? @Colin, Eyavar, Aristeas, W.carter, A.Savin, Julesvernex2, Jeff G., Adamant1, Chris.sherlock2, SHB2000, Nosferattus, Ikan Kekek, Yann, Normanlamont, Diliff, Cmao20, Юрий Д.К., GPSLeo, Pigsonthewing, Acroterion, AFBorchert, MichaelMaggs, Thincat, IronGargoyle, Nil Einne, Bluerasberry, PARAKANYAA, Pppery, Glane23, Zymurgy, A1Cafel, JPxG, Dronebogus, NinjaRobotPirate, Glrx, Deb, Mackensen, Huntster, Enhancing999, Jmabel, and Wilfredor:

I am concerned about a few users who seem to be trying to extend existing consensus about "copyleft trolling" to apply to a much broader swath of copyleft enforcement. Most directly, this has taken the form of straightforwardly renaming the guideline "copyleft trolling" to be "copyleft enforcement". At least on the surface, this seems to say "if you upload to Commons, you can't enforce your license unless the most aggressive enforcers of this guideline approve it", which is well outside any sort of consensus we've established thus far.

Discussions about this subject have thus far been filled with well-intentioned but incorrect/misleading information which has left us in a confusing position. For example, there was this long thread, where a closer found consensus for the creation of Commons:Copyleft trolling and a procedure about CC4, but that stuff about CC4 was based on a false premise -- that CC4 provides a grace period to fix attribution, which it doesn't, and nobody supported it after that was clarified.

Many of these disputes regard Diliff, a difficult case in that he was/is a Wikipedian who contributed photos, not someone who uploaded photos in order to make money like others we apply the label to, and doesn't have e.g. an overly complex attribution statement to try to trip people up. He nonetheless does use Pixsy, a firm associated with copyleft trolls, and seems to demand money even when there's no real damage to him. He's in a gray area where someone doesn't seem to be acting in line with the spirit of openness this project tends to endorse, but also not trolling, so we're left with an uncomfortable question: how do we prevent such behavior without putting a big banner up saying "if you upload here, you give up your right to enforce copyright"? I don't have a good answer to that, but it seems a few users are intent on pushing forward with taking some action on 's images, despite a DR finding no consensus to do so.

To my eyes, it's hard to see a clear consensus for anything beyond a consensus that (a) Commons does not like "copyleft trolling", (b) Commons wants to take some sort of action where there's consensus that someone is engaging in the practice, and (c) we need a guideline explaining the concept and possible actions.

I will not be sad if Diliff's images get watermarked, but I will be sad if we take a vigilante approach to this problem, and I'll be sad if we can't better articulate expectations for enforcement to our uploaders. At minimum, before any of the remedies outlined at Commons:Copyleft trolling can be enacted, we should require have an explicit discussion at COM:ANU with formal consensus that the person in question is engaging in behavior that runs afoul of that guideline. Then it's time to sort out remedies. That consensus may emerge, but we don't have it yet, and process is important. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  20:35, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

If we are going to ban any enforcement of CC licenses, we may as well bar any CC licenses besides CC0. They are licenses. They come with rules, and if you break them the rights holder has the right to payment. If we bar enforcing the terms of the license, then why are we allowing people to upload using them? PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:41, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. As you point out, there's been multiple discussions and proposal having to do with this already. So I don't really see how the process isn't playing out or what exactly you think should have been done differently. From my perspective there's two issue here. 1. Diliff's actions 2. How the project deals with it and similar issues. From what I remember there was no consensus to sanction, ban, or otherwise deal with Diliff or their files. So watermarking images is really the only other option left outside of just throwing our hands in the air and allowing uploaders to extort re-users. I would have supported just banning Diliff and deleting their uploads myself, but there clearly isn't a consensus for that. So what other option is there outside of watermarking images or letting people get tooled? Because it doesn't seem like anyone has proposed anything else. Renaming the guideline is a separate issue IMO, but there should at least be an alternative if what people are currently trying isn't adequate for whatever reason. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:47, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

@Adamant1 If we are going to prohibit people enforcing the license on CC licenses, why are we allowing people to upload using the licenses? The only way to protect reusers who refuse to read the actual license is to only allow licenses that require no attribution or share alike status, e.g. CC0 or public domain. It makes no sense to ban people or watermark images for doing what is well within their rights, unless we want basically to treat it like they have no rights, in which case why do we lie about what licenses we accept? PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:51, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

If we are going to do this to protect reusers, we should ban all licenses that require attribution. Nothing else will protect people who just grab the image off of Wikipedia. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:53, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

@PARAKANYAA: There's obviously a difference between someone enforcing the license and them enforcing the license in a way that puts users at needless legal risk. I maybe wouldn't say it's our job to protect users more generally, but there is an expectation that if someone uses a file with a CC license that it won't lead to legal issues. If it were me, everything on here would be PD though. Anything outside of that is just needlessly complicated and obtuse. What are they on now, like the 5th version of the CC license? The whole thing is totally ridiculous. But we have to deal with people who take advantage of it or the site somehow. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:03, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that is what enforcing the license is, short of legal action there is little one can do. It would be nice if they asked first (and newer CC licenses do have a provision regarding that) but usually people will ignore it until legal notice is brought.

That expectation is false, and if we are doing that then we should ban the licenses altogether because it is against the spirit of the license. Punishing the content creators for enforcing rights that we allow them to have is absurd. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:08, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Copyleft trolling isn't allowed. That's kind of whole point here. Your acting like this whole revolves around a normal enforcement of a license when that's not what happened. No one cares if an uploader enforces their license by following the normal precedures to do so. That's not what this is about. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:26, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

"short of legal action there is little one can do"

You can send a message asking for the attribution or removal of the image, though a formal cease and desist letter is probably more effective. Immediately demanding lots of money is not essential. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:28, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Strange. I was under the impression that you would embrace such a change of tone, Rhododendrites? That we stop calling those people "trolls" (thus vilifiying them), when they aggressively send bills to re-users of their images without giving them chances to fix it? Our page "Copyleft Trolling" states that such an enforcement practice is out of step with our community's ideals of media that is free to share; and I wouldn't dream of changing those statements. Just, to stop vilifiying them.

It's not ANY form of Copyleft Enforcement that our guideline is intended to act against. The page lines out that there is a grey zone, and that we have to carefully consider each case. But we SHOULD act against those forms that directly ask for high lump sums of money due to minor licencing errors based on outdated CC licenses. We can still act against actual trolling while still calling it by a "nicer" name.

@Parakanyaa, I think you might have come upon this without prior knowledge of the cases. If you add up the money that the specific cases have allegedly "made" from their targets, you're talking about really large sums of money, enough to keep a florishing industry of full-fledged lawyers busy and expanding. The guideline in question is not a broadband remedy to get rid of everyone who checks re-users. It is intended to stop the worst excesses. --Enyavar (talk) 21:03, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

If it's not any form of enforcement that is the issue, then why would we move the title, indicating that it is all forms of enforcement?

I participated in the Diliff discussion. If we can ban users for enforcing rights that we give them then why allow those licenses at all? Why not ban all of the licenses that require attribution instead of doing it piecemeal? I do not think enforcing the rules on people who broke it is the "worst excesses", unless it's someone without a presence here who was clearly doing it as part of some scheme. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:13, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

That we stop calling those people "trolls" (thus vilifiying them) I do appreciate this intention, to be clear. Regarding aggressively send bills to re-users of their images without giving them chances to fix it being out of step with our community's ideals, there is absolutely a conflict there, but you're talking about a very broad scope that's more akin to the Flickr community guidelines that require contributors to the Commons to give people a chance to fix attribution. We can absolutely do that, but there's no consensus for that at this point. This section is trying to head off an assumption that such a consensus exists, and to steer folks who want to go in that direction to a formal proposal to achieve said consensus. It would be a profound change in our guidelines. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  21:36, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I disagree with watermarking Diliff's images. If the basic terms of CC licenses need to be clearer, they should be put in big red letters on every file page. I don't believe in damaging photos because reusers who don't do any kind of due diligence reuse images at their own risk. A big red warning could also appear at the top of every Commons page, if we think that's necessary, stating that people who reuse Creative Commons-licensed images without attribution may risk legal action from the authors. But at a certain point, it isn't our job to protect people from themselves.

I do agree that suing small reusers and not giving them a chance to correct their errors for a small fee is mean and disreputable, so I don't dispute the description of Copyleft trolls in the beginning of the article about them (I haven't read the other sections), but that's a different matter from defacing great photos. ---- Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:24, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

A few months ago someone proposed moving licenses to the top of pages but it was rejected. I'd be supprised if most people scroll down far enough to read the fine print though. And it doesn't help we allow for users to create their own licenses and terms that can be (and usually are) pretry different from the norm. Really though, user created licenses should be banned and the template moved to the top of the page. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:32, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

user created licenses should be banne — or they should at least go through some review process for approval. Nakonana (talk) 08:44, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

100% agree there's a design problem that could solve a lot of problems (actually talked a bit about that in a Wikicon presentation last year :) ), but [how do we stop people from violating licenses] and [how do we articulate and enforce expectations for enforcement within our community] are worth separate conversations. Here I think we're squarely talking about the latter. Specifically, it's about what we do when our uploaders are suing small reusers and not giving them a chance to correct their errors for a small fee, and where to draw the line. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  21:41, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

It’s worth pointing out that all that’s required to attribute a Diliff photo correctly is to include the text ‘Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0’ together with the picture. And that this very short and clear licensing statement is quite literally in bold text on every single image page for every photo he has ever uploaded. Are we really saying that the priority is to ‘protect reusers’ who couldn’t be bothered to follow these simple rules? And that hundreds of photos the community has judged to be of excellent quality should be defaced as a consequence of a handful of people’s failure to do this? Honestly speechless at how little this site seems to value its own contributors’ rights. Cmao20 (talk) 22:15, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Re-users are really no copyright experts. We see often enough that people misunderstand "public domain" for "image that is publicly accessible on a website". The CC-license templates oftentimes have a quite lengthy text, and as simple as that text sounds to us, it may still sound like complex legalese to a re-user (or at least it did sound like that to me in the beginning). Clear instructions might be more useful than listing license terms. The file description infobox has a "permission" field where one could insert such instructions in a very short and very clear statement, e.g., "To reuse this image on your website or anywhere else you are legally obliged to add the following text underneath or near the image: 'Image by [information from author field]. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0'. Not doing so might lead to legal consequences." Nakonana (talk) 09:01, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I made my position on this issue clear at the time. Copyleft trolling involves uploading images under ostensibly free licenses for the express purpose of trying to make money by fleecing others for minor attribution errors (often in deliberately complex licenses so that correct attribution is made hard). There's no evidence that Diliff did this, what he did do was hire a rather aggressive enforcement agency to chase up offenders because he was fed up of seeing his pictures being used with no attribution. I'm not too keen on what Pixsy seems to do as a company, but all copyright enforcement companies seem to operate fairly similarly, so our content creators don't have much other recourse than to use companies like this if they are interested in preserving rights over their images. (Edit: they could individually try to hunt down license violations themselves and get in contact with offenders, but we are a site of hobbyists and non-professionals who have other jobs and virtually no one has the time or expertise to do this!) If we are basically asking users to entirely give up their rights to enforce proper use of license agreements, then there's no real reason why we should allow licenses that require attribution at all, since we're basically saying the licenses don't really matter and there are no actual consequences for users who don't abide by them properly - we're just making an unprincipled exception so that Commons can still exist at all.

I don't buy the excuse about 'protecting reusers' - reusers have the responsibility to protect themselves by attributing images correctly! Actions have consequences, and where's the consideration about protecting the rights of our content creators, something that I think is just as important if not more important than protecting reusers who cannot be bothered to abide by a simple license agreement.

On the Diliff case, one has to remember that users like Diliff joined Commons very early when its main purpose was to provide images for use on Wikipedia. I can completely understand why it's upsetting to have uploaded a lot of pictures for the reason of trying to support an encyclopaedia project years ago, only to see them all over the internet with no, or even false, attribution. And I absolutely do think he, and people like him, have the right to try to enforce proper use of their images. Otherwise there's zero point in the license. We're basically doing a bait-and-switch on our own uploaders by saying yes you have the right to specify the use of a license, but you don't have the right to do anything about it. So basically you've released your pictures into the public domain, even though we lied about this by telling you that you could reserve some rights.

I thought we'd had this discussion months ago, and yet it keeps coming up - all I can say is that if Commons's policy shifts to deleting or forced-watermarking the uploads of content creators who have produced hundreds of featured pictures for the simple 'crime' of trying to make sure their pictures are not used illegally, then something has gone very, very wrong. Cmao20 (talk) 21:39, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, something has gone very, very wrong. Commons is part of the dream of creating an open-source, free-to-use encyclopedia. Hundreds of thousands of people donated text for Wikipedia, and also media files. And eventually, a few of those people found a loophole to charge people large lump sums of money, with no prior warning. Those few people are the ones which we have dubbed "trolls". And my suggestion was to stop calling all of them "trolls", and to stop vilifying them. While still maintaining our intended policy to mark those images so that re-users can be safe. Again: Copyleft Enforcing is not a crime, the Enforcers are not villains; and neither are Commons and Wikimedia the vehicles to make the big money. And this discussion will keep coming up until we can make sure that we find a balance between the various interests at play here. --Enyavar (talk) 21:52, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Sure, but ‘free to use’ means ‘can be used without paying money for the privilege’, it doesn’t mean ‘you can do absolutely anything you like with it and the original author has no right to stop you.’ Our job is not to keep re-users safe who are illegally using other people’s work. I think it’d be reasonable to punish content creators who are uploading content with deliberately incomprehensible licenses in the hope of shaking money out of violators, but this obviously isn’t what happened here, and yet extreme solutions such as deletion or forced watermarking keep being brought up. Mission creep at its finest.Cmao20 (talk) 22:01, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Example watermark

Example image, cropped with CSS, so the watermark is not visible.

