Commons:The Commons Log/2010s

See also

• Commons:Journal (June 2006 only)
• Commons:Milestones (2004 - present)
• Commons:Community news (2004 - 2013)
• Meta:Goings-on/Archive

2010

Main license templates use TranslateWiki

31 January 2010: The main licence templates now use translations provided by TranslateWiki.

Six million media files

31 January 2010: Wikimedia Commons reaches six million media files The six millionth file was uploaded on January 31, 2010, five months after the five millionth file, with the bot assisted upload of some 250,000 images from the Geograph project.

Vector skin becomes default

26 March 2010: Commons has now changed the default look to a new theme called Vector, which makes many functions much easier to find.

Picture of the Year

June 2010: Voting for the Commons:Picture of the Year/2009 competition concludes. 742 Wikimedians voted. Winner was File:Sikh pilgrim at the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib) in Amritsar, India.jpg.

File movers

May 2010: The file movers can now rename files.

• Commons:File movers

Explicit images deletions controversy

May 2010: Controversy after Jimmy Wales spearheaded a purge of explicit content on Wikimedia Commons

• en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-05-10/Commons deletions)

TIFF support enabled

August 2010: Support of the TIFF format is enabled.

Institution template

August 2010: Creation of the {{Institution}} template.

UploadWizard in public beta

October 2010: The UploadWizard launches in beta.

• Commons:UploadWizard

Illustrated tutorial

Puzzly, hero of the licensing tutorial

November 2010: An illustrated tutorial is created by the Wikimedia Foundation to educated users on copyright issues during the UploadWizard process. It features Puzzly.

One-click reuse buttons

Stockphoto gadget in action, for anonymouse users

October 2010: Enabling of the Stockphoto gadget, meant to help with media reuse, by adding on file pages buttons helping wirth credit lines, licensing requirements and code generation.

• Help:Gadget-Stockphoto

Localisation for anonymous users

December 2010: Interface gets localised for anonymous users (background)

Eight million media files

30 December 2010: Wikimedia Commons reaches eight million media files (Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2010/12#8M_milestone).

2011

Picture of the Year

June 2011: The Commons:Picture of the Year/2010 competition concludes. Winner was File:Laser Towards Milky Ways Centre.jpg.

Nine million media files

23 February 2011: Wikimedia Commons reaches nine million media files (Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/02#We_broke_9M).

Ten million media files

15 April 2011: Wikimedia Commons reaches ten million media files with File:POL Lipno (jezioro w województwie pomorskim) 02.jpg.

• Commons:Press releases/10M

User galleries

April 2011: The user gallery feature lists all uploads by a user (background). A direct link is provided in the top-right user links in August 2011 (consultation).

UploadWizard is default

May 2011: The UploadWizard is now the default upload tool

NARA

July 2011: Beginning of the collaboration with the National Archives and Records Administration

Eleven million media files

21 September 2011: Wikimedia Commons reaches eleven million media files (Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/09#11M).

Wiki Loves Monuments

Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 is organised across Europe, with the European-level contest open for entries in the month of September. 169,150 images were uploaded in total. The contest caused a notable peak in the new editors statistics.

Community growth

September 2011: Wikimedia Commons becomes the second largest community (after the English Wikipedia), in terms of active editors (5 edits per month) and very active editors (100 edits per month). (Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/11#Commons_and_the_September_report_card)

MediaWiki 1.18

image rotation symbol

4 October 2011: MediaWiki 1.18 deployed to Commons and other Wikimedia sites. Over the following months this caused widely noted issues with picture rotation due to the new use of EXIF data to autorotate images - Commons:Rotation.

• WMF blog post
• en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-10/Technology_report

2012

The Commons Log

The Commons Log is launched as a light-weight replacement for the long-defunct Commons:Journal. It is described as

an ad hoc record of notable events on Wikimedia Commons. It may be updated by anyone, as rarely or as frequently as desired. The guideline for whether events are suitable for inclusion is (i) that events are of sitewide interest and (ii) that the events are reasonably significant in the context of Commons events in that year. The Log is intended to be archived only once per year.

There is no publication schedule or editor; whatever is logged, is logged. The Log is archived at the end of every calendar year. It is hoped that the Log will make it easier for users who don't visit Commons very often to keep up to date with major events, and also serve as a historical record of major events. Examples of expected log entries include election results (administrators and bureaucrats); substantial policy debates, especially if policy is changed as a result; significant technical changes; and content milestones.

12m files

The 12 millionth file.

