Commons talk:Quality images candidates

Quality of the noms of User:Ahmet Düz

Hello, I want to bring to your attention that I had to warn Ahmet Düz because he is nominating a lot of candidates of poor quality. That would be fine for a newby he's not anymore. He's been nominating for almost one year now and his candidates have very obvious problems that he's getting feedback about again and again but he's obviously putting no effort to improve them before nomination. I find this situation not acceptable. It's unrespectful towards those who have been giving feedback and he's also overloading the system with his stuff (as he doesn't review anything). If there is no change of mind here I would vote for banning him from the site. Other opinions? Poco a poco (talk) 09:17, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

@Poco a poco: Why ban me? I already try to do that with my photograph selection! I apologize if I made a mistake! Very greetings, Ahmet Düz (talk) 09:20, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

The user has some approved QIs. In my opinion, a ban would be unnecessarily harsh. This is not FP, where some people have a tendency to get annoyed very quickly. Anyway, I cannot see any overload at a maximum rate of 5 images per day. However, the user should really check photos more thoroughly before nomination, e.g. for very simple issues, such as duplicate nominations and too low resolution (do not downscale!), but also for image quality (e.g. issues with noise, CAs, perspective). May be nominating fewer photos per day (e.g. just a single one per day) might also be helpful as long as almost every candidate photo gets declined. Once the user understands which photos might be good enough, larger numbers could be nominated. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 13:50, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Ahmet Düz: It's not about making mistakes, it's about attitude. You systematically nominate images with no fix of CA, perspective, over- oder underexposure, random crop and so on. Why don't you take time to read and accept the feedback before you nominate a bunch of new images? It's very frustrating for reviewers to have to repeat the same feedback again and again and see that th author just doesn't seem to care.

Robert Flogaus-Faust: One user will not overload the system, but if we have many like him with 45 noms and no reviews then we'll have an issue. I also believe that new users who are not so familiar to the QI rules shouldn't start reviewing from scratch, but I believe that usually we can expect that after a year (not in this case, though). Poco a poco (talk) 14:03, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

I understand very well now and I just advised Ahmet Düz on my personal talk page to stay away from the QI candidate list (possibly at least for some time) because of exactly the attitude issues that you are complaining about. Reviewing images is recommended, but not mandatory. By the way, I would not encourage anyone to review images who nominates so many images that are below the bar. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 15:23, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

@Poco a poco wouldn't it be helpful to make clear PDF guidelines in the long term? I believe it would prevent misunderstandings and make the process more easy to understand for everyone. Riad Salih (talk) 14:59, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean. We have already a good guide here: Commons:Image guidelines. What I complain about is lack of civism and respect. I find it unrespectful towards the time reviewers invest here not to take that feedback into account and after one year keep nominating bad quality stuff. Many of the images could become QI but as all other people nominating images here do, they need to be processed first and also need a final review prior to nomination.

Clearly nobody is perfect. There is nobody here achieving 100% pass rate, and myself I've nominated a bunch pictures that were declined right away rightfully but this is a different animal. Poco a poco (talk) 18:52, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

I am absolutely shocked how a good faith contributor is treated here. Suggesting a ban for someone who tries his best ist definitely not what I would consider collaborative or collegial. Has anyone except Robert tried communicating with Ahmet Düz directly before posting here? Kritzolina (talk) 18:33, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

To use meaningful captions I indeed requested him two times already ([1], [2]), but this has been ignored. --A.Savin 18:45, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

My photos don't have to please everyone, or always. Guys, what we're doing is a complete waste of time! Even I have better or more important things to do than argue or discuss things with each other!

And @A.Savin:

I'm trying to add more meaningful captions or explanations to the images. However, if I change that, I'm happy to do so in the future! Very greetings, Ahmet Düz (talk) 18:57, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Addendum: [3] Very greetings, Ahmet Düz (talk) 18:59, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

IMO this is something that should be discussed on a personal level or on Ahmed's talk page but not here. And I'm clearly against a ban for such a case. --Plozessor (talk) 03:07, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

• As someone who has recently declined most of Ahmet's images, I want to say that I also started with a positive approach and assumed good faith. I tried to write reviews meant to help improve future nominations. Unfortunately, all feedback was ignored. Every day, another batch of images appeared with the exact same issues - again and again, for weeks now. I do not enjoy writing negative reviews, but I do it because I believe that if the QI label is to have any real value, there need to be some standards. Many people are reluctant to write critical reviews and only leave positive feedback. Then eventually, after a week or so, someone promotes an image that everyone else has passed over. This, in turn, encourages contributors who do not want to work on image quality to keep nominating weak images day after day, hoping that eventually one will slip through. -- Jakubhal 20:26, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

