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A few months ago I went there, categorized a few images (spent quite some time geolocating them), provided some ideas at the talk page which were fully, totally ignored by that community as if I do not exist. Not going to do it again. Ymblanter (talk) 19:33, 30 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't think that you should feel ignored, keeping in mind that "no criticism is praise enough." Implementing procedures to fight the backlog will take some time. It's a task for unsung heroes, who are sufficiently self-motivated to categorise files or to motivate uploaders to to it themselves. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 20:15, 30 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Jmabel: I completely agree with the comment “don't remove it from Category:All media needing categories as of 2020!“, but the problem is that when using Cat-a-lot it automatically removes it. Wouter (talk) 07:54, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Cat-a-lot makes it easy to add the category Unidentified people to all photos of people, for example. The user can be proud because now so many images have a category added. Another user has then to solve the problem with "Unidentified people" with over 31,000 images. I've personally noticed that there are images with the person's full name in the description and that also have a Wikipedia article. Wouter (talk) 10:10, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
This is a very good comment, indeed. I have subsequently categorized some of these people and found that this is easier than categorizing those grouped by dates. Thus, I think it is helpful, to put them temporarily into this category. You may skip the mass uploads starting with a number, if you want to categorize them manually. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 03:50, 5 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
You can combine the research of several people and get a result: File:Bakkikayam.jpg The description is in the Malayalam language. This limits the picture to the Indian state of Kerala, or the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district). This is a dam on some river. But I dont want to speculate.Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:58, 9 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Based on the metadata and image quality, I have the impression that the photo was not taken in 2017, but that a scan of a photo was made in 2017. Wouter (talk) 19:25, 9 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
There also is the issue that most of the files in these needing-categories cats are of low quality and/or low usefulness/relevance so what categorizing them does is
cluttering categories
creating work for those contributors who keep these categories clean and well-subcategorized
@Vysotsky: Thanks, this is a very useful link, indeed. It is relatively easy to categorize these files, especially those of people. However, I am also interested in finding high-quality photos that are not being used, because they cannot be found, unless they are better described. NearEMPTiness (talk) 08:54, 1 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Completely agree. Even more: categorizing photos not being used might be more important. At the same time, I think it is good to also look at the ones heavily used. Your call has worked fine so far: 34,000 uncategorized images brought back to 19,139 within one month. Thanks. Vysotsky (talk) 14:24, 1 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Question: When you clear these backlogs, do you attempt to provide meaningful categorization or do you just stick any old category on it and call it good? For years now, continuing to the present day, I've come across copyvios that have lingered on the site for years. This occurred mainly because the file contained a random, irrelevant category which effectively hid it from anyone knowledgeable about the subject. Oftentimes, they were originally uploaded by bad actors or just plain clueless contributors. Another phenomenon I've observed is with my own uploads where I didn't have time to add categories. The revision history shows an entire series of categorization edits which amount to kicking the can down the road. It's as if to suggest it's my responsibility to come back and properly categorize the files, while it's perfectly okay for them to fuck around incessantly. If you think I'm being unnecessarily mean, go read what COM:CAT says about including the most appropriate category in the tree. I believe that also applies to those editors. Taking an uncategorized file, adding Category:Men or similar, and walking away patting yourself on the back for what a great job you did is utterly ridiculous. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 02:54, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I, for one, would never remove the "uncategorized" template unless I had provided one or more quite relevant categories, and when I'm going through a list like this I often am nominating files for deletion (or speedying them) when I see problems. Hence my remark above about if all you can do with an image that is clearly supposed to depict a place is to categorize a tree, don't remove it from Category:All media needing categories as of 2020!. - Jmabel ! talk05:02, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I fully agree that applying non-sense categories such as Category:Men or just their first name does not fulfill the objective of this exercise. I think, we should focus on enabling authors or readers of Wikipedia articles, to find relevant photos more easily. Currently, we are working on the 2020 files. Thus "anyone knowledgeable about the subject" had sufficient time to request the deletion of files. Requesting deletions can also more effectively be done in parallel to categorization. If we do not start from A to Z by alphabet, but if start by categorizing high-quality photos, for instance the uncategorized photos uploaded via Flickr. On some occasions it might be helpful, to add temporary categories such as Category:Unidentified cities or Category:Unidentified automobiles, because these are being looked after by motivated specialists. NearEMPTiness (talk) 05:18, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
