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 You can be demanded to make a short test run with your bot account (30–50 edits/uploads) to allow other users to review your bot's tasks. Unauthorized test run is not allowed.
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 bot

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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.

Taylorbot (talk · contribs)

Operator: Taylor 49 (talk · contributions · Statistics · Recent activity · block log · User rights log · uploads · Global account information) (assign permissions)

Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: fix sorting hints/keys example (including trivial cleanup ie removal of trailing spaces and excessive blank lines)

Automatic or manually assisted: automatic, supervised at the beginning

Edit type: one time run as needed

Maximum edit rate: 12 edits / mi

Bot flag requested YES

Creator of the bot code: myself (the operator)

Programming language(s): ASM+BAS

Taylor 49 (talk) 18:05, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

Please make test run. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:15, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

@User:EugeneZelenko Done. Taylor 49 (talk) 19:37, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Please make better edit summaries. I think will be good idea to mention category and key there. I don't think that words should be merged in key, like in File:Fi-vegaani-ei-sy"o-ruokaa-jossa-on-el"ainper"aisi"a-lis"aaineita.ogg or File:Fi-Min"a olen kaksikymment"aviisi vuotta vanha.ogg. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:25, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

@User:EugeneZelenko Better edit summaries are possible. Whitespace and greyspace is removed in order to give a more predictable position of files containing commas, brackets, long, superlong and hyperlong dashes etc. Not merging is not really difficult, on the contrary. Taylor 49 (talk) 22:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I think it's good idea to make keys same as they should appeared in print (== readable). --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:38, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Usage Bot (talk · contribs)

Operator: Bjh21 (talk · contributions · Statistics · Recent activity · block log · User rights log · uploads · Global account information) (assign permissions)

Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: To create and maintain galleries on Commons that record the use of files by other projects that are not supported by Special:GlobalUsage.

Automatic or manually assisted: Automatic, unsupervised

Edit type (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Batch runs, daily or less frequently

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

Bot flag requested: (Y/N): Y

Programming language(s): Python

This bot is prompted by a suggestion at Commons:Village pump/Proposals#File usage on openstreetmap.org, The following page uses this file to add an indication on Commons that a file is in use on OpenStreetMap. It will do this by querying OpenStreetMap for a list of links to files on Commons and then maintaining user galleries that link to all of these files. These user galleries will then appear under "File usage" on the relevant file pages, which will in particular make these external uses visible for deletion requests. Initially the bot will only target uses of files on OSM, but it could easily be extended to other external targets. Likely early ones are wikis using InstantCommons (such as the wikitech: wiki) and MusicBrainz. --bjh21 (talk) 10:27, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

I think such a bot just for a user gallery would not need any approval. But I would suggest to not do this in a user gallery. This project should be in the Commons namespace. --GPSLeo (talk) 10:22, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm quite happy to target the Commons namespace instead. @GPSLeo: Do you have any opinion on the page naming? My initial instinct is to have Commons:Files used on OSM/1, Commons:Files used on wikitech/1, etc. And then an overall Commons:Files used on other projects to tie them all together and provide a central talk page for the system. --bjh21 (talk) 11:21, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I've replaced "user galleries" with "galleries" in the proposed task to allow for the possibility of maintaining galleries in project space instead of user space. --bjh21 (talk) 09:20, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I think it makes much more sense to have tool similar to Commons:Glamorous . --EugeneZelenko (talk) 13:57, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

@EugeneZelenko: Can you explain why? Molgreen's idea was that the usage on OSM should be visible in the same place as usage on Wikimedia projects, namely on the file page. The point of this was to make it easy to see the external usage of a file when it's proposed for deletion. Requiring use of an external tool would be less convenient since it would require extra clicks to get to the list of uses. --bjh21 (talk) 20:14, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

From my point of view, the proposed solution of bjh21 is optimal. The use of the images is very recognizable without unnecessary email on watched pages. A big thank you to Bjh21. --Molgreen (talk) 04:24, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that maintaining potentially huge page is reasonable. External tool is much better idea. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 13:43, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

