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Welcome to the Village pump proposals section

This page is used for proposals relating to the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons; it is distinguished from the main Village pump, which handles community-wide discussion of all kinds. The page may also be used to advertise significant discussions taking place elsewhere, such as on the talk page of a Commons policy. Recent sections with no replies for 30 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2024/02.

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Disabling talk pages of deletion requests

While there now exists Template:Editnotices/Group/Commons talk:Deletion requests that notifies users to make comments on the deletion request pages themselves, it is evidently ignored, as seen in 54conphotos' comments on the talk page of Commons:Deletion requests/File:KORWARM2.jpg (which I transferred to the main page and in Amustard's comment on a Turkmen deletion request which I subsequently transferred to the mainspace. As it is very evident that the edit notice is being ignored, I am proposing that the "Talk" namespace be disabled in all pages with prefix "Commons:Deletion requests/". This should be a permanent solution to the incidents that should have been better avoided. For existing talk pages of deletion requests with comments, the comments (including mine if ever I had responded to uploaders in the talk page namespaces) should be transferred to the deletion requests mainspaces, with consideration to the dates of the comments or inputs. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 09:10, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

 Support At least, the use of DR talk pages should restricted to power users (admins, license reviewers?). Yann (talk) 09:37, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

@Yann that may be OK. Restricted to admins and license reviewers. Or the talk pages are still existing visually but those who don't have user rights, even autopatrolled ones, will be barred from editing talk pages and be presented with a boilerplate notice that they don't have the right to edit talk pages and should instead comment on the main discussion page, with a link to the DR itself in the notice (do not expect several new users to comprehend what they are reading in the notices). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 10:09, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

 Support --Krd 11:23, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

 Support Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 11:56, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out this Template:Editnotices/Group/Commons talk:Deletion requests location in Wikimedia. This was not ignored as you said in your comment, it simply was no where to be found at the time I commented. It's a shame it's too late to place a comment there as I would have done so. Even your notes to me are very confusing as the names of Comments pages do not match up so I can find them as are all the previous notes received by others. Being new to this platform, I have found it very confusing to find things that are suggested when seeing comments by others.

Hopefully I will have the hours to research and better understanding of the workings of Wikimedia Commons in the future. Thanks again! 54conphotos (talk) 13:32, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

 Support or, if it's easier, systematically turn them into redirects to the relevant project page. - Jmabel ! talk 21:56, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

 Support --Adamant1 (talk) 00:35, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

 Support. Some good ideas above from Yann and Jmabel. We could also explore autotranscluding them to the bottoms of the DR subpages themselves.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 00:49, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

 Support. Yes, good idea, esp. with Jmabel’s and Yann’s additions. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 11:34, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

 Support to restrict it to anyone with autopatrol, I think these users are knowledgeable enough to know that the talk page isn't to discuss the deletion. We must create an informal and easy-to-understand AF notice though. -- CptViraj (talk) 12:19, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Another one, this misplaced comment by ApexDynamo, which I have transferred to the main nomination pages. CptViraj, I don't think even autopatrolled users are still knowledgeable enough to know that talk pages are not proper forums to comment. Example: misplaced comments by Exec8 (which I also transferred soon after initiating this proposal). I suggest the use of those talk pages must be restricted to admins/sysops and license reviewers. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 09:38, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Still, rare cases for autopatrollers. IMHO we shouldn't unnecessarily take away the power completely, the problem is mainly caused by newbies/non-regulars. -- CptViraj (talk) 18:13, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

 Support I have never used a talk page of a DR nor have I seen one being used. The DRs are usually also frequented by very few editors and the comments can easily be distinguished from one another.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 22:13, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

One more problematic use, by @Balachon77: (see this). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 01:00, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Another problematic use, by SiCebuTransmissionCorrecter (talk · contribs) – Commons talk:Deletion requests/File:Line construction of Hermosa-San Jose Transmission Line. The line constructs above Hermosa-Duhat-Balintawak transmission line.png. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 00:10, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

no no no no no no! SiCebuTransmissionCorrecter (talk) 01:12, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Commons_talk:Deletion_requests/File:Afrikan_och_Afrikanska_x_Ingel_Fallstedt.jpg ? DS (talk) 14:50, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

@DragonflySixtyseven the discussion should have been made at COM:VPC or at concerned admin's talk page. Ping @Holly Cheng and De728631: for attention. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 21:35, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I was the one who started the discussion about the undeletion date. That's the type of thing that makes sense to do on the DR's talk page. —holly {chat} 21:43, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

@Holly, do you think this was useful enough to you that you would be opposed to making this change? I don't see a lot of loss if you had to do something like this directly on the DR page. I realize we normally don't touch DRs once they are closed, but we do add categories to them (for example) and I've seen a closing admin go back and add to their rationale. It's also what we typically do on a DR for a single image if the image is kept, then later nominated again for deletion. This seems similar to that, though I think you'd want to put the new content below the {{Delf}} template. - 23:45, 7 February 2024 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmabel (talk • contribs)

@Jmabel: If we stick the new content below the {{Delf}} and then it gets nominated for deletion again, won't that mess up the bot that does the archiving? In the case of undeletions due to expiration, that would probably be extremely rare. I suppose if that does happen, someone can always manually archive it. I guess I'm not opposed. The benefits seem to outweigh the possible risks. —holly {chat} 17:16, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

@Holly Cheng: I'm not certain even what archiving you are referring to. There's nothing I'm aware of that any bot does to the individual DR page, and I'm not sure what is Krdbot's rule to remove the transclusion of the individual DR in the page of DRs for a particular day. It's obviously able to cope with categories below the {{Cfdf}}, but maybe not other text. User:Krd, I presume you could answer this. - Jmabel ! talk 01:07, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I meant the moving of individual DR subpages from the day page to the day archive page. —holly {chat} 17:58, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. And I don't know User:Krdbot's rule for that, which probably only User:Krd can answer, unless someone feels like doing a bunch of research. - Jmabel ! talk 20:16, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

"Only Categories" is the answer, though I'm not sure to which exact question. Krd 05:42, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

That's too bad. Then it sounds like Holly's use case might be reason enough to keep the talk pages for these. Does anyone see a good workaround? - Jmabel ! talk 05:52, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the use case is invalid, as the objection should better be on a user talk page. Does anybody watch deletion requests? I don't. Krd 06:08, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

@Krd I only watch DRs that I made, or that have significant interest in me that I am heavily involved, like responding to comments or questions every now and then. Though I heavily encouraged everyone to comment on DR pages themselves, not the DR pages' talk pages. On DRs that I am watching, I force the respondent (typically the uploader of the nominated file) to reply on the nomination page proper by moving their comment from the talk page to the nomination page proper and responding their question or protest, with the addition of a reminder for them to comment or respond on the nomination page proper. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 07:40, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

 Strong support I see no reason to nominate someone's talkpage for deletion unless there is a strong reason, i.e. vandalism, or purely disruptive nature. However, I think this is only a very small number of them, and it should be handled by senior users. --A1Cafel (talk) 10:18, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Support I see no reason why the talk page of a DR is required. Admins should be allowed the edit permissions for maintenance reasons -- DaxServer (talk) 18:56, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Retiring License template tag

In 2011 I created {{License template tag}} template, an empty template which is added to 5 license layout templates and transcluded in almost all Commons files. This tag template was essential in creation of SQL queries for files missing a link to this tag which usually means that they are missing any license. Some years latter Extension:CommonsMetadata was created that adds Category:Files with no machine-readable license to files without license. I am no longer using {{License template tag}} template and I do not think it is needed anymore. At the same time there is an issue with Commons database growing way too fast (see phabricator:T343131) and this template contributes to this issue. I would like to propose to stop using this template, however I am not sure if others do not use it for something. Jarekt (talk) 17:56, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

•  Support. If we remove it from those five templates, the other 102 million transclusions should disappear automatically, eventually.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 18:24, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