A lesser problem than copyvios are the duplicates wich become visible, when placed next to each other. Sorting the category by date makes them even more visible.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:55, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks! Also added to this page. For the category here, I think now for the files left there is a large fraction of files for which SDs, DRs, and permission needed tags would be good to add or at least probably would be good to consider using more often. In part for the sake of making it more feasible to complete this, probably the cutoff for quality/usefulness expectations may be good to raise so that eg this file and this fall beneath it (these don't add much but clutter really). Prototyperspective (talk) 23:04, 9 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Agree. This info would also be good to add to that page. Also similar ways to separate types of images, e.g. Category:Moon from Earth instead of dumping further low-quality photos where the Moon is somewhere in the image directly into high-level Category:Moon. There's probably more similar ways that would be good for categorizers to be aware of. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:26, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
There are still approx 13682 uncategorized files, which are used on Wikipedia and related projects, as shown on Glam-Tools. Some of them can be easily categorised by using the lemma of the English Wikipedia. NearEMPTiness (talk) 21:03, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I don't like "low quality" categories. For one thing, we have no systematic way to make such a judgement. For another, it unnecessarily insults users who may not agree with that description of their work. - Jmabel ! talk00:45, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 days ago6 comments4 people in discussion
Hi, I would like to discuss the description in all categories of the scheme "Maps of <country> in the <x>th century" (see for example Italy, Belgium, Spain, Poland). There are three different points about the current system I would like to invite comments on:
the wording of the definition in the first paragraph of the hatnote
whether or not to include "you may also be looking for similar maps" (second and third paragraph) of the description
whether or not to re-include a distinction between history maps (in this category group) vs. old maps (not in this category group)
For the first point, there are two proposals, the first is the current "Maps showing all or most of the territory (geographic area) of modern-day <country> - as the lands were in the 8th century (701-800 CE)" which I would prefer to replace with a simple "This category is about maps of the history of <country> in the 8th century (701-800 CE)", given that "modern-day territories" are not always the same as they were in the respective century. Another critism of mine is that "all or most" excludes history maps that only cover smaller parts of the country in question.
For the second point, my argument is that these paragraphs are not necessary, since the links to the Atlas project should be included in the respective parent category (i.e. "Maps of the history of <country>"), which is also linked via template.
For the third point, I find it essential to point out that Commons has always distinguished "current", "history" and "old" maps, formulated in Template:TFOMC: "history" maps include this map of Poland in the 16th century (created recently, depicting the past) but "old" maps include this 16th-century map of Poland (created to depict the present, back then). There are certain grey areas where these categories DO overlap, especially "old history maps", but in quite many cases they don't. The respective category names are quite similar and can be confused, so I would suggest to mention this right in the category description.
I've put my own opinion in italics to explain why I think this requires debate, but I would like for people to check out the scheme examples for themselves, and judge on their own. Peace, --Enyavar (talk) 08:11, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Enyavar: I'm trying to understand the first point. A couple of questions that may help me understand:
Would there be no such thing as "maps of Germany" for any date before 1866? Or would we take "Germany" before that date to mean the German-speaking world (and, if so, would that include areas where the rulers spoke German, but most of their subject did not)? or what? (Similarly for Italy.)
Similarly: would there be no such thing as maps of Poland or Lithuania between 1795 and 1918? If so, what would we call maps of that area in that period?
I could easily provide a dozen similar examples, but answers to those two will at least give me a clue where this proposes to head. - Jmabel ! talk18:49, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for that question, our categories about "history of" do not really care for nation states existing. Germany's history begins quite some time before it became a nation in the 19th century, and Polish history did not stop during the times of division: Poland in the 19th century is unquestionably a valid category. Our history categories generally imply that people know the limits of a subject without exact definitions.
Your question is getting to the reason why I am uncomfortable with the current hatnote/definition of these categories. I have not checked for all countries in Europe, but I'm quite confident: We do not define the subject of "Maps of the history of Poland" with a hatnote. We do not define "Poland in the 16th century" either. So why would we define the combination subcategory of the two so narrowly and rigidly, that only 6 out of 26 files currently in the category even match that (unreasonable) definition? (And of course, Poland/16th is just a stand-in here, I would argue the same for Spain/12th and Italy/8th and all others)
I would even be okay with no definition at all, besides a template notice (my third point) that "maps of <country> in Xth century" is about history maps, and old maps have to be found in "Xth-century maps of <country>". --Enyavar (talk) 04:53, 3 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Please read the original post, that is not a comment on the actual questions of this topic. Old maps are not the topic here, this is about history maps (i.e. Maps showing history of specific countries/centuries) regardless of when they were produced.