@EugeneZelenko: The individual galleries need not be huge. With my current configuration, OSM would have 40 galleries of about 200 kB each. If you're worried about the churn caused by editing, I plan to have the bot avoid moving files between galleries, and to try to batch additions with other edits, so for projects with stable image usage the number of edits should be small. --bjh21 (talk) 18:48, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Is there any example file page where we can see how this would look like? --Krd 06:18, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I've updated User:Usage Bot/Used on OSM/1 to contain what the bot would currently put there, showing the first thousand images used on OSM. In operation, there would be 39 more galleries containing other files used on OSM. I wrote an InstantCommons backend yesterday as well, and User:Usage Bot/Used on wikitech/1 shows the first thousand Commons files used on wikitech. --bjh21 (talk) 09:17, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I think it needs broader discussion what is the best approach. It could or could not be an idea to put this on the file pages themselves, or on the file talk pages, instead of galleries. Perhaps even structured data could or could not be an alternative. --Krd 19:21, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

@Krd: I think all of those would be bad because they would require edits that would show up on the watchlists of everyone watching the corresponding files. I've observed that people are quite averse to bot edits that they see as unimportant (such as SDC edits) ending up on their watchlists. We've had some discussion here and on COM:VPP about how to handle this. I suppose I could put a note on COM:VP pointing at one or other discussion. --bjh21 (talk) 21:25, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

That's how I feel too: two certainly very useful bots cause an email every time a change is made. Over time, I have received a good 5,000 e-mails for just under 2,800 media files. I have specially set up a mailbox rule to separate these mails. Do not misunderstand: the bots have their justification, but I could do without the mails. But because of that I don't want to switch off the observation either. - That's why I like this solution so much.--Molgreen (talk) 12:26, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

@Krd: I've posted what I hope is a suitably neutral notice on COM:VP. --bjh21 (talk) 19:57, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for this - it is a great idea and especially galleries (instead of editing file pages) is a very nice innovation! I support this bot and propose expand it to support use of Wikimedia Commons files on OSM Wiki and https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:wiki:symbol (note that OSM Wiki would need to be also checked whether file is shadowed) Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:27, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I have code of bot doing something similar - see https://github.com/matkoniecz/mediawiki_file_copyright_handler_bot/blob/master/edit_note_files_used_in_osm_database.py and https://pypi.org/project/taginfo/ (code is trivial but taginfo was not mentioned so far here). Note that also https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:wiki:symbol can use files from Wikimedia Commons. And finally, OSM Wiki is also using files from Wikimedia Commons. Exposing that would be also great Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:22, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Files that are used in OSM may be replaced by other files. Does that mean they will also be removed from the gallery or not? Also there is the published-template (used on file_talk pages). How will this project interact with that? Wordpress has a plugin to make standardized attributions (using curid) for images imported from commons. Will this be covered? --C.Suthorn (talk) 04:02, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

@C.Suthorn: Yes, when a file stops being used on OSM (or whatever other sites the bot monitors), it would be removed from its gallery at the next bot run. The aim is for the galleries to track what's actually in use reasonably closely. There wouldn't be any direct interaction with {{Published}}. {{Published}} covers all off-site uses and doesn't indicate whether a use of a work depends on the file's remaining on Commons. Usage Bot, on the other hand, is specifically to track uses that would be affected by deletion from Commons. It might be possible to extend {{Published}} to cover recording whether a use is dependent on Commons, but I think the number of edits required would make it inappropriate for a bot to do this. There are currently about 21,000 files in Category:Commons as a media source, but there are 40,000 referenced by the wikimedia_commons tag on OSM. Which external sites are covered is a matter for community consensus if the galleries are in the Commons namespace. The main technical requirement is for an API that the bot can query to reasonably quickly find out which Commons files are in use on a project. MediaWiki and taginfo provide that; I don't know if the Wordpress plugin you mention does. --bjh21 (talk) 10:57, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

