Talk:Community Tech/Commons deletion notification bot

Untitled section

We are planning to do this as our final year project We are in confusion how to start. Can we have any suggestions? --Harideepan (talk) 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Someone supposedly had a working version here.[1] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:14, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

How can I check whether an image is deleted from commons, So that I can notify the wikipedia articles that images associated with them are deleted--Harideepan (talk) 14:38, 2 January 2018 (UTC)?

We have lists here https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests#Lists_of_requests

Here are the ones listed on Jan 2nd 2018[2]

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:49, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

I actually asked about notifying the Wikipedia articles after the images associated with them are deleted Harideepan (talk) 05:42, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Not sure. There is a bot that comes around and removes the images. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:46, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Is it possible to get the usages of an image (in Wikipedia articles) which is deleted from commons using the API?. Can we extract information from the commons deletion log C:Special:Log/delete? --Harideepan (talk) 06:42, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

If you look at the lower part here https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_gout_james_gillray.jpg

It says all the places an image is used. Can you get this from the API? I have no idea. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:01, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

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@Harideepan and Doc James: Just dropping by: mw:Extension:GlobalUsage has query examples, if that helps. Mahir256 (talk) 07:07, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't really see how posting notices about images that have already been deleted would be useful. This information is already apparent to people watching the article due to the CommonsDelinker edit. Regardless, at that point it's too late to do much about it anyway. The proposal at the Community Wishlist Survey was to create a bot to post notices when a file is nominated for deletion, not when it is actually deleted. Kaldari (talk) 08:20, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Possible obstacles

There are at least two possible obstacles for the implementation:

• resistance to vandalism: there should be some throttle or time delay before the notification are sent, because when someone tags for deletion a highly used file in bad faith, it has a potential to produce a huge amount of unwanted spam across all projects
• "template" files: what should the bot do, when a file is an integral part of a highly used template? Should be only the template talk page notified, or should be the notification placed at talk pages of all articles where the template is used?

--Vachovec1 (talk) 18:52, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

@Doc James: Any thoughts on these potential pitfalls? Kaldari (talk) 08:21, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

The first one is interesting. How often does this occur I wonder? One does not want to wait so long that commons deletes the image though.

It should notify the WikiProject to which the template belongs IMO.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:28, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

That would be difficult for projects which have different WikiProject systems. Perhaps just inform the people who have the local filepage watchlisted when the Commons file is altered? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:23, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

If the projects are listed on the talkpage would be fairly easy. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:43, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

If the bot runs daily, then that should usually be enough to not report common vandalism. If the bot runs continuously, a delay of a few hours should be more than enough. I don't know how active is commons, but anywhere from 1h to 24h would make sense to me. Headbomb (talk) 20:05, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds reasonable to me. --Vachovec1 (talk) 01:38, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Article alerts

Would be good to have the notices combined into this on languages were this exists. For example for medicine en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Article alerts Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:50, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree, but for the first version of this bot we will just be writing on the talk pages of the articles that directly use the image. But we'll certainly keep this in mind as we also work on Community Tech/Article Alerts for more languages in 2018. — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager 🗨 18:27, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree that 'this' bot should stick to article talk pages notices. However, those notices could very well be picked up by the revamped Article Alert bot. Or maybe the new Article Alerts could detect things on commons directly and not depend on another bot. Headbomb (talk) 20:05, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

User:Headbomb having the article alert bot pick up these notices would be excellent. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:18, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Number of pages to edit

I assume that this number is the total number of images put up for deletion per month.

One should subtract those which are not used within any project (which I imagine is a fair percentage)

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:11, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

This is a bit of a tardy response, sorry. But we will handle this logic in phab:T188150. — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager 🗨 17:30, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Notification

• If a file is used on more than 10 pages, the bot will only post on 10 talk pages, to minimize spam.

That doens't make any sense. I can show you deleted images that link to thousands of pages worldwide. So, first and foremost the original uploader should get a notification and every wiki that uses that image. Village Pumps would be perfect places to do that. Best, --OrsolyaVirág (talk) 15:35, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Or the community should be able to designate a black hole (instead of VP) for all notifications to be sent there. — regards, Revi 16:51, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

@OrsolyaVirág: I need to update this to say "10 pages per wiki", but this doesn't sound like it entirely addresses your concern. For the first version of this bot we would rather make it too quiet than too loud and increase any limitations (namespace, maximums, etc.) until it is a useful tool. We believe that 10 is a appropriate number that will accomplish the goal of informing enough people to participate in the Commons deletion nomination process. In the future we could build something more sophisticated — I like the idea to post to Village Pump or -revi's idea to let each wiki select the target page. I've created phab:T190313 to keep track of this idea. — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager 🗨 17:30, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

I have the same concerns as Orsolya. 10 pages, even per wiki, sounds pretty low. Possible solutions would include making it configurable per wiki or having the number as a percentage of the total number of usages.--Strainu (talk) 20:07, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

My most obvious ideas for reasons to have over 10 pages using the same image are: a) templates, b) images used in lists or similar. For templates, can the bot try to identify the template and write on the template's talk page instead of talk pages of all template's transclusions? For lists, can the bot probably identify the main article (e.g. if it is a picture of a person, article about that person) and make sure there is a message on that talk page? — NickK (talk) 20:32, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@Strainu: @NickK: We are going to attempt to identify the 10 pages that are the most watchlisted, which we feel will increase the likelihood that someone will notice the message and participate in the deletion discussion. This bot doesn't need to reach every single person, just one person who is willing to go to Commons and participate in the deletion discussion.

As for your ideas: Yes, it could identify the template talk page, if possible. And we could make the bot configurable in the future. I've updated phab:T190313. It would be much more complicated to try to identify the main article on list pages, and why wouldn't the list article's talk page suffice? — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager 🗨 00:19, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

@TBolliger (WMF): The point is that pages may belong to different Wikiprojects and thus may be watched by different people. Say, a portrait of a person can be in an article about that person (whose editors are clearly interested in discussing it) but may also be in List of people related to Anyplace which might be only moderately interested to editors on that specific city, especially if the picture is from a different period. Is it clear why it will be like that? — NickK (talk) 04:24, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Or signatures. I just subtituted dozens of deleted images in thousands of signatures on huwiki. I know it's one step further but it would be nice to have an extra row for possible image substitution. Many times C admins just click on delete and leave thousands of unavailable images worldwide behind because they never click on "what links here?" and never look for a very similar image that could be used as an alternative. I'm sorry but that's so lazy. They cause a lot extra work for others locally. --OrsolyaVirág (talk) 22:01, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

That's a good idea but not sure this is within the scope of this very bot. There might be tricky cases as some replacements may involve uploading that image locally as fair use and replacing with a local copy etc. Might be too complex at this stage — NickK (talk) 22:12, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@NickK: @OrsolyaVirág: Yes, replacing images is a bit out of scope for this project. This sounds more like something to address in the deletion process itself (e.g. a warning when an image used so frequently is about to be deleted) or handled socially on each wiki. — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager 🗨 00:19, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Doesn't commonsDelinker remove deleted images automatically? Strainu (talk) 08:06, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it appears User:CommonsDelinker removes redlinks from article pages based on Commons Deletion logs. We won't be changing this bot with our project. — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager 🗨 18:54, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't understand. The original uploader of the image will be notified by the bot or not ? --Accipiter Q. Gentilis (talk) 14:51, 13 April 2018 (UTC) P.S. Ia fully agre that first and foremost the original uploader should get a notification and every wiki that uses that image, too. Also, I fully agree that Village Pumps would be perfect places to do that on every wiki.

@Accipiter Q. Gentilis: Thank you for your comment, but that would be a Commons Wiki process, and not part of this project. This project is specifically about cross-wiki notifications when an image used on an article page is marked for deletion. — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager 🗨 18:54, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Standard way to request deletion is c:COM:DR#Starting requests and if you use the method (gadget there), the DR initiator will issue a notification that "I've put your file into DR". c:Special:Permalink/290702022#File:Hwaseongsine-map.png — regards, Revi 10:24, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Bump

Any plan or progress on discussion blackhole? Never heard back since then. — regards, Revi 15:22, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi -revi. I've taken over this project from Trevor Bolliger. I don't think we can work on the discussion blackhole as part of this project. The team is running behind schedule and we need to work on some of the bigger projects that were asked for in the wishlist survey before we can take this on. We were handed some projects that were outside of the wishlist which has severely impacted how much work we can deliver this year. I apologize for that.

That said, maybe Steinsplitter can help out with this as he has a bot which does a similar job. Thanks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:09, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

@NKohli (WMF): Hi, Currently there is only c:User:SteinsplitterBot/DR and https://tools.wmflabs.org/steinsplitter/drrc/tool/ (alpha). Regards--Steinsplitter (talk) 14:10, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Low aims

It seems like the development process aims very low. There is absolutely no talk about more complex use-cases, such as interested parties (institutions) getting notified when their uploads are proposed for deletion.--Strainu (talk) 20:07, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@Strainu: Correct, we have scoped this very small so we can build it quickly. The goal for this bot is cross-wiki communication when an image used on a wiki other than Commons is marked for deletion on Commons. Because this is a project that deals exclusively with Commons, I think you might be able to discuss it with the Commons community at commons:Commons talk:Deletion policy or with the WMF/WMDE commons:Commons:Structured data team, which is working to improve the Commons Wiki experience for institutions. — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager 🗨 00:19, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Account