Why are you talking about "punishing content creators"? As far as I'm aware, over at Flickr people have been getting banned for years already... while we were busy doing endless debate loops. Being talked about is not a punishment, and neither is the suggested watermarking. Please note the example images, the watermarks are benign and you can even still use the images in WP, without average readers noticing anything. The content is still there, it is fully accessible. It just got an extra extension so that people stop and think before uploading the cute birdie onto their school's biology class's project website and getting the shock of their lives a few weeks later. Naive re-users are not criminals either. The single one thing that the watermarking policy would change in the long run, is to stem the guaranteed money stream for content creators. --Enyavar (talk) 22:23, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I am talking about punishing content creators because this is simply what the proposals to watermark or delete photos do. And yes, naive re-users have broken the law. Just because Flickr takes a different stance than Commons is not an argument of any worth. The fact that other sites have an expansive definition of ‘copyleft trolling’ doesn’t mean that they are right or we should copy them. What if another photographer decides tomorrow that they are going to hire Pixsy’s services? Are we then going to spend lots of volunteer effort and time watermarking all their uploads too? Rather than just trust reusers to…read the image page and abide by the very simple licensing rules it literally states in bold text!

Commons should be trying to encourage more contributors to upload excellent content, not putting them off. I agree that this watermark is not hugely intrusive, unlike the previous watermark proposals last time we had this discussion. But it still sends a message that we disapprove of uploaders attempting to enforce their rights over their own pictures, which will rightly put people off from uploading at all. By all means punish actual copyleft trolling but this case only counts as ‘trolling’ if we stretch the term to the point of meaninglessness.

As an aside I note that Diliff’s pictures are currently illegally available on stock photo websites under false attributions at the time of writing. Malicious copyright theft of CC-by-SA images is rife on the internet and for someone as prolific as Diliff in contributing to the project I don’t blame him for a single second in trying to stem the tide. If Commons doesn’t want people to resort to companies like Pixsy then the site should do more to try to defend its content creators’ rights against this kind of illegal behaviour. Instead, we’re debating making it more difficult to preserve those rights. Hence, this proposal does indeed punish content creators, I won’t withdraw that statement. Cmao20 (talk) 22:41, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

The irony is, if the duck had been watermarked, the (supposedly illegal) uploaders would have to crop the image again before stock photo websites (or any other websites) are able to use it; and it would actually make Diliff's case against that kind of re-use much more valid. By including his preferred attribution right into the image, we would strengthen Diliff's case, not curtail it.

I'm fully unconcerned with my own (much less professional) uploads - so if a stock photo website illegaly profits off them I don't care. But yes, that kind of illegal use rightly concerns professional creators. It should. I support Diliff in combatting large faceless firms who profitteer off of him.

At the same time, the existence of a huge stock photo websites doesn't make it right for him to profiteer off of actual naive re-users who made honest mistakes. The ones that Jmabel calls "some guy with a blog" below. Or school projects and charities. While I can't claim that Diliff ever bankrupted charities: Verch did while boasting to give "free lessons in media awareness". Free lessons costing thousands for those naive re-users, and also costing reputation for Wikipedia where he spammed the predatory content into the articles. Again, to my knowledge, Diliff did not do that. But for sure, he goes after "some guy with a blog". In his defense, Diliff said he punishes the small guys because he couldn't get hold of big business. That doesn't render him criminal, but the morals? Ugh. Ughh.

A little watermark in less than 1‰ of our content makes us more trustworthy, not less. --Enyavar (talk) 23:19, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Maybe we can move past the renaming of the guideline, which seems like a good faith effort to tweak some language rather than to radically change the guideline. I think it would change the guideline, and is still a bad idea, but I understand now that wasn't the point. I hope this can be more of a discussion about the process of forming consensus that something falls short of community expectations, and thus how to pursue a remedy. I think we've seen a couple cases that we know are egregious, and Diliff is a case where opinions seem pretty well split, so how do we articulate the ways in which Diliff does or does not fall short of community expectations such that we can then decide whether or not a remedy is necessary? — Rhododendrites ^talk |  22:00, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

If you think there is a correct standard process (for verification, I assume), I'm happy to learn about it. You have started a collection of previous debates about this topic before. I too was against quickly doing a rogue action and just watermark away. That was why I started the thread at VP/Copyright. --Enyavar (talk) 22:34, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

No one asked me, but my take: when someone clearly has made a good faith effort to attribute a free-licensed photo, and has not done it quite right, it's pretty trollish to start with a threat of a lawsuit. We certainly would not tolerate someone within the Commons community who threatened a lawsuit every time another Commons contributor got confused as to just how to attribute a derivative work.

The more you are dealing with repeat offenders, professional media organizations that should know better, and/or media that cannot be dynamically corrected (books, movies), the more appropriate it is to reach for the legal hammer. But when "some guy with a blog" accurately attributes your photo to you (or to Wikimedia Commons), and doesn't understand that he is supposed to indicate the license in question (or your name), and there is no reason to think he's been down this road before? It seems to me that the appropriate thing to do is to ask him politely to fix the attribution, not to threaten a lawsuit. - Jmabel ! talk 22:50, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree that companies that ask for money for incorrect licensing such as Pixsy are quite authoritarian in their behaviour but I think in practice, given how rife copyright violation is on the internet (note above that Diliff’s pictures are currently illegally available under false attribution on stock image sites), most creators have a choice between: a) do nothing and give up any hope of enforcing their rights, b) spend a lot of time and energy on chasing up copyright violations on the internet and politely asking them to desist, with a low chance of much success and c) farm it out to a company like Pixsy. This is a volunteer site and people don’t have the time or expertise to chase up every copyright violation or to know what to do when they don’t get a productive reply, it’s entirely understandable to me that they would want to get a company to do that work on their behalf. I don’t think it’s fair to call that trolling, even if Pixsy is heavy-handed.

I won’t comment further for fear of being accused of bludgeoning the process but I’ll just add that if Commons is really serious about improving this situation it should provide an option d): have its own portal/mechanism by which uploaders can report copyright violations and Commons chases them up. That would remove companies like Pixsy from the equation. But I am sure people will invent a million reasons why we can’t do that… Cmao20 (talk) 23:04, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I don’t think Commons as an organization can do anything like Cmao20 suggests, but it can help photographers and set up examples of how copyright violations should be handled. Perhaps a warning could also be added to the license templates, about what legal action can be taken if an image isn’t credited properly according to the CC license. Something like “Failure to credit the photo properly, may result in the author contacting you and ask you to correct this. If the credit still isn’t made, the author could have grounds to bill you for the use of the image.” Sorry my “legalese” is very bad, but you get the idea.

When I see one of my photos used without the proper credit, I sometimes take action if it is used in a commercial context. I never bother with educational, small bloggers, charity or things I can support, only with large companies. I contact them, explain the situation and give them the choice to credit me properly or pay me a small sum, usually about what I would get for a photo if posted on Shutterstock or similar sites, for the one-time use of my photo. I don’t need to threaten with lawsuits or anything, we always come to an amicable agreement, the company is happy to be able to use the photo and I get a small compensation. This is the sort of things that Commons could help set up guidelines for if it wants to help photographers and “cut out” firms like Pixsy. It might also give some photo poachers a second thought if they see that there may be consequences. Btw, I don't think watermarking works at all, it's too easy to remove. --Cart (talk) 23:54, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Again, irony. I don’t think it’s fair to call that trolling was my original take that spawned this whole debate today. Sorry for spilling so many words on the topic, on a single day. --Enyavar (talk) 23:35, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

[undent] I don't believe in using special watermarks for Diliff's photos. If we decide to go down that road, every CC-licensed photo needs to have a watermark. Instead, the idea of putting the license on the top of every file page - and as I have suggested several times, in oversized red letters - is IMO a good idea. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:52, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that it matters where on the page the license is. To a photo snatcher they just look like invitations to "borrow" the photo. They only thing that could be of interest to them, is what the consequences might be if they don't follow the rules of the license. That should be made clear on the file page. Today there are no visible consequences. See my suggestion above. --Cart (talk) 00:05, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Your suggestion is good. Put a warning of legal action for not attributing photos to their authors in big red letters, then. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:08, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Agree with both Ikan and Cart's suggestions here, this would be great at combating this issue in future by giving uploaders more confidence and providing a deterrent factor. Cmao20 (talk) 00:14, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

You'd just be scaring off re-users that way. I've always been of the opinion that people on here bend over backwards to accommodate uploaders while treating everyone else like they don't matter and should just piss off. This whole thing is a perfect example. Don't put off uploaders by putting something at the bottom of a single users images, but then it's totally cool to warn re-users in big red letters about potential legal action if they don't reuse the image in a 100% perfect way. Right. Screw everyone but uploaders. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:16, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

That's like saying that people would be scared to park their cars for the threat of parking tickets, instead of learning how to park the right way. --Cart (talk) 00:27, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

That's a good analogy. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:30, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

@W.carter: You could say the same exact thing for putting a notice on the bottom of a couple of uploaders images. "That's like saying uploaders would be scared to park their car if there's an address on the curb." It's not an argument. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:39, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, as I said before, I'm not for water marking, it's too easy to remove. Second, I don't think we should be discussing this to solve the problems with just one or two users' photos. We need a more overall solution that will work in the long run for many more uploaders. I have never before seen Commons and Wikimedia make rules for just one or two users, changes in policy should be something that works for all users and re-users. --Cart (talk) 00:46, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

What's your solution, or would you rather just keep things exactly as they are? My main concern is not to deface photos, but I'm fine with clearer warnings. On Wikivoyage, when we have to upload otherwise free images of copyrighted stuff that lacks commercial FoP, I like to put warnings on the file pages to the effect of: "Not to be used commercially. If you nevertheless choose to use this file commercially, you do so at your own sole risk." I wish Commons had a large category of such photos that could be used non-commercially only, with such warnings, but the Wikimedia Foundation will probably never agree to that. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:29, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

1. Ban uploaders from creating their own licenses 2. Do what you suggested but maybe as a link to the license section next to the "From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository" at the top of a file 3. Move towards depreciating older CC licenses and consolidate some of the more obtuse ones having to do with public domain. Like there's 18 PD templates for works of the United States government.

At the end of the day there should be one or two PD licenses per country, one general purpose CC license, and that's essentially it. To use an analogy, you get the class you teach. This is just the natural outcome of the substantial amount of licensing options and "old west" mentality towards the whole thing on here. It's totally unrealistic to expect anyone who just wants to use an image for their personal blog, scrapbook, or whatever to sort through or understand it all. You have to design things for regular people though or there's just going to be problems. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:47, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Of course it would be great to have "license plates for Dummies" like you suggest. That would be heaven, but I don't think Commons has any say over the the 18 different PD licenses used by the United States government. And good luck with getting this administration to consolidate them. We need to work with realistic goals, things we can actually change. --Cart (talk) 00:57, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

@W.carter: From what I remember a good portion of those licenses were created by users on Commons purely for tracking purposes and aren't actually necessary. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:15, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

My view on this hasn't changed since last year. If there is a problem with reusers being sloppy about attribution, the solution isn't to punish the creators who notice the fact and do something about it. Making the license information more prominent might help, but it's not as though it's hidden. Mackensen (talk) 00:42, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

+1 - no idea why we should prioritise 'protecting reusers' who are using pictures illegally. No one who used these pictures legally has had any issues - people need to realise that not everything on the internet is free for them to use with zero consequences or requirements. There wouldn't be a Wikimedia Commons without the generosity of our uploaders and as long as the reuse requirements are not ridiculous and don't violate Commons licensing policy, we should support their right to seek to enforce proper attribution. Cmao20 (talk) 01:09, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

For those arguing that this is 100% on the side of reusers, a reminder that one of the only clear findings of consensus we have is to establish Commons:Copyleft trolling at a guideline. There is a point at which the behavior of copyright owners can go too far. This is about figuring out how to better draw lines and/or a process to figure out when someone "goes too far" (to use the most general possible language). — Rhododendrites ^talk |  01:10, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

That is why, while I made my suggestion about warnings above, I also hinted about some general guidelines for how authors should behave if their work was used in an improper way. I don't think we have any such help right now. Photographers are usually not trained in legal matters and they often have trouble writing good letters about the situation to companies using their work, so they turn to services like Pixsy that enforce too much. Even a simple message to copy would be a start. Both parties need some help with this and clear guidelines. --Cart (talk) 01:20, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Agree with Cmao. If ever "copyleft trolls" are a problem for Commons, it's surely one of the lesser problems with users. Unlike harassment, hatespeech, and, more generally, human stupidity.

I also oppose any watermarking of Diliff's images, and if we have "copyleft tolls" here on Commons I still don't think Diliff is one of those. For me, he is just a formerly active Wikipedian with lots of useful contributions, who meanwhile ceased to contribute actively. If he is enforcing his copyright via Pixsy, it's still his right to do. As for me, true "copyleft trolling" is some kind of a "business model" including single-purpose account(s) with careless uploads and aggressive pushing of pictures in Wikipedia aricles + Wikidata items -- Livio & socks would be a good example for that, if we had straight evidence that he takes money from re-users (I don't know if he does, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if he does).

But: if that's an existent "business model", I doubt it's a really profitable one, and apart from a few real trolls who are easy to reveal (such as Livio) that's lesser a problem for Commons. The community should appreciate real contributors and acknowledge that they have a copyright and the rght to enforce it if necessary. --A.Savin 04:06, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree with this. I'd add that people who post blatantly stolen images either maliciously or because they have no understanding of copyright and think it's OK to just grab everything they saw on a website and others who request deletion of images for nonsensical reasons (or worse, improperly speedily delete images for meritless reasons after they were duly kept in discussions) are also much bigger problems than people who aggressively enforce their copyrights. If you violate someone's copyright and they go after you, that's unfortunate for you, but they have the right to do it. I remember back in the 1990s Usenet days, there was a user who went by Muad_Dib who posted thousands of photos stolen from Penthouse.com and was sued and had to settle for some $100,000 in damages plus an online apology. That was a very expensive lesson for him. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:54, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree with getting Commons:Copyleft trolling renamed. I find it a misguided term that is embarrassing to link to. Why use neologisms? Call the page Commons:Copyright enforcement and discuss trolls/copyleft/uploader's rights/reusers abuse of license terms there.

A concern seems to about protecting unaware reusers. Education is important for that:

• Redesigning the file page so that licensing is clear
• I don't mind a prominent template on the file page ("This creator aggressively enforces licensing terms")
• Getting Wikipedias to put a credit/license line in file captions - why would an oblivious reuser do that if Wikipedia itself doesn't obviously credit anyone for anything (text or files).

