On this page, Commons users can request edits to templates, the addition of complex templates to pages, and the creation of new templates. Here, users experienced with templates can find tasks to work on.

On Commons, templates are used for aiding navigation, adding standardized categories at scale, enabling adjusting various things from a central place, overviews, warning messages, and much more.

Create a new section for every new request:

Please use a descriptive title that briefly explains the change. Currently, edit requests for the {{Wikidata infobox}} are not included here – please see Template talk:Wikidata Infobox for these.

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Requests

Parameter auto=yes for ArchiveBox to detect and link/transclude archive subpages

Please add a parameter to the template so that it gets all subpages that have the prefix /Archive and links them. For example at Commons talk:Welcome, I think it could be possible to just take these pages from Special:PrefixIndex/Commons talk:Welcome and link them by the title after the /Archive/ which here is the year instead of having to manually write them out.

The current state of things is problematic as it needs continuous maintenance and people can forgot to add the achivebox or make other mistakes. For example, I forgot or didn't know I had to add the archive box when adding {{Autoarchive resolved section}}. I think it may be better if things were just by default archived per page per year instead of just numerating the archive number but unlike the box at Commons talk:Welcome, it would transclude the per-year pages into one archive page that is as long as possible without templates breaking in it as with Commons talk:Tools. Having all the years there directly can become long even if new pages don't need to be added manually and having just a few threads per page can make it difficult to go through the archives. However, when per-year pages are used which are then transcluded, it needs to be made sure that the transclusions all work (maybe it breaks with too many years or too many threads).
See the discussion here.
Prototyperspective (talk) 14:07, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Parameter for "review impossible" for LicenseReview template

At Commons:Village_pump/Proposals/Archive/2025/02#Add_an_outcome_of_LicenseReview there is a discussion about to modify Template:LicenseReview so it is possible to mark files with some sort of "review impossible". I tried to fix the template per Template_talk:LicenseReview#Outcome but it did not work as planned. And there is no reason to modify MediaWiki:Gadget-LicenseReview.js untill we have a working review template. Can someone fix? MGA73 (talk) 10:26, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Relayed from Commons:Village pump/Technical#Add an outcome of LicenseReview. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:27, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, see work in progress in {{LicenseReview/sandbox}}. If someone else wants to continue the work, please feel free to do so. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 03:30, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fix Topic in country template linking to the redlink Template:Byby

I am trying to decode how this is happening, but I'm at a loss: categories such as Category:Construction in Guam which feature {{Topic in country}} have some nonsense code linking to the redlink Template:Byby, but it's only a little over 600 out of the 17,700 transclusions. I don't know why. Can someone smarter than me fix this? Thanks in advance. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:38, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Relayed from Commons:Village pump/Technical#Broken template. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:30, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Computer science in Catalonia and 800 other pages are also showing the same error. The same error would happen if you added the template to Category:Construction in Puerto Rico. See also this discussion from May 2025. Somewhere the wikitext {{{byby}}} is being used and the parser thinks it is a template call inside single braces, instead of a template parameter. It may be one of these six pages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:29, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Setting Videos by xyz category based on license templates like PD-USGov-USDA

Shouldn't all videos with {{PD-USGov-USDA}} as license template also be in Category:Videos by the United States Department of Agriculture – when I checked that category had just 6 files but there's many more files in the category set by the license template Category:PD USDA.

Could the license template please be changed to automatically also add the videos category if the file is a video?

I think media-type detection could be implemented similar to how it was done at Template:Prompt.

Then there's probably many similar license templates associated with organizations that would also benefit from such a change.

Some may not yet have a video (*in some cases also/instead audio?) subcategory or already have one that isn't flat. For example, Category:Videos by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention posted on YouTube is a very large deeply nested category that organizes things by subject. I think for such cases implementing this would be much less useful but even there it could be useful to let this get set by the template for three reasons:

One could create a parallel flat category with the files directly which is useful to for example search through all CDC videos which can be problematic with a category that has very many subcategories and is deeply nested into many layers as one can then better use deepcategory to search through all or -deepcategory to exclude them all (in this case of a flat category even incategory).
Some files with the correct license template may not be in the Videos category.
One could use this to scan which of the files in the category do not have that license template set.