In our Commons:WikiProject Postcards we have the similar problem. Is this a "old postcard of the German Empire" or a "Postcard of Germany". There we are mostly agree, that today people often search for postcards be the locations of today. So many former German towns are now Polnish towns and so we are categorized this postcards under the polnish name of the town. See also Commons:WikiProject_Postcards#Categories. Best regards --sk (talk) 12:29, 12 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
February 05
Moving Things named after xyz categories out of xyz cats
Latest comment: 4 days ago8 comments6 people in discussion
Such categories often add lots (sometimes many thousands) of offtopic files to category branches.
This can hamper categorization as in this case
It doesn't really relate to the subject of the parent category
It's not really helpful or useful to the person browsing the parent category which is about an entirely different subject
It puts files into wrong categories – in this case a video of a person swimming is underneath the Category:Orders of insects → Category:Lepidoptera category (falsehood) but shown is not an insect but a human
it can also make the deepcategory-based wall-of-images view useless (unless this wish is implemented and there's no indications it will be and even then it's still a problem)
The distinguish template is better for similarly-named subjects that might be confused for one another, I think the "Cat see also" template is more appropriate here. That being said, I don't see anyone arguing that we shouldn't have these categories at all, this is more about their placement in the category tree. ReneeWrites (talk) 13:45, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
It's also worth noting that "named after" relationships can be language-specific. For example, the tool which we call a "monkey wrench" in English is called a "llave Ford" ("Ford wrench" - after the automobile manufacturer) in Spanish, or an "Engländer" in German. "Named after" isn't a hierarchical relationship, and shouldn't be represented in the category system. Omphalographer (talk) 20:09, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
That's true, but I suspect the majority of these named-after cats are things like streets, buildings, ship, etc where the name origin is not language-dependent. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:19, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
In Commons:Village pump/Technical#FastCCI dysfunctional again? (about a tool to see the categorization path) it was found that videos of helicopters where in Category:Trochilidae (hummingbirds) because of Trochilidae -> Things named after hummingbirds -> Airbus Helicopters H120 Colibri. Colibri is a genus of hummingbirds in English and possibly also a colloquial name for hummingbird while a very similar word "Kolibri" is the German name for hummingbird while in several other languages like Russian or Japanese, I think there is no relation of "Colibri" to their words for hummingbirds.
Either way, here again it wasn't useful (and if it is useful to some, they could find the cat if it's linked via some see also or in the Wikidata infobox(?)) but instead obstructed the completion of the very incomplete Category:Videos of hummingbirds since it introduced lots of helicopter videos to the source set of files to copy/move into it. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:04, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Commons category system is not a strict ontology (Wikidata is) so the fact that categories about butterflies contain people is not wrong as such, even if it may result in odd results when searching down the category tree. MKFI (talk) 07:52, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
That doesn't affect the validity of the 5 points except for weakening #4. Regarding that, I'd say that it's currently not a correct ontology doesn't mean it can't move toward it and/or that some cases/branches can be made more ontologically correct; there is no imperative for things to be categorized also in ways that are ontologically incorrect, it's just not a priority or required. By the way, Wikidata in practice is often less precise or ontologically correct than Commons & Wikipedia categories and, more importantly, often no subclass and/or instance of is set there or some key ones are missing which isn't the case for categories.
You make a good point and this needs to be considered but again, it doesn't really affect the main reasoning in this case. It's just not useful but problematic in various ways. Linking to it can still be done – if the links there are considered useful – via templates, such as via the cat see also template. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:47, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Metallurgical furnace in operation inside an industrial foundry in Guwahati, Assam, India, showing molten metal being poured and workers engaged in the smelting process.
In the historic compressor hall
Silk factory, throwing: female workers gain filaments from silk moth pupas and combine them to treads wound on weels with machine help, Dalat, Vietnam
Congrats! I like these results. (I just wished there would have been more photos of modern active industrial factories in the Factor interiors challenge.)