 Oppose. User:AntiCompositeBot's NoLicense task uses {{License template tag}} to check for license templates, because the CommonsMetadata category was not reliable enough to detect all license templates. It's also not possible to replace it with a search query because of the number and complexity of primary and secondary license templates. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 19:24, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=hastemplate%3A%22License_template_tag%22%20incategory%3AFiles_with_no_machine%2Dreadable_license&title=Special%3ASearch&ns0=1&ns6=1&ns12=1&ns14=1&ns100=1&ns106=1 says there's at least 800 files with the template in the category. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 19:39, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

AntiCompositeNumber I am glad I asked. If this template is used than we should keep it. --Jarekt (talk) 20:04, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Per AntiCompositeNumber reply I would like to withdraw my proposal. --Jarekt (talk) 20:06, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Unresolve. Most of such results are error that should be fixed and I have reduced the number of results from 800 to 120.--GZWDer (talk) 23:04, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Other than one file I tagged no permission, only one file left in search result: File:GFDL (English).ogg.--GZWDer (talk) 14:36, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@AntiCompositeNumber and GZWDer: I just checked Category:Files with no machine-readable license and I do not see any files with {{License template tag}} template (https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=26927412). I guess that if there are files in Category:Files with no machine-readable license that have undetected license than those license templates need to be fixed, as described in here. I still think that it might be time to retire {{License template tag}} template in favor of detection by MediaWiki software. --Jarekt (talk) 14:50, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

@Jarekt AntiCompositeBot and iNaturalistReviewer no longer check for {{License template tag}}. I've had ACB log every instance of a file that had the category and the tag for the past few days, and none have had a license template on the review revision. Some had a license template on a previous revision, while others never had one. I'm satisfied that the category is reliable enough and have no objections to removing {{License template tag}}. It would probably be a good idea to slowly phase it out, starting with a license that is popular enough for someone checking for the tag to notice. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 00:26, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

AntiCompositeNumber, Thanks for following up on this. I will start retiring {{License template tag}}. As for slow/fast phasing out, once some licenses do not have it than queries that search for files with missing tag will be finding those making them useless. So I do not see how slow phaseout will be useful. Am I missing something? --Jarekt (talk) 01:50, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

 Done --Jarekt (talk) 05:04, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Jarekt, I had to revert your removal of {{License template tag}}. It appears that Commons:UploadWizard tests for the presence of {{License template tag}} (see mw.UploadWizardLicenseInput.js and CommonSettings.php). —RP88 (talk) 17:44, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

It also appears Zhuyifei1999's YiFeiBot relies upon {{License template tag}}. If you look at its edit history it became very busy adding Category:Media without a license: needs history check after the template was removed from the base templates. Now that it has been added back, YiFeiBot is now busy removing the missing license categories it added. —RP88 (talk) 19:03, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

RP88, thank you for handling this. I guess {{License template tag}} is part of many systems now. I will document it on it's page so in case years from now someone else tries to retire it, they will know what to check. --Jarekt (talk) 22:56, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Do we even need that bot task? I've always found it just made reverting vandalism more annoying. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 21:07, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to prohibit political restriction templates

(The following policy proposal was motivated by the issue discussed in the above section, Commons:Village pump/Proposals#Require community consensus for new non-copyright restriction templates. See also Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Zionist symbol and Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Chinese sensitive content.)

The licensing/permission section on files must contain (a) copyright template(s), indicating either that the file is in the public domain for a certain reason or that it is licensed according to an acceptable license. This section may sometimes contain some other templates, too, which are found in Category:Non-copyright restriction templates. I reckon that there are generally three types of templates in this category:

1. Templates which convey that there is a (potential) property or pseudo-property right, other than copyright per se, which may result in reusers needing a license for certain types of use.

   Examples:

   • Trademarks: A form of property whose holder has specific rights (although these aren't the same as the rights associated with copyright). The exclusive rights of the trademark holder can only be used under license. Insignia, emblems, seals and coats of arms may be subject to similar restrictions.
   • Personality Rights: A form of property or pseudo-property where people have certain rights not to have their image used in certain ways. These uses can only be made with permission.
   • Governmental Quasi-IP Rights: Not a form of private property, but a scheme under which certain uses of objects can only be made with permission from a public authority. For example, Italian law requires anyone who makes commercial use of images certain culturally important objects to pay a licensing fee.
   • AI-related: Some templates indicate that images may have been produced by generative AI trained on copyrighted works. The legal implications of that are a subject for a different discussion.

   While none of these are copyright restrictions (and may or may not be applicable at all, depending on the jurisdiction), the basic commonality is that there is some sort of (either private or governmental) owner of some kind of exclusive right, and permission must be received from that owner to make certain uses. I think these kinds of templates can be useful reminders to re-users that some form of permission may be required from someone in certain circumstances.

2. Templates for events and projects which transclude restriction templates of type 1.

   Most of these are for events where some photos may include identifiable people with personality rights. I think these templates are arguably miscategorized (since they are only really restriction templates by virtue of transcluding a restriction template), but that's not what my proposal is about.

3. Templates which indicate that some jurisdiction(s) may ban any use of some image/symbol in the file for ideological/political reasons. These are what I'm calling political restriction templates.

   Examples:

   • Template:Aum symbol
   • Template:Chinese boundaries
   • Template:Chinese sensitive content
   • Template:Extremist symbol in Russia
   • Template:Georgian boundaries
   • Template:Hong Kong Independence
   • Template:Indian boundaries
   • Template:Islamic terrorism symbol
   • Template:LGBT symbol
   • Template:Martyrs-PRC
   • Template:Nazi symbol
   • Template:Non Falungong swastikas
   • Template:Non Nazi swastikas
   • Template:Pakistani boundaries
   • Template:Racist symbol
   • Template:Russian militarism symbol
   • Template:SouthVietnam
   • Template:Teikoku symbol
   • Template:Zionist symbol

Proposal

All political restriction templates should be deleted (along with corresponding categories), and future templates of this kind should be disallowed as a rule.

A political restriction template is a template which indicates or claims that some use of a file may be banned, restricted or considered objectionable by some governmental or non-governmental body on the basis of a point of view which is, or may be considered, expressed by use of the content.

Reasoning behind the proposal

Some starting points from Commons policies:

• Content with these tags may be objectionable to some. This is not a valid reason to remove it, as Commons is not censored. The use of political restriction templates, although it does not entail the removal of these files, may conflict with the spirit of this guideline, as I'll explain below.
• Commons is not Wikipedia, and files do not need to express a neutral point of view. However, Commons itself is supposed to be neutral on subject-matter disputes. Certainly, a lot of files that are tagged as representing a banned ideology of some kind express a non-neutral point of view in some fashion (which does not make those files banned). The use of these political restriction templates, however, poses significant problems related to neutrality of point of view.

Some of my reasons for making this proposal:

• The main point of permissions templates is to indicate that the rights to the files have expired or been licensed (and what limitations apply to the expiry/license).
  • A copyright template may indicate that a file is in the public domain in some countries, but not others, or that a license is granted for its use, but with conditions (such as attribution or sharing alike).
  • Anyone who wants to go beyond what is possible according to that file's status must get permission from the appropriate rightsholder(s). Similarly, anyone who wants to use a file in a way that would require the permission of a trademark holder, or a person whose personality rights would be relevant, etc., must receive permission from the appropriate party before proceeding.
  • By contrast, the political restrictions referred to by these templates are (more or less) universal in application, and unrelated to securing permission. In countries where certain ideologies are banned, there's generally no way to receive permission to engage in prohibited speech.
• Political restriction templates have the effect of privileging government bans over the speech of those who disagree. This goes against our policy on Commons itself (as opposed to the files hosted on Commons) maintaining a neutral point of view.
  • Some of the existing templates already serve as warnings that some content may be objectionable according to a restrictive authoritarian regime. The creation of these warning templates, especially in cases where the government attempts to block access to Commons due to the fact that it is not censored, seems to express the decidedly non-neutral standpoint of those governments over the viewpoints of their opponents (and, in fact, specifically targeting files which contain the viewpoints of their opponents).
  • If we were operating during the days of the Nazi regime, would there being a restriction template placed on the work of Jewish artists indicating that their work is considered degenerate art? Would we have attached a label to the creations of dissidents during the Cold War? Why should we attach such a warning label to such content today?
• The act of applying these restriction templates to files may also reflect a non-neutral point of view with respect to what the file actually expresses.
  • Who is to say what is or isn't one of these symbols? It seems to require a subjective judgment on the part of the person who applies the tag to say that the symbols in fact do fall within the scope of a ban, especially considering the many legal disputes over what is and is not permitted speech in various countries.
• The application of a restriction template serves to potentially stigmatize the content (thus expressing or implying a non-neutral view of the content and/or implying that it should be considered whether or not its valid educational use should be avoided), and may be considered inflammatory by various users (see the various points raised in the "Zionist symbol" deletion discussion).

