Wikipedia:Bots/BetaCommandBot and NFCC 10 c
This page in a nutshell:
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The Debate
As many might know, User:BetacommandBot is causing many discussions in different places, specifically about NFCC10c. Many different arguments are being made and issues are being lost in the noise, and people's issues with the bot are being mis-represented. MickMacNee (talk) 14:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Purpose of this page
The purpose of this page is to:
- Bring together relevant previous debates
- Centralise discussion about how BCB tags for NFCC10c compliance, nothing else
- State the issues people have with BCB and how it tags for NFCC10c compliance
- State suggestions for improvement
- Establish consensus for these suggestions
It should be noted that everything I state here has a disclaimer that I can only state what I have observed or discussions/links I have found or been pointed to. I have requested info before, if none was forthcoming and I have not been able to find it, I make no apology for that. And no, I don't know how to program bots.
MickMacNee (talk) 14:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Statement of principles
To prevent some of the same mis-representations and mis-directions again, I believe myself and the other concerned editors are:
- Not interested in changing the policy
- Not here to advocate copyright infringement
- Not trying to overule the Foundation
- Experienced editors who know how to write an FUR
- Experienced editors who know the NFCC policy
- Experienced editors who are merely concerned at the effect this bot has on image retention rate
- Not here for vanity, harrassment of BCB or to prove a point
If any contributors to this page feel they don't agree with the above, there may be better places for your comments, however, I do not wish to stifle opposition to the specific suggestions stated here. If discussions deviate from the stated aims, I or others may redirect them as appropriate.
MickMacNee (talk) 14:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Statement of issues with BCB
The issues I and others have with BCB tagging for NFCC10c are:
- The wording of the tag: it is inflammatory, inaccurate and unhelpful to many many editors.
- The schedule: specifically, the lack of any definition of when it runs, and the act of tagging 15,000-200,000 images in two days, all to be dealt with in 7 days (as the tag states, despite any actual realities). Also the repeated references to some deadline that is to be met, and repeated assertions at the rate of new uploads.
- The indiscriminate nature of the tags: the bot tags many different situations with the exact same tag, which has different consequences for different people. We recognise that the bot cannot assess an FUR. That is a human's job, but the current blunt instrument approach is clearly inadequate and should be improved.
- The lack of central information: about this specific tag (NFCC10c), the bot, and the issues surrounding it. This is generating far more debate and taggings than any other issue dealt with by the general message boards or talk pages. This also leads to incredible amounts of wasted effort frequently answering the same questions. This also seems to have produced a general lack of willingness by people who know the answers, to continually answer the same questions this bot produces.
- The assumption of infallability about this bot and the NFCC10c requirements. It is clear that people think this bot is tagging all non-compliant images, and a bot is needed because humans are too slow. Well, there is a class of non-compliance that the bot never tags, and never will do. Also, the degree of non-compliance issues tagged ranges from the trivial to the severe, all treated the same way with the same tag. FUR's are for a human to judge, by definition.
MickMacNee (talk) 14:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC) - Demanding more work from volunteers: Wikipedia has volunteer editors. BCB demands extra work from them. If this work is important, and many people support it, those people should be the ones to volunteer. Dragooning editors into doing the work is a hostile attack on the volunteer nature of Wikipedia. I can see the principle behing BCB's operation (they uploaded it, they should fix it), but consider how many editors have announced their resignation from Wikipedia on BCB discussion pages. This should be interpreted as criticism of BCB's operation rather than BCB's mission. RussNelson (talk) 16:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Proposed solutions
To address the above issues, I propose the folowing actions:
- Reprogram or reconstitute BCB for NFCC10c tagging
- Separate tagging runs into:
- Runs checking newly uploaded images immediately
- Runs checking newly uploaded images after a grace period to alow natural human exposure
- Runs checking images last changed before the date of a significant NFCC10c change
- Separate NFCC10c tagging from BCB into a community bot
- Separate NFCC10c tagging from BCB into a BetaCommand operated bot
- Separate tagging runs into:
- The NFCC10c tags need to be re-worded (some relate to reprograming above):
- State that BCB cannot assess compliance
- State that BCB is just a basic check, any issue may be trivial (i.e. moved pages)
- State where to find a FAQ board specifically for NFCC10c questions
- Remove the 7 day deletion threat if that is not actually the current operation
- Make the amount of time before deletion proportional to the amount of time that the image has remained on wikipedia. It's not our job to enforce other people's copyrights. If an image has been on Wikipedia for more than a year and nobody has challenged its copyright status, that alone is evidence of fair use.
- State whether an RFU should be for single use or multiple use (i.e. check links)
- State whether the tagging is for a new image against the current NFCC policy, or for an image that may now be non-compliant due to a change in NFCC policy
- NFCC10c information needs to be centralised.
- the reason for BCB needs to be stated, with accurate numeric figures
- The pseudocode of BCB needs to be stated, i.e. why it tags an image
- The limitations of BCB for assessing compliance needs to be stated
- Any planned runs should be stated
- Any deadlines being worked towards should be stated
- An FAQ needs to be written for the repeated NFCC10c questions
- A sub help desk needs to be made and supported for the repeated NFCC10c questions
Feel free to add your own if they meet the purpose and principles of this page as stated above.
MickMacNee (talk) 14:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- I'm fairly sure that BCB supporters will prevent any change to the way the bot itself operates, but perhaps they would consider adding a warning so that when an editor moves a page it is clear to them that all the fair use rationales will become non-compliant under BCBs coding and should be updated with the new link and they are then provided with a list of the images in question on the double-redirect check page. English peasant 19:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- This is a pointles exercise. If we are going to leave the list open to modification then at least shut down the voting below (misleadingly labeled "consensus"). No point in people voting on something that is beeing changed all the time. I notice the current version have several items that go directly agains current policy, not to mention the supposed purpose of this page. Suggest we hold off on showing support and opposition to the proposal untill a reasonably stable version have crystalized from the discussion below. --Sherool (talk) 01:09, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Consensus
I hope that people can register their support, opposition or a brief comment on each or all of the proposals in this section. Try to keep the consnsus statements separate from discussions, as per a proposed move type discussion.
MickMacNee (talk) 14:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Note. Some options are mutually exclusive, i.e. separate the bot.
Support
Threaded discussion will be moved to the discussion section
- Support most of the above. The details can be worked out as we move forwards. This is a good step to be taking, though I would note that BetacommandBot has been running for nearly two years now (since May 2006), and I think it has been doing image work for around a year. There is a deadline of 23 March 2008, and Betacommand has been working towards that. Give that, this may be a bit late in the day (BetacommandBot has, in the past, tagged tens of thousands of more image than just the ones done in the past week), but it would be good to get agreement on how to handle things from now on. Carcharoth (talk) 14:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Support Will (talk) 14:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Support. My specific objection is that BetaCommandBot makes nearly-constant mistakes, incorrectly tagging images that have a valid fair use rationale. This is not about opposing the policy. The policy is fine; the issue is that BetaCommandBot is doing its job poorly.Nandesuka (talk) 14:59, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Support. I notice that Hammersoft unconditionally supports the current operation of BCB. That kind of blind support for something which is clearly flawed is reason alone to support a call for changes in BCB operation. RussNelson (talk) 16:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Reminder, this is specifically about NFCC10c tagging. There are plenty other uses of BCB which I have no issue with (as they have never been so obviously on the radar). MickMacNee (talk) 17:04, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Support. We need these changes to the way the bot handles 10c. I do not object to the fair use policy, just to the way this bot applies one particular rule of it. Those who are saying "you can't change the bot! it's policy!" need to realize that a different, better bot could also work with the policy without being so harsh, inflexible, and disruptive. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 19:15, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Support For all the reasons above and more. The Betacommondbot has had numerous instances of being blocked and is not a solid piece of software, but maybe it's more the user wielding it than the tool that was devised? FWIW Bzuk (talk) 19:20, 17 February 2008 (UTC).