Could a template with a category or just a category be added to the Photo challenge winner photos? I think the info that the file won (place 1-3 at least) a photo challenge would be interesting to the visitor on the file information page. Additionally, I'd like to add it to Category:Community-based media evaluation and the top x files could maybe at some point be upranked somewhat in search results are to being more likely relevant and of good quality. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:20, 7 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. This hasn't been added to the winning pictures here and neither to those of the prior challenge posted about further up this page. Is it just missing for these or was it not added for files of earlier challenges too? I check some files of the latest challenges in the archives and the template was not set on this, this and this. Maybe there is a way to query for all PC-winner files without the template somehow. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:10, 7 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
It seems like it would need a way to see files used on Commons on pages like "Commons:Photo challenge/[some changing text here]/Winners" or "Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/Archives/year". Other than that, there doesn't seem to be anything consistent for these files and I couldn't find a way to query for pages linking to even just a particular Commons page under File usage on Commons. Is there a way to do this with petscan? I tried entering "Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/Archives/2025" into Templates&links linked from (linked to also didn't work). Prototyperspective (talk) 18:45, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
What do people think about creating a second category for files voted far up but not in the top 3 (3 is an arbitrary number), probably place 4-10 or 4-15 or 4-20? Is it feasible to categorize the files into a new category for such, e.g. Category:Photo challenge runner-up (places 4–15)? (probably using the scores pages like this) These are not called winners, for why this would be useful, please read on.
I think we probably better use all the community quality assessments that we can get on Commons because this would raise the chance that for any given search on Commons there's at least a few files that we could slightly uprank so as to increase the quality of files in the top search results and there aren't so many indicators available. When searching for "herd" for example, it would be best if the search results showed on the first (first few) pages high-quality results (with herd in title or description or category etc) based on quality indicators like number of uses in Wikipedia, whether it's a featured pictured, and whether it's a photo challenge winner. However, for many searches – especially for more niche or specific things – there probably aren't any or many files that have any of these indicators. So I think a category for files from the challenges that are more likely to be of good quality but not necessarily very high-quality or 'winning' – as defined by reaching spot 1-3 – could still be useful. For these second-class category files either only another template would be added or not template at all but just the category. It's not just about the search results though, one may want to browse these files or work on them to make sure they're well categorized, this gets me to the next point which is also another way this categorization can be practically useful:
This query on Quarry (thanks to Bawolff again) shows the photo challenge winner files sorted by number of set categories. Even when just considering the top 3 winning files of each photo challenge (currently 887 files overall), many files only have a single nonhidden category set. For some files that's probably fine but for maybe circa ⅔ there are categories missing like a topical category for what's actually shown. I've created a report page at Commons:Photo challenge/Undercategorized files table 1 for the files containing just 1 or 2 nonhidden categories (this is the case for 376 files). If anybody would like to, you could use this report to help add categories to undercategorized winning files. As suggested above, if a new category for runner-up files is created, an additional report could be created where I suspect some good-quality files don't have any topical set at all.
@Jarekt: Do you think adding a category to e.g. files places 4-15 is feasible to you? Having them in a category can e.g. be used to categorize these files better via the mentioned reports. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:24, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Prototyperspective: I would have to write custom python code for that to read and parse /result pages. It is feasible but a lot of work. I do have a code to parse /Winner files, but it would be useless. If we want to do that we should create new template based on Template:Photo challenge winner for runner-ups. Also I am not sure what we would call it. English term "runner ups" is usually used for 2nd and 3rd place and we do not have a term for others other than "participants". It might be easier to categorize all participants, but not all are good. Jarekt (talk) 16:08, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for clarifying. Finding the name shouldn't be the difficult part and one could change the category's name later; maybe Category:Photo challenge files (places 4–15)?. I asked an LLM 'there is a challenge with places 1-3 but how to call files that reach place 4-15? (of 100 files only few get there)' and suggested terms include Honorable Mentions, Notable Entries, Spotlight Files but I guess one would keep it more neutral and short by not choosing any such term and just have it in the title that those are places x to y. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:17, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
More properly pluralized as "runners-up". And it can refer to something pretty far down the scale. I've heard phrases like "9th runner-up."
