Commons:Bots/Requests

Shortcut: COM:BRFA

If you want to run a bot on Commons, you must get permission first. To do so, file a request following the instructions below.

Please read Commons:Bots before making a request for bot permission.

I	Create a user account (while logged in to your normal account) and user page for the bot On the bot's userpage, add {{bot}}, which automatically adds the page to Category:Commons bots. Then add the following information to the bot's userpage (all this is mandatory): Operator: Who the creator/operator is and how they can best be contacted Tasks: Details of the bot's task or tasks Operation: Whether the bot is manually assisted or runs automatically When: When it operates (continuously, intermittently, or at specified intervals) Maximum edit rate: The bot's maximum edit rate (eg edits per minute) Language: The language and/or program that it is running
II	Create your bot request: Replace "YourBotName" with your bot's username in the box below and click the button. Complete the questions on the resulting page and save it. Remember that your bot will be allowed to operate only for those tasks that you have specified in your request. Add your bot request to the list here: Edit the following request list, adding the following text to the top of the appropriate section (replacing "YourBotName" with your bot's name): {{Commons:Bots/Requests/YourBotName}}
III	Test run Make a short test run with your bot account (30-50 edits/uploads) to allow other users to review your bot's tasks.
IV	Waiting for approval. You now need to wait for community approval. A bureaucrat will close the request and will also grant a bot flag, where necessary. Closed requests are moved to Commons:Bots/Archive.

Archives List all Requests Requests by closing date

Requests made on this page are automatically transcluded in Commons:Requests and votes for wider comment.

Requests for permission to run a botEdit

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Before making a bot request, please read the new version of the Commons:Bots page. Read Commons:Bots#Information on bots and make sure you have added the required details to the bot's page. A good example can be found here.

When complete, pages listed here should be archived to Commons:Bots/Archive.

Any user may comment on the merits of the request to run a bot. Please give reasons, as that makes it easier for the closing bureaucrat. Read Commons:Bots before commenting.

YiFeiBot (talk · contribs) (28)Edit

Operator: Zhuyifei1999 (talk · contributions · Number of edits · recent activity · block log · User rights log · uploads · Global account information)

Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought:

Categorize userpages of WP0 abusers into Category:Users suspected of abusing Wikipedia Zero. (Block message contains, case-insensitive, T129845, Z567, Z591, WP0, wikipedia zero, or wikipedia 0, within word-boundary.)

This task automates the de-facto standard practice mostly for statistical purposes. CC @Jdx, Dispenser, TJH2018:

Automatic or manually assisted: Automatic unsupervised

Edit type (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Hourly. quarry:query/20378 is the most successful query optimization I've ever done (runs within seconds on tool labs with sql commonswiki)

Maximum edit rate (e.g. edits per minute): 6 edits per min

Bot flag requested: (Y/N): N

Programming language(s): Python: Pywikibot

Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 13:31, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

DiscussionEdit

• I will remove the incorrectly-placed (partially my fault) user talk pages (as opposed to userpages) from the category semi-manually/semi-automatically once the first complete run is done. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 13:31, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• The bot will switch the source table from logging table to ipblocks table once the first complete run is done, so that only current blocks are accounted for, and the bot do not end up edit-warring on mistakenly-blocked users (eg. in the case of User:MJ_Studies). --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 13:31, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  The ipblocks query is much slower. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 05:02, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  The variant with materialization entirely switched off is insanely fast (<1 second). --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 14:22, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

• Please make test run. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:05, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

   Done 10 --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 18:22, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  I think will be better to have template with category for that purpose. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:02, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  With templates you don't get to use subcategories (i.e. some users may be better categorized into one of "Sockpuppets of ..." categories), unless you add some sort of templating parameters (eg. {{{cat|[[Category:Users suspected of abusing Wikipedia Zero]]}}}), which will overcomplicate stuff and you can't use cat-a-lot anymore to sort them (and VFC don't support userpages anyhow, you have to use AWB or bots to do (semi-)automated recategorizing). Besides, the 3500+ pages already directly in the category should be all bare categorization without templating; I don't imagine it would make sense to switch 3500+ more pages to template-method when the initial run is to categorize 600+ pages. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 16:21, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• Even though the WP Zero abuse has subsided substantially since we got those abuse filters and the bot tagging in place, it would make our lives easier so we don't have to tag each suspects' userpage manually. Thanks for including me in this discussion! TJH2018talk 17:49, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

PlantaeBot (talk · contribs)Edit

Operator: Guanaco (talk · contributions · Number of edits · recent activity · block log · User rights log · uploads · Global account information)

Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: Uploading 17,835 public domain images of plants from here. The bot will categorize these images by species and also {{information}} including the author if available. It will also apply a specialized license template for this upload, explaining that they are stated to be free of copyright by the USDA.