Why use the account User:Community Tech bot rather than an account like User:Commons Notification Bot or etc? --Terra ❤ ^(talk) 00:39, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

@TerraCodes: We decided to re-use the existing bot account for speed of development because it is already configured as a bot on a few wikis and it is straightforward to add new commands for the bot to execute. We discussed using a new bot such as you recommended (and are not opposed to doing so in the future!) but feel the frequency of Commons deletion nominations does not necessitate a new bot. — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager 🗨 21:05, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for explaining it. --Terra ❤ ^(talk) 02:28, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Opt in at EN WP

Have begun a discussion here Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:39, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Opt in at RO WP

Discussion has begun here.--Strainu (talk) 22:12, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

@Strainu: thank you! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 00:27, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Strainu It seems like there is consensus and all the translations have been completed. Is this ready to go? I have a few additional questions - does rowiki require a trial edit period? Should the bot edits be marked with bot flag? Any edit tags which should be used? Thank you. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:01, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

We're indeed good to go. I believe the answer is 'no' to all your questions. We might require the bot flag if there are too many edits, but we should begin without it to make sure the edits are visible to patrollers, not just people watching the page. Strainu (talk) 22:33, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Strainu. I have a ticket for deployment ready here: task T202340. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:43, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Strainu The bot is now working on rowiki. Only one edit so far. Do let us know if something looks off and we will fix it. Thanks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:26, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Correct link

I posted a link the notice I received called "Community Tech/Newsletters/Commons notification bot and SVG translate - August 2018" but apparently to the wrong transwiki. Can't find it. What is the correct link? I have posted the wrong link to three nominations. Other editors are now confused. Trackinfo (talk) 06:25, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

The page is on mediawiki.org. When you clicked on the notification, did you not take you to the page? Thanks Trackinfo! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Opt in at PL WP

Discussion started here today. Wostr (talk) 21:40, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

• There is a question from pl.wiki user: what happens with notifications after file is deleted or discussion on Commons is closed? Does the bot delete such notifications or maybe there is no option to delete old notifications using Commons deletion notification bot? If the bot doesn't delete old notifications from article discussion pages, are there any plans to implement this option in the future? Wostr (talk) 22:03, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

The bot does not delete posts it makes from talk pages. There are no plans to implement this feature right now. How important is this feature to the plwiki community? Thanks for facilitating communications, Wostr. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure I can answer this question right now. My personal opinion is that the pros outweight cons (i.e. keeping old notifications on discussion pages), but for some users deleting old notifications may be important enough to oppose running the bot – we'll see in a few weeks (approx. 2 weeks is a minimum time for such discussion in pl.wiki to be valid). We're also trying to figure out if it's possible to run another bot for deleting old notifications – but this is complicated (we have bots that delete old notifications based on templates, but here we would have plain text, so we're not sure if we manage to do this on our own). Regards, Wostr (talk) 15:23, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

NKohli, the discussion on pl.wiki lasted 4 weeks, there are no oppose votes, even after information that the notifications can't be removed by the same bot. The bot should operate without bot flag and notifications should not be marked as minor, but pl.wiki bot policy require about 20–30 test edits. I think all necessary translations are added. Wostr (talk) 22:14, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for coordinating this, Wostr. I have created task T204524 for the team to do this. I will let you know when the 30 trial edits have been made. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 13:16, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

@Wostr and Malarz pl: Hi. Continuing conversation from task T204524, I understand the community wants a way to figure out which notifications to delete. I saw this page (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedysta:MalarzBOT/commons). How is it being generated currently? Adding templates to messages is often not a great idea because messages are meant to be used on all wikis which use pl language. And they get harder to translate. It should be easy to just watch the bot contributions for this purpose and delete notifications posted by the bot on the wiki. The bot does not perform any other tasks on the wiki. If you want to make it more fullproof, we can add an edit tag for these edits which will allow you to quickly filter all of these edits. Can we help with either of those solutions? Thank you. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Now, my bot is looking for bot notification in pl:Special:Contribs/Community Tech bot. Bot notification are deleted 24h after file deletion or 24h after last edit on file description page if there hasn't templates like {{delete}}. In the long term, this may be inefficient. If community tech bot does not perform any other activity on pl.wiki i can switch my bot to scan list generated by pl:Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Community Tech bot (as I previously planned to scan "WhatLinksHere/Template:Powiadomienie o ..."). I think you can run bot permanently on pl.wiki. Malarz pl (talk) 21:41, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

The bot does not perform any other activity on plwiki currently so you may scan all bot edits. Generally, edit tags are a good way to do this because you can use the API to find out which pages have those edits. See this example API output for mobile edit tagged edits on English Wikipedia. You can also use edit tags to filter RecentChanges feed. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:30, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

