User talk:MGeog2022

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, MGeog2022!

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-- Wikimedia Commons Welcome (talk) 12:31, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

File:GIJON CENTRO.png

File:GIJON CENTRO.png has been nominated for deletion at Commons:Deletion requests/File:GIJON CENTRO.png This is a deletion request for the community to discuss whether the nominated page should be kept or deleted. Please voice your opinion in the linked request above. Thank you very much! If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. Please see Commons:But it's my own work! for a guide on how to address these issues. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

In addition, I noticed that you've made malformed deletion requests. Here, {{Delete}} is not for speedy deletion, please see COM:DP. When you want to delete a page by manually using the {{Delete}} template (rather than the automatic Nominate for deletion or Nominate category for discussion tool in the Tools menu on the sidebar per COM:DR#Starting requests and COM:CFD#Starting requests), you must follow the instructions in the template, including the "Click here to show further instructions" portion (or Commons:Deletion requests/Listing a request manually policy or the "By hand" portion of COM:CFD#Starting requests, normally collapsed), otherwise you will create a lot of work for other people.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 00:49, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

And also:

• File:GIJON ESTE.png
• File:GIJON OESTE.png
• File:GIJON SUR.png
• File:OVIEDO CENTRO.png
• File:OVIEDO ESTE.png
• File:OVIEDO OESTE.png

  — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 01:03, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm new to Wikimedia Commons. Thank you very much for the advice, and above all, for fixing all seven malformed deletion requests. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:27, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

You're welcome, but you forgot to ping me.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 13:29, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: OK, I'm pinging you now. I'm still learning :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 13:33, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Good. You've been through COM:FS, right?   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 13:35, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: Yes, I've read "first steps".

I'll mark all 7 old images with "speedydelete" and the same reason they now have each one of them. I was the original uploader of all 7, and have changed all uses in Commons and Wikipedia to the new JPEG equivalents. I would have liked to upload a new version for all them, but it is not possible to replace an image with another in a different format. I could not create (original files were in PDF format) new PNG images with good quality and reasonable size, so I had to make JPEG ones. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:48, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Which criteria for speedy deletion do they meet? Please understand that on WMF projects any png image will look fuzzy when scaled down (due to design decisions discussed in phab:T192744).   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 14:02, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: They were of lower quality themselves, as compared with the new JPEG ones (it's easy to see it when viewed with enough zoom). I made a mistake using PNG for this kind of image at first. I'll add "F8. Exact or scaled-down duplicate" to all of them. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:08, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: All of them are now tagged with "This file is an exact duplicate or scaled-down version of:". I hope everything is OK now. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:20, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

You could add that to the DR subpages along with {{Vsd}}.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 16:41, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

File:GIJON ESTE.png

File:GIJON ESTE.png has been nominated for deletion at Commons:Deletion requests/File:GIJON ESTE.png This is a deletion request for the community to discuss whether the nominated page should be kept or deleted. Please voice your opinion in the linked request above. Thank you very much! If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. Please see Commons:But it's my own work! for a guide on how to address these issues. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

Túrelio (talk) 18:50, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Autopatroller

Hi, I gave you the Autopatroller right. Thanks for your contributions. Yann (talk) 19:20, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

@Yann, thanks for the info. You're welcome :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 19:22, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Huge datasets worth preserving?

Hi!

As many data on the web vanished (partly due to political motivations), I would like to ask you if you know useful datasets that could be uploaded to Commons? I am covering orthophotos of Germany right now, but I can imagine you have some good ideas, too :)

Greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:21, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello @PantheraLeo1359531. I don't know many details about the US datasets that are currently in big danger, but I suspect that they are mostly numeric or textual data that I don't know how they would exactly fit into Commons (but they probably could). It's great to have freely licensed orthophotos and maps about one's own country. It's also the case with, for example, Spain and the United States, but, unfortunately, not with countries such as the United Kingdom.

