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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/2021/11.

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Change Media of the Day to Media of the Week[edit]

I propose to change Media of the Day to Media of the Week.

Reason:

  • we have much less high-quality audio/video content than we do images.
  • whereas POTD must go through the featured picture candidates process, MOTD has no quality-based criteria for inclusion. There is a parallel process, featured media, but it gets very little participation (not nearly enough to supply one per day).
  • we do not have enough people interested to surface what high-quality audio/video content that we do have, with people instead adding low-quality content
  • changing to a weekly vs. daily basis allows for more oversight and greater selectivity without the requirement of producing a new file every day.

Recent background:
Last month, Ellywa posted to the village pump about a low-quality video of an anti-vaccination protest being showcased on our main page. We displayed it, along with the anti-vax "freedom of vaccination" slogan to our users during a pandemic. Looking more closely at upcoming MOTDs, I noticed many poor quality videos, e.g. for September 11, a video which combined shaky cellphone video at the 9/11 memorial with a personal selfie slideshow. So I opened this thread. It was there that people suggested possible solutions, including several people suggesting cutting it down to one per week. Today I checked back to see that the same person who added the first anti-vaccination protest added another one, similar to the first, which we highlighted on our main page again on October 1. Regardless of whether one thinks that it is acceptable to actively promote anti-vaccination during a pandemic, the fact remains that the files we select for MOTD are very frequently low quality.

Change Media of the Day to Media of the Week (survey)[edit]