12 January 2012 saw Commons reach the milestone of 12 million hosted files.

SOPA protest 18 January

On 18 January the English Wikipedia joined other websites in blacking out its website in protest against the proposed US laws SOPA and PIPA, which many fear might disrupt free expression and harm the Internet, and "threaten Wikimedia projects in all languages and countries". Following a community discussion advertised via a SiteNotice, Commons was one of many Wikimedia communities supporting the protest with an informational banner.

Featured Feeds extension enabled

February 2012: The FeaturedFeeds extension, which creates daily feeds (Atom or RSS) of our Picture of the day and Media of the day, is enabled and tailored for Wikimedia Commons (background, discussion)

URAA affirmed by US Supreme Court

On 18 January the Supreme Court of the United States, in Golan v. Holder, upheld the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA). This decision potentially meant the deletion of thousands of files on Wikimedia Commons published outside the US between 1923 and 1977. Initial discussion was at Commons:Deletion requests/All files copyrighted in the US under the URAA. Many, but not all, the files were tagged {{Not-PD-US-URAA}}. One of the follow-up discussions: (5 February 2012) Request for comment about a copyright review process for public domain images.

German stamps not in public domain ruling

A court decision in a case pursued by Wikimedia in Germany over the public domain status of some images (Commons:Loriot Signature Background) led to the clarification by the court in March 2012 that stamps are not considered "official works" and therefore not in the public domain in Germany on those grounds (they may be PD on other grounds). Commons:WikiProject Public Domain/German stamps review was launched to review the thousands of files affected.

Chunked uploads and size limit

May 2012: Deployment of the experimental Chunked uploads feature, intended to provide better reliability during the upload of large files using the Upload Wizard and raising the maximum file size of 500MB.

New stats for Wikimedia Commons

May 2012: New statistics for Wikimedia Commons are available, like upload stats and file types breakdown − see tables and Graphs. (background).

ZoomViewer

June 2012: The ZoomViewer gadget is enabled by default for all users (Proposal).

13m files

13 June 2012 saw Commons reach the milestone of 13 million hosted files.

Picture of the Year

June 2012: The Commons:Picture of the Year/2011 competition concludes. Winner was File:Lake Bondhus Norway 2862.jpg.

New upload tool: Up!

July 2012: Release of Up!, a desktop application to upload files to Wikimedia Commons.

New upload tool: KIPI uploader

July 2012: Release of a new version of KIPI uploader, an extension to digiKam to upload files to Wikimedia Commons.

New upload tool: VicuñaUploader

September 2012: Release of VicuñaUploader, a desktop application to upload files to Wikimedia Commons.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2012

September 2012: Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 launches in 35 countries.

Mobile upload

September 2012: As part of Wiki Loves Monuments 2012, a mobile application developed by the Wikimedia Foundation allows upload to Wikimedia Commons.

Slideshow

September 2012: The Slideshow gadget is enabled by default for all users (Proposal).

14m files

23 September 2012 saw Commons reach the milestone of 14 million hosted files.

Featured picture criteria enforce licensing standards

October 2012 Following a public vote, the Featured Pictures criteria disallow pictures licensed only under the GFDL 1.2 license or combined GFDL 1.2 and NC(non-commercial)-only license.

Maximum size for thumbnails raised

October 2012 The maximum size for thumbnails is raised from 12.5 megapixels to 25 megapixels.

Timed Media Handler

November 2012: TimedMediaHandler is deployed on Wikimedia Commons, enabling a new HTML5 video player (with subtitle support), server-side transcoding, support of WebM format.

DMCA takedown notice conflicts with Commons FoP doctrine

November 2012: Following a DMCA takedown notice, the Wikimedia Foundation removes reproductions of sculptures still enjoying copyright protections on public display in Germany, arguing the lack of Freedom of Panorama for sculptures in the United-States, regardless of German law.

15m files

The 15 millionth file.

4 December 2012 : Milestone of 15 million hosted files.

Integrated Flickr upload tool

December 2012 A buit-in upload tool from Flickr is deployed on Wikimedia Commons, integrated into the UploadWizard. This follows the work of a Google Summer of a Code project (more information).

Import of Wikivoyage images

November 2012 As part of the adoption of meta:Wikivoyage, the images hosted there are imported to Wikimedia Commons. (source)

2013

URAA enforcement

January 2013: Increase in the enforcement of URAA leads to multiple deletion requests and an initiative to transfer deleted files to a Canada-based third-party website.

