Commons:Village pump/Technical

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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/2026/07 /Archive/2026/08.

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Google lens still not working

Is Google bans requests from Commons directly or there is some technical error here? As Google lens not working, categorizing files and searching copyvios becomes harder. Is there is a chance that the issue will be fixed? Regards, Юрий Д.К. 17:45, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Юрий Д.К., probably similar to phab:T425850 and we're still waiting on that one. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 05:08, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

OK. Юрий Д.К. 11:32, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

Issues with Google on Search by Image gadget

The search by image function for Google hasn't been working for quite some time now. I'm not quite sure whats up with it. Aplucas0703 (talk) 01:15, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Solution idea for category name problem

before we finally get a system that allows multiple / multilingual category names, i just had an idea to patch on top of what we have now.

what if in addition to showing the actual cat names, a tool shows additional names above them (like ruby text)? the additional names could be, that category's wikidata label (in a language chosen by the user), or defined on the cat page itself by using

{{en|...}}
{{fr|...}}
{{ja|...}}
...

it's a solution for people quarreling over whether a category name should be english or other native latin-alphabetic language. example: Category:FC Bayern München. with this tool, if the cat name is english, users can see the german name above so german users still know what it is; if the cat name is german, non german users can see the english (or any other language user chooses) name above.

it appears like this on a parent cat page containing it.

　　FC Bayern Munich
> FC Bayern München (24 C, 88 F)

or

　FC Bayern München
> FC Bayern Munich (24 C, 88 F)

it's not just useful for multilingual name conflicts, but also if something has some very famous alternative names, e.g.

　Sears Tower
> Willis Tower (10 C, 35 F)

other considerations:

1. if querying up to 200 pages every time someone opens a cat page is too much for the servers,
   1. the tool could query the page and show the alternative name only when the cursor hovers over the target.
   2. or there could be a cache set up on toolforge that stores cat pages queried and their alternative names, so if a page is queried recently, there's no need to query wikidata or commons again but the tool can directly fetch the cached data.
2. this solution is ofc not compatible with current designs of hotcat, catalot, uploadwizard... which can only show the actual page name.

RoyZuo (talk) 15:20, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Closest thing I could think of would be to disable $wgRestrictDisplayTitle, but MediaWiki's manual page discourages that practice. Alternatively, the Translate extension could be used to create internationalization variations for categories, similar to what's already in place for pages in the Commons namespace. ForeverFlying (talk) 18:11, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Flickr2Commons

Not all OK with Flickr2Сommons, sadly. I've uploaded File:Sunset in Vernazza 2018.jpg and File:Sunset in Hehuanshan, Taroko National Park.jpg, they have been transferred without date and {{Flickreview}} tag. I've added them manually. It is possible to use an old version? Юрий Д.К. 09:34, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

@1Veertje. RoyZuo (talk) 13:45, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

sorry, should have tested more. Submitted a patch that should fix this Vera ^(talk) 19:25, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

• Currently F2C adding Flickreview tag but date field is still empty. Юрий Д.К. 15:13, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

  @Юрий Д.К. looking at latest uploads, this seems resolved? although it seems if the flickr file has no exif or date taken then f2c leaves it empty. RoyZuo (talk) 10:49, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

  @RoyZuo: Sadly, no. I've uploaded File:Monistrol de Montserrat (55416587297).jpg. EXIF with date, but F2C leaves the file without it. I've added it manually. Юрий Д.К. 12:06, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

  @Юрий Д.К. i see how i got confused. i clicked your 1st version and saw the date in sdc.

  it seems technically ok if f2c doesnt fill in the data for a short while, coz @FlickrResourcesBot adds sdc. RoyZuo (talk) 13:54, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

  @RoyZuo: Hello. I hope that the F2C will add the date during import. It will be convenient for me to add "Taken on" template. Besides, I've noticed another problem. I've uploaded File:Storm cloud at sunset - Paraná, Entre Ríos (34769035286).jpg and the F2C left a digital Flickr ID of an author instead of a nickname. It isn't good indeed. Юрий Д.К. 00:36, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

  @1Veertje.

  @Юрий Д.К., indeed problematic. please report problems to https://codeberg.org/magnusmanske/flickr2commons/issues or m:Talk:Flickr2Commons. RoyZuo (talk) 17:01, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

  Thank you for allerting me. I've submitted a patch Vera ^(talk) 14:38, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

• Also F2C removing coords from Flickr images. Юрий Д.К. 21:39, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Post-processing professional photos?

