Commons talk:Media of the day

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Feel free to nominate your favorite audio, video, animation... We suggest to use the template below. If disagreement about MOTD cannot be resolved, start discussion at Village pump.

== Nomination: FILENAME ==
[[File:FILENAME|thumb|thumbtime=12:34|FILENAME]]
(any additional comments here, e.g. suggested date)
--~~~~

They forgot the media of the day today

Is Commons main page being neglected? Soviet Pepega (talk) 03:14, 17 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Aafi has fixed it! LuniZunie (talk) 04:07, 17 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

I have temporary placed a redirect on {{Motd/2026-06-17}}, and I'd appreciate if MOTD folks actually update this. _signed, Aafi ^(talk) 04:09, 17 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

sigh

where's media of the day Soviet Pepega (talk) 02:27, 20 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

OK, fixed. Yann (talk) 04:06, 20 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Are we missing something? (Apparently again?) Front page has "Media of the day No media of the day today. The ID "M" is unknown to the system. Please use a valid entity ID." No entry at Template:Motd/2026-07#8. TheFeds 02:57, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Would it be technically feasible to suppress display of the box on the front page when there is no selected media? At least it wouldn't look so bad. TheFeds 03:03, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

the the media of the day page exists but it might be a backend error that it's not displaying Gladcape2013 (talk) 03:15, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

me too I see that there is no definition Gladcape2013 (talk) 03:13, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Do they actually have to have "Featured" status? If not, then File:Squirrel in tree eating an apple.webm or File:Start of the procession of gegants for the Feast of Sant Josep Oriol.webm (both mine) might be better than nothing. - Jmabel ! talk 03:15, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Yes indeed Gladcape2013 (talk) 03:20, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Jmabel, literally anyone can put anything up as MOTD. That's how my escalator video became MOTD, I needed something last minute to replace a video with licensing issues. Feel free to add your videos on COM:MOTD. Squirrels are cute. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 06:37, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

TheFeds, on it. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 06:33, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

OK, I added the squirrel. I hope I did this correctly (never went near Motd before), someone please check. - Jmabel ! talk 06:48, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

I take it that there is something more to do than just fix Template:Motd/2026-07-08, because I don't see it on the main page. - Jmabel ! talk 06:51, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks to all for looking into this. I'm not sure how it is supposed to work, but instead of the squirrel, now I see "No media of the day today. A great egret carefully steps from the ice into the water", with no picture. Purging the main page and the template page don't seem to be the answer. It's unfortunate that there isn't an obvious method to update this. TheFeds 09:29, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

to continue User:D-Kuru's idea Template_talk:Motd#c-D-Kuru-2019-10-13T11:20:00.000Z-Template_redesign.

recently i've also been thinking about this. an idea i have is that the main file template could be merged into 1 per month, like

{{#switch:{{{date|}}}
...
|2026-07-09=a.webm
|2026-07-10=b.webm
|2026-07-11=c.webm
...

then the display template just fetches the filename for a given date from this template. it could actually be 1 for the whole year or any length of time, but for easier management and inspection 1 per month would be nice.

another idea i thought about is making use of help:Tabular Data, but i think editing data:...tab pages and extracting data out of them are way more complex than using switch in a template page.--RoyZuo (talk) 18:22, 9 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

So there seems to be a dearth of entries for the Media of the Day recently. I hadn't ever participated in this process before, but yesterday afternoon I noticed that there wasn't any file yet selected for today (July 31) and so I tried clicking the buttons to enter a filename and caption, which looked like it all worked, and it seems nobody's complained about it that I know of. So I've got some questions here about what I did and/or should do:

1. Did I have this right, that anybody at all like me can just pick any media file at all and just place it anywhere in the MOTD schedule?
2. Is there some criteria listed for what should or shouldn't be used? I mean obviously I'd pick files that I think are good files, and I wouldn't pick anything I thought would be clearly offensive. But anything written down for what makes a good or poor choice?
3. There's a {{Media of the day}} template, which I manually put on the file I selected. Is that the right process, or is some bot or other automated or manual system supposed to add that to the selected file? And does it get added when the file is selected, or after it's been promoted to the home page, or at some other specific time?
4. Is there any notification template or the like for telling an uploader that their media file has been selected? I left a barnstar and message on the user talk page of the uploader for the file I picked, since I thought it'd be great to let them know. Is there any more-formal process for this that I'm missing?

Thanks. — PeterCooperJr (talk) 23:18, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

1. Yes, you add the media alright, but you didn't add the caption. I did it in English and French. If you know any more languages, please add more. BTW, good file.

2. You can choose among Commons:Featured media, but I am not sure there are enough files to fill all days. Whenever possible, it is nice to have a file related to the date, anniversary, etc.

3. The file page should get a template {{Media of the day|2026|08|01}}; Also done.

There are not enough people taking care of this. Thanks for helping. Regards, Yann (talk) 09:22, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

Just to be clear, I did July 31, not August 1. The edits I did were to Template:Motd/2026-07-31, Template:Motd/2026-07-31 (en), and adding the template to the file itself. Is there something more I need to get the caption working? Thanks. PeterCooperJr (talk) 11:48, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

1. Yes, that's why we frequently see rather poor choices without as much as a caption, repetitive content and sometimes even files with license troubles.
2. Don't think so.
3. I don't even bother putting the template on files. It's not exactly a prize.
4. Nope, barnstar works.
Thanks for helping out. As Yann said, not enough people taking care of this. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 22:36, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply