Commons:Bots/Work requests
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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:
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SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 7 days. |
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# | Bot request | Status | 💬 | 👥 | 🙋 Last editor | 🕒 (UTC) | 🤖 Last botop editor | 🕒 (UTC) |
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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 | 7 | 3 | Wikiwerner | 2025-04-21 20:25 | DaxServer | 2025-01-19 11:23 | |
4 | US GOV accounts on Flickr | 8 | 6 | Ooligan | 2025-05-02 03:05 | TheSandDoctor | 2025-03-13 19:18 | |
5 | Commons:IA books | 1 | 1 | ShakespeareFan00 | 2025-04-22 19:13 | |||
6 | Brenham Banner-Press newspaper files | 1 | 1 | Ricky81682 | 2025-05-04 04:41 | |||
7 | VRT notice on each files from Category:Photos_by_David_Clayton_Ellsworth | ![]() |
4 | 3 | DaxServer | 2025-05-12 15:56 | DaxServer | 2025-05-12 15:56 |
8 | Template add request | 3 | 2 | 151.95.8.206 | 2025-05-12 16:19 | |||
9 | Donating map images | 2 | 2 | Wikiwerner | 2025-05-14 18:50 | |||
10 | Updating the author sections of two cropped images | 3 | 2 | ~Berilo Linea~ | 2025-05-15 15:00 |
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When exceptions occur, please check the setting first. |
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)
- 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)
- "history of ..." is not any better. everything is history. RZuo (talk) 20:43, 2 August 2024 (UTC)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- "history of ..." is not any better. everything is history. RZuo (talk) 20:43, 2 August 2024 (UTC)
- 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)
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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- But how do decide by bot when a category is desired to keep? Wikiwerner (talk) 17:09, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
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)- @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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- @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)
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
)- 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
- 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)
- @Pigsonthewing How does this diff look on the WLM cat with redirect? -- DaxServer (talk) 11:23, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
- @DaxServer: Thank you. Looks good to me. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:44, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
- 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)
- @Andy - What do we need to do with the categories' content: nothing, remove it from the categories, or move it to the target category (and check if it is already in that category or its subcategories)? In the latter case the script will be more complicated. Wikiwerner (talk) 16:21, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
- Looking at the examples given above, I would do nothing. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:25, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
- OK, I have submitted Commons:Bots/Requests/Wikiwernerbot. Wikiwerner (talk) 20:25, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
- Looking at the examples given above, I would do nothing. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:25, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Andy - What do we need to do with the categories' content: nothing, remove it from the categories, or move it to the target category (and check if it is already in that category or its subcategories)? In the latter case the script will be more complicated. Wikiwerner (talk) 16:21, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- @vip I fully understand that you would like to fix what is allready on Commons before more stuff is uploaded. But we have sadly seen Trump remove lots of images so if there are any accounts that are in risk of removal then perhaps it would be good to upload those and worry about categories later. I would ofcourse recommend that there is some sort of human evaluation before the files are uploaded so files are only uploaded if most of the files from the stream is likely to be usable and to have a valid license. --MGA73 (talk) 15:12, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- 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)
- 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)
Commons:IA books
There is a need for a bot to identify archive.org hosted items in the public domain which are linked to but not uploaded as local copies (licensing permitting).
Would it be possible for a bot to scan through commons generate a report , of linked but not hosted IA resources? Which could be then used as the input to a second bot that batch automates IA-upload requests on Commons?..
Thanks.
It would also be nice to have replacements for the tools Fae was running before they left, in order to automate the curation of the 1 million and growing , files which were mirrored (Some of which may need to be rebuilt due to quality or failed uploads locally.) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:13, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
Brenham Banner-Press newspaper files
There may be perhaps 24k files located within Category:Media contributed by Abilene Library Consortium without any categories. The vast majority are pages under Category:Brenham Banner-Press. Can a bot first add that category? If the operator wants to add dates or other more complicated things, that's possible but a category should be a good start. I believe I have sorted all the Category:American Flag, Cameron County and Matamoros Advertiser ones but if those are missed, it can go into the main category. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:41, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
VRT notice on each files from Category:Photos_by_David_Clayton_Ellsworth
Hi, @Dogfennydd: suggested me to add the VRT notice from the category Category:Photos_by_David_Clayton_Ellsworth to all files of the category, but it's very long to do for me, so someone can use a bot to add this information on all files of this category ?
Thanks
— Koreller (talk) 16:47, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- I created template {{David Clayton Ellsworth DPRK}} and added it REAL 💬 ⬆ 17:14, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Template add request
Could someone add template {{trademarked}} in all files on Category:Signatures? 151.95.8.206 08:37, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
- There is no reason to do that. Not all signatures have a trademark. Yann (talk) 15:45, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Yann: it is to protect signatures to unofficial and unauthorized use on fake text/letters. --151.95.8.206 16:19, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
Donating map images
I wrote at the Help Desk
I have a website https://maproom.org which presents images of maps from atlases, mostly published in the 19th century. I used to sell higher-resolution versions of these images, but my sales have dropped to zero. I'm considering donating all the higher-resolution versions to Wikipedia. That's 2484 jpgs, totalling around 70 GB.
My main concern is to minimise the amount of bureaucracy for me. I would not want to have to specify a filename for each image, let alone add it to categories. I can provide access to a database with information (subject, date, source, etc.) for each image.
I anticipate that this will involve more work than any Commons volunteer would want to take on. But if there is a way of managing things, please let me know
and was encouraged to post here. The database fields include
- the name of the uploaded file
- the title of the plate, as in the work from which it was scanned
- the title of the plate in English
- a list of search terms (which might be useful in assigning categories)
Maproom (talk) 16:26, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
- See Commons:Batch uploading? Wikiwerner (talk) 18:50, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
Updating the author sections of two cropped images
Hi,
I recently edited the author section of the file here:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mohammed_Abu_al-Khair_Shukri_2.png
I need the changes to be reflected in these cropped and extracted files here:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mohammed_Abu_al-Khair_Shukri_2_(cropped).png
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mohammed_Abu_al-Khair_Shukri_2_(cropped2).png
I'm pretty new to Wikimedia Commons, so I don't really know how to automate such a task(assuming I need to) and I'm not sure if I qualify for bot access yet(not that I know how to use one yet, but I thought I'd just say, anyway).
Is there a way for a bot to do this and can I make a request for a bot to make those changes? ~Berilo Linea~ (talk) 14:24, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
- I edied it for you. By the way the Creative Commons license on Youtube is CC BY 3.0 not 4.0 REAL 💬 ⬆ 14:34, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
- Okay, thanks for letting me know and thanks especially for the edits! I really appreciate your efforts. ~Berilo Linea~ (talk) 15:00, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