• You are totally right, Jakubhal. Out of 425 images taht Ahmed nominated, only 30 (showed in his "Hall of Fame") got the QI seal (the rate lower than 10%!). Looking into those 30 I wouldn't have promoted most of them. Poco a poco (talk) 08:34, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

• Seeing this discussion I must say that I am shocked. QIC is for discussing images, not for discussing people. People are not things, and we affront their dignity if we discuss them like things. Discussing about other users is OK if and only if they vandalize Commons, cheat or insult other users heavily; but in any other case we should talk to users, not about them. And yes, this still applies if you have talked three times to the user before. The question is still the same: Has the user vandalized Commons? Has the user cheated? Has the user insulted other people heavily? If not, there is still no reason to discuss the user, just keep on talking with them. And even if somebody would always make bad nominations, that’s not a reason to expel that person; if QIC cannot stand some bad images, well, then it is broken. If we want to raise the quality on QIC, well, then we should improve the quality of our own nominations. I considered to return to QIC, but seeing this discussion puts me off. – Aristeas (talk) 17:45, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

  Please, let me answer here instead of following the thread. Sorry, I missed your comment, Aristeas. I usually agree with you in almost everything, your attitude, your way to deal with issues, your criticism and all apart from your great contributions. Saying that talking about people is a taboo is IMHO short-sighted. Everybody can make failures, we are humans. I will never critize anybody for that, but if the mindset of a participant is the wrong any and this persons doesn't care in spite of reams of feedback then I feel that we have to taggle the problem at the root. And I think that this frame, among us, is the best one to do it without going to the admin's board. I've also offered Ahmet my help to sort out his candidates before he noms them but he didn't took it and looking at the last noms I still don't feel that we're moving forward. And yes, I also believe that the process works and can resists a situation this, but probable not if we have a bunch of users with the wrong attitude. I don't see why we need to keep this stress on the QIC-process without doing anything after one year. Is this the wrong site for somebody who doesn't care about the feedback he has got? if he didn't even try to improve any images following the criticism he got? Maybe I'm the alien here but to me this is just wrong. --Poco a poco (talk) 16:13, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

  Well, because it is apparently encouraged for some users to place nominations like "Photographed to the May 10th, 2025 in the Basel (Switzerland)" (sic!), I think QIC is shit. Nice that we both have the same opinion that QIC is shit and aren't planning to return. --A.Savin 19:12, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

  Note that this is the nomination description (and yes, it doesn't make sense), but the actual image descriptions are usually correct (and if not, are critisized in the process). IMO the QIC process is not optimal but still quite good, and the anomalous actions of a few individuals are compensated by the community. --Plozessor (talk) 03:15, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

  Agree with Plozessor. Meaningless nomination descriptions are annoying, but they are not a new phenomenon and far less important than meaningless file descriptions. The nomination description will rot away in the QIC archive, the file descriptions will stay. But if meaningless nomination descriptions are so terrible, well, then please add a new condition to the QIC rules, namely that each candidate needs a meaningful description and that every candidate without a meaningful description can be rejected immediately. This allows to get rid of inadequately described candidates in, well, about 2 seconds per candidate. This should be fast enough even for the most impatient fellows. – Aristeas (talk) 08:29, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

  I would just like to kindly highlight once more that we are talking about a situation where a user ignored review feedback for weeks - feedback from different people who were genuinely trying to help, but also many times had to decline his photos with constructive comments. Day after day, we were receiving another batch of very weak images with the same flaws for review. It is easy to take an idealistic approach and insist that everyone deserves respect - something I absolutely agree with - but it feels a bit different if you have actually been the one doing these reviews. Was he respecting the time others spent on giving feedback to his work?

  I also want to add, since some very strong words have been used here, that QIC would not be "shit" if more people participated in reviews - especially those who really know how to take good photos but perhaps don’t nominate their own work. In my opinion, the real problem is that too many contributors are hesitant to write negative reviews, even though they clearly have opinions - this is obvious when some photos are consistently avoided by everyone, until eventually some newbie or just someone with lower standards comes along and approves them. -- Jakubhal 19:31, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

In my opinion, the QIC process has been misunderstood for quite some time. I have commented several times that these discussions about image improvements in the candidate list are counterproductive, because the long duration makes the list longer and longer and longer. And now someone ignores your suggestions for improvement and keeps posting new images with similar flaws. Should he be banned for this because it's annoying? No. If the quality is not good enough: Decline. Done. Smial (talk) 13:57, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

• And here we go again. Check the newest series of nominations. The same problems persist as before: accidental framing, CAs, and unsharpness, but at least the descriptions have improved. -- Jakubhal 04:00, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