- Strong support Enigma msg! 20:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Support in general. Agree that details need to be worked out. Also, it shouldn't be an up/down thing. Each of the items (better tags, announcing a schedule, creating a FAQ) can be done independently, and don't need approval as a group. Why not just get to work on the easier and less controversial ones first and see where it takes you? Nobody would object to a FAQ, for example. Wikidemo (talk) 20:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Support bits and pieces. Yes to eliminating arbitrary limits, no to rampant deletions without review. No to yet another helpdesk, WP:ICHD has only succeeded in creating an unnecessary duplicate of WP:MCQ. Creating a minifaq might be a better approach, but then so is actually forcing people to read WP:NFCC. BC's approach, philosophy, and occasional errors leave much to be desired, so I support any measures that improve the retention of useful, policy-compliant non-free images. And lets be frank here, NFCC#10c is probably the least important formality in the whole set of criteria. ˉˉanetode╦╩ 22:08, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Support. I am aware of no policy that requires fair use rationales to be machine-interpretible. Far, far more people have spoken out against BetacommandBot than ever were involved in the original bot approval discussion. I think it's clear that the bot does not have consensus to operate in the manner it is currently being used. *** Crotalus *** 23:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Support. Betacommandbot and it's owner seem to be law unto themselves,answerable to none. Haphar (talk) 13:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- ABSTAIN My previous vote is biased - reject "..That friendly alien formerly known as Kosh from the Vorlon Home World, somewhere in the Taurus constellation. 17:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Support in principle, details negotiable. BCB's practices are not in the best interests of the encyclopedia. скоморохъ 18:11, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Oppose
Threaded discussion will be moved to the discussion section
- Oppose: Just another lynch mob for the bot, which was approved by WP:BAG, approved by the bureaucrats, supported by Foundation resolution, and supported by local EDP policy. This page reeks of bias against the bot. If you want to solve problems, wipe this ridiculous slate clean and start from an unbiased approach. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose - I agree with Hammersoft. This needs to be deleted and redone without bias. Some of the comments made in this proposal are completely flawed. We are all volunteers, this is true. However, it is not an unfair burden to place on the uploaders of images to bring those images into compliance. To demand all of this extra work on Betacommand to recode his bot for all these things is absurd. Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia. Those who desire to bring non-free content into it carry the burden to do so within policy. Editors who are too stubborn or too lazy to do this and choose instead to leave the project should not be held in high regard. That aside, a copyrighted image remaining on Wikipedia for a year is not evidence of fair use. I'd like to see someone put "This image is allowed under fair use because it's been sitting on Wikipedia for a year unchallenged" and see how that flows when we get hit with copyright infringement. Adjusting the grace period from tag to deletion to be proportionate to how long the image has been on WP is just ridiculous. The fact that the March deadline is being questioned is laughable. While there may be merit to points in this proposal, overall it's just more bitching about a bot that annoys some people but does overwhelmingly good work that would otherwise be unmanageable. Lara❤Love 17:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose It is a fundamental principle of the project that Wikipedia should be free content. Unfree images which do not meet with WP:NFCC should be removed or fixed to meet the policy as soon as is possible. The bot appears to identify non-compliant images correctly in almost all cases and at that point all responsibility for "saving" the image from deletion lies with any users who wish to do so. Guest9999 (talk) 18:22, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose by User:ST47 moved to #Comments by ST47 below. Lara❤Love 19:23, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Strong oppose, per all of the above. Everyone loves a good lynchmob, I suppose. If you don't like BcBot leaving you reminders, perhaps you should consider writing proper rationales. I know, I know, there are/were a fair amount of images out there, from before we required it. In those cases, there should probably be some form of throttle, for messages regarding broken images. The only thing I would suggest, is MAYBE sending messages for images that were not uploaded same-week, in a condensed format, once per day (say, one message, listing all the images you have that are non-compliant). Either way, this task is about 95% done now, I'm not sure what the point of bringing this up now exactly is, if it's not specifically about harassment. In closing, again, if you write your rationale correctly, you're very unlikely to get a reminder from the big bad scary BetacommandBot. Have a nice day, folks. I was edit conflicted, by someone REMOVING other peoples comments in this section (especially a bad idea, for someone that's supporting this whatever it is!). You don't see others doing so with support comments, it's pretty disruptive, and, I'd like to ask you guys not to monkey with people's comments in these sections. I fail to see what point there is to it, other than making it look like there's more support for this than there actually is. SQLQuery me! 19:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Strong oppose - the bot is doing good work which needs to be done. There are several levels of policy and consensus behind the bot. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's wrong. Kudos to BC for putting up with this crap instead of giving up. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 20:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Strong oppose - except that we should make a quick "BCB Faq" and make sure it's linked in BCB's warnings (something I don't believe Beta would be against if it helps move traffic off his talk page), transluced and/or referenceed from WP:NFC, WP:NFCC, and WP:ICHD. With only a month left, we don't have much time left to determine "nice" ways to do it, and I'd rather let BCB burn through all images up to, say, Feb 15, 2008, warning en masse, but giving editors and the various teams 21-28 days to fix rationale instead of the present 7. --MASEM 21:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Strong oppose I have nothing against BetaCommandBot nor am i seeing any bad things about it, as such i'm opposing mainly because BetaCommandBot is doing what it should be doing. Terra Who are you? 21:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Rare Earth Magnet Strong Oppose - I really see no problem with BCB, no matter what people say. Of couse, I only mean the image task, I don't think I need to remind you about what happened to the main page. It really annoys me how people always try to attack BC for his edits, that follow policy. Soxred93 | talk bot 23:47, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose - per LaraLove's excellent summary. Garion96 (talk) 23:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose - Lara says it all. ➔ REDVEЯS knows how Joan of Arc felt 08:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose Wrong forum, even consensus to do something won't accomplish anything, and the issues with BCB aren't large enough to warrant taking it off-line for a major recode. MBisanz talk 08:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose - this was decided at Foundation level. BCB is doing what it's supposed to be doing. If people tagged their images and provided rationales properly, there would be no problem. Stifle (talk) 10:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- No, it was not. According to Kat Walsh, a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, the foundation is satisfied with just a boilerplate license tag. —Remember the dot (talk) 23:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose. Lara's got one hell of a point, as does Hammersoft. Those editors who don't learn from BCB's first taggings of their first uploads, and who continue to violate GFDL and copyright and fair use by rampant uploading without FUR and linking aren't big losses to the project, because they cause drama like this among others, and they clearly don't care, or they'd fix their own mistakes. Your mockery of the basic premise to 'take responsibility for your actions' is in poor taste. That many people dogpiled BCB rather than admit they need to take responsibility is more indicative of faults in society and the age of many such contributors,teens trawling the 'net and 'borrowing' images for us. I note that good image contributors like David Shankbone KNOW how to write teh rationales, and they benefit this project far, far more. ThuranX (talk) 13:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- David Shankbone might not be the best person to compare to right now. Stifle (talk) 16:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- I think David is a perfect example. He's a valuable asset to this project. He understands our image policies and abides by them. That thread is spawned from a situation on a similar level of ridiculous as this one. Lara❤Love 17:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Fair use rationales are not required by law, nor are they required by the the GFDL. Those who neglect to add them are not violating copyright or fair use in any way. —Remember the dot (talk) 23:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- David Shankbone might not be the best person to compare to right now. Stifle (talk) 16:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Discussion
- Please take a look at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria compliance for a proposal for a new system to combine the best of bots and humans, working together, to ensure compliance with non-free image policy, and hopefully to handle things better than they have been done so far. Carcharoth (talk) 14:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- I thought that WP:ICHD was specifically created, or possibly repurposed, to address BCB issues? Mind you, this page should be linked into Beta's warning, and the top needs to have a brief FAQ for dealing with BCB requests and the limitations of BCB. Also, I don't know if Beta is looking to or is able to program the bot to group warnings to a user (a very common complaint when it hits up 1000s of images at a time), though some of his newer edits suggest he might be looking into that; however, we should mention in the BCB limitations that it is unfortunate that BCB is spamming talk pages when it does large runs, but this is a necessary side effect and attempts to mitigate it are being looked at. --MASEM 15:23, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Spamming is not necessarily unwarranted, some users upload many pictures. But with the scheduling and separation of run types would stop all the images you might have uploaded in 3 years being tagged at once. MickMacNee (talk) 15:26, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Discussion of Hammersoft's oppose:
- So, no specific answers to the points above then? Thanks for you time. MickMacNee (talk) 16:03, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- One, stop refactoring my comments. Two, my answers are extremely specific. This is a detestable page that is heavily biased. It is inherently flawed in its language, premise, and approach. I made very direct recommendations on what should happen to this page. Perhaps you would be so kind as to exert some energy and fix the blatant bias in this page? --Hammersoft (talk) 16:10, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- I will move any comment that does not follow the stated operation as above, as basic vandalism and an attempt to derail. MickMacNee (talk) 16:33, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- And now you accuse me of base vandalism? You sir, are completely out of line. Would you have me accuse you of vandalism because you move my comments? How about I just accuse you of ownership of this page? --Hammersoft (talk) 23:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Hammersoft, "approved by WP:BAG, approved by the bureaucrats, supported by Foundation resolution, and supported by local EDP policy" - I agree with some of this, but I think you are overstating the case. Please provide diffs for something where the Foundation specifically supported the way BetacommandBot operates? And remember that some people reading this page won't understand what EDP means. Please state "Exemption Doctrine Policy" and explain what that is, if you are going to use that term. Carcharoth (talk) 16:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Hammersoft, I think that you would call any listing of problems with BCB "biased". Yet I was not biased against BCB until it spammed a page in my watchlist. I had no opinion (was unbiased) until I saw it in operation. Instant hostility on my part, and .... I'm not alone. BCB angers MANY people. Some of them are made angry simply because they are being asked to do extra work (work that they should have done in the first place). Some of them are made angry because of the manner in which BCB informs them of the problem.
- It's text comes across as hostile, and I've suggested improvements which have been ignored.
- It imposes a 7 day deletion time which is actually not enforced, so it's lying.
- The 7 day deletion time is completely arbitrary and has no relationship to the amount of time the image has been on wikipedia without being challenged by the copyright holder.
- BCB doesn't make any use of the number of pages to which an image is linked. If an image is only used in one place, it should insert a different notification than if the image is used in multiple places.
- It inserts MANY notifications when one is sufficient.