I do a lot of fixing up of poor photos used in enwiki articles, most commonly just plain badly exposed images with deep shadows. Then I look at something like File:Supreme Court US 2009.jpg and I'm not sure what to do. My first thought is to just shove the shadow slider all the way to the right and be happy that I'm recovered the detail in the justice's robes. But this is an official photo taken by a professional photographer under studio conditions. Do I really want to mess with that? Maybe the underexposure of the robes is a deliberate artistic statement, not to be bludgeoned by a random slider-pusher? Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 15:43, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Don't do? Not because of assumed artistic statements, but on technical grounds. I most likely wouldn't try to recover shadows from a JPEG, it's dynamic range is too limited. And are those robes truly plain black (RGB 00 00 00) or are they only dark (didn't check the pixels or the histogram)? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 16:14, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

RoySmith, there's nothing wrong with that photo? - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 03:13, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

RoySmith: File:Raikaia Salmon.JPG was taken too far. File:Alice Tangerini.jpg also. File:Frank Lloyd Wright - Barton House.jpg was not an improvement. You generally lean towards overbrightening. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 03:25, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Batch uploading audio files – bot or not?

Hello! I want to upload a large amount of audio files, approximately 33 000, to Commons (pronunciations of Estonian words, if you're interested). For the sake of my mental and physical health, I don't really want to click the Upload Wizard 33 000 times to upload each file individually. There's gotta be a more efficient way to do that, perhaps it's a job that a bot can do? I know there are tools other than the Upload Wizard, which can be used to upload many files at once, but there's a few additional catches which lead me to think it's a job better left to a bot or a user more experienced here than me, who would know how to tackle these issues and not end up in a mental hospital in the process.

Firstly, the files need to be renamed. Currently they are just numbered, for example psv_08693.wav. Their names need to be reformatted to Et-{{{term}}}.ogg. Fortunately, there is, at least for one portion of the audio files, a .txt file which connects every one of those numbers to the corresponding terms. I imagine that a bot wouldn't have a problem with reading that and renaming the audio files accordingly. The other portion of the audio files also have an additional file, but it's in the .ndx format, which I can't open, so I'm not sure if it can be used in the same way, hopefully it can. The fun doesn't end there though – not only do the file names need to be converted from a numeric value to a text value as per the .txt file, but these text values in turn need even more changing. Nothing too extreme though, mostly just converting some symbols, like ` to *, with some exceptions, such as the symbol being removed altogether for words of 4 or less letters (it's more complicated than that but I will not go into it). The reason being that these audio files are intended to be used on Wiktionary, and the template that converts Estonian text to IPA uses different symbols when respelling, and the audio files should, ideally, be equal to the respelling in the first parameter of the pronunciation template. But it will also allow manual input of the audio files, so if you deem making this shortcut possible to be too complicated and time-consuming, then it's not the end of the world either. A couple of examples: psv_08693.wav → t`el'k → Et-tel'k.ogg, psv_01396.wav → hilja → Et-hilja.ogg (no changes needed), psv_00855.wav → el`ekter → Et-el*ekter.ogg, psv_00447.wav → `asf`alt → Et-*asf*alt.ogg, psvalg_1721.mp3 → k`un'stn`ik → Et-k*un'stnik.ogg (here, again ideally, delete the symbol if the term ends in -ik, but as I said, no problem if that's too complicated, and there are a million exceptions to this anyway), psvalg_2109.mp3 → organisatsi`oon → Et-organisatsi*oon.ogg, psv_00931.wav → enآ´ergiline → Et-en"ergiline.ogg (´ becomes "), psv_00028.wav → abi+elu → Et-abi-elu.ogg (+ becomes -, compound words), psv_07746.wav → sini+m`ust+v`alge → Et-sini-must-v*alge.ogg (components of a compound word are treated individually, so the rule of removing ` from 2-4 letter words applies). Every other symbol other than letters, spaces, and those symbols mentioned, should be removed. A final note: some forms are exactly the same and have the same pronunciation, therefore they have only one file for all of the forms in question, but the .txt file lists them multiple times, although with the same file name, just on different lines.

The second issue is one of categorization. The files need to be categorized as [[Category:Estonian pronunciation|<first letter of the term>]] or [[Category:Estonian pronunciation|<term>]] (I think it's the same). This can probably be solved with some non-back-breaking code, but it should still be done by someone who knows what they're doing.

Thirdly, the files are either in .wav or .mp3 format. They need to be converted to .ogg. This doesn't seem like a nightmare on its own, I could probably do that by myself, but combined with all these other things it doesn't bring me much optimism.

