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Overwrite a file with another existing file

Hello, last month I uploaded this YT video File:President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Oval Office, Feb. 28, 2025.webm. This was back when v2c isn’t working for YT so I had to manually upload it, but the initial version didn’t had the highest quality possible. Later, I wanted to upload a better quality version but I didn’t know how to overwrite using v2c, so I just tried first to upload it as another file, seen here: File:President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Oval Office, Feb. 28, 2025 (ajxSWocbye8).webm.

I then put it aside when I couldn’t figure how to overwrite, I was only reminded of it recently when it got tagged as duplicate. This version only has a slight quality improvement, so it will be fine if it was deleted, but still I wanted to ask is it possible to overwrite the current version with the slightly better version? Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 21:38, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

  1. using v2c, you cant overwrite; you cant even upload to a filename that was once used but then deleted.
  2. User talk:Rillke/bigChunkedUpload.js.--RoyZuo (talk) 21:46, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I will try chunked upload and see if it works. Tvpuppy (talk) 22:08, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
@Tvpuppy right now with your new intended version already uploaded, the usual approach is let a sysop move the new to the old covering the old, or as you mentioned, "tag as duplicate" and the sysop will do just that. RoyZuo (talk) 22:35, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
I have just successfully reuploaded and overwritten the file using chunked upload, so it worked out as I intended. Thank you for the advice above. Tvpuppy (talk) 22:44, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Tvpuppy (talk) 22:44, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons Gazette 2025-04

Volunteer staff changes

In March 2025, 1 checkuser was elected; 5 sysops and 1 bureaucrat were removed. Currently, there are 177 sysops, 6 bureaucrats and 4 checkusers.

Election:

Removal:

We thank them for their service.

An appeal to all Commons users: please consider applying to become sysops or nominating users. Departure of multiple sysops exacerbates Commons volunteer staff shortage. Your experience and passion are much needed.

Other news

  • Thanks to User:Don-vip, Video2commons was fixed so uploads from Youtube are possible again. This bug impeded Video2commons for approximately two months.

    Video2commons is in need of maintainers. Please help keep it running!

Edited by Abzeronow and RoyZuo.

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) 06:38, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Sadly it seems v2c just broke for youtube again in the wee hours today. RoyZuo (talk) 11:48, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
It still works. Sometimes one needs to retry (and also refresh page if it just keeps loading). Also it seems like YT (and by extension DuckDuckGo Videos) now also shows nonCCBY videos in the results (for one search I tried at least) even filtering by CCBY but maybe that's just a rare bug. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:52, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Maybe it wasn’t working earlier in the day, but it is still working for me now. I just tried and successfully uploaded couple YT videos using v2c. Tvpuppy (talk) 13:01, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?tagfilter=OAuth+CID%3A+394&title=Special:RecentChanges
i see indeed you imported more just now, but i retried mine and it still failed with the bug "Sign in to confirm you\xe2\x80\x99re not a bot..." :/ RoyZuo (talk) 13:22, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata and Sister Projects: an online event

Hello everyone, I’m writing to announce an upcoming event called Wikidata and Sister Projects that will be a mini online conference to highlight the different ways Wikidata can be connected and integrated with the other WM projects.

We are currently looking for session ideas and speakers for our program and wanted to reach out in case there were any editors here that might have a cool idea for a session proposal. More info and templates for sessions can be found on the event discussion page.

As previously mentioned, we would like to showcase the relationship between Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata and how data such as Commons Categories, Structured Data and depicts information help Wikimedians navigate through the projects and find relevant information and articles.