- How can you continue to defend BCB in light of all of these flaws? I'm guessing that you're a friend of Betacommand. I understand loyalty to one's friends. However logic demands support for changes to BCB, and right now you're not being logical. RussNelson (talk) 17:27, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- 7 days is a long agreeded standard as a balance between giving time to the uploader and not leaveing things hanging around forever. Wikipedia always has backlogs which means that at any time some of our tags will be in error. This is a feature not a bug since it means we don't constantly have to update the tags based on backlog length.Geni 17:54, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
At this point with only a little over a month left to run before the foundation policy is finalised we have little choice but to use BCB style tactics.Geni 17:54, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Russ, this is an extreme example of bias. It's also extremely rude. You're calling those who disagree with this preposterous proposal illogical and saying it's only as loyalty to a friend. Seriously? Negative. The proposal is illogical. The text of the tags and notices are not hostile, they're to the point. The bot does not lie, the writers of this proposal are misrepresenting. The bot does not say that the image will be deleted in seven days. It says after seven days. So whether it gets deleted next week or in June 2012, the bot hasn't lied. And even if some of the tags said "in seven days", the fact that admins can't keep up does not make the bot a liar. Be glad your grace period has been extended and stop begging for an extending grace period. And to expect the bot or anyone else to base the grace period on the amount of time the image has been on Wiki... what? Whether the image is used in multiple articles or one, the point is that the FUR needs to be specific to each use. A change in wording is arbitrary, not crucial. And last, one notice is not sufficient. If I've lazily uploaded a dozen copy-vios and the bot only notifies me of one, then I'm only going to fix one... or, as is apparently shown historically, go pout about it and leave the project. Either way, there needs to be a notice for each image. If your talk page gets smacked with a dozen notices, take it as a clue-by-four to the face that you need to reevaluate the quality of your uploads. If they are historical uploads, then I guess it's time to go ask some friends for help if you can't be bothered to fix a handful of images yourself. If the uploader has left, then if the images are so necessary, I'm sure they'll easily be reuploaded... hopefully appropriately. Lara❤Love 18:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- A couple of points. A brief look at BCB talk should be sufficient to see how many people are confused about being asked to provide an FUR for all instances when there is only one instance, and due to the way the image page works, it has a link, and either by looking at the guidline or due to legacy NFCC changes (again not differentiated by the bot) the image has what looks like an FUR. Also, re-uploading is not that easy is you don't know where it came from, again a possible bot improvement, a subsection of images tagged where the uploader has not editted for x months and unlikely to see the tag. And finally, even the statement will be deleted is innacurate, whether in or after 7 days. No one can say for sure that a tagged image is definitely going to be summarily deleted when examind by a human, which is the only way compliance can be judged (again as said above, this has never been assessed), especially as complaints are continually treated individually. MickMacNee (talk) 19:03, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Russ, this is an extreme example of bias. It's also extremely rude. You're calling those who disagree with this preposterous proposal illogical and saying it's only as loyalty to a friend. Seriously? Negative. The proposal is illogical. The text of the tags and notices are not hostile, they're to the point. The bot does not lie, the writers of this proposal are misrepresenting. The bot does not say that the image will be deleted in seven days. It says after seven days. So whether it gets deleted next week or in June 2012, the bot hasn't lied. And even if some of the tags said "in seven days", the fact that admins can't keep up does not make the bot a liar. Be glad your grace period has been extended and stop begging for an extending grace period. And to expect the bot or anyone else to base the grace period on the amount of time the image has been on Wiki... what? Whether the image is used in multiple articles or one, the point is that the FUR needs to be specific to each use. A change in wording is arbitrary, not crucial. And last, one notice is not sufficient. If I've lazily uploaded a dozen copy-vios and the bot only notifies me of one, then I'm only going to fix one... or, as is apparently shown historically, go pout about it and leave the project. Either way, there needs to be a notice for each image. If your talk page gets smacked with a dozen notices, take it as a clue-by-four to the face that you need to reevaluate the quality of your uploads. If they are historical uploads, then I guess it's time to go ask some friends for help if you can't be bothered to fix a handful of images yourself. If the uploader has left, then if the images are so necessary, I'm sure they'll easily be reuploaded... hopefully appropriately. Lara❤Love 18:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Reply to Lara Love
To reiterate what I tried to make clear on this page, this in not about lazy/inexperienced editors or first time uploaders, and not about challenging changing the policy. Try and read the specific points from that point of view. Also, the comments about volunteers is not totally my point, but it is relevant to the specific schedule that BCB is being run to, i.e. 20,000 images in 2 days and then nothing. The point about loading work onto betacommand, he can solve that by releasing his NFCC code (should he be allowed to ignore the multitude of requests for changes just because he coded it for free?), or he can take what I imagine would be a couple of days works to do as suggested and split tagged images into different categories, to reflect the very different types of non-complance that it catches with one tag. That would at least allow the uninvolved people who wish to save images, to at least pick the ones that take 10 seconds to fix, but as it was uploaded in 2005 and obscured in a huge catch all net, doesn't bother. And bear in mind, it increasingly seems as if hardly any of these tagged images are ever not saveable on a point of law, and once again, BCB is NOT assessing comliance with the law, as pointed out above. MickMacNee (talk) 18:08, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- If the image does not have an adequate fair use rationale, then it's not in compliance with policy or law, correct? Is the policy not tailored to the law? Even if the policy is more strict than the law, that's an issue to be taken up with the policy, not the bot enforcing it. And if these images are so precious and critical to the encyclopedia, why spend so much time on complaining about it instead of working to save them? For all the attention being drawn to BC and his bot, a drive could have been started to bring in the help of others to save all these historically necessary images. Lara❤Love 18:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- You are confusing the policy with the bot, as I thought I had adequately explained above. I was saving images, until it became clear that it was pot luck whether all an image required was 10 characters added, or a whole rationale, or was infact illegal and not allowed at all (and I have absolutely not encountered a single case of this as yet); and also that it was pot luck as to how many turned up in my watchlist to save, none, none, or 8, or none. So no, blindly getting on with fixing tagged images as and when does not seem an efficient use of time to me considering how I observe that BCB is currently being run or has been coded. And instead of making continued compliants, here I am, hopefully not wasting any more time that I realy wish I was using to edit articles, but on the 20,000 run day, I didn't get much of that done I can tell you, and I have a very small watchlist, and again, none of these tagged images are my uploads. MickMacNee (talk) 18:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- How am I confusing the policy with the bot? Repeating something doesn't make it true. The bot enforces policy. Period. If you don't like that policy, go try to change it. Lara❤Love 19:04, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- If that's your view then I don't think you have understood the specific issues stated here, or the way the bot is coded, or have looked at any tagged images recently. And as a fundamental principle, fair use is judged by a human, not this bot, so this bot does not enforce anything, it is merely a helper to highlight possible non-compliance, the point being (as explained above), currently it is a crude and possibly time-wasting one at that. MickMacNee (talk) 19:20, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- The bot enforces policy, but the bot and policy are not equivalent. Better bots could enforce policy too. We want to change the bot, not the policy. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 19:17, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- The policy is that all fair use images must have a valid fair-use rationale. BetaCommandBot (a) improperly tags images that do have a valid fair use rationale, and (b) improperly doesn't tag many images that don't have a valid fair use rationale. The policy is fine. The problem is that the bot is doing a bad job of applying the policy. That's why we're here. Nandesuka (talk) 19:18, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- How am I confusing the policy with the bot? Repeating something doesn't make it true. The bot enforces policy. Period. If you don't like that policy, go try to change it. Lara❤Love 19:04, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- You are confusing the policy with the bot, as I thought I had adequately explained above. I was saving images, until it became clear that it was pot luck whether all an image required was 10 characters added, or a whole rationale, or was infact illegal and not allowed at all (and I have absolutely not encountered a single case of this as yet); and also that it was pot luck as to how many turned up in my watchlist to save, none, none, or 8, or none. So no, blindly getting on with fixing tagged images as and when does not seem an efficient use of time to me considering how I observe that BCB is currently being run or has been coded. And instead of making continued compliants, here I am, hopefully not wasting any more time that I realy wish I was using to edit articles, but on the 20,000 run day, I didn't get much of that done I can tell you, and I have a very small watchlist, and again, none of these tagged images are my uploads. MickMacNee (talk) 18:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
The bot does not tag images that have an adequate FUR. If the article is not specified, it's not in compliance with policy, it gets tagged. It's a 10 second fix. Do it and be merry and get over it. Show some examples of the bot tagging images that are in total compliance with policy. I doubt there are many, if any at all. This bot has tagged thousands upon thousands of images. The overwhelming majority of which were correct. Show some evidence of all these inappropriate taggings. And seriously, don't start faulting it for what it hasn't tagged yet. Lara❤Love 19:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- I've seen many articles tagged that had a perfectly appropriate FUR. That the bot (and, apparently, you) don't recognize this says more about your misunderstanding of what the fair use rationale policy is than about anything else. Nandesuka (talk) 20:59, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Fine. Examples please? --Hammersoft (talk) 00:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Let's use the example I gave on WP:AN just yesterday. If we can't agree that that was a perfectly valid fair use rationale, then I'm skeptical that any further examples are likely to sway you. Nandesuka (talk) 01:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Could you please provide diffs showing the behavior you believe is incorrect? --Hammersoft (talk) 01:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oh look, here's a new one. Let's look at the history: (1) Perfectly valid fair use rationale is put on article. (2) Article is moved to a new name, presumably without the knowledge of whomever put the rationale on. (3) BetacommandBot, applying its magic powers of Getting Everything Wrong Whenever Possible, incorrectly tags the image. Nandesuka (talk) 05:34, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Actually, the FUR was pointing at Myst, when the image was being used in [[Myst (video game). Myst was a disambiguation, making it impossible to deduce which of the disambig'd pages the image should belong on. MBisanz talk 05:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- At the time the FUR was created, on January 7th, it pointed at the article it was being used in, Myst. On February 10th, the article Myst later renamed to Myst (video game), and the disambiguation page inserted. One could argue that we should rewrite the mediawiki page move function to rewrite all FURs automatically. But a simpler thing might just be to, y'know, not have BetacommandBot fail to take obvious edge cases into account. It's hardly "impossible" to look at the page history and do something smart. Instead of something stupid. Nandesuka (talk) 06:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Okay, so you want Betacommand to recode his bot to check the history of every article that links to an image to make sure that the article hasn't been moved? Or check every article that is linked in a FUR but not in the "What links here" to see if it's a redirect? Okay, wait. I'm reading this wrong. Image linked to Myst and has adequate FUR. Myst is moved to Myst (video game), FUR not updated, no longer adequate. BCBot gets to this image, the FUR fails, it tags. Notification goes out, "Oh shit, we forgot to update the FUR..." *add (video game) to article name in FUR*. Done. Next step, go propose a bot that automatically does this when pages are moved... or request a notification pop up to remind editors to check images for this after they move a page. What am I missing? It's 2am, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing the point here. Lara❤Love 06:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- The notifications don't always work. Say the original uploader is long gone and the original article writers are gone as well, the only active user around is the one who did the page move, and they might not have kept the article on their watchlist. The more specific point is that such improvements were suggested (as you would know if you had been following the issue closely as some of us have). People are often asked to read archives instead of complaining, well, why not read the archives of WT:NFC? It would be entirely possible to make a large list of the improvements that were suggested and never implemented. If Betacommand had worked more with other bot editors, such changes could have been done. And no, saying that he wasn't required to do that doesn't address the question, it only sidesteps it. Carcharoth (talk) 10:47, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Okay, so you want Betacommand to recode his bot to check the history of every article that links to an image to make sure that the article hasn't been moved? Or check every article that is linked in a FUR but not in the "What links here" to see if it's a redirect? Okay, wait. I'm reading this wrong. Image linked to Myst and has adequate FUR. Myst is moved to Myst (video game), FUR not updated, no longer adequate. BCBot gets to this image, the FUR fails, it tags. Notification goes out, "Oh shit, we forgot to update the FUR..." *add (video game) to article name in FUR*. Done. Next step, go propose a bot that automatically does this when pages are moved... or request a notification pop up to remind editors to check images for this after they move a page. What am I missing? It's 2am, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing the point here. Lara❤Love 06:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- At the time the FUR was created, on January 7th, it pointed at the article it was being used in, Myst. On February 10th, the article Myst later renamed to Myst (video game), and the disambiguation page inserted. One could argue that we should rewrite the mediawiki page move function to rewrite all FURs automatically. But a simpler thing might just be to, y'know, not have BetacommandBot fail to take obvious edge cases into account. It's hardly "impossible" to look at the page history and do something smart. Instead of something stupid. Nandesuka (talk) 06:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Actually, the FUR was pointing at Myst, when the image was being used in [[Myst (video game). Myst was a disambiguation, making it impossible to deduce which of the disambig'd pages the image should belong on. MBisanz talk 05:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Let's use the example I gave on WP:AN just yesterday. If we can't agree that that was a perfectly valid fair use rationale, then I'm skeptical that any further examples are likely to sway you. Nandesuka (talk) 01:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- this edit. no notification here Talk:History of the Chicago Bears
- Image:ItuzaingoLogo.gif, Image:GimnasiaCU.gif, Image:Laflorida.gif, Image:GrupoUniversitario.gif + at least 20 more, all tagged for deletion with no notification on my talkpage.