  • Support as proposer. — Rhododendrites talk |  18:26, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support While the long-term solution is to improve the depth and breadth of featurable videos we receive as well as the vetting process, currently we do not have enough volunteer effort to maintain MOTD at a consistent quality on a daily basis. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:20, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support We should have implemented this sooner Commons:Village_pump/Proposals/Archive/2020/06#Turn_MOTD_into_MOTW 4nn1l2 (talk) 02:30, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ah! I had not seen that thread. Do we even need a new one, then, in order to move forward with this? — Rhododendrites talk |  02:38, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • Not sure if consensus was reached back then. Four users opposed explicitly, and at least 2 users opposed implicitly, while 9 users supported the proposal at that time. Let's just focus on the new proposal which seems to have more chance to succeed. 4nn1l2 (talk) 20:18, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support per above. If some time eventually in the future we have a wealth of feature-worthy videos, it could be changed back to daily, but weekly seems better at present. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 02:35, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support It's clear we don't have the current throughput, or vetting process, to support a daily media. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 04:34, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I think seven days is fine. If we have an excess of stuff too far into the future, we can expand back to one day but I actually think we'll get more picky which can be good. I also think we could use more batch uploading of videos and other media. Requests can be made at Commons:Batch uploading. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:18, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support if we somehow get too many (unlikely for the time being) we can always do what en DYK does and up the rate for a while.Geni (talk) 08:13, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol oppose vote oversat.svg Strong oppose even with 365 MOTD, the system is already strongly favouring media from Europe and North America. With any number less than that, this systemic discrimination will only be enforced and other parts of the world are de facto kept out of this.
This proposal is solving a problem of "shortage of users picking MOTD" by killing MOTD, which does not magically increase the number of users working on it.--Roy17 (talk) 11:44, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
People are really lazy in helping, but just wanna kill something nice.
A bot could even be created to spam MOTD with https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?sort=create_timestamp_desc&search=webm+insource%3AUS+-%22of+the+day%22 for example. Roy17 (talk) 12:01, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is it's both highly visible and decidedly not nice. — Rhododendrites talk |  12:25, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
With any number less than that, this systemic discrimination will only be enforced and other parts of the world are de facto kept out of this. - How? I would think doing it once per week would allow the small number of users participating to take their time and select a more diverse range of videos. — Rhododendrites talk |  12:23, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are some people aware that there are 40+ countries in Asia and 50+ in Africa? One file from each country can easily make up a queue of 100.
Are some people aware that one year has 52 weeks? Roy17 (talk) 12:38, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As and when we can get and curate one decent video per country we will worry about it.Geni (talk) 12:55, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So before you can do that, you will just happily make this systemic discrimination much worse by killing off the chances of these countries getting featured?
Even though countries as small, secluded and neglected as Benin, Bhutan and Lesotho have at least a handful of videos already.
Benin https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?sort=create_timestamp_desc&search=webm+insource%3ABenin+-%22of+the+day%22+-stamp
Bhutan https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?sort=create_timestamp_desc&search=webm+insource%3ABhutan+-%22of+the+day%22+-stamp
Lesotho https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?sort=create_timestamp_desc&search=webm+insource%3ALesotho+-%22of+the+day%22+-stamp Roy17 (talk) 13:11, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't understand your arguments here. You have a good point that we do not highlight enough content from non-European/North American places. But you haven't made any clear connection between that argument and the actual subject of this section. It's a good argument for you (and/or others) to get involved with MOTD (or MOTW) to make it more diverse. But there is no central authority saying "let's have more videos from Europe!" People are just grabbing what's easiest, and for the people volunteering, those videos may be European. You can change that. At least as often, people who upload videos are just placing their own videos in MOTD slots with little or no oversight. That's how we got two anti-vaccination videos in the span of a few weeks. We allow it because there's not enough participation, but nobody thinks this is ideal.
So right now it's arbitrary based on the personal interests and easy access of the people who volunteer. That could change if other people volunteer, but nobody has stepped forward.
There is no list of countries that we are working through, with European/North American countries at the top, and Asian/African countries at the bottom such that reducing the number of media displayed means we won't get to the Asian and African videos. Changing it to be weekly doesn't reduce the proportion of videos from Asian or African countries. If anything, it should increase them because even without additional volunteers, if there's no pressure to find something new every day, volunteers can be more selective and spend more time searching for higher quality content, and more diverse content rather than rely on the self-nominations of our disproportionately European/North American uploader userbase. — Rhododendrites talk |  13:35, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Plus, except Lesotho, other examples are having FOP problems afaik. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:00, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support In this topic, I would agree KoH above that the depth and breadth need largely improves, just image: if you propose to turn Meta-Wiki Translation of the week to "Translation of the day", what will Meta Users think? The world's most strongly NOPE. So "of the day" series need to be dropped on Wikimedia step-by-step, just make this to be the first one. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:16, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • GA candidate.svg Weak support Ideally, we should strive to have enough good-quality media for a daily presentation, and I fear that this will not be a temporary measure until we are there, but rather "giving up". But I see that there is a distinct lack of presentable video content. Gestumblindi (talk) 12:51, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support per nom - Disappointed to see yesterdays MOTD which was something along the lines of "no media chosen today" - new people don't want to see that, Anyway I support this and also echo KoHs sentiments - Changing this to MOTW gives people more time to pick videos and more time to pick diverse videos too and it also means the MOTW on the front page shouldn't be empty either. –Davey2010Talk 13:08, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support Christian Ferrer (talk) 18:52, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose Going to one media file per week is far too drastic of a change. I could, at most, support one media file every three days, but even then I think this is not ideal. The occasional mess-up is not enough for me to support a 3x-7x reduction in media on the front page. I think the best solution is to 1) promote the featured media process, 2) make the featured media process easier by reducing quorum, and 3) limit media of the day to featured media, even if this results in repeated entries.  Mysterymanblue  21:17, 14 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    People may dislike the idea of seeing the same thing every 200 days, but I think that seeing the same file every day for a week straight is worse than seeing the same file every 200 days.  Mysterymanblue  21:21, 14 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Every 3 days is hard, technically, and also normatively. Regarding your suggestions: (1) did that. several times. (2) did that, too. (3) To put some numbers to this, we have 203 total featured media. We have promoted a total of seventeen throughout all of 2021 so far. You're saying that we just repeat the same 200 videos over and over, adding a handful of new ones each year? That would be preferable to the current situation, I suppose, but a distant second choice to just reducing it to one new video per week. — Rhododendrites talk |  21:35, 14 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, how do you think people may like the idea of seeing the same way on Meta-Wiki, to run a potential "Translation of the day"?!?!?! Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:59, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol oppose vote oversat.svg Strong oppose Once again we are having this discussion rather than having a discussion on "How to engage more people in MOTD?" ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 05:33, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Gone Postal: So far, despite all our efforts, we have failed to engage more people in MOTD. The question becomes: do we feature more media on the main page and potentially have some of them be poorly vetted, or do we feature fewer media which are better vetted? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:56, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @King of Hearts: I understand your position, your answer to your last question is "fewer media", mine is "more media". I will try to dedicate some time on MOTD. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 06:05, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Regarding "more media", I'm afraid that this is more-and-more untouchable due to this problem. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:09, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose in favour of the other proposal to reuse older ones. Agathoclea (talk) 09:57, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support 182,239 videos vs. 70+ million images (see Special:MediaStatistics). No wonder we don't have enough high-quality content. Changing to weekly frequency will increase the quality of presented videos to 125,000+ daily visitors of the main page. Jklamo (talk) 16:45, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose Demotivating, wait time will be too long. — Racconish 💬 06:17, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    And how can anything on wiki be too short? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:38, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support Let's admit it: sound and video on Commons sucks in many regards. Celebrating weak examples on the front page makes us look like the bunch of amateurs we are and does not much to encourage people to produce better stuff. That spot should be reserved for the best of the best, and as moving to a weekly schedule would mean we could display our greatest media for longer, that's a win in my book! After all, as a visitor it's easy to snack a quick POTD, but audiovisual content takes much more time to get through. --El Grafo (talk) 07:36, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support 1) uploading videos (large files) and converting is extremely difficult. 2) Let's spend the effort to pick media-of-everyday on other things. 3) I also suggest including images from other rigorous Wikimedia sites to make Commons' front page actually look like an image repository rather than some communist website. Thank you —Vis M (talk) 13:43, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support Unfortunate, but until we get more participation in MOTx this is a prudent change to help resolve the problems listed in the nomination. If we ever get to the needed level of participation to support higher frequency, we can easily readjust the frequency again. -M.nelson (talk) 14:56, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose, While I actually went into this wanting to support it, reading some of the counterarguments convinced me otherwise. I wouldn't be opposed to having a "Featured media" that rotates every three (3) or so days, but 52 (fifty-two) different non-image media files per year isn't enough, it won't truly represent the diversity of the Wikimedia Commons, I think that with a number of ideas posted below like re-using old featured media and some ideas above like more representation for non-European and non-North American media would be better. Having occasional low quality stuff isn't bad as long as they are extraordinarily educational. I do support changing it to more than a day, just not a week. Theoretically this could be solved with more outreach on places like Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Facebook, Etc. where non-image media creators hang out, but until the number of contributors in this field grows I think that it will be wise to limit it to a new featured main page media every three (3) days which would be more than a hundred (100) files a year. MOTD isn't just videos, it is 3D works and other things like books, enough books were imported by user "Fæ" this year alone to have a different book at MOTD for years, though obviously it shouldn't only be books. An old manuscript or Bible in PDF every now and then is also preferable. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:43, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support --A1Cafel (talk) 05:43, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose After some thinking, no. Better to show some files several times (i.e. the ones which are Featured), and to include other content, not actually shown now (books, etc.). Yann (talk) 12:31, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support Contributers2020Talk to me here 06:43, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Enlarging media to include also books[edit]