Some alternate ideas or potential objections (and my response to them):

• Why not base this on whether or not the restriction is imposed by a democratic/good/etc. country?
  • For one, there's no strictly neutral way to determine whether or not a country is "democratic." The World Press Freedom Index mentioned by GPSLeo is the expression of a viewpoint. I'm not saying that viewpoint is incorrect; I'm just saying it's not neutral. Some judgments may be more or less contentious here, but there would definitely be some level of viewpoint-based disagreement.
    • Besides, what would we do if some country which has a good score now is taken over by a new government, which decides to crack down on the freedom of the press? Would we put a template up pending the release of the next WPFI index? It is better to have a test which is independent of any such country-by-country assessment.
  • The restrictions imposed by the countries with higher WPFI scores tend to be less total. In those countries, it's the promotion of certain totalitarian ideologies that is banned, not the reproduction of the symbols (which is commonly done, for example, in history textbooks). Moreover, defendants in criminal cases have due process rights there. For them to commit a crime, it's hard to imagine that they wouldn't know what they were doing (see also the point below on whether or not we owe our users a warning).
  • The most suppressive regimes can (or already do) block access to Wikimedia Commons on the basis that we do not censor the site.
• Why not make this a case-by-case community discussion?
  • Having a case-by-case discussion means we're still not being neutral. Instead, the discussions would become a popularity contest, with perhaps some restrictions being more accepted than others based on the content of the restricted ideology or who's doing the restricting.
  • Even putting aside the previous point about the lack of neutrality in accepting the restrictions in principle, if we accept that even some of the restrictions are "OK enough" to have a template, the issue with a lack of neutrality still applies every time the restriction template is applied to a given file. "Is this file prohibited content type X?" is not necessarily clear, and I don't think we should be having these discussions (with the inherent NPOV problems in edge cases) on individual files either.
  • GPSLeo sought to exclude things which are like the existing personality rights templates from the scope of the rule, but did not define the scope exactly. I hope my proposed rule is a bit clearer.
• But we owe users a warning that they could be violating the law, don't we?
  • We have a general disclaimer, and we're not responsible for what users go and do with free content.
  • As addressed above, even where these restrictive laws exist, there are often completely licit uses for these symbols (e.g., in educational materials).
  • I don't think we need to patronize our users like this. These restrictions tend to be very well-known to the people in the countries where they are in effect. They are a core part of the political culture in that country. Both those who agree with them and who disagree with them know this very well. They do not need to be told.
  • Tons of materials can be used in a way that is illicit for non-copyright reasons in lots of countries, even beyond this. For instances, photographs of identifiable people could be modified in a way that libels the person in the photo (or so on). We do not need to remind people not to do things that are illegal.
• But the Nazis were really bad, and society should not stand for the promotion of Nazism.
  • I agree, but I don't need a restriction template to tell me that.

    Also consider the legal and political disputes such as Strafgesetzbuch section 86a#Anti-fascist symbols, as well as other problems discussed above (some of which apply even if it you accept the wisdom of the legal restrictions themselves). (By the way, despite the ruling of the German courts on the crossed-out Nazi Swastika, the relevant file on Commons still has the restriction template!)

D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 02:49, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Votes and discussion

•  Support as proposer. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 02:56, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
•  Support These templates are unnecessary cruft. Nosferattus (talk) 03:12, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
• Strong  Oppose. How strong? If we drop {{Nazi symbol}} and do not provide some equivalent, I will resign as an admin and possibly reduce my other involvements in Commons. - Jmabel ! talk 03:41, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  1. Why?
  2. I don't see what equivalent could exist which is not simply a renamed version of the same thing. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 04:11, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

     1) I don't think I owe anyone an explanation, given that this was taken straight to a vote with no prior discussion stage and that (below) you've shown that anything anyone says here in opposition simply becomes another place for you to challenge them.

     2) Precisely. If there is no equivalent of this, that will be my course of action. - Jmabel ! talk 19:23, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose This feels like a solution in search of a problem. "Cruft" can describe a lot of things that get put on file pages. Do people really need to see banners that an image was selected as an FP? Quality Image? Media of the day? Do they need to know an image was acquired by Commons due to a partnership between an external repository and a Wikimedia chapter? Do they need to know a picture depicts a UNESCO World Heritage Site? Until someone can come up with a convincing argument for why these specific templates are disruptive or harmful to the project, I don't see any reason to get rid of them. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 04:15, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  The proposal is not saying that they should be deleted due to being cruft. (Another person said that, yes.) There is no issue with the number of templates, and the reasoning given in the proposal would not apply to any of the other kinds of templates you mention. And if you do not believe there is any actual dispute here, see Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Zionist symbol, as well as the other section above the original proposal. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 04:30, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose. Suppose you get your way and some college student in Germany illustrates a paper on WWII including a swastika downloaded from Commons, and gets thrown into jail for it because there was no warning. Are you going to defend them? Are you going to bail them out? Are you going to apologize to their parents? Multiply the likelihood of that by the number of college students in Germany on any given day. We try to protect our reusers, not hang them out to dry.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 04:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  This is not a scenario that actually happens. It's not illegal for a college student in Germany to use a swastika in a history report about World War II. (Can you imagine how absurd it would be to prohibit using pictures of the Nazi era in history reports about World War II?) The symbols of the Nazi party are included in images in virtually every German school textbook about World War II, just as they are included in textbooks about World War II around the entire world. They are also totally legally included in works of art, such as historical movies. See Strafgesetzbuch section 86a. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 04:24, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  @D. Benjamin Miller: Sorry, I had not read that article.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 04:39, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  Even in Germany, where the restrictions on the use of symbols of anti-constitutional organizations (including the Nazi party, but also ISIS, the Kurkish People's Defense Units in Syria and various other groups) are fairly strict, there are exceptions for (among other things) use in an educational context, use in opposition to those groups, research, art, reporting, etc. It is hard to conceive of an scenario in which a user in Germany accidentally engages in unlawful conduct because of Commons.

  Likewise, the goal of Commons itself (to store images for educational purposes) is legal in Germany. In fact, many of the images of Nazi Germany come from the Bundesarchiv (see Category:Images from the German Federal Archive)' these images are distributed by the German government for educational purposes. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 05:13, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

• Selective  Support and  Oppose. Support deleting templates that are purely tied to geopolitics, such as {{Indian boundaries}} and {{Chinese boundaries}}. Every country always gets offended if they see any maps being used on Wikipedia with boundaries that they deem incorrect or inappropriate, but it is not the job of Wikimedia Commons to please their territorial interests. I am actually a bit "surprised" that even if it is highly-offensive to depict the "Nine-dash line" by China here, there is no equivalent {{Philippine boundaries}}, but it is not the job of Wikimedia Commons to please our territorial interests. But oppose deleting templates related to political history as well as racial/cultural politics such as those related to Nazi symbol and Falun Gong, in accordance with current arguments by The Squirrel Conspiracy and Jeff G. as of this writing. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 04:47, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  What is the difference between geopolitics and political history? Do you just mean templates specifically related to maps? D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 04:51, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  @D. Benjamin Miller: yes. Such templates only add needless "dirt" on the description pages of map images. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 04:53, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  If these templates are a solution avoiding the project to be blocked in India or China, why not having them? It is a much lesser evil than a block affecting billions of users. Yann (talk) 10:17, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