- Image:Ahitienetumadre.jpg tagged for deletion, no notification on Blof's talkpage.
But the betacommand supporters don't seem to give a damn if people are not informed. I'm not opposed to the bot and I accept that most of the complains are spurious, but the fact that it doesn't follow redirects when pages get moved, with no warning of this consequence when you hit the move page tab and the fact that it sometimes lists things for deletion without notifying the uploader/article talk page annoy me. Not as much as the BCB supporters brigade who always shout down what I consider to be legitimate complaints. English peasant 01:47, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- These all are tagged correctly in that yes, the image before tagging did not have correct #10c rationale. However, you do bring up an issue that looks like a new bug in that BCB did not report tagging the images to the appropriate uploaders or pages, though the fact they're all recent may have to do with a recent bug in his bot. You should make sure Beta's alerted to this (actually, I'll go to his talk page and make him aware BCB is missing notifications). However, it is still tagging images that lack machine understandable FURs and will try to follow redirections (but can't follow through disambg pages) to verify if the FUR works or not. --MASEM 01:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- RETRACTING MY BIASED COMMENTS
- These all are tagged correctly in that yes, the image before tagging did not have correct #10c rationale. However, you do bring up an issue that looks like a new bug in that BCB did not report tagging the images to the appropriate uploaders or pages, though the fact they're all recent may have to do with a recent bug in his bot. You should make sure Beta's alerted to this (actually, I'll go to his talk page and make him aware BCB is missing notifications). However, it is still tagging images that lack machine understandable FURs and will try to follow redirections (but can't follow through disambg pages) to verify if the FUR works or not. --MASEM 01:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
KoshVorlon 17:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- WP:SIG prohibits using images. It ENDORSES use of unicode symbols, as lara has done. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 17:42, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- YOUR sig, one the other hand, has an unclosed <span> tag which makes my text here appear in a different font. I've corrected it here, but please fix that ASAP :) --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Reply to Guest9999
"The bot appears to identify non-compliant images correctly in almost all cases". First of all, one of the issues stated above is that there has been no demonstration of this with public analysis. Second, there is a large sub-set of illegal images that would not be tagged by the bot and never would, thereby almost all cases is incorrect (this could be confirmed if the code was explained - another suggestion made above). Third, this comment reinforces my view stated here that many people are mistakenly believing that this bot is making an objective assesment of compliance, it is not, it is making a crude string match, nothing more. This bot is a helper, it should be seen, described and treated as such, both in the tag and elsewhere, before anyone faced with it is given that impression. It absolutely does not and never can assess comliance to any meaningful degree, and in the cases of images with single use, it is coming up very short of even identifying images that would not pass muster in a court as having a valid rationale, due to which version of NFCC was in force at the time. Again there is a suggestion that would help differentiate these cases for easier fixing, by better categorisation and more helpful wording, because at the end of the day, this is about fixing things. You cannot say that the wording of tags has no effect on the likelihood of things getting fixed. Finally, I am very concerned at the idea that enforcement of fundemental principles of WP should be turned over to bots. What next, civility bot? Banned for 24 hours if you swear? MickMacNee (talk) 18:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Reply
- "there has been no demonstration of this with public analysis"
To me the demonstration of this is the fact that during the many, many discussions over the bot and despite the many, many editors opposing its actions it is extremely rare for an example of a mistake to be provided. Additionally I haven't seen any reports by admins who go through the backlogs saying that the bot is regularly making mistakes. If even a small fraction of the tens of thousands of images it tags were in error there would be hundreds of examples that frankly do not appear to exist.
- "Second, there is a large sub-set of illegal images that would not be tagged by the bot"
I'm slightly confused by this statement - are you saying that because the bot cannot identify every image that is in violation of policy it should not be allowed to identify the ones it can. I was not aware that this particular bot was the only possible means of identifying inappropriately used non-free content in the encyclopaedia.
- "it is coming up very short of even identifying images that would not pass muster in a court as having a valid rationale"
As you said the bot is meant to be a "helper" - not a solution. Additionally there is no "court" in Wikipedia and as I stated above I think the consensus is that the bot is accurately identifes images that violate WP:NFCC.
- "You cannot say that the wording of tags has no effect on the likelihood of things getting fixed"
I agree with you but I do not think that the proposals here will make it any more likely that "things will get fixed".
- "Finally, I am very concerned at the idea that enforcement of fundemental principles of WP should be turned over to bots"
The fundamental principles of Wikipedia haven't been turned over to bots, as you said bots are helpers and tagging an image which does not meet with policy is a workable solution to a problem with a massive backlog. Guest9999 (talk) 19:22, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Comments by ST47
- First, I am amused by the reasoning behind RussNelson's opinion. I understand that showing support for a bot is a very scary idea which must be oppressed, and that the only opinion that can rightfully be had about bots is that they are evil and out to destroy the wiki. However, we seem to have quite a few of these bots running, and the support of a bot by one user is not a valid reason to oppose it. Please find a more cabalistic and uninformed reason and return. Now, your proposals. I see that you have numbered them. I see that they are all numbered 1. This attempt to confuse me shall not be taken lightly. Nevertheless, I shall evade this assault and use the words 'first', 'second', and 'third'. Regarding the first proposal, subsection 2. What is a 'community bot'? One whose code is changed based on consensus? This is truly a bad idea. People oppose BCBot and others like it because they disagree with the policy it enforces (or don't understand it) and by being allowed to change it, would alter its purpose. This is a bad thing.
- "It's not our job to enforce other people's copyrights."
- "If an image has been on Wikipedia for more than a year and nobody has challenged its copyright status, that alone is evidence of fair use."
- So why don't we protect all articles that were created before February 2007? People have had plenty of time to change them! In fact, since we've had plenty of time to make all the new articles we need, let's close article creation. Heck, let's close the whole wiki down and publish! It's been enough time! We've fixed all the problems by now!!
- "Dragooning editors into doing the work is a hostile attack on the volunteer nature of Wikipedia."
- Any editor who thinks the image is valid is free to correct it. We only notify the uploader because they are the ones who know about it. If you'd like to help, there are categories of these images.
- "State whether an RFU should be for single use or multiple use (i.e. check links)"
- What is an RFU?
- "the reason for BCB needs to be stated, with accurate numeric figures"
- Why? BCB is needed because images exist which violate policy. Why do we need numbers of that? Why must we waste BC's time in getting those numbers?
- "The pseudocode of BCB needs to be stated, i.e. why it tags an image"
- Again, why? If you think that a tagging was done in error, then tell BC, and he can fix it. There's no need to give out the regexps and algorithms, because then he'll be forced to justify every bit of it, even where a change was made for the better. Here we are with giving BC more work to do. And we whine about how the bot screws up so much.
- "Any planned runs should be stated"
- Why? I run my bots on a cronjob or when I get a chance to get online. I don't see a need to post this information, especially when it's all available in Special:Contributions.
- "A sub help desk needs to be made and supported for the repeated NFCC10c questions"
- I believe there is a link to one from BCBot's talk page, STBotI's talk page, maybe even BC's talk page.
- "An FAQ needs to be written for the repeated NFCC10c questions"
- How about that big box on the top of User talk:Betacommandbot that no one reads? Why would they go out of their way to read a FAQ when they don't even look at the big red stop sign?
