Commons:Village pump/Technical

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This page is used for technical questions relating to the tools, gadgets, or other technical issues about 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; recent archives: /Archive/2025/02 /Archive/2025/03.

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Feature or bug reports should be filed on Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs).
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Category for City by year

How do I go about creating or editing a new category for a city/town by year? For example, when viewing Category:Oshawa by year, select 2024 for example and hit 'Edit' all you can see is "CanadaYear|Oshawa|202|4" which automatically adds the bar at the top to filter by year and categories. Is there a template somewhere? PascalHD (talk) 20:46, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@PascalHD https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=992358870 . RoyZuo (talk) 20:07, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

disappearing thumbnails for pdf/djvu files

from all my 17 pdf uploads there are only 4 left with thumbnails at the moment. some of thumbnails disappeared in minutes after uploading, some in weeks. i had vague hopes it will be fixed by itself in time, but this magic works one-way only so far.

the issue seems to be seriously impacting the general search in "other media" tab. for example: "koltsov" or "Кольцов" search leads to "Invalid search Could not normalize image parameters for Aleksey_Vasilyevich_Koltsov_Yego_zhizn_i_sochineniya_1914.pdf" message.

attempts to search for "moskovskij zhurnal", "Московский журнал", "teleskop", "телескоп" lead to the same 'invalid search' result

while trying to search for "брюсов" i found another user affected by the same issue. the search led to "Invalid search Could not normalize image parameters for Первобытный_Брюсов_календарь_(1875).pdf" message.

some of the flies uploaded by HareGovorittKrishna with disappeared thumbnails arent ruining the search - theyre just staying invisible for it:

but some are: check lomonosov/ломоносов search.

none of the old HareGovorittKrishna's uploads are affected - so the issue mightve been started since at least november 2024.

so now my only way to upload while not ruining anything is uploading files with nonsense names, but i have a real distaste for the idea. TheyStoleMyNick (talk) 17:03, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

looks like HareGovorittKrishna's File:В. П. Благовещенский. Мыловарение (1909).djvu got its thumbnail back. its still invisible for the search though TheyStoleMyNick (talk) 17:29, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Try doing ?action=purge on the image description page. Bawolff (talk) 20:19, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

like a (partial) charm. thank you. theyre still invisible for the direct search though, but at least "other media" search is not ruined anymore TheyStoleMyNick (talk) 20:59, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Publishing errors for days

Hi!

I recently experience several errors when publishing or uploading via Chunked Uploads (file could not be locked etc.) and sometimes, the publishing process takes a lot of time. Longer than usual. An issue that happens over years --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:24, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@PantheraLeo1359531 try checking your upload list in a new tab. my experience is that sometimes when this error "local-swift-xxxxx" shows up, the file was apparently already successfully uploaded and it seems the error could be ignored. RoyZuo (talk) 20:14, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok thanks for the hint :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:20, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mutinous robots mark images for deletion, even when properly licensed

When uploading images with flickr2commons, somewhere along the process, a robot tags images that had a license of public domain mark for deletion EVEN WHEN THE IMAGE DESCRIPTION HAS HAD A VALID LICENSE ADDED TO IT!!!! Today's examples: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o

I told flickr2commons to add the {{PD-USGov-State}} template to each of these images. It did add that perfectly valid and appropriate tag. Nevertheless these images were tagged for deletion by an out of control robot.

Yes, I could go to each of those images, and remove the improperly placed deletion tags.

But robots are supposed to be our slaves. They are supposed to serve us, not vice versa. I shouldn't be cleaning up after mutinous robots.

It should be trivial to make the robot check the information template for a valid license, before it calls for deletion under a claim the image is unlicensed.
But, really, it is long past the time we maintained a whitelist, of flickr contributors known to mistakenly tag images with a public domain mark.
1. That whitelist should include all flickr IDs that are maintained by employees of the US Federal government. When they are uploading images taken by US Federal employees we KNOW those images are unambiguously in the public domain.
2. There are many flickr contributors who are excellent prolific photographers, who generously want to put their fine photos in the public domain, who routinely mark their photos with the public domain mark.

