Commons:Bots/Work requests

This is a page for requesting work to be done by a bot. This is an appropriate place to simply put ideas for bots. However be aware of various tools available to all users which can be used to accomplish the work without the need for a bot:

Gadget Cat-a-lot can be used for most category adding, removing and moving
VisualFileChange tool can be used for mass-changes of one author's uploaded files, or files in a category, creating a mass-deletion-request, let you insert tags to the file-description-pages (even copy from exif/meta-data). You can also perform find and replace operations with or without JavaScript regular expressions (regexp). A common use case is: "I've changed my username". It's a web-tool and can be launched directly.
AutoWikiBrowser can be used for large number of supervised and automatic edits
Commons:Batch uploading page can be used to request mass image uploads

Please add {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} when request is resolved.

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Archives

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11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

#	Bot request	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)	🤖 Last botop editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Move "Historical images of" to "History of"	15	7	TheSandDoctor	2025-03-14 06:12	TheSandDoctor	2025-03-14 06:12
2	Report update request (#2)	5	2	Wikiwerner	2025-02-02 19:03
3	Monuments database in Russia	4	3	Wikiwerner	2025-04-12 17:47	DaxServer	2025-01-19 11:23
4	Adding cat "Animated GIF files" to all instances of such	6	2	Prototyperspective	2024-12-15 13:43	Schlurcher	2024-12-15 12:46
5	Mass changing WD statements about files	8	5	PMG	2024-12-15 19:12	Schlurcher	2024-12-13 06:50
6	US GOV accounts on Flickr	4	4	Don-vip	2025-03-13 23:09	TheSandDoctor	2025-03-13 19:18
7	Adding deletion request notification to multiple image files	3	2	Jan.Kamenicek	2025-04-01 06:55	Jeff G.	2025-04-01 00:50

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Move "Historical images of" to "History of"

Per note at Category:Historical images by country (as conclusion from Commons:Categories for discussion/2019/09/Category:Historical images), the content of the categories at Special:PrefixIndex/Category:Historical images of should be moved to "History of". This seems to involve more than 10'000 categories, see PetScan:29034509. I think the resulting redirect could afterwards be tagged for speedy deletion. Enhancing999 (talk) 18:59, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

i dont think it's a good idea to handle this problem without human supervision.

i would rather do these instead:

prohibit new categories with the word from being created.
let users slowly move the files to the appropriate categories (by time).

RZuo (talk) 20:42, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"history of ..." is not any better. everything is history. RZuo (talk) 20:43, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Right, any cutoff for "history" will change every second/minute/hour/week/month/year/century/millennium. See also Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/08/Category:History by country. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 10:20, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

there's specific interest related to "history" of something.

for example, historians of asian history should go under "history of asia".

but to dump files into "history of xx" is no more better than dumping them in "xx" or "historical images of xx". all files of xx can perfectly fit into all those three variations.

most of these "historical images of xx" basically contain all photographs before the advent of digital photography, especially black and white photographs.

so i'd rather users move these cats to or create for example "xx in the 19th/20th century". RZuo (talk) 12:49, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

i have an idea of a bot moving files according to the time/date, but i need probably 1 or 2 years to code something like that up. RZuo (talk) 12:53, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this is the place to re-discuss the CfD. If you think the closure is problematic, ask an admin to re-open it. Enhancing999 (talk) 12:57, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is just no way this can be done manually. If there are cases you think would be problematic, please state them here. Enhancing999 (talk) 20:56, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support Per Enhancing999. There's currently 33732 categories for "historical images", which is way to many for anyone to deal with manually. This also isn't the place to relitigate the CfD. Nor do I think doing so would go anywhere anyways since it was open for 4 years and has been closed since last year. So there has been plenty of time for people to raise concerns about it. Most of these categories only contain a couple of images to begin with and they aren't "historical" either. The idea that we should let users slowly move the files to the appropriate categories when it's only a couple of images per category to begin with is totally ridiculous and would just waste everyone's time. There's no reason people can't better categorize the images once they are moved to "history of xx" categories. That's where most of the images were in the first place. Regardless, this should totally be done by a bot instead of forcing users to waste time doing it manually. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:27, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of tagging the redirects for speedy deletion, a bot may rename the categories without leaving a redirect if the corresponding category 'history of...' does not yet exist. Wikiwerner (talk) 12:12, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If a cat "historical images of xx" has < 5 (or a similarly small number) files, all files should be moved to "xx". it's not necessary to make a separate subcat for just a handful of files. RoyZuo (talk) 14:14, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

e.g. Category:Historical images of Sababurg which has 6 files, while Category:Sababurg has only ~50 files. RoyZuo (talk) 14:40, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But how do decide by bot when a category is desired to keep? Wikiwerner (talk) 17:09, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This request requires probably hundreds of thousands of edits. Is "History of ..." a better categorization? The category:History is subject of a CfD too: see Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/06/Category:History. We better wait for a verdict there. Otherwise perhaps another hundreds of thousands of edits are necessary after the latter verdict. Wikiwerner (talk) 19:59, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have subscribed here but @Wikiwerner: et all if there is a decision to move forward with this, please ping me. If I have time I can see about adding this to my plate at that time.

Wikiwerner is also right that if there was to be a collapsing of smaller categories ground rules would need to be clearly defined to make that codeable and have clear expectations. A blind move is far easier, a bot cannot make judgement calls outside of potentially "< 5 members? move". But it gets messy and rather complicated very quickly. It cannot determine exceptions etc, though a list could certainly be compiled of categories with fewer than X members. TheSandDoctor (talk) 06:12, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Report update request (#2)

Please also update these new reports with a bot:

I suggest that these are updated twice a month at first. Frequency could be increased as needed.

Here's how I update the reports manually (info how this is done for the two reports above doesn't seem to be included): I go to the query page click Download data and select csv. Then I open the csv in VSCodium (Visual Studio Code) and use this to add [[:Category: to the start and ]], to the end of every line as well as replacing all linebreaks. There also is a page 2 with only the first 500 items. I requested the queries here so thanks to Matěj Suchánek. Changing the output to be ordered alphabetically would improve it. "redcats" refers to nonexisting categories – further explanations are at the top of these reports.

By the way, I think the resulting categories need to be null-edited is too unclear. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:45, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Wikiwerner: could you also look into these reports? I started this thread as a subthread of the thread right above where you participated. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:29, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am running the query now, which I can post-process to update the report. I have not yet a tool to update the word count. Does that matter? Wikiwerner (talk) 17:16, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. No, the paragraph about top word counts is not important. Enhancing999 added it afterwards. If you update the report, please simply remove that part. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:27, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I have saved the output and removed the word count. The second report you mentioned, already appears to be updated every two weeks. Wikiwerner (talk) 19:03, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Monuments database in Russia

Per discussion at Commons:Village pump#Monuments database in Russia.

There are >25K sub-categories of Category:Galleries of cultural heritage monuments in Russia (and about 275 in its subcategory, Category:Galleries of cultural heritage monuments in Crimea) named in the format (for example) Category:WLM/1010021052. That example duplicates Category:Threshing barn from Berezovaya Selga. The corresponding Wikidata item, Threshing barn from Berezovaya Selga (Q106488771), has a Wiki Loves Monuments ID (P2186) value of RU-1010021052 (note the "RU-" prefix). That Wikidata item is linked to the alphanumerically named, not numbered, category.

For each of those 25K categories, we need a bot to do the following:

Find the Wikidata item with the Wiki Loves Monuments ID (P2186) value (e.g. RU-1010021052)
1. If no Wikidata item is found, write a log entry and skip to the next category
Find the Commons category that the Wikidata item is linked to
1. If no Commons category is found; or if the linked category is of the numeric type, write a log entry and skip to the next category
Redirect the numeric category (e.g. Category:WLM/1010021052) to the latter category (e.g. Category:Threshing barn from Berezovaya Selga)
Ensure that the latter category transcludes {{Wikidata infobox}}

An alternative at 1.1 would be to create a Wikidata item; populating with data from e.g. https://ru-monuments.toolforge.org/wikivoyage.php?id=1010021052 - but this could be done later. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:14, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing How does this diff look on the WLM cat with redirect? -- DaxServer (talk) 11:23, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@DaxServer: Thank you. Looks good to me. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:44, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is quite an easy script. One question rises still: what do we do with the contents of the redirected categories? Wikiwerner (talk) 17:47, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Adding cat "Animated GIF files" to all instances of such

Category:Animated GIF files is a fairly flat category containing most or probably more than half and most in-use animated GIF files. However, I noticed it's quite unreliable and does not contain a large fraction of animated GIF files. Could a bot please add this inferrable category to all files with the GIF filetype that are animated?

This can be useful to later have a filter for animated GIF files, to complete Animations of xyz categories, and for deepcategory searches and Petscans for animated GIF files in specific, and for allowing searching of all animated GIF files (e.g. via the category search box at the top of that page).

I don't know how one could check whether a GIF file is animated or not but there probably is a way for that (maybe using machine vision via using some machine vision package but not unlikely also possible in a much easier way). If somebody know how that could be done please add info about that here.