There are some cases where I dream about having full collections in maps uploaded to Commons, but I think about it as something almost impossible to do it by myself, due to the needed time and effort:

• Spain's National Topographic Map (source: https://centrodedescargas.cnig.es/): I've uploaded the maps for the main cities and several interesting areas, for the first digital edition of MTN50 (1:50,000 scale). It would be great to have the more than 1,000 sheets that form that edition of the map (a unique edition because it shows full Spain consistently as it was in the 1999-2010 period, while other editions, both pre-digital and the next digital editions, are updated only on a per-sheet basis, in very different dates). In addition, it would be even greater to have all the sheets of all editions of MTN50, and the same for MTN25 (1:25,000 scale). There are lots of sheets of MTN25 in Commons, but probably not all from all editions.
• All versions of all orthophotos of Spain from PNOA (same source: https://centrodedescargas.cnig.es/).
• All the sheets of all editions of United States Geological Survey (USGS) maps (source: https://www.usgs.gov/). This is a really HUGE number for sure.
• The same for other countries with freely licensed maps.
• The full collection of 123 sheets of 2010 orthophotomap of Asturias in PDF format (source: https://ideas.asturias.es/).

Except for the last case, fully uploading (including setting the descriptions, etc) any of these sets of maps is a really formidable work, but using automated tools perhaps could make it possible. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:40, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! When I have time and resources, I may upload some of them :)

Some items sound like Commons:Batch uploading.

Greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:11, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, thanks to you for asking for proposals! :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 19:40, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Yayy :) Digital preservation is a very important topic to me, and I am horrified how people do not care about this topic, let it be in my hometown and elsewhere :(. If you have new ideas, please let me know :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:55, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, an update on this: I uploaded the remaining sheets from the 2010 orthophotomap of Asturias in PDF format, and it's fully uploaded by now. More sheets from the first digital edition of MTN50 (1:50,000 scale) have been uploaded by me and other users, but many others still remain without being uploaded. Regarding other countries with freely licensed maps, I'm sure many is still to be done, but, for Switzerland's case, it's already done, and the result (I have not contributed to it at all) is really great. MGeog2022 (talk) 11:02, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

I think it needs the effort of many OpenRefine-fluent users to upload the humongous amounts of files, as we face several 100,000 files and many many Terabytes in total. Thank you for your efforts :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:45, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Stance on Mapillary

Hi!

I stumbled across Mapillary some weeks ago. It is a free panoramic viewer of street imagery. As it covers also streets of many countries, even in special areas, I would like to know what your opinion is on backing up this content. As Mapillary is owned by Meta, it could be subject to restrictions or more in the near future. It covers many many million images, many also useful for Commons. Kind regards, --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:20, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

(example: imagery of Greenland PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:20, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi, @PantheraLeo1359531! I didn't know about Mapillary: I wished that something like "OpenStreetView" existed, and it seems that it already existed :-D

Of course, if all or part of its content is freely licensed, my opinion is that it would be great to upload it (or the freely licensed parts) to Commons. If it's several TB in size, it would be good to talk first about it on Village Pump or the like, though. My opinion (and I hope the opinion of most Wikimedians also) is that all free educational (including historical, not necessarily old) media has its place in Commons, unless it's too much burden for Commons total storage size (we don't know what's "too much" without asking: maybe doubling current Commons size is a problem, maybe it isn't).

In this case, a solution would be to prioritize the images considered as most important. Another point would be to categorize the images so they can still be "navigated" in some way, in Commons. Depending on how many people are interested, it would even be possible to create a navigation viewer plugin in Commons (similar to the current ZoomViewer), using OpenStreetMap and the uploaded Mapillary images. MGeog2022 (talk) 10:51, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

I had a talk in a Telegram chat of Wikimedians. They were also in favor of uploading content, but the problem is that some sequences may have unnecessary images (unsharp, wrong focus, etc.). I assume that the WMF can handle some petabytes without problems. I think it would be good to have a crawler that crawls the sequence IDs (in a certain area) to download the high-res (through the API) files and to remove the low-quality ones before upload. Especially high-populated places have incredibly much images. Even my hometown (<50000 inhabitants) has maybe 15000 to 20000 files :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:49, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Even if we would get into too high storage problems, the transfer could be stretched onto more months ;) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 12:03, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, good luck with it, it sounds as a really formidable work. Yes, WMF, with its budget, could host several PB for sure (including backups and redundancy), but it has to first take the step to prioritize investments in expanding the storage capacity.