Change Media of the Day to Media of the Week (Discussion)[edit]

  • Pictogram voting comment.svg Comment, I am still convinced that this is something that would easily be solved if videos were more easy to be uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons, namely by supporting .MP4 files, a proposal that has recently gathered much support and little opposition. I think that temporarily downgrading it to 52 (fifty-two) per year might be a good idea as I found the anti-SARS-CoV-2-vaccine demonstrations on the main page to be a bit... odd, to say the least. But to me the issue is that it's a sign that we simply don't have enough contributors in these fields, we don't have bands re-enacting public domain music, we don't have people that search Google's YouTube to download good quality videos with free licenses, we don't have filmers ourselves that make video-recordings with their camcorders. We have those people, but not many, not enough, and I think that to some extend both the unfamiliarity of the Wikimedia Commons to these types of peoples and the technical restrictions cause these issues. While I think that this change, unfortunate as it is, is a necessary evil, I really dislike the fact that so little is being done to try to recruit more people to join the Wikimedia Commons to contribute more non-image media. Maybe present a few books or something on the main page, I am sure that there are plenty of books being uploaded that deserve that spot, it doesn't always have to be a video.
Likewise, 3D works are also something that could be showcased, I believe that I saw some, but I could have mistaken it. I just find it a shame that we are not actively trying to get more volunteers to join. We are not like Wikidata that we essentially have "too much people", in fact, the Wikimedia Commons tends to be a collection of missed opportunities and low investment from the WMF, at least in adding content and features. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:54, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It would be good to make it easier (coincidentally, video2commons seems broken at the moment Update: the interface is returning errors, but the upload completed. Nevermind that.). It would be good if we had more people with video production skills. It would be good if we had more people interested in surfacing good quality videos. It would be good if we had more people looking around at other sites to find video to transfer. I agree with all of that. But we need to work with the situation as it exists now. If those things change in time, we can always reinstate MOTD, but for now IMO the best thing would be to remove the requirement that we display something every day, because we're not doing a good enough job at that. — Rhododendrites talk |  21:47, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Donald Trung: I agree that supporting MP4 videos would go a long way to making video contributions accessible to most people, whose best video recorder is their smart phone. Something I'll also note is that this proposal has no expiration criteria. So even if "temporarily downgrading it to 52 (fifty-two) per year" is a good idea, there is a significant chance that the inertia of "MOTW" will mean that we're stuck with it forever, even if work is done to improve video on Commons.  Mysterymanblue  01:45, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MP4 is pretty much irrelivant to serious video since you are going to want to work on it in post and outputting to webM is trivial. Even if MP4 is your starting point en:HandBrake now transcodes to WebM so it can be done entirely with a GUI.Geni (talk) 08:41, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that one day seems too little... but seven days seems too much. Would it be possible to choose a new file every three days or so?  Mysterymanblue  04:37, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sort of. The template currently uses CURRENTDAY2 which could be switched to CURRENTWEEK. Once every three days would involve things being doing manually via the back-end.Geni (talk) 14:19, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Once a week seems reasonable although it doesn't help that the back end is not very findable. The reality is that creating high quality video is much harder than creating high quality photos. To an extent photography can be brute forced. 100 photos an hour is quite doable (and desirable in an event like a classic car rally) and under ideal conditions 10+ will be good. Video is much more of a challenge. They straight up take longer, there are fewer viable subjects (videos of static objects don’t look great) sound becomes an issue. Lighting presents more of a problem (since it may have to be good in multiple directions) as does camera stability. Editing in post presents more of a challenge since it requires a greater skillset and significantly more computing power (particularly at higher resolutions). There’s a reason why most photography is done solo where as even moderately serious video work involves teams.Geni (talk) 10:39, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The issues at the heart of this are longstanding and not easy to solve: Creating good videos (as this is mainly what "media" is about here) is far more challenging than creating good images (not only from the technical side, as noted by Geni, but also from the licensing point of view - you have to be very careful not to include copyrighted music etc.), and then the uploading to Commons is notoriously challenging, even with a tool like Video2Commons, which is intended to make uploads easier, but even I as an experienced user of many years and admin are often struggling with. As noted in my comment above, I'm not sure that we are going into the right direction by giving in / giving up in that way, taking pressure away from the "media of the day" instead of trying to finally make Commons more attractive for uploads other than images, namely for videos. I think I fully understand why this proposal was made, and I am supporting it, weakly, but I am concerned that it will only serve to make video on Commons even more of a marginal matter. Gestumblindi (talk) 13:01, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
the point about the "anti-vax" video is void, because i upon seeing that in advance added two motd that are supposedly "pro-vax" in response: Template:Motd/2021-10-04 Template:Motd/2021-11-01.
anyone who's so obsessed about neutrality / balanced point of view / procedural correctness should add one more "anti-vax" video as motd.--RZuo (talk) 13:27, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's not about being "obsessed about neutrality" or some kind of "balance". We just shouldn't be displaying anti-vax propaganda during a pandemic. Displaying something pro-vaccination later doesn't change the fact that it was harmful. There is no "balance" to harmful. It's fine to host such a video, of course, but we should not be highlighting it on our main page. Perhaps when/if we move on from treating vaccination like a "both sides" political issue, it would be fine to display such a video for historical purposes, but we're not there yet. — Rhododendrites talk |  13:43, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I oppose this change chiefly because it is bad for non-image media on Commons. Reducing the visibility of high quality media by a factor of seven will not improve Wikimedia Commons; it will only further discourage the creation and uploading of high quality media. Doing so without setting a clear timeline for a return to MOTD will also discourage people from attempting to contribute to or fix the featured media process, further entrenching the problem that it is seeking to address. This proposal amounts to a resignation that the issues that plague video on Commons are unfixable and that we should just accept that the amount of high quality media will always be this bad. Instead of taking this step to discourage media contributors, we should be making it easier for video to be captured, uploaded, and promoted to featured media/media of the day.
I will admit that Commons has tried to promote media contribution many times in the past with disappointing results. However, I do not think that we have done enough on this front.
Lowering quorum to approximately three would improve the featured media process. While participation in the FM process is wanting, it's not exactly obscure; there are more than enough people who check that page during the course of a nomination period to fulfill the purpose of a quorum: to prevent files from "slipping under" the community's radar and into featured status. A quorum of three would still serve this purpose effectively while ensuring that FM nominations cannot be unilaterally rammed through.
Critics of lowering quorum might point out that there have been many FM candidates with 3 or 4 positive votes that failed due to lack of quorum—they may point to the failed nomination of these "unworthy" files as evidence that the higher quorum serves a purpose. However, I believe that these comparisons are invalid because quorum impacts people's voting behavior. Of the many people who view FM candidate nominations, only a few vote on them. This is because they are aware of the effect of a higher quorum: "noes" and "lean noes" may abstain because they are aware that a file is unlikely to pass without their support, and "lean yesses" may withhold support because they believe that quorum is unlikely to be reached anyway. Lowering quorum will therefore promote discussion by making the clear success or rejection of a featured media candidate a tangible future possibility so that even the first support and oppose votes will be meaningful. It will force those who rely on abstentions to oppose featured media to voice their opinions in a public space where they can be discussed. This will end the limbo that many failed FM candidates are currently in, where it is unclear if their failure was due to unstated opposition or unvoiced support.
There is also a significant technical barrier to uploading media to commons. Video2commons is broken, and files over 600 MB fail, even in chunked uploaders. Additionally, the exercise of requiring users to convert video to only a few formats tends to be out of reach of most people. A “Wiki Loves Monuments”-style contest is essentially doomed to fail because the most accessible video recorders - cell phones - almost universally record in “patent-encumbered formats”.