Maybe it would be best to discuss things here and implement just the U.S. Department of Agriculture case and then creating a separate new request about any further identified license template where this would also be useful. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:04, 13 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, I have taken a look and it appears there isn't a lot of videos with this template, see incategory:"PD USDA" filetype:video. Since there isn't a lot, I think it makes more sense to just manually categorize them (i.e. using Cat-a-lot). This can allow others to subcategorize them if needed, without changing the template (which is template editor protected).

I think the existing flat category for the license template (e.g. Category:PD USDA) is sufficient to search for videos. Users can just do the same search above (i.e. incategory:"PD USDA" filetype:video) to filter the category for videos. Alternatively, we can add {{Category search by}} to the categories, to provide a easier way to filter.

This is just my opinion, so I'm interested in others' opinions on this, especially those who do categorizing work or those who import US-Gov videos. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 23:19, 13 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for looking into it and the feedback. Probably you're right and the solution is to just not do this. Haven't yet discarded idea though since most of the files missing in that category is a bit of evidence that adding autocategorization to the license template would put things into the associated category (e.g. Videos by the United States Department of Agriculture->Videos by the United States Department of Agriculture (flat)).

Another point there is that not all videos by USDA have that license template set and when uploaders know/use organization-specific license templates or other editors add them, it's quite likely they also know the category / how categories work for it to be usually added. I thought it would be a good way videos are included in categories without any extra maintenance and right after upload.

I've added the category to the videos and one had to exclude like so -deepcategory:"Wikivideos" because these videos only included a small clip from the USDA videos but had the license template too.

As for {{Category search by}}, I think it's overkill providing so many and so fine options even down to the hour (& not by year) and at the same time not having a box for search terms. Maybe you meant to say one or a few of those templates: I'll add {{Category search by/filetype}} and {{Search in category}} – adding these to pages of categories that are set by license templates may be the better action. I'm also curious what other users who import US-Gov videos think about this. Maybe Trade who created the USDA videos cat has something to add? Prototyperspective (talk) 01:12, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to have seperate categories for "Videos by the United States Department of Agriculture" and "Videos by the United States Department of Agriculture posted on YouTube". Perhaps a parameter in the template could do that? Maybe have an bot detect if the author is listed as USDAFoodSafety and move the files accordingly? Trade (talk) 01:25, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What would be the reason or use of subcategorizing by where the video was first or also posted?
I think there's many files in Category:Videos by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention posted on YouTube now that haven't been posted on YouTube because it's the category with the deep nesting about CDC videos by topic (without YouTube being in their title)
I think it could be done by using a search like deep/incategory:"Videos by the United States Department of Agriculture" insource:youtube.com/.

Prototyperspective (talk) 14:41, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Healthcare by country template (& how to add template to all cats?)

I think a template for the subcategories of Category:Healthcare by country would be good, similar to the vaccination by country template. I think it would contain the following (please comment if you think something is missing or flawed there):

{{Countries of Europe|prefix=:Category:Healthcare in}} [[Category:Healthcare by country|Greece]] [[Category:Health in Greece|care]] [[Category:Services in Greece]] [[Category:Science in Greece]]

Is there a way to add this to all the subcategories, replacing the existing categories or entire wikitext (except for the Wikidata infobox) on the pages? See also Commons:Village pump/Technical#How to move (rename) many categories?.

Should the template have Category:Public services of Greece and/or Category:Services in Greece? And also it seems like there already is some dynamic topic by country template so maybe that should be used. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:24, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there is already an option to use {{topic in country|healthcare}}. Do you prefer this or do you want to another custom template to be created?

Also, I think this being a subcat of public service makes more sense, as explained in en:Public service. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 15:53, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, then using the topic in country template would be better if it can set the categories. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:07, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

New Jersey public domain license

The footnote on this New Jersey government website states the following about their data falling in the public domain:

Records, documents and information made available by the agencies of New Jersey state government or its subdivisions are the property of the people of the state of New Jersey. Therefore, the New Jersey State Library considers these items to be in the public domain according to US copyright law (see Title 17, U.S.C.). Responsibility for making legal assessment of items and securing necessary permissions rests with the individual user. ForeverFlying (talk) 20:03, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@ForeverFlying, unfortunately I will not be able to fulfil your request currently. The explanation is:

There used to be a "New Jersey public domain license" in Commons, namely {{PD-NJGov}}, but it was deleted in 2018 per community consensus at Commons:Deletion requests/Template:PD-NJGov.
I am not familiar with New Jersey laws, so it might be possible the laws have changed since 2018. However, since the license template was deleted per community consensus, this means before recreating the template, it is required to obtain community consensus first (per COM:CSD#G4).