  @Yann Commons hosts a couple of maps that really offend the Philippine authorities because these include Spratly Islands and other South China Sea / West Philippine Sea features to the Chinese territory, such as File:China prefectural-level divisions and administrative divisions (PRoC claim).png (used in an English Wikipedia article), File:China-map ko-kore.svg, and File:North and South China Partition Map.png. Perhaps you are aware of the current tensions between Manila and Beijing that have been existing since 2010s. Still, the PH authorities hasn't issued any order blocking access to either Commons or even Wikipedia because of instances of maps that show the whole South China Sea region as part of China, and I think there is little likelihood of Commons itself being blocked because of the presence of such maps. English Wikipedia would be the first in line of the PH government's censorship if ever, but there is low probability as of now. I do not agree hosting templates tackling boundary disputes (like {{Chinese boundaries}} and {{Indian boundaries}}), these should be taken down. The users are responsible for their actions (as stated in our general disclaimer page); more so, English Wikipedia editors are responsible to ensure that their articles do not cross the line of fire of the PH/Indian/Chinese authorities with regards to insertion of such contentious maps in articles that may discuss territorial disputes. Territorial disputes are English Wikipedia's responsibility, not Wikimedia Commons'. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 22:56, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, I aware of the dispute between China and the Philippines. It came in the news in France. I won't fight for these templates, but still I feel that some information in each of these maps is needed. Only "(PRoC claim)" in the title doesn't really seem sufficient. So if it is not in the form of templates, how to do it? Yann (talk) 23:05, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  @@Yann: we do not need to provide extensive information about territorial claims, other than using description fields of {{Information}}. It is the job of individual Wikipedias to provide such information. For other users, it is at their own risk if they offend our government for using Commons-hosted maps of China, the Chinese government for using Commons-hosted maps of the Philippines, and the like. We have COM:General disclaimer, which is repeatedly referenced here. In most cases, we only deal with copyright restrictions (FoP, license plates, stamps, toys, etc.) in safeguarding other users, but in non-copyright restrictions, these are the users' own risks. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 07:54, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

  I'll wager the vast majority of countries does not throw people in jail for using a version of a map they dont like Trade (talk) 14:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

   Info I now started Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Indian boundaries. The fate of {{Chinese boundaries}} will depend on the outcome of the said template deletion request. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 22:53, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose This is far to broad and needs exceptions. I think the assumption on what the neutral point of view means for the project is wrong. The NPOV only applies when it comes to the decision which photo to use and how to describe and categorize content. But for meta topics we are not neutral, there we have the goal to make the project better. GPSLeo (talk) 07:12, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  That's not the position taken in the essay Commons:Disputed territories. For example:

  Categorization should either be neutral (ideally), or double. e.g. most of these files will be in the simple Category:Geography of Golan Heights (neutral), which itself is a subcategory of both Category:Geography of Israel and Category:Geography of Syria (double). This will work with all subcategories too. Don't add Category:Flora of Israel. Make a category called Category:Flora of the Golan Heights, then it can be a subcat of both Category:Flora of Israel and Category:Flora of Syria.

  I'll ask you: how could we possibly make exceptions in a way that is not based on whichever viewpoints are popular or not? For instance, should we decide whether to keep the Indian or Pakistani border depiction warnings based on which receives more support? Should we keep Template:LGBT symbol? Template:Chinese sensitive content?

  As far as I can see it, there are three paths we can go:

  • We don't allow for any of these templates — which is content-neutral.
  • We allow for all restriction templates (as we currently do). We've seen contentious back-and-forth editing where these templates are used to stigmatize content (including, in some cases, according to 魔琴, content which isn't even actually banned even under the various authoritarian regimes). Template:Zionist symbol will continue to be stuck as a "badge of shame" (as Mx. Granger described it) on various pictures with stars of David, Template:Chinese sensitive content will be stuck on images of the Dalai Lama and Tsai Ing-Wen, etc. By this standard, someone could create a template, such as "American Imperialist Symbol," and slap it on all images of an American flag, commenting on how it cannot be flown freely in Iran and North Korea. I think these labels can be inflammatory and highly undesirable — and are inherently prejudiced towards the view of the banning party over the view of the banned party.
  • We allow for some, but not all, and the determinations end up based on the popularity of the banned viewpoint. Also, political flame wars ensue over every controversial subject to determine whether or not it should be given the mark of shame. I don't think this outcome is desirable either.

  D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 07:39, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  Alternatively, here's the other issue. You mentioned earlier that you do not feel it makes sense to have restriction templates for the legal restrictions created by undemocratic regimes, but that it must be OK to have some for legal restrictions created by democratic regimes.

  (The following statements are very much not viewpoint-neutral. My personal opinions are contained below.)

  In agree with you — sort of. I think that there are things that are morally wrong — say, because they run counter to my concept of justice (which has democracy as a component). I think it is worth condemning and stigmatizing those things. Nazism is one such thing.

  But Nazism's wrongness in no way originates from the fact that it its symbols are banned by the German government. It was wrong when it was first formulated, it was wrong when the Nazis were in power and it is still wrong now. When the Nazis killed my relatives and millions of others for "crimes" such as being Jewish, they did so with the authority of government.

  Government legislation is not a source of morality. Governments can do evil things. Even a bad government has real power over people, and bad governments today can and do subject people to punishment for reasons that are fundamentally unjust.

  As far as I am concerned, the worst reason to not be a Nazi is because it is punishable by law. If the only thing that keeps someone from promoting Nazism is a legal penalty, that is incredibly sad.

  To me, it feels wrong for these warning labels to be mere acknowledgments of the fact that some set of governments has condemned something. The way this is done right now is what I'd call pseudo-neutral. While I think using political restriction templates at all is inherently non-neutral (see above), accepting them indiscriminately is being neutral with respect to which state-sponsored prohibitions warrant mention. However, this means that you are opening the door to include political restriction templates based on the edicts of the most vicious and wrongheaded governments.

  The alternative you suggest — having some templates but not others — inherently involves adopting some set of political ideals. Even just deciding which states are "democratic" (and thus are worth paying attention to for the purpose of restrictions) requires this. After all, the North Korean party line says that the North Korean regime is democratic, though I certainly wouldn't concur.

  Especially given the role of these values themselves, rather than any state identified as sharing them, in determining what is right and wrong, if you're going to have any anti-Nazi (or anti-anything) template, it should be based on the fact that Nazism, etc., conflicts with these core values themselves, not the fact that there is a government out there that imposes some sort of penalty for some use. That would be the reflection of adopting, as Commons and/or Wikimedia, some number of official political positions as a community.

  The real question is what to do when you get to the more contentious templates in the group — really, you get beyond an anti-Nazi stance, every other subject probably elicits significantly less agreement. And I just don't feel it's realistic or necessarily productive for Commons/Wikimedia to adopt official community stances on political issues which don't have to do with copyright, free media, etc. The procedure for proposing and approving such motions sounds like it would be a nightmare.

  D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 11:01, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  As I already wrote: We should not be neutral when it comes to the usability of our project. And we can not be neutral when it comes to the en:Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore we should accept warning templates based on laws they are covered by and are made to support these human rights. GPSLeo (talk) 20:35, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks. That is a good point and feels like a better starting point than choosing a particular cutoff from a particular press freedom ranking. I am certainly not neutral towards the values of the UDHR; I support those values. And as of 2021, the WMF has adopted support of the UDHR as a position. So that seems something which could be built on.

  The WMF also has adopted a Universal Code of Conduct in a similar vein. One point of this policy is a rule against the "use of symbols, images, categories, tags or other kinds of content that are intimidating or harmful to others outside of the context of encyclopedic, informational use. This includes imposing schemes on content intended to marginalize or ostracize."

  The presence of such symbols within the appropriate educational context is allowed (which nobody disputes). But my reading of this policy (a policy which adopts a non-neutral stance towards intimidation and hatred itself) is part of why I feel the tags are problematic.

  Putting aside for the moment the issue of whether or not we are making accurate determinations about what is or isn't a Nazi symbol (which I think is problematic in some cases), I don't think that it is really debatable whether or not Nazism is an ideology that is counter to the human rights stance of the WMF. It obviously is; the UDHR itself was formulated specifically in response to Nazism, so there can be no ambiguity about whether or not it is included within the scope.

  Allowing for restriction templates only relating to laws which target ideologies and political views which are counter to the UDHR is a more precise distinction, and I appreciate your suggesting it.