  Hier würde ich dir gerne mal auf Deutsch erklären: Du musst nicht abstimmen oder irgendein Drama machen, wenn die Fotos dir nicht gefallen. Und ich hatte schon mit @Poco a poco vereinbart, dass ich ihn meistens zuerst zeige (zumindest per Mail). Selbstverständlich möchte ich auch mal etwas selbstständig abschätzen können müssen; das geht uns allen, nehme ich mal an! Viele Grüße, Ahmet Düz (talk) 20:26, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

  Please at least read Guidelines for nominators and the image guidelines and try to follow them for your photos. Right now, it seems like you are still ignoring them and just nominating pictures, hoping that maybe one out of every 10 or 20 will be promoted because someone decides to accept a borderline photo. As for reviews, I will comment on whatever I want, including your photos. -- Jakubhal 04:39, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

  That's true, I gave Ahmet feedback to 5 pictures that he nominated on June 25th. I told Ahmet, that one picture was QI to me. This one was also promoted. I also told him that 2 other pictures were definitely no QIs. He didn't nominate those (good), but new pictures which were not QI either. The point is though that Ahmet you didn't make any improvements to the pictures where I said they could be QI if you fix this or that. If you nominate pictures with issues like CA or perspective correction that are fixable and 99% of the users here fix that, but you are not willing to do so, the result will be a straight decline. I don't know if you don't care or just don't know. If you don't care that's a problem, if you don't know (but want to learn) we have help out here. I also told you that this picture would be QI if you add proper categories, for that you need no processing skills, you also ignored my feedback. It does look that your approach is to nominate many pictures and hope that the bell rings from time to time if the image come as QI out of the camera, with no intereste in processing the pictures or caring about the feedback you get here. Poco a poco (talk) 07:51, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

  @Poco a poco

  I haven't and didn't want to ignore a single piece of feedback! Here, too, I'd like to apologize to you and all of you! Very greetings, Ahmet Düz (talk) 09:26, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Extension of the evaluation period for multiple positive evaluations

According to the guidelines a promoted image becomes a quality image if there are no objections within a period of 2 days (exactly 48 hours) from the first review. QICbot automatically handles the images 2 days after a decision has been made. However, if an image that has already received a promotion receives another promotion, QIBot seems to base the calculation of the time limit on the last rating instead of the first See File:NPZ-Steuerwagen Bt 29-35.jpg which was promoted on 17 June 2025, 03:12 (UTC) and again on 18 June 2025, 15:37 (UTC). This image should have become a quality image on 19 June 2025, 03:13 (UTC) but at the moment it is still on the list of nomiantions. Even though it is great to receive several promotions for an image, this should not have a negative impact on the evaluation process. Would it be possible to teach QIBot to handle multiple promotions according to the guidelines? Chme82 (talk) 06:09, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I'd rather advise against this kind of code changes that are not really essential and that might introduce additional bugs. You might contact Lukas Raich instead (who might be notified about me mentioning him anyway) and ask this user not to vote for images in the general section if someone did that before. Duplicate votes may be due to very similar lengthy file names and a bug in QIVoter helper, but mostly due to people who do not understand yet that a single vote is generally sufficient on the QIC list. Anyway, your photo might be promoted about two days later than necessary, but I cannot see any major harm in that. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 09:45, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Could you please describe the bug in QIVoter, I could take a look. Thanks Wilfredor (talk) 03:50, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

@Wilfredor: AFAIK the QIVoter helper tool has a limit on the number of characters in a file name that it takes into account to identify an image for which a vote is cast. Therefore, if someone nominates two images with extremely long and very similar file names that differ only near the end of the file names, then all votes for or against one of these images might end up with only one of the images. If I remember correctly, everything looks fine until the tool actually saves the votes. However, I don't remember the last time when this happened or whether the bug is still present. Sorry for not reading your comment at an earlier time. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 09:27, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

No problem, I'm taking note about this situation, and waiting for some admin apply my last patch Wilfredor (talk) 01:58, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

The bot looks for the promotion tag and the last timestamp in the entry. Having it look through all comments and trying to figure out which one corresponds to the first promotion, and not any other part of a discussion, would be tricky and likely error-prone. Does the extra day wait make much of a difference? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:51, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Quality image template

Hi, can we restrict users from adding the Quality image template to their own file, allowing only the bots to add it? Riad Salih (talk) 01:26, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

We should not do that IMO. There were some instances of bot failure when the bot did not add the template to multiple images and when this had to be done manually. Each quality image should have at least one link to an archive of the candidate list. If this is missing or if none of the archives linked from the image shows that the image has been promoted, then the respective QI seal was misplaced and the user who added it to the image should be notified or warned and the QI seal should be removed. This is just my opinion and what I would do in such a case. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 09:10, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

