Commons:Village pump/Technical/Archive/2025/10

On-Commons-WikiFlix menu

Why is User:Spinster/WikiFlix/Menu not showing on e.g. WikidataGalleries/WikiFlix/Documentary films? Could somebody fix it? Prototyperspective (talk) 00:34, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective, it should be fixed now. The menu uses the template {{Divbox}} and I fixed an error where the template is not appearing in gallery pages. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 02:07, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:19, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

IA Upload didn't work

This file File:Granny's Wonderful Chair 1929 ill. by Emma Brock.djvu appeared to upload OK with the IA Upload tool but has got no cover image. I'm not quite sure what went wrong except that I stupidly put a full stop in the file name and that may have confused the tool. Can someone either figure out what went wrong or delete it for me so I can try again? Thanks. DrThneed (talk) 04:58, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

@DrThneed:

It looks like it does have a cover image, it's just that it's page 2 of the file (see at right). The IA sometimes chooses a thumbnail that isn't the first page. The tool does have the option to remove page 1 (so that it can delete the Google Books cover page when needed) but it doesn't look like that's happened here. Sam Wilson 09:40, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh - so perhaps it just takes some time for that processing to happen - I was just seeing a logo for djvu before and no image. I shall be more patient in future! DrThneed (talk) 20:47, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:16, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Reverse image

Hello everyone. After this discussion, I come here to solve the problem.

On File:Pierre Paul Léon Glaize - Esquisse pour la salle des fêtes de la mairie du 20e arrondissement , Les grands hommes de la Révolu - PPP4025 - Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris.jpg, the original file is ok (good orientation from left to right), but the thumbnails are facing the other way (from right to left), just like the older version. The reorientation has been made last month, so could anyone find why the thumbnails don't apply the change ? Thanks. Sammyday (talk) 14:52, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

@Sammyday In the EXIF metadata, it states "Orientation: Flipped horizontally". This is making the thumbnails flipped horizontally. So, you have to set the orientation to "Normal". I believe you can either edit the EXIF manually or let the bot do it by adding {{Rotate|resetexif}} to the image. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 17:39, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

@Sammyday I think I might have misunderstood your question. I just realised from your question actually you wanted the image to be flipped, so basically the bot just undid what you did in September. This is because the "reorientation" you did in 22 September did not actually flip the file, you (or the editing software you used) only changed the orientation in the EXIF metadata. So, in order to flip the image, you have to actually edit the file, not the metadata. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 21:59, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

I just went ahead and did it myself. Can you check if the image is now displaying correctly for you? Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 22:16, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Ok ! Thanks a lot, it seems quite right from now on. Sammyday (talk) 08:26, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 21:25, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Odd upload issue

At File:Yuen Chin performing home energy audit for Seattle City Light, 1993 (50166856626).jpg I don't seem to be able to see the thumbnail for the new high-res version even if I purge everything I can think of. Any thoughts? Is it just "caching problem, will resolve itself"? - Jmabel ! talk 01:05, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Similar issues at File:Seattle - Boating at Seward Park, 1930 (42952454160).jpg, File:Seattle - Regrading work at 6th and Columbia, 1914 (46800556422).jpg.

Weirdly, it does not seem to affect use of the images elsewhere, just on the file pages. - Jmabel ! talk 03:01, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

It looks like something went wrong with thumbnailing servers and they became overloaded. hnowlan is currently investigating/fixing it. Bawolff (talk) 12:12, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Could you please post once this has been fixed? I was just starting some uploads so would be great to know. wuppertaler _Post um 12:36, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

From what I've heard, i think its fixed now. Bawolff (talk) 14:00, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

There was a problem with thumbnailing (and spill-over into swift itself), but we did publish a status update about the incident - https://www.wikimediastatus.net/incidents/cll27hvs2wj5. It is worth checking the status page if something seems amiss... MVernon (WMF) (talk) 12:52, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:25, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Upload problem

Right now all my attempts to upload an image fail with the error message An unknown error occurred in storage backend "local-swift-codfw". We had the very same problem before. According to the T396186, this happened due to some filtering to address abuse. Is anyone else experiencing this? --AFBorchert (talk) 12:33, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

There was an open incident (see [1] ). MVernon (WMF) (talk) 12:48, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, User talk:MVernon (WMF), for the quick response. This issue appears to have been resolved now. --AFBorchert (talk) 13:21, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:24, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Help to migrate a video

Can someone help me to migrate this video to Commons? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-hrW3bTSnqs Victorgrigas (talk) 13:22, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

You can try toolforge:video2commons or Commons:YouTube files/Downloading. Nemoralis (talk) 13:48, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:23, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

How can I turn a category into a disambiguation?

The category Category:Sarı Köşk currently redirects to the category Category:Yellow Pavilion (Üsküdar), but 'Sarı Köşk' literally means Yellow Pavilion and theres more than one, how could I disambiguate the category so that it specifies there are multiple? Many thanks Eticangaaa (talk) 07:12, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Pick a random disambiguation category like Category:Abandoned houses in Georgia, click edit and copy its contents. Then you can edit the category to make it a disambig page too. Important is to add {{Disambiguation}} at the bottom of the page. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:24, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:22, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Purge not available?