Mapillary images eventually making more than half of total Commons size sounds a bit strange, but, given than many movies and other filmings will enter public domain over the next years, Commons total size will grow a lot for sure, so it's unlikely Mapillary will take more than half of the space for much time. I hope WMF commits strongly to Commons needs: media files take a lot of space, but they are much needed, both to complement the content of Wikipedia and other wikis, and for preservation of historical materials. MGeog2022 (talk) 18:22, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

I have here some graphs about the growth :). I think I will talk wit some other people how this could be realised. Maybe like beginning with some thousands files per day :). I would expect that this runs in the background, and possibly won't aggregate that many terabytes so quickly anyway. File:Zuwachs der Datenmenge auf Commons pro Jahr in Terabyte 20250322.svg, File:Entwicklung der Datenmenge auf Wikimedia Commons 20220507.svg

--PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:40, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

I transmitted a request. Funny enough, the recipient thought about a batch importer, too. Let's see what happens :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:24, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, for several million images, yes, it makes sense to think about automatic batch uploading :D

While being data from a single source, that could make more than half of total Commons size, I think it's good to have it here despite that, because it's like a "view of (parts of) the world", that wouldn't be otherwise possible to have available in Wikimedia. That is, it's a really big amount of data, but also a very important one.

By the way, whether it's eventually added to Commons or not, it would be fine to also include it in OpenStreetMap as a kind of "OpenStreetView", if OpenStreetMap is open to that (and it would help to expand the coverage of the street views, with the help of OpenStreetMap community). MGeog2022 (talk) 12:52, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Fun fact: Afaik one similar project was named OpenStreetView but requested to change its name :D. But you're totally right. We need to connect the data between Mapillary, OSM and Wikimedia Commons, preferably with redundancies to avoid data loss. The advantages are clear: Digital twins as public good (accessible for everyone)^[1], records of past structures, educational value and structured data, can be combined with OpenGeoData by (for example) German "Landesämter" (like lidar measurements, orthophotos, maps, etc.). And we need a strong free alternative to all the commercial services who set up a huge anti-Commons (unfortunately with the help of many million people who gift their imagery to them for free). Being dependent on commercial services is like sitting on a twig that is about to burst, but you don't know when exactly. ArchiveTeam claims that Mapillary has a few petabytes of footage. Of course it's a lot, but not impossible. The big challenge will be in the near future to change the opinion of the society towards free and open data while companies shamelessly accessing more and more (personal) data (you certainly know about the fatal actions of US government and companies like Palantir, digital feudalism, etc.). When I tell people what I do, many don't see the importance or may look irritated at me😕.

[1] At one fair, we had representants of the district of my hometown and they showed the advantages of digital twins (for example putting in a possible new building into the environment that could be built there, etc.). Many people don't know about the advantages and then claim there are none. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:48, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, yes, that's clear: commercial companies have no obligation to preserve the data they store, and they only store it while it makes money. That's the advantage of non-profit foundations such as WMF or Internet Archive (in the latter case, if they properly backuped their data, which I doubt, as I've expressed in Village Pump), because they are commited to keeping the data in perpetuity.

When I tell people what I do, many don't see the importance or may look irritated at me: you can just tell them to imagine what would happen if that data vanished tomorrow. For example, Google has the legal right to close Street View at any moment... yes, it's very profitable, but maybe the historic images aren't, so they could delete them to save space. "Good vs bad" rethoric may not persuade some people, but it's just about purpose: commercial companies are created to make money, while certain non-profits are created to preserve knowledge, and both have their place (some companies create freely licensed content that can be preserved by the non-profits, in the same way many companies create free software that can be preserved by, for example, the non-profit Debian project).

the advantages of digital twins: this includes preserving how streets or buildings looked at a certain time. With notable buildings, this is usually guaranteed. If you like your own (past or present) house or street, you should like that its present look is as preserved as the ones from notable buildings are. MGeog2022 (talk) 13:23, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

There are good points :). Yeah of course, how many people like to see what their neighborhood looked years or decades ago :D. I think the trend on generating automated imagery of streets etc. will increase, but the question of preserving them will be huge issue. Many, many exabytes will be created and need to be stored, I really hope that concepts by public libraries and archives will be set up soon to combat this issue. Basically, it's often OUR data for data FOR US, so it needs to be treated like that :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:19, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

@MGeog2022 I have news. We now have an importer that imports Mapillary sequences to Commons :). --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:12, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, thanks for the info! It's great to know that street images from around the world will be available in Commons thanks to your work (and, probably, also the work of others).