It would be nice if the category sorted in order, insofar as there is an order. If nothing beyond the first 3 are specifically ranked, the sort key could still be 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, etc. and the 4s would sort alphabetically. - Jmabel ! talk19:33, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
The description at the top of Category:Photo challenge pictures and several of its subcategories note that these categories are no longer being used, though I can't find a discussion where this was decided. I think it would be a good idea to "un-retire" these categories. I quite like the way content is categorized under Category:Photo challenge/2014 and I think we could apply this structure to the other years as well. ReneeWrites (talk) 10:54, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
So, I don't think there are any problems with these categories themselves, hence I agree it is a good idea to reuse these categories again. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 11:24, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
February 08
Expand TOC script
Latest comment: 7 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Apparently, some of the name of gods across different myths and religions in the Indo-European languages sound too similar to be a coincidence. This made linguists and mythologists to speculate that there were Indo-European gods that people believed back when they spoke Proto-Indo-European. See en:Proto-Indo-European mythology. HyperAnd [talk] 23:14, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Rough seas
Latest comment: 6 days ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Every so often I search in vain for a category "rough sea(s)" and find only "sea storms". To me, a "sea storm" is a storm at sea (well Duh). I wouldn't call some big waves hitting rocks or rolling into beaches and coastlines under blue or fair-weather skies "sea storms", yet that category contains quite a few examples of such. Do we need a separate category for "rough seas"? ITookSomePhotos (talk) 18:32, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
A storm at sea can still be at the coast or not? At least rough seas imo is not any more fitting for sth happening at the coastline vs far into the open water. But a new broader cat may be good because there also is Category:Splashing water waves that looks like a subcategory of it or it could go into a cat with the photos in Category:Sea storms. Also quite a few files in sea storms seem miscategorized there especially per its Wikidata infobox definition "sustained winds between 50 and 87 km/h". Prototyperspective (talk) 18:52, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
A sea storm? A storm at sea can hit the coast, yes, but I think of that as implying big clouds and probably lashing rain too. While all waves at sea are of course primarily caused by winds, and strong winds are a feature of storms, yet I do not think of something like this at right as a "sea storm". Do others? ITookSomePhotos (talk) 19:49, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 hours ago8 comments6 people in discussion
The titular question is only half in joke. When I'm using our search function for the combination of "<country> maps logos", the first entry is File:Burger King Princess Street Kingston.jpg (image of a BK restaurant in Canada), followed by dozens of other files showing BK products, BK logos, BK restaurants and BK merchandise. This works only for some selected countries, the ones I have noticed so far are: Albania, Bahrain, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, Guatemala, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Maldives, Malta, Morocco, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela. So far, I have only seen this with nation-countries, not with regions or continents like "Extremadura", "Wales" or "Asia"
When trying to reproduce this bug for as many countries as possible, I found out that "Argentina maps logos" does not result in Burger King spam. But "Argentina maps Lanka" (a mistake) yields the spam again. I stumbled over this because the bug appears less reliable when searching for two-word country names: "maps Sri Lanka logos" has the offending image as the 10th and not the 1st result. "logos maps Lanka" (but also "logos maps Sri") fixes the issue and the Canadian restaurant is number one again. *squint* *headscratch* Anyway, the following images are generally in the same order, regardless of the country, sometimes interrupted by a singular more relevant result: #2: restaurant in Wisconsin, #3: Crown stack, #4: restaurant in Belgium, #5: restaurant in Puerto Rico, #6: products in Guangdong, #7: restaurant in Russia... and so on.
Paradoxically, when searching for "Canada maps logos" (but also France and India), the first three search results are for Starbucks instead of Burger King. For other countries again (Australia, Austria, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland, Romania, ...) the first results are indeed what I would expect: logos or maps of the respective country. But even so, at some point after the 25th or 53rd search result and then downwards, images of MacDonalds restaurants, merchandise and chickenwings are suddenly supremely dominant again. And finally, there are those countries for which the search tapers off into satellite images of the requested region - which I can accept as tolerable results.
I understand this might be partially because "logo" is part of my search term, and global brands like BK, McD and Starbucks obviously have logos. The "maps" part of my search term might lead to misleading results because there is a camera location indicated in the restaurant images? (If that causes it, it needs to be fixed, because camera locations are not maps). Notably the country names like "Pakistan" or "Guatemala" are not even occuring in the false search results! So how does this keep happening, and most importantly, why do these images always appear in this order in search results for something completely different?
@Enyavar: This may be partially because "B" comes before 92.3% of the letters in the Latin character set, plus all of the letters of the other character sets, and we don't have enough competing "A" logos. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 19:41, 9 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
You don't say which search you were using; I use Special:Search I get nothing of the sort for United States maps logos, though what I get is equally irrelevant (File:Martian Dust Devil Trails.jpg). I think this is all mostly because the combination of "maps" and "logos" in wikitext/SDC for any given file is an unlikely one. - Jmabel ! talk20:12, 9 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Re Jeff G.: What are "A" logos vs. "B" logos and why would they boost MacDonalds products? Among the first 200 search result images (for my search of "Austria maps logo") were 119 MacDonalds images.