Hi there, I am hitting the Wikisource 0x0 bug, where I cannot build a page index without first purging the copy on both Commons and Wikisource.

Although I can purge the file on Latin Wikisource, I cannot see a "purge" button at File:Select epodes and Ars poetica.pdf. Any ideas why? GuilelmusDugard (talk) 05:06, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

@GuilelmusDugard: Do you have either "Page Purge" or "ExtraTabs2" gadgets enabled in your Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets? You can also always manually purge a page by adding ?action=purge to the url. MKFI (talk) 12:00, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I have enabled that now! GuilelmusDugard (talk) 09:06, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:22, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Category:Honored Power Engineers of the Russian Federation

Hello! I have a problem: the title of Honored Energy Worker of the Russian Federation, using Zhores Alfyorov as an example, isn't showing up. I've worked with templates and links in Wikidata. What's the problem? MasterRus21thCentury (talk) 22:03, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

It looks good to me. Maybe your cache needs to be cleared? --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:04, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

It is not his cache. It is his editing. Анастасия Львова^ru/en 22:48, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:21, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-41

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• Paste Check is a new Edit Check feature to help avoid and fight copyright violations. When editors paste text into an article, Paste Check prompts them to confirm the origin and licensing of the content. Starting Wednesday, 8 October, 22 wikis will test Paste Check. Paste Check will help new volunteers understand and follow the policies and guidelines necessary to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia projects.

Updates for editors

• Mobile devices will receive mobile articles directly on the standard domain (like en.wikipedia.org), instead of via a redirect to an "m" domain (like en.m.wikipedia.org). This change improves performance. This week it will be enabled on Wikipedias. The existing mobile URLs and the "Desktop view" opt-out remain available. Learn more. [2]
• New date filters, creationdate: and lasteditdate:, are now available in the wiki search engine. This allows users to filter search results by a page's first or last revision date. The filters support comparison operators (e.g. >2024) and relative dates (e.g. today-1d), making it easier to find recently updated content or pages within specific age ranges. [3]
• Wikifunctions now supports rich text in embedded calls across the 150 wikis where it's enabled. To showcase this, the team created a Latin declination table that Wiktionary editors can use to automatically generate noun forms, producing clear, formatted results — see an example output. If you need any help or have any feedback, please contact the Wikifunctions Team. [4]
• An edit link will now appear inside the categories box on article pages for logged in users, which will directly launch the VisualEditor category dialog. [5]
• View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a problem downloading pdf files last week and that has been resolved. [6]

Updates for technical contributors

• The field rev_sha1 in the revision database table is being removed in favor of content_sha1 in the content database table. See the announcement for more information.
• The Reader Experience team will roll out Dark Mode user interface on all Wikimedia sites on October 29, 2025. All anonymous users of Wikimedia sites will have the option to activate a color scheme that features light-colored text on a dark background. This is designed to provide a more comfortable reading experience, especially in low-light situations. Template authors and technical contributors are encouraged to learn how to make pages ready for Dark mode and address any compatibility issues found in templates in their wiki before the enablement. Please contact the Web team for questions or any support on this talk page before the enablement. [7]
• Starting on Monday, October 6, API endpoints under the rest.php path will be rerouted through a new internal API Gateway. Individual wikis will be updated based on the standard release groups, with total traffic increased over time. This change is expected to be non-breaking and non-disruptive. If any issues are observed, please file a Phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board. [8]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 17:18, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Broken links to uploaded files in the Upload Wizard

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T408610

Hi, I’m having a problem with Special:UploadWizard (I’m using the standard default version). For the past few days, all of my uploads have had broken links in the upload summary. The files are uploaded successfully, but the summary links point to temporary "UploadStash" URLs instead of the actual file pages. It’s quite inconvenient, as I want to open the uploaded image pages to add them to a gallery.

I was redirected here after asking about this issue at Commons:Help_desk, and from what I’ve seen there, at least a few other users seem to be experiencing the same problem. I’m using the "Old Vector (2010)" interface, if that’s relevant. -- Jakubhal 17:20, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I’ve experienced that too, I hope it can be fixed soon. As a workaround, I go to my uploads and open images from there. Malcolmxl5 (talk) 20:07, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

• Apparently there is an issue in Phabricator: T408610. -- Jakubhal 07:02, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

This is fixed since yesterday. Der Umherirrende (talk) 22:09, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Der Umherirrende (talk) 22:09, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Renaming a file

File:Renoir A Waitress at Duval's Restaurant.jpg (1875) was uploaded in 2014 from a collection at the Met. At the time the painting was titled A Waitress at Duval's Restaurant. The Met has since done further research and determined this title is incorrect. They now call it "Young Woman (La Servante)" because the artist never named it, and the painting has no connection to Duval's Restaurant, and what her profession depicts is unknown (housemaid, waitress, etc..). I added some notes, but don't know what else should be done or how to do it. Is the page renamed? What about existing links on Commons and other wikis? I leave it for anyone who wants to help. -- GreenC (talk) 21:08, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