 Mysterymanblue  01:34, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Reducing the visibility of high quality media It does not currently do much for the visibility of high-quality media. We can continue to display low-quality media, which IMO is more discouraging than anything because it's supposed to represent our very best, or we can highlight a smaller number of actually high-quality media.
Doing so without setting a clear timeline Nothing would prevent a proposal to go back once it can be demonstrated that the state of media on Commons has changed sufficiently that we can both attract good content and surface it on a daily basis. I thought about framing this as a trial period, but, realistically, there's no indication anything's going to change.
resignation that the issues that plague video on Commons are unfixable - Perhaps some see it this way. I see it more that until we fix those issues we shouldn't just pretend that everything is going well.
This is because they are aware of the effect of a higher quorum - I'm someone who sees [almost] all of the FM nominations and doesn't vote on most of them. I do support some, and occasionally oppose, but more often I abstain because it's neither objectionably bad nor particularly good. We already have a much lower bar for FM as compared to FP (I'm talking about quality requirements, not number of votes).
There is also a significant technical barrier to uploading media to commons Agreed. This is part of the argument in favor, because there's no sign this is going to be fixed. If it does, and that affects the media we get, we can always revisit. — Rhododendrites talk |  12:50, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There were 600+ films produced by USA alone in 1925, all of which have entered PD: List of American films of 1925. And the number of films going into PD from all countries would only increase year after year. We could well show two movies every day.--Roy17 (talk) 13:32, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
However, I would not be surprised to see some supporters talking about how studio-made films have low quality blah blah blah.
By now fellow Commons users should notice that some users are jumping up and down this thread to do nothing but finding every excuse for killing MOTD. Some users talk big about contributing but never made any effort curating MOTD, for example [1].--Roy17 (talk) 13:32, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am part of the "lack of participation" problem with MOTD, just like nearly everyone else. The thing is, MOTD affects everyone, regardless of whether they participate, and everyone sees the results via the main page. Everything here is only as good as the volunteer time put into it. Some processes work better than others for that reason. What we have in MOTD, however, is a mismatch between the amount of volunteer interest and the prominence/importance given to the process. If volunteers for a particular process want the output of that process to be given real estate on the main page, it's up to volunteers interested in that project to make it work. We don't put things on the main page and then say "ok now it's everyone else's fault if this doesn't work" -- no, it's up to people who want there to be an MOTD to make it work. Otherwise, we need to remove it from the main page or find another way to fix it (and yes, I say MOTD→MOTW is fixing, not killing; killing would be removing that section of the main page). — Rhododendrites talk |  14:46, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Yann: , per your new proposal above based on what I wrote, just to be clear, doesn't the MOTD today already mean all non-image media? I always assumed that it did because the MOTD isn't always a video as I've seen 3D objects and other non-video MOTD in the past. Though I am glad that you created that proposal, as it has the largest chance of actually saving the MOTD for now, as we have so many books, manuscripts, and other PDF files, perhaps also expand it to include all PDF, DJVU, Etc. files as for example a PDF of a scientific thesis that has had a major influence on the world deserves to be on the main page as well. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:52, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative proposal: Change Media of the Day to Media of the Year[edit]

One audiovisual file per year. Easy.--Roy17 (talk) 11:44, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose - I certainly don't agree with one video per year .... regualars will simply stop looking at the front page. We can do better than one per year. –Davey2010Talk 18:31, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose No reason to make "Saimoe"-like "of the..." for non moegirl-related Autonomous sites. Media of the Week is enough. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:18, 13 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think the "alternative proposal" is meant sarcastically, not in earnest. Gestumblindi (talk) 19:39, 13 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe it's just me but this proposal doesn't sound sarcastic - I recall at EN taking the mick out of someones proposal before... only to to be told it was serious .... and when you've seen idiotic-yet-serious proposals on EN you begin to start believing everything you see. Meh it went over my head. –Davey2010Talk 22:43, 14 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But in this case, from the context of Roy17's other discussion contributions, it seems to be pretty clear. Roy17 argues for keeping the "media of the day", after all. Gestumblindi (talk) 07:42, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose One media file per year is worse than one media file per week, in the same way that one media file per week is worse than one media file per year.  Mysterymanblue  01:46, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

upcoming media of the day[edit]

Does not seem to be an actual proposal. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:41, 13 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

