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.
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.
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.
Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: To upload, categorize, rename, provide with a generated index Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps downloaded from the Library of Congress and other places (seldomly).
Automatic or manually assisted: manual
Edit type(e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): intermittently for a few weeks
Maximum edit rate (e.g. edits per minute): 100 when uploading
i have already uploaded 80,000 files through my main account in the last few days, unaware of this prior authorization requirement. Nowakki (talk) 16:28, 25 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
here is a proposal for the index which i would add to the category page of a town. this category would then have subcategories for the (year, volume) combo of a map too. But the index should suffice to access all the plates.
the code to add the index is not yet written. i will add comments above and below the generated content to allow automatic edits to easily be undone.
For the moment i just need to upload the images. I can ask for additional permissions when i have the code ready.
Additional permissions will almost certainly also include the renaming of old files that were uploaded by somebody else with a bad naming scheme.
In any case, all accesses of the bot will be restricted to files and categories that start with "Sanborn Fire Insurance Map From". In other words, it may make more sense to just look at the end result as this is really just an upload job for new content with some alteration to old content in the same "namespace". Nowakki (talk) 16:38, 25 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Based on your uploads: will be good idea to put content of file name into description, not just plate number; please enclose description in language tag. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:12, 26 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Ok, i am now using the in the description the same string as in the filename (File:ALLTHIS.jpg) with a language tag. I will delay editing existing pages in case something else comes up. Nowakki (talk) 05:01, 27 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: Makes requests to the MediaWiki API for information pertaining to category lists and IDs
These API requests are converting into a JSON list to aid in our assessment of whether images existing on Wikimedia Commons with a 'Cultural Permissions' tag need to be put forward for mass deletion. Currently through the Mediawiki API queries can only be done on 500 items, while we require ~2000 items to be queried.
Automatic or manually assisted: Manually assisted
Edit type(e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): One time run
Maximum edit rate (e.g. edits per minute): 2 edits per minute, although no edits should be required
Bot flag requested:(Y/N): Y
Programming language(s): Python, printing data as JSON
Please don't make manual edits with a bot account. Who is the operator of the bot? I think this cannot b e approved, please use API:Continue. --Krd 05:43, 13 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This looks like a XY Problem. @Dactylantha: you seem to be behind this account. Can you please explain in more detail what you're trying to do? Multichill (talk) 20:10, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: upload images, update their description and structured data
Automatic or manually assisted: automatically triggered, when upload happens on OsmAPP.org
Edit type(e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): when user uploads an image on OsmAPP.org
Maximum edit rate (e.g. edits per minute): 20 ?
Bot flag requested:(Y/N): N
Programming language(s): TypeScript
Note: Bot is currently in development, asking to be able to test it. Zbytovsky (talk) 19:20, 19 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Discussion
Do I get it right? Someone adds an image to osmapp and your bot will transfer it to Commons. If so, how is ensured that the license of that image is a) valid and b) meets Commons' requirements? --Achim55 (talk) 19:50, 19 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Achim55 Yes, i think you got it right. As OpenStreetMap is also a open data project, we aim to have open licenses. Please see the design of upload dialog. I tried to write it the best I can, but I welcome any suggestions. It will add images with direct link to OSM feature, which means also proper map coordinates and category (eg. castle, guidepost, school, bridge etc.) Zbytovsky (talk) 07:35, 20 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@EugeneZelenko Well, I didn't think of that, thanks for bringing it to my attention :-) As we are a map application, it is pretty easy to inform users based on country of the object. I created a mockup here - it would show up for the "NO" countries. Do you think it is sufficient for the beginning? I don't expect many users soon, but if it turns out to be an issue, it is quite easy to be more restrictive, or eg. check if there is a building in 1km, etc. Zbytovsky (talk) 20:22, 21 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
It'll be OK for beginning, but will be good idea to extend database (Wikidata is perfect place to share with WLM if organizers will finally comprehend the need to do so) to include information about sculptress/architects, so it'll be possible to allow what is in public domain. There are also countries with partial freedom of panorama, where photos of buildings are allowed, but not of works of art. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:00, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Sure, I can reach out to WLM once this become an issue. Zbytovsky (talk) 19:51, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Good question! My general approach with these things is to be extremely conservative – imo the V1 bot should be purely additive, and any conflicts should be flagged for manual inspection.