I don't agree with watermarking Diliff's photos. Although providing an on-the-fly watermarking service for reusers would be useful, picking and choosing which images to watermark may be counter-productive. If A.Savin gets annoyed with Commons can they send out a few $900 demands to infringers to get their 1000s (?) of high quality files watermarked? Commander Keane (talk) 07:46, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

As an example: Norwegian Wikipedia is already crediting photographers in most of their captions, this is what it looks like. They use a template, byline. --Cart (talk) 11:25, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I checked the files of mine that they use. None of the uses had that template. In the articles where I found my images, only some historic images were attributed. –LPfi (talk) 18:26, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Everything above tldr. i just have one question:

is there an agreement on where the line is, between "acceptable copyright enforcement" and "unacceptable copyright enforcement"? RoyZuo (talk) 07:56, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Sure. Acceptable enforcement means appropriate response to the infringement: "some guy eith a blog", charities, and even small-scale private business websites shouldn't get 900-1500 $€₤ bills out of the blue, but a fair warning first. (Sure, big publishers are a different matter.)

Inacceptable behaviour: systematically enforce CC licenses with no warning; usually by abusing loopholes of outdated CC licenses.

Also @A.Savin: yes this is actually a very profitable business model to the point that several agencies/law firms are specialized in enforcement, notably Pixsy. Not addressing this very real problem makes it worse because more people will begin to participate in it, upload photos on Commons just for the money. --Enyavar (talk) 12:32, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

If you upload 100 photos on Commons and do nothing else, then after 5 years and running Google search for all 100 the likelihood of finding ONE of that photos being used somewhere on the Web w/o attribution is ... pretty low. If you upload 10,000 and do nothing else and wait 10 years before the search, then yes perhaps this likelihood is a tiny little bit higher. --A.Savin 13:39, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Sure, the 10k approach you describe was what Marco Verch did: pay volunteers to take and upload as many photos as possible, then use those stock images as bait on Commons.

However, we are not talking about any random photos of odd potatoes or nice sunsets... We are talking technically flawless images of popular places/objects. Keyword SEO and used in as many language versions as possible, too. That is actually what Commons expects the perfect contributors to do.

With that in mind, please re-calculate the odds of images finding re-use. And again, the authors of the two images should reserve all rights to bill malicious moneygrabbers who steal the images for posters. Yet they also bill innocent naive re-users in a manner we wish to prevent from happening. --Enyavar (talk) 21:47, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi, Here is my experience in copyright enforcement. I rarely check or try to correct uses of my pictures, but when I have done, I usually got attribution fixed within a day. The exception was a French political party using of my picture for their election material, online and printed, and not doing anything even after 3 mails. So I hired a lawyer who got some money from them. I was quite pissed off in this case, as the they are not a poor blogger, but a professional organization which can even bother to hire a photographer for their business. So I disagree with "copyright enforcement is difficult". It is quite easy and straightforward. However I don't know the solution for copyleft trolling. Yann (talk) 10:48, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

The solution to copyright trolling is to have fair legislation, which doesn't allow it, or at least doesn't make it profitable, The problem is that the big commercial players want to be able to hit hard on anybody who uses their material, and they have quite some lobbying power. –LPfi (talk) 18:34, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

•  Oppose watermarking any of images on Commons. So-called "copyleft trolls" is not a problem for Commons. Hence, we shouldn't delete/damage useful content. So-called "copyleft trolls" is a problem only for goofy/irresponsible "reusers" Юрий Д.К 13:17, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

  And naïve users, i.e. most of the people out there. People in general don't learn even the basics of copyright law, except those who make an effort for professional reasons, or out of interest such as many here. –LPfi (talk) 18:37, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

• I would also like to add that having author's name and/or license in the image caption on Wikipedia's pages is simply a waste of time and space. Every time someone has used one of my images in a less than good fashion, I have got the comment: "But I didn't take it from Wikipedia, I just found it online." Those looking for images to use, do so online and they end up at the Commons file page, or they search directly on Commons for good photos. Our QI and FP categories are like catnip for images poachers. We are literally telling them where the best images to steal are. In any case, they always need to go to the file page to download the image, so any info, licenses or warnings should go on those pages. Those grabbing the image usually also need to download it by clicking on the image or one of the size links below it. A first step could be to place a warning at the top of the page that opens then. That way the warning is not too visible/intrusive for those who just click on the image from an article, but will appear only when you open it larger. Just an idea. --Cart (talk) 13:46, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Part 2

• This thread is all over the place now. One of the things we do have consensus for is that uploading images with the intention of exploiting free licenses to sue people who use our media is not acceptable on Commons. We also seem to have consensus that this is a very difficult and even divisive issue. What we don't have consensus for is a one-size-fits-all solution and especially what to do in edge cases that we can call something like "aggressive copyright enforcement". There's also pretty clear consensus that we could do more to explain/present terms of a CC license better. IMO I don't think the opinions that "it's all the reusers fault" or "everyone has to agree not to take legal action/give people a chance to fix the error" are that helpful as they're extremely unlikely to gain consensus and thus fill these discussions with emotion rather than working towards a realistic compromise/solution. For anyone who thinks Diliff is exemplary of what people are talking about when they say "copyleft trolling is a problem", you could read something like this piece in Computer Weekly that involves Commons (or any of a number of posts by Cory Doctorow on the same subject, or the statement Creative Commons put out itself condemning "[CC] license enforcement as business model"). This is all to say, the reason the conversation about Diliff is so difficult is because his case is not "copyleft trolling" but a form of "aggressive copyright enforcement" that in some ways looks the same as copyleft trolling. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  14:19, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

  Well, this is the Commons so you can't expect a clear streamlined debate. But if we are to use Diliff's photos as a first case trial, why don't we start with putting a template on his file pages, stating something like "This photographer uses aggressive copyright enforcement, please read the terms of the CC license carefully and follow them." --Cart (talk) 14:37, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

  All of his files ARE using a template, stating very clearly how Diliff wants his images being attributed upon re-use. This very clear template hasn't stopped people from misunderstanding or overlooking those directions, not the least because Commons doesn't allow license texts at the top of pages. About a dozen times upon receiving bills from Diliff's lawyer without prior warning, people went to Diliffs talk page on Wikipedia and asked questions: That they were sorry; that they honestly didn't know; that they would fix the attribution (actually legally impossible: you have to pay up AND remove the image that was "violated"); and if Pixsy was even authorized by Diliff; and yes also that they couldn't afford the payment.

  Those were not the image poachers who blatantly steal images, those were naive re-users who (rightly) expected to find "free" images on Commons and just didn't realize the catch that they had to exactly reproduce Diliff's licence text including the links. Forgotten the attribution? Minor errors, or creative solutions like maybe alt-text? Nope: PAY UP.

  We also have not a clue how many cases Diliff pursued and settled off-site. The idea of tools to help Diliff* with managing re-users? He has no need for tools, help-pages or guidance to settle his cases. He has efficient and automated workflows, off-site. And so do the other copyleft-enforcers we're talking about. I have read from your statements that you (@W.carter: ) have a much more mindful approach, and as a result there probably won't be distressed calls for help towards the Commons community. Content whose copyrights are gently enforced, with warnings? That won't bear forced watermarks.

  And that is where the watermark comes in: Within Wikimedia projects, we have templates to hide it. Outside of Wikimedia, the naive re-user can simply place it in their social media post or wherever, and be sure that they fully reproduced the correct license. While the malicious re-user who crops the watermark on purpose? Yeah, that last one must fully deal with the consequences on their own. --Enyavar (talk) 21:11, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, Diliff's files do contain a template about the license, but it's totally lame and information-wise a disaster. To call something "Summary" in very big letters is misleading and makes you just skip that part thinking that it's a summary of the text about the image. The big letters should say: "How to use this file", there should be colors and at least some frame, perhaps a picture. As mentioned above, the warnings about use needs to be so well designed that even the dumbest re-user will notice and understand it. Take a look at some more intimidating pages created by people who are more experienced at layout: Example 1 (heck, even I would think twice before doing anything with that file!) and Example 2. If you redesign the licenses, please let it be done by people who know about such designs. --Cart (talk) 12:33, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

•  Comment And by the way, since Diliff's files and behavior is causing so much trouble for Commons, can't we simply upgrade the design of his template per above to make it stand out more on the page? I mean that text is under the usual CC here on the site, and even if we are very polite and don't edit each other's things more than necessary, we have after all discussed everything from deleting his files to adding watermarks. Just making that template more noticeable/"legal-looking"/(frightening?) isn't really such a big infringement on his rights, since it is forcing us to have these long discussions. --Cart (talk) 12:55, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

One particularly nasty detail of Diliff's license text is the Suggested attribution: "Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0" - which is technically insufficient as attribution because it only names the license without linking to it. That feels very close to a deliberate trap. If Pixsy is going after users for that deficiency, we have every reason to take action to disarm that trap. Omphalographer (talk) 18:31, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@Omphalographer: I  Support disarming that trap.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:29, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Omphalographer and Jeff G., I went ahead and made a bold move and upgraded User:Diliff/Licensing a bit. Not so much (hopefully) I risk getting blocked or something, it's all very revertable if people think I went too far. It stands out a bit better now. --Cart (talk) 19:38, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I like the idea, but it's incompatible with the way the template is used in some of Diliff's image descriptions, e.g. File:Skylark 1, Lake District, England - June 2009.jpg. I've rolled back these changes and replaced "CC BY-SA 3.0" with a URL to the license to make it maximally clear that the URL needs to be included. (The name of the license is not required.) Omphalographer (talk) 23:26, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I think a lot of the above is very unrealistic. Have a look at what I've put in Category:Images by Joe Mabel as a media source. I believe all of the uses mentioned here correctly mentioned my name (I might be wrong about one or two); I would be surprised if more than a dozen or two got the licensing entirely correct.

People—even well-intentioned people—simply do not understand how to properly indicate a CC license. This should not result in hundreds of threatened lawsuits. - Jmabel ! talk 17:29, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I believe the key is to find a fair balance protecting creators’ rights to enforce proper attribution while not discouraging users or complicating legitimate image use. A clear, agreed-upon process should be established to determine when license enforcement crosses the line providing users with a warning and the chance to correct mistakes before taking drastic actions like deletion or watermarking. The issue also lies in the lack of visibility for license information. Previously, clicking an image on Wikipedia would lead directly to the Commons page where author and license details were prominently displayed. Now, the image opens in a popup for a larger view, which significantly reduces that visibility. This change was made without community consultation, and actions taken outside Commons are beyond our control. Limiting uploads or adding watermarks is not a valid solution; instead, we should work to restore or improve the visibility of license information on Commons Wilfredor (talk) 01:13, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

•  Comment It was discussed above by User:Ikan Kekek, User:Adamant1, User:Rhododendrites and other to put the license template at the top. I think it would be better to edit the layout of the license templates instead so there is a more clear warning for example mark the words in {{Cc-by-sa-4.0}} so it says "YOU MUST..." in bold and red text or a text saying "To meet the requirements you usually need a line like: "Photo/work by <insert author>. License: <link to license added by template>". Perhaps someone could make a suggestion so we can see how it could look? --MGA73 (talk) 10:30, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I just noticed that such a suggestion have been made at Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Extra_clear_instructions_for_attribution. --MGA73 (talk) 13:36, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

•  Comment It should be made clear that copyleft trolling and copyleft enforcement are fundamentally different. Copyleft trolling is actually copyright enforcement following a copyleft trap. Copyleft enforcement could very well be encouraged - we could even have a page for reporting wrong attribution and templates in place for easier notification by the community. Note that Pixsy only pursues compensation for CC 4.0 files if the user shows they've reached out to the transgressor to no avail. To be honest, if you've reached out to someone and they ignored you for 30 days, really, it's hard to believe that said transgressor is acting in good faith. Release the Pixsy hounds, for all I care.

Beyond that, I'd also support implementing a much clearer warning on file pages stating that correct attribution is a condition of reuse and that failing to meet this requirement may constitute a copyright violation. This would help ensure that reusers are aware of their obligations up front and reduce unintentional misuse. Rkieferbaum (talk) 17:26, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

May constitute a copyright violation and could incur legal penalties to the reuser, including heavy fines. That or other words to that effect should be in the warning text. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:20, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@Cart, Rkieferbaum, and Wilfredor: Putting more warning text on the file pages won't solve copyleft trolling. Many of the people who have been targeted by copyleft trolling were actually trying to follow the rules, but made a mistake. For example, the most recent victim of Diliff apparently did credit him, but the credit was accidentally hidden under the border of the website so it couldn't be seen. Many other victims have credited images to "Wikipedia" or "Wikimedia Commons" because they didn't understand how attribution is supposed to work. I myself have incorrectly attributed images by accidentally listing the wrong license. I strongly support enforcing copyrights, but none of those conditions should result in someone facing demands for thousands of dollars without any opportunity to fix the error. Nosferattus (talk) 02:23, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

We have no control over what happens outside the Commons Wilfredor (talk) 02:57, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

If we watermark an image, the attribution stays with it outside of Commons, thus preventing copyleft trolling. Nosferattus (talk) 04:57, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Watermarking photos undermines the core principle that images should remain freely accessible. For years, I have personally removed watermarks from images in our commons collection because they introduce distracting visual noise and diminish the photos' natural appeal, encourage self-promotion over genuine sharing, and ultimately contradict our foundational philosophy Wilfredor (talk) 11:15, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

distracting visual noise is no problem: together with the watermarking, we can add a link users to provide the template that removes the white attribution line (when used in a wiki, see the example image above). remain freely accessible: well, the photos will still be freely accessible. However, once watermarked, they are no longer an instant free money generator for those uploaders who violate our foundational philosophy. --Enyavar (talk) 12:46, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@Wilfredor: If people stop using Commons because it has a reputation for being a trap (which is already the reputation it has on Reddit), what good are our founding principles? Free images that no one wants to use are worthless. Do you ever wonder why people are willing to pay $50 to use a public domain image from Alamy or Getty instead of getting it for free from us? This is why. I have also removed lots of watermarks from photos and am not a fan of watermarking. In this situation, however, it is the least bad solution. Nosferattus (talk) 22:18, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

We’re everyday people who donate our time without expecting any compensation, we aren’t employees, and comparing us to large corporations isn’t fair. Everyone here gives what they can. IMHO every project has a lifecycle, and the mismanagement of WMF has contributed to a decline in its user base factors that are ultimately beyond our control Wilfredor (talk) 22:46, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Also: the type of watermarks that are being proposed here are a strip along the bottom of the image, not an overlay like some stock image sites use on their previews - see File:Skylark 1, Lake District, England - June 2009.jpg for an example. They don't intrude on the image content, and are trivial to remove if you're attributing the image in another way. Omphalographer (talk) 23:19, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Here's my 2 cents:

1. make a policy or guideline that requires commons users who attempt copyright enforcement to:
   1. first warn or request copyright offenders to rectify the mistakes by any non-monetary methods (re-adding attribution, making public announcements / addenda...) within a reasonable time frame (such as 2 weeks or more?)
   2. only after #1.1 fails can commons users start monetary / legal threats.
2. set up a group of users, who will be tasked with reviewing complaints against commons users who fail to follow #1 (issuing threats without first serving warnings / requests). if the complaints are deemed true, then submit the case for the community to decide whether those commons users should be banned.
3. if banned, delete all uploads.