The event is scheduled between May 29 - June 1st, 2025. If you have any questions about the event, would like more information or have a session idea to propose, please feel free to get in touch by replying to this post or writing on the event page or on my talk page. Thanks for reading, - Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 07:23, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Foreign and non-latin cat name

Hello, I was working on some categories listed in Special:UncategorizedCategories, but I don't know what to do with Category:"Зручне Передмістя @patokovyna". Do we even accept non-English categories? If yes, should the name be romanized? I need an advice. Mikinisk (talk) 10:14, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

@Mikinisk: Invented cat names should be in English. Whatever the name, this should be a user cat. Pinging @Ratskui as sole editor.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 10:39, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, I should romanized it either way I guess. Thank you for your ping. Ratskui (talk) 15:30, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
If they are redirects or text, e.g. Category:Жизнь (text), then we certainly do accept them. I've also seen categories for books being written in native script, but I don't know whether that's acceptable (though it might be for old books that have never been translated). For subjects that might not have an English name (e.g. a church in a small village), I tend to either translate the name (if possible) or romanize it. Nakonana (talk) 15:04, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Diff post, 1 April 2025, How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects

I think that this could be interesting here too. WMF just posted a Diff post on how after early 2024 Wikimedia has experienced a 50% increase in bandwidth usage primarily from AI scraper bots collecting training data from their image repositories, with at least 65% of resource-intensive traffic coming from bots. This is not from the WMF posts but i think that situation could be helped if there would be least pre-scaled image repository where to download images instead of hammering the main servers.

--Zache (talk) 12:21, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

See also m:Community_Wishlist/Wishes/Physical Wikimedia Commons media dumps (for backups, AI models, more metadata). Prototyperspective (talk) 13:05, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
I've been getting random loading errors here and there for at least the last couple of months. I wonder if the load from AI bots has something to do with it. Hopefully they come up with a way to keep the load from effecting the user experince regardless. Off-site backups and hosting of popular files would certainly help. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:53, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand — Stoned Fox

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the Wikimedia Foundation office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.

The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Stoned Fox. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Category search by

Over the months i've developed a couple more Template:Category search by: Special:Prefixindex/Template:Category_search_by, by hour, month, number of direct cats.... you can test them out at for example Category:NASA files uploaded by OptimusPrimeBot. (i will update the older doc later.)

you can add the subtemplates directly to categories for use, so you have many customisation options and can choose what works best for the categories you use. RoyZuo (talk) 19:40, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

How did I edit a cascading protected page?

How did I edit the Picture of the Day, when it clearly says "This page is currently protected, and can be edited only by administrators."? Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 20:26, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I think it only prevents the image being overwritten, it doesn’t prevents edits to the file description. See Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/02#Cascade protection and bullet point 3 on Commons:Village pump/Technical/Archive/2025/03#Tech News: 2025-10. Tvpuppy (talk) 20:57, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Final proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter now posted

The proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and the U4C Charter are now on Meta-wiki for community notice in advance of the voting period. This final draft was developed from the previous two rounds of community review. Community members will be able to vote on these modifications starting on 17 April 2025. The vote will close on 1 May 2025, and results will be announced no later than 12 May 2025. The U4C election period, starting with a call for candidates, will open immediately following the announcement of the review results. More information will be posted on the wiki page for the election soon.

Please be advised that this process will require more messages to be sent here over the next two months.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 02:03, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Recordings more than six days long

Not really long

These files are officially more than six days long. However, if you play them, you hear a single word or phrase, then the recording stops playing. Can anyone guess what's going on with them? Based on the descriptions (which match the recording) and the file sizes (7 KB in each case), the length is erroneous; I'm not concerned that we've lost more than six days of sound. Note that all three are uploads over originals that were 0.0 seconds long (but each original sounds the same as the one that overwrote it); all six versions should probably be something like a second or at least half a second. Nyttend (talk) 19:24, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

It looks as though @TheDJ just fixed these three files. I'll run a Quarry query in a bit to look for other files with similar issues. Omphalographer (talk) 19:55, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
I've found a few more files with similar issues, mostly pronunciations as well. (I wonder if there's an issue with the mobile application which is causing these files to have corrupted lengths.) See quarry:query/92525 for a list. Omphalographer (talk) 23:16, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Apparently really long