Automatic or manually assisted: Supervised/assisted for testing, then unsupervised and automatic once I am confident everything is correct and there are no bugs.

Edit type (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): One time run

Maximum edit rate (e.g. edits per minute): 12 uploads per minute

Bot flag requested: (Y/N): Yes, for upload_by_url

Programming language(s): Python/pywikibot

Guanaco (talk) 21:48, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

DiscussionEdit

• As far as I see not all images from the source site are PD. Which files are you planning to upload, and how do you detect which file is free? --Krd 06:45, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

  Copyright status is a search parameter on the site, and each image has a corresponding attribution page stating the same. I plan on attempting to upload all 17,835 images that are marked non-copyrighted. Some are already uploaded, and in those cases it'll abort on the duplicate warning. Guanaco (talk) 16:17, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

  As I'm building this, I now see that there are some images with conflicting information. They have copyright watermarks, yet the site says they are not copyrighted. For example this image. I'm going to email them for information and forward what I hear from them to OTRS. Guanaco (talk) 19:02, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

  I received this response, so it should be clear to go ahead.

  "thank you for contacting us about this. The copyrighted yet uncopyrighted photo you referred to is taken by Patrick Alexander, and a few years ago he contacted us to request that copyright status be removed from his photos. We were able to make that change in the database, but changing the “© Patrick J. Alexander” in the actual images was not a task we could accomplish without a very large effort, so we decided to just answer people’s questions about this when they came to our attention. I believe his are the only photos we have with this issue. If you want to use his photos you probably will need to spend a lot of time removing the “©” from each of them so there’s no confusion."

  Guanaco (talk) 22:09, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• Please make test run. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:03, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

  Coding... Guanaco (talk) 16:17, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

AliciaFagervingWMSE-bot (talk · contribs)Edit

Operator: Alicia Fagerving (WMSE) (talk · contributions · Number of edits · recent activity · block log · User rights log · uploads · Global account information)

Uploading freely licensed images from (primarily GLAM) collaborations with Wikimedia Sverige.

Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: Image uploads

Automatic or manually assisted: Automatic

Edit type (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): One run per batch.

Maximum edit rate (e.g. edits per minute): ~ 3/min

Bot flag requested: (Y/N): Y

Programming language(s): Python / pywikibot

The particular task the bot account will be used for is uploading freely licensed images from the Swedish National Heritage Board. This will be a continuation of the most recent upload by AndreCostaWMSE-bot, using the same codebase and category structure, incl. maintenance categories.

Alicia Fagerving (WMSE) (talk) 11:59, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

DiscussionEdit

• Is there a reason why this is better than creating a generic WMSE upload account which can be run by WMSE on defined projects? As an observation, you don't need a bot flag on an upload account like this. --Fæ (talk) 12:04, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

As for the bot flag, it's necessary for the account to be able to upload files via url, as opposed to from the local machine. We also prefer to use separate accounts to make it clearer who's responsible for specific tasks. Since institutional accounts are discouraged on some wikis anyway, we've decided to stick to one account per person. --Alicia Fagerving (WMSE) (talk) 15:12, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Agreed that institutional accounts remain controversial (though they do exist), however having a bot flag makes no difference to uploading via URL as far as I'm aware. So if the concern is that the person doing the uploads needs to be accountable, then you can just use your existing WMSE account. There may be a good case to use a separate account if you want to run the uploads as a distinct project and there are going to be a lot of images (like 10,000+), but even then, there is no special benefit in having a bot flag, you can just create the account and start using it. --Fæ (talk) 17:04, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

You need upload_by_url permission to do so, and it's restricted to image reviewers, bots, and admins. Guanaco (talk) 21:53, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, my mistake. I vaguely recall a discussion early in the year about relaxing the restriction. It does seem slightly arbitrary considering there are few restrictions on upload tools that do the same thing by proxy. --Fæ (talk) 06:49, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• Bot flag set, please make some test edits for final approval. --Krd 06:33, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

BartBotje (talk · contribs)Edit

Operator: Bj.schoenmakers (talk · contributions · Number of edits · recent activity · block log · User rights log · uploads · Global account information)

Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: Uploading nature related images from plantennamen.info, waarneming.nl waarnemingen.be and observation.org (and other sites in the future in aid of the dutch nature wikiproject Dutch)

Automatic or manually assisted: Automatic when manually initiated

Edit type (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): One time runs at the discretion of the operator

Maximum edit rate (e.g. edits per minute): avg. 10 per minute

Bot flag requested: (Y/N): Y

Programming language(s): Perl using: MediaWiki::Bot and MediaWiki::API

Bj.schoenmakers (talk) 21:10, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

DiscussionEdit

This bot already has a botflag for the Dutch wikipedia. I want to be able to use it for uploading image batches and as a back-end for a tool i'm creating, allowing users of waarneming.nl, waarnemingen.be and observado.org (sites for nature observations) to publish media to commons using the correct copyright/attribution etc.