RoyZuo (talk) 08:48, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

A problem with (3) is that it would provide a way around an otherwise perpetual licence: courtesy deletion declined → start copyleft trolling → image deleted. –LPfi (talk) 06:52, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Without my proposal, they can still start copyleft trolling and get images deleted, no? RoyZuo (talk) 14:19, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

• I got pinged. I've read through the above discussion and am pleased it seems more reasonable than the previous one. But then I see Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Copyleft trolling - proceeding to watermark images and despair what a few hot heads can do. Watermarking is a dumb ass solution. Go ask WMF to help you with a better UI for images on Wikipedia/Commons that informs our readers and potential image users of what they need to do. That solution works for all of us with CC licenced images. And you need to stop with the "copyleft troll" immaturity real soon before someone ends up on the wrong side of a libel action and finds out how much being stupid and hot headed on the internet can cost. Trolling is the deliberate posting of supposedly free images in order ensnare those who use them and fail to follow the licence conditions to the letter and dot and crossed tee. Diliff did not do that and we have no evidence (actual evidence, not random posts on the internet) that anyone making a licence attribution mistake has been perused. Diliff created thousands of professional-class images that are very widely used on Wikipedia and elsewhere according to the licence conditions. The previous big discussion involved someone who admitted they thought the images were free to use without attribution. Which had all the intellectual weight of me assuming that since the cookies are free at the church fair, they are also free at my local Tesco.

Wrt Flickr comparisons, Flickr is a community project that exists as long as photographers want to belong and pay. Commons is an image repository. That many of the images were created by people who are users here is a bonus but on Flickr licenced images can only be uploaded by the creator. That isn't the case here. It makes our ability to sanction the image creator harder. Many of the suggestions made are off the cut off your nose to spite your face variety and ignore the many tens of thousands of re-uses of Diliff's images elsewhere that are licence-compliant. The copyleft-zealot-hotheads are only going to end up ruining things for all those users (and potential users) because, what, a mere handful of people were Stupid On The Internet and went to Diliff's user page to complain.

And I repeat that if Commons does something stupid with Diliff's images like watermarking -- the above linked post has the idiocy of a watermark saying this attribution must be retained, and then immediately below, an example of using it on Wikipedia with the attribution cropped off. I thought that level of stupidity was restricted to US presidents -- then all that will happen is Wikipedia will fork the images without watermark and Commons is no longer being used as a repository for them. It might even provoke English Wikipedia to decide to dispense with Commons, who clearly can't be trusted to host an image repository without vandalising the images that don't belong to them.

Please move on with some of the more productive ideas on this page, about informing users of all our licenced images. Rants and vandalism belong on Twitter. Commons is an image repository of images with a valid licence. Those licenced images are still copyright. Users who have a problem with that are welcome to start their own CC0/PD project. -- Colin (talk) 13:54, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

The copyleft-zealot-hotheads are only going to end up ruining things for all those users @Colin: Realistically what's the actual effect of putting a watermark at the bottom of an image going to be? It's not like whomever uses the reuses an image can't just crop the watermark out. Big whoop-de-doo. Your the one acting like people are being "zealot-hotheads" by supporting watermarking. Are you seriously going to act like someone having to edit an image to use it is that much of an issue? Come on. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:14, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Watermarking photos is a really stupid idea to force people to give attribution. It dirties the image, alters the original, and introduces the risk of invisible modifications (such as changes in color space, image quality, compression, or even invisible metadata alterations that can damage the file). What are we supposed to do with TIFF images, for example? It also contradicts the principle of preserving works in their pure, unaltered statesomething that is especially important in archives and museums. Nobody wants to use images with added text. What happens if someone wants to create a derivative work? Does the watermark stay and an additional attribution gets added on top of it? Technically, adding a watermark can be seen as an additional restriction, which is not allowed under licenses like CC BY or CC BY-SA. Wilfredor (talk) 10:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons offers to download an image in different resolutions... what if one could add an additional download option labeled "image with examplary license conforming attribution" which would download a watermarked image? Nakonana (talk) 12:09, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

{{[ping|Nakonana}} "examplary" is not a word, so I'm not sure what you mean here. "exemplary"? "example of"? Something else? - Jmabel ! talk 17:59, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I assume "exemplary" is what was meant. I don't agree. A watermarked image is not exemplary – if it were, why isn't Wikipedia attributing authors in bylines? Rather, the way we do it here, with file description pages, is exemplary. WMF has added the functionality of showing an attribution line, which is the crucial thing. The issues are whether people understand in the first place that they must attribute properly and that attributing Commons isn't enough, and our user interface constructing licence-compliant attribution lines. –LPfi (talk) 07:04, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I meant "exemplary". I don't mean the image to be exemplary but the attribution text. Such an option would make it easy to attribute an image correctly even to people who otherwise can't be bothered to educate themselves about correct licensing. Like an "idiot-safe" method: if you don't know how to re-use the image, just download this version of the image and use that, 'cause it already has all the required information. Nakonana (talk) 10:55, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Content of users who act against Commons guidelines

I think before we can decide how to handle uploads of users who aggressively and with monetary interest enforce their copyright we need a general guideline how to proceed with uploads of users who violate our guidelines in cases where the content itself does not violate any guideline. For new contributions it is clear that a blocked user can not upload new files, but what do we do with existing uploads? GPSLeo (talk) 07:00, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

"For new contributions it is clear that a blocked user can not upload new files." If that's clear, why did a proposal to delete photos by Livio Andronico and socks get voted down in flames? I don't think it's clear, because the fact that a user is blocked doesn't make the photo violate any policy or guideline inherently, especially if it's COM:INUSE, as many of Livio's photos are. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:40, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

GPSLeo, sorry: I don't understand the whole question. We have a guideline about Copyleft trolling. We do not usually block copyleft trolls. Nor do we usually take down their uploads. That is the exact reason in the first place, why we should watermark those uploads that are effectively Copyright traps. If that little can be agreed upon, I have no problem with even known Copyleft trolls continue to upload images - we'd just watermark them. --Enyavar (talk) 13:00, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@Enyavar: Livio Andronico is User:Livioandronico2013. This user was blocked, and then globally locked for harassment and abuse mainly in the featured pictures contest. Nothing to do with copyleft trolling. However we should block and ban copyleft trolls, i.e. people who create content under a free license for the sole purpose of suing reusers. While I don't like people who use Pixsy or similar companies to enforce their copyright, they are not all copyleft trolls. Specifically Diliff didn't upload pictures on Commons for the sole purpose of suing reusers. Yann (talk) 13:42, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Not for the sole purpose, no. Yet acting that way, now. And if we want those pictures on Commons, we cannot just ignore that behaviour that harms our users and our reputation. --Enyavar (talk) 14:00, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

If a user acts against Commons in a way that we decide that we forcibly alter all uploads of this user (by adding a watermark) I can not imagine a case where we do not block this user. GPSLeo (talk) 14:32, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

There is a problem with the watermark solution: CC-BY(-SA) requires attribution as prominent as for other similar contributions. Deliberately attributing copyright trolls more prominently than other contributors seems very much backwards. –LPfi (talk) 07:08, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

The license requires the other content not covered by the license, to be similarly attributed? I don't think that is meant that way; this is a provision to not skimp down on the required attribution of the licensed material.

But even if that is the case, attributing the non-CC-licensed material would still depend on the discretion of the re-user. Meanwhile within Wikimedia projects, we need to promote the usage of the soft-crop method via the CSS template, as shown in the example above. --Enyavar (talk) 21:24, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

April 06

10,000 files to be categorized, please

A small team started in November 2024 to add at least one category to the files that had been shown in Category:All media needing categories as of 2018. We have reduced the number from 40,000 to 10,000, and now we need the help of experienced users, please, to add categories to the remaining files. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 10:05, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

If you encounter files with Cyrillic descriptions or names add them to Category:Media needing categories (Cyrillic names). That's the category which I'm trying to work through systematically. (Already cleared the sub-categories for Belarusian and Ukrainian language files.) Nakonana (talk) 10:11, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

FYI: I have been working on "Media needing categories" for years, and my experience is that using Wikidata is very helpful. In the search box you can enter the name of the person or the relevant word of the topic in any language. The result can ideally be the Commons category or a link to a Wikipedia article or a page within Wikidata. If there is no result, it depends on the description of the image what should be added as a category. If there is a positive result, I add the image to Wikidata if there is no image or a very bad image. I also check if the image can be useful on a Wikipedia page if there is no direct transfer from Wikidata to Wikipedia (for example the English and German WP). Wouter (talk) 13:39, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Added a link to its parent cat at Commons:Categorization requests. One could also build various search queries for that category by which categorization becomes easier for various subsets. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:43, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I've gone and categorized about ten files. It might seem little help, but I don't have much time. Anyway, if all readeers entered and categorized some files, a great decrease would be done.

And don't be shy! There are stuff in Cyrillic, yeah, but quite some files are pretty straightforward to categorize. I found one from a football team in Colombia, a place clearly in Chechnya, a monument related to castellers in Barcelona... And a lot of things I don`t know, but maybe you, you or you are familiar with that tree, language, flag or ''chisme''.

Good luck!

B25es (talk) 16:44, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

One can use the information contained in the image, but one misses the location and date for more extensive categories. Example: File:Homecoming (44495938).jpeg. The only location clue is the German text.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:02, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Please add such images to Category:Unidentified locations or a relevant subcategory, where folks including myself would be happy to try to track it down! Sam Walton (talk) 10:58, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

The categorisation team is growing, but we still need to categorise 9,000 files, please, from "I" to "Z", or by adding categories to more obvious candidates in between. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 11:47, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Besides it only being up to 2018, aren't there also many files that don't have categories that aren't in these by year cats? Example: Special:Diff/1019907777. Also, many files have a category but not the category/ies most relevant / where the file would be most useful or likely to be looked for. Overall, I think on the issue of missing categories, some bot is needed that suggests categories (if not adding a subset automatically) that then only need to be checked with a short click. Otherwise it won't scale to even just the files in those by year cats and will take too much time while many cats will get missed being added. See also Suggested edits (e.g. here). Prototyperspective (talk) 14:12, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree that a bot would be usedful, especially for persons, whose name is listed in the file name, on Wikidata and in the article. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 14:35, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I think it is useful when such a bot takes also a look in the general categories like Category:People with for example a file as File:Luiza Avetisyan phd.jpg. Or Category:Men with for example File:Kerényi Attila.jpg. In that case there is a link to Wikidata and Wikipedia. Wouter (talk) 15:20, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Start now, or you might miss the opportunity to categorise 8,000 files, please, from "K" to "Z", or by adding categories to more obvious candidates in between. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 17:03, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I have been categorizing files sporadically but mostly later years.

Please be sure to check for copyvios if applicable (if it looks suspicious). These are rather common among uncategorized files. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:25, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

April 11

Easy collage

Whats the easiest way to go about it if i need a collage comsisting of three photos to use on another project--Trade (talk) 14:15, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

@Trade: Depends what you mean by "collage". Obviously, the general case would require something like GIMP or Photoshop, but if you mean all aligned in the normal fashion and with no overlaps, there are a lot of possibilities that can be done with just the capabilities of HTML tables. A modern version of something like File:Seattle and the Orient 58.jpg could probably be achieved with some very complicated CSS, but I'd suggest it was easier to build it in GIMP. - Jmabel ! talk 18:38, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Most languages have Template:Photo montage (enwiki example). That nicely handles alt text for each individual image, so it's probably better than a custom collage for most simple cases. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 19:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Doesnt work for Wikidata Trade (talk) 21:24, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Some projects, such as Wikipedia in Swedish, don't want collages as default illustrations, so you might want not to add such collages as image (P18) (but perhaps as montage image (P2716)). –LPfi (talk) 19:47, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I haven't checked but most likely it's some website among the results when searching for "collage maker" or sth similar. (Things to consider is whether it reduces the resolution and whether there is any watermark.) Prototyperspective (talk) 21:30, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Photopea ReneeWrites (talk) 19:21, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

April 12

Updating needed ––– outdated files

There are many files that need an update, including many that are used a lot across mainspace Wikipedias.

Could there be some coordinated / routine efforts to update outdated things like outdated charts that are used?

I think this is really important, posting about it already even though there could be more info and guidance. Comment if you have an ideas or more queries / tools that could be useful for this.

Priority things to update (examples):

• Scan for images requiring an update that are in use in mainspace (cat Files that need updating has over 1000 files directly in it)
• Scan for charts showing data only up to 2013 that are in use in mainspace (you can change the year)

See the somewhat-new Category:Wikipedia updating.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 12:28, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

• Scan for 2000s maps of the world in use (many of those outdated datagraphics with newer version available; note that currently in v2 of GLAMorous only the first 10 images are loaded – see phab:T391827)

Prototyperspective (talk) 13:05, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

• New WikiProject proposal for things like this on Wikipedia: Proposing a new WikiProject Data Visualization. I've linked to here from there and if you're interested in participating in this WikiProject, you could leave a comment there.

Prototyperspective (talk) 14:36, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Administrator conduct expectations and desysopping

This is a follow-up to Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2025/02#Expanding an explanation on the De-adminship policy and meta:Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Cases/A.Savin#Motions.

I agree that the change previously proposed shouldn't have been made (if for no other reason than we don't have or seem to want an ArbCom). But I think some changes are warranted: both in their own right, and to address the U4C's concerns. I've made a proposal below. Some commentary:

• It is much more minimal than the previous proposal.
• It also doesn't say outright that the standards for administrator conduct are/ought to be higher than for non-admins: I think that would be more appropriate to say in either COM:Civility or COM:A than the de-adminship policy. That said, if this is a community expectation (as I hope it is), the final bullet would cover it.
• I added the word "egregiously", as if an admin acts badly enough on one occasion, I think the community ought to have the power to de-admin them. (Of course, if e.g. the community is persuaded that it won't happen again, the community doesn't have to de-admin them.)
• The logistics, including the requirement of some consensus at a prior discussion, are unchanged from the current policy.

Here are the changes. The left is the current policy, the right is my proposal.

−

== De-adminship process as a result of abuse of power == In the rare case that the community feels that an administrator is acting against policy and routinely abusing their status, it may seek de-adminship in the same way as adminship is sought. Please note this process should ''only'' be used for serious offenses in which there seems to be some consensus for removal; for individual grievances, please use [[Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems]]. De-adminship requests that are opened without prior discussion leading to some consensus for removal may be closed by a bureaucrat as inadmissible. [[Commons:Administrators/Archive|Previous cases]] may provide some guidance.

+

== De-adminship due to misconduct == In the rare case that the community feels that an administrator should lose their adminship because they routinely or egregiously: * abuse their status as an administrator, * violate Commons policy, * violate the [[wikimedia:Universal Code of Conduct|Universal Code of Conduct]], or * otherwise violate community expectations of administrators it may seek de-adminship in the same way as adminship is sought. Please note this process should ''only'' be used for serious offenses in which there seems to be some consensus for removal; for individual grievances, please use [[Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems]]. De-adminship requests that are opened without prior discussion leading to some consensus for removal may be closed by a bureaucrat as inadmissible. [[Commons:Administrators/Archive|Previous cases]] may provide some guidance.

Thoughts? —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 23:00, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

(Pinging previous discussion participants: @Wilfredor, Bedivere, Alachuckthebuck, DarwIn, and Barkeep49: . —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 23:00, 12 April 2025 (UTC))

I highly doubt that this proposed change will be accepted, especially considering active administrators voting or involvement in the discussion. Additionally, there's already an excessive reliance on the UCC. Personally, I believe that fewer rules would significantly benefit the project, and ideally, fewer administrators as well. Unfortunately, Wikipedia/commons has increasingly become more bureaucratic, burdened by countless rules, templates, and individuals compulsively adding unnecessary templates in the usertalks. I imagine this observation applies broadly to Wikipedia in general. Please refrain from pinging me about this issue in the future. I'm not interested in sparking any controversy; I'm already aware that my viewpoints can be particularly polarizing. --Wilfredor (talk) 23:11, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

It's much better worder now @Mdaniels5757. I support this proposal. Bedivere (talk) 23:13, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I also support this proposal. I don't see this as excessive reliance on the UCC, merely putting our guidelines more in line with it, a criticism from U4C which has jurisdiction here as we as a community do not want a ArbCom. One of the things about the amount of rules we have is that this project supports more than 200 others, so some things here would have a big impact on other projects. Abzeronow (talk) 23:44, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping:

Regarding Wilfredor's point about rules: We have shockingly few rules outside of copyright and rules that apply across all project considering our impact, and we don't have enough admins, we currently need about 200 more just to handle the flickr LR queue as it is. This doesn't include the catch all LR catagory that's over 100k files at this point. We also need at least 3 dedicated admins to rewrite our abusefilters for temporary accounts, as IP edit checks will all break because temp accounts have age now. As to our opinions regarding UCC, If our policy on a topic is just meeting UCC, we should try to stay well above it, the UCC is a bare minimum, not a maximum . Do admins have a en:w:SUPERVOTE on commons? Maybe, but they are also the most respected users on commons, that's why they are the admins.

As to the actual text, routinely should be repeatedly, because while admins aren't perfect, a pattern of repeated misuse is a indication they shouldn't have the tools.

All the Best -- Chuck ^Talk 00:43, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

•  Support Although IMO a good percentage of what instigated this whole thing was because of admins playing defense for A.Savin, not the lack of a process for desysopping an admin per se. Whatever helps though. But it's not like the same circling of the wagons can't, or won't occur, if this is approved. Administrators need to stop giving each other a free pass when it comes to bad behavior. Otherwise this will just be toothless. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:44, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

What do you have in mind with the „otherwise violate community expectations“ point? I want to avoid that people who do not like the outcome of a deletion decision where a majority supported keeping the file but the admin deleted it demand sanctions based on this. Maybe we should add that acting against majority in some cases especially deletion requests is no violation of community expectations. GPSLeo (talk) 05:59, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@GPSLeo I agree that desysopping should be unavailable in that case. But the community expects and wants admins to have a w:en:WP:SUPERVOTE where policy is being violated (see Commons:Deletion requests#Overview and the last bullet in Commons:Guide to adminship#Checklist of stuff you should know), and an admin who does so is meeting -- not violating -- community expectations. So I don't think that that there would even be "some consensus" for removal at the required prior discussion in that case.

What I have in mind is behavior that doesn't violate *policy*, but isn't acceptable coming from an admin (or, often, anyone else). For example, edit warring isn't technically prohibited by policy (although the blocking policy says that people can be blocked for it). But desysopping could be warranted for an admin who repeatedly gets into edit wars, even if they don't abuse the tools while doing so. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 15:54, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons is permanently lacking active admins, new applications are rare, backlogs on some tasks are months if not years old, while we are now going to desysop admins for having called someone an asshole? Did I understand correctly? --A.Savin 19:29, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

That is my understanding of current consensus, with the bar being a little higher than calling someone an asshole, but yes, that is the situation. All the Best -- Chuck ^Talk 19:36, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

I appreciate the ping. This conversation is ultimately up for the Commons community to decide so I will be following this discussion but do not plan to weigh in substantively. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:29, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

 Support. Convenience links: change location section and WMF UCC. For the text Alachuckthebuck suggested that "routinely" should be "repeatedly" - that is minor but fine.

Directly below the proposed change it says Although the process is not a vote, normal standards for determining consensus in an RfA do not apply which could be simplified to "The normal standards for determining consensus in an RfA do not apply".

In the removal section of COM:A it currently says administrator rights may be revoked due to inactivity or misuse of sysop tools which needs to be updated.

A single instance of calling someone an "asshole" isn't repeated or egregious in my opinion - but that can be decided in a discussion. And we shouldn't have editors running to meta every time they have a grievance. Admins may have to work a little more on communication techniques. Commander Keane (talk) 09:02, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

April 13

Renaming multiple files

Hi, I uploaded a few photos of cows yesterday, but I've realized that I had put incorrect information about their breed in the file names. Is there some sort of gadget that would let me mark all the files for rename at once without placing {{rename}} on every page manually? Mikinisk (talk) 11:02, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@Mikinisk: Hi, and welcome. If you are comfortable with regex, you can use VFC for that or User:Jeff G./massrename is available for filemovers.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 11:16, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

If you are not comfortable with using regex but the files follow the same naming pattern, you could still use VFC by loading your own uploas and choosing the option "prepend any text" and add the {{Rename}} template (with filled out parameters) to all selected files, plus, a note that the file mover should add a different number to each file name so that the files have different names. Nakonana (talk) 11:44, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@Nakonana: Have you done this before? How was the reception from the filemover(s)? What wording did you use?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:04, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

No, I haven't done this before, but it sounds doable to me? Would the renaming process be any/significantly different for a file mover if one would manually add the renaming template to each file instead? It would still be the same amount of files that need to be renamed, and file movers don't always use the name one suggests anyway, so I think it's reasonable to make such a request? Maybe there's even some mechanism that automatically prevents file movers to rename a file to a file name that already exists, so that it would be clear that a number needs to be added for any subsequent file?

Would your masserename tool be helpful for such a task by any chance?

As for wording, maybe something like {{rename|1=Cow.jpg |2=3 |3=Please note that I've tagged several files for renaming with the target file name always being "Cow.jpg". When moving the tagged files, please add a number to the target file name to prevent overwriting, e.g. "Cow 1.jpg", Cow 2.jpg" etc.}}. Nakonana (talk) 16:33, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

I can't tell what your example is meant to illustrate. Do you not have a "Move" command on the file pages when you see them? As a non-filemover, what that tab will do is to make a move (rename) request.

If, as this appears, this is only 4 or 5 files, it is unlikely anyone will use a massrename tool. You have already expended more words here than it would have taken to describe exactly what renaming you want. If you can just say what you want changed, it will save everybody a lot of time. - Jmabel ! talk 20:28, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Jeff asked me what wording I'd use, so I answered. I don't know why my reply is suddenly being listed as a response to your comment rather than Jeff's comment -- it was displaying correctly earlier. I also didn't check how many files Mikinisk was talking about before I replied to Jeff and assumed that there must be a lot. You have already expended more words here than it would have taken to describe exactly what renaming you want. If you can just say what you want changed, it will save everybody a lot of time. Are you confusing me for the OP??? I didn't open this thread, I'm merely responding to it. It's not me who wants to have files renamed but Mikinisk. Mikinisk only made a single post in this thread, and my lengthy message was to answers the questions that Jeff directed at me with a ping. I'm going to fix the thread order again, so that my previous comment shows up as a response to Jeff again rather than to your post. Nakonana (talk) 20:51, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I think I'll use VFC with wording similar to that proposed by you in the future (of course when I'll have reasonably high number of files to rename). Mikinisk (talk) 04:51, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

It looks like you only have five uploads in total; surely you can mark them up by hand. - Jmabel ! talk 16:12, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Of course I could, I'm just lazy :) + I wanted to know a way to do this faster just in case I need to tag more than 4 files in the future. They are already renamed, thank you for it @Hjart. Mikinisk (talk) 05:04, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Files from studies

New meta page describing how to upload files from studies and about science media on Commons.

Scientific media (mainly datagraphics and scientific illustrations/diagrams) is probably some of the most educational and most useful and often used in Wikipedia articles. However, still nearly nobody else uploads many of these so more participation would be good.

Maybe users here have some further info to add to this page. It details the current procedure in ca 17 steps which also is relevant if people would like to improve it, e.g. to make it smoother and quicker. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:11, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Relevant: Commons:Requests for comment/Technical needs survey/Upload tool poll#Study2Commons. Such a tool could make it easier to upload such images but it seems unfeasible there will be one such in the near future. This the page linked above has some info how to find and upload them. If you know of further ways to find CCBY images in studies than the ones listed there, please add them. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:52, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

April 14

Question regarding maps on tl|Wikidata Infobox

So, something I've been wondering about. Is there anything special you need to do (here or in Wikidata) to have the area of a...well, area display on the OpenStreetMap display in {{Wikidata Infobox}}? Compare the infoboxes in Category:Tiger Bay State Forest to Category:Plank Road State Forest. I'd like the latter to be like the former, but don't know if there's something I need to do or if it's just "it will do it if it has the data". Thanks! The Bushranger (talk) 03:15, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

You need to link the object on OpenStreetMap to the Wikidata item. GPSLeo (talk) 10:45, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Ah, so it's on the OSM side of things. I've never poked around there. Thanks for the tip. - The Bushranger (talk) 20:46, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Urgent advice required re false images in Commons and Wikidata

Hi everyone,

I’d appreciate some advice, please.

There are a few images of my client on Commons and Wikidata that were modified in a malicious way to cause emotional stress. The original Flickr images have been made private, but we can no longer reach the user for deletion.

We have photos taken at the same event that clearly show the subject in a completely different context from the version uploaded, which appears to have been significantly altered.

Is there any way to have these removed under these circumstances? Any guidance would be really appreciated.

Thanks so much, Monique — Preceding unsigned comment added by MoniqueB1987 (talk • contribs) 10:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

If it is related to Category:Rebecca Wang, "modified in a malicious way" probably means cropped. I'm not a big fan of uploading bad quality pictures, but it's clearly not a malicious way to cause emotional stress to your client. This case is clearly not urgent because you already obtained answers from the community on March. Pyb en résidence (talk) 11:21, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

In general, a good way is to upload an alternative and then use that. People generally use the best picture available so providing a better one for any purpose, means the prior one will not be used anymore. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:47, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

What is the actual incentive for admins to refrain from out-of-process deletions?

Apparently this isnt an valid reason for undeletion. Which means people can just delete files if they are scared that the DR will fail considering you cant make DR for delete files --Trade (talk) 12:42, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

The incentive is that if someone gets things wrong a lot, they lose the community's confidence as a admin.

you cant make DR for delete files doesn't make a lot of sense, but you can always make a UDR for a deleted file, if that is what you meant. - Jmabel ! talk 15:16, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

I'd ask myself instead what is the actual incentive for admins to delete files?. Apparently you see administrators as people in constant need of deleting files, and never get satisfied with that. Strakhov (talk) 15:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

...As i already said i was told that an file getting deleted for an invalid reason isn't enough reason to get an UDR accepted Trade (talk) 17:17, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

It was deleted for a valid reason- namely, privacy. It was not deleted for the reason that was mentioned in the DR- it would only be the case of an invalid deletion if it was based on the DR. Out-of-process deletions might not be good in themself, but it's still a valid way to delete files when something as serious as subject consent is present. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:07, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Several of the deleted photos were voted to be kept after being undeleted. Trade (talk) 18:21, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Which photos are you talking about, because this is the only one I saw in your recent contributions. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

If files are deleted for privacy reasons this is not mentioned in the deletion comment to avoid scraping of such files form caches. GPSLeo (talk) 18:43, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

If was several photos of women playing sports Trade (talk) 22:22, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

@DoctorWhoFan91 well, the file should have been DR-ed instead of speedy-ed, since anything related to privacy without an actual complaint from the subject/s is subjective and best resolved through a deletion request. We do have thousands of images by the infamous Filipino judge w:en:Florentino Floro (who goes by his now-blocked account Judgefloro (talk · contribs) and his socks like FBenjr123 (talk · contribs) and Valenzuela400 (talk · contribs)) that show people (esp. children). A couple of the subjects he took aren't apparently aware that they are being taken (e.g. File:09977jfBuga Sapang Mandili Roads San Miguel Bulacan Pampangafvf 11.JPG and File:09977jfBuga Sapang Mandili Roads San Miguel Bulacan Pampangafvf 15.JPG, as well as a couple of images under Category:Cycling men in the Philippines). Any way, these cases are best resolved through DRs. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 23:39, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, the image being talked about(the one I saw in trade's undeletion requests)- had a woman giving a blowjob, so I think that's a bigger violation of privacy than these are. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 05:59, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

If you looked at the talk page of the file you could see that the community voted to keep twice it because they found the complaint to be unfounded

Again, is this really what we want to be the new norm on Commons? Besides if there was any complaint from the subject it should go through VRT, not DR Trade (talk) 00:08, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Trade: the prior proposed deletions were not on the basis of the privacy issue. This is just like we could have a file kept after a discussion as to whether it is in scope, but still delete it later over a copyright issue. - Jmabel ! talk 00:43, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Guess i was thinking on another image? Either way it's difficult to argue on reasoning when the community was never allowed to be involved Trade (talk) 01:04, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

It was a woman giving a blowjob- the community does not need to be involved for that, pretty clear cut case. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 08:35, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I used to think so but it increansingly seems like you can just put a SD template on any file for any reasoning and 9/10 times it will get deleted anyways.--Trade (talk) 01:06, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Uploading works by a third party

We get a lot of relatively new users who either stumble when trying to upload third-party work or who ask very similar questions either here or on the help desk. I've written Commons:Uploading works by a third party as a general guide that I think covers almost all cases and pitfalls that I've seen. (Yes, there are some really weird edge cases that are not covered there, but I've tried to cover everything that I've seen come up more than a couple of times.) I'm hoping that a lot of the time we can just link this rather than need to write a bespoke help-page answer or user-talk-page comment.

Besides the possibility of linking to the document as a whole, there will be times when it is useful to link Commons:Uploading works by a third party#Is the content you want to upload already free-licensed or in the public domain? or (especially) Commons:Uploading works by a third party#If you need to obtain a license for copyrighted work, which starts with a "What not to do" section that might help head off a problem we see almost daily. - Jmabel ! talk 15:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

I might just by cynical but i feel like most issues from uploading works from third parties comes from the uploader neither replying to nor reading any of the templates on their talk page only to get upset when their inactivity backfires at them with the files getting deleted or a block after an complaint to AN Trade (talk) 00:18, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

The templates on their talk page are not nearly sufficient to explain how to do it right. In the process of writing this, I even turned up one issue that was major enough that it is going to result in a change to the Upload Wizard because the developers of that tool hadn't properly thought through one significant scenario. If they are confused, where does that leave the average user? - Jmabel ! talk 00:45, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Coordinate and Categories

Hi! I think I saw a bot on Wikimedia Commons that could categorize files based on their coordinates. Could you tell me if such a bot actually existed, or am I mistaken? Mitte27 (talk) 15:34, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

We have bots that copy coordinates from a photo's metadata to the structured data, but as far as I know they don't add categories based on that information (except for maintenance categories sometimes, if the coordinates are 0,0 for instance). ReneeWrites (talk) 16:53, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Files uploaded by user URRS Soviet Union

URRS Soviet Union (talk · contribs) has numerous logos sourcing from Logopedia, a fandom wiki that especially hosts logos. I'm questioning if the files, like File:Nelvana 2001.svg and File:Toys R Us 1998 Outlined Star.svg, would be under WP:TOO? Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 23:29, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

I think the polar bear is surely copyrightable. But the Toys R Us logos are probably fine as File:Toys "R" Us logo.svg has been here a while  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   00:32, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

The US have a rather high TOO for text logos. Nakonana (talk) 15:13, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Check COM:TOO US for examples of what's considered OK in terms of logos. Nakonana (talk) 15:17, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

April 15

Templates that always generate a warning.

Template:PD-Japan-oldphoto takes no parameters and emits "Please provide the source and publication date." I noticed it at File:リタ１９３８年.png. What is the solution for this template, and what is the solution for this kind of error in general? I don't recall the others, but I have come across a few copyright templates that either always generate an error or at least default to generating an error. Rjjiii (talk) 02:13, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

I have checked the source code at Template:PD-Japan-oldphoto/en, and I don’t think it is intended to be an error message, it appears just to be a reminder for uploader to include the source and date in the file description. Maybe the wording can be changed so it appears less like an error message. Tvpuppy (talk) 16:17, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

@Rjjiii: The template just reiterates the COM:EVID policy that we need source and publication date.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 06:53, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

That policy makes sense, but the template output looks like an error or warning message, Rjjiii (talk) 21:47, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

U4C case

Hello. This is to notify the community that there is an ongoing U4C case for user(s) who has been active on this wiki. You are invited to participate. RoyZuo (talk) 14:23, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Flickr limiting filesize downloads from free accounts

I just received an email from Flickr, saying:

Starting May 15, 2025, Flickr will restrict the downloading of original and large (larger than 1024px) sizes of photos owned by free accounts. If you use a free account, this update applies to both your own content and to content shared by other free members. In addition, videos stored on free accounts will no longer be downloadable once the change takes effect.

...

This restriction won't apply to Creative Commons licensed photos.

Flickr Commons members are exempt from this change and will retain access to all download sizes.

Obviously this will have an impact on us when we want to use PD images or videos from such accounts, incorrectly tagged as being in copyright. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:52, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing, yes, I noticed this too today. This will have some important impact indeed (for example I'm uploading some hundreds of photos shot by the Romanov family and stored on their albums scanned just on Flickr by one user... and now I shall hurry up!).

What do you suggest to do?

Thanks. -- LucaLindholm (talk) 09:44, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@LucaLindholm I'd recommend uploading using Commons:OpenRefine or other such tools to speed up the process -- DaxServer (talk) 09:50, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

"This restriction won't apply to Creative Commons licensed photos." That's oddly specific. Is there any context behind this change?--Trade (talk) 02:39, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Flickr have a few times given special status to open licensed photos, I think. When they first started deleting extra photos (after being bought by Smugmug) I'm pretty sure they didn't delete CC ones (at least, that was my experience). I think they might just care about open content (c.f. flickr.org), or figure that they can at least start with harsher measures for closed stuff and see if that gets things as far as they need to. Sam Wilson 03:21, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

File:The Artist - Maurits Cornelis Escher - working at his Atelier (50385403156).jpg

Photo of an artist with his artwork that is probably copyrighted. Work of Escher are no in public domain. A lot of usage, but I think that this violates the copyright. Didn't want to request deleting because of usage of this image. What you think? Jakub T. Jankiewicz (talk) 21:54, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Its just a part of something clearly larger. In case of doubt one may crop a bit on the top and on the left and the rest should count as de minimis. Herbert Ortner (talk) 08:02, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jcubic, I agree with @Herbert Ortner. Crop the image to keep the artist and his brush and support stick. Thanks for bringing your concerns here for comment. After cropping, please ask an Administrator to revision delete (rev del) the original photo here: Commons:Administrators' noticeboard. Thank you, -- Ooligan (talk) 15:50, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jcubic: , I share your concern. It does look like a case of flickr-washing. See Commons:Deletion requests/File:The Artist - Maurits Cornelis Escher - working at his Atelier (50385403156).jpg --Jarekt (talk) 20:14, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

April 16

Bulk upload of Swisstopo images

Since 2021, all data (including images) from Swisstopo (Swiss Federal Office of Topography) are freely accessible, and thus can be published on Wimikedia commons. See COM:SWISSTOPO. However, looking at Template:Attribution-Swisstopo it seems like only a few hundred images were uploaded to Commons.

Swisstopo has hundreds of thousands of high quality images with rich metadata, for example terrestrial images, historical images, technical images. These could be highly valuable in general (as they are not so easily discoverable in search engines) but also for the broader Wikimedia communities, e.g., to illustrate articles, thanks to the rich metadata.

I didn't find any previous discussions on this, so I was wondering: is there any concern with a bulk upload to Commons? I don't have any experience with bulk uploads, but this is something I'd be happy to look into. 7804j (talk) 19:55, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@7804j: https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/legal-framework says, "Copyright and any other rights relating to texts, illustrations, photos or any other data available on the websites of swisstopo are the exclusive property of swisstopo or of any other expressly mentioned owners. Any reproduction requires the prior written consent of the copyright holder." That would seem to make the matter at least ambiguous. - Jmabel ! talk 20:20, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

The license in the template is only for geodata including orthophotos but not for other photos. GPSLeo (talk) 20:32, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@GPSLeo: I'm completely inclined to believe you, but if you are correct then I believe Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/Switzerland#Data_published_by_the_Swiss_Federal_Office_of_Topography_swisstopo is currently misleading, if not downright inaccurate. - Jmabel ! talk 02:30, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

The description is totally correct. The term data in this context means geodata which does not include regular photos. This is a very common differentiation in European license and data usage policies. GPSLeo (talk) 05:56, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I believe the geodata terms of use also apply to the images.

For example, the terrestrial images page's terms of use section links directly to the "Terms of use for free geodata and geoservices (OGD) from swisstopo", not the broader legal framework. Also this press release lists a lot of geoservices that are also included in the framework, including orthophotos.

I don't see any statement that would suggest images are excluded, and I agree with Jmabel that the current wording of the policy in Commons strongly suggests that it also applies to images 7804j (talk) 10:04, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Update: I have reached out to Swisstopo, who confirmed that my interpretation is correct. All images are free to use with attribution.

Pasting their response below (in French):

Nous vous remercions de votre demande et de votre intérêt pour les images historiques.

Depuis le 1^er mars 2021, nos données peuvent être utilisées et publiées librement.

Géodonnées de base gratuites (OGD) (admin.ch)

Pour la publication des prises de vue terrestres, techniques, et des images historiques vous n’avez donc pas besoin d’autorisation de reproduction et aucun émolument n’est perçu.

Nous vous prions seulement de mentionner la source suivante :

Source : Office fédéral de topographie swisstopo

ou

© swisstopo

De plus amples informations et l'accès aux géodonnées gratuites sont disponibles à l’adresse

Géodonnées et applications (admin.ch)

Informations générales sur l'obtention de géodonnées (admin.ch)

Nous avons prix connaissance de votre remarque.

Nous restons à votre entière disposition pour tout autre renseignement. 7804j (talk) 12:31, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@7804j: FYI, I already uploaded all maps in 2023. Please see Category:Swisstopo map sheets. Yann (talk) 13:54, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@7804j: I have looked at these images. They are indeed interesting and of high resolution, e.g. File:Handhabung, Doppeldecker Häfeli DH-5 (Militär) für Aerofotogrammetrie Aufnahmen, 000398822, edit.jpg. What general category do you suggest for these (Category:Images from the Swiss Federal Office of Topography?) Is there an API to retrieve all the information? You could start a request at Commons:Batch uploading if you can't upload these yourself. Regards, Yann (talk) 19:56, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

They have csv files with the metadata and download links, which would work. But for some reason this metadata is missing the most important attribute, which is the description... I've reached out to Swisstopo to find out if there's another way to get the description programmatically, or if I missed something. For the category, I was thinking of Category:Swisstopo historic. 7804j (talk) 07:37, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I saw this. This is not really meaningful. We can do better. Yann (talk) 07:59, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Permission to single instance of a drawing of a comic book character

I have this issue, I was asking on Discord and Grok (Twitter AI). If there is a way to publish this photo:

• Drawing Chninkel (Grzegorz Rosiński drawing one of his comic book characters)

On Discord, they said that I can't publish this photo on Commons because the character on a Photo will need to be released on Creative Commons. But Grok said that I can get permission just for this specific drawing without giving away the rights to the whole character in every instance. I know that this is just AI and can hallucinate, but consider this image: File:Stripmuur Thorgal.jpg this is a Mural of a character by Rosiński released because of FOP. And obviously, Rosiński (or publisher and screenwriters) still hold the copyright to that character, even that the photo is on Commons.

So this brings the question can you just publish a drawing when the author agrees to publish that specific drawing on Creative Commons License? Without the permission of the character itself. I can try to get permission for this drawing, I know a guy that is in contact with Rosiński. Jakub T. Jankiewicz (talk) 21:30, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jcubic: The flickr photo has 2 authors: There is the photographer (presumably you) who released the photograph under CC-by license and then there is the artist (Mr. Rosiński). Commons should accept this photo if the artist would agree to release the drawing in the photo under a license compatible with Commons. The artist can release the rights to this single image without releasing copyrights to the character itself. The process outlined in Commons:Volunteer Response Team page would require him to send an email with the permission. --Jarekt (talk) 21:49, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Relevant: Template:Free depiction  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   21:57, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@999real Awesome, thanks. I will try to arrange that. Are there any templates on Commons that specify that only this single drawing is released on CC license, similar to {{Personality rights}}, or is it not needed at all? On File:Stripmuur Thorgal.jpg there is a disclaimer in form of {{FoP-Belgium}}. Jakub T. Jankiewicz (talk) 22:09, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jcubic You can use {{Free depiction}} for that, see other similar images in Category:Free depictions of non-free works. Tvpuppy (talk) 00:06, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Move Claim tool

Some of you might be familiar with MoveClaim tool on Wikidata, which is widely used for copying statements between wikidata items. Now the tool's author Matěj Suchánek, ported the tool to Commons to allow copying SDC statements between files. Please see Commons:MoveClaim Tool for more info and help us test it. Jarekt (talk) 21:33, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Nice.

Is it planned to add that tool to users preferences in Commons as it is in Wikidata? Pere prlpz (talk) 14:35, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

April 17

Vote now on the revised UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter

The voting period for the revisions to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines ("UCoC EG") and the UCoC's Coordinating Committee Charter is open now through the end of 1 May (UTC) (find in your time zone). Read the information on how to participate and read over the proposal before voting on the UCoC page on Meta-wiki.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review of the EG and Charter was planned and implemented by the U4C. Further information will be provided in the coming months about the review of the UCoC itself. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:34, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Photo challenge February results

Absence: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Absence of essence	Automatic river lighthouse. Yenisei River, Krasnoyarsk	Linden alley at Kalevankangas Cemetery in Tampere, Finland
Author	Tn.kuvat	VSerebrenikov	Xannima
Score	18	17	12

Healthy living: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Heal thy life.	Sun salutation for healthy living	Young athletic girl
Author	Tn.kuvat	Sneha G Gupta	VSerebrenikov
Score	12	11	10

Congratulations to Tn.kuvat, VSerebrenikov, Xannima and Sneha G Gupta. -- Jarekt (talk) 02:59, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Mass nomination of image of Azerbaijani people

There have previously been multiple attempts on- and off-wiki (I received several unsolicited emails asking me to delete them or withdraw my objection to their deletion) to delete images of Rza Talıbov (e.g. File:Rza Talıbov (şəxsi foto).jpg, which is currently in use on multiple projects). Those images have again been nominated for deletion, individually, along with many others of individuals from Azerbaijan, all with the rationale "COM:ADVERT". There is no evidence - nor even any attempt to make a case - that they are advertising.