More copies erroneously titled and described: Category:A Waitress at Duval's Restaurant (c. 1875) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in the Metropolitan Museum of Art -- GreenC (talk) 21:18, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Possible new file name File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir's untitled young woman aka La Servante or A Waitress at Duval's Restaurant.jpg .. then for each file copy tag a number like " (copy 2)" etc.. and include a note in the metadata about the naming ambiguity. -- GreenC (talk) 21:27, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

@GreenC: You can use {{Rename}}. Yann (talk) 15:53, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Missing licences in recent uploads

Hello, I noticed that none of my uploads of the last days (at least since October 2) have had their licences added, which was usually done by SchlurcherBot within minutes or hours after the upload. Is this related to the recent upload error (on October 1, see discussion above), or is it an issue with the bot? See for example this file or this file. Kind regards wuppertaler _Post um 15:08, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi, I don't see any issue. Please see [9] or [10] for the result just after their upload. Yann (talk) 15:51, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Hello, yes, but there are hidden categories saying that SDC statuses are missing. Sorry if I explained it in the wrong way, I assumed it was the same thing. I just noticed that SDC were always added shortly after the upload and since the recent upload issues, this has not happened anymore. wuppertaler _Post um 18:48, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Some of those were added by bots of Multichill which are currently blocked. Ymblanter (talk) 07:24, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-42

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• Last week, improvements to account security and two-factor authentication (2FA) features were enabled across all wikis. These changes include user interface improvements for Special:AccountSecurity, the support of multiple 2FA methods via authenticator apps and portable security keys (previously users could only enable one method), and a new Recovery Codes module which facilitates fewer account lockouts due to lost two-factor apps and devices. As part of the Account Security project, work is continuing through the rest of 2025 on further user experience improvements, and support for passkeys as an alternate second factor.

Updates for editors

• Another part of the Account security project is making 2FA generally available to all users. Along with editors with advanced privileges, such as administrators and bureaucrats, 40% of editors now have access to 2FA. You can check if you have access at Special:AccountSecurity. Instructions for activation are on the linked page. The plan is to continue increasing availability if it is determined that the user support capabilities are able to support global usage. [11]
• This week, users at wikis where talk page Usability Improvements are already available by default (everywhere except the 12 wikis listed in T379264) will gain the ability to Thank a comment directly from the talk page it appears on. Before this change, Thanking could only be done by visiting the revision history of the talk page. You can learn more about this change. [12]
• Users who have not verified their email address will soon be receiving monthly Notification reminders to do so. This is because users who have verified their email can more easily recover their account. These reminders will not be sent if the user is inactive or removes the unverified email from their account. [13][14]
• View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a fix was made for an occasional error with saving translated paragraphs in the Content Translation tool, and the related error messages are now easier to see. [15]

Updates for technical contributors

• The Unsupported Tools Working Group has chosen Video2Commons as the first tool for its pilot cycle. The group will explore ways to improve and sustain the tool over the coming months. Learn more on Meta.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 18:55, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Great news for Video2Commons, hopefully they can find a reliable method for YouTube uploads to work. Tvpuppy (talk) 19:07, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh, I just noticed there was an announcement thread right above this. Tvpuppy (talk) 20:46, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Update to the SVG filter

Just a heads up, we updated the filter that checks SVGs when you upload them to make sure they are not malicious. For the most part you should hopefully not notice anything different. The main difference is that the new version is more likely to reject files that have invalid CSS. Its also more liberal with files that have embedded fonts in them. I suspect nobody will notice the difference, but if it causes any problems please let me know. Bawolff (talk) 17:40, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

@Bawolff, this is an issue with OWID SVG files, which are quite common. I think they call an external font, and it's a pain to fix that by hand. JayCubby (talk) 23:03, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

External fonts are different from embedded fonts. We are intentionally blocking external fonts both before and after this change as they are a privacy risk to users. If you are uploading OWID files via https://owidimporter.toolforge.org/ then i believe it strips the font for you. Bawolff (talk) 23:42, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

That's a truly wonderful resource. Thanks a ton! JayCubby (talk) 23:45, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

cat-a-lot missing translations

Hi. There are some translations missing and interface admin assistance is required. Not sure what are procedures on commons, but reported here: translating talk page. Nux (talk··dyskusja) 14:22, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-43

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• To optimize how user data is stored in our databases, the saved preferences of users who haven't logged in for over five years and have fewer than 100 edits will be cleared. When those users return, default settings will apply. [16]
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a broken link from the GlobalContributions interface message to the XTools GlobalContributions page which has now been fixed. [17]

Updates for technical contributors

• The work to reroute all traffic to API endpoints under the rest.php route through a common API gateway is now complete. If any issues are observed, please file a phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board.
• Edits to Wikidata references or qualifiers will now be shown in RecentChanges and Watchlist entries on other wikis less often, reducing unnecessary notifications. This will reduce the overall quantity of 'noisy' entries. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. [18]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

"View relevant changes" tab of Watchlist totally down now

When loading the page, I received this error message: [f0ec4299-7dbf-46d8-8cb7-7b477b40a419] 2025-10-22 20:11:08: Fatal exception of type "InvalidArgumentException". What's happening to the Watchlist? George Ho (talk) 20:13, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