I did another test, without logos this time: The same experiment with just "Austria food" yielded results of probably 60-80% Austrian cuisine images, just as I would expect, Not a single fast food image in sight, and even a single map. Yes, that search worked brilliant. Next I tried "Austria food maps". Wow. As far as I counted my search results, this one yielded a ratio of 206 MD-images vs 32 non-MD-images (and notably not a single map). I know that MacDonalds is pervasive, but that is a bit over the top.
Re Jmabel: The search I am using is Special:Search on what I believe is the default setting. Please tell me where I can access different search functions in Commons. I would give them a try. Also, are you telling me that when you searched for these specifically stated 34 country names (that for given reasons did not include the US/UK), in combination with the words "logo maps", you are getting Martian Dust Devil Trails as the first image hit, but no fast food chains? That now makes me believe that Commons is employing user-adaptive search patterns, similar to Google. If that is so, I would like to ask how I can reset my individual search adaptation. --Enyavar (talk) 00:21, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
If you want to switch between the two searches, look near the top of the search page for "Switch to MediaSearch" or (if you are in MediaSearch) "Switch to Special:Search". - Jmabel ! talk02:09, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I got the aforementioned Burger King images for searching Kazakhstan maps logos. I simply entered the three words in the search bar at the top of the page. I know that Commons search algorithm isn't the best one (I usually just search by category), but those Burger King search results are really strange. They are neither located in Kazakhstan, nor are they maps or logos. It's as if the search algorithm is just returning images, except that they are apparently not random at all because I get the exact same images as Enyavar mentioned, and in the exact same order, too. Jeff G.'s suggestion about it having to do with alphabetical order makes sense at first, but on second thought numbers usually come before letters, and we have plenty of categories which start with the number 1, and we also have a lot of categories starting with the letter A, so why would the search results start with the letter B? And not even "B1" or "Ba" but instead with "Bu"? Nakonana (talk) 17:03, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
What a strange bug. Trying similar search terms, I can also get the same results by replacing maps logo with just the word burger: eg. a search for "Luxembourg burger" or "Kazakhstan burger" returns the same range of Burger King photos from around the world that Enyavar reports above. Some other country names (eg. "England burger") correctly return only burger images related to that place.
There are about 59,000 images returned by all of these searches, the same number that you get (in what looks like largely the same order) if you just search for "burger king". I have no idea how MediaWiki's search works, but could it be some cached lookup index (maybe where some supercategory like Category:Burger King was briefly and erroneously added to a lot of country categories in the past, and reverted, but not before the search functionality had indexed it) that we'd be able to purge? Belbury (talk) 18:06, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Turning down frivolous requests for courtesy deletion...
Latest comment: 1 day ago7 comments5 people in discussion
Personally, I think WMF projects should turn down all frivolous requests for courtesy deletion.
I noticed something alarming just now. There is a discussion at as to whether to delete a headshot of Randy Lennox. That image was kept in October 2025. During that discussion I counted 17 images of Mr Lennox in his category. I think I checked, in the last week or so, and we still had 17 images. But now? There are only 12. What happened to the other five images?