Because there are so many nominations, it is too time-consuming to respond to each individually,

It may be that the former images have been caught up by chance, but that is not certain. Perhaps User:Yousiphh, who nominated them all, can explain what is happening? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:45, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I didn't find any previous nominations. I've just been nominating the files I assume have problems with the Wikimedia Commons rules (i.e. COM:ADVERT). You can find all my previous nominations with the same problems. All these photo files were specifically uploaded for the reason to promote and to advertise. They were uploaded to be in use in personal Wikipedia articles in several languages. For now all Wikipedia articles got deleted. Now these photo files (which (again) were specifically uploaded for the reason to promote and to advertise.) were nominated by me for the deletion. Best regards. Yousiphh (talk) 14:54, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Again: File:Rza Talıbov (şəxsi foto).jpg is currently in use on multiple projects. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:16, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

It's only in English Wikipedia. His Wikidata is also nominated by me for the deletion. Yousiphh (talk) 15:31, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Although uploaded for advertisement (if that's the case), the images may be useful in other contexts, especially when categorised appropriately. Please don't nominate for deletion without considering such other uses. –LPfi (talk) 20:09, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Category:English-language SVG charts etc

Does it make sense to add datagraphics to it? That category

• does not contain very many SVG datagraphics in English
• Adding a translation using the SVG Translate tool does not add a language category like that automatically so many translated SVG files do not have such (at least for many of the langs they had been translated to)
• In the search one can filter by the SVG filetype

--Prototyperspective (talk) 19:30, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

April 18

Uploading many JPG files from Internet Archive

Hi, is there any easy way to upload a lot of JPG files (different titles/URLs) from IA to Commons? Similar to IA-upload tool, but that tool only for PDF/DJVUs. I need something like that, but for JPGs. (I have many things to import, so downloading/manual import is out of the question). Bennylin (yes?) 13:58, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

For this I will probably use https://url2commons.toolforge.org and use JavaScript on the pages to get the titles file links and desciptions somehow from IA  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   14:18, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

request for bot

Is there a bot that can insert the date/time from the exif metadata into the image? In question about 140 images from user Category:Photographs by Mark Ahsmann taken in Sintra here --JotaCartas (talk) 21:59, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

No, nor do I think such a bot would be accepted. Visible timestamps in images are discouraged, and considered redundant if that information is already in the EXIF data. Images with visible timestamps can be tagged with a template to have them removed, but the reverse never happens. You can read up a bit on the policy at COM:WM#What_are_not_watermarks, see also the description of Template:Watermark with the "timestamp" parameter. ReneeWrites (talk) 20:54, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Ok, you may be wright .. but .. It is not possible to use EXIF data in tools like PetScan and/or AWB (at least I don't know how to use it), thanks JotaCartas (talk) 21:02, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@JotaCartas: that seems like a non-sequitur to what you originally wrote, so maybe your initial question (which ReneeWrites answered) was not quite what you meant to asked. She presumed (as did I) that you wanted a visible timestamp overwritten onto the image, like a watermark. Did you mean something else? If so, could you clarify? - Jmabel ! talk 00:49, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi, actually what I want is to transfer the complete EXIF ​​data to the "|data=" field of the "Information" template. The reason is to be able to obtain a list of images of a of a certain user sorted by "date/hour/min" to determine their +- exact location. JotaCartas (talk) 01:43, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@JotaCartas: That sounds like something that could be automated. You could ask at COM:BR to see if this is possible. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:16, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Ok, thanks I will try there JotaCartas (talk) 23:12, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

April 19

PDF thumbnail not rendering

Just checked the file File:BBC_Charter_2017.pdf and found the PDF thumbnail is not rendered, why???

Pinging @999real DinhHuy2010 (talk) 04:54, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@DinhHuy2010: It is rendering for me, 5 hours later.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 09:55, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jeff G. THE THUMBNAIL RENDERED ON MY SIDE, LET'S GOOO!!!!!! DinhHuy2010 (talk) 10:09, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Also just add structured data too... DinhHuy2010 (talk) 10:24, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I've had this problem with a number of files myself. Some started working again, but File:Meccano Magazine 1929-07.pdf hasn't rendered a thumbnail in months. Does anyone know why this happens or how it can be fixed? ReneeWrites (talk) 20:56, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Idk, but pdf not rendering in initial upload (usually tied to metadata extraction failure) but then working fine after a purge, seems quite common. I've seen many reports of it. It needs someone to investigate more fully. Its probably something easy to fix once the root cause is identified, but its not clear right now what that cause is. You could try asking the WMF to investgate (ping @Sannita (WMF)) Bawolff (talk) 01:23, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Could someone report this to phab? DinhHuy2010 (talk) 03:27, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

It was actually the opposite case here. The thumbnail rendered after the upload, but then broke after a few days. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:06, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Should every location have it's own "by year" subcategory?

I take a lot of pictures in Iceland and have noticed that many of my pictures have been moved to a subcategory of when it was taken. I feel this is not very usefull information since it's already in the description. These changes are mostly done by user Hornstrandir1. I quickly found a few examples Category:Raufarhólshellir by year, Category:Snæfell by year, Category:Esjufjöll by year, Category:Bárðarbunga by year, Category:Kambabrún by year. You can see that many of the categories within them only have 1 or 2 files. What are the guidelines regarding putting images in categories regarding their year? I have found them useful when looking for pictures of individuals, because you want the most recent image of the person. But places rarely change that much over the years. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Steinninn (talk • contribs) 21:38 , 19 April 2025 (UTC)

”But places rarely change that much over the years.” I disagree, some places may not change a lot but other places do. Could be some sort of natural disaster, natural progress (new development, become abandoned ect.). Bidgee (talk) 22:07, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I didn't say they don't change. I said they rarely change that much. That is still true. But you are right, over centuries you can see changes. And sometimes (rarely), there are big changes within just a few months. But my question is, should Raufarhólshellir, Snæfell, Esjufjöll and so on have a category for every year? Steinninn ♨ 23:26, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

The guidelines are mostly "do what makes sense". For a major city, that may be a category per month. If this is resulting in categories with one or two files, though, then this is too granular; decade or even century may be more appropriate than year. For somewhere like Kambabrún where we have a grand total of two photos, date categories at this level of locality are an outright liability. - Jmabel ! talk 00:54, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Id say no. "By year" is way to granular in most instances and just leds to images not being categorized by more meaningful criteria like "by subject." There's been of ton CfDs in the past where there was clear consensus to get rid of "by year" categories in instances where they have little or no files to. So there's clearly a consensus against them in instances like this. I'd say its not an either or thing though. If there's enough images to justify it, cool. Create or keep the categories. Otherwise don't. But one or two images in a category clearly isn't enough to justify it. People just like navigation templates to have blue links. They don't care if the categories actually makes sense or not. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:12, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Adamant1 So should I start removing the images from the categories or contact the person that created them? Steinninn ♨ 03:54, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I'd just up-merge the images to "by decade" categories or something. You can cite this conversation if they say anything. I created a list of CfDs and Village Pump discussions for "by year" categories on User talk:G.dallorto in the second to last section. You can always cite some of them if you have to. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:03, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. Steinninn ♨ 05:41, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

"By year" categories should be treated like any other, in that there needs to be enough media to justify the split. One or two files per category is too granular. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:12, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

• Agree what seems emerging consensus - no everywhere does not need year categories, but they are often useful for places which regularly generate large numbers of files. (I don't think we need a hard rule for exact number of files, but when there are more than 200 (default page view) files in a category I often look if there is are easy and useful ways to make subcategories.) -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 15:15, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Unidentified Baden-Württemberg stations

Two unidentified stations in Baden-Württemberg:

• 
• 

I placed the first image in Baden-Württemberg because of the Eppingen destination and the previous slides where in the general area. Category:2003 in tram transport in Mannheim and Category:2003 in tram transport in Heidelberg (I probably started from Heidelberg).Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:21, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

The second station is an unidentified dead-end station, with the destination board displaying Meckesheim.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:48, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

This is almost certainly Aglasterhausen. The first could then be Meckesheim, where the railcar would return to.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:25, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I think the first one is indeed Meckesheim, the level crossing immediately south of the train station. There are just three tracks now, but there used to be more. The platform (where the people are standing) looks similar to the one in this 1985 photo. --Rosenzweig τ 12:17, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

April 20

Is there a category for files with this technical issue?

--Trade (talk) 02:43, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Question about Commons:project scope and AI generated images

Hi. According to Commons:project scope "any use that is not made in good faith does not count." There was recently a DR, Commons:Deletion requests/File:Science Fantasy platform city on an exoplanet.png, where an AI generated image was kept because it was being used in a German language article for science fantasy since according to the closer "Commons does not override the editorial autonomy of sister projects." Normally, I'd be fine with that. The problem is that the image was added to the article by Prototyperspective, a user who doesn't edit the German Wikipedia. He also has a history of adding AI generated images to other projects in order to game the system. Something that he's been reported to ANU and admonished for doing multiple times. So it seems like the editorial autonomy of a sister project was already violated by him adding the image to the article.

It appears that he's been doing the same thing on Wikidata. Last month he created Wikidata:List of science fiction themes and has been uploading and adding AI generated images to Wikidata items based on it. Last year he was report to ANU for doing the same thing but on Wikibooks. I'm not going to relitigate the whole thing. It seems like an increasing issue that can't be dealt with through deletion requests because of how the policy is currently worded though. So I think it should include something like "any usage of AI generated images on sister projects by someone who isn't a regular contributor and/or where there's better (non-AI generated) alternatives is invalid." Thoughts? Adamant1 (talk) 03:31, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

This needs to be solved on the projects where the files are used. They need to remove the file from the page and block the user. GPSLeo (talk) 06:11, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@GPSLeo: I feel like it's our issue to deal with if there's already a line in the policy that bad faith usage isn't valid to begin with and the user doing it is from Commons. Obviously it's not on sister projects to enforce our policies. Otherwise, if no one is willing to enforce that part of the policy then it should just be removed. But it's ridiculous to put it on other projects to remove images that were added by our users in an attempt to get around our policies. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:29, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

You can remove it from the other project as long as you do not break any local rules by doing so. If projects fail fighting vandalism this is a task for the global admins and stewards. GPSLeo (talk) 06:37, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@GPSLeo: That's fair. I wasn't sure if it was allowed it or not given how people on here don't like anything that comes off as gaming the system. I'd still like to see the policy actually enforced or that part of it changed or removed if it's not going to be though. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:44, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I think Prototyperspective was actually reported at the noticeboards on en.wp for the use of AI images.

A change to policy might be good- though of course it is difficult- we don't want Commons to be overrun with slop, but we also can't ask other projects to keep an eye on file usage. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 09:04, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Are you suggesting adding useful illustrations, some of them made by AI, is vandalism? And on ENWP I was reported mostly for making a thread and replying two often in two threads, not for adding AI images against which a rule was made only after I added them. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:18, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

No, I don't think I've mentioned vandalism anywhere in any comment I've made about it. Nice try though. I know it's impossible for you to be honest about the subject, but come on. If your going to respond to me at least have the respect to base it on what I actually said. And just an FYI for other people, he's topic banned from anything having to do with AI generated images on English Wikipedia for exactly this type of behavior. Along with replying two often in two threads, but the endless dishonesty was a large part of it. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:29, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I was referring to GPSLeo when he wrote If projects fail fighting vandalism. for exactly this type of behavior and I just made one reply to clarify one misconception you had, namely that I was referring to you when I wrote this. Keeping my replies minimal. a user who doesn't edit the German Wikipedia is also false by the way. @GPSLeo: who replied below: okay but it does make that impression to users who read this thread. Moreover, not being fine with what a user does usually does not result in some immediate block but instead people get warned and/or discuss, you seemed to suggest like if I add images people on a project don't like they should immediately block me. I didn't add many but those stayed for over a year because they are due and useful. My contributions are good-intentioned, cost me time, and constructive. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:38, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I feel like this doesn't quite meet the level of "bad faith". There might be better images, and projects might not want to use AI for this purpose, but ultimately it is depicting something that could realistically be described as a science fantasy scape. To me, when i think bad faith, i would think blatent vandalism (e.g. if they put this image on the article for catapillar). Seems like for this sort of thing it would be better to revisit when/if projects remove all usages. Bawolff (talk) 11:37, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Bawolff: It's as much about the user doing it and their previous history around the subject then a particular image or edit. But there are other images of science fantasy that would have worked perfectly fine instead of the AI-generated one. It's bad faithed because Prototyperspective specifically picked an AI generated image that he uploaded himself over exiting ones, added it to an article on a project that he's not a contributor to, and then argued that the image can't be deleted because it's in use. All of which is something that he's already been reported to ANU for. Obviously if some random users of the German Wikipedia just put an AI image in an article for lack of anything better to use that wouldn't be "bad faithed." That's not really the issue. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:42, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

there are other images of science fantasy that would have worked perfectly fine This is. false. And I already explained it to you in the DR. And if there is an image, it doesn't mean there can't be two or even five in the article. It's bad faithed Will you ever stop wikihounding me and making continuous unwarranted bad faith accusations? article on a project that he's not a contributor to I'm a contributor to that project.

• What I personally think what would be appropriate: thanking me for spending lots of time and effort to close an identified media gap on a subject I'm somewhat knowledgable and interested in.
• What is happening instead: hostility and accusations and having to justify myself in threads like this. It's totally fine if nobody thanks me but this is the exact hostility that drives other kinds of people of the Wikimedia projects and away from providing missing media and contributing constructively where contributions are most valuable.

Prototyperspective (talk) 11:47, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: You were reported to ANU for adding images to Wikibooks and added the image in the DR to the German Wikipedia when you aren't a regular contributor to the project. Those aren't "accusations", those things literally happened. So What bad faithed accusations am I making here? --Adamant1 (talk) 12:00, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

1. I'm a regular contributor to that project. 2. I'm allowed and even encouraged to make useful Wikibooks. I don't know which ANU you refer to but making an ANU because I create a useful WikiBook is absurd in itself and not a good point and perfectly illustrates the wikihounding in my opinion. 3. You make the bad faith accusations that I do things in order to game the system and that my contributions are bad-intentioned, inappropriate and malicious. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:06, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

1. You've made 987 edits since 2019 and most of them were to same four or five articles having to do with science fiction or a Wikiproject having to do with AI. I wouldn't call that a "regular contributor." 3. this ANU complaint and I think it's perfectly valid to point out since it part of a pattern of problematic behavior on your end across multiple projects 3. People certainly thought you adding images to Wikibooks was gaming the system. I could care less either way but other people certainly thought that's what you were doing and you are topic banned from the area on Wikipedia for inappropriate behavior having to do with it.