  My difficulty is that, while it is clear that Nazism is counter to the UDHR (I don't think there's any other way to interpret it, given the specific context in which it was written), a lot of these restrictions have to do with things which are claimed to be against the UDHR (but not universally accepted as such).

  For example:

  • Zionist symbol — Many people and governments have characterized Zionism as inherently racist. I don't agree with that assessment — nor do the governments of Israel (obviously), Germany and a number of other countries. But many governments do characterize it as such. From the 1970s to the 1990s, this was a position taken by a UN resolution. South Africa has brought a case against Israel accusing it of genocide in the ICJ. So there are many people who would say bans on "Zionist symbols" target an ideology counter to the UDHR.
  • Chinese bans — China claims to support and implement the UDHR. The Chinese government claims its restrictions on speech are necessary to preserve a public order that supports human rights. I and many Western governments and commentators find these claims dubious, but they do make them.
  • Russian bans — Russia has claimed that Ukraine is run by Nazis and that its war against Ukraine is motivated by a desire to de-Nazify Ukraine. Nazism is obviously the paradigmatic anti-UDHR ideology. The issue here is that the Russian claim that Ukraine's leadership are Nazis is an implausible factual allegation.

  And so on. My question is:

  • Do we want to put ourselves in the situation of having to determine by consensus which ideologies violate the UDHR and who really subscribes to such ideologies?
  • What is the level of consensus needed? Must there be virtually universal assent that the target of the legislation is anti-UDHR? Would this standard of consensus be higher than the usual standard of consensus for other questions?

  D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 22:37, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  Yes we are the one to decide as this our project. Consensus is formed like for every proposal or scope related deletion request. GPSLeo (talk) 06:54, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

  Well, I admire your optimism and I hope you're right to think that it would go smoothly if it were the rule. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 11:19, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose No need to object to neutral statement of facts to inform users about works they should be careful using.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:45, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
• Rather  Oppose. More information is better than less or no information. Some of these templates may be too strongly worded (or unnecessarily display a strong warning), but yet they offer an information pertinent for some users. I would support more neutral templates (not using red warning, etc.), but the deletion isn't a solution. Yann (talk) 10:08, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
•  Oppose per Yann and Prosfilaes. --Prototyperspective (talk) 11:06, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
•  Oppose per Jeff and others. All it takes is some rogue prosecutor in a country that doesn't have free speech as a guaranteed right, and a re-user could be jailed for using one of our images. Warning them of these laws should be a thing we do. I agree with Yann that some warnings should have a more neutral tone, but generally warning of non-copyright restrictions is good. Abzeronow (talk) 17:08, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
•  Oppose, while I am not a fan of the existence of these political restrictions, I think that we have a moral duty to report to potential re-users what restrictions exist outside of copyright-related rights. We shouldn't be providing less information about the consequences of using files uploaded here, especially since some of the fines and penalties are really serious (like desecrating the name or image of a "hero of the People's Republic of China", which can land a person 3 (three) years in prison). I don't think that anyone here is actually a fan of the existence of these restrictions, but warning people of potential consequences doesn't enforce the positions of these unfree governments, it simply informs re-users that there are limitations beyond the copyright ©️ of a file. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 06:33, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

  My feeling, however, is that the speech restrictions of some countries (like the PRC) are really pretextual. If you have an authoritarian government, then they're going to censor you or prosecute you however they want. To @Abzeronow's point, I'm not sure that such prosecutors would really be "rogue."

  Besides this, some of the tags we've seen have been inaccurate (or misleading). For example, Tsai Ing-wen's photo was tagged as Chinese sensitive content — but she is in the Chinese news; there is certainly no ban on acknowledging that she exists. The problem would be "advocating for Taiwan separatism." Similarly, defaming (by whatever arbitrary and capricious standard might be applied) a hero of the PRC may cause jail time, but the image of such a person would not be defamatory in itself. So we could say a lot of the files aren't problematic in themselves, but the subject depicted is one which could cause problems for people (depending on the viewpoint expressed about the subject).

  Not to mention, if we really go down this road, we could end up tagging all pictures of Winnie-the-Pooh as Chinese sensitive content, or all pictures of Salman Rushie as Iranian sensitive content. And who knows what might draw the ire of a censor tomorrow?

  As a number of other people have mentioned, the PRC blocks access to Wikimedia projects anyway. They are not the only one to have done so, and a bunch of the censorship templates we have refer specifically to the laws of these countries. If someone is accessing the site from the PRC, they know they're circumventing a block to begin with. If we are worried about inadvertent problematic use, I think we can presume anyone bypassing their country's ban on the site altogether isn't going to be making such a use accidentally. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 17:17, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

  Co-signed. Zanahary (talk) 21:15, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

•  Support prohibiting anything related to the PRC, which has both famously abysmal press freedom and blocks Wikimedia websites; also support prohibitions for Myanmar, Russia, and North Korea for similar reasons;  Oppose any broad prohibition of political warning templates. I do think some of them should be deleted as frivolous and largely unused but that doesn’t require a policy change. Dronebogus (talk) 14:03, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
•  Oppose deletion for templates of democratic countries (Like {{Communist Symbol}} for South Korean users. In South Korea, symbols related North Korea are prohibited under South Korean National Security Act. {{Communist Symbol}} can be used for symbols related North Korea files.)  Support deletion for templates of autocratic countries (Like {{South Korean Symbol}} for North Korean users. Wikimedia Commons cannot be accessed in North Korea.) --Ox1997cow (talk) 15:29, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
•  Oppose for the way-too-broad proposal, but also  Weak support for the general idea: this is a sensitive issue. In moderation, "political restriction templates" have their use, which should not be prohibited, as such a prohibition is itself a restriction of the freedom on Commons. Communazi symbols are frowned upon in most parts of the world, and Commons should be a platform for education, not propaganda. For that reason, files that outright show facist or authoritarian propaganda (especially without educative texts to explain the display) should get a disclaimer to show that Commons does not share the authoritarian views promoted in the picture itself. The Chinese-borders template is another example: any map showing any part of the SCS but not the 9Ds is basically illegal in China, but their authoritarian stance should receive blowback here on Commons: Nine-dashed maps are authoritarian propaganda, and planting a template is therefore deserved. Most maps on Commons don't have these 9Ds, anyway. On the other hand, we should not obediently place a "political restriction template" on all other maps, warning our PRChinese users that China considers these maps illegal. Naturally, the previous commenters here have already taken action and DR-nominated templates discussed here, without waiting for consensus on the debate. Now: If a political warning-template would have to be plastered onto hundreds of thousands of files (if fully executed), then something might be wrong with the definition of the template; especially if there is nothing offensive to be seen. On the other hand, if a political warning template (like the Nazi-symbol disclamer) gets plastered onto hundreds of thousands of files with no offending symbols (the text deals with inheritance law issues), then something might be wrong with the application of the template.
  tl;dr: "Political restriction templates" should be used with common sense, and we do indeed need project-wide agreements on how to use them. --Enyavar (talk) 17:16, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
•  Support.