So in conclusion, I'm looking for somebody who is willing to and able to help me with uploading these files. It would be fantastic if somebody could do it for me, and if not, then could at least explain to me the necessary steps, as I genuinely have no clue. I understand if this seems like a lot to ask, we can do compromises on the file naming part, if necessary, but I really hope somebody here has the necessary skills and readiness to take on this task in some format, either with a bot or not with a bot. Joonas07 (talk) 09:37, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

 Comment MP3 is now accepted. - Jmabel ! talk 18:02, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Does require having the autopatrol right, which you will need to request (for you or a bot) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:59, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Great, that's one problem less. But I'm still looking for someone who would generally know what they're doing, especially if some kind of autopatrol rights have to be requested, it's better to have a user who has some kind of prior experience. Seeing as nobody has answered me here yet, could you maybe suggest some users that I could contact directly and ask if they are ready to do it? Apologies if I'm being intrusive, but I really need help here. Joonas07 (talk) 09:36, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Are the files other than the actual audio small enough that you can pack them all into an archive (eg. a zip file) and upload them to somewhere we can look at? I think seeing the real data would help us prepare for this task.

It intimidates me that we'll have to derive the upload filenames according to conventions of dictionary in a foreign language that I'm not familiar with. So you'll probably have to explain these transformation rules and proofread the derived filenames, possibly in multiple passes until we get all the names right.

Also please tell us about the legal parts, as in licenses for copyright and database rights. I know this can be annoying, but I think anyone who wants to help will want to be really sure about them before uploading tens of thousands of audio files. Though of course we won't upload all of them at the same time, instead we'd upload a smaller selection first and then allow users some time to tell us what we did wrong. – b_jonas 03:45, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Sorry for not replying, fortunately, I found a user already who can help me, but thanks for offering! Joonas07 (talk) 16:19, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

But I'll keep you in mind, in case it won't work out with that other user after all. There's the issue of bot permissions and when it comes to converting the names, I'm not sure if it can just be done with find and replace. So I might still contact you at some point, if you are okay with that. Joonas07 (talk) 16:30, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

For the record, all the files including the index are packed into three zip files, and the files are CC-BY-4.0, so we can use them for educational purposes. Joonas07 (talk) 16:37, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Wait, “psv_00931.wav → enآ´ergiline → Et-en"ergiline.ogg”? There's a letter from arabic script in the middle of that one! I hope there's a semi-reasonable explanation for this one, like it's an old database from back when Unicode wasn't as prevalent as now and some characters got replaced by inappropriate ones during the conversion. – b_jonas 05:07, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that too, but I don't know where it came from. Seems like it appears only before the symbol ´, so probably some Unicode stuff like you said. Joonas07 (talk) 16:28, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Android motion photos

When uploading photos that contain video data ("motion photos" on Android), would I be required to remove the video portion from the image if it is in a non-free format?

Android motion photos are simply JPEG files with MP4 video appended to the end. According to the specification, the video track may be encoded in AVC (H.264), HEVC (H.265), or AV1 - my phone encodes them in HEVC - and the video can also contain an audio track in AAC. Since these are non-free formats, strictly speaking the video portion should not be allowed under Commons:File types. But there's nothing technically stopping me from uploading the motion photo because it's in an allowed file type (JPEG). MediaWiki might just treat it as an ordinary JPEG file and ignore the MP4 data.

With iOS live photos, the device saves the photo and video as two separate files, so this doesn't seem to be an issue. Qzekrom (talk) 02:25, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Problems with Template:Citation

The Template:Citation seems to have been changed recently. This har resulted in lines of white space being inserted between the citations used in references in an artwork template, as seen here File:Martinus Rørbye, Arrestbygningen ved råd- og domhuset, 1831, KMS206, Statens Museum for Kunst.jpg. I have not seen this behavior of the template before and have no idea of how to correct it. Cheers Rsteen (talk) 12:45, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Pinging @ForeverFlying who made the edit in question. – Howardcorn33 (💬) 16:58, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

@Rsteen I have removed the extra white spaces, so the template should be displaying properly now. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 17:31, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

My apologies for messing up the line-spacing! @Tvpuppy Thank you for the fix! And thank you @Rsteen for bringing up the issue. ForeverFlying (talk) 17:40, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 21:22, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-29

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

• Revise Tone helps newcomers identify passages in Wikipedia articles that may contain non-encyclopedic language and encourages them to consider revising the tone. The feature was A/B tested on the Arabic, English, French, and Portuguese Wikipedias, where newcomer task completion rates increased by 38.7% compared to the default Copyedit task, with no decrease in edit quality. The test ended on July 9, and the feature is now available for everyone on these wikis, configurable via Community Configuration. The plan is to release Revise Tone to more wikis.
• The community configuration that allows automatic removal of inactive mentors based on configurable criteria will be enabled on Thursday 16, on some wikis to keep mentor lists up to date. Mentors are experienced contributors who opt in to help new users on-wiki through the Growth Features. Administrators can now prepare the settings via Special:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship; they will take effect starting Thursday.
• View all 38 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where some users of the Wikipedia Android app were logged out immediately after signing in, preventing them from staying logged in and editing pages, has now been fixed. [1]