16m files

2 February 2013 : Milestone of 16 million hosted files.

URAA statement

6 February 2013: The Wikimedia Foundation Legal team publishes a statement concerning URAA and its enforcement. (discussion)

New search extension enabled

25 May 2013: Activation of SearchExtraNS extension.

Picture of the Year

POTY 2012

February 2013: The Commons:Picture of the Year/2012 competition concludes. Winner was File:Pair of Merops apiaster feeding.jpg.

Footer cleanup

10 March 2013: Activation of Vector extension FooterCleanup (bugzilla:48636)

Lua

March 2013: Deployment of Lua, a programming language for templates.

Commons App

29 April 2013: Announcement of the official Commons app for iOS and Android source)

17m files

The 17 millionth file.

16 May 2013 : Milestone of 17 million hosted files.

Maximum size for thumbnails raised

May 2013 The maximum size for thumbnails is raised from 25 megapixels to 50 megapixels (bugzilla:47363, discussion)

Multilinguism extensions, Universal Language Selector and Translate, enabled

13 May 2013: Universal Language Selector and Translate extensions are enabled. (RFC 1 RFC 2).

FLAC and WAV support

8 July 2013: Support for FLAC container and WAV format is enabled (note, note)

HotCat enabled by default

10 July 2013: The HotCat gadget is enabled by default for all logged-in users.

Deployment of VipsScaler

18 July 2013: Deployment of VipsScaler, a new thumbnailer for PNG images bacground)

Update to Upload Campaigns

22 July 2013: As part of work on Mobile, the underlying infrastructure for Upload campaigns (mainly used for Wiki Loves Monuments) has been rewritten. (more information)

18m files

The 18 millionth file.

15 August 2013 : Milestone of 18 million hosted files.

Wikimedia Commons brochure

The brochure, featuring Puzzly.

2 August 2013: After a community process, publication of the Welcome to Commons brochure (source).

Restyling the gallery tag

19 August 2013: New outputs for the <gallery> tag are available (manual)

19m files

21 October 2013 : Milestone of 19 million hosted files.

Maximum file size raised to 1GB

6 November 2013: The maximum file size (using chunked uploads) is raised to 1GB.

Deployment of CirrusSearch

16 December 2013: CirrusSearch, a new backend forthe Search feature, is deployed on Commons as secondary.

Deployment of the GLAMwiki Toolset Project

17 December 2013: Deployment of the GLAMwiki Toolset Project, an extension to help cultural institutions batch upload content & metadata.

2014

The 20M milestone file.

picture of the year 2014

Fast Category Intersection

January 2014: Deployment of the FastCCI button, an interface to a powerful tool for fast Commons category operations such as loop detection, deep traversal, category intersection and category subtraction.

Request for comments on MP4 support

January 2014 The Wikimedia Foudation starts a community discussion on whether or not to support the MP4 video file format on Wikimedia projects, which is rejected by the Wikimedia community (see Commons:Requests for comment/MP4 Video)

20m files

25 January 2014 : Milestone of 20 million hosted files.

URAA redux

February 2014: Four Wikimedia chapters publish open letters to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees regarding Wikimedia Commons policy on files affected by the URAA. Together with the Board answer, they lead to a community debate on whether files deleted on URAA grounds should be massively restored.

Media of the Day debate

8 May 2014: The stil frame displayed for the media of the day, a video of the Buchenwald concentration camp, sparks a debate on the Wikimedia-l mailing list.

Picture of the Year

Winner of the 2014 Picture of the Year vote is File:A butterfly feeding on the tears of a turtle in Ecuador.jpg by the Dirección de Información Turística del Ministerio de Turismo del Ecuador.

2015

picture of the year 2015

25m files

11 March 2015 : Milestone of 25 million hosted files.

Freedom of Panorama threatened in Europe

July 2015: Commons:Freedom of Panorama 2015

Picture of the Year

Winner of the 2015 Picture of the Year vote is File:Pluto-01 Stern 03 Pluto Color TXT.jpg by NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

2016

picture of the year 2016

30m files

13 January 2016 : Milestone of 30 million hosted files.

Release of Pattypan upload tool

May 2019: First release of Pattypan, a desktop upload tool using spreadsheets, intended especially for small-to-medium GLAMs.

Picture of the Year

Winner of the 2016 Picture of the Year vote is File:Jubilee and Munin, Ravens, Tower of London 2016-04-30.jpg by Colin.

2017

picture of the year 2017

40m files

21 June 2017 : Milestone of 40 million hosted files.

Picture of the Year

Winner of the 2017 Picture of the Year vote is File:Perereca-macaco - Phyllomedusa rohdei.jpg by Renato Augusto Martins.