File:Eo-plezuro.ogg

This one, on the other hand, may be as long as it says. However, the original upload and the current version both begin with a few words and then go to silence. I don't feel like listening to 163 hours of silence; is there some way to review the file to see if it's just silence the rest of the time? And if it is just silence, is there a way to "crop" it (not sure what the right term is with sound) to just the first few seconds? Note that the file history claims that the original is 0.0 seconds long, but obviously it's not. Nyttend (talk) 19:24, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

This file wasn't actually 163 hours long; it was merely 15 hours and 40 minutes of silence. I've trimmed that off. However, the contents of the file don't even remotely match with the filename - the user reads the words "rondo, sango, sédio, speco", then makes some comments in Portuguese about "How do you pause? Am I pressing the right button?". It would appear that they didn't. Omphalographer (talk) 20:04, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Related: phab:T376137 (FLAC and MID files display a duration of 0 (zero seconds)). Prototyperspective (talk) 13:19, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Architectual style

is there a name for such kind of wall? or what is this pattern called in geometry? RoyZuo (talk) 06:36, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

They aren't the exact same thing but it looks pretty similar to diamond rustication. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:57, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
It reminds me of structures that could be found in the German Democratic Republic, some sort of large commercial building --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:06, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
I just created Category:Bauhaus Berlin Halensee, with two sources as proofs. The sources may give hints to the architectural style and category improvements. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 02:03, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Oh "sheesh", just found out that there already exists Category:Bauhaus Kurfürstendamm. I'll merge the two. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 02:05, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

List of Endangered US Gov resources

Connecting to older posts, The ArchiveTeam has a list with endangered US Government websites. These shall be downloaded and archived with higher priority: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/US_Government

--PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 20:12, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Default signature

Default signature looks like this 

[[User:Example|Example]] ([[User talk:Example|talk]]) Example (talk)

However, also by default, users initially have no user pages.

So, what's the point of default including a red link to the user page, which often is non existent? An effect of this can be seen on Commons talk:Abuse filter, which is full of new users and hence many red links.

Instead of user page, a link to user talk page and a link to Special:Contributions are way more frequently used and useful.

(previously raised: Commons_talk:Administrators#c-RoyZuo-20241101115500-Commander_Keane-20241029164200.)--RoyZuo (talk) 10:07, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The fact that they don't have a user page is informative. - Jmabel ! talk 23:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Most people who lack a user page abandon their accounts shortly after creating one, or participate only very sporadically. For those who do choose to engage long-term, having the user page in their signature provides an easy and natural prompt to create one, and in a way it serves as your "face" on this site - neither the contributions nor talk page serve a purpose similar to this. Removing the user page link from signatures would diminish its visibility, and by extension its role in encouraging community participation. You could make an argument to have the contributions page added to the default signature, but I strongly oppose removing the user page from it. ReneeWrites (talk) 18:16, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
that sounds like circular reasoning for including links to non existent pages. why not let users choose to include the links only after they have created the pages? why make that decision for the users themselves? RoyZuo (talk) 13:06, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
People can already set their signature as they wish, with quite a bit of latitude. But I am saying that I find the current default useful, (and I believe ReneeWrites is saying the same). - Jmabel ! talk 15:22, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

NOAA services going offline soon

Apparently "Services for NOAA will be going offline as soon as tomorrow night. (april 4th)".[1] Some groups are already working on scraping the pages. It would be great if folks could look through the following sites for media and datasets that are worth transferring to Commons (before they disappear):

If you don't live in the U.S., here's some context about what's going on: [2][3][4] Nosferattus (talk) 23:37, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

A mirror of climate.gov (subpage of NOAA.gov) can be found here: https://climate.govarchive.us/ --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:53, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
I am batch downloading some images. I am happy to see people joining :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:58, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Files can be found here: https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES18/
"DownThemAll" can batch download the links --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:59, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
  • Additional useful links:
  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvi7dtWVn6c (Downloading through API via PowerShell) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:55, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Shutdown has been averted, for the moment: https://www.axios.com/2025/04/04/noaa-research-websites-go-dark-saturday-night
I already saved >1,6 TB and more than 530,000 files --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:07, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
@Nosferattus But the danger does not seem to be over yet --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:09, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Office actions/DMCA notices/2022–23

Can I split this into two separate archives (one for 2022 and the other for 2023) for consistency of archived pages, despite 2022 only having one listed DMCA takedown notice?