See this search query.
Prototyperspective (talk) 12:10, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

According to Google it's fairly straightforward in most programming languages to check if a gif file is animated. Is there a way or wiki API call that can tell if a Gif is animated without downloading it first? --Schlurcher (talk) 17:21, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll probably implement this during the Christmas break. --Schlurcher (talk) 14:36, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds great! I don't know if there is an API to check whether or not it's animated but that service may need to download the full thing as well (don't know if it can just selectively download some of its metadata). Prototyperspective (talk) 15:55, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Short status update. I've now updated my bot to add instance of (P31) → animated GIF (Q11201061) to all animated Gif files it touches. However, adding the category Category:Animated GIF files sounds straigt forward, but it is not. For one, it is not a flat category, as it has subcategories that should be excluded. I also think that structured data is the correct way to proceed here. Any thoughts? --Schlurcher (talk) 12:46, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. If there is a way to autoadd categories, it does need a way to exclude subcategories (so to not add a category above a category that's already set). However, that may be the only thing that's needed and such a way would be very useful. Maybe just having some structured data set would be be best for metadata like this that is about the kind of file. However, currently I think it's not because

that SD is not yet added automatically and otherwise people need a way to quickly conveniently add categories using HotCat or CataLot to specify this (maybe this could be changed with the bot)
one can't search / filter via the SD as far as I know which is I think the current main use of this cat – one can do things like deepcategory:"Animated_GIF_files" time-lapse -deepcategory:"Time-lapse animations" or use the search box at the top of the Animated_GIF_files cat.

Prototyperspective (talk) 13:43, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mass changing WD statements about files

I have my own bot, but I need to manage WD statements linked with files, they aren't stored in wikitext, so my bot can't change them. I need, for several categories, to do a job: remove one WD property and add another, with a different value for different categories. Could someone here do that? MBH 08:23, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Schlurcher or Mike Peel: Could you help out with this? — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 09:35, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some more detail would be needed. Also sounds like a job that could be done with AC/DC gadget. --Schlurcher (talk) 14:32, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Schlurcher my case is described on phab:T381945. On categories like Category:Views_from_The_First_Tower_observation_deck it's needed to set P1071 for all files and, if exist, remove P180, because earlier I was uploading such batches setting a name of summit to P180 property instead of P1071. MBH 02:50, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PMG looks like you're doing this automatically, how you did it? MBH 02:54, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These edits were done with Help:Gadget-ACDC which was also my first suggestion. --Schlurcher (talk) 06:50, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@MBH - I am using AC/DC. There is also option to remove properties so you can both remove and add something. PMG (talk) 19:12, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've not figured out bot editing of SDC yet, I suggest asking @Multichill: . Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:41, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

US GOV accounts on Flickr

I am requesting a upload of all USGOV Flickr accounts.

Unfortunately, many of them are locked behind the copyright tag. The C copyright tag is (unfortunately) the default tag on Flickr and most likely were never changed to the proper tag of being public domain via USGOV work. A change to USGOV means it has to be manually changed, which someone never did.

I say this because there was a recent change in administration that seemed to aim to gut the govt, including shuttering US A.I.D.. I’m just concerned the Flickr images will get deleted. Thank y ou. SeichanGant (talk) 17:57, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest asking for a bot to review the account and if there is a copyright tag, make a list somewhere on site and let a human examine it. Otherwise download the details. Leave the bot operator to handle the bot tasks and let us humans do what we can. Ricky81682 (talk) 20:33, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Flagging to Don-vip's attention as Don-vip runs OptimusPrimeBot and rather than someone like myself re-inventing the wheel, this might be a task suited to its skillset. TheSandDoctor (talk) 19:18, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's tricky. Sometimes the works are public domain because made by federal employees and wrongly licensed as copyrighted on Flickr. But it's often really copyrighted, because even published on an official Flickr account, content may be created by someone else. So the license must be individually checked for each file, and so it's fastidious. For now my bot imports a lot of US Gov pictures released under a free license, I would like to categorize all these pictures before starting to look into the "copyrighted" ones. Help appreciated :) vip (talk) 23:09, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Adding deletion request notification to multiple image files

I am requesting adding the following notification to all the files linked at Commons:Deletion requests/Akhtar Aly Kureshy: {{delete|reason=The following files are not in scope of Commons, as their subject is not any really notable person, and are a result of a promotional campaign to an Akhtar Aly Kureshy. For details see the linked nomination page.|subpage=Akhtar Aly Kureshy|year=2025|month=March|day=29}}

and also

{{subst:idw||Akhtar Aly Kureshy|plural}} to the talk pages of their uploaders. Thanks very much! -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:57, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Jan.Kamenicek: The first part is

Done, except for 14 of the 100 listed files which do not exist. I leave the second part to my colleagues (with the caveat that blocked users don't need to know). — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 00:50, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks! As for the second part, it seems that only one of the uploaders has not been globally blocked yet, so I am withdrawing it. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 06:55, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]