Again, those are just facts and it's not wikihounding to point them out. Especially since your the one who always goes off and derails these conversations. That's on you for making every damn conversation about AI revolve around you and your opinions. I'd love to never talk about you again. Your the one forcing me to by endlessly making things about you and your personal grievances. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:20, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

1. Some users make thousands of edits to fix typos, is that really worth so much more than large edits updating articles on major subjects that are read a lot with important scientific information? A thousand edits is not little and it's not just the same four or five articles but many, especially up to a year ago. It's somewhat offtopic anyway and just further shows the wikihounding behavior.
3. If I add images to a wikibook at one point when I think of creating the wikibook, people accuse me of gaming the system – do I need to wait and create it later so less people care about me creating the very useful and due wikibook?
your the one who always goes off and derails these conversations This is precisely false. I address points and dislike it a lot when people ignore mine and do not address the subject which is also why the ANU was started since I asked people to please stay ontopic right from the start. Just look at this thread: where have I gone offtopic and not addressed a point made?

I'd love to never talk about you again. Your the one forcing me to by endlessly making it about you and your personal grievances. How did I force you? You keep wikihounding me and making bad faith accusations and I doubtful you will ever stop just like I'm not so certain you will stop the personal attacks that got you to ANU multiple times. That's on you for making every damn conversation about AI revolve around you and your opinions I think this thread was started by you and specifically refers to me and what I did. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:29, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

You keep wikihounding me and making bad faith accusations You mean like your comment on Wikidata about how I have a huge problem with anything AI-generated and just want to have it removed from the project when the conversation had absolutely nothing to do with you? That's literally your game. All you do is Wikihound me and make bad faithed accusations any time I say anything about AI anywhere. Be my guest and don't though.

I think this thread was started by you and specifically refers to me and what I did. Yeah, because your the one who uploaded the image that the DR was about and added it to the German Wikipedia article. Come on. I'm not going to ask a question on the Village Pump without saying why I'm asking it. That's just the way it works. It's not like I'm insulting you for no reason in a conversation that has nothing to do with me like your doing. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:55, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

You started that discussion at the same time as this one and here you are referring to me adding some AI image(s) to another project. You are making tons of threads about AI and replied in nearly every one of them and I think it's a due mention there that you are quite opposed to these. In any case to any reader of this and the other thread that's not a bad faith accusation and it wouldn't make your continuous countless bad faith accusations against me any better or less of such. I don't wikihound you at all. You keep on making ANU threads and VP threads and whatnot about everything AI-related that I do and often refer to me and vote delete in any DR of files uploaded by me, iirc often started by you. Now this is going offtopic though since you deflect from what I said and bring up other things. your the one who uploaded the image didn't say anything else. You claimed a certain thing, I addressed it, now you as usual move the discussion toward tangential things or don't address what I said. What you quoted was a reply to That's on you for making every damn conversation about AI revolve around you and your opinions and you often move things out of context or sth like that which then needs to be addressed with an even further reply, resulting in a) walls of text b) misunderstandings and c) potentially too many replies on my side to address and correct these things. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:07, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I had some free time and it was on my mind because of the DR. That's it. It's my prerogative to work in whatever area, when ever or as much as I want to. The fact that your acting like there's a problem with that is exactly why I said you keep making this about you and your personal grievances. Your the one who repeatedly makes these discussions about you and your need to go off on people about the subject. Just don't. It's not that difficult. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:18, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I think we(as in commons) needs to have a discussion about AI. It's not like Prototyperspective have technically broken rules directly- but Adamant1 does bring up good points.

Making the whole issue about just one editor, no matter how central they are to the issue at hand is a bad idea. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 14:12, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

You link to a DR about a file I uploaded and write about me e.g. at It appears that he's been doing the same thing on Wikidata and then when I reply in the thread I keep making this about you and your personal grievances. Make that make sense. You started this thread. You made this to a large part about me and it's well warranted I reply to address what you said about what I did. It's this simple. Moreover, you didn't really get the point across of what I said but whatever. I kindly ask you to please not go off on people as you, unlike me (I'm always addressing specific points and never made a personal attack), did many times including with insults and bad faith accusations. I had some free time and it was on my mind because of the DR. It's similar for things I do, yet you accuse me of things like gaming the system and whatnot. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:19, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

You are very central to DRs about keeping AI generated images- so you were an obvious first choice to start this conversation about AI topics. You actually are doing those things on sister projects though- and have even been reported for it. You do keep making it about yourself- you are supposed to defend by citing rules, not by going about how the other person is wrong or whatever. The point about gaming the system is different, and one can easily provide evidence for you doing it. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 14:24, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Are you saying it is not okay I address what the user said about me and what I do? Please check what has been said above and which points I addressed with what I said. And I have been reported on English Wikipedia for making a thread and replying too often in it, not for adding the AI images which I added before there was some sort of rule against them and which largely stayed there until recently two or so users removed them all at once for the reason that they're AI-made which I did not even challenge. Not I'm not making it about myself when a user makes a thread referring to me and writes things like It appears that he's been doing the same thing on Wikidata. I explained various things and I cited things like WP:AGF and COM:HOUND. Nothing of what I did referred to here was wrong and as said the edits were constructive. Please according to WP:AGF ask yourself what a behavior is that accuses a person who spends hours and lots of efforts to close identified important media gaps with good intent? Pretty sure other users would long have given up because of not just thanklessness but hostility and quite plain personal attack insults. I did not make this about myself, the user did and it's very due I address what has been said about what I did such as the false bad faith accusations. There is no evidence of me doing it because I'm not doing it. There is however evidence that certain people seem to want to delete any AI image, no matter how useful and good-quality. The DR'd image has been addressed in the DR so I don't need to address it here again repeating what I already said there such as that the image illustrates well what the sources in the image caption are saying. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:13, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

You say you are not making this about yourself, then who is this ego play about?

What I personally think what would be appropriate: thanking me for spending lots of time and effort to close an identified media gap ..and contributing constructively where contributions are most valuable.. You said you were reported for replying too much on en.wp, but the threads were related to AI images, and you trying to push a view about them. Also, personally, as someone who has seen some of your AI image contributions- the only reason i didn't nominate 80% of them is bcs they are in use on wikiversity/books. Most, if not all, of those AI images are bad slop, and you have been making bad reasonings in many places of how easy they are to make and hence should not be deleted- I have seen you mention twice to not delete on the image, but improve on the image/prompt- when yhe issue is that the image should not be AI at all. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 15:28, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

this ego play about may I suggest not looking at every detail of my replies under some magnifier but the actual points made. I can't even correct any further replies because I'll have to stop replying to address people's points here or else I'll be accused of replying to much. The main basic point is the user made this thread much about me so it's warranted that I reply and address what has been said about me. bad slop uncivil degradation; also false; also it's not about the looks but the illustrated concept(s). bad reasonings not true how easy they are to make and hence should not be deleted that's your reasoning. Interestingly, it's usually from people who made no AI illustrations and is totally unsubstantiated claim and not a good point to begin with since the value of images is not the difficulty of creating them but whether they're good quality and useful. yhe issue is that the image should not be AI at all Thanks for making clear you're against AI images in general. Anyway, I'll try to stop to reply at this point. And maybe I should repeat that it wasn't me who made this thread to a large part about me but the person who e.g. wrote by Prototyperspective, a user who doesn't edit the German Wikipedia among other things.

I value reason and rationality; and I'm out. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:39, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Really, a magnifier- you write a huge block of text about we should all praise you and you saying we are putting your words under a magnifier. How is me calling the images bad slop "uncivil"- likr seriously?? Wow, new information- we are supposed to judge images by what they are supposed to illustrate, and not the image itself. That was your reasoning, it was not mine. Yeah, we should not be using AI images for many things bcs LLMs can generate bad slop.

Maybe do not edit every discussion related to AI images if you do not want to be discussed as one of the primary subjects in a discussion about AI images.

No replying from me either- the AI images discussion should go to the proposals subpage, and user behaviour to ANU if anyone deems necessary- this isn't the place for it. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 15:47, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

That's just Prototyperspective's MO. He'll write walls of text to derail a discussion and then go off on other people about how their insulting him and over analyzing things the second they provide the most basic feedback. He clearly thinks he owns the area and that no one else is allowed to an opinion about it. At least unless their bowing at his feet about how great he and AI images are. I guess that's on me for not starting this conversation with a 40 line Phd dissertation all about how fantastic AI and his work around it is. My bad. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:21, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

(I wish to collapse the entire above discussion as being a side discussion on user behavior, conflict, and alleged wikihounding.) --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 22:33, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Go for it. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:24, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

@Adamant1 i agree its annoying behaviour, but i consider bad faith to be a pretty high bar, and i'm not sure this crosses it. If this was a non-AI image the user took (but was subpar) and they posted it on a bunch of projects, i would not consider that bad faith per se, so i think the same logic should i apply to yhe AI case. I lean towards its up to individual projects on how to deal with it (and if it truly becomes disruptive across many projects then meta ban). I think commons should generally defer to other projects unless it is blatently obvious (like beyond a reasonable doubt) that someone is just trying to game the system. I just don't think that threshold is met here. (That said, Prototyperspective's communication style on this thread really isn't helping their case) Bawolff (talk) 22:26, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Given we accept these prompt images, the least Commons can do is clearly put a template on them.

{{PD-algorithm}} is used but it is about copyright and author's rights. What if the prompt, AI code and file database are cc-by-sa? Then it would need an additional licensing template that would allow use in UK and Hong Kong maybe. Copyright is messy, having {{Prompt generated}} that warns reusers doesn't have to be. Let's do that?

With a solid template it is up to sister projects to scour for, label and remove AI-gen files if they wish. I would expect big projects like English, German and French Wikipedias to mandate an AI warning template in file captions, but maybe they haven't caught on yet?

This problem isn't unique to AI-gen files, previously during a deletion discussion an uploader put their user-art on Wikidata to keep it in use.

<rant>Back when I joined Commons uploading a file involved buying a DSLR, going outside and getting accosted by the police. I should have waited 20 years to avoid all that and make nicer images.</rant>.

@Adamant1: I am not stalking you from Wikidata, we just both frequent the discussion boards it seems. You could have put some context there though. Commander Keane (talk) 06:21, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@GPSLeo: Are you suggesting I should be blocked for doing my best to add useful images to pages such as science fiction subjects? I'm contributing constructively and Adamant1 is once again doing bad faith accusations that have no basis in reality. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:16, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I am only saying that blocking would be the right answer if the local project does not want such contributions. If they are fine with these contributions they of course should not block you. GPSLeo (talk) 11:30, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

DoctorWhoFan91 makes a good point that we can't ask other projects to keep an eye on file usage. Even if adding the images to other project is an issue know one is going to be blocked for something that editors from said projects probably aren't going to see or deal with to begin with. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:35, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

 Oppose Commons:Project scope also says "Examples of files that are not realistically useful for an educational purpose: Advertising or self-promotion." Well, pretty much every time a company releases something of their property under a free license they are doing it to promote themselves/their products, but for example there are hundreds of free licensed promotional videos like Category:Videos by Bandai Namco which are not only educational but we need in order to replace low quality copyright violations on Wikipedia (by the way we need people to help with that as well as sorting out some videos where Bandai Namco might not own the rights to the characters). Also, almost every attribution license is a form of self promotion in a way.  $999$REAL 💬 ⬆   16:05, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

As the closing admin of the above mentioned DR: I think we need to draw a clear line between intent and effect. Even if an image was added to a sister project in bad faith or to make a point, that is ultimately a matter for that project to evaluate and respond to. If the image remains in use after a reasonable time—especially on a page where it is contextually relevant—then, regardless of the uploader’s intent, the local community has effectively accepted its use. Commons should not second-guess that. We don’t patrol editorial decisions on other projects, and it's not our role to speculate whether their inaction reflects apathy, ignorance, or tacit approval. If someone believes the use is problematic, the proper route is to raise it locally on that project, not to rewrite Commons' project scope to treat “intent” as retroactively overriding demonstrable in-use status. Otherwise we risk giving ourselves an impossible task: interrogating motives and second-guessing every cross-wiki edit from a Commons user, rather than judging a file’s value by how and where it is actually being used. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 11:56, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

If an image was added to a sister project in bad faith...that is ultimately a matter for that project to evaluate and respond to. I could really care less either way but that's clearly not what the policy says. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:08, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

You’re right that the policy says “Any use that is not made in good faith does not count”, but I don’t think that line necessarily overrides the reality of sustained, in-context use on a sister project. The core problem is that Commons can't—and shouldn’t—decide unilaterally that a file’s usage on another project is “not made in good faith,” especially if the local community has seen the image and opted not to remove it. If we're going to treat that usage as "invalid" based purely on the uploader’s history or presumed motives, without any action by the local project, then we’re inserting Commons into editorial decisions we’re explicitly not supposed to override. The policy is meant to avoid abuse, not to give us veto power over content decisions on other wikis. If someone is misusing Commons-hosted files across projects, the most appropriate venue is that project's local process—otherwise we’re judging “good faith” in a vacuum, which is both unworkable and overreaching. If you feel this line of the policy is creating confusion or loopholes, then perhaps it’s worth discussing a revision to clarify how and by whom good faith is judged in cases of cross-wiki use. But until then, I’d hesitate to rewrite usage norms through deletion discussions. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 12:18, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

to a sister project in bad faith or to make a point Just to be clear: it was neither added to make a point nor in bad faith. It's distressing to get nothing but hostility here for what I think are particularly valuable contributions where good-quality helpful illustrations were added where they were missing which substantially reduces the quality of articles and which is a subject I'm addressing not just by adding AI images but also by adding many other media. I'm spending lots of time and effort to contribute constructively and my edits were absolutely not bad faithed but good-intentioned, due and constructive. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:13, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I apologize for the misunderstanding in my previous comment where I suggested that the user may have added images to a sister project in bad faith or to make a point. My intent was to be circumspect in addressing the broader issue of similar image usage, not to accuse you specifically of malicious intent. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 12:23, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Turrets

BEGIN moved from Commons talk:Village pump - Jmabel ! talk 21:18, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
In this wiki "category:turrets (architecture)" seems to describe "Corbelled turrets" in some cases it describes "Ridge turret" which is something different.

I would propose "category:turrets (architecture)" to be replaced by "Category:Corbelled turrets" (a bot can do that).

Some items would have to be recategorised by hand Io Herodotus (talk) 10:22, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
END moved from Commons talk:Village pump - Jmabel ! talk 21:18, 20 April 2025 (UTC)