Note that I first archived both 2022 and 2023 notices into one single page for practicality, even if it may not be consistent with other DMCA page archives. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 09:26, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Just a note, the since 2022 action had a comment from 2023. So would depend on if we archive based on first post date, or by last comment date. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 12:22, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Perhaps this is the only instance of a comment that dates the next year (haven't seen such instances in other DMCA notice talk page archives). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 09:02, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

External archive of Commons

Please download the file

https://p-7.eu/MW/H.ASCII

This is an ASCII file of 6.2 MB in size. It contains the MD5 and SHA1 hashes of the backups as of 20 March 2025 of 1007 public wikis of the Wikimedia Foundation (including the German-language and English-language Wikipedia, Wikidata, WikiCommons and all other WikiMedia wikis).

If Wikipedia unexpectedly disappears completely, or if there is a suspicion that Wikipedia and the backups are being falsified, it is possible to use these hashes to verify that backups of Wikipedia from 20 March 2025 are authentic.

Please archive on a data carrier (SDcard, USB stick, DVD, mdisk, paper printout, MicroFiche) that is not connected to a computer, preferably in a fire and flood-proof safe.

Please also follow the account @Data_is@no.pony.farm which is about external archiving of Commons outside the USA. --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 18:41, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for you effort. But it feels a bit exaggerated to me. To have free online works like Wikipedia disappeared is very hard (especially when it has a rather handy size). There are several hoarders who keep copies and backups of Wikipedia snippets or as whole. Kiwix distributes ZIM files that are like snapshots of Wikipedia. Caution is good, but we should not fear the worst :). Anyway I downloaded all featured pictures on Commons some weeks ago, which make up around 350 gigabytes. For example, the university of Erlangen in Germany has copies of Wikipedias that are up-to-date (https://ftp.fau.de/kiwix/zim/wikipedia/) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:17, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
If Wikipedia unexpectedly disappears completely, or if there is a suspicion that Wikipedia and the backups are being falsified, it is possible to use these hashes to verify that backups of Wikipedia from 20 March 2025 are authentic.
Backups aren't public: they are kept in private by WMF (for a good reason, since they contain truly private information). Public dumps can be downloaded by anyone, and are copied to several mirrors worldwide. The problem is that media files are excluded from them, and there are no media dumps for now. But maybe an important part of the files in Commons is already stored offline by people even more paranoid than me :-)
This page contains useful information for mass downloading files from Commons, if anyone is interested.
In any case, both these current worries and the AI bot activity that is affecting Commons (I don't know if anyone has already talked about it here, but it might be an interesting topic), are good reasons, I think, to have media dumps in place again (Commons size has increased a lot, but it's sad to think that for a brief period around 2012 there were media dumps, and now there aren't). MGeog2022 (talk) 15:44, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Commons is already on the radar of the archive team, but I don't have information about the status. But it's true, the remaining of files and data must be discussed broadly, as they are very precious. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:00, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
It feels like data hoarders could soon be the heroes of tomorrow, when many people realizing how many files are/were at risk --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:08, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Specific kind of tiling meant for car parking

what category fits? RoyZuo (talk) 22:55, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Category:Outdoor car parks, Category:Public car parks shouldn't be totally wrong. --Enyavar (talk) 23:23, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
I would call these "pavers": paver (Q3328263), and following the category tree there is actually Category:Concrete paving slabs in Germany with one file already in it! No Category:Pavers by application that I could see though. I don't think it is a public car park, as it has a number so it belongs to somebody. Commander Keane (talk) 00:55, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
thx a lot! i will put it somewhere under such existing cats but not create new ones since there's Commons:Categories for discussion/2019/12/Category:Pavements (architecture). RoyZuo (talk) 07:59, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
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