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Commons:WikiProject Minimum One Category

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The Wikiproject Minimum One Category will help to get all media at least one Category. Many uploaded images had no categories.

Main source

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Uncategorized images are collected in some big categories:

Tools

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GLAMorous

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  • GLAMorous is a powerful tool, to display uncategorised files that are already being used on Wikipedia, such as All media needing categories as of 2026 The lemma of the English Wikipedia article might used, when creating a new category.

Cat-a-lot

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Cat-a-lot steps:
1) Select files
2) Select destination category
3) Perform the operation

Search strategies

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  • Search by keyword: Instead of working alphabetically from A to Z, it might be more effective, to search for a keyword, such as Sunset, Moon, Beach. For these files, it is often easy to find a category, often in combination with a geographical descriptions such as Category:Sunsets in Germany.
  • Search on a map: This seems to work only, if the number of uncategorised files is not too large.
  • Search for files that are already being used on Wikipedia: Especially on the English Wikipedia you will find recommendations for the correct names of categories, if you want to create a new one. Please note that Wikipedia uses singular (en:WP:Tree), while Wikimedia Commons uses plural Category:Trees

From SDC to category

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Structure Data on Commons (short SDC) can be found in some images. This help by add new categories.

Vehicles

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Objects

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Landscapes

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Buildings

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Persons

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Categorizing people just by gender, should only be used in exceptional cases, because more precise categories are available in most cases, for instance if the man plays a guitar.

Biology

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Some images had links to Wikipedia in the description. This help to find a category.

From searchwords to category

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Subject

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For many subjects we have experts for the finer categorization at some WikiProjects / categories. Files should generally have at least one file about the content / topic of the file.

Language-specific words

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Some words indicate the origin of a image. For example the word "und" is a German word.

Language-specific letters

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Some letters in an alphabet indicate the origin of a image. For example the German letters ä, ü, ö and ß.

Language-Template

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Many images has description in a language template. We can find this images with this search:

Flickr-Tags

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Many images where imported from Flickr and had the typical tags. Often this help to categorize the image.

Also you can search for individual tags like:

Type Tags
Countries

austria , australia , china , denmark , france , germany , india , italy , japan , russia , spain , ukraine , usa

Regions

bavaria , california , england , florida , ontario , wales

Cities

berlin , london , los angeles , new york city , paris , seattle , toronto

Vehicles

boat , bicycle , car , ship , train , tram , vehicles

Architecture

airport , architecture , bridge , castle , building , house

Biology

animal , horse , insect , wildlife

Nature

autumn cloud , flower , nature , river , smoke , sunset , plant , tree , water , waterfall

Attributes

bw , colorful , geotagged , monotone , reflection

From location to category

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How to find the location, where a photograph has been taken?

  • Some photos have categories automatically added to their exif data. Then you can click onto your favourite link, such as Google Maps, to find the location of the object.
  • Often it helps, to check for similar photographs of the same uploader. Maybe, some of these have already been categorised. If not, you may add the categories to them, while you proceed.

World map

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World map by year:

Near coordinate

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For large cities, you can use a radius search within the city limits to find and categorize all georeferenced images.

A: Ahmedabad - Alexandria - Algiers - Amman - Ankara - Atlanta

B: Baghdad - Bandung - Bangkok - Barcelona - Belo Horizonte - Bangalore - Beijing - Bogotá - Boston - Buenos Aires - Busan

C: Chengdu - Chennai - Chicago - Chongqing - Colombo

D: Dalian - Dallas, Texas - Dar es Salaam - Delhi - Detroit - Dhaka - Dongguan - Dubai

F: Faisalabad - Foshan - Fukuoka

G: Guadalajara - Guangzhou - Guatemala City -

H: Hangzhou - Hanoi - Harbin - Ho Chi Minh City - Hong Kong - Houston - Hyderabad, India -

I: Ibadan - Istanbul

J: Jakarta - Jinan - Johannesburg -

L: London -

K: Khartoum - Kairo #1 - Kairo #2 - Karachi - Kinshasa - Kolkata - Kuala Lumpur

M: Moscow - Munich -

P: Paris - Prague -

R: Rome -

S: Shanghai -

T: Tokyo - Toronto


Categorization

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No uncategorised categories

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Please keep in mind, to add at least on category to each new category that you create. Otherwise, it will appear in the Category:Uncategorized categories

Exisiting or new category

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The question, Should I use an existing category or use a new one? is difficult to answer. If you want to categorise the photo of a village in a remote part of the world, it might be sufficient to add the existing category of the district in which is is located, if it is unlikely that more than three photos of this village will be uploaded in the foreseeable future. If it is a photo of a person, of whom a Wikipedia article exists in any language, you may add a new category and should include the template {{Wikidata Infobox}}, to link it to Wikidata and generate automatically some categories.

Automatisation

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While programming bots or automating the categorisation has limitations, uploaders should be automatically informed that at least one category should be added to each file. This could either be done in the Upload Wizard, or a message could be sent to the uploaders of uncategorized files. The discussion page of Commons:WMF support for Commons/Upload Wizard Improvements might be a good place to discuss this.

Low quality photos

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Special categories exist for blurry, rotated and inappropriately processed photos, such as Category:Blurred images, Category:Dutch angle and Category:Image processing gone wrong. The Commons:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop can stretch or rotate photos, to make them more useful for Wikipedia, such as those shown in the Category:Rotated photos and its subcategories.

Out of scope

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Requests for deletions should be added to photos that are out of scope, such as low-quality holiday snaps showing an unidentified person at an unidentified place.

Cleanup while categorization

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Files without categories have a larger fraction of files that are copyright violations are of low quality without realistic usefulness. When categorizing files, nominate such for deletion via Tools → Nominate for deletion or via Tools → Report copyright violation. For identifying copyright violation, a browser addon to quickly reverse search the suspected image via Tineye can be useful. Note that overly low-quality files can clutter the categories you add them to especially for broad categories for major topics (like 'Buildings'), so instead of adding a broad category, consider a more specific one or an Unidentified xy category where quality of files – as well as subcategorization (e.g. by type of building) – is relatively unimportant. Ambiguous file names would also be good to rename right away per COM:File naming.

Project infos

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Project members

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Forum for questions

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Feel free, to raise any questions at Commons:Village pump, which is a forum for novices and experienced Wikimedians.

Statistics

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Date All media without category Percent
2026-02-07 134.019.947 619.611 0.4623 %

See also

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