We maintain a blacklist, a list of flickr contributors known to have unreliably tried to license images with free licenses, when they didn't own the IP rights to those images. If we can maintain that blacklist we can maintain a whitelist of flickr contributors whose public domain Marks should be recognized as stating the image is in the public domain. Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 06:33, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your license template looks to be in the wrong parameter, it should probably be inside Permission instead of Description for the bot to recognize it. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 08:31, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nice guess @Sjoerddebruin. That's not it. I don't know how often I have encountered these mutinous robots. At least thousands of times. Trust me, the location of the valid permission is irrelevant. It is always ignored.
IMO, a well-behaved robot would recognize file description that contain a valid license, no matter where the license was placed.
I am going to repeat... WHITELIST... We need a whitelist, of flickr-ids, known to routinely use the public domain mark for images where there is no doubt the image is in public domain.

Lots of smart flickr photographers always use public domain mark for images they took themselves.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, or flickr-ids are managed by some junior GI, or other government employee, who only upload images that are taken by other Federal government employee, who, nevertheless, use the public domain mark, even though there is zero doubt that the images taken by their colleagues are in the public domain. Geo Swan (talk) 15:06, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Administrator Krd deleted my examples, apparently not noticing that the delete tag had been improperly applied by a mutinous robot. I asked them to restore my properly licensed examples. Geo Swan (talk) 15:06, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You have two options: ask Magnus to change how flickr2commons works, or don't use it. Shouting here is not productive. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 19:06, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@AntiCompositeNumber -- Magnus? That name rings a bell. Congratutions on knowing who you think is responsible for this bug. Commons has [[User:Magnus sine Cognomen]], [[User:Magnus 0038]], [[User:Magnus242]], [[User:MagnusA]] and [[User:Magnus Manske]]. Is one of these the Magnus you think is responsible? Geo Swan (talk) 01:10, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Update

The administrator who deleted the properly licensed images in my example did restore them. They also left a broad hint that I should then clean up after the mutinous robot. Cleaning up after it erodes their utility as examples. But I started this section three weeks ago, so I guess it has probably received most of the attention it is going to receive. So, for the record, those examples look okay, now. But, if you look at their revision history, that is because I cleaned up after the mutinous robot, myself.

For the record, I continue to think robots should serve us, and not vice versa. Geo Swan (talk) 01:19, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Magnus Manske is the one listed at Commons:Flickr2Commons. Commander Keane (talk) 03:15, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Language-independent anchors on file pages？

Now, if i copy the anchor to file page, e.g. File:Test.wav#Summary, the link will fail if the person clicking it is not using english ui.

i think we should make the anchors language independent somehow, so that we can create links that jump to specific sections on file pages that work for all users.

another idea is, we keep the current anchors but add language independent ones somewhere next to them, if the current anchors based on i18n headers cannot be changed.

why such links are needed? coz sometimes file pages are long, and it is beneficial to jump to for example "summary" for all the file descriptions when i am referring specifically to them. RoyZuo (talk) 20:28, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know how this {{int:filedesc}} works but that is supposed to be at the top of the content and the anchors work for the other sections across languages... e.g. File:Test.wav?uselang=de#filehistory which is a section I find sometimes useful to link to. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:53, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

hmm, i looked at view-source:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Test.wav?uselang=de#filehistory . if i understand correctly, the file history html tag id remains "filehistory", but the "Summary" tag id also changes to "Beschreibung" as it is translated. RoyZuo (talk) 10:55, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's what I've been saying. Again, I don't know how this {{int:filedesc}} works – that's where this would be changed if doing so is needed or good. I guess HTML id tags should stay the same regardless of language so as long as nobody has a good argument against it, I'd support a request to change it albeit I currently see no need for it. These id tags can however be very useful, e.g. to screenreaders and for ways to convert pages into other formats like audio etc. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:15, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Viewing PDFs

I recently uploaded two PDF files. Unlike in the past, the pages are not visible via the file page, nor can they be shown within other Wikimedia projects. See my two latest uploads, as opposed to previous ones.