In your first message here about this topic, you talked about imagery of Greenland. Yeah, that's a good starting point just now. Just have a look here... I'm sure it's the one getting the most visits this week, out of all the files uploaded by me. Greenland is a guarantee of success at this very moment :-D MGeog2022 (talk) 13:50, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Indeed! I hope the tool will be used by many many other users with joy ;). What are you doing now with the popularity? ;D --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 17:55, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, really wonderful, wow! Thanks. The only problem is that the images are not categorized, other than the hidden categories (I thought categorization would also be automatic). Unfortunately, I've added 722 images to the list of uncategorized files currently in Commons :-( MGeog2022 (talk) 20:37, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Happens ;). Fixed it! I use Mapillary ({{mapillary.user.username}}) {{captured.date}} {{captured.hours}}H{{captured.minutes}}M{{captured.seconds}}S{{captured.milliseconds}} ({{mapillary.photo.id}} at {{mapillary.photo.sequence}} with {{camera.make}} {{camera.model}}).jpg as name template (to include any information in the title name, and usually the categories: [[Category:Photographs of <CITY> from Mapillary (<SEQUENCE ID>)]] ::::::::::[[Category:Files from Mapillary uploaded by PantheraLeo1359531]] ::::::::::[[Category:Images from Mapillary uploaded with Curator]] ::::::::::[[Category:Files uploaded by PantheraLeo1359531]], while there are my usercats. Maybe this helps :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 21:22, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Category:Photographs of Gijón from Mapillary (eGHX9vG3ArtcQjBo9sjSOg) PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 21:22, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, many thanks! Could you give me a step-by-step about where "Category:Photographs of <CITY> from Mapillary (<SEQUENCE ID>)" is to be placed, in the tool? Thanks in advance. It's the only part I need before doing more Mapillary uploads (since "Category:Images from Mapillary uploaded with Curator" is automatically added, and I don't use nominal categories for my uploads). This is a very interesting tool :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 22:33, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Another thing: I see that "Category:Photographs of Aserbaidschan from Mapillary" was created by you. The correct name in English is Azerbaijan, not Aserbaidschan. Similar case with "Category:Photographs of Comores from Mapillary", where the English name is Comoros. MGeog2022 (talk) 23:00, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Oh damn, this is some sort of German version D: Will fix that soon, thanks for mentioning! --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:24, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, you're welcome :) MGeog2022 (talk) 14:00, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

At point 3 EDIT, there is a section called "Fallbacks". Inside it, there is a textbox with a grey "Categories". This is basically the area where you can add wikitext (like [[Category:Photographs from Mapillary etc.]] or FoP-Templates). The "Exclude from date category" is useful if you manually add [[Category:<COUNTRY> photographs taken on YYYY-MM-DD]]. Then it does get categorized in the country photographs category, not the mothercat :). Greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:23, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, many thanks, it's working fine! Good things will be done with this tool ;-) MGeog2022 (talk) 13:59, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531: I've had a problem: I missed the "Category:" part in an upload. Is it possible to add "Category:Photographs of New York City from Mapillary (e6dm23f8qovg9our24i9z7)" to all the photos I'm uploading now, replacing the "Photographs of New York City from Mapillary (e6dm23f8qovg9our24i9z7)" text? I'm not familiar with Commons automation tools. That's the problem with mass uploads: errors are not manually fixable. I'll try to be more careful in the future. Thanks in advance (please wait until about 1 hour from now, at least, so the upload is complete). MGeog2022 (talk) 15:10, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

Suggestion: a "Cancel" button in the tool would be very useful. MGeog2022 (talk) 15:12, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

Noted.