For reference, the full error message is:

Unknown filter module "latest"

from /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/recentchanges/ChangesListQuery/ChangesListQuery.php(1158) #0 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/recentchanges/ChangesListQuery/ChangesListQuery.php(220): MediaWiki\RecentChanges\ChangesListQuery\ChangesListQuery->getFilter(string) #1 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/recentchanges/ChangesListFilterGroup.php(473): MediaWiki\RecentChanges\ChangesListQuery\ChangesListQuery->applyAction(string, string) #2 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/recentchanges/ChangesListFilterGroupContainer.php(257): MediaWiki\RecentChanges\ChangesListFilterGroup->modifyChangesListQuery(MediaWiki\RecentChanges\ChangesListQuery\ChangesListQuery, MediaWiki\Html\FormOptions, bool) #3 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/specialpage/ChangesListSpecialPage.php(1230): MediaWiki\RecentChanges\ChangesListFilterGroupContainer->modifyChangesListQuery(MediaWiki\RecentChanges\ChangesListQuery\ChangesListQuery, MediaWiki\Html\FormOptions, bool) #4 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/specialpage/ChangesListSpecialPage.php(805): MediaWiki\SpecialPage\ChangesListSpecialPage->buildQuery(MediaWiki\Html\FormOptions) #5 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/specialpage/ChangesListSpecialPage.php(483): MediaWiki\SpecialPage\ChangesListSpecialPage->getQueryResult() #6 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/specials/SpecialWatchlist.php(151): MediaWiki\SpecialPage\ChangesListSpecialPage->execute(null) #7 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/specialpage/SpecialPage.php(711): MediaWiki\Specials\SpecialWatchlist->execute(null) #8 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/specialpage/SpecialPageFactory.php(1735): MediaWiki\SpecialPage\SpecialPage->run(null) #9 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/actions/ActionEntryPoint.php(499): MediaWiki\SpecialPage\SpecialPageFactory->executePath(string, MediaWiki\Context\RequestContext) #10 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/actions/ActionEntryPoint.php(143): MediaWiki\Actions\ActionEntryPoint->performRequest() #11 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/includes/MediaWikiEntryPoint.php(184): MediaWiki\Actions\ActionEntryPoint->execute() #12 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.45.0-wmf.24/index.php(44): MediaWiki\MediaWikiEntryPoint->run() #13 /srv/mediawiki/w/index.php(3): require(string) #14 {main} Bawolff (talk) 03:39, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-44

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• The Wikipedia iOS app has launched an A/B/C test of improvements made to the tabbed browsing feature for select regions and languages. The test, named “More dynamic tabs”, explores new tab experiences and includes “Did you know” and “Because you read” article recommendations. You can read more on the project page.
• Autoconfirmed users on small and medium wikis with the CampaignEvents extension can now use Event Registration without the Event Organizer right. This feature lets organizers enable registration, manage participants, and lets users register with one click instead of signing event pages.
• View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue of flashing colors when holding or pressing the arrow keys under the dark mode settings in Vector 2022 has been fixed. [19]

Updates for technical contributors

• The CampaignEvents extension will be deployed to all remaining wikis during the week of 17 November 2025. The extension currently includes three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. For this rollout, Invitation List will not be enabled on Wikifunctions and MediaWiki unless requested by those communities. Visit the deployment page to learn more.
• The SwaggerUI-based REST sandbox experience is now live on all wiki projects. The sandbox can be accessed through the Special:RestSandbox page. Please report any issues to the MediaWiki Interfaces team board, or join the discussion on the project launch page. [20]
• Transform endpoints with a trailing slash path in the MediaWiki REST API are now marked as deprecated. They will remain functional during this time, but removal is expected by the end of January 2026. All API users currently calling them are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. Both endpoint variations can be found and tested using the REST Sandbox. See the MediaWiki REST API Deprecation page for more detailed information about the API deprecation policies and procedures.
• A dedicated changelog now exists for the MediaWiki REST API. The changelog provides an overview of these changes, making it easier for developers to keep track of improvements and iterations. Announcements will also continue to flow through the standard communication channels, including Tech News and email distribution lists, but can now be more easily referenced from a central location. If you have feedback about the style, structure, or content of this changelog, please join the discussion.
• Administrators can delete the tracking category which was previously added by the JsonConfig extension, as it is no longer used. See the categories linked from Q130635582. It is OK if there are still pages listed in the category as that is just a caching issue, and they will be automatically cleared out the next time each page is edited. [21]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 19:27, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Nuke tag may be broken?