So, I would suggest you to ask for consensus first (i.e. support from other users), probably in Commons:Village pump/Copyright, before requesting to create the template here. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 20:39, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I made a post on the page titled Creating new public domain license for New Jersey. I am also not well-versed in New Jersey copyright laws/policies myself, so hopefully someone from the linked discussion could bring some more clarity to the matter if there is consensus to create a new template. ForeverFlying (talk) 01:32, 22 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Review stage for "extracted from" derivatives of deleted files

It was flagged in 2022 that the {{Extracted from}} template had been changed in 2021 in how it handled situations where the source image had disappeared. If a file is templated as having been cropped or otherwise derived from another file, and that original file stops existing for some reason, then instead of being given a link to the source image the user is told:

This file has been extracted from another file: [...]. The source file was deleted for reasons that do not affect this file, like a derivative work which is not a part of this cropped file.

This is automatic. The message is also displayed in cases where the file was deleted for reasons which also apply to the extracted image.

I raised this in a pump thread last year and was advised by Prototyperspective that One could also have a parameter in the template that can get changed when the image got checked. However then I think it needs some change to a gadget that allows reviewing files with the click of a button. The template edit request could be made at Commons:Template requests.

I'm not familiar with the gadgetry in question, but is this a template change that somebody could look into? My view would be that the template should default to saying something like The source file was deleted for reasons that may affect this file (my bold) when all it knows is that the source image has disappeared, and The source file was deleted for reasons that do not affect this file when a human has reviewed it. Belbury (talk) 16:01, 23 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a good thing to implement, my idea of implementation is something like {{Check categories}}. This means:

All current files (3362 files) and future files with the {{Extracted from deleted}} template will required to be checked, so their template text will be changed (e.g. source file was deleted for reasons that may affect this file)
Any user can perform this check
The action of checking involves clicking a link/button on the template (either "Accept" or "Reject", or similar wording), and clicking submit.
If the file is accepted, then the checking link/button will be hidden, and the text will changed back to the current one (i.e. source file was deleted for reasons that do not affect this file)
If the file is rejected, then there are 2 options we can implement:
- Option 1: Move the file to another category, indicating the check has failed, and other users are free to nominate them for deletion. See Category:License review failed as example
- Option 2: Directly add a {{Speedydelete}} template to the file

@Belbury Do you have any thoughts about this? And which option do you think is better for rejected files? Also pinging @Prototyperspective as they are mentioned above. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 22:28, 23 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! My only thought would be to wonder whether there are any situations where a non-admin wouldn't be able to check the source against the crop (because they can't see the original image and the reason given for its deletion isn't enough to tell them whether that reason would apply to a crop), but I can't think of any cases for it, or see any from skimming through.

Would it be possible to generate a list of files where the {{Extracted from deleted}} target file is described as having been deleted as a No permission since...? These seem quite common and could be speedied straight off. Belbury (talk) 21:06, 24 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Belbury I think most cases users will be able to determine from the corresponding DR if an extracted file should be deleted or not. If there isn't a DR (i.e. the file was speedy deleted), then users should able to decide using the deletion summary. It is possible that some cases would require admin assistance, but I think those cases should be rare.

For the list of files deleted with "no permission since" you mentioned above, I think it is possible to generate it with Quarry, but I couldn't figure out how to do it properly. Perhaps you can get better help for this at COM:VP/T. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 10:44, 25 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if it was in response to this request, but the template was altered yesterday by Geohakkeri to display a different warning message, apparently fixing the issue of source images being described as having been deleted for "reasons that do not affect this file" when the template doesn't have that information. Discussion has restarted at Template talk:Extracted from#Template for deleted items?. Belbury (talk) 17:33, 2 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for letting me know. After my previous message, I did attempt to implement my idea, but I realise it requires creation of a JavaScript file, hence requiring interface-admin rights. The changes made yesterday is similar to my idea, although it requires users to review it manually (i.e. updating the template parameter using the editor). However, I still think it is a good in-between solution. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 17:56, 2 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]