- --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 18:48, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- That box is full of Betacommand's opinion, and also full of Wikipedia jargon. It is rather unhelpful to people who don't understand the process. Also, people's talk pages aren't policy. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 19:18, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Irrelevant to the fact that no one reads it, as evidenced by the masses of comments on his talk page whose questions are answered by that box. I believe the first bullet point sends users directly to our master policy on all this, yet so many clearly didn't follow it - why make more text that no one will even look at? --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 19:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- That box is full of Betacommand's opinion, and also full of Wikipedia jargon. It is rather unhelpful to people who don't understand the process. Also, people's talk pages aren't policy. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 19:18, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
We're not enforcing copyright here, we're protecting the Foundation against copyright liability and also promoting free content. Two different issues. Anyway, almost none of the images tagged and subsequently deleted are copyright problems to begin with. This is about recordkeeping. There is definitely a problem with the scheduling and workload issue. We aren't free to correct images, not really. Not in the way people are free to delete them. I've personally fixed 500 to 1,000 images and promoted a template change that probably saved several thousand others. If I could I would have fixed the 50,000 or so valid images that would otherwise be deleted. But asking editors to go in and edit image pages one-by-one on an ad-hoc basis at random, unanounced intervals dictated by the operation of a bot is like sending people with sticks and spears to deal with a tank. The bot's methodology should definitely have been disclosed, and both that and its operation schedule subject to some oversight. It's kind of strange, and antithetical to a lot of things on Wikipedia and the free content / open source / democratic content movement overall that a bot's internal code would be a secret, and that a single person would be entrusted with running the whole operation.Wikidemo (talk) 21:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Uhhhhhh, no, you aren't protecting the Foundation. The way to get BCB to shut up is to link to the article. In fact no FUR is needed. Thus, BCB's actions don't actually help protect the foundation against copyright infringement. All the hand work that people claim BCB is avoiding .... is still necessary. Now, can we please stop claiming that BCB is accomplishing ANYTHING beyond annoying people, and maybe prodding some people into adding a FUR? RussNelson (talk) 03:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Now, can we please stop claiming that BCB is accomplishing ANYTHING beyond annoying people - I'm done participating in this juvenile discussion. I'm no longer debating with anyone who can't converse at at least a high school level of maturity. Lara❤Love 07:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Personally, I think a high school level of maturity is displayed by those who say they are no longer going to debate with someone. LaraLove, I left an unsolicited apology on your talk page because I got angry and said something that I regretted when I re-read it. You then archived the discussion without responding. How do you think that makes me feel when I see you talking about high school levels of maturity? I don't normally get angry enough to feel I need to apologise to people later, but when I do I am saddened if people don't respond. Cutting off discussion like that, whether here or on a talk page is not the way to work on a collaborative project where we need to be able to continue to talk to each other. Carcharoth (talk) 11:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Amicably resolved on my talk page. Thanks, Lara. Carcharoth (talk) 14:34, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Personally, I think a high school level of maturity is displayed by those who say they are no longer going to debate with someone. LaraLove, I left an unsolicited apology on your talk page because I got angry and said something that I regretted when I re-read it. You then archived the discussion without responding. How do you think that makes me feel when I see you talking about high school levels of maturity? I don't normally get angry enough to feel I need to apologise to people later, but when I do I am saddened if people don't respond. Cutting off discussion like that, whether here or on a talk page is not the way to work on a collaborative project where we need to be able to continue to talk to each other. Carcharoth (talk) 11:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Now, can we please stop claiming that BCB is accomplishing ANYTHING beyond annoying people - I'm done participating in this juvenile discussion. I'm no longer debating with anyone who can't converse at at least a high school level of maturity. Lara❤Love 07:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Bot problematic but no good alternative
I don't see any valid objections to the proposal so far ("this is a lynch mob" and "images need to follow policies and law" do not address the issue at all) and, frankly, some of the vitriol and hyperbole directed against this is way over the top. So I'll add something here.
Yes, I agree with most of the criticisms:
- Bot has had many errors and mis-fires
- Bot run by single person at whim, who has often been unresponsive, a little rude, and has not collaborated with other efforts
- Bot's operation is ad-hoc and unscheduled so nobody can make reasonable plan of how to work with it
- Bot was not properly approved and has exceeded its approval
- Bot (and image deletion volunteers) are doing a lot of damage by deleting images
- Most images deleted are fine for the encyclopedia and have no free use / copyright problems
- Foundation resolution does not require we do this
- The messages in the notices are unhelpful
- No good procedure in place to bring old images into compliance or educate new people how to comply
- Little effort was made to explain to affected people why we were doing this, how, and what they could do to get onboard
And probably half a dozen others. So this is a good lesson in how not to do it next time we want a major content change on the project. There were many suggestions and proposals to do this work, some of which could have worked a lot better and smoother. However, it's too late for a major course change now, with only a month and a half left. We have made the decision to try to reach close to 100% compliance with adding use rationales, source statements, and backlinks to images, and none of the alternate proposals got anywhere. We might as well be done with it and start from a new base level where the remaining old images have the data they need and the only problem to deal with is people adding new images.
I wouldn't suggest slowing down the bot's work, but if anyone cares to pitch in and make some improvements for this last part, why the heck not? As I mentioned in voicing support above, just do it. If we need an FAQ, why not just write one? If we need a better tag message, just write one. Betacommand isn't always responsive to direct challenges and criticism, but he's not unreasonable. If you make him a template that's better than the one he's using he'll probably a9dopt it. No biggie at all. The scheduling thing is a little more complex and I'm a little dubious that can be worked out in short order, but if anyone has a specific suggestion why not? It could be something so simple as do all the logos in week 1, the film posters in week 2. Or it could be based on the upload date of the images, or even alphabetical - start with A, then B, then C based on article name or image name.
Finally, I do think it's helpful to have a central place to discuss all this instead of the half dozen different policy and guideline pages. If this page is going to be a central place to talk about the bot I'm all for it. However, that's at odds with it being a single person's specific proposal. Wikidemo (talk) 20:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
let me respond
- 1 BCBot does not miss tag images. if there are errors please let me know.
- 2 I run the bot when I can. I have bent over backwards trying to work with others. per your own request and agreement ~6-7 months ago I did not tag images that were uploaded prior to 2007, instead I had them posted in a list on my toolserver page
- 3 Ive set up a planned schedual for BCBot runs once I was asked about it.
- 4 the bot was approved to tag images without valid rationales. its what the bot does.
- 5 I cannot delete images, if we could get users motivated to fix them we would not be having this discussion. we just cannot get enough people motivated
- 7 the foundation requires that we have images compliant with our EDP. our EDP is what Im enforcing.
- 8 Ive asked countless times for help improving the message the bot leaves, I have gotten very little help
- 9 there was an agreement for me to not tag older images so that you could help bring them into compliance and educate users. you could get nothing going in over five months. Please dont blame that on me
βcommand 03:10, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- 3 - most people would link to the schedule. Could you do that please?
- 7 - our EDP is something that the Wikipedia community should be discussing. It has to follow the Foundation policy, but where it is stricter than the Foundation policy, or where people disagree with your interpretation of it, you should be engaging with their concerns, rather than saying "we need to do this because of the Foundation resolution".
- 8 - do you have a standard template that the bot substs as part of the message? If that templated message was available on-wiki, people could edit the wording and help you. Having to pass changes to you, and then read the new version and suggest new changes is, well, rather inefficient. Please link to a page in your user pages, or in the bot pages, with the standard message text so people can edit it and/or discuss changes on the talk page.
- 9 - this was unfortunate, I agree. There are new efforts underway to improve and modify the process by which we make sure new images uploaded after 23 March 2007 are OK. We will need the major bot operators (and that includes you, of course) to co-operate with this and be part of the process. Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria compliance isn't really ready yet, but please help out or look out for a notice about it.
- Those are only my immediate points. Wikidemo might have other points to raise. By the way, I noticed somewhere that you said you were collecting stats - could you provide those on-wiki and link to them, as I'd be interested in doing more graphs. In particular, the analysis I've done at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria compliance covers all images. Getting the free/non-free split is more difficult - I hope you will be able to help there. Carcharoth (talk) 10:25, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- as for the main stats im working on, ive got a few bugs, Im expecting about a week before I can get them compiled, but you might find User:BetacommandBot/Free Template Useage & User:BetacommandBot/Non-Free Template Useage which update regularly. βcommand 13:34, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks Beta. Those are extremely useful pages. Do you think you could advertise pages like that a little more widely? It is the first I've heard of those pages. I've checked "what links here", and despite being in existence since September 2007 those pages are only linked from archives of your talk pages and here. I would generate stats immediately from those pages, but I will wait and see if it is this data that you are intending to generate stats from. I've also taken the liberty of rummaging around your user and bot subpages here and there are some interesting pages there. Is User:BetacommandBot/Templates a complete list or not, and is it kept up-to-date? Carcharoth (talk) 15:48, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- as for the main stats im working on, ive got a few bugs, Im expecting about a week before I can get them compiled, but you might find User:BetacommandBot/Free Template Useage & User:BetacommandBot/Non-Free Template Useage which update regularly. βcommand 13:34, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Probably not the right place for this but...
Doesn't anyone here who doesn't like the way the bot runs have the knowledge and ability to write another bot that will do the task in a way they are more happy with? Surely the issue is big enough that having more than one active bot could be appropriate, there are several anti-vandel bots. Guest9999 (talk) 22:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- I'm sure there are others who can write codes for bots to enforce FUR, but they haven't come forward. We're left with a bot which does the job poorly, and a bunch of defenders who continue to claim that the bot is merely enforcing the rules. There are different ways to enforce the same rules. Enigma msg! 22:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- I may be wrong here but doesn't the bot operator own the code to BetaCommandBot, if that is the case then no one can actually make the user change it. The bot could be shut down but in all the discussion there doesn't seem to be a consensus for that to happen. Has the operator suggested they would be willing to change the code to incorporate anything the community suggests or is this just a very round about way to kill off the bot completely? Guest9999 (talk) 23:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Part of the problem is that any potential bot operators are likely to decide it isn't worth the flak.Geni 23:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- And how is someone supposed to make a "better" bot? The main complaints against BCbot would apply to any bot that does an adequate job at the same task. Mr.Z-man 23:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Not at all. The complaints against BCB for the most part haven't been because people want to complain about the policy. The complaints are about the way BCB handles enforcement of the policy. Enigma msg! 00:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Personally I think BetaCommandBot does a pretty good job; my point was merely that if editors don't like the current bot, creating an alternative more to their liking might be a practical solution. Guest9999 (talk) 00:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- And how do we make a bot that is better? Of course something "better" is good. My question is: How does one create a bot that fully enforces the policy and does the job "better" than BCbot? Mr.Z-man 00:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Nobody in this section has used the word "better" apart from you. I think others are suggesting that the way in which the bot identifies infringing images and the way in which the bot informs the uploaders of infringing images could be improved in order to gprevent potentaily suitable, encyclopaedic images from being unneccesarily deleted. I know very little about coding, running or maintaining bots so cannot say whether any of the changes wanted by some members of the community would be possible to implement in BetaCommandBot or in any new bot. I would have thought that certain aspects of what is wanted (such as those pertaining to WP:CIVIL) would not be that difficult to enact a technical level without compromising on policy. Guest9999 (talk) 01:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- The core of how the bot works is quite simple. It needs to get a bit complex to deal with the quantities and making automated edits and other technical issue that most bots face, but basically it works like this
- Get image list. Then, for each image:
- Does it meet the parts of policy that can be checked by bot? (Criteria 7, 9, 10b, and 10c)
- If yes, move to next image
- If no, tag image and notify uploader, then move to next image.