DoggoBot (talk · contribs)

Operator: EpicPupper (talk · contributions · Statistics · Recent activity · block log · User rights log · uploads · Global account information) (assign permissions)

Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: Recategorizing files in Category:San Antonio Express Vol. 39 to Category:San Antonio Express Vol. 49, recategorizing files in Category:San Antonio Express Vol. 45 to Category:San Antonio Express Vol. 55, renaming and editing files in Category:San Antonio Express Vol. 39 from "Vol. 39" to "Vol. 55", renaming and editing files in Category:San Antonio Express Vol. 45 from "Vol. 45" to "Vol. 49".

Automatic or manually assisted: Automatic

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

Maximum edit rate (e.g. edits per minute): 1 / 5 seconds

Bot flag requested: (Y/N): Y

Programming language(s): Cat-a-lot, mwclient for renaming, VFC for editing

EpicPupper (talk) 03:15, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

This was requested at bot requests.

Please make test runs for each task. Please use edit summaries similar to Help:Gadget-HotCat and User:CommonsDelinker. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:33, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @EugeneZelenko, I've run a trial for the recategorizing (18 edits). My bot needs filemover to do the other part; could that be given, please? Thanks! EpicPupper (talk) 21:51, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Changing categories looks OK for me. I granted file mover right to bot account for week. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:31, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

• EpicPupper, the files in 45 need to be renamed to 55 to match the match the recategorization. :) Also, can you make the small change so that the text changes from 39 to 49 like I did here. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:06, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
  • Sure Ricky81682. Do the volume 45 files also need editing? EpicPupper (talk) 00:38, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
    • EpicPupper I started and completed the files like File:San Antonio Express. (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 55, No. 215, Ed. 1 Monday, August 2, 1920 - DPLA - c52d78ed9de6b2bf8f61baf9a77829a6 (page 1).jpg but it got beyond tedious by hand as you can imagine. This is an extreme level of correction I'm aware but I figure it's important. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:34, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
      • Hi Ricky81682, yep, I was planning to move the volume 45 files as well, but was wondering if they needed the title parameter in the wikitext edited. Cheers, EpicPupper (talk) 01:35, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
        • EpicPupper Sorry I wasn't clear but yeah, that would help. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:56, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi EugeneZelenko, I've finished the trial (recategorization, renaming, edits). For some of the earlier edits I forgot to set an edit summary, but I did so for the later ones. Cheers, EpicPupper (talk) 01:57, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Please omit - Doing 1 replacements from description changes. It would be reasonable to move unused files without leaving redirect. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:16, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

@EpicPupper and EugeneZelenko: Please summarize what is missing here. --Krd 13:16, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

@EugeneZelenko and Krd, the edit summary was requested to be changed; I'm not sure this is possible in Cat-a-lot. I'm concerned about not leaving redirects for file moves as offwiki sites might link to the old versions, and we should try to prevent link rot as much as possible. See also "Redirects as cheap" on enwiki. EpicPupper (talk) 13:30, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Please repeat test run. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:32, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

@EugeneZelenko could you grant file mover for a month, please? Thank you. EpicPupper (talk) 00:58, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Recategorizing done. EpicPupper (talk) 01:21, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Done. Please also perform text replacements. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:41, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

@EpicPupper: Please report the status of this request. --Krd 09:34, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I’ve performed multiple test runs; I don’t think it’s beneficial to do more. I would like a decision on this request. EpicPupper (talk) 20:40, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I requested to repeat text replacements test and it's still not done. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:35, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to clarify that I've already performed text replacement trial runs/ EpicPupper (talk) 20:15, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Last text replacement I see in bot's contribution was done March 7 and edit summary was Fixing volume number to actual number - Doing 1 replacements., so test run with fixed edit summary was not repeated. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:12, 22 June 2024 (UTC)