Updates for technical contributors

• Editing a page via user scripts or gadgets was causing watchlist labels that the user had assigned to that page to reset. This has now been fixed. [2]
• To work around a Safari bug (see phab:T425211), on Parsoid-enabled wikis, wikilink hrefs now use absolute urls instead of protocol-relative urls. REST API output remains unchanged and continue to use protocol-relative urls. Gadgets, user scripts, bots, and CSS might need to be adapted if they relied on the presence of protocol-relative urls in wikilink hrefs. [3]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• The Wikimedia Foundation’s Experiment Platform Team has published a blog post reflecting on its first year of structured experimentation. It highlights successful experiments such as Paste Check, Reference Check, and Tone Check, which improved editing outcomes and have been rolled out to more users, as well as experiments that did not lead to product changes. Read more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:08, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Inappropriate rejection of a file name

Initial report and section title (the latter now modified) appear to have been wrong, but there is still apparently a problem here. - Jmabel ! talk 06:49, 19 July 2026 (UTC)
Santiago Brra. reports that he tried to upload a file with the name "Sala de la colección principal de la Biblioteca Popular Solidaridad Social, Rosario, Argentina. Julio de 2026.jpg" and got the obviously inappropriate message "Please write a more informative title". Anyone have any idea why this would happen? - Jmabel ! talk 22:29, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

OK, it was an inaccurate report on his part, though there is still an issue. The message he received was entirely different, and in Spanish. It was "Algo salió mal: El nombre de archivo que estabas intentando subir ha sido incluido en la lista negra..." So it was saying something in this file name was blacklisted. Offhand, I have no idea what is wrong with that filename. Nothing in the filter log at all for that account. Reading what he later wrote at Commons:Help desk#Título para imagen de Wikimedia, I'm pretty sure it was a cross-wiki upload from es-wiki, if that helps. - Jmabel ! talk 06:49, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-30

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 Reader Experience team has incorporated community feedback around the placement of watchstar and watchlist buttons for the Reading Lists beta feature, which would allow for saving articles for later reading – a wishlist item to bring the functionality to web. Editors are invited to enable the beta feature to test it out and share their thoughts.
• Suggestion Mode offers edit suggestions within the VisualEditor for improving Wikipedia articles. All suggestions are community-configurable. The TextMatch feature is a way for volunteers to create custom local suggestions. The feature searches in articles for strings of text, and now includes support for regular expressions. This gives volunteers greater precision and flexibility over the kinds of local suggestions they can create. Note: Suggestions can be targeted based on the edit count of the person editing as well as other aspects of the page. You can find examples from other communities for inspiration, including TextMatches that detect: typos, grammar-errors, potential advertisements, clichés, incorrect dash or hyphen usage, non-specific time keywords, outdated names, and more. Any feedback is appreciated.
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the SVG Translate tool could use an outdated version of a file, causing existing translations to be overwritten when new ones were uploaded, has now been fixed. Overall, in the last quarter from April – June 2026 about 337 community tasks were resolved by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Updates for technical contributors

• On Parsoid-enabled wikis, Parsoid now renders a maximum of 1,250 images per page. A new tracking category, "media-limit-reached", will be soon made available to identify pages where this limit is reached, making it easier to find content whose media output may have been restricted during rendering. See phab:T430854 for more information and to provide feedback.
• 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 05:44, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Outdated pictures of the day

I've been seeing reports that the picture of the day is sometimes showing POTDs from previous days. Are the caches for the Main Page not always getting updated? Clarinetguy097 (talk) 16:47, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

• Here is an example where both POTD and MOTD are affected: the POTD and MOTD for 11th July are repeated in archive.org from 11-15th July: 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th July. Only on 16th July did POTD and MOTD get updated. --Tagooty (talk) 15:42, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

  i vaguely remember that @Schlurcher's bot purges the main page every day after midnight. sorry if wrong mention.

  2 potential problems:

  1. not sure when exactly the purge happens. might it help if it's done a few minutes after 00:00 instead of exactly midnight?
  2. still, i have a vague impression that pages quite often look different to logged in and logged out users, probably due to how the website is cached and delivered by wmf.

  RoyZuo (talk) 13:16, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

  @Clarinetguy097, @RoyZuo, @Tagooty: RoyZuo remembers correctly SchlurcherBot purges all the different language versions of the main page every day, around 1am. However, SchlurcherBot was down during time period noted. I did not see this before, but it seems this is a faily critical task to do, so maybe we need a second bot, that does the same or another backup solution. --Schlurcher (talk) 15:08, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

  thx a lot.

  i agree that having a 2nd bot to double tap is essential.

  but, maybe wmf should also purge the highest traffic pages? for pages that are frequently visited, or contain important info (such as legal stuff or time-sensitive stuff), maybe wmf should purge them so they make sure pages delivered to users are up to date?

  maybe a page should be automatically purged whenever it hits a certain view count? purged every 100k-th visit. or purged daily/hourly when a page accumulates 100k visits over 24h/3d/7d...? just some random ideas. RoyZuo (talk) 16:45, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

  Thanks for the explanations. Given the time-sensitive nature, I think the best solution is for the bot that updates POTD and MOTD at midnight UTC to purge immediately. Leaving the task to another bot that usually, but not always, runs 1 hour later is risky and imprecise. Tagooty (talk) 04:02, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

  Tracked in Phabricator
  Task T433164
  

  see if the problem gets worked on. RoyZuo (talk) 11:12, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Automatic categories for Template:Translate

Scribunto now can return a list of languages translated in an SVG file (T259018), and so it's possible to automate the addition of files to Category:SVG by language (as requested in T407647). I'm not quite sure where the best place would be for this feature (maybe in Module:FileMedia, although that doesn't really deal with categories; then called from {{Translate}}), but something like the following should be possible:

    local langs = mw.title.new( 'File:Tulunadu.svg' ).file.languages
    local cats = ''
    for _,langCode in pairs( langs ) do
        local langName = mw.language.fetchLanguageName( langCode, 'en' )
        cats = cats .. '[[Category:' .. langName .. '-language SVG]]\n'
    end
    return cats

Pinging @Booksmurf who's working on related stuff.
— Sam Wilson 02:07, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

I have created this module and its doc in relation to:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist/W528 @docjames

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Module:Translate

As per Sam's comment, I do not know where would be the place place for this, so if any admin could help figuring out the next step or giving recommendations, it would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you Booksmurf (talk) 09:27, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Last month in technical changes

Following Wikimania 2026, another overview of technical changes in the media support corner of MediaWiki, covering activity since June 17th.

• A big new development: WMF has created a new dedicated Media Platform Team on July 1st, to own how we store, manipulate, stream, and display media going forward — Thumbor, file storage, and thumbnailing infrastructure all fall under it now. Their initial focus is thumbnail infrastructure sustainability.
• The hCaptcha support added to UploadWizard has now also found its way to the Special:Upload page and there have been a few follow-up fixes, like a proper loading indicator T429322, T429287.
• Failed uploads in UploadWizard can now be retried individually per file instead of only being able to retry the whole batch. An improvement contributed by @Amdrel. T410980.
• The "Other resolutions" list on file pages, broken since the thumnbnail size limitations that I mentioned in the previous editions, should now be matching the actual available sizes. T401668
• @Mimurawil added a new category suggestion framework for UploadWizard. This works towards Wishlist item W526. Geo- and full-text-based search suggestions are in active development T427047, T428065, T428066.
• On mobile, you can now double-tap the left or right third of the video player to skip back or forward 10 seconds, similar to many video apps. This was wishlist item Wishlist item W468 and added by @Brooke Vibber. T432729.
• I myself completed the changes for WebVTT subtitle support. Next week, it will be possible to create a Timed Text page with the .vtt file extension and you can use advanced styling and positioning of subtitles beyond what the SRT support already allowed for. T116154. If you want to help update the Timed Text documentation, that would be appreciated btw !
• There has been some work on 3D models, with @Amdrel driving the latest changes. Thera are patches out for review across the extension, its metadata handling, and the thumbnailing backend. Without support of the foundation and people reviewing the patches, it is however hard to land these changes, so if you can help in any way with testing or reviewing, that is appreciated. T246901, T419711, T187844.
• There were several Wikimedia Commons related projects presented at the Wikimania 2026 Hackathon closing ceremony, which you can watch back on Youtube

——TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:33, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Can't wait to see the rollout of textured meshes on Commons :3 --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:15, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Thumbnail sizes

Still doesn't appear to be consistently matching available thumbnail sizes. See, for example, File:Seattle - Rainier Avenue overpass, 1954 (22651065004).gif. It offers a 1,920 × 1,481 pixel thumbnail of this 1,400 × 1,080 pixel image. - Jmabel ! talk 06:46, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Language missing

I don't know where to reach out about this, so I'll do it here.
It is not possible to create a VTT file through the TimedText page (example) when there already is an SRT for the same language. It doesn't come up in the list. I suspect it is the same the other way around too. It also isn't a translation, so the text is technically wrong. Thanks. // Kakan spelar (talk) 16:16, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Newsletter?