It's somewhat challenging to keep track of those edits; here’s an example. Riad Salih (talk) 17:09, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

That case you linked is a typical vandalism. I wouldn't change anything in tooling or policies because of that kind of "edits". --Poco a poco (talk) 19:03, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it's technically feasible, but I would recommend that the template cannot be added by users who don't have at least 500 edits and 3 months of activity. Riad Salih (talk) 19:25, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

It should be possible to catch at least the most common formats with Special:AbuseFilter. AbuseFilter can stop users from saving caught edits, but it can also warn users and tag edits if they confirm they want to save the edit – the latter ensures that anyone, including relatively new users, can do the bot’s job if the bot fails to do it, but wrong edits can be specifically looked for rather than just finding them by chance. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 23:58, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

I just added lots of QI templates manually because the bot failed to do it. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 13:52, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Image enhancements

Here at QIC, we seem to be evaluating more and more automatic (AI-)functions that serve to improve images instead of judging the photos. This is particularly noticeable with images from smartphones, but software for developing RAW formats also seems to carry out a number of enhancement steps in the background by default these days, without the user noticing anything. Personally, I don't enjoy judging AI. I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see images generated entirely by AI or photos that have been heavily retouched by AI. In future, I will also reject any photo that does not provide usable or completely implausible EXIF information. --Smial (talk) 11:56, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Since Smial began this topic, I'm placing here an invitation for contributing opinions and comments on Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Amendment to Commons:AI-generated media. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 14:11, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Not sure what your question is exactly about, @Smial - AI-generated/-retouched media as such, or discussing about that on the QI candidates page? I have sometimes recommended nominators to try AI denoise if they nominated a picture that could obviously benefit from it and I saw from EXIF data that they are using a recent version of Photoshop or Lightroom that supports it. Personally I'm using AI denoise for most of my pictures, and sometimes I use small AI-generated areas instead of cloning to fix defects or retouch small (!) disturbing elements. About "judging AI", I usually do not 'judge AI' but I comment when a picture has the typical results of (flawed) AI processing. For example, AI-processed iPhone pictures have weird effects on signs. Likewise the AI upscaling mechanism in Adobe products has a distinctive effect on leaves (and I am against AI upscaling of photos in general, it is good for drawings but not photos). In general, I think AI should not sophisticate the subject of a photo. Take a picture of a church: If a major portion of the church wall would be AI-generated, that would be unacceptable. If a bush next to the church at the edge of the photo is AI-generated, I don't care. Plozessor (talk) 04:32, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

I also use AI denoising, but I would not like AI-generated artifacts. At the very least, the template for retouhed pictures should be added for something like your added bush. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 14:02, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

@Robert Flogaus-Faust Yes, both were extreme examples. If a whole bush is added, I would add the "Retouched" template. If it's a small portion of the actual subject to retouch a disturbing element in front of it, I usually also add the template. But when it's a small portion of the bush to retouch a disturbing element, or used to fill a small corner of the street by perspective correction, I don't. Plozessor (talk) 03:53, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

I use AI functions to improve a photo. This includes denoising or removing distracting elements, for example when standing in front of a hedge. These replacements could then also be created by copying other image elements. They are therefore meaningless for the motif and could be done elsewhere with more effort. I don't see this as a problem at all. What I don't do is add parts of the image using AI or generate entire images using AI and then nominate them as QIC. (Well, it happened once by mistake. It didn't become QI, partly because it wasn't good enough). I think that Smial means exactly these photos. However, it was only through this post that I discovered that there are now templates for labeling the photos.--XRay 💬 04:54, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Eatcha

Hi, There are QI uploaded by Eatcha which seem fake and not Eatcha's work. Please see COM:ANU#Eatcha. Yann (talk) 09:38, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Another bot failure

I got notified on my talk page that there was a bot failure in the morning. Apparently, some promoted images did not get their template and the notification of the users did not work. I added the missing QI templates manually but I won't do anything about the missing notifications. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 13:58, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Traced back to this edit by @YikyuenG: that added <del> and </del> tags, which aren't supported and crashed the bot code. Please remove lines to withdraw nominations rather than using del tags. I'll see if I can tweak the code to handle this better in the future. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:13, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

this reordering will hopefully avoid this issue in the future - it should just move on to the next image in the list if an error like this occurs. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:27, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Again?

Hello @Robert Flogaus-Faust and Mike Peel: I've recently been trying to improve the quality of my images and noticed that this nomination of my image was archived. Is there another issue? Thank you.--WMrapids (talk) 05:20, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

@WMrapids: Wait for it... :) The bot's still running through today's images. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 05:24, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

Haha thank you! Just thought that because the code looked strange and when it was archived, the bot was done with it. WMrapids (talk) 13:21, 2 August 2025 (UTC)