The issue doesn't seem to have anything to do with the size of the PDF file or the number of its pages, because this file is fairly small. Did I perhaps do something incorrect upon uploading? Dovi (talk) 12:07, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Typically this means that mediawiki could not figure out the file's dimensions or other metadata. Sometimes this is because the file is too complicated and it takes too much time to figure out (This is correlated but not exactly equal to size of file). Other times this might mean something is wrong with the file or the metadata extraction program is broken. Sometimes errors are transient and can be fixed by doing a purge of the file page.

Looking specificly at the file file:Second Rabbinic Bible Venice 1525 Color Full.pdf, the internal wikimedia error logs have an error scripts/retrieveMetaData.sh: line 35: 86660 Killed "$PDFHANDLER_TOTEXT" file.pdf - > text, which probably indicates that extracting the text layer was taking too long. A version of the file with OCR data deleted might work (It is a bad solution though as it makes the file less useful). Bawolff (talk) 01:10, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

see comments at Commons:Help_desk#Problems_uploading - try purging the cache. -- Beardo (talk) 04:40, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Gadget-Restore-a-lot broken

Hi, Any why Help:Gadget-Restore-a-lot is broken? I can select files, but they are not undeleted. Yann (talk) 18:39, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On Chrome Development Tool, I got:

"error": {
        "code": "pagecannotexist",
        "info": "Namespace doesn't allow actual pages.",
        "*": "See https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php for API usage. Subscribe to the mediawiki-api-announce mailing list at <https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/mediawiki-api-announce.lists.wikimedia.org/> for notice of API deprecations and breaking changes."
    },
    "servedby": "mw-api-ext.codfw.main-679c98c89f-6xbcs"
}

Tech News: 2025-09

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

Administrators can now customize how the Babel feature creates categories using Special:CommunityConfiguration/Babel. They can rename language categories, choose whether they should be auto-created, and adjust other settings. [1]
The wikimedia.org portal has been updated – and is receiving some ongoing improvements – to modernize and improve the accessibility of our portal pages. It now has better support for mobile layouts, updated wording and links, and better language support. Additionally, all of the Wikimedia project portals, such as wikibooks.org, now support dark mode when a reader is using that system setting. [2][3][4]
One new wiki has been created: a Wiktionary in Santali (wikt:sat:) [5]
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that prevented clicking on search results in the web-interface for some Firefox for Android phone configurations. [6]

Meetings and events

The next Language Community Meeting is happening soon, February 28th at 14:00 UTC. This week's meeting will cover: highlights and technical updates on keyboard and tools for the Sámi languages, Translatewiki.net contributions from the Bahasa Lampung community in Indonesia, and technical Q&A. If you'd like to join, simply sign up on the wiki page.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:37, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An unknown error occurred in storage backend "local-swift-eqiad"

Hi, I got this error while trying to upload a big PNG file using https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rillke/bigChunkedUpload.js. Please see phab:T341007#10578627 for details. This occurs time to time. What's weird here is that Chrome console says something about User:The_Photographer/QICvote.js, which has nothing to do with what I am trying to do. Any idea? Yann (talk) 12:14, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The error with QICvote is almost certainly unrelated to the upload error Bawolff (talk) 20:07, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The error for QICvote is because User:The Photographer was renamed to User:Wilfredor. We had an issue previously where people would register the old names of renamed users, edit their js subpages to hack accounts that included those javascript files. To prevent that importing js from unregistered users no longer works. You are probably getting this error on all pages not just when you are uploading things. Bawolff (talk) 20:12, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The error should be fixed just changing The_Photographer to Wilfredor in your user script in your Common.js Wilfredor (talk) 20:16, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bug: Unicode handling when undoing edits

Special:Diff/1002157742 was an attempt to undo a previous edit. It mangled some Unicode characters that weren’t touched in the previous edit. My quick search on Phabricator didn’t find anything. Brianjd (talk) 02:18, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m still not sure what is going on, but according to User talk:Lx 121#Breaking votes on Commons talk:Sexual content, the EoMagicalConversion gadget can do weird things. I can’t even figure out what that gadget is meant to do, so I’m disabling it on my account. Brianjd (talk) 05:55, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Inscription template in artwork templates. Unwanted blank line.