The nuke tag in Special:Tags doesn't seem to be working. There have been vastly more than 951 files deleted with Special:Nuke and my recent ones aren't there. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 01:27, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

@The Squirrel Conspiracy This is a known issue - T402228. Unfortunately file deletions with Nuke aren't currently tagged due to MediaWiki file deletion not really supporting tags in the codebase right now. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 16:12, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Good to know. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 17:18, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T402228

Prototyperspective (talk) 10:19, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Allow non-standard EXIF metadata to be displayed?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T408763

When you take a photograph using a Canon camera, the lens used to take the picture is recorded as the "Lens used" standard EXIF field, as one would expect. This displays correctly in the "Metadata" section on any file description on Wikimedia Commons (as an example, see today's POTD), and this displays correctly in the "Details" tab in the file properties in Microsoft Windows. Annoyingly, and I want to figuratively strangle Sony for doing this, Sony cameras do not use this standard field, and instead use an EXIF field called "Exif.Photo.LensModel", which is not the same field as "Lens used", does not display correctly in the properties dialog in Microsoft Windows, and does not display correctly on Wikimedia Commons. It does display in the EXIF viewer in GIMP, see this screenshot, which is this file opened in GIMP.

My question is, would there be any chance that the Metadata table for image files on Commons be modified to also display such non-standard EXIF attributes? --benlisquare_{Talk•Contribs} 14:41, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

@Benlisquare Please file a ticket in Phabricator, requesting support for this EXIF tag. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:50, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Done, created T408763. Thanks. --benlisquare_{Talk•Contribs} 23:45, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Unsupported Tools Working Group is focussing on Video2Commons

The Unsupported Tools Working Group have chosen Video2Commons (V2C) (the video upload tool) as the first unsupported tool to focus on for its pilot cycle. The Unsupported Tools Working Group is a group of volunteers and staff created by the WMF that will look at wishes in the Community Wishlist and other places and prioritize them into technical tasks that WMF teams (or contractors hired by the WMF) can take on. Feel free to comment on this thread with any bugs or feature requests you'd like to see addressed in the tool! Sohom (talk) 16:48, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta I'm not a Commons regular (or a regular v2c-user); but from watching Phabricator, something you/the UTWG may wish to be aware of re. v2c is that (IIUC) it sometimes directs users to request a server-side upload in Phabricator. However, the server-side upload queue is currently without a maintainer/steward :P This therefore occasionally results in folks filing tasks to request server-side uploads from v2c, which in most cases recently haven't been actioned prior to the files in question being deleted from v2c. (See also phab:T391469.) Best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 19:39, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, there's three main problems with video uploading right now: 1. v2c doesn't always run the newest yt-dlp, which means it hits YouTube anti-downloading measures; 2. Even with current yt-dlp, v2c gets IP-blocked by YouTube; and 3. Uploading large files is still unreliable, with WMF support for media infrastructure being extremely limited. AntiCompositeNumber (they/them) (talk) 19:56, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

As a side note, video2commons is the perfect example of a tool that should not exist. It would be much better for UploadWizard to have full support for uploading video and transcoding it to a free format. AntiCompositeNumber (they/them) (talk) 19:58, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

@AntiCompositeNumber, I agree wrt to transcoding issues, but I don't think the WMF can officially host a tool with yt-dlp (I think). Video2Commons has a place (V2C allow yt downloads and uploads by being unofficial), but I agree it probably should not have as much of a bottleneck as it currently is. Sohom (talk) 21:46, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. I upload the files (after download with YT-DLP) manually, because V2C is sometimes too buggy. But a fully supportive video upload included in the UploadWizard is needed, for non-Commons-experts --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:55, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

It would be great if v2c could at least do one retry of the upload before suggesting that people file a task. Bawolff (talk) 18:38, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

(FWIW there's also phab:T393851, which seems to result in v2c sometimes telling folks to file a task for a server-side-upload-request, even though their file actually does end up being uploaded successfully through v2c.) ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 19:02, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

This should be less frequent now that we have optimized encoding size and switched to AV1. Generated files are a lot smaller now. vip (talk) 19:24, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

That's great news; I had speculated and hoped the tool selected would be video2commons. First of all, the tool needs changes to work again since currently it's broken for YouTube videos And when they do, I think there are still a few errors that occur. Then I think preventing duplicate uploads like the UploadWizard does would be very important. Enabling upload of playlists and channels would also be of high priority – explained it at W443: Enable uploading playlists and a user's videos/audios via video2commons. Maybe more important than that for now would be re-enabling import of subtitles – they're in the YT video but not on Commons. See W392: Make video2commons subtitle import work again & add subtitles to earlier video imports. Importing chapters would also be good since that could later be used if the media player gets a chapters feature and often has much information about the video's contents. All of these things already are issues in the GitHub project where there also are more issues to fix. It's important!

Regarding video upload from the UploadWizard: assuming that is feasible, maybe v2c could be integrated there so improvements to it could then be used by UW if it ever gets built into it. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:43, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Are the subtitles on YouTube under the same license as the video? GPSLeo (talk) 06:39, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes of course. Another important thing would be to make sure it always imports at full resolution and not a lower-quality video (see the video2commons talk page; seems like this wasn't fully fixed). Also especially for enabling uploading of videos or audios from a channel/user/playlist but not only for that, it needs the check for whether the video is already on Commons (youtube ID elsewhere in source field or the structured data), like the UploadWizard does it for images. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:23, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta here's my 2 cents:

1. there're technically 3 different purposes realised by v2c:
   1. convert videos in any format (file extensions) to formats accepted by commons and then upload
   2. import youtube videos to commons
   3. import any videos, from a direct link to the video or the website url containing the videos, to commons (same thing as youtube but youtube is most popular and has its special problems so i single it out.)
2. 1.1 should ideally be realised within uploadwizard, or another upload tool maintained by wmf, instead of using v2c that uses external tech (yt-dlp for now, yt-dl in the past) and is run by volunteers.
3. v2c does 1.3 quite well.
4. youtube upload frequently has all sorts of problems, as other users have mentioned and filed in github issues. but a most important improvement, i believe, is to form some kind of cooperation with youtube, so they let wikimedia users upload more easily, instead of causing all the throttles, ip blocks, etc.