If you have a running process, you can click on "past uploads" in the upper right and choose your upload. Ongoing uploads should have a cancel button :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:24, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, so is it possible to fix it, isn't it? Thanks for fixing it when the moment arrives, and thanks for the info about the button (I won't cancel now, since I understood that it's possible to fix the category issue). I also suppose that if I log out the mass upload that I started will continue until the end, isn't it? MGeog2022 (talk) 15:29, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

Confirmed: the upload goes on after logging out (this makes the tool even greater!). So time to take a rest, and, when using it again, I will be more careful. Now that I know that I don't need to be looking at the upload as it progresses (and that, probably, I can start several parallel uploads without problem), I'll dedicate more time to looking twice at the categorization :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 15:37, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

 Done Don't worry, mistakes happen ;). I fixed the categorization with VisualFileChange. I filed a request to automatically add the milliseconds to the title, because sometimes 2 or more images are taken within one second, and they are uploaded to the same file name. The millisecond timestamp makes every filename unique. Greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:35, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, many thanks again! Things are usually fixed quicker here than in many paid services :-D MGeog2022 (talk) 20:27, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

As it should be ;). Happy to help! --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 20:34, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

You probably know it already, but keep in mind that while uploading Mapillary imagery, some countries like France don't have FoP :( --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:39, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, oh... does this mean that the photos of Paris I uploaded (or part of them) will be deleted? Well, "de minimis" may well apply in many cases, so I hope there is no problem. But thanks for the info, I'll keep it in mind. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:32, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

Category:Photographs of Paris from Mapillary (4jQnB8XkNUM3E59wDzG1Io) looks good. As panoramic, de minimis should work here. I just saw the batch and was remembered because of the problematic French jurisdiction, so I just wanted to tell, for potential future conflicts :). PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:35, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, thanks! For now, I won't upload photos from non-FoP countries, but in the future, if it's confirmed there is no problem thanks to de-minimis, I'll do. MGeog2022 (talk) 14:38, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

Well, probably, I alarmed myself too much :). You clarified it well enough: for panoramics, de minimis should work here. But it's important that such Mapillary photos are panoramic (many others aren't, and I wasn't thinking about FoP, so many thanks for the warning: uploading 700 copyvios is not funny).MGeog2022 (talk) 14:41, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, the problem is really annoying, so I wanted to warn soon enough :D. I thought about panoramics from Syria, but the similar problem here. For panoramics (especially yours from France), I don't see any problems, but other pictures from Mapillary may be. I focus on pictures from FoP countries for architecture, which are quite a lot :). [[COM:FOP <COUNTRY>]] usually gives advice on what from which country is okay to be depicted :). Greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:19, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for making this tool! But can you please upload it somewhere where its easier to find, since i had to look at this user talk page to find a very helpful tool which should (in my opinion) be somewhere for everyone to find. Thanks ! CubanoBoi (talk) 01:01, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

@CubanoBoiHi! Yes, the tool is in a sort of Beta stadium, and there are still some things to figure out, especially when it comes to a mass usage by many users at the same time. This is why I wanted to perform a smaller rollout ;). But I will talk about how to make the next steps. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 09:52, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

@CubanoBoi, just a detail: this tool was not created by me. As @PantheraLeo1359531 told me, the tool was coded by DaxServer and became public in November 2025. I'm only an intensive user of the tool, not its author :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 13:42, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Some news on archiving...

Hey, as more and more data is generated and also endangered, we also experience an increase in archived data through Commons (File:Zuwachs der Datenmenge auf Commons pro Jahr in Terabyte 20250322.svg) and the Internet Archive (File:Unique data of the Internet Archive 20260105.svg). For Commons, we also archived 50 TB in January 2026 alone, 21% of the data compared to 2025 or 2020 in total. Some good news for data preservarion :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:54, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, thanks for the info! And, the most important news, that data now seems to be really preserved. WMF has proper media backups since around 2021 (before that moment, it hadn't, and, sometimes, bugs resulted in data loss), and Internet Archive has backups "around the world", according to a 2025 CNN article. I don't know when they did start, but data from 2016 showed that they had only 2 copies, both in San Francisco area; that's why I was so worried about it and I talked about it several times in Village Pumps (both Commons and Wikipedia), before I knew about the good news.