This question is coming as a a result of this discussion: [7] Blank lines at the wrong positions. It is suggested there that the MediaWiki Software puts in an extra blank line after the inscription type - whether you want it or not. It seems that this can only be avoided by some kind of workaround in your settings, but that is not how things should be done here. Does anybody know why the extra line is put in, and how to get rid of it? Cheers Rsteen (talk) 17:12, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Horizontal Flip request / Mirror image request

Need to perform Horizontal flip or Mirror image for file File:Hoysaleswara Temple (25823085874).jpg. Mirror of current image would be the correct view. Please note this is Salabhanjika 25 of 38 on the outer walls of Chennakesava temple, Belur (see the 2 and 5 barely visible at base of pedestal). Also see image File:BelurCTM 25 Bhasma Mohini Dance.jpg. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 14:21, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done through Graphics Village pump, by person with appropriate rights. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 03:37, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Change of color in the jpg preview of a pdf

I uploaded File:JUNO Detector with labels.pdf. The labels cannot be read because the light grey in the boxes from the pdf is a dark grey in the jpg previews. What am I supposed to do here: export the pdf to jpg on my computer and upload the jpg? Kallichore (talk) 23:55, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Automated upload of videos to Commons

Hi!

The Bavarian public television will provide a bunch of videos this year that is compatible with Commons. When talking together, the question was raised if there is a way of an automated upload of videos. What would be appropiate tools? Thanks :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:53, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is the format uploadable? if yes, Commons:Guide to batch uploading#Tools; if not, v2c. v2c seems to have an api. dig in the talk page for other users' previous comments about v2c api. RoyZuo (talk) 20:03, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, yes! It would be a WebM file, then :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:30, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@PantheraLeo1359531 btw, ZDF Terra X Redaktion their team also uploads videos. dont know if the bayern tv might have contact with them. maybe try asking how they do it? RoyZuo (talk) 16:49, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, this is a good idea ;) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:03, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Image Upload Error: DivisionByZeroError

Hi, while trying to upload an image, I received the message [ea0e6881-972b-418f-9478-bc9ab3542ac2] Caught exception of type DivisionByZeroError, and the photo is not uploading. How can I fix this issue? Pragdon (talk) 13:02, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Pragdon This probably means there is invalid data in the metadata of the image. You might want to strip the EXIF data before uploading. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:26, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-10

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

All logged-in editors using the mobile view can now edit a full page. The "Edit full page" link is accessible from the "More" menu in the toolbar. This was previously only available to editors using the Advanced mobile contributions setting. [8]
Interface administrators can now help to remove the deprecated Cite CSS code matching "mw-ref" from their local MediaWiki:Common.css. The list of wikis in need of cleanup, and the code to remove, can be found with this global search and in this example, and you can learn more about how to help on the CSS migration project page. The Cite footnote markers ("[1]") are now rendered by Parsoid, and the deprecated CSS is no longer needed. The CSS for backlinks ("mw:referencedBy") should remain in place for now. This cleanup is expected to cause no visible changes for readers. Please help to remove this code before March 20, after which the development team will do it for you.
When editors embed a file (e.g. [[File:MediaWiki.png]]) on a page that is protected with cascading protection, the software will no longer restrict edits to the file description page, only to new file uploads.[9] In contrast, transcluding a file description page (e.g. {{:File:MediaWiki.png}}) will now restrict edits to the page.[10]
When editors revert a file to an earlier version it will now require the same permissions as ordinarily uploading a new version of the file. The software now checks for 'reupload' or 'reupload-own' rights,[11] and respects cascading protection.[12]
When administrators are listing pages for deletion with the Nuke tool, they can now also list associated talk pages and redirects for deletion, alongside pages created by the target, rather than needing to manually delete these pages afterwards. [13]
The previously noted update to Single User Login, which will accommodate browser restrictions on cross-domain cookies by moving login and account creation to a central domain, will now roll out to all users during March and April. The team plans to enable it for all new account creation on Group0 wikis this week. See the SUL3 project page for more details and an updated timeline.
Since last week there has been a bug that shows some interface icons as black squares until the page has fully loaded. It will be fixed this week. [14]
One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Sylheti (w:syl:) [15]
View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed with loading images in very old versions of the Firefox browser on mobile. [16]

