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.

	SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved\|1=~~~~}} after 7 days.

#	Bot request	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)	🤖 Last botop editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Add coordinates to images	3	1	Enhancing999	2024-05-17 17:50
2	Add Template:User category (CL)	1	1	Enhancing999	2024-04-29 09:49
3	DGJ file descriptions from Flickr	1	1	Enhancing999	2024-05-05 07:38
4	Removing a redundant parent category from 100+ images	4	3	RZuo	2024-05-08 08:00
5	Hidden categories added as Category:Hidden categories	4	2	Jonteemil	2024-06-04 11:52
6	sorting files	1	1	Hanooz	2024-06-07 15:18
7	Revert additions to Category:History by Mitte27	7	5	Enhancing999	2024-06-30 11:06	Cryptic-waveform	2024-06-25 13:04
8	Convert Category:Photographs by Carol M. Highsmith to JPEG	15	4	DaxServer	2024-07-04 08:57	DaxServer	2024-07-04 08:57

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Add coordinates to images

prologue

There are many images listed on Commons:Files used on OpenStreetMap that lack coordinates, but have them on OSM. A bot could add {{Object location}} to file description pages.

This was previously suggested by another user to the maintainer of the lists, but they have other things on their plate. @Herzi Pinki and Bjh21: Enhancing999 (talk) 09:21, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You could try User:Herzi Pinki/GeoTools to do this manually. best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 11:14, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Funny. An estimate how much time that would take? Enhancing999 (talk) 11:32, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can write a bot yourself, find someone who will do it for you, do it manually, or keep it as it is. It takes less than a minute per image using my scripts (I have done 6 now in 4 minutes: [1]). Do you have an estimation how many images are still missing location info? best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 20:34, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of this page is to find a contributor who is willing to do it by bot. You might want to redact your comments accordingly.

There are about 175 subpages. I checked one, it had 1000 images with 60% without coordinates. Enhancing999 (talk) 21:47, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You asked for an estimate. best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 10:10, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can you elaborate and explain on your other suggestions. I consider them off topic.-- Enhancing999

related discussions
See Commons:Village_pump Enhancing999 (talk) 17:50, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For files listed on the >175 subpages at Commons:Files used on OpenStreetMap, please add {{Object location}} to file description pages.

These subpages include approx. 1000 images. On one page 60% were found not to have coordinates. Enhancing999 (talk) 17:50, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Add Template:User category (CL)

Please add {{User category |1=Chris Light}} to the user categories of @Chris Light: . This ensures they are in Category:User categories (flat list) and marked as hidden categories.

To find them: https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=28135244

I fixed the few inclusions that weren't user categories (or shouldn't be): sample. A few are still to fix:

About 60 are currently not hidden categories: sample. They will be once the template is added. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:49, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

DGJ file descriptions from Flickr

Files like this have some duplicated text and content that is of interest mainly to Flickr users. In the past, I cleaned up some pages myself, but there are actually plenty of them, see Special:Search/"PLEASE, NO invitations or self promotions, THEY WILL BE DELETED." (about 10000). Also Category:Dennis G. Jarvis and Special:Search/"Dennis G. Jarvis" (27000).

Possibly Creator:Dennis G. Jarvis template could be added at the same time. Enhancing999 (talk) 07:38, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Removing a redundant parent category from 100+ images

Most (maybe all?) of the 111 images in the category Category:Los_Gaiteros_de_San_Jacinto are also in parent category Category:Cumbia music groups from Colombia. Would someone be able to remove the parent category from those images? GanzKnusper (talk) 11:41, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GanzKnusper: That was quite a simple request and does not need a bot to do it. I've done them and used the "Perform batch task" that you find in the left side panel of pages. I used it on the files in the category and did a simple replace of Category:Cumbia music groups from Colombia with a "space" though two of the files did not have to be changed as you suggested. This is something you can do yourself but be cautious as it is a powerful tool with many options and easy to make mistakes. There seem to be more files that should be in Category:Los_Gaiteros_de_San_Jacinto, so simple text replacement will do the job for you replacing one category with another one. Good luck. Ww2censor (talk) 12:14, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that! I wasn't aware of VisualFileChange.js, which adds the "Perform batch task" option. I'll cautiously try it out! GanzKnusper (talk) 12:48, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ww2censor @GanzKnusper for changing categories it's even easier to use com:catalot. RZuo (talk) 08:00, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hidden categories added as Category:Hidden categories

Hidden categories is a system category added by __HIDDENCAT__

However, some files and even categories add it as regular categories: [[Category:Hidden categories]]

To find some: [2] (currently 468 in category namespace). Enhancing999 (talk) 13:22, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've reduced the numbers with Com:Cat-a-lot. The rest probably should be gone through manually. Jonteemil (talk) 23:04, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't they be replaced with __HIDDENCAT__? This finds those lacking that. Enhancing999 (talk) 23:18, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure all 128 categories really should be hidden. That's why I suggest they be gone through manually. Jonteemil (talk) 11:52, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Currently 54 hits.