RoyZuo (talk) 15:03, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

@RoyZuo and @Prototyperspective I'm unsure about 1.1 on the upload-wizard side of things, I think the Wikiproject Med Foundation is looking at some of that. The focus will probably be on 2 and 3 and fixing bugs in and around uploading (I think Bawolff's suggestion of retrying uploads was something we discussed). To ground expectation a little bit, I am not sure the WMF can work out a special deal with youtube (though I will try to figure out if that is possible), but the focus of the group will be more towards improving the infrastructure to have less bugs and be more maintainable overall.

Also @Prototyperspective, you mentioned the issues on Github, are you aware of any effort(s) to prioritize these tasks/collate these tasks/rank them based on severity/which would the highest impact to solve? cc @Don-vip and @DaxServer who are much more involved on that side as well -- would be interested in hearing y'all thoughts as well! Sohom (talk) 05:13, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Roy, in the long term 1.1 should be an official WMF-supported service, either as part of UploadWizard or mediawiki itself, but not a Toolforge project. Considering WMF has already a video transcoding infrastructure that converts videos to lower resolutions, I guess it would be feasible to integrate the mp4->webm conversion in it. Then v2c could be reduced to the non-official features like the youtube imports. But I also agree we would need some sort of collaboration between WMF and YouTube to have less restrictions. Currently it's a nightmare to keep these things working. Anyway I'm super happy to see that v2c is receiving this much needed support from WMF through this user group, many thanks to everyone involved <3 vip (talk) 20:21, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

@Doc James, (also cc @Bawolff) I remember you telling me that the Wikiproject Med Foundation was working on patches for 1.1, could you comment on how far y'all are and whether you need any reviewing/Foundation help wrt to it (also if there is a phab/gerrit patches feel free to link to it). Sohom (talk) 21:07, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Im about to make the next patch soon Bawolff (talk) 21:42, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Agree that 1.1 would best be part of UploadWizard basically. Regarding prioritization, I think threads & replies in this thread as well as the v2c talk page and the github issues are one type of measure. Another is the number of files affected. I think everyone would agree getting it to work would be top-priority; I currently can't upload any videos from YT because I keep getting error Error: An exception occurred: DownloadError: b'ERROR: [youtube] hVD_vky7sCM: Requested format is not available. Use --list-formats for a list of available formats' as documented on the v2c talk page and there's a few more errors. I don't think we should rely on YT partnership to fix the issues and think they can be fixed without that. In the case of the error, it seems to be because the file needs to be converted to webm on the server. In regards to the number of files affected, enabling users to upload whole channels/user/playlists would enable much more uploads and more complete sets. Starting with the YT account of Wikimedia Foundation or as recently on the v2c talk page a set of drone videos or a channel in my todos in which ancient technology is recreated. For this, checking whether the video has already been uploaded is a requirement and that's also very useful either way and not without reason part of the UploadWizard for images. Regarding subtitles, these have been often asked about in the talk page, affect many videos which now miss subtitles and would be part of movement goals of making knowledge accessible (here to those not speaking whatever the video language happens to be for translated subtitles as well as people who can't always turn on audio or are deaf). Subtitles are useful also for translating them into new subtitles. Video imported at lower resolution also affects many videos (large fraction of past uploaded videos plus upcoming videos) – details at W447: Fix video2commons so it imports videos at max resolution & fix videos imported with low quality. There is not formal prioritization of issues yet. I think it could make sense to for example survey Commons users which v2c things they think are most pressing but that's needed (or even adequate and worth the effort) only if these issues / issues like these have already been addressed. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:20, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi, It is great that V2C is being taken care of. Thanks to all for that. One important issue is that V2C doesn't check if the file name exists or not. So the video is uploaded, converted, and then V2C fails because the name is already taken (for a long video―old films I used to import―it could take hours). So a big waste of time and resources. V2C also fails if the file was deleted before. This is the most urgent bug to be fixed. Regards, Yann (talk) 18:44, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Add an outcome of LicenseReview

At Commons:Village_pump/Proposals/Archive/2025/02#Add_an_outcome_of_LicenseReview there is a discussion about to modify Template:LicenseReview so it is possible to mark files with some sort of "review impossible". I tried to fix the template per Template_talk:LicenseReview#Outcome but it did not work as planned. And there is no reason to modify MediaWiki:Gadget-LicenseReview.js untill we have a working review template. Can someone fix? MGA73 (talk) 10:26, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Moved this to a new template request on this new page: Commons:Template requests#Parameter for "review impossible" for LicenseReview template. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:28, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Broken template