Updates for technical contributors

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 02:27, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How to fetch and display file captions？ Template？

suppose i want to get en caption of File:JPG Test.jpg, how? is there something like {{template|file name or page id|langcode}} that will get the specific caption? RoyZuo (talk) 12:59, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also if somebody knows how to fetch the caption on Wikidata using sparql, please also comment here or at d:Wikidata talk:SPARQL query service#Is there a way to fetch the file's caption on Commons?. In my case, I need the caption because that's how I'd retrieve the information about what version (date) of the article a Wikipedia article audio narrates. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:58, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can query it with schema:caption or rdfs:label. These are same value, but values is just copied to two different names. Most likely to make it work in same way than the labels in WQS. (example query: https://w.wiki/DJkq ) --Zache (talk) 18:11, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is {{File caption}} what you need? GPSLeo (talk) 15:24, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I was also searching this. Lua code which fetches the text is here Module:Information#L-229 and another way to do the same is with mw.wikibase.mediainfo.getCaptionByLang (docs) --Zache (talk) 17:57, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with Vector2022s Dark Mode

If you want to change a file on Commons (upload a new version of this file), the text is unreadable in German. Even if you click on the “?” in the upload options, the text is unreadable. The Other Karma (talk) 11:30, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This applies for multiple versions of MediaWiki:Uploadtext, it would be better to turn the original translatable. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 12:59, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Sjoerddebruin any idea how i could fix that problem? The Other Karma (talk) 12:37, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that dark-mode parsing doesn't work when texts are imported from mediawiki namespace. Solution would be to move content of MediaWiki:Uploadtext to template (i am not sure if this works) OR move the style rules from inline to classes defined in mediawiki:vector.css or mediawiki:common.css. In any case it would require somebody with interface admin rights to do it. --Zache (talk) 14:47, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Update to myself, the change to the english version works fine. The change just need to do to all different language versions of the uploadtext too. (see subpagelist, only ones with hardcoded background color needs to be updated). --Zache (talk) 06:50, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Englandestcat

Hi everybody. I have a little problem with this Template:Englandestcat. For example it should should Category:1992 establishments in England in Category:1992 events in England but it doesn't work. Could someone help me? Thank you in advance. MrKeefeJohn (talk) 18:09, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure what you are asking. Category:1992 establishments in England is already in Category:1992 events in England, so the template seems to work as expected. Or is there a different issue? Regards, ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 22:01, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ChrisiPK thank you for your answer. I mean that I can't see Category:1992 establishments in England in Category:1992 events in England. The same for Category:1993 establishments in England in Category:1993 events in England, but for the other years it seems it works well Category:1994 establishments in England in Category:1994 events in England. It works properly now. MrKeefeJohn (talk) 06:50, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that sometimes you have to perform a null edit on the page with the template, so that it refreshes and shows up in its parent categories. Tvpuppy (talk) 14:06, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Tvpuppy thank for your suggestions: yesterday I did it a lot of time, but it didn't work, that's why I asked here. But today it works, the problem is solved. MrKeefeJohn (talk) 18:53, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Blocking error in VisualFileChange

Hello,

I just wanted to use the VisualFileChange to open a mass DR. The gadget got stuck, see the screenshot. That's due to a protected talkpage (of the deceased VSchagow) and that the gadget's programming is not able to carry on beyond notifying the uploaders to the task of adding the nomination subpage to the daily list. As a solution, I'd suggest (if possible) to put the DR listing above the uploader information task. In my case, I added the DR manually, but that's not a satisfying workaround. Was this place here suitable for the bug report or should it get transferred somewhere else? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 20:24, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

+1 support for good idea about better job order. should also time out and skip automatically. RoyZuo (talk) 23:26, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki:Gadget-VisualFileChange.js/core.js is a lot of code so you might need to either find someone to maintain it or diy. RoyZuo (talk) 23:27, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dark mode compatibility of the template Cleanup image