For what is currently on the way see Template:Motd/2021-10.Geni (talk) 12:11, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose - Seems more confusing tbh. MOTW is good enough. –Davey2010Talk 18:32, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose Per Davey, probably the "Template:Motd/$1" should temporary be blocklisted. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:19, 13 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly is being responded to here? this is just a link to the current MOTD backend.Geni (talk) 18:35, 13 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, as I understand it, you didn't make a proposal here (that could be supported or opposed), but just posted the link for information, right? Gestumblindi (talk) 19:38, 13 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies Geni I did indeed thought you were proposing a name change to "upcoming media of the day" - I didn't twig on you were actually telling people the upcoming media of the day so apologies for this. –Davey2010Talk 22:34, 14 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Allow a file to become Media of the Day (MOTD) more than once[edit]

Watching/listening to a good piece of work every few years is reasonably acceptable. This could serve as a fallback to fill an empty MOTD last minute. Simply go and pick an old one from more than 10 years ago.

AFAIK it's currently not forbidden to do this, but it's just a convention not to make a file MOTD twice.--Roy17 (talk) 09:05, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Symbol support vote.svg Support Seems very rational. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 05:37, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support for FM only. I view this proposal as orthogonal to the original, i.e. it can be implemented in addition to changing it to weekly. If MOTW passes, then I think all FM should be "reset" and become eligible for MOTW a second time; it's not fair that something doesn't get to be featured on the main page for a week just because it got featured for one day. If MOTW doesn't pass, then FM should just be eligible for an indefinite number of repeat MOTDs with at least 3 years in between. In either case, previous non-FM MOTD should remain ineligible; if it's really good enough to put on the main page twice, it should be good enough to get consensus for FM promotion. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:03, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support Seeing the same file every few years is better than seeing the same file for a week straight.  Mysterymanblue  08:41, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support Just make sure there is a new one every week and rotate the rest through after a suitability check. Agathoclea (talk) 09:54, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Pictogram-voting-question.svg Question Is there any ways to avoid nominating for MOTD same one file everyday within a long period, or at least within one month for just same one? If there can't have, I'm afraid that I will still oppose due to concerns with Special:RecentChanges spamming. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:13, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support for FM only as an additional proposal. Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose as an alternative proposal. The problem the original proposal intends to fix is the low quality of media in MOTW and chronically low participation at MOTW, even if a couple users pop up in these threads with commitments to turn it around. Allowing the same low quality videos to appear multiple times doesn't help anything. Nor does allowing FM to repeat, because that's FM repeating in addition to the low quality videos we'll continue to get. — Rhododendrites talk |  14:04, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've updated the heading to reflect this can be additional or alternative, depending on one's perspective. As just an alternative, which doesn't actually address (at least not directly) the reason for the original proposal, it's confusing and misleading. — Rhododendrites talk |  14:06, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • Sigh. Looks like Roy reverted my change to the header with the message "(Changes to my proposal need my endorsement.)" -- @Roy17: You don't own this proposal any more than I own the original. You did not ask for my endorsement to add an "alternative" as part of the proposal I opened, and I didn't ask yours to modify this, since it's clearly not just an "alternative". Both are fine. — Rhododendrites talk |  20:01, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        • Reverted back to your version. Users don't own headings. 4nn1l2 (talk) 21:06, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support only as an additional proposal, and Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose as an alternative. The MOTD should die and MOTW be born anyway. No objections to repeated MOTWs. This is a real problem that has surfaced N times, and it doesn't matter how many times you say "it will be fixed", because it won't and we know that. 4nn1l2 (talk) 18:41, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support as well as an addition or an alternative. It's absolutely fine to present the same file again after a few years; I don't know how it's handled in English Wikipedia, but in German-language Wikipedia, featured articles can be repeatedly chosen as "article of the day"; it doesn't happen that often, but it is allowed. For example, de:Augustus was "article of the week" (before the switch to a daily featured article) in 2004, then "article of the day" in 2014 and there's already a proposal to choose it again for August 19, 2024. Gestumblindi (talk) 19:21, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support, while I have no objections to changing the MOTD to MOTW as a provisional measure, this would allow us to showcase high quality media to the people that visit the main page. Sure, the Wikimedia Commons doesn't have as much page views as the English-language Wikipedia, but if we would work with that (Defeatist) mentality then nothing would ever get done. If this could save the MOTD it would be great, if this could ensure the quality of the MOTW it would also be great. Either way, this is a good proposal. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:28, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support as an addition, not an alternative. Though I don't think this will be of much use in case MOTW passes, I nonetheless don't oppose using the same file again as MOTW in case we really have no new FM (which I think/hope is not going to be the case). That said, I think there should be longer intervals between using same FMs as MOTW. Perhaps 3 years for MOTD and 5 years for MOTW, should it pass. Ahmadtalk 20:27, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support only when the file was last used in MOTD/MOTW for like more than 3-4 years. Otherwise, Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose Contributers2020Talk to me here 06:47, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Supplemental proposal: Expiration criterion for MOTW[edit]