I am trying to decode how this is happening, but I'm at a loss: categories such as Category:Construction in Guam which feature {{Topic in country}} have some nonsense code linking to the redlink Template:Byby, but it's only a little over 600 out of the 17,700 transclusions. I don't know why. Can someone smarter than me fix this? Thanks in advance. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:38, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

I tried, but I couldn’t figure what exactly causing it, I think it maybe has something to do with the fact that it is Guam. I mean finding the source of a problem related to {{Topic by country}} is always like going down a rabbit hole. There are just so many different templates and parameters to analyze. So, I will greatly appreciate if someone more familiar with these templates can figure out the problem. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 02:35, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Moved to this new page for template requests: Commons:Template requests#Fix Topic in country template linking to the redlink Template:Byby. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:31, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:02, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

FlickreviewR 2 sometimes struck

Sometimes when I moving images from Flickr, the FlickreviewR 2 can take up to ~30 Minutes to review the license, see this [22]. 6D (talk) 02:44, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

@6D: It appears that the problem occurs occassionally. Using this file as an example, it takes around 1 hours and 15 minutes for the bot to review my file. At the time of my upload, there were around 200 backlog for the bot, though they are all resolved now.廣九直通車 (talk) 13:07, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Noting here that due to a toolforge outage, the bot will take longer than normal to review files for a few hours once back online. The maintainers are aware, and Chuckbot is on standby if needed. All the Best -- Chuck ^Talk 05:45, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Flickr2commons “The file you submitted was empty.”

I have this issue “The file you submitted was empty.”, How to fix? 6D (talk) 07:15, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Does Anyone else have this issue? 6D (talk) 09:13, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Not recently, no. I don’t know the cause of it, but I remember when I had this issue, I just kept resubmitting the files until they went through. Tvpuppy (talk) 02:28, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

And the Flickr2Commons are struck at Running....., may be the F2C API key got ratelimited. 6D (talk) 15:21, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

And it now working again!!!’ 6D (talk) 23:53, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

So are your two issues both solved now? Prototyperspective (talk) 10:23, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

The Flickr2Commons are struck at Running..... is fixed, but Flickr2commons “The file you submitted was empty.” is not fixed, when I moved about ~600-800 images, this issue pop up for 30 Minutes-1 Hour. 6D (talk) 02:50, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm also still experiencing the same “The file you submitted was empty.” with the tool. Also checked, and I am able to manually transfer these files, so it is a tool related issue. Respublik (talk) 23:09, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

Path to merging multi-part audiobooks?

Commons contains a sizable fraction of free-licensed audiobooks. However, many are split into multiple parts. This makes it cumbersome to download them and to listen to them conveniently and without interruptions.

It's also not well-suited for adding the file to Wikidata items or Wikipedia articles or Wikisource pages if it's split up into many parts. There also are further issues.

Is there any way that many or all of the multi-part audiobooks could be feasibly bundled up into one file each?

For example, there's many in Category:LibriVox recordings and I just merged one of them with 8 parts (just 45 min; 83 MB) using one ffmpeg command. But it can't be done manually for all the audios there. Prototyperspective (talk) 00:01, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Created Commons:Bots/Work requests#Merging audio files of audiobooks. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:42, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

One reason is that only one part audio files can be featured as Media of the Day and that instead of cluttering a Wikipedia page with lots of audio parts, it should be just one file (and some templates may only allow for one or a few audios). It also makes it easier to correct/update/improve the description, metadata and categories and to add it to Wikidata items. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:42, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Template:Shortcut not showing

The {{Shortcut}} box isn't showing on any of the pages it's being used. Could somebody please fix this? Prototyperspective (talk) 13:52, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Moved to this new page for template requests: Commons:Template requests#Make template Shortcut show again. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:34, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't see what the use of that template even is if it's not showing. Note that many of the policy pages using this don't have an additional {{Shortcut2}} template that is showing so the shortcuts aren't visible to the readers. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:43, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

NASA videos imported at low quality

I noted Kesäperuna recently reuploaded this old video that was recently featured on the frontpage where I remember I was a bit surprised about the sometimes blurry resolution: File:Measuring Elevation Changes on the Greenland Ice Sheet.webm (thanks for that!)

When going to the video source (the sourced linked in the first link is 404 by now so the source of the webm reupload) and clicking on the Download button, the only webm available there is 62 MB, not 110 MB like in the new file uploaded to Commons.

So it seems like sometimes or often NASA doesn't make videos available in full resolution as webms and it's been these videos that have been imported here. Kesäperuna probably downloaded another file and then converted it.

I then also noticed the new video File:At Land's Edge - Tracking Coastal Ecosystem with Landsat (SVS14903).webm imported by OptimusPrimeBot operated by Don-vip looks quite blurry and tested whether I'd get a better version if I download the mp4 file and convert it to webm locally on my machine using ffmpeg. As you can see in the File history of that file, the new video is of much better resolution and about 5 times the size (click on the prior version to see the difference). Thus, I think many NASA or even PD-US-gov videos may have been imported at submax resolution.