Regards fixing the {{Cleanup image}} template, see Template talk:Cleanup image/layout. -- ZandDev (talk) 20:38, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

SVG translation tool

Hi, I would like to translate this SVG with the SVG translation tool. It doesn't allow me access, saying that texts like "$123" prevent the translator from working. This is the first time I've encountered this situation. Can someone guide me? Turbojet (talk) 18:17, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Link to SVG Translate

https://svgtranslate.toolforge.org/File:2018-_Energy_transition_investment_versus_fossil_fuel_investment.svg

It is a programming bug. SVG Translate refuses to translate a file when it sees strings such as "$100..." in the original file.

Glrx (talk) 00:38, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the answer. One last question: is there any reason for this to remain like this? So that I know in the future whether in these cases it is worth returning with the translation work, or translating the source directly, uploading the translated file separately. I have not seen that the file has been translated into other languages, without the "$", otherwise I would have started the translation from there. Turbojet (talk) 13:07, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Turbojet:

I do not know what to say.

The bug is a surprise because SVG Translate does not need to resort to the typical $nnn translation string hack. Sadly, SVG Translate has some other issues. I expect fixing any issue with SVG Translate is a low priority for WMF. You could fill out a Phabricator issue and cross your fingers.

A more expedient approach edits the file to remove the $-number problem. I added a space between the dollar signs and the numbers. Now SVG Translate may work on the file. Glrx (talk) 23:28, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Thank you! Turbojet (talk) 10:50, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I understand what needs to be done. I managed to translate another file. Thank you very much! Turbojet (talk) 12:29, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of course fixing bugs doesn't require the foundation (getting them merged/deployed might). The code is on GitHub https://github.com/wikimedia/svgtranslate available to any person willing to give it a go. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:58, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-11

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

Editors who use password managers at multiple wikis may notice changes in the future. The way that our wikis provide information to password managers about reusing passwords across domains has recently been updated, so some password managers might now offer you login credentials that you saved for a different Wikimedia site. Some password managers already did this, and are now doing it for more Wikimedia domains. This is part of the SUL3 project which aims to improve how our unified login works, and to keep it compatible with ongoing changes to the web-browsers we use. [17][18]
The Wikipedia Apps Team is inviting interested users to help improve Wikipedia’s offline and limited internet use. After discussions in Afrika Baraza and the last ESEAP call, key challenges like search, editing, and offline access are being explored, with upcoming focus groups to dive deeper into these topics. All languages are welcome, and interpretation will be available. Want to share your thoughts? Join the discussion or email aramadan@wikimedia.org!
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 19. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: the launch of the Community Updates module, the most recent changes in Community Configuration, and the upcoming test of in-article suggestions for first-time editors.
An old API that was previously used in the Android Wikipedia app is being removed at the end of March. There are no current software uses, but users of the app with a version that is older than 6 months by the time of removal (2025-03-31), will no longer have access to the Suggested Edits feature, until they update their app. You can read more details about this change.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:06, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tool to calculate total file sizes

Hi!

Is there a tool that calculates the cumulative amount of file sizes within a category?

Thanks :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:56, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would be best if it also allowed seeing the largest files in the category. Maybe one could use a query with deepcategory (relevant question here). Prototyperspective (talk) 00:30, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What would be the goal that had to be achieved with that information ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:16, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the file sizes:

– It allows to analyse cats if they have files that may be too large to use and can get a smaller file version. It can be analyzed, how the values have changed and, for example, if datasets by (e.g.) US governments have been copied (sometimes, the number of files isn't a good indicator). --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:33, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Go home, Upload Wizard, you're drunk

What happened here??