No permission since

In the "Requirements" section, there are examples of the messages posted if a file is nominated for regular deletion or speedy deletion. What if it's nominated using commons:Template:No permission since? Over at en.wikivoyage, there's some concern about articles with valid licenses being tagged with this template and then deleted before anyone from Wikivoyage has a chance to try to solve the problem. If we enable the bot on our project, will it notify us when images we use are tagged with the "No permission since" template? Mx. Granger (talk) 01:15, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

@Mx. Granger: Hi. The bot can notify when images are tagged with that template, yes. It will however also notify when the image is tagged with other templates relating to deletion (Speedy deletion etc.). If you want the bot to be enabled, can you start a discussion on the Traveller's Pub to get consensus about enabling the bot and also for notifying about images tagged with "No permission since" template? We can enable the bot as soon as the community approves. Thank you for reaching out. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 05:10, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Great! Thanks for the reply. I've mentioned this in the ongoing discussion, and I hope we'll get consensus for enabling the bot. Mx. Granger (talk) 08:27, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

@NKohli (WMF): In the discussion mentioned above, we have consensus to enable the bot (including for the "No permission since" template)—there's support from a number of users and no opposition. Please enable the bot when you have the chance. Thank you! Mx. Granger (talk) 02:27, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

@Mx. Granger: Thanks for the update. I will report back to you once the bot is enabled. I expect it to happen within a couple weeks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi NKohli (WMF), I just want to check if there's been any progress on this. Mx. Granger (talk) 12:29, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

@Mx. Granger: The task for tracking this work is in task T208747. I believe the technical work is complete but remains to be deployed. I will let you know as soon as that happens. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Okay, great—thanks for the link! Mx. Granger (talk) 23:29, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Mx. Granger, the bot has been enabled, you can see its contributions here - please let us know if you see something wrong with edits. I'll enable the new notifications on other English wikis on Monday. Wikis in other languages need to translate the new messages before these notifications can be enabled for them. Max Semenik (talk) 22:47, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Wonderful, thank you! Mx. Granger (talk) 11:39, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Deploy on fawiki

Translations done on the translatewiki.net [3], Phab ticket created phab:T227622. Please deploy the bot on the Persian Wikipedia (fawiki). You need to ask for bot approval at fa:ویکی‌پدیا:سیاست ربات‌رانی/درخواست مجوز (The use of English language is supported and accepted). Bot flag is not needed. Bot edits should not be marked as minor. No extra tag is required. Contact me at Metawiki if you needed any help. Thanks in advance. 4nn1l2 (talk) 22:02, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Spread the word

You need to tell different language communities about the creation of this bot. Use this list of Technical Village Pumps (Distribution list/Technical Village Pumps distribution list). No need to translation. Many people can read and understand English, even if they cannot speak or write it. 4nn1l2 (talk) 04:28, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Request for deployment on nl.wiktionary

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T256527

A proposal in our Village Pump did get support and no objections in the customary 4 weeks period for comments, so we would like you to deploy this bot on nl.wiktionary. I provided translation into Dutch. To better serve its purpose, the bot should operate without bot flag and notifications should not be marked as minor. I have created the edit tag "Commons discussie" to be used by the bot. We have no policy to require test edits. When can we expect the bot to start running? If I can be of more assistance in the deployment, please let me know. --MarcoSwart (talk) 20:59, 15 June 2020 (UTC) @NKohli (WMF): There appears to be no reaction whatsoever on my request. Am I doing something wrong? --MarcoSwart (talk) 12:24, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@MarcoSwart: I think it is just that nobody is tracking this page. I think that you should create a phabricator task (example: phab:T204524, phab:T227622) Leave it as unassigned but add community-tech and commons as tags ad phab:T190233 as parent task. --Zache (talk) 02:07, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

@MarcoSwart: I am sorry, I was not watching this page. Like Zache mentioned, the best way to proceed would be to create a phabricator request ticket. It's been a while since this project was completed so engineering teams have moved on to other things. I'll update the project page to reflect this. Thank you. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:56, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Confusing notification text

@MusikAnimal (WMF): The current notification text is really awful: it's long (two lines long header, what the heck?!) and confusing. If you need to notify about Commons file, you don't need to mention totally unrelated Wikidata item, and vice versa. Additionally, the message text is almost similar to the header text, which means that this looooong header text could be shortened. — putnik 00:53, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Putnik The image could be used on the Wikidata item for that page, is the reason why it is mentioned in the message. Some users want to be notified about that. We can shorten the title, at least. I'll look into that. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Notifications not being sent since 6 June?

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T339145

Based on the global user contributions tool, it seems that these notifications have not been sent since 6 June 2023. Has this been intentionally disabled? I can't seem to find any recent discussions regarding this. Anon126 (✉ ⚒) 22:35, 14 September 2023 (UTC)