Geo Swan, I haven't seen them. I checked the category page on archive.org and found a copy from January 2025. There was nothing in the category in January that's not there now. So those five images would have to have been uploaded and/or categorized between January and October. Do you remember anything, anything at all about any of the images that were in there? Partial filename, where they were taken, rough date, what he was wearing, anything? Could they have been re-categorized or deleted as copyvio? Could you have made a mistake? All I found was odd stuff:
Randy Lennox (Diff ~1327227745) "He has appointed senior VP/GM in 1993 amid company growth". Amid company growth? That doesn't sound like wikivoice
I searched the page titles from 1 October 2025: $ cat commonswiki-20251001-all-titles | grep -E 'andy_[Ll]ennox' 4 Deletion_requests/File:Randy_Lennox_and_the_Launch.jpg 6 Randy_Lennox_2020.jpg 6 Randy_Lennox_at_the_2017_CFC_Annual_Gala_&_Auction_(32687750515).jpg 6 Randy_Lennox_at_the_2018_CFC_Annual_Gala_&_Auction_(25432943657).jpg 14 Randy_Lennox If there were five more images, they were either added to the category between 1 and 16 October, or they didn't have "Randy Lennox" in their filenames, or you made a mistake. - Alexis Jazzping plz05:25, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
This might be one of those paid editing bullshit where people think they own the wikipedia page of theirs, don't know how many cases like this i fought, some even on enwiki back then. Its a shame the Canadian Film Centre people stop posting their images on Flickr after Flickr became greedy and enforced image limits for non-paying users, i was the one who got them to change their licence so we could use it on wikipedia 12 years back. If you say there was 17 images then someone could use the excuse that some of those images because the flickr pages no longer exists are copyright infringements, then admins might delete them by mistake if its tagged as speedy..also trying to force an image on enwiki where they tagged the year as 2020, but date on form says 2019 and exif says 2018 just reeks of Bad intentions.. Stemoc05:15, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
"then admins might delete them by mistake if its tagged as speedy" It's pretty well known you can get almost any file deleted by using the deletion template Trade (talk) 19:04, 14 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Geo Swan, also, could we somehow nudge vanity deletion requests towards noindex requests? Often what they really care about is Google. This probably only works for unused images though. - Alexis Jazzping plz07:26, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
On the talk page of Category:Greater Morocco, a user doubts the accuracy of the map. However, they seem to have been inactive since December 2024. Is it possible for someone to verify the accuracy of the map (I put two references for the map) so the tag can be removed? Thanks in advance
(I only just realised I initially put this in VillagePump Copyright. My bad!) Mayouhm (talk) 14:12, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
The C.R. Pennell book cited looks pretty readily available. It can be bought in paperback for about $25, and it is is in a lot of academic libraries. A Worldcat search shows me one at pretty much every major academic library in my area, you'll probably find the same. If that doesn't help you directly (no access to an academic library, and unable or disinclined to shll out for a copy) you still should be able to turn it up through interlibrary loan. - Jmabel ! talk19:53, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Can we aggregate deletion nominations by the same person that is using the same rote deletion rationale?
Latest comment: 2 days ago12 comments5 people in discussion
It is possible to combine existing DRs, but once they have some comments, unless those comments are verbatim identical, it is a pain in the butt. Also, when combining, it is important that the facts of the cases (not just the deletion rationale) be very clearly parallel. - Jmabel ! talk00:53, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
If 2015 is the first known publication, that's where the copyright clock starts. The burden is on you to prove that it was A.) published before 1994 (really March 1989) AND B.) without a copyright notice. We should not assume that these were published without a copyright notice. Abzeronow (talk) 03:55, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
You are ignoring the question: "Can we aggregate deletion nominations by the same person that is using the same rote deletion rationale?" You are arguing the outcome of the debate, not whether the debates can be aggregated. --RAN (talk) 21:49, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): I've done this where the files obviously stand or fall together, that is where material facts are the same across all the files. My usual technique is to pick a single "lead" DR and to list all the files there, turn the other DRs into redirects to the lead one, and remove those others from the various places they get transcluded (so the daily page doesn't end up with 25 copies of the same DR. --bjh21 (talk) 23:13, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I wonder what the point of including by @RAN: in discussions about deletions the clichéd statement that we know when a photo was taken because it happened during their lifetime, and then sarcastically claiming it wasn't taken after their death. With such a trivial statement, you could claim we know when practically every photo in the world was taken. --Uniminomumm (talk) 00:26, 12 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Unless it is an image of a rotting corpse, we generally know that an image was taken during someone's lifetime. And since we know what people look like at various ages, we can generally estimate that age to about a 5 year range. Does this work for "every photo in the world", no, not landscapes and not with images of people where we do not know their birth and death year. --RAN (talk) 00:21, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
It's still guessing though, and creation is not publication which matters a lot more than when a work was created. Europe has more stringent requirements for publication than the US due to the Berne Convention (which the US didn't fully implement). Abzeronow (talk) 04:18, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
It certainly tells us about creation date, but nothing about publication date (except an earliest possible date). For U.S. copyright, for anything prior to 1978 publication date is all that matters; even after that it matters if the author is unknown (or their death date is unknown) and we can't show that the content was at least 35 years old at time of publication (120 - 95). - Jmabel ! talk19:58, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
February 13
Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Little Daddy (1931)
Latest comment: 2 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 23 hours ago3 comments2 people in discussion
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I guess so, since I see some other ship categories there; I would have presumed that was to be used for images that actually showed the remnants of a burned ship, but I guess not. - Jmabel ! talk18:21, 15 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Stonington Island
Latest comment: 1 day ago2 comments2 people in discussion
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Being logged in should override the IP address block
Latest comment: 2 hours ago12 comments8 people in discussion
I get the message outlined below when trying to update a page even when I am logged in. Being logged in should override the IP address block and allow the update.