•  Support. For plantennamen we have a valid OTRS-ticket (ticket:2017031610007597). Bot owner knows what he is doing and the pics at the sites mentioned are great. Natuur12 (talk) 23:18, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

• Please make a few test edits. --Krd 06:33, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

• Ok, did a few test-uploads in Category:Images from plantennamen.info

  Please enclose author name in language tag. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:18, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

• Please make dates complaint with {{ISOdate}} in the {{Information}} template to allow for multilingual dates. Example: |date=Tue Apr 25 01:16:25 2017 changed to |date=2017-04-25 01:16:25~riley (talk) 23:32, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
•  Question Why doesn't plantennamen have the author's name anywhere? It makes your template statement "This permission only extends to photos taken by Maarten van der Veer at this link." very hard to interpret, because I can't see who any of the photos are by. --99of9 (talk) 02:09, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
  • There is a slight problem with the ticket. Most likely outcome: we will have too delete the test uploads from plantennamen. I will leave some detailed notes at the ticket in some days too explain what went wrong. Natuur12 (talk) 19:58, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
    • I nuked the uploads from Plantennamen. It turns out that this person didn't take at least a significant amount of the photographs himself. This was only found out after an extensive check off the test uploads. Most uploads contained consistent EXIF but some didn't. Perhaps we can still hoste some off the files in the future but not this day and given the situation not any day soon. Natuur12 (talk) 13:55, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
      • Always ask at least one question :). Thanks for investigating Natuur12. --99of9 (talk) 00:00, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
• I'd be happy to see test uploads from the other sites. --99of9 (talk) 02:14, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I did some test uploads from waarneming.nl, waarnemingen.be and observations.org :

Natrix natrix (Colubridae) (European Grass Snake), Biebrza NP, Poland.jpg
Alces alces (Cervidae) (Eurasian elk), Biebrza NP, Poland.jpg
Eysarcoris venustissimus (Pentatomidae) (Woundwort Shieldbug) - (imago), Elst (Gld), the Netherlands - 2.jpg
Eysarcoris venustissimus (Pentatomidae) (Woundwort Shieldbug) - (imago), Elst (Gld), the Netherlands.jpg
Harmonia axyridis f. succinea (Coccinellidae) - (imago), Elst (Gld), the Netherlands.jpg
Diurnea fagella (Chimabachidae) - (imago), Elst (Gld), the Netherlands.jpg
Lophophanes cristatus (Paridae) (European Crested Tit) - (adult), Oberengadin, Switzerland.jpg
Pseudoips prasinana (Nolidae) (Green Silver-lines) - (imago), Zemst, Belgium.jpg
Bombylius major (Bombyliidae) (Dark-edged Bee-fly) - (imago), Arnhem, the Netherlands.jpg
Ommatoiulus sabulosus (Julidae) (Striped Millipede), Molenhoek, the Netherlands.jpg

Bj.schoenmakers (talk) 11:12, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

• The latest upload contains {{LicenseReview}}. Ca we assume that the bot checked the license before the upload, can we consider this reviewed? --Krd 15:24, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

  @Bj.schoenmakers: ? --Krd 05:25, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

  • The tool can only be used to upload files with license CC0, BY-SA and BY .. this is checked at upload-time and timestamped using a url-copy at archive.org (since users are allowed to change their copyright/license settings), Bj.schoenmakers (talk) 08:47, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

    So if this is already checked at upload time, do we need {{LicenseReview}} or can we consider this already reviewed by the bot during upload? --Krd 12:20, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

    @Bj.schoenmakers: ? --Krd 05:36, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

    Yes, the copyright/license is checked by the bot during upload, do you want me to remove the {{LicenseReview}} template ? (or is it autopatrolled or something ?) Bj.schoenmakers (talk) 14:52, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

    Yes, I'd say if it was already reviewed by the bot it does not require additional human review. It should be replaced by the template version which says review is complete. --Krd 17:20, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

  @Krd: this may be controversial (2014 discussion). I was not allowed to do this for my uploads even though I could prove that using the FlickrAPI meant I had automatically confirmed the license and there was no true value by having the standard Flickr bot do exactly the same thing again. I would support a definition of what is required for bots to skip license review, but this may need a community consensus beyond an individual bot discussion. --Fæ (talk) 12:08, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

• Why does the account need a bot flag? --Fæ (talk) 12:06, 27 June 2017 (UTC)