• Hi @TheDJ: is this a regular newsletter summarizing media technology changes? Is there a way to subscribe to this on user talk pages and/or have it included in The Signpost? ↠Pine (✉) 20:03, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

  @Pine it's just me doing something extra for the Commons community. I've done this for 3 months now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:03, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

• @TheDJ: OK. It would be great to turn this into a newsletter which could have talk page subscriptions and/or be republished in places like The Signpost. Is that feasible? ↠Pine (✉) 21:06, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

Surprising result from Commons search

I searched for "english national football team" in Commons. The URL is https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=english+national+football+team&title=Special%3AMediaSearch&type=image. To my surpise, the result set includes File:Lions Family Portrait Masai Mara.jpg which makes some sense in that the logo for the English national football team is three lions, but the metadata for the lions family portrait file shows nothing about English football that I can see. What might have happened with the search tool that caused this result? I'm wondering if the search tool leverages data from additional sources beyond the search text string and the image metadata. ↠Pine (✉) 19:20, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

I think the search uses Wikidata to try to match up words with concepts. My guess is that since "english national football team" is one of the aliases of Wikidata item England men's national association football team (Q47762), and so is "Three Lions", that those are considered completely equivalent terms by something within the search engine, and that picture has the text "three lions" in its description. That's a guess; I'm not sure where (or if) it's documented exactly how the search finds synonyms or related concepts. — PeterCooperJr (talk) 17:18, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

@PeterCooperJr: thanks for the comment. That may be what happened. See mw:Help:MediaSearch, mw:MediaSearch and Commons talk:Media search. By the way @JTweed-WMF: you appear to be a member of the newly-created mw:Media Platform Team, and perhaps can answer my question authoritatively as well as the unanswered questions and comments on those talk pages. Thanks, ↠Pine (✉) 17:27, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Blank space on top of categories with navboxes

Some navboxen appear to be having mysterious blank spaces on top of the categories (in MonoBook on Firefox latest version, at least). See for instance Category:Snow in Florida, which has a significant gap between the navbox and the category title on top of the page. Compare to Category:Rain in Florida, which has the same navbox, but does not have the mysterious space. What gives? - The Bushranger (talk) 05:07, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

@The Bushranger: The first character of the page is an invisible en:Byte order mark. I removed it from Category:Snow in Florida. --Achim55 (talk) 07:11, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Huh, wonder how that happened. Thanks for clearing it up! - The Bushranger (talk) 01:53, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 21:21, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-31

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

• Content Translation now supports dark mode, fulfilling a Community Wishlist request. This brings the tool in line with the accessibility features available in the Vector 2022 and Minerva skins, helping reduce visual fatigue for users translating content. [4]
• DiscussionTools' source mode and the 2017 wikitext editor will now offer autocomplete for links ([[), templates ({{), HTML and parser tags (<), and magic words (__), making it quicker and easier to insert links, templates, and other wiki markup while editing. [5]
• The Readers Growth team has concluded its experiment with mobile page previews and will not roll out the feature. Page Previews are a pop-up bottom sheet that appears when readers tap a blue link, showing a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and an option to open the article. The experiment showed flat retention and negative indicator metrics, suggesting that mobile web readers preferred navigating directly to linked articles rather than using page previews.
• The Reader Experience team has seen encouraging early results from the Reading Lists feature, with 93% of participating users reporting that it was useful. Reading Lists help active readers save articles for future reading and support their learning goals on Wikimedia projects. The team plans further improvements before expanding the feature to more users.
• The Explore Feed Refresh initiative was tested with new and casual Wikipedia app readers. The refreshed feed helps readers discover new and relevant content. After a 10.5% increase in engagement with the feed, Wikimedia Apps team has decided to scale the Home Feed redesign to iOS with the learnings from the Android release applied.
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where subject names in the Article Guidance feature were displayed with incorrect capitalization on French Wikipedia, has now been fixed. Subject names will now follow the correct capitalization rules for the language. [6]

Updates for technical contributors

• After running several Account Creation Experiments to improve registration completion rates, a new version of the username field on Create Account has been rolled out. It includes a popover summarizing the username policy to provide clearer guidance during account creation. As part of this change, the messages createacct-helpusername and createacct-username-help that several communities have configured will no longer be used. If communities want to customize the guidance shown in the new popover, they can instead edit the following messages: createacct-username-policy-popover-bullet1, createacct-username-policy-popover-bullet2, and createacct-username-policy-popover-bullet3. [7]
• Later this week, the CodeMirror syntax highlighter will offer themes. The themes can be picked from a dropdown menu in the full CodeMirror preferences dialog. For wikitext, available themes are default, colorblind-friendly (previously the colorblind preference option on Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing) and no-highlighting. For code languages (i.e., CSS/JavaScript/JSON/Vue/Lua), there are several themes available. These same themes will eventually be available for wikitext, too. [8]
• From now on, wikis can restrict editing in the "User" namespace to only the page owner and certain user groups. Read the configuration documentation to learn more.
• 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 18:46, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

TSE-Dados-Abertos

Hello,

I'd like to know if it would be possible to update the TSE-Dados-Abertos to improve the categorization. As it stands now, the main category have 18,915 files, with the categories by party and by year having to be added manually.