To be implemented only if the main proposal passes:

Media of the Week will revert to Media of the Day when there are two years' worth of daily featured media. That is, when the number of featured media is greater than or equal to 730, media of the day will be reimplemented.  Mysterymanblue  21:28, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Symbol support vote.svg Support as proposer. The primary concern of MOTW supporters is that there is not a high enough quality, curated stream of media to spotlight every day. When the featured media process has matured enough, these concerns will be satisfied, and we should revert to Media of the Day. I chose 2 years worth of daily free media as the cutoff for this, but I will support an expiration criteria of any number of files, with preference toward a lower number.  Mysterymanblue  21:28, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • BA candidate.svg Weak oppose any sort of automatic change. At the rate we've been going, this proposal will be pending for several years before going into effect. We don't know what changes will happen (or won't happen) regarding uploading, the FMC process, FMC participation, etc. We may get more media, but maybe the FMC process won't function well enough to promote enough of them, in which case it may still make sense to restore MOTD. I would support simply saying that we'll revisit this in one year or two years, to make sure it's working as it should, but we can also just say that anyone who thinks things have changed sufficiently to restore MOTD can propose that in the future, regardless of specific metrics. — Rhododendrites talk |  12:56, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Rhododendrites: The logic really flows both ways on this one. You say that without an expiration criterion, we could always have a discussion about reinstating media of the day in a few years. Of course, with an expiration criterion, there could also be a discussion as to why we should keep media of the week around for a little bit longer. An expiration criterion does not permanently bind the project to one course of action - it is meant to be a concrete starting point for thinking about the end of the proposal. It serves as an acknowledgement that this change has particular aims, is narrowly tailored to achieve those aims, and will be undone when those aims have been achieved.
    An expiration criterion also has the benefit of setting a goal for the project to regain media of the day. This would give featured media proponents something to work toward and would help mitigate the discouraging effect that removing media of the day would have on audiovisual contributions.  Mysterymanblue  22:47, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A little Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose, but setting a higher-than-de-facto bar may lead me to re-support. Currently there were probably also sockpuppets that were created {{Motd}} subtemplates, we need to make sure the accounts touching the bar are real different peoples, rather than a man who is using CDN servers to set up a sock army to touch that. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:21, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Liuxinyu970226: You're welcome to say something like "Oppose 2 years, but will support 3 years or more."  Mysterymanblue  01:25, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No time period changes I suggested, what I suggest is just same as the motto of WADA official site: Play true. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:28, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mysterymanblue: Also, under same reasons, you might want to change Meta-Wiki's Translation of the Week to Translation of the Day, isn't that? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:47, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support, the Media of the Day feature should return when the Wikimedia Commons are ready, we have a lot of bad quality non-image media files being promoted today but this might change in the future, this could be one (1) year from now, this could be two (2) years from now, or this could be ten (10) years from now. Setting precedent today will mean that when we eventually do have enough high quality media for the main page that in a decade or so we won't have an army of users opposing the Media of the Day returning because "It has always been the Media of the Week, no need to change what ain't broken" and changing such a system would be an uphill battle once it's implemented. Already saying "Yeah, if this goal 🥅 is reached we can allow the MOTD to return" will allow us to adapt to a changing community climate that is more focused on non-image media. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:24, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose an automatic change; I don't like the idea of locking in some future change today. I would strongly support scheduling a discussion/proposal at some point in the future (e.g. 6, 12, 24 months) and evaluating then if we should increase the frequency. If the "goals" above are met and the issues in the OP are resolved, I would probably support such an increase at that time. -M.nelson (talk) 11:45, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @M.nelson if someone started a discussion again it will take months for that. Contributers2020Talk to me here 03:02, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Symbol strong support vote.svg Strong support for this proposal. Contributers2020Talk to me here 03:01, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Time for closure?[edit]