- In the case of BCbot, I don't think it even checks for all the criteria in each run, it seems like only 10c in the latest runs. A bot can't check for encyclopedic importance or suitability, that needs human judgment to evaluate the image in the context of the article its in. Things like templates can be improved, but that doesn't have to do with the bot coding. Mr.Z-man 02:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- The core of how the bot works is quite simple. It needs to get a bit complex to deal with the quantities and making automated edits and other technical issue that most bots face, but basically it works like this
- Nobody in this section has used the word "better" apart from you. I think others are suggesting that the way in which the bot identifies infringing images and the way in which the bot informs the uploaders of infringing images could be improved in order to gprevent potentaily suitable, encyclopaedic images from being unneccesarily deleted. I know very little about coding, running or maintaining bots so cannot say whether any of the changes wanted by some members of the community would be possible to implement in BetaCommandBot or in any new bot. I would have thought that certain aspects of what is wanted (such as those pertaining to WP:CIVIL) would not be that difficult to enact a technical level without compromising on policy. Guest9999 (talk) 01:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Not at all. The complaints against BCB for the most part haven't been because people want to complain about the policy. The complaints are about the way BCB handles enforcement of the policy. Enigma msg! 00:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- I have the ability to write such a bot, but I'd be unwilling to take the time to write it from scratch -- especially as the end result is that it would be likely to be rejected by the same BAG that approved BetaCommandBot. I'd use a bit of fuzzy matching to allow near misses on the article name, leave a more helpful message, and try to improve the scheduling so it didn't hit all of a user's images at once. This is one reason I want BC to open the source code, to lower the barrier to creating a better bot, but of course it's not in his interest to do so. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 08:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- He's said he will release it to people he trusts under certain conditions, so you might try asking him directly. Unless you have and he's said "no". MBisanz talk 08:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Heh! Somehow I doubt Betacommand would trust me, considering how personally he takes his bot's work and how much I've objected to it. And he shouldn't trust me to keep the code secret, because whatever I write is going to be open source. But I will try asking. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 07:01, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- He said no. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 20:00, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- if you cannot respect my terms of service then you will not get my services. End of story. βcommand 20:21, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- He said no. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 20:00, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Heh! Somehow I doubt Betacommand would trust me, considering how personally he takes his bot's work and how much I've objected to it. And he shouldn't trust me to keep the code secret, because whatever I write is going to be open source. But I will try asking. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 07:01, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- He's said he will release it to people he trusts under certain conditions, so you might try asking him directly. Unless you have and he's said "no". MBisanz talk 08:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- and its his intellectual property, so its his choice.MBisanz talk 20:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
What I would have done instead
It should be noted that BetacommandBot's work is nearly finished. The legacy images are (according to Betacommand) all tagged now, and it is only the new uploads that will be tagged, though as these taggings will WP:BITE new users, it would be useful to get the whole process to be less dramatic and abrasive to uploaders.
- I would have done the image tagging by upload date to avoid mixing up recent uploads with older uploads.
- I would have spread the load evenly over the last year (say, a run every week) to avoid admins feeling the need to delete thousands of images to clear large backlogs, or tagged everything at once with a deadline of a whole year, with a group set up to divide up the work needed and work on shorter deadlines.
- I would have at least attempted to make a clear distinction between images of contemporary culture (modern album covers and logos and book covers) and historic, educational images (with some arbitrary date dividing line, as needed), and set up a specialist group to deal with unclear copyrights and historic images, of which there aren't actually that many. It would have been easy to separate them out.
- I would have done more updates on runs and numbers of images. Betacommand's four phases were helpful, but he just didn't give regular or consistent updates. Ocassionally he worked on-wiki with others, but the impression was more that he worked alone or off-wiki with other bot programmers.
The depressing thing is that these issues were raised, but nothing really seemed to get done. The FAQs and image upload help desk and other (already-existing) noticeboards did help, but there was a real feeling of powerlessness in all this. I tried to get some changes made (and asked Betacommand several times to make some changes), but the inertia against change is immense, and the momentum Betacommand and others built up was difficult to rein in as well. Having said that, I'm not Betacommand, and this year and his work probably was needed in the long-run. I just wish it could have been handled better. There were good-faith editors riled by this, as well as the editors who fail to understand what "free content" is, let alone the drive-by image uploaders, most of whom probably still haven't noticed that anything has changed. Looking forward, would everyone here consider helping to change things to work differently after the March deadline for future uploads? If we can get a group of people together to work on various proposals, it should be possible to get a group of bots together to handle stuff that Betacommand doesn't do (by choice or not, I don't know) so that there is less fall-out from BetacommandBot's tagging. That might reduce drama in future. Also, I will note that getting attention to a page is not as simple as it seems. I'm looking at this page and at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria compliance, and wondering what I did wrong? Is the page I created boring or something? :-) Carcharoth (talk) 00:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oh, and Rspeer mentioned something I forgot - fuzzy matching of article names could have been used to create a separate set of images to be checked for the fairly common "redirect/disambiguation page/mis-spelling" situation. Again, this is something that was suggested, but Betacommand didn't (as far as I know) make any attempt to incorporate it into his bot. Could WP:BAG have forced him to make such improvements? Could the community have stirred up enough of a fuss to get such changes made? Who knows. The thing is - the sheer scale of what the bot was doing means that such pleas shouldn't have been stonewalled and/or rejected without more consideration. Carcharoth (talk) 10:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Right. So, we hold someone under pain of blocking because they won't incorporate code advancements for an operation method that was previously approved. Wow. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- What are you talking about? I never mentioned blocking. It is common sense that something that affects large portions of a community should be responsive to legitimate concerns and requests for change from that community. I know there were many requests for change that would have impeded enforcement of policy, but that's not what I was talking about. I'm talking about reasonable changes that weren't done because, well, I don't think it was ever made clear why some of the reasonable changes were never done. Do you want to have a go at explaining why things weren't done the way others have outlined? Carcharoth (talk) 00:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Stats and pretty graphs over here!
In case anyone is interested: Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria compliance#Weekly uploads and deletions and bot taggings. It seems that non-free images are only about a quarter of the net image uploads to Wikipedia. It is probably possible to pick large holes in my analysis, but I would welcome constructive comments and suggestions on the talk page. Carcharoth (talk) 01:28, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Moot point
For the record: Z-man removed these comments. I think it should be recorded that RussNelson said: "I'm amazingly WAY underimpressed by BCB defenders' responses. But if Carcharoth is correct, and BCB's swath of destruction has been completed, then fixing BCB seems like a moot point." I agree with the removal of the rest of RussNelson's comments, and the removal of the unhelpful response by LaraLove. Carcharoth (talk) 10:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Comment by Kaypoh
In "Statement of principles", it says that the concerned editors are "experienced editors who know how to write an FUR" and "Experienced editors who know the NFCC policy". How many people who upload images know the million rules about fair use and free use and the thousand steps about writing a fair use rationale? If the uploader gives a reasonable fair use rationale but it is not written the way BetacommandBot wants, the image will still get deleted. Also, when BetacommandBot leaves messages on talk pages, it does not say what is wrong with the fair use rationale. --Kaypoh (talk) 13:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- There aren't a million or a thousand; there are ten.
- If people can't write a simple FUR and are going to jump all over BC and BCB when it prompts them to do so, perhaps they're not ready to be uploading images, especially ones that are the intellectual property of others.
- BCB tags images with basic problems with their FURs, not just because they aren't written as BCB wants.
- When BCB leaves a message, it explains the problem and provides a link to the policy page. There is also an FAQ on the bot's talk page. ➔ REDVEЯS knows how Joan of Arc felt 13:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- What part of "invalid rationale per WP:NFCC#10c The name of each article in which fair use is claimed for the item, and a separate fair-use rationale for each use of the item, as explained at Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline. The rationale is presented in clear, plain language, and is relevant to each use" [1] is a non-explanation as to what is wrong with the rationale? The bot does say on the user's talk page to go to the image description page [2], does it not? --Hammersoft (talk) 15:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Well, for a start, that's one of the most confusing messages ever to be spammed around Wikipedia. Why is it worded as if the problem is that "The rationale is presented in clear, plain language, and is relevant to each use"? Why is it crammed full of Wikipedia jargon when so many people who need to read it don't speak Wikipedia jargon? That message really needs to be fixed. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 06:55, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Comments on a more user-friendly FAQ for BCBot
I've noted above that I think part of the issue is the lack of easy to find instructions for the common questions and corrections that the tagging that can be done. I am encouraging that we include this BCB FAQ that I've created to be put as a collapsible but highly visible section on WP:ICHD and possibly other places to reduce the volume of noise against BCB. I know it doesn't resolve all issues with the Bot, but this should help us get through the next month. Please edit to taste but note that I'm trying to keep the tone friendly and conversational to discourage complaint. --MASEM 17:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Responses on return from ban
Haven't been around due to a sock fight, but I have a few comments on how things are going
To LaraLove and similar opponents
Despite stating it in what I thought was an unambiguous way in the opening statement of principles and header, people still insist this page was created to go against the resolution, the policy, to attack BCB etc etc. It is not. I would have thought that people interested in reaching a consensus on the specific issues raised would see the other general for/against posts for what they are, as clearly stated, not relevant to this debate, they have been discussed elsewhere, continuing threads in this vein is merely duplicating arguments that have no possibility of ending. It is also absolutely not about first time, lazy or ignorant uploaders, we know how to tag, we know what is required, stop insulting our intelligence by suggesting these issues are born out of lazyness, or dismissable as merely a lack of following procedure. We are not first time uploaders, we are editors who are trying to save non-violating tagged images, or have had legacy images tagged by the hundreds, and are raising the issues involved with fixing that. MickMacNee (talk) 21:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Issues with communication from Betacommand
Again, this was not an attack page, but as you have seen, his only contributions to this effort at discussion have been misguided at best, contemptable at worst. Just because he is a martyr for his chosen cause does not indemnify him from the obligations pllaced on any editor, his status is not higher than any other editor just because he wrote a bot. I note that it has apparently now been revealed all legacy tagging has been completed, (although still no confirmation from the person who knows), so it would appear a large part of the issues are redundant. Had I been aware of this information, this page may never had existed, but this shows the registered concerns about communication were valid and will likely remain for any future policy change he decides to code for. A related issue is the mention of the March deadline, this is still not clearly stated anywhere, and seems to merely be in the memory of involved admins. This is not conducive to informing everyone who are tagged or who have issues with the tags to understand the purpose of the bot. MickMacNee (talk) 21:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
The BCB enforces policy or protects WP fallacy
- It is extremely easy to mistakenly write an invalid FUR that will not be tagged by BCB because it passes as 'valid' to the bot. Not tagging these images still leaves WP under legal risk, and hence sweeping statements about BCB's infallibility when it comes to enforcement are wrong.