To empty the main category, could it be possible for the template to work like {{TSE-Dados-Abertos|party=(party acronym; example: MDB, PT, PDT...)|year=(electoral year)}}, with an warning message displayed if any or both options are missing? It would also be interesting if the template could link to the divulgacandcontas.tse.jus.br (as the source of the political party), as we can see here, for 2022. This could also help if this batch upload proposal ever happens. Erick Soares3 (talk) 16:22, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Redesign of photo navboxes

Deutsch: Hi! Ich habe länger darüber nachgedacht, und möchte es jetzt gerne zur Aussprache bringen. Die Navigationsboxen von Fotos eines Jahrzehntes, wie bei Category:2019 photographs of Bavaria, kommt mir etwas klein vor. Wäre es eventuell besser, die Schriftgröße zu erhöhen und die Box über die ganze Breite der Weißfläche zu ziehen oder zumindest in eine zweite Zeile zu erweitern? Bin gespannt auf eure Meinungen. Grüße!

English: Hi! I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'd now like to bring it up for discussion. The navigation boxes for photos from a specific decade, like the one at Category:2019 photographs of Bavaria, seem a bit small to me. Would it perhaps be better to increase the font size and stretch the box across the entire width of the white space, or at least expand it to a second line? I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Best regards!

--PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:20, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

@Reinhard Müller made a series of super neat templates Template:Category description. RoyZuo (talk) 09:27, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-32

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 Reader Experience team has developed a patch demo that wraps the page toolbar onto two lines when there is not enough horizontal space for all the buttons. This aims to reduce crowding in the Vector 2022 toolbar, which can occur on some language Wikipedias at certain screen widths. [9]
• The Reader Experience team is planning to launch Reading Lists, a Community Wishlist item, which is currently available to try in beta, as a full feature in September. Before then, volunteer translator help is needed for string translations into a number of languages. The feature supports reading and learning goals on Wikipedia.
• Next week, the table of contents on Wikimedia Commons file pages will be improved by consolidating the file page table of contents with the page table of contents. This will make it easier to understand a file page’s structure, navigate to specific sections, and share links to individual sections. [10]
• View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where some TIFF images failed to load after clicking their thumbnail, causing a broken image to be displayed instead of the full-size image, has now been fixed. [11]

Updates for technical contributors

• The variable and function selector in AbuseFilter has been updated to support search and autocomplete. It will allow filter maintainers to find the desired variable or function more quickly. [12]
• The MJPEG and VP8 formats are removed from the video player. The MP4 format (MPEG-4 Part 2) is added instead, which provides higher quality videos to older iPhone devices. It may take a few weeks to retroactively update all existing videos. The default format for modern devices stays the same (VP9/WebM). [13]
• 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 19:43, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

There was a problem during the HTTP request: 429 Too Many Requests

I've never encountered this message before. Just trying to upload some of my photos from Flickr as normal, but I'm getting cut off at around 50 photos. Normally I have no issues, but now it won't let me upload anything. Is there a way to increase the limit of photos I can upload? PascalHD (talk) 16:28, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

There is a related discussion here: Commons:Upload Wizard feedback#There was a problem during the HTTP request: 429 Too Many Requests. I also have encounter this same error couple days ago when I was trying to upload Flickr images, but I'm not sure what is the reason for this problem. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 18:03, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Need help to fix Template:Milim

Template:Milim has a "Search DVIDs" function which is broken. The link should bring up the search result based on VIRIN. e.g.

[https://www.dvidshub.net/search/2.0?q=170504-D-PB383-056 Search DVIDs for VIRIN 170504-D-PB383-056]

would produce a link Search DVIDs VIRIN 170504-D-PB383-056. However, replacing the value of VIRIN in the above URL, https://www.dvidshub.net/search/2.0?q=$virin, in this template doesn't produce the desired result. Help is needed to fix the bug. Happyseeu (talk) 02:57, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Convenience link: Template:Milim. - Jmabel ! talk 03:57, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

@Happyseeu: I'm not sure quite what you have in mind, but that "$virin" is definitely wrong. Maybe you have in mind "{{{virin}}}" or "{{{virin|SOMETHING ELSE HERE}}}"? - Jmabel ! talk 04:02, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. I've fixed the bug with your help. Happyseeu (talk) 05:12, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 21:21, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Cleanup of bad pages created by broken template