1. most of these nonsense templates only started appearing in recent years.
2. internet is not kindergarten. users are expected to assume their own risks and not babyfed such warnings/reminders of any kind of restrictions there may be in any country.
3. quoting Professor James Duane https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE&t=310 , there are 10000 different ways you can get convicted by US federal law. there're just infinite number of crimes in the penal codes of the 200+ jurisdictions there are in the world, which can relate to certain files hosted on commons. as shown in the list, some countries by themselves alone need multiple templates because they outlaw porn/maps/blasphemy/lèse-majesté... where does this end?--RZuo (talk) 14:05, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

   for example, since taliban bans music, should there be a template for all recordings of music to warn afghan users then?

   en:Censorship in China has a super long list. a template for all of them?

   https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/roughly-300-books-were-removed-from-libraries-in-florida-last-school-year-heres-the-full-list/3113184/

   Utah primary schools ban Bible for 'vulgarity and violence' https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65794363

   ... RZuo (talk) 16:43, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose. The situation is messy, but ignoring the conflicts does not clean it up. Ignoring a conflict is not being content neutral. Some templates will provide useful information, so the proposal is overbroad. Glrx (talk) 19:01, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
•  Weak support I understand the ideas behind, and I found the templates are meaningless in certain extent. However, propose to delete all political restriction templates is going too far. --A1Cafel (talk) 04:13, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
•  Support. Per RZuo. -- Geagea (talk) 19:38, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

• And also. Nazi symbol is not a reason to create nonsense templates. it will lead our attention to nonsecal issues and will bring to Commons user from all over the world for a political issues which is not in the topic of Commons.-- Geagea (talk) 19:46, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

 Support. The disclaimer covers what needs to be covered. These templates create needless edit-wars that really add nothing to the commons (how valuable is the Zionist symbol template that it's worth fighting with disruptive editors to have it taken off of pictures of menorahs and cookies?). They also put commons users in the position of interpreting various international laws, many of which have never been transparently enforced. This is also a needless slope to roll down; lots of territories legally suppress imagery and text. These suppressions are often vague and thinly-explained, and don't lend themselves well to creating a template that says "The law here says x". Zanahary (talk) 21:14, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

 Comment Most of these seem ridiculous and offensive. Putting an LGBT warning on every file with a rainbow in it is patently ridiculous. The Nazi warning seems fine to me, but the rest feel like someone saw a slippery slope and grabbed their toboggan. Bawolff (talk) 07:14, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree on the LGBT matter, but at the same time... while many are saying here that we don't need even warnings over cultural sensitivity, others are proposing to delete hundreds of images over cultural sensitivity. And it seems to me that a warning tag is a good compromise between deletion and nothing. - Jmabel ! talk 22:44, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: the case you mentioned seems to relate to non-copyright restrictions (cultural rules from the museum), and not necessarily cultural sensitivity. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 23:12, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

The museum itself had licensed the photos on their own account, using one of the usual irrevocable CC licenses. They have now decided for reasons of cultural sensitivity that they wish to suppress the images. The license itself was clearly valid in copyright terms. Yes, the basis on which they want it deleted is a non-copyright restriction; similarly, none of the warnings discussed here related to copyright. - Jmabel ! talk 23:27, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Accidental copyright releases reversed for courtesy don't seem relevant to this particular template discussion. Zanahary (talk) 05:04, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

At the point when I initially made my remark, they were asking for deletion on the basis of cultural sensitivity. They seem to have shifted their ground. - Jmabel ! talk 17:07, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

That seems like a very different type of "sensitivity" - As far as I understand, the museum accidentally released a bunch of images under creative commons licenses. Then years later they realized they had promised some other groups that they wouldn't do that in order to be "culturally sensitive". Now they are trying desperately to put the genie back in the bottle, and commons has to decide if we want to delete out of courtesy to avoid burning bridges, or stick to our guns that whatever private agreements the museum may have are not our problem years after the fact as long as the museum was legally capable of giving permission at the time. A fraught situation to be sure, but I highly doubt a warning template would satisfy anyone in resolving it. Bawolff (talk) 03:08, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose having a specific policy prohibiting these kind of templates; I do not see the need to create a new policy to solve this problem. Templates that are unnecessary or problematic can be deleted through our normal Commons:Deletion requests process. funplussmart (talk) 14:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

 Oppose Way-too-broad of a proposal. I'd probably support something more narrow and less long winded though. Like I mostly agree that the template for Nazi symbols in Germany is totally pointless. But each template should really be decided on separately though. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:31, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

 Oppose in its entirety: {{Nazi symbol}} and {{Communist symbol}} are established templates that are used in MediaWiki itself (via MediaViewer) to warn potential re-users about the restrictions. Yes, that is a ‘restriction to freedom of speech’, no, that does not necessarily mean these templates are out of order. If the template text / design is a problem, we can re-do that, but even {{LGBT symbol}} is now justified given that, for example, Russia (the country I come from) criminalises any display of LGBT symbols, down to rainbow frog earrings. It is more than valid to try to warn potential re-users about this bullshit. stjn^[ru] 14:40, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

@Stjn how about the territorial dispute templates like {{Chinese boundaries}}? These are needless clutters to files of maps of the Philippines, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, and other countries with territorial disputes. I do not agree to deletion of the likes of Nazi templates though. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 15:04, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

If it has real consequences like in Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Georgian boundaries, I don’t see a problem. The template text can obviously be made shorter/smaller/w/e. stjn^[ru] 15:10, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Tracking file usage on wikis run by Wikimedia movement affiliates

I've posted a proposal on Commons talk:Tracking external file usage that Usage Bot should be allowed to maintain galleries of files used by all kinds of Wikimedia movement affiliate, and not just Wikimedia chapters as at present. Comments over there would be welcome. --bjh21 (talk) 17:37, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Proposed template for simple media labels

Given the size of categories such as Vinyl singles, should there be specific templates for simple labels of physical media? The following is my proposed text for the templates:

PD record labels

This label of a phonograph record consists only of a simple background, logo and/or non-literary text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain.

PD tape labels

This label of a cassette tape or videotape consists only of a simple background, logo and/or non-literary text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain.

PD disc labels

This label of an optical disc (such as a CD or DVD) consists only of a simple background, logo and/or non-literary text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain.

Thoughts? JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 17:48, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

 Question Why are the existing PD templates, such as {{PD-simple}} and {{PD-textlogo}}, insufficient? Why do we need three substantially similar new templates? The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 19:29, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not saying that they're insufficient. I'm just saying that there could be a template that condenses them together (and may also automatically put files in a specific category). JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 00:27, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Leaning towards  Support, we need public domain templates that are specific to works depicted. @The Squirrel Conspiracy: , PD-textlogo is supposedly for images of texts like logos, but not photos that are derivative works of the works said above. I made {{PD-structure}} specifically for infrastructure and simple structures, as {{PD-ineligible}} does not fit into the said types of works. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 02:13, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

•  Support I was actually thinking about proposing something similar myself since as JWilz12345 points out we need public domain templates for specific types of works and PD-textlogo doesn't seem to cover record labels. Really, it would be great to have similar templates for other types of physical media to though. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:39, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  What other types of physical media are you referring to? JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 03:03, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Unified proposal

PD-medialabel

This audio or audiovisual media label consists only of a simple background, simple logo, and/or non-literary text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain. Although it is free of copyright restrictions, this image may still be subject to other restrictions.

We could probably also have a 1= field for vinyl/tape/disc to make subcategories, but I think all three can share one template. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 07:40, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I also listed labels of audiovisual physical media as well, such as videotapes and DVDs.

Also, the name PD-label is ambiguous. JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 14:22, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

@JohnCWiesenthal: PD-medialabel?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:54, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

That seems more suitable. JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 16:57, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Adjusted. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 19:25, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Image categories by year

The more we have images categories divided up by year, the less applicable the categories become when looking for a good image for an article. In my opinion this syndrome/phenomenon has gotten completely out of hand and done very serious damage to the project. A person of royalty, for example, may have 40 different categories of "So-and-so by year" making it practically impossible to find the best image to use notwithstanding what year it was created. Would it be possible by some kind or bot or AI to duplicate all images sorted by year to the subject's main category? SergeWoodzing (talk) 19:47, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Year categories are often very useful, especially for maps, charts and so on...the problem you described is not specific to years-cats but lots of other subcats as well. For example, cats for all the countries in Category:Milky Way Galaxy and a place on Earth‎ or Gender subcategories in (1 example) Category:People exercising or and countless other cases.