Then a couple of things might happen:
The existing SDC looks wrong, so I make a manual edit from my account to fix it. e.g. I’ve already been looking at the use of source of file (P7482) for Flickr photos in the SDC snapshots, and I found ~200 cases where the URL points to the Flickr URL’s profile (/photos/{username}) rather than the photo itself (/photos/{username}/{photo_id}). Those got dropped on a queue and I’ve been gradually tidying them up by hand – opening the files in question and making a manual edit from my account to point to the more specific URL.
The existing SDC looks right, so I work out why the bot is disagreeing. Is it a bug in my code, have I interpreted the data mapping wrong, is the data mapping at odds with the community approach to SDC, is the bot missing some bit of info on the Flickr photo. But the bot won't do anything on its own.
There might also be cases where the existing SDC is wrong in large numbers and we'd want to write an automated fix, but that's somewhat risky and I’d want to be extremely careful before doing that. Two possible examples spring to mind:
License versions. Flickr photos use CC 2.0 licenses, so that's what the bot will write into the SDC. But what if it finds a Wiki Commons file which links to the 4.0 version of the CC license? That sounds like an easy candidate for a fix buuuut I think there are Flickr users who leave descriptions on their photos saying "I license this as CC 4.0". A human copying their photo across would notice that; the bot might not. So in this case the bot would likely leave it as-is to avoid deleting info.
Date granularity. Flickr has different levels of granularity for "date taken". Most photos are DDMMYY, but there are some which are MMYY or YY or "Circa YY". If there are lots of cases where there's an imprecise data but the SDC claims it's a full DDMMYY, we might consider automating that. (It's pretty obvious when this has happened – Flickr always returns a full timestamp from its API, but it sets all the unknown values to 0/1. So a YYYY becomes taken="1950-01-01 00:00:00" takengranularity="6".) The bot could be written to fix these. But I don't know if that's a widespread issue in practice.
If/when the bot does start editing existing SDC claims, I'll make sure we document those with examples – and if there are cases that seem contentious, I'll bring them back for community discussion before actually implementing them. Alexwlchan (talk) 08:13, 2 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
To return to this question of "how does the bot handle conflicting edits":
Right now the bot will flag any conflicts as "unknown", not make any edits, and put them in a manual queue for review. I’ll look at them and decide if we need to update the bot code, do a manual edit to the SDC, or leave it be.
This confuses the bot, because it wants to write a different SDC statement to what’s currently in Commons – so it flags it as “unknown”.
I went and had a look at it, and I can see that the license has changed since the initial upload – there’s a license history feature on Flickr, and it was changed from CC BY 2.0 in April 2014, a year after it was uploaded to Commons.
(And now I'm going to look at tweaking the bot code so it gets the license from when the photo was uploaded to Commons, and uses that rather than whatever the license is now. But license is a pretty well-populated field, so I may not need this in practice.) Alexwlchan (talk) 08:22, 13 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Brief addendum to this: I’m going to take license out of the bot for now.
1. Licenses are already pretty well-populated in SDC, so the potential gain here is less.
2. I’m encountering a lot of cases where Flickr users have changed their license after the fact, which makes the bot unhappy.
It is possible to see license history on Flickr as far back as 2008, or I could inspect the Wikitext, but I’m going to leave it for now. I can come back later and see how many Flickr photos are actually missing a license in practice. Alexwlchan (talk) 14:45, 13 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
To add another example to this:
If the bot encounters conflicting information in the "date taken" field, it flags a warning but doesn’t do anything.
e.g. File:STS059-238-074 Strait of Gibraltar.jpg is a photo which was posted to both Flickr and a NASA website. On Flickr the taken date is "April 1994", but on NASA's website we get the more precise date "17 April 1994", which is what's used in the SDC.
Flickypedia would write a statement "April 1994" if it was copying the photo fresh from Flickr, but it doesn't overwrite the existing, more-precise statement when it does the backfill. Alexwlchan (talk) 11:02, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
👍 I’ll probably get to making some test edits early next week, and I’ll link them here for inspection when they’re done. Alexwlchan (talk) 07:46, 2 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I know it’s been a couple of weeks and nothing has happened on this.