You do not have the permissions needed to carry out this action.Your IP address is in a range that has been blocked on all Wikimedia Foundation wikis.
The block was made by JJMC89. The reason given is Open proxy/Webhost: See the help page if you are affected.
Start of block: 00:51, 3 July 2024Expiry of block: 00:51, 3 July 2027Your current IP address is 52.94.133.131. The blocked range is 52.94.128.0/20.
Please include all above details in any queries you make. If you believe you were blocked by mistake, you can find additional information and instructions in the Stewards Block Wizard.
I know. However, if you are logged in, the fact that you are no longer an anonymous user should override the block. By logging in you are assuming all the consequences of your actions. If a user does something wrong, such a user can be blocked. My-wiki-photos (talk) 22:54, 15 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
No, I don’t really need it personally. I was just thinking it would make more sense for the IP address block to be overridden when a user is logged in and their credentials are known. My-wiki-photos (talk) 04:49, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
No, the default is that they only apply to anon users. They only apply to logged in users and account registration if multiple abuse accounts used the IP. GPSLeo (talk) 06:33, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Registering an account doesn't make you not anonymous, it just gives you a username. Open proxy users are anonymous by default and due to their ease of abuse blocked from editing, as they should be. You can ask for an IP block exemption as Jeff recommended, or disable your VPN. ReneeWrites (talk) 08:25, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I support allowing the use of VPNs for registered editors without requiring any extra "IP Block Exempt" permissions or similar. Maybe only users of a certain age and/or minimum count/fraction of unreverted edits. This would better protect privacy and safety. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:44, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
yeah it's becoming a bit ridiculous. half the internet is on an open proxy and we will have fewer and fewer people NOT in that situation. We need to find different ways. Maybe with like dynamic blocking and unblocking of ranges whenever there is abuse or something. This overblocking is costing us editors. I hear people wanting to try editing complain about it all the time. We mostly don't hear that, because we don't see those people, which is convenient... I guess. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:59, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
February 16
I'll just ask a question
Latest comment: 17 hours ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:33, 16 February 2026 (UTC)
Latest comment: 5 hours ago3 comments2 people in discussion
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:06, 16 February 2026 (UTC)
Seems to be fixed now. A redirect was in place. ShuQizhe tried to have it speedily deleted (adding the template breaks the redirect) and The Squirrel Conspiracy removed it for not being eligible, which restored it. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:05, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Rate-limiting Flickr2Commons for non-autopatrolled users due to poorly curated mass uploads
Latest comment: 1 hour ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Mass uploaders who fail to categorize or have appropriate filenames seems to be a perennial problem, and end up creating a ton of work for other users. I just stumbled upon a user who uploaded 125 uncategorized photos from Flickr2Commons in the span of 7 minutes, and I am giving up for the night and just dumping all the photos into a further-categorization-needed category.
Would it be possible to rate limit mass uploading from Flickr for non-autopatrolled users to something reasonable (say, maybe 10 to 30 uploads per 24-hour period) to combat this? There's probably some reasonable number which holds back badly-done mass uploading without preventing users from properly contributing useful content. From my personal observation complaints over poorly-curated mass uploading stems pretty much entirely from Flickr transfers; there seems to be little to no issue with people directly uploading their own media, so rate limiting Flickr2Commons seems reasonable. If an uploader has proven themselves to be trustworthy and want to say, transfer more than 30 files a day from Flickr they can go for the autopatrolled right.
I personally think a slower problem is better than a faster problem; a slower problem gives editors more time to catch up on new uploads (e.g. I don’t have the time to categorize 125 photos every night, but I can do 10), gives more time for problematic mass uploaders to be identified and dealt with, and reduces the mess that problematic mass uploaders generate. 4300streetcar (talk) 16:21, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think mass imports by humans should be treated as bots requests (i.e. thins should be right) and requester should be hold accountable for initial filtering, proper naming, describing,categorization, adding Structured data. EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:15, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
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This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ReneeWrites (talk) 20:10, 15 February 2026 (UTC) 