A problem not quite clear from your description is that also when one intends to subcategorize them by something else such as 'which exercise' it is or what's actually shown in the image rather than common distinguishers, then this becomes very difficult when one has to browse lots of subcategories from where these have then been removed (often even before the cat has been created or despite it missing there; see COM:OVERCAT). There could be further and complementary potential solutions to this issue but for now what I proposed is a Wall of Images view for category pages so you can easily see all images in the subcats on one page like in the search results. And in addition one could sort (and filter) them by things like year or number of uses where these as well as the ability to just scroll through glanceable images make it possible to quickly find a good / fitting image. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:08, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much! I just voted there. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 20:31, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

An option to simply disable subcategories for a specific category would be a lot simpler Trade (talk) 20:41, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

+2 to that. Although there's nothing wrong with Prototyperspective's proposal, but at the of the day there should be multiple options and the issues with people over using "by year" categories should be dealt with regardless of if their idea takes off or not. Really, there should just be a guideline about when it's cool or not to make "by year" categories in the first place. We shouldn't have to create work arounds to compensate for the lack of guidelines or policies about these types of things. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:50, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposal for a common "culture and society" category

Although Culture and Society are different topics, the two are pretty much interrelated and easily confused (this is why {{Topic of country}} template deploys hatnotes at culture and society categories). I think there should be a common Culture and society category, which would cover the two related topics together. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 13:21, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Don't think think that's a good idea – sure they are interrelated but many things are. There are good reasons for why on ENWP these are separate as well. If we were to merge interrelated cats then we should also merge in Economics because society is largely or to a large degree about economics mechanisms/systems/activities. It's more distant to culture so that is one of the rough brief descriptions for why these need to be separate at that layer (there can be and are overlaps and linking subcats). Prototyperspective (talk) 13:28, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't want Culture and Society to be merged into a single category. Instead, I want them to be separate, with Culture and society be a common category covering concepts common to both culture and society. Although economy and society are interrelated, the two are not easily confused topics. Culture and society are both interrelated and easily confused, and many languages combine the two concepts together (for instance, we Bengali people commonly talk about সমাজ-সংস্কৃতি (romanized samāj-saṃskṛti) in Bengali, literally "society and culture"). Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 13:53, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Ah okay, that wasn't clear. The idea in general seems good but not this terminology/implementation in specific (for example because it does not include socioeconomic system). I'll ping you from the discussion at a larger-order cat which I think would better encompass these in some way. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:34, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose There was a pretty rigorous discussion awhile back where it was determined that there shouldn't be categories that combine multiple topics. To quote Commons:Categories "We should not classify items which are related to different subjects in the same category. There should be one category per topic; multi-subject categories should be avoided. The category name should be unambiguous and not homonymous." Any categories along the line of "X topic and Y topic" will inherently go against that, including a common Culture and society category. Although I acknowledge that the original proposer is saying they don't want to merge Culture and Society, but that's essentially what will happen if you create a parent category that combines both. People will just media loosely related to both of them in Culture and society and then it will impossible to sort said media into one or the other. Otherwise, there's probably zero reason to have the parent category in the first place.

A better approach is probably to better define the purpose of each category. If it were me I'd stick to a definition for both similar to Googles. I. E. for society "the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community" and with culture "the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively." Or to put it another way, society is a group of people living together in a society and culture is the event, action, or object that clearly shows or embodies said society. Hopefully that's not to convoluted, but essentially Culture should be for images that relate to the output of a society and Society should be for the more amorphous (or non-material) things having to do with the people in it. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:53, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

 Oppose Performances, arts groups, etc. are culture, but not particularly society. Government functions and NGOs are society, but not particularly culture. Yes, some things are in the intersection, but I don't think that we should lose the distintion. It's fine if some cats have both as ancestors. - Jmabel ! talk 17:57, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Feedback needed on proposed changes to Describe step

Hi all! As part of our work on improving UploadWizard, we are now collecting feedback on some proposed changes to its "Describe" step. Please, feel free to join our discussion in our project talk page, and share your feedback. We are looking for your opinion to improve further our suggested changes. Thanks in advance to those who will participate! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:16, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Comment It'd be neat if the created/published box were two distinct boxes instead, so people reusing from WikiCommons don't have to guess whether the date refers to creation or publication. Moreover, both dates can now be listed. Bremps... 07:30, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

New draft of File naming guideline

There was a discussion recently on the English Wikipedia about whether including the photographer's work in the filename was relevant, specifically with images such as File:Murten Bern Tor photographed by Robbie Conceptuel.png. It was pointed out that Commons' file naming guideline is very terse, kind of a mess, and is actually a failed proposal - the closest accepted guideline is the Commons:File renaming policy. The "blatant advertising" renaming criterion was mentioned but I found a note in Commons:Requests for comment/File renaming criterion 2 that "re-naming a file to remove the author's name is inappropriate". I think that discussion has been resolved but it did bring to my attention that there is a gap in guidance - Commons has a detailed official guideline on renaming files, but no official guideline on what to name them initially.

Therefore, I took it upon myself to create a new draft, User:Mathnerd314159/File naming. I incorporated existing policies, guidelines, and advice from a variety of sources on Commons while trying not to create any novel policy. I was thinking that I would revise the draft to accommodate any comments and then once the draft is in a good state I would overwrite the main Commons:File naming page and there would be a vote on whether to adopt it. Mathnerd314159 (talk) 17:52, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the work, and the proposal makes pretty much sense for me. Ymblanter (talk) 08:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

 Support thanks for the work, I have made numerous move requests for nonsense filenames.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 08:47, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

 Support +1 - Jmabel ! talk 09:55, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

 Support +1 --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 11:11, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

 Comment — An important Commons constituency are third-party users. In the "Ideal" section I'd like to see a mention of the importance of choosing a name that is suitable for use/linking by third-party users. —RP88 (talk) 18:24, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I looked a bit but couldn't find many considerations in naming that were specific to third-party users. There is the general policy of stable filenames, which is partially to ease third-party use/linking, but that does not affect new uploads, so it is only mentioned in the introduction. There is searching for relevant files, but all Commons users appreciate better filenames in this task, so specifically identifying third-party users would be strange. Is there a specific file naming criterion that you had in mind that is important for third-party users but not relevant to first-party users? Mathnerd314159 (talk) 21:13, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't as clear as I should have been. I'd like to see a mention of the use/linking by third-party users as an example/justification for the first point (the one that contains "...good idea to stick to graphemic characters, numbers, underscore..."). If I recall my Commons history correctly, linking by third parties was part of the original justification for suggestions of this sort when recommending preferred (as opposed to mandatory) name criteria. —RP88 (talk) 22:16, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

 Oppose there are several problems with that approach:

• the guidance that "filenames should be in English" violates our core Commons:Language policy.
• Also, given that your initiative seems to have come from wanting to curbe the inclusion of the name of photographers as advertising or self-promotion, there should be some guidance that including the name of the photographer or archive is acceptable.
• Also it's unclear if there is actually any added value in another page on the topic (Will we end up renaming because of the "file renaming policy" or because of the "file naming policy"?).

Further, I don't think the following is helpful and might make uploads of archives utterly complicated:

• "The following styles of names are not allowed: Names consisting primarily of a broad location, such as a city, province, or country." Uploaders might struggle to be more precise than including the a city or province, but other contributors can easily complete descriptions and categories.

Enhancing999 (talk) 04:32, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

• On some of these, I think we need to distinguish between what is allowed and what is encouraged. Certainly that is the case for discouraging "broad location, such as a city, province, or country" and such files should probably be subject to renaming. I recently ran across a case where someone took 50 files of a single cemetery and gave titles that were each just the city name plus a number.

  Good catch on English, though. That's generally the case for categories, but file names can be in any language. - Jmabel ! talk 10:11, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

  Even so, e.g. we have thousands of files from Ray Swi-hymn uploaded from Flickr with somewhat general, but useful filenames. Eventually some files end up fairly well described and categorized, but this is way beyond what can be done or expected from an uploader. Enhancing999 (talk) 10:32, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Enhancing999: I think you have separate the usefulness of a file name from the ability to categorize an image. Since they different ways of finding media that aren't mutually exclusive. If you want an example, check out how most stamps of the Soviet Union or Russia are currently named and categorized. Sure Russian stamps from 1996 are still categorized appropriately in Category:Stamps of Russia, 1996, but then the individual files are named after a catalog number from an obscure stamp catalog in Russian that no normal person has access to, cares about, or would use a way to search for the images. Especially on something like Google where descriptive file names are pretty important.

• Someone said recently in another proposal that most people don't find files through categories, but mainly through file names. I think that's true. Categories are mainly a backend thing that are exclusively used by people who specifically spend their time sorting files, not re-users. They mainly, if not exclusively find images through the file name. So it's important not to have ambagious file names. Let alone ones that create a situation where someone has to browse through, and/or be an expert in, a specialty catalog's numbering system in order to find an image. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:11, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Regarding the English, I wrote in the minimum filename standards that any language was acceptable. The question I was attempting to answer was instead, for a multilingual uploader, which language they should use for their upload name. The language policy calls out English in several places (e.g., category names, creator names) so it seemed a good suggestion. I have updated it to prefer the language most relevant to the subject (based on Commons:Galleries#Naming_conventions). There could be further work on this guideline but at least the gallery convention encourages language diversity.