It's been more than a month for the original proposal, only two additional !votes this month so far, and a few days since anyone said anything. This would benefit from a formal closure from one or more uninvolved admins, I think. — Rhododendrites talk |  13:38, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree @Rhododendrites. We got enough votes and discussion in order to now take this in action. Contributers2020Talk to me here 06:48, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Let us see what changes should be made with consensus-
1) Main proposal of MOTD to MOTW- Symbol support vote.svg Support-17, Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose- 7 = 70.83% = Proposal passed
2) Additional proposal of enlarging media to include also books- Symbol support vote.svg Support-5, Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose- 0 = 100% = Proposal passed
3) Alternative proposal of changing Media of the Day to Media of the Year- Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose- 6 = 0% = Proposal declined
4) Supplemental proposal of expiration criterion for MOTW- consensus do not agree for automatic changing, If manual changing occur- Proposal passes"'
Now please if any involved admin should just do it. It's two months. Pinging King of Hearts, Yann, Geni for immediate closure. -- Contributers2020Talk to me here 03:21, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Contributers2020: No, 1 is for MOTW, not MOTY.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 04:26, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry @Jeff G. I fixed it. Contributers2020Talk to me here 05:05, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Pictogram voting comment.svg Comment I have uploaded a lot of audio files in order to diversify and improve the MOTD quality. I also added 2 books at the end of this month. Yann (talk) 21:56, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Probably doesn't matter, @Yann. It would take atleast 4-6 months for 1/20th being qualified for MOTD. Till then, lets continue with what consensus has decided, Contributers2020Talk to me here 06:38, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously Symbol wtf vote.svg WTF? Lets close this. This is so serious that this proposal is going on from October and no administrator seems to care. Please please, just make the necessary changes. Contributers2020Talk to me here 16:56, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tool to help with [Category:Maps of <location> by <year>][edit]

Request
Help with creation of categories in the {{Map of <location> by <year>}} (and/or decade/century) schemes
(Since I don't know which village pump is the best to bother with my request, I first go here. Please feel free to move my request to any place better suited, if I'm too wrong here.)

My current problem is that I wish to categorize maps as precise as possible. This again requires extensive knowledge of existing categories because you NEVER know which categories already exist. Sometimes, there are already detailed categories in place where you can put an "Old map of Madagascar" right into the Category:16th-century maps of Madagascar; or an "Old map of France" right into the year Category:1892 maps of France, or an "Old map of Russia" into the Category:1760s maps of Russia. More often however, the intended category doesn't yet exist. That leaves the categorizer two options:

  • Number one, create the category tree yourself on the spot, which means quite a bit of research how the other categories of that tree are defined and then copy the templates from some other already existing category, get it wrong three times, and sometimes even adjust several other categories that missed important parent categories or whatever. Which takes quite a lot of time and is quite a punishment for the categorizer.
  • Number two is the lazy route where you don't do anything and drop your still uncategorized map smack-dab into "Category:Maps of the United States" (for example; that one has currently 1266 files of all years, map types, etc.). From there a map eventually gets moved by another more dutiful categorizer into "Category:Unidentified maps of the United States" (currently 1165 files), or directly into the correct state, or year, or both. Most categorizers choose this lazy route, because the more specific subcategory doesn't exist and you want to get some work done. Until I recently created century-subcategories for London, the "Old maps of London" contained about 800 maps from the 15th to the 20th century. That's quite a punishment for anyone who uses the categories to search for a map of some place+time and has to click through several hundred files, and it invalidates the purpose of categories.

So what can we do to create an easy-to-handle system? I have two suggestions:

  • First, to have lots of yet-empty categories created in advance: Category:1712 maps of France and Category:1916 maps of Idaho may still be empty, but you can expect that it will at some point have content, since 1711 and 1713 maps of France; and 1915 and 1917 maps of Idaho already exist. This would require a clever user to guide a bot which categories should be pre-created, based on which countries or sub-divisions existed at which point in time. Which means that it makes no sense to create "1692 maps of Uganda" - that's nonsense - but there needs to be provision for categories like the 1692 maps of HRE, Ottoman Empire and Prussia; and then again prevent 1962 maps of these countries. After such an organized creation, we'd have several thousand empty categories, but ready to be filled.
  • Second, have a bot searching for red categories that match the right parameters: IF a category like "Maps of <place>" already exists AND that category already has more than <threshold> subcategories (about 10?), the bot would recognize red categories of "YYYY maps of <place>" with the same <place>-Keyword and create the according category tree. In practice: if next year someone categorizes a new map as "2022 maps of Nigeria", the category would remain red for a while until the helpful bot creates that category as "{{MapsNigeria|202|2}}", plus the "2020s maps of Nigeria" and the "21st-century maps of Nigeria", as needed. Meanwhile, a "2022 maps of Birmingham" (map-of-category exists but has too few subcategories) would not yet create its own subcategory, and the bot could change this tag automatically into "Maps of Birmingham|2022" which allows for a later subcategorization if really needed.

--> As far as I can see, the structure of maps by year/decade/century is standardized and distinct enough to make both outlined approaches somewhat feasible. No concern is given here to the other sorting criteria (projection, topic/theme, language, etc.) as these require different and more elaborate categories. The same could theoretically be done with the "YYYY in <place>" categories (Category:2017 in Bogotá vs. Category:1968 in Kathmandu), but here I see a few more potential implementation problems. All the best, --Enyavar (talk) 18:49, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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