As for those new 50 TB, without my Mapillary mass uploads this weekend (I had to take advantage of my free time on the weekend), they would probable be 49 :). It was a hard work, but we now have photos from many countries, uploaded mainly by you and me, as I could see in the tool's history. I don't know if the tool is still in a stage of "beta testing", but maybe it would be good to talk about it in Village Pump, so many other users can join us (perhaps restricted to autoconfirmed or autopatrolled users, or some other measure to prevent miscategorization by unexperienced users). Both the tool and our many uploaded files deserve to be better known! MGeog2022 (talk) 20:19, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

Indeed! The tool was coded by DaxServer and became public in November 2025. I was allowed to test it and make suggestions. I think it is already quite mature, but I am careful to make it very public, because it could put the tool under pressure when it has too much users :D. Thank you for covering major cities! Maybe we can find a proper solutions in following discussions.

My wish is that the awareness for data preservation moves across society... Kind regards :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 20:32, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, I think a potential problem is that a non-autopatrolled user can quickly gain the right to become autopatrolled (>500 edits) by using the tool. But, probably, it's not the only way to achieve this by using mass uploads. I hope admins also look at the quality of the edits and not only the numbers :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 13:48, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Haha, good point :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:14, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Feedback on Commons:Curator

Hi! I wrote Commons:Curator some days ago as manual for new users. I would appreciate your feedback in terms of understanding the text and your improvement suggestions :). All the best! --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:18, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, it looks very good. Only a small suggestion to improve it: include also how to get the sequence key, step by step (clicking the circle with the three dots, etc). I've just made another improvement: providing a direct link to the tool, so my talk page is no longer the primary way to get it :-D

I'll also add Mapillary and your manual to this page. MGeog2022 (talk) 20:20, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Another suggestion: mention that the batch upload continues working even if the user logs out. At the same time, ask the user to be patient, since there is a single common queue for all the users. MGeog2022 (talk) 20:41, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, I try to apply the changes in the next days. :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 21:20, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, you're welcome :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 13:45, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

I added a new little feature: You can now categorize Mapillary images by date. If you uploaded a batch, you can add the Category Mapillary photographs taken on YYYY-MM-DD to the batch category. There you enter {{Mapillary photographs taken on navbox}} :3. All the best! --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:57, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

I also added Category:Photographs from Mapillary by event which the imagery related to the Category:Late January 2026 North American winter storm, as imagery on the map can be filtered by creation date on Mapillary. Maybe you know images containing buildings or structures that don't exist anymore. For these cases, you can add images to Category:Photographs of former structures from Mapillary. Kind regards :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:07, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, thanks for the info. For now, I'm doing mass imports by city/town only, but it can be useful in the future :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 13:22, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, the systematic processing of cities is a useful task :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:25, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, I see you added date categories to some of my Mapillary uploads, thank you. Sorry if I am too lazy, but creating those categories every time I do a Mapillary upload, seems too much work to me (many times, one needs to create the country, administrative division, city and sequence categories, and to link to the "photographies of ..." or main category for several of these items). Maybe I will dedicate some day to create and assign lots of date categories to the sequence categories created by me, but such a day hasn't arrived yet :-D MGeog2022 (talk) 14:26, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

That's no problem ;). Just a little idea by me for the very eager. Maybe I can add some :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:53, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

I just thought it is funny to have chronological sorting and how many dates can be collected :). The oldest image I found on Mapillary is from 2002. Some image are tagged with 1989 or even 1970, but this is not correct or valid --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:04, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, yes, no doubt it is very useful to have them organized by date when possible. I don't know if older photos are allowed in Mapillary (if that's the case, even those 1970 photos could be correct). MGeog2022 (talk) 16:07, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

They seem to be allowed, but the 1970 photos were made by digital cameras on Mapillary, but there were no (high-res) digital cameras ;). Afaik they were claimed to be taken on 1970-01-01 --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:34, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

I added images to Commons:Curator. Maybe I can make a video walkthrough soon... --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:32, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, thanks for the info. Yes, a video would make things even clearer. For now, there are more than 237,000 images in category Images from Mapillary uploaded with Curator, so nearly 2 out of 1,000 files in Commons are Mapillary images imported using Curator. Not bad :-D MGeog2022 (talk) 20:18, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