I just wanted to notify that due to a missing pipe in the template Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request/header/i18n some bad pages got accidentally created such as:

• Commons:Deletion requests/2026/08/05action=edit&preload=Commons:Deletion+requests/newday, deleted by @Jaqen
• Commons:Deletion requests/2026/08/06action=edit&preload=Commons:Deletion+requests/newday, deleted by @The Squirrel Conspiracy
• Commons:Deletion requests/2026/06/30action=edit&preload=Commons:Deletion+requests/newday, which needs its content to be moved to Commons:Deletion requests/2026/06/30 before the page gets deleted.

I already fixed the template but Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request/header/i18n/en and Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request/header/i18n/de need to be updated accordingly.

It's moon (talk) 14:05, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Moved the last one and deleted it. - Jmabel ! talk 20:30, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

The next needed step is to mark Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request/header/i18n for translation. I don't actually know how to do that. - Jmabel ! talk 20:36, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Someone has already requested this in Commons:Translators' noticeboard#Mark translation for Deletion requests/Mass deletion request/header/i18n.

According to Commons:Preparing a page for translation, it appears you need translation admin rights, which appear to be separate from regular admin. It's moon (talk) 23:28, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

It looks like the translated subpages have been updated (Special:Diff/1257622398 & Special:Diff/1257622393) :)) It's moon (talk) 21:48, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks to It's moon for noticing and fixing it, my bad :) —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 11:46, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

PAGESINCATEGORY stuck at 0 despite confirmed category membership

Hello,

I've got a category, that uses {{PAGESINCATEGORY:{{PAGENAME}}}} to show a photo count. It's displaying 0, but the category actually has files in it and it was confirmed via the categorymembers API (returned 500, API-limit-capped; true count is around 621) and via the "Hidden categories" list on the member files themselves, which correctly lists this category. I've tried:

1. The action=purge on the category page
2. Edit and save across the category's member files

None of it moved the count off 0.

A structurally identical category using the same template shows its count correctly (900), so seems to be specific to this one category's cat_pages/cat_files counter being desynced from actual categorylinks membership, rather than a template or caching issue on my end. Has anyone seen this before, or know how to trigger a recount server-side (e.g. via populateCategory.php)? I've also filed T434362 on Phabricator with the same evidence.

Thank you. Regards, Oleg (talk) 14:14, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps try {{PAGESINCATEGORY:{{#titleparts:{{PAGENAME}}}}}} instead. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 18:11, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, Tvpuppy! This fixed the issue. I appreciate it! Thank you. Regards, Oleg (talk) 18:19, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 21:21, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-33

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

• A new ChartWizard is now available on Wikimedia Commons for users interested in creating charts from their own data. The wizard makes the Chart extension more beginner-friendly by allowing editors to create charts, such as bar and pie charts, without needing to use JSON. Users can still switch to the JSON editor if they prefer. Feedback on the new tool is welcome on the wish talk page.
• View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the Wikipedia iOS app’s Picture of the Day widget displayed the same image every day instead of updating daily, has now been fixed. [14]

Updates for technical contributors

• Math formula SVG images will soon be generated in the browser instead of on the server. MathML continues to be generated on the server and renders in the browser without JavaScript. Wikibooks will see this change on 12 August, Wikisource on 19 August and Wikipedia from 20-27 August. You can try this by selecting "Client side MathJax rendering (for browsers with limited MathML support)" in your preferences. This change is part of deprecating RESTBase and deprecating Mathoid. [15]
• Category pages will soon support sorting entries by the time they are added to a category. This will make it easier to find recently or long-standing categorized pages. It will also improve workflows for maintenance categories such as deletion backlogs and other time-based review tasks. You can use cldsort=timestamp URL argument in category view to sort the entries. [16]
• Gadgets and user scripts on Wikimedia wikis may now use ES2018 features and ES2019 features in JavaScript code. Previously, the platform only allowed up to ES2017. MediaWiki validates the source code to protect functionality from syntax errors and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. [17]
• 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 20:42, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Data file too big to edit

I've come across the strange case of Data:McGraw electric railway directory company observations.tab. DavidLevinson was able to upload it and later add categories, but my attempt to move it from Category:Rail transport in the United States to Category:Tram transport in the United States failed with the error The text you have submitted is 3,123.549 kilobytes long, which is more than the maximum of 2,048 kilobytes. David thinks it might be due to how Commons expands JSON. Does anyone have any way to make the category change - and are there any guardrails we can put up to prevent large data files becoming effectively uneditable? Pi.1415926535 (talk) 02:54, 11 August 2026 (UTC)