The file was uploaded with:

{{PD-US-expired}}{{PD-old-70}}{{PD-USGov}}{{PD-USGov-NASA}}{{Remove this line and insert a license instead|year=2025|month=03|day=11}}

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:45, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tables instead of templates for motd

An idea just came to my mind. instead of creating lots of templates for com:motd, it could use 2 monthly Tabular Data instead. 1 for filenames (and thumbtime, etc.), 1 for captions.

also probably easier for users since instead of manually making sure all the template parameters are right, you just need to fill in filenames in the table. RoyZuo (talk) 11:23, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Actually a Data page is not even needed. we can create a 62-parameter template (31 for filenames and 31 for thumbtime (optional)). RoyZuo (talk) 11:30, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Quick way to search for potentially existing category or wikidata item

Anyone has to do the same thing like me? Took a photo of something probably not yet documented on commons, so before creating a new cat, wanna search for existing cat or wikidata item first? How do you go about doing that?

I have to do a classic search on commons, and a classic search on wikidata. I find this rather tedious when i have to repeat this double search hundreds of times. Any better solution? RoyZuo (talk) 08:43, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would only search on Commons and if the category doesn't yet exist, create it. If and once I created it I would also search on Wikidata if it has an item to then link the category there but usually it doesn't have it. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:18, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

access to tabular data

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T389105

At en.wiki, Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration uses the lua function mw.ext.data.get() to fetch data from Data:CS1/Identifier limits.tab. This is functioning correctly as can be seen from any module debug console. To prove that to yourself, try this:

=mw.dumpObject (mw.ext.data.get ('CS1/Identifier limits.tab').data)

Those data are in need of an update. But, the link to Data:CS1/Identifier limits.tab does not work. When that link is clicked, eventually I get the "Service Temporarily Unavailable Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem. Please try again in a few minutes." I first got that message c. midnight 17 March 2025 (UTC).

Is this a known issue? If so, when can we expect to regain edit-access to tabular data files? — Trappist the monk (talk) 14:00, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Most likely it is not known issue and i made an phab ticket phab: T389105 for it. Good thing is that it seems that data-namespace files are generally working and it is more likely that just this is broken. (i tested some map and graph, and data files and they worked). --Zache (talk) 17:34, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you; subscribed there.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:47, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-12

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

Twice a year, around the equinoxes, the Wikimedia Foundation's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team performs a datacenter server switchover, redirecting all traffic from one primary server to its backup. This provides reliability in case of a crisis, as we can always fall back on the other datacenter. Thanks to the Listen to Wikipedia tool, you can hear the switchover take place: Before it begins, you'll hear the steady stream of edits; Then, as the system enters a brief read-only phase, the sound stops for a couple of minutes, before resuming after the switchover. You can read more about the background and details of this process on the Diff blog. If you want to keep an ear out for the next server switchover, listen to the wikis on March 19 at 14:00 UTC.

Updates for editors

The improved Content Translation tool dashboard is now available in 10 Wikipedias and will be available for all Wikipedias soon. With the unified dashboard, desktop users can now: Translate new sections of an article; Discover and access topic-based article suggestion filters (initially available only for mobile device users); Discover and access the Community-defined lists filter, also known as "Collections", from wiki-projects and campaigns.
On Wikimedia Commons, a new system to select the appropriate file categories has been introduced: if a category has one or more subcategories, users will be able to click on an arrow that will open the subcategories directly within the form, and choose the correct one. The parent category name will always be shown on top, and it will always be possible to come back to it. This should decrease the amount of work for volunteers in fixing/creating new categories. The change is also available on mobile. These changes are part of planned improvements to the UploadWizard.
The Community Tech team is seeking wikis to join a pilot for the Multiblocks feature and a refreshed Special:Block page in late March. Multiblocks enables administrators to impose multiple different types of blocks on the same user at the same time. If you are an admin or steward and would like us to discuss joining the pilot with your community, please leave a message on the project talk page.
Starting March 25, the Editing team will test a new feature for Edit Check at 12 Wikipedias: Multi-Check. Half of the newcomers on these wikis will see all Reference Checks during their edit session, while the other half will continue seeing only one. The goal of this test is to see if users are confused or discouraged when shown multiple Reference Checks (when relevant) within a single editing session. At these wikis, the tags used on edits that show References Check will be simplified, as multiple tags could be shown within a single edit. Changes to the tags are documented on Phabricator. [19]
The Global reminder bot, which is a service for notifying users that their temporary user-rights are about to expire, now supports using the localized name of the user-rights group in the message heading. Translators can see the listing of existing translations and documentation to check if their language needs updating or creation.
The GlobalPreferences gender setting, which is used for how the software should refer to you in interface messages, now works as expected by overriding the local defaults. [20]
View all 26 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the Wikipedia App for Android had a bug fixed for when a user is browsing and searching in multiple languages. [21]