Author in the filename is listed in the minimum standards bullet list under "Names consisting solely of dates, the name of the photographer or rights holder, and/or words like “Flickr".

The "broad location" guidance is in the file renaming policy, there was a vote 15/18 that uploaders should do a "bare minimum" of work to include detailed locations in the filenames. For example File:20170712_ZurichRail_0932_(36101630414).jpg, arguably the filename is a "meaningless or ambiguous name". The only legible information is "Zurich Rail" but there is no Zurich Rail visible in the picture. The file could likely be renamed to a more informative name like "20170712-Lidl-Gretzenbach" without any opposition. Since it can be renamed, it is a bad filename.

There is some overlap between the naming and renaming policies, but the renaming policy actually specifically links to the naming policy page and says "Commons:File naming describes how files should be named." I would say the distinction is that the file naming policy describes how good a filename is (absolute scale), while the file renaming policy evaluates whether there is sufficient justification to rename a file (a certain arbitrary increment on the scale, from new to old). If this guideline does get accepted, likely some of the footnotes and explanations on the renaming page could be omitted as the file naming page goes into depth on those details. Mathnerd314159 (talk) 16:04, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

•  Support Per my comment above. We have a longstanding issue with people using file names for images that are to ambiguous or specialized to be useful. I think we should be able to separate the ability categorize something from the usefulness of the file name. Since they aren't mutually exclusive. Like with my example of how Russian stamps are currently named, sure they are "well categorized", but that doesn't mean that specific images are easy to find or that how they are currently named is at all useful to anyone. Anyway, we really need some kind of guideline to curb things like that. Although I do wonder how it would be enforced, but that's another discussion and I trust Mathnerd314159 will iron out the details before a final vote. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:23, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

"There was a discussion..."

what's that?

 Oppose as @Enhancing999 has elaborated. RZuo (talk) 14:03, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposal for history maps template

Hi, if you are interested in "Maps of the history of Europe/Asia/etc" and the template(s) that could provide more order among its subcategories:
Please feel invited to participate in Template talk:Subject by century#Proposal.
Proposed features:

• New navigation template for "history maps" - well, those that are sorted by region/country, and then by century. Such a template is currently not existing.
• Switching naming standard from "Maps of 17th-century France/India" --> "Maps of France/India in the 17th century" (for all history-showing "maps of X in Yth century")
• How to group current and historical countries regionally, within the template (adaptable later)

Hope to see you there. Bring some time and long breath: I don't expect we will wrap up this open topic soon. Also, ancient history is unlikely to be covered, I think we can start with 5th century at the very earliest, but I am rather optimistic about the structure in 12-14th century onwards. --Enyavar (talk) 19:58, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Creation of an AI bot to add structured data to files

Note: I know that most things regarding AI are controversial right now (and for good reason in many cases), but I still think this is an idea worth considering. Also, AI being able to correctly identify items in a photo is still in its infancy, so this is a more long-term proposal/idea.

I hope all is well! AI technology has seen many advances in the past few years, including the ability for it to identify objects in photos. My proposal, simply put, is to create a bot, which uses some form AI, to add and/or adjust current structured data on files. It would mainly identify what is portrayed, from the main parts to the smaller items in a photo, using an identification algorithm, but it would also use the categories included on the file page to also identify object. Structured data is very underused on Wikimedia Commons, but it has wide-ranging effects on how a file is viewed and seen by humans and bots alike. To show an example using this picture, it could quickly deduce that water, glass, sidewalk, skyscraper, etc. are pictured, but then, using categories and possibly text included on its file page, it could deduce that the prominent part of the picture is City Hall, London (Newham), not just a random building, and depending on its knowledge of location, it could tell that the London cable car is pictured, and not just a random structure. Importantly though, it would not adjust anything on an image's file page, including its categories, captions, or descriptions.

I can think of some general reasons why it would be useful for day-to-day use on Wikimedia Commons (not organized in any order):

1. Structured data is mainly used by programs to sort images correctly and properly on the website; so using a computer program to identify structured data would reduce the possibility of lost data due to human error (i.e. it would know what to look out for more in images than humans adding the structured data).

2. It would improve the search engine of Wikimedia Commons, which can sometimes struggle when searching for a broad term or terms with multiple meanings and/or parts.

3. It would allow copy editors, file patrollers, admins, etc. to focus on more important things. As well as that, it would reduce the possibility of new editors incorrectly tagging files (or just skipping the process altogether).

4. Structured data is not like categories, mainly because it doesn't need to be filed into smaller subsections (e.g. using that image again, the term "water" isn't filed under something like "waterways in England"). Though, its identification algorithm could always be fine-tuned to better decide what should or shouldn't be tagged.

If this idea was to be further investigated and approved, I also propose that it be introduced to the community gradually. It could start as an opt-in program, in which users, who approve its use, would allow for it to edit the structured data on their uploaded files only. Then it could go to being automatically used for files uploaded by new users, then older files without structured data. Basically, the AI bot could either be turned into an automatic program like SchlurcherBot or BotMultichillT, or it could stay a permanent opt-in setting in the preferences tab.

Thank you for your time and consideration; I'd be more than happy to answer any questions. Have a great day! -- DiscoA340 (talk) 22:20, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

What you're describing sounds a lot like the Commons:Structured data/Computer-aided tagging project, which was an abject failure. You may want to review how that system worked and why it failed. Omphalographer (talk) 01:16, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Strong oppose per the abject failure (exactly the words I would use as well) of the computer-aided tagging project. - Jmabel ! talk 09:09, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Wasn't that AI centuries ago implemented in a suboptimal manner (i.e. mixed with manual edits)? Enhancing999 (talk) 09:18, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

The fact that it required users to manually approve edits was probably the only thing protecting it from adding even more bad tags, like tagging pictures where the sky is visible with "depicts: blue", or tagging logos with "depicts: graphics". Omphalographer (talk) 17:59, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

SD/CAT was apparently set up before 2020 and ran (amok) until 2023. "AI" has developed quite a bit since that time: Midjourney went online in 2022-07, ChatGPT in 2022-11, and has since undergone multiple revisions. Now, there is no documentation available, which advancements SD/CAT went through, but I am certain that we (well-meaning enthusiasts) cannot compare with the tech giants who don't seem to think their "AI" is an abject failure.

I think that a new attempt should at some point be started: some general  Support from me. Although I am still sceptical and don't have any interest in getting involved myself. And yes, a review why the SD/CAT project failed is crucial, before committing the same errors again. Sadly, there is no such review readily available on the linked project page. --Enyavar (talk) 09:25, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

The biggest problem with SD/CAT was that it had no idea what was important for Commons categorization, so it was constantly proposing useless categories ("tree", "stop sign", "building", "person" etc.), often for images that were already well categorized. Yes, AI has advanced, but try feeding an image to even an excellent present-day AI to describe verbally, and then think about how far that description is from actually useful Commons categories. - Jmabel ! talk 11:15, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the category tree is way too detailed for any so-called AI. Good thing: Disco's proposal idea talks about structured data (i.e. tagging), not about categories, except to use the existing categories of a file for better tagging. Myself, I only categorize as deeply and intricately as possible, I don't touch the SD-interface with a ten meter selfie stick if I can help it... But I think there are people who'd like to improve the state of SD, and this could be a way. --Enyavar (talk) 13:52, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

instead of trying to build something close to an AGI, how about doing a simple task first?

1. tag the faces for Category:Unidentified people.
2. further, identify any pics with human faces that have not been tagged, and then tag them.

RZuo (talk) 13:58, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that would be appropriate. There are a lot of images on Commons which include people but which deliberately don't identify the individuals, either because that's unknowable (e.g. photos of street scenes), or because the subject(s) of the photo would prefer to remain anonymous. Omphalographer (talk) 18:07, 25 March 2024 (UTC)