I think many of these videos are some of the most educational, most useful and partly most-used videos we have on Commons, so I think they should probably be on Commons at full resolution where if necessary and as adequate only the default playback quality is changed but not the max-resolution kept low. At the very least the fraction of NASA videos that are featured in MOTD or in use on any other Wikimedia project like Wikidata or Wikipedia (but probably all of them).

How do you think would be the best way to fix the low-resolution of these videos? That would be a two-step process of 1. identifying which videos have been imported at submax resolution and 2. importing a higher-resolution video (directly if available or via downloading the maxres video and converting it to webm locally. Could somebody implement this?

I don't know if the max-resolution video is by now usually available as mp4 but if so it may also make sense to wait until mp4 files get accepted on Commons if that's just a few more years(?) If somebody could import highres versions of these files, that would be great either way! Prototyperspective (talk) 17:55, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, this is a problem. The original WebM file is remarkably small. Then there is a standard quality version in an unfree codec, and a MOV (ProRes 444 or so) file with astronomical file size. If it is a managable amount of files, I can help converting and reuploading, as my machine can roar like a lion :) (works very fast). As we don't have videos beyond 8192 pixels wide or tall, this is no problem :) --19:05, 17 October 2025 (UTC) PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:05, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

For the encoding from other formats, video2commons should now (since yesterday) be able to upload videos with a good size/quality ratio (thanks to Amdrel contribution). To identify the videos that need a reupload however, I have no idea. vip (talk) 22:42, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Does anybody have an idea how to identify videos with lower or much lower quality than available at source?

Prototyperspective (talk) 18:46, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

Good that you noticed and started this thread, better to have more eyes on this issue.

Firstly, NASA svs website changed url format from https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?4022 to https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4022.

I did couple more videos that were used in articles with most views in category Videos from NASA, that were in poor quality and had better versions available.

Highest quality "master" format in NASA website is very varied, sometimes it's mp4 file, mpeg2 file, or prores mov, I used best version available and encoded to AV1/Opus format with reasonable settings(depending on video in question, as most videos have visible mpeg2 artifacts in prores master files for some reason) to keep file sizes smallish.

What should be done to videos uploaded in different format such as ogv that are promoted to MOTD or have other "awards" associated with them, can they be just redirected to better webm version? Kesäperuna (talk) 00:01, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

I think, yes. OGV is outdated, probably not the most suitable codec for UHD content, and WebM (with AV1) is state-of-the-art. I can imagine there is a "replace" voting system for featured media, too. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:36, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. It may be useful if somebody replaced all those links with the new format using VisualFileChange. Good idea to replace the ones with most views first and right away. I think the old file can simply be deleted and redirect to the new webm file per F8. Twinkle has something about the file format but the actual policy doesn't require it to be it of the same file format. However, I'm not sure if it can technically be done currently – maybe it's only possible for files of the same file format. I'll tag the low-res file at a later point – would like to have it stay as is for a while so people can still see the file in the context of this issue/thread. I think many files are affected by this so I think it was best if this wasn't done manually but via some script or so. One of the difficulties with that though is that it doesn't seem like one can download the highest quality file with some standardized url like e.g. appending ?dl=hd https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4022?dl=hd. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:11, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

F8 says “exact or scaled-down duplicate of an older existing file”. If the scaled-down duplicate is the older one, it does not apply; the OGVs should not be deleted in order not to break external usage (which we cannot track down and fix). Please add {{Superseded}} to the description pages of the OGVs instead of getting them deleted. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 16:08, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks; maybe that phrase should be changed then: the old file could be turned into a redirect to the higher-quality file so the uses would not break. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:40, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Some of them do break: hotlinking to the https://upload.wikimedia.org files doesn’t follow redirects, so it’s the external, non-wiki usage (i.e. usage that doesn’t come from first- or third-party MediaWiki installs) that suffers the most. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 22:15, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

How to move (rename) many categories?

How can one rename many categories at once? This would be similar to VisualFileChange or massrename but for categories, not files. For example, all categories starting with something / that are in the search results of some search query. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:40, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

This really isn't possible?

Is it possible to edit the content of many categories at once similar to how VisualFileChange can be used to edit many file pages?
See MediaWiki talk:Gadget-VisualFileChange.js#VisualFileChange for category text content changes?.
Prototyperspective (talk) 23:51, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I am also curious if you find out something here. I'm less interested in mass-renaming of categories, but if there is a better way to mass-categorize many categories (like Cat-a-lot?), I am still unaware of possibilities. The only way I know is HotCat and Edit. --Enyavar (talk) 09:54, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

but if there is a better way to mass-categorize many categories (like Cat-a-lot?) you can use cat-a-lot for that. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:57, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

So it doesn't seem to be possible and I'll create a wish for it. Please correct if I'm wrong and there is a bot one could readily use for this or a tool. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:41, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with Commons:AutoWikiBrowser, but maybe it is possible to do using AWB? Tvpuppy (talk) 15:40, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Maybe it's possible with AWB – but for whatever reason it's developed for proprietary Microsoft Windows and I'm using Linux (looking for something cross-platform or Web). Prototyperspective (talk) 16:27, 4 December 2025 (UTC)