Commons:Village pump/Proposals

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Welcome to the Village pump proposals section

This page is used for proposals relating to the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia 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; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2024/07.

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	SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 1 day and sections whose most recent comment is older than 30 days.

Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality

I'm wondering whether Commons should adopt a guideline comparable to en:Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. We certainly have enough of the sort of problem it was intended to address, particularly for gender. - Jmabel ! talk 15:12, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Sure. Such a guideline would greatly help in case of disagreement. Regards, Yann (talk) 15:20, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

•  Support.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 03:14, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
•  Oppose without modification. We don’t have the concept of “non-diffusing“ categories here and I, for one, would oppose its introduction—at least not without separate discussion, and COM:OVERCAT would need modification to accommodate it. Users’ wanting to put things in parent-&-child cats is already a fairly common cause of conflict. On that question in general, I think a solution more natural to the way we usually solve the ‘burial problem’ is instead to have (Topic) by (secondary property) cats, which keep the over-categorization at arm’s length.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 06:12, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
  • “non-diffusing“ categories is exactly why we need this policy. Yann (talk) 07:27, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
•  Oppose Please write a specific proposal based on past cases on this project. --Fæ (talk) 07:39, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

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OK, here's a draft. Would anyone like to help hammer it into shape? (Since it is my proposal, currently in my user space, I retain the right to revert what I might consider hostile edits, but help with getting it to be a more appropriate proposal for Commons would be greatly appreciated.) - Jmabel ! talk 04:57, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

 Comment Maybe better to live with the mess for a little longer and hope (I think it should) COM:Structured data will solve some of these issues. This proposal would probably lead to less (specific) categorization which might hurt structured data in the long term. - Alexis Jazz 05:23, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

•  Oppose the draft is not helpful since it is based on the english encyclopedia section that is about writing an article. In commons we discuss media, it does not make sense to request reliable sources to use a category since sources are not used in commons. --Neozoon (talk) 23:38, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
• Well to comment on "For example, most sportspeople should not be categorized by religion, since being Catholic, Buddhist, or another religion is not relevant to the way they perform in sports." ehhh... It could happen that someone in a certain sport that is only performed in countries of a certain religion could be controversial because of their (ir)religion, comparatively one could make the exact same argument for ethnicity because it doesn't matter if you're German-American, Irish-Canadian, Russian-Brazilian, or whatever as these things don't influence their ability to perform a sport while discrimination based on race has historically been a very common topic in sports and removing the ethnicity of a sportsperson could ironically remove why they were notable playing thatdd sport (think of negro Vs. white baseball leagues), and race and ethnicity aren't always clearly defined, for example the famous US American actor César Romero was considered to be "White" for most of his career but after the "Hispanic and Latino" race was created in the United States of America during the 1960's or 1970's he became regarded as one at the end of his career winning awards in categories related to "Hispanics and/or Latino's". I'm personally neutral either way, someone's religion could be irrelevant to one context but notable in another. If someone is notable for being an African-American baseball player in the 1930's doesn't mean that an African-American baseball player in the 1980's is notable for anything other than their talent. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 11:54, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Hence "most sportspeople", not "sportspeople". Obviously Jackie Robinson's ethnicity is relevant, and probably so is Sandy Koufax's ethnic/religious background (Jewish, and he chose not to pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur), but does it really matter whether a random player is Catholic? - Jmabel ! talk 06:26, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to include non-CC0 licenses for the Data namespace (Part 2)

There was previous consensus here to allow CC BY and CC BY SA licenses data in the data namespace.

Legal at the WMF has commented here regarding the final steps required. User:Yurik can you help carry them out? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:10, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Proposals to improve the appeal options for blocked users and making sure they're properly informed

In light of recent events and many older ones that didn’t get the same level of scrutiny it’s clear that Wikimedia Commons’ possibilities to appeal a block need to be widened and users need to be more informed on how they can appeal. One such solution could be creating a UTRS for Wikimedia Commons, this system should be able to be accessed to all Commonswiki sysops and would eliminate the current issue where users who can’t appeal on-wiki to use an alternative revenue.

Because of the way the block that lead to this was conducted I would suggest an extra layer of scrutiny for both the deciding sysop and the blocked user by not making the readability of the UTRS appeal publicly accessible but with every appeal the appealing person will get the option “Do not make this appeal accessible to non-administrators”, this would also be necessary for appeals that concern private information. Of course as not every blocked user knows that these options exist (and in fact some users only learn of the en-wiki UTRS after their first appeal has been denied), both a full fledged guide to appealing blocks could be created and possibly a template for blocked/banned users’ "Miranda rights" could be left at all currently blocked users’ talk pages.

It’s also possible that the same UTRSBot from the English Wikipedia could deliver the templates here or maybe a separate Commons UTRSBot would have to be created. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:52, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Comments and votes

•  Support, obviously as proposer. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:52, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Blocked users deserve "Miranda rights"

Due to a current issue where the issue was raised that most users on Wikimedia Commons with no talk page or e-mail access have no right of appeal I have decided to continue with my attempt at creating a standard template that all blocked users should receive on their talk page placed there by a bot similar to User:Wikimedia Commons Welcome. Part of this proposal is that it will be added retroactively to all user talk pages to currently blocked users.

Original English Wikipedia proposal this is based on

The “Blockbox” or “Miranda rights for blocked users”.

It appears that you have been blocked.
Please read the guide to appealing blocks.
* If you are currently unable to access your talk page you may request an unblock via the Unblock Ticket Request System or the #wikipedia-en-unblock chat channel.
* Checkuser and Oversight blocks may be appealed to the Arbitration Committee.
* If you were blocked by Jimbo Wales then you may appeal directly to him and/or the Arbitration Committee.
* If this is a Sockpuppet then you should confess your main account (or IP) now so you may receive a reduced penalty.
* If you have been blocked for a username violation then you can simply create or request a new account or request to be renamed here or at #wikimedia-rename, if however the username was made in bad faith then first request a rename and then you may appeal the block; further reading Wikipedia:Changing username.
* If you have been blocked for adding promotional material or spam then please read about our policy on this and our external links policy before requesting an unblock.
** If you continue to violate this policy then the next time the duration of your block will increase. If you believe the link(s) you added aren't spam then you may request for it to be removed from the blacklist.
* If your options are currently still unclear then please read the more technical how to appeal a block.

Personally I envision this box to be light blue with a red title. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:52, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons’ "Miranda Rights"

Someone more familiar with how and why the blocking tools and their appeal works could create it.

Comments and votes

•  Support, obviously as proposer. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:52, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

#commons-unblock IRC channel

Also while we're discussing unblock options wouldn’t it also be better if there was a separate IRC channel for users to appeal their blocks? Similar to the one used by the English Wikipedia or the Japanese Wikipedia and the same rules would apply, but as it’s open to sysop-abuse where the same sysop could follow a user and ban them from all channels have this channel be publicly logged so both the appeal and the users being appealed to can be scrutinised. Of course there are some blocks that in fact can’t be discussed in the open and for that a separate #Commons-unblock-private could be created which would not be publicly logged. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:52, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Comments and votes

•  Support, obviously as proposer. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:52, 10 July 2018 (UTC)