- FURs are by definition only verifiable by a human, as such, BCB plays no part in any assesment of compliance, and arguments stating such and the consequences are wrong. It is merely a tool that highlights possible problems in certain circumnstances. Assertions that BCB is the WP FUR compliance assessment tool are wrong.
Under the enforcement section of the NFCC policy, it states: An image whose only violation is the lack of a fair-use rationale for some (but not all) articles will not be deleted. Instead, the use of the image will be removed from the offending articles. The fact that BCB bot does not distinguish between single and multiple use images, stating for both cases that they will be deleted if concerns are not addressed, is against policy.BCB is apparently not tagging these images. Is it removing them from offending articles? MickMacNee (talk) 13:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- MickMacNee, removing those in question is the next planned phase of BCBot, as it stands now BCBot does nothing with those. βcommand 13:38, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Single use images have machine read-able link to the article for which fair use is being claimed. Tagging these images as non-compliant is against policyIt has now been pointed out that there is a valid reason for repeating the reference twice for single use images. This should be pointed out to people in the tag and or an FAQ, as the reason behind it is not immediately obvious when looking at an apparently acceptable rationale. MickMacNee (talk) 13:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)- FUR's that contain redirected links are valid but not readable by BCB. Tagging these images as non-compliant is against policy.
- Any assertion that requesting changes / fine tuning to the bot code goes against a foundation resolution and puts WP at risk are wrong, the bot code is not policy, assessment to the policy is the resolution requirement, the bot code is a small part of that process. Secondly, no valid claim has been made about the actual success rate of BCB for tagging true copy-vio images as a percentage of all claimed non-free images hosted, rather than tagged byb BCB. The only acceptable way to do this given the numbers involved is a true quality control sample.
- These are the basic facts, and do not even begin to address the issues surrounding efforts that could be made to help the human elements of this process, i.e the people that assess and fix the images.
MickMacNee (talk) 21:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)- I don't see how you consider BCBot worthless for the reasons you've stated. Yes, it is possible to evade it. But that doesn't happen very often. The fact that the bot has made hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of taggings means that it has been useful and helpful. It has eliminated work that a human would otherwise have to do. Perhaps once everything calms down, in a few months, people will be able to start reviewing images. But currently the bots doing it en masse is the only reasonable way to do that. They are reviewing old images faster than any human could, taking the obvious stuff out, maybe making a few mistakes, but always fixing them once they're caught. They are performing triage on newly uploaded images. Without BCBot and others, we would be standing at the floodgates and staring in awe of the great task ahead of us, reviewing over 700,000 images for compliance. And yes, with that magnitude, there's no way to assure compliance with complete certainty in reasonable time. But the bot is making a huge amount of progress, and as you realize, I'm sure, from the flood of comments on your talk page from BCBot last night, just how difficult a task it would be without automated help. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Has anyone got any figures for how many untagged images are not correct? Otherwise how can you say it isn't evaded very often? A human still has to check every image, tagged or not, so there has been zero time saving after the initial step of collecting nonfree licenced images, only the saving of time to fix any wrong images. MickMacNee (talk) 23:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Also, one thing. Betacommand has stated that images with redirected links are followed. Do you have examples to contradict that, or are you just jumping on the bot with false attacks?
- It's what I remember seeing as one of the complaints.MickMacNee (talk) 23:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Well, I'm pretty sure redirects are followed, as of quite a while ago. Probably someone had wrong information. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- It's what I remember seeing as one of the complaints.MickMacNee (talk) 23:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Also, your third point. Betacommand has stated that images with a single valid rationale are ignored by the bot. He did say that he intended to change that, but I'm sure he doesn't plan on tagging those images for deletion, but perhaps rather leave a message on the article talk page or remove the image. What he intends to do is not currently an issue, and as far as I know (perhaps you have evidence otherwise?) the bot is only looking for one valid rationale at the moment. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- If this is the case then I refer to the dislcaimer at the top of the page, seeing as there is no explanation of what the bot is doing, and none forthcoming at the complaints I've seen at multiple use taggings, I am basing my assumptions on the umpteen statements that the bot is applying the policy.MickMacNee (talk) 23:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- It would be better if you based your assumption on facts. Like diffs. Granted, we wouldn't have this fun witchhunt then, but maybe something good would get done? --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- If this is the case then I refer to the dislcaimer at the top of the page, seeing as there is no explanation of what the bot is doing, and none forthcoming at the complaints I've seen at multiple use taggings, I am basing my assumptions on the umpteen statements that the bot is applying the policy.MickMacNee (talk) 23:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- I don't see how you consider BCBot worthless for the reasons you've stated. Yes, it is possible to evade it. But that doesn't happen very often. The fact that the bot has made hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of taggings means that it has been useful and helpful. It has eliminated work that a human would otherwise have to do. Perhaps once everything calms down, in a few months, people will be able to start reviewing images. But currently the bots doing it en masse is the only reasonable way to do that. They are reviewing old images faster than any human could, taking the obvious stuff out, maybe making a few mistakes, but always fixing them once they're caught. They are performing triage on newly uploaded images. Without BCBot and others, we would be standing at the floodgates and staring in awe of the great task ahead of us, reviewing over 700,000 images for compliance. And yes, with that magnitude, there's no way to assure compliance with complete certainty in reasonable time. But the bot is making a huge amount of progress, and as you realize, I'm sure, from the flood of comments on your talk page from BCBot last night, just how difficult a task it would be without automated help. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- It is a correlation of the mantra that BCB enforces the policy. Without information about how it works, what else can you base an assessment on? At the end of the day, this new fact just weakens the idea that BCB is helping by introducing another set of untagged but possibly non-compliant images, but communication was one of the issues, as is the case with the redirect confusion. MickMacNee (talk) 23:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- As I just said, you can base assessment on diffs. By the reasoning of many here, we can't trust what Betacommand says anyway, so please do put forward diffs supporting your points regarding multiple rationales and redirects. Unless of course you're just here to fuel the fires? --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- (ec) Betacommandbot is not introducing any images, it is getting rid of them. I don't see how you think having lots of bad images and lots of good images is better than having a few bad images and lots of good images. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Please note that the Foundation resolution requires machine readable EDPs, and thus having BCB attempt to tag these is policy. --MASEM 23:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- That's an interesting point. I believe the foundation policy only requires that downstream content providers be able to differentiate between free and non-free images, not that they be able to confirm compliance with the resolution and policy. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- The "machine readable" part is taken care of with Category:All non-free media and having all the non-free tags begin with "Non-free". —Remember the dot (talk) 23:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- This, by the way, is the reason that some images with rationales but without non-free media tags or copyright tags are tagged by the bot. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- I think it's the other bots that do that...I haven't seen BetacommandBot putting "no tag" tags on any images. —Remember the dot (talk) 23:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- This, by the way, is the reason that some images with rationales but without non-free media tags or copyright tags are tagged by the bot. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- The "machine readable" part is taken care of with Category:All non-free media and having all the non-free tags begin with "Non-free". —Remember the dot (talk) 23:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- That's an interesting point. I believe the foundation policy only requires that downstream content providers be able to differentiate between free and non-free images, not that they be able to confirm compliance with the resolution and policy. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 23:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Reply to REDVERS Mfd comment
This page was written in response to your suggestion to consolidate discussion and create consensus, to prevent 'WP:forest fires' on ANI and elsewhere. Now it has been done you dismiss it in 3 words as an attack page. MickMacNee (talk) 21:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- And having requested this action himself, he does this [3]. Apparently I am not worthy of an explanation about anything. Next time I will be ignoring his suggestions at ANI or elsewhere. MickMacNee (talk) 22:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Not very grown up of you. I fail to see what the purpose of this comment was, beyond trolling for a response. I took your suggestion. I can has Barnstar?. My suggestion, as you put it, was that you stopped lighting forest fires by the number of pages and threads you were creating as part of your campaign to destroy BCB. Your response? The creation of another page, this one so appallingly written that people have suggested it be deleted for being an attack page. Then you light another fire by replying to a comment on one page on a different page, presumably to get your little lynch mob to focus on me. Nice. ➔ REDVEЯS knows how Joan of Arc felt 10:18, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- I seriously can't follow your logic. If what you actually meant in your original ANI suggestion to me that no more discussion about BCB is permittted, you should have said that. It's clear from your opinion that this page is an attack page on a user, and not on the operation of a bot that you were not interested in seeing an end to the drama at all. Perhaps I will write a bot so I can be immune from all your personal attacks when I feel like it. MickMacNee (talk) 13:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Not very grown up of you. I fail to see what the purpose of this comment was, beyond trolling for a response. I took your suggestion. I can has Barnstar?. My suggestion, as you put it, was that you stopped lighting forest fires by the number of pages and threads you were creating as part of your campaign to destroy BCB. Your response? The creation of another page, this one so appallingly written that people have suggested it be deleted for being an attack page. Then you light another fire by replying to a comment on one page on a different page, presumably to get your little lynch mob to focus on me. Nice. ➔ REDVEЯS knows how Joan of Arc felt 10:18, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Positive comments