Support fixing this. [[Category:Hidden categories]] should NOT appear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Taylor 49 (talk • contribs) 14:12, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

sorting files

Please help me sort files in the subcategories of Category:Photographs in the Golestan Palace Library by number. Sortkeies should be in three digits as there might be more than a hundred files in each album. Hanooz 15:18, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Revert additions to Category:History by Mitte27

Thousands of uncategorized files were added to the already-bloated Category:History. All of the edits I find were on 31 May 2024. Could some please automatically revert these edits? Thanks. Cryptic-waveform (talk) 20:55, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's a good idea to return it. My idea was to then move the files from "Category:History" to more specific categories. --Mitte27 (talk) 09:59, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The current status is that thousands of files that were correctly marked as Uncategorized, and therefore easily visible to contributors doing a first round of categorization, are now erroneously categorized in a top-level category. Cryptic-waveform (talk) 13:04, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Mitte27: so when do you plan to move the images to more specific categories? This is clearly not an indefinite solution. —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 18:55, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I sorted out some photos related to the history of Russia/USSR, but I have little understanding of American history, and most of the photos in the category are related to it. In any case, this category is better than none. --Mitte27 (talk) 22:29, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is no reason to ever place files into extremely broad categories like Category:History. Please do not remove {{Uncategorized}} unless you are able to either accurate place a file in the most specific categories available or into a dedicated cleanup category. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 00:22, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You could just use cat-a-lot. I don't think adding all LOC or NARA images to "History" by default is a good idea. Enhancing999 (talk) 11:06, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Convert Category:Photographs by Carol M. Highsmith to JPEG

Category:Photographs by Carol M. Highsmith is an excellent Library of Congress collection of very good images. Unfortunaly, all those images are in TIFF format, which means that the average file size is 100-300 MB, which is incredibly large. It causes long loading times of even the preview image (let alone the actual file), and TIFF file format is not supported by most browsers or general applications. Wikipedia discourages using TIFF files for those reasons, and this reduces the likelyhood of those excellent images being used.

Therefore, some bot should convert those TIFFs to JPEGs, copy the descriptions/categories and make sure the files reference each other. Further, the categories from the TIFF files should be replaced with Category:LC TIF images with categorized JPGs TheImaCow (talk) 21:59, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@TheImaCow Thanks for finding this. I've filed for a bot Commons:Bots/Requests/ImageConverterBot -- DaxServer (talk) 15:13, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't expect someone to reply to this so quick, thank you!

I came across this series via Category:Aerial photographs of the United States and subcats, which contains many poorly categorized images from this collection. TheImaCow (talk) 16:40, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

LCCN2013631230.tif shows a jpg and several jpg-sizes are offered. Is this really needed? Enhancing999 (talk) 18:44, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I didn't notice that. It seems it is not necessary after all -- DaxServer (talk) 20:56, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I'm blind, but where are those files offered? It's not the "Download/Use this file/Email a link" bar, all resolutions there only download the same low-quality preview generated by the Mediawiki software (which is shown on the file description page) TheImaCow (talk) 21:19, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Below the image, there is a line:

The last one matches the tiff. Enhancing999 (talk) 21:52, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh thanks I see. However this is very obscure and when embedding the file anywhere, it will always refer to the TIF version - so an seperate JPG should probably still be uploaded, like the 220,000 other TIF files in Category:LC TIF images with categorized JPGs (or the 58,000 Category:NARA TIF images with categorized JPGs)

But I don't have strong opinions on this. TheImaCow (talk) 22:11, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Loading a file to test this -- DaxServer (talk) 05:51, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly support for tiffs was less developed when they were uploaded. I wonder how all those thousands of duplicates are curated and how much volunteer time is lost by handling two instead of just one copy of every image. WMF recently expressed their view on hosting files on Commons that aren't used on WMF sites [3]. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:22, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, in theory, those TIF duplicates shouldn't need any curation, as they are supposed to be dumped into the massive categories mentioned above, and only linked from the description of the maintained JPG version.

The use of TIF is something I think is generally not needed for 99.9% of files, modern compression is more than good enough.

(I don't oppose eventually getting rid of the TIF duplicates, but there is not even consensus to delete de-facto duplicates where one version is rotated differently by single degrees, or random low quality TIF scans of generic text documents, where the same scans are also uploaded as JPG, so forget it) TheImaCow (talk) 13:28, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oddly, I can't figure out which one of the two maps is correct ;) Did you nominate the wrong one? For the text ones, I'd have nominated the jpg ones. The assumption that deletion doesn't save anything is incorrect: deletion reduces curation (even if theoretically none is needed, it still happens and wastes volunteer time), limits spamming of Special:search, can even save storage space as files can be purged (from non-public view) or wont be exported twice when requested.

As technology changes, I think views on this evolve. NARA's approach might have been the ideal 15 years ago, but other GLAMS that started only more recently use different approaches. Enhancing999 (talk) 12:13, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what you mean. Both maps are exactly the same. JPG ones nominated instead? Ideally someone uploads a PDF and 307 files are replaced with one in the correct format for documents. I never said I oppose deletions, I said the exact opposite.

The NARA approach has actually changed - there have been at least two bulk uploads, one in 2011 and the other 2019.

The 2011 one uploaded nearly every image twice - one TIF+one JPG. The 2019 one uploaded only JPGs.

Looking at the NARA catalogue, files uploaded earlier have often TIF,JPG and sometimes GIF versions for download. Images uploaded 2019, presumably digitized later, have only high-resulution JPGs for download. TheImaCow (talk) 18:33, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's better to have the lossless files than a JPEG, as you can always make a JPEG from a lossless file, but you can't make a lossless from a JPEG. Still, while we shouldn't delete the TIFFs, we should make JPEG options. Adam Cuerden (talk) 08:52, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If we want to offer lossless files in a reasonable sizes (2MB vs 200MB), we might want to consider offering PNGs instead of JPEGs -- DaxServer (talk) 08:57, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]