Coorect :). I think the number will grow even faster, soon. The developer also examines some options to speed up procedures, this would be necessary. Imagine having 10+ users acting at the same time... 🫠 --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:40, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I may create a file with the growth soon. This makes the increase visible --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:40, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I added a video to the guide page. I hope it is useful :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:19, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Valued Image Promoted

★ Your nomination has been reviewed and promoted ★
Congratulations! The image you nominated was reviewed and has now been promoted as a valued image. It is considered to be the most valued image on Commons within the scope:
3D model of a fused grid district.
If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Valued images candidates.

review

•  Comment The scope is too broad.--Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
•  Comment I changed the scope to a more precise one, I hope it's OK now. MGeog2022 (talk) 20:11, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
•  Support Useful and used --Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 07:14, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

Result: 1 support, 0 oppose =>
promoted. Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 07:06, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

--VICBot2 (talk) 00:19, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Valued Image Promoted

★ Your nomination has been reviewed and promoted ★
Congratulations! The image you nominated was reviewed and has now been promoted as a valued image. It is considered to be the most valued image on Commons within the scope:
21st-century maps of Manhattan, New York City.
If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Valued images candidates.

review

•  Support the best indeed --Gower (talk) 17:51, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Result: 1 support, 0 oppose =>
promoted. Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 16:29, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

--VICBot2 (talk) 00:23, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

USGS imagery

Hi! I remembered your suggestions for archiving. USGS offers an S3 url with many files. (https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html). I don't know if all files are public domain. I assume we have to check this via the Sciencebase, like here, when we look up the originator. Maybe I find a way, then I could mass import the files from there. I can imagine, you have some ideas on that topic :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:06, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Hello, @PantheraLeo1359531! All USGS files should be in the public domain, since they are works by the federal government of the United States (see also the article on USGS itself). I don't know if there could be a rare case (for example, if the making of a USGS map was contracted to a commercial company, or the like) of a non-public domain USGS map, but, if exists, it should be a very rare exception.

The total number of sheets, multiplied by all the editions, must be really formidable, but there are already a good number of them in Commons (root category), and many of them seem to be quite recent uploads. Great if they can be mass imported like with Mapillary :-) MGeog2022 (talk) 22:38, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Nevermind, I just saw that the "The National Map" imagery is indeed all public domain as in The National Map. Okay, I will file a whitelist request :). I just have to think about a proper categorization. Maybe by US state or something... --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 09:44, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

MediaWiki_talk:Copyupload-allowed-domains#Allowlist_request_-_USGS_The_National_Map --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 09:51, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

I did a test upload: File:AS Manua Islands East 363612 2001 24000 geo.tif with a category structure, similar to the directory on the S3 AWS. Unfortunately, Commons does not support SHAPE files, LAZ (point clouds) and other important geospatial filetypes... --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 11:42, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, in addition to The National Map (mainly edited by volunteers, I see), there are many map sheets downloadable from

https://www.usgs.gov/, covering many editions for each sheet. Sadly, the quality of the USGS topographic maps degraded around 1992 (according to the Wikipedia article about USGS, the best standards were those used between 1945 and 1992). Just compare this sheet from 1966 and the 2019 edition of the same sheet. But, with better or worse quality, having the full historical series in Commons would be very useful to watch the historical evolution of the places.

Nearly 57,000 individual maps in this series, multiplied by several editions, would result in a really huge number of files to upload to Commons, but, for example, just now we have 261,906 files Mapillary images uploaded with Curator, so it wouldn't be impossible at all ;-) MGeog2022 (talk) 18:26, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

57,000 files doesn't seem to be a problem :). I can put more than 100k files in one table for OpenRefine, so this seems doable :D. Do you even have a specific USGS URL to the direct downloads? --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:30, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, sorry, I don't have any specific URL, I believe it's years since I last downloaded a map from there :-(

57,000 is the number of sheets, but, multiplied by the total number of editions (I suppose it varies from sheet to sheet, at least, that's the case with Spain's national topographic map), it will be a far higher number.

About Mapillary: in countries without freedom of panorama, I only find panoramic images. Maybe it's just coincidence, but perhaps one doesn't need to worry too much about FoP status of each country, so (possibly Mapillary itself is already taking care of it). MGeog2022 (talk) 18:37, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

Alright! I will look through it, when I have some capacities :).

