Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/09

Crop tool

Is CropTool broken again? I can select my crop, but when I try to overwrite the original, I get "Upload failed! undefined". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:52, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

Andy, I tested Crop tool and have the same error. --Jarekt (talk) 04:04, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

I just used it to crop this file, so it's either working again, or only failing for some users. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 04:53, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Working again for me, now. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:25, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2025-09

In August 2025, 1 sysop was elected; 2 sysops were removed. Currently, there are 178 sysops.

Election:

• User:Theklan was elected sysop (26/4/2) on 28 August.

Removal:

• User:Jean-Frédéric was removed on 12 August due to inactivity. He had served as sysop from 8 December 2009.
• User:JoKalliauer was removed on 6 August due to resignation. He had served as sysop from 17 June 2019.

We thank them for their service.

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Edited by RoyZuo.

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Commons Gazette is a monthly newsletter of the latest important news about Wikimedia Commons, edited by volunteers. You can also help with editing!

--RoyZuo (talk) 08:45, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Watergate video copyright

Are videos such as this one produced by the federal government (and thus public domain)? The titlecard says "Org. from WETA" (this being a DC-area PBS station) but it gives no indication as to whether WETA owned the copyright or was merely the first broadcaster. Marnanel (talk) 15:12, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

@Marnanel: At 1:08:58 there is a spoken credit, appparently to NPACT (National Public Affairs Center for Television), which was at that time part of WETA, a PBS affiliate. So it would seem to me that WETA would be the likely copyright holder. The question would then be whether they did what was necessary in those days to secure copyright for a television broadcast. - Jmabel ! talk 01:20, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

Category:Books from China by year

to move Books from China from, for example Category:1398 books into Category:1398 books from China I have to open each file, edit and save it. There are rather a lot of them. Is there any way of processing them in bulk? Rathfelder (talk) 10:29, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

@Rathfelder: Assuming I understand what your asking about, you can use Cat-A-Lot to do bulk file moves. It can be enabled in your preferences at the top of the "tools for categories" section. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:58, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Catalot does not do what I want. All these files are already in the appropriate year category, but to get them to move they have to be opened, edited and saved. Rathfelder (talk) 12:20, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Oh yeah. I see what your talking about now. I have zero idea what the problem is then. That's a weird issues. Probably it's caused by something in Template:Digitized Ancient Book in the National Library of China. Although heck if I know what. That's one of the problems with templates on here. It's darn near impossible to figure what how to fix problems with them when they go wrong. It looks like the creator of it, User:虹易 isn't really active anymore either. IMO the template should just be removed from the files and it should be deleted. It's totally pointless anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:30, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Help:VisualFileChange.js might work if you know what string you want to replace, and if you know how to write that string in Regex. Nakonana (talk) 15:14, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

@Rathfelder, if you want to do null edits (saving without editing anything) in bulk, you can use VFC as menetioned above, select the files and then prepend/append {{subst:void}}. This should save a lot of time compared to doing it individually. Tvpuppy (talk) 15:18, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. I dont need to change anything - they are are all - I think- marked as being in the category. Rathfelder (talk) 15:21, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

I forgot to say, as a test, I have just used VFC to do null edits on the files in Category:1398 books, so that’s why they are marked correctly. Tvpuppy (talk) 15:36, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Will null edits help? It looks like there's some template-like string in the license section which adds the general 1398 books category and prevents moving the files into a different category. I'd think that that string needs to be either deleted or replaced to move the files. Nakonana (talk) 15:22, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

I think it is a null edit. But how can I do a load at once? Rathfelder (talk) 15:27, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

You need to install Visual File Change. This will add a "Perform batch task" link to the tools menu on the category page. If you click that link, a window will open where you can choose the option "prepend any text" or "append any text", and there'll be a text box for the text you want to prepend/append, that's where you write {{Subst:void}}. And then select the files on which you want to perform that edit. Nakonana (talk) 15:34, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I will have a try. Rathfelder (talk) 18:04, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

VisualFileChange doesnt appear in my preferences under gadgets. Is it hidden somewhere?

and when I try Automatic: click here and follow the instructions. I just come back to the same Help:VisualFileChange.js page - I dont get any instructions Rathfelder (talk) 19:55, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

But Try it without installing does work! Rathfelder (talk) 21:11, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

If I remember correctly you might need to have a particular user status/group for it to appear in the gadgets list. You'll probably have to install it manually or use it without installing. Nakonana (talk) 15:42, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

I'm afraid I dont understand how to use Subst:void. Is there an explanation somewhere? Rathfelder (talk) 15:24, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Explanations of what the templates do can be found on enwiki Wikipedia:Substitution and Template:Void. Nakonana (talk) 15:43, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

CropTool only possible of rotation by 90, 180 and 270° ?

I've noticed that it's no longer possible to rotate to any desired angle in the CropTool. Only 90, 180, and 270°. Has this been changed? Wouter (talk) 18:39, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

@Wouterhagens: You are probably in "Lossless" mode rather than "Precise" mode. - Jmabel ! talk 02:37, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks!! Wouter (talk) 08:03, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Close relative created files uploaded

I was searching for some railway related picture and found some pictures which were uploaded by Santosh4118 which were not their original work, it says Uploaded a work by Arjun Arvind (Brother) from WhatsApp with UploadWizard. Is this ok to upload files of someone else without vrts.––KEmel49(📝,📤) 16:46, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

No (unless they happen to be freely licenced, or inherited). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:02, 3 September 2025 (UTC)