I am planning to get back to this bot eventually, but right now I’m prioritising getting the “uploader” part of Flickypedia working. Once that’s done, I’ll come back to the Backfillr bot. Alexwlchan (talk) 09:47, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If you use a JSON data specification this can be done by simply merging all the different claims.
Please tag the edits with "BotSDC" as lots of user use this tag to filter out SDC edits
If you use a JSON post request this can be done by adding { "tags", "BotSDC" }
Please make sure you specify a maxlag for your edits as this got me into trouble once and avoid database overload
If you use a JSON post request this can be done by adding { "maxlag", "2" }
In the edit summary, please link the phrase structured data to [[Commons:Structured data|structured data]] or this bot request so users can find out more if needed.
I would appreciate if you could perform another set of bot edits that incorporate this. --Schlurcher (talk) 08:46, 13 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks for the quick feedback! I’ve addressed all four of your suggestions.
1. Done, duh. For some reason I got it into my head that you can’t modify multiple properties at once, but I think that’s just a limitation of the visual editor? API seems fine with it, so that’s changed.
2. Done.
3. Done. I’m also planning to drop a note to somebody who works on the structured data team before I start running the bot at large scale, as a courtesy – backfilling Flickr data means 10s of millions of new statements, and I figure it’ll be easier if they have a direct line to the person adding database load.
4. Done. I’ve also added the property IDs, which I figured might be useful.
Thanks. No further comments from my end. My database issue was described here [2] and as I learned, as long as we respect maxlag it should be fine. As I've myself added 100s of millions of statements, I would not be too concerned about this request. Contrary, I think it is an excellent addition to improving SDC use. --Schlurcher (talk) 13:27, 13 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Please summarize: Have all issues been addressed? --Krd 04:28, 21 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Tasks: Upload up-to-date maps of Italian municipalities. There are about 8000 municipalities, boundaries are updated yearly by the national statistical agency. Here is an example of image that will be uploaded, the description will be automatically updated for each municipality: [3]
Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: upload several images automatically
Automatic or manually assisted: automatic supervised (through OpenRefine)
Edit type(e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): One time run each year
Maximum edit rate (e.g. edits per minute): I don't know the edit rate allowed using the new OpenRefine function for uploading images. As fast as it can, i suppose.
Just to clarify: Is this to upload as a new version, or to overwrite? If the latter, is there a consensus to do so? I see that those borders include photo credits to the individual photographers, and these are from a respected archive, so I'd just want to make sure that there is agreement that this is desired; I've seen similar situations go either way. Clearly more useful in Wikipedia articles without the borders, but it's not clear to me that we don't want also to host a version with the credit line on the image. - Jmabel ! talk 23:58, 1 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
My thought is to overwrite. I've not seen any written consensus on the matter, but in practice that's what has been done for years in this category. I think that implies a silent consensus, considering these captions have been digitally added by the archive and provide no additional information not already in the description. Beao (talk) 08:36, 2 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Please make some example edits. Krd 17:06, 6 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Looks good to me. Krd 13:49, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Any more information or discussion needed? Beao (talk) 12:22, 14 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
[4] Why is this updated so often? Krd 03:04, 19 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The "Images with watermarks" category is very big, so the retrieval of file usage statistics is batched to a fixed number of images every hour to avoid performance spikes, and I update the gallery after every batch. Is updating gallery pages too often problematic? I could do it less often (I'm thinking if images are not removed from the category), and also avoid doing it when nothing changes. Beao (talk) 15:53, 20 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Please at least don't update when nothing significant changes. Krd 07:42, 21 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I've updated the code to update only on changes now! Beao (talk) 09:01, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I appears to me that there are still too many edits or the statistics pages. (Or is there any relevant work done on these maintenance categories?) Krd 14:31, 10 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I've updated the code a couple of days ago and did some extra runs to confirm that it worked, and since then the non-changing categories haven't updated. But yeah, I'm also removing watermarks! Beao (talk) 07:27, 17 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
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Oppose this bot request until two concerns are addressed:
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![[1]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ATimesSquare-500px.jpg&diff=829081269&oldid=700856020){kind=link}
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.jpg&diff=prev&oldid=830339160){kind=link}
.jpg&diff=prev&oldid=830339211){kind=link}
![[3]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Aicurzio_(province_of_Monza_e_della_Brianza,_region_Lombardia,_Italy_2023).svg){kind=link}