Mapillary: That's an interesting aspect you cover up here. Maybe there is even in the Mapillary forum a thread about this topic --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:41, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

I had a question regarding Belarus panoramics from Mapillary (Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Panoramics_of_Belarusian_cities_despite_non-commercial_FoP), which is a similar topic. Many depicted buildings may be simple enough, especially in this case. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 18:44, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, with panoramics, de minimis is the key point, right? Only if the same copyrighted building took all the space in the panoramic, there would be problems, isn't it? MGeog2022 (talk) 18:48, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, it makes sense that they care about it: since all Mapillary images are licensed under CC-BY, in non-FoP countries, such licensing would violate copyright when a recent building is shown and de minimis isn't applicable. MGeog2022 (talk) 18:44, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

I've just found some non-panoramic Mapillary photos from Reykjavik (Iceland is a non-FoP country), so my theory can be discarded. I don't know the legal basis for such CC-BY licensing: maybe all buildings are shown in a de minimis way even while the photo is not a panoramic, but I won't take any risk. MGeog2022 (talk) 18:53, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

The question is, what is considered here. Mapillary can say the license only covers the image itself, not the depicted motifs. Maybe the awareness of FoP is not there. I wonder how this issue is managed by Google in Google Street View --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:28, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

PS: I had a talk with a WMDE member in the last days, and she said that WMF wants to focus more on Commons. This is really needed, because we still have some important actions and projects to take, as the textured 3D models, for example --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:55, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

The suggestion was thankfully approved. As a FAQ entry, we should have Public Domain here :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 20:12, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

I began the transfer here. It may be slower at the beginning, as I am watching other transfers now. If I keep going like this, I'll end up in data hell :P :D --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:07, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, good luck with the transfer.

she said that WMF wants to focus more on Commons: that's really good news. Commons is the WMF project that needs the most storage resources (for obvious reasons: the other projects only store plain text, with some exceptions), so it's good that WMF values its importance. Also, Commons, in addition to being a needed complement to Wikipedia (in the same way as, for example, Wikisource or Wiktionary, are), it's also like a part of Wikipedia, since most images (and other media files) shown in Wikipedia are hosted in Commons. So Commons is, in some way, also part of WMF's flagship project. MGeog2022 (talk) 18:46, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

This might be heretical, but I think Commons is more important than Wikipedia. Of course, having articles about mnay topics is important (especially in time of fake news), but having a free media archive, that covers anything from street imagery, heritage images, history, diagrams, media of historic events, animations of ancient cities, 3D models of mathematic conceptions, etc. in times of dying digital media has an importance that can never be appreciated appropiately. And the changes in media creation is obvious. When I see the first media on Commons, it often is some 640x480 photography of old train stations from 2005. Now we have UHD videos, 3D models, interactive SVGs, E-Books, 360 panoramics and hopefully much more, soon. Interesting time to be alive, right? So or so, we need to have a fast reacting archive, to allow more media formats, and to combat with the larger getting resources to be archived. We may have yearly growths of >1 PB soon, so we better be prepared --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 19:07, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

@PantheraLeo1359531, yes, Commons is (or at least has the potential to be) some kind of mini-Internet Archive (excluding, of course, the web archive and non-free media). Wikipedia is also very important as the vertebrating core, the entry point for every topic. From there, you can get more details from Commons (or, for example, Wikisource, if it's about a book).

I think the true sum of all human knowledge is Internet Archive. But it's too big, and content is distributed among many different sites, many of them untrustable (well, that's just the Internet, not Internet Archive's fault :-D). Wikipedia is the summary of all human knowledge, the starting point. Further knowledge is in Wikimedia sister projects (for example, the Commons category about an article's topic), and even more (references and external links, especially for non freely licensed content) is at Internet Archive. When you start from Wikipedia, most meaningful knowledge about any topic should be only a few clicks away.

Thinking about Internet Archive, I would say that its Wikipedia pages (including the parts of Commons that are archived, Wikisource, etc) are like an index for the most important parts of the full archive, the ones that allow to have access to the basic summary of all human culture. MGeog2022 (talk) 19:27, 15 February 2026 (UTC)