Updates for technical contributors

Later this week, the way that Codex styles are loaded will be changing. There is a small risk that this may result in unstyled interface message boxes on certain pages. User generated content (e.g. templates) is not impacted. Gadgets may be impacted. If you see any issues please report them. See the linked task for details, screenshots, and documentation on how to fix any affected gadgets.
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 23:44, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to create a template for categories to show a map with the images within that cat

Hi all,

I'm trying to create a sort of embedded version of "Map of all coordinates" for geotagged categories, which would be particularly useful for COM:WikiProject GeoSets. I'm failing miserably so far. Would anyone familiarized with Lua care to take a look, or maybe suggest a different approach?

Module:GeoSetsNav

Template:GeoSetsNav

Testing (and failing) at Category:WPGS - Basílica de Nossa Senhora de Lourdes in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, September 2024

Thanks,

Rkieferbaum (talk) 00:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, not looking good but at least it's working now. Any input still greatly appreciated. Rkieferbaum (talk) 19:04, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Broken SVGs

I've been seeing a lot of SVGs from long ago that are not rendering properly. As an example:

File:Tartaric acid 2.svg

On its file page, and when I pick any other size, it displays two rows of "CH –COOH", with a large white gap between each "CH" and "–COOH". Likewise when I click the image to see the original SVG using Firefox 115.21.0 or Chrome 16.0.5845.187. So both the MW thumbnailer and my local browser are mis-rendering it. However, if I download the SVG and open it in an old version of Inkscape or in emacs with x11 graphics enabled, there are "(OH)" in those gaps. I don't know much about SVG technical details...has some standard rendering library become more strict or changed how it handles imperfect files? DMacks (talk) 00:49, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Any way to view these files?

Yesterday I uploaded File:Emma Müller Edle von Seehof Bub mit Federhut.jpg and File:Falstaff-Szene A1885.jpg but somehow neither the images nor thumbnails show up. If I try to upload the file again as a new version, it doesn't work either and I get the error he file "mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-public/e/eb/Emma_Müller_Edle_von_Seehof_Bub_mit_Federhut.jpg" is in an inconsistent state within the internal storage backends Purging doesn't help either. --Anvilaquarius (talk) 12:21, 20 March 2025 (UTC).[reply]

Had the same error and could upload a new version after trying again a few hours later. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:48, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They both display fine to me now (on Firefox) so I suspect it was just a temporary server issue. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 17:54, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for checking. Still nothing here, must have to do something with cache (on my side or the servers). I'll just wait. --Anvilaquarius (talk) 18:09, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Anvilaquarius: The uploads are permanently broken and the file names themselves can't be reused (not your fault; known issue). I re-uploaded them as File:Emma Müller Edle von Seehof Bub mit Federhut (reupload).jpg and File:Falstaff-Szene A1885 (reupload).jpg and redirected the original files to the new ones. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 07:35, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! --Anvilaquarius (talk) 17:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Install Wikimedia Commons popup

Just a moment ago I got a little "Install Wikimedia Commons" popup when visiting a regular discussion page.

It has happened a couple of times, every few months. It has the Commons logo, a wikimedia url and install button. I tried to grab a screenshot but it disappeared before I could act. I was using Chrome/Android in Mobile mode.

It has happened on meta too (with meta logo), so it probably not connected to the Commons app. I thought it might be a w:progressive web app or just Google being strange. Any ideas? Commander Keane (talk) 00:32, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Never had that and never heard of it. Could you click it? If it disappears so quickly that sounds strange. Maybe you could check which types of extensions you have installed. In any case, I recommend a mobile version of Firefox. I think such a popup would be a good thing once the Commons app has a few key functionalities like playing audio&video. Prototyperspective (talk) 01:51, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]