I am pleased by some of the suggestions here, and hope they are taken on board. I support the new policy improvement page, and wish it well, this page was always in a separate scope to that one, and he seems to be making head way. I hope the bot advocates participate in it, as I get the feeling that a failure to do so in the past has produced this drama and ill feeling, when combined with betacommands eagerness to be a code martyr. As it seems legacy tagging is over, I feel less inclined to keep banging my head against a wall if people fail to debate the specific issues raised, or even understand what the difference between the bot code and the policy is. In that event I would gladly bow out safe in the knowledge that BCB will no longer raid my watchlist or talk page (malicious POINT vandalism aside), and that I can save any image I find without a valid FUR, tagged or not, in the course of normal editing. All other images will have to be a case of you won't miss what you never saw. Hopefully the continued stream of confused uploaders to betacommands talk page page will keep him busy enough and out of my way.MickMacNee (talk) 21:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
BC's response to the blatant lies and bullshit
No one here can point to a valid image the bot tagged improperly. it doesnt happen. what you can do and have done is point out images that have half ass rationales, that the bot tags and you insist are mistakes, well if you read the policy you can clearly see that as part of a non-free image rationale, (note I did not say fair use they are not the same. Our non-free policy is a lot more strict) you must include the name of the article for which you are writing the rationale. Other wise who knows what page its meant for? you write a rationale for page A, image gets added to page B, with no rationale. then it gets removed from page A. the rationale for page A is not valid for page B. Also addressing another lie, BCBot does look for redirects and does follow them, there was one image recently that was brought to my attention where there was an issue with a redirect, the page that the API gave me was not the actual page. it was due to a Unicode error. It was pointed out and I addressed it fairly quickly. As I have stated BCBot is only one step in cleaning up the mess that we have. Oh and to stop yet another lie/misstatement BCBot does not tag images that have at least one valid rational, if an image is used 10 times but has a rationale for one of them the bot skips it. But if the same image does not have a rationale for at least one it is tagged. I welcome bug reports and suggestions, the fact of the matter is that I have implemented a lot of user requests. I am currently gathering some stats, I have no clue how long that will take. if someone things the bot makes mistakes please provide diffs and one of two things will happen, Ill show you what is wrong with the image, or in a very very rare case you might have found a bug in the bot, in which case Ill fix the bug. βcommand 23:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- As I said just now, a lot of the above I wasn't aware of, and it is not explained anywhere that I have seen. Directing someone to 50 page archives is just not good enough, and I am not going to stand for the stuf I just found above being accused for 'waging a campaign' because of it. It's taken this teethpulling exercise to get you to explain how this thing works, all we have had in response is 'the bot enforces the policy' ad nauseum, well if that's all I am given as a response, that is what I will base my discussions on together with the images I have seen tagged. Perhaps you will take this lesson and explain those points on an FAQ as suggested. And there is nothing wrong with a bit of misunderstanding, but if you cause it at the scale of 20,000 hits a day, then of course it will escalate and look like a lynch mob. MickMacNee (talk) 00:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- yet you assume things based on no proof, if you read the message that the bot adds to images you can clearly see why its tagged. or spend some time reading WP:NFCC or WP:NFURG βcommand 00:23, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- The only things I have had to assume is how BCB applies the policy in the face of little or no response to queries. The reason why the bot tags it is not the same as the reason why the policy requires it. I am fully aware of what the policy says and what the tag says, as stated, if you think it is that obvious why is every second query at your talk page about a single use image where a rationale appears to have been provided? And this was only one of many other issues, most of which passed when it was revealed that the legacy tagging has been completed, again a fact I was not aware of from the information available and therefore make no apology for. MickMacNee (talk) 00:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Why assume when there's a mound of evidence at Special:Contributions/Betacommandbot? For some reason, no one is actually backing up their claims, and when it turns out that they're dead wrong, they blame Betacommand. Of course, that's to be expected, it's the cool thing to do, but I wish that you could at least do it intelligently and constructively. The accusations made the section above this one by MickMacNee were wrong, as stated by BC here, and were based on assumption. Is that really all you can come up with? If there are problems here with the bot's tagging of images, I'd like to see them. But I have not. I will, of course, continue to waste my time lest you declare victory and have the bot blocked after boring us all to death, however I wish we were actually debating fact, rather than your misinformed and unresearched opinion of the bot's functioning. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 01:05, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- There were many original concerns, none of which were situations of incorrect tagging. I put the example of single use because it is a common confusion, as seen on bcb talk. Not tagging multiple uses if just one link is present for me goes against the assertions here that BCB enforces NFCC, produced in response to any complaint, justified or not. There is no other more detailed explanation of what BCB does, until now. MickMacNee (talk) 01:27, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- OK, let's talk about it not following NFCC. Does anyone really think that it enforces all of NFCC? Minimal use? Does it check each article to make sure fair use isn't overused? No. No free equivalent? Does it keep a database of the subjects of all pictures that exist, to compare the picture uploaded against? No. Respect for commercial opportunities? Does it check that we aren't taking someone's money? No. It's a little naive to assume that it enforces every single part of NFCC, and as I have said, the best way to know what it does is its contribution history. No documentation will ever be better than looking at what it actually does in real life. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 01:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- There were many original concerns, none of which were situations of incorrect tagging. I put the example of single use because it is a common confusion, as seen on bcb talk. Not tagging multiple uses if just one link is present for me goes against the assertions here that BCB enforces NFCC, produced in response to any complaint, justified or not. There is no other more detailed explanation of what BCB does, until now. MickMacNee (talk) 01:27, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Why assume when there's a mound of evidence at Special:Contributions/Betacommandbot? For some reason, no one is actually backing up their claims, and when it turns out that they're dead wrong, they blame Betacommand. Of course, that's to be expected, it's the cool thing to do, but I wish that you could at least do it intelligently and constructively. The accusations made the section above this one by MickMacNee were wrong, as stated by BC here, and were based on assumption. Is that really all you can come up with? If there are problems here with the bot's tagging of images, I'd like to see them. But I have not. I will, of course, continue to waste my time lest you declare victory and have the bot blocked after boring us all to death, however I wish we were actually debating fact, rather than your misinformed and unresearched opinion of the bot's functioning. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 01:05, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- The only things I have had to assume is how BCB applies the policy in the face of little or no response to queries. The reason why the bot tags it is not the same as the reason why the policy requires it. I am fully aware of what the policy says and what the tag says, as stated, if you think it is that obvious why is every second query at your talk page about a single use image where a rationale appears to have been provided? And this was only one of many other issues, most of which passed when it was revealed that the legacy tagging has been completed, again a fact I was not aware of from the information available and therefore make no apology for. MickMacNee (talk) 00:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- yet you assume things based on no proof, if you read the message that the bot adds to images you can clearly see why its tagged. or spend some time reading WP:NFCC or WP:NFURG βcommand 00:23, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- The problem is that images like [4] should be kept, but BetacommandBot is tagging them for deletion anyway. I think that pretty much sums up the problem. —Remember the dot (talk) 00:06, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- there was just one very small error with that image, see this diff for what was needed to fix it. you dont always need templates. just the proper name of the article in question. βcommand 00:11, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- So, BetacommandBot tagged the image for deletion because it said "Litton" instead of "Litton Industries"? —Remember the dot (talk) 00:13, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- BCBot looks for the name of the article (or a redirect to) where its used, Litton is a dab page, it is neither a redirect or the article where its used (Litton Industries). which is required per WP:NFCC#10c βcommand 00:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Are you saying that you would rather delete the image than add the link? —Remember the dot (talk) 00:20, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- I never stated that I want to see images deleted, see User talk:Betacommand#7. there is just no method to have a bot write proper rationales βcommand 00:23, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Polbot fixes rationales instead of tagging images for deletion. —Remember the dot (talk) 00:31, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- there was a major problem with how polbot operated and there was a massive (~5k) rollback of the bots edits. βcommand 00:34, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- But even as Polbot's creator admits: Bots are extremely limited in their rationale-writing capabilities. For most uses of most images on Wikipedia, a bot will never be able to write and accurate and useful rationale. However in a few cases, I believe that a bot could improve Wikipedia by adding a limited rationale for a very specific kind of image use. which is why it only looks at non-free logos. --MASEM 00:35, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Polbot fixes rationales instead of tagging images for deletion. —Remember the dot (talk) 00:31, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- I never stated that I want to see images deleted, see User talk:Betacommand#7. there is just no method to have a bot write proper rationales βcommand 00:23, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Are you saying that you would rather delete the image than add the link? —Remember the dot (talk) 00:20, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- BCBot looks for the name of the article (or a redirect to) where its used, Litton is a dab page, it is neither a redirect or the article where its used (Litton Industries). which is required per WP:NFCC#10c βcommand 00:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- So, BetacommandBot tagged the image for deletion because it said "Litton" instead of "Litton Industries"? —Remember the dot (talk) 00:13, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- there was just one very small error with that image, see this diff for what was needed to fix it. you dont always need templates. just the proper name of the article in question. βcommand 00:11, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
←Let's come back to Polbot later. About Image:Litton logo.png: BetacommandBot tagged it for deletion. It did not tag it as having a possibly invalid rationale, it tagged it for deletion. —Remember the dot (talk) 00:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- our improper rationale template is a deletion template. the bot tagged it as invalid rationale, which is a reason for deletion βcommand 00:46, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- So, you'd rather delete the image than fix the minor problem with it. —Remember the dot (talk) 00:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- No, Like I have said, I tag the image let all involved parties know about the issue. if they dont fix the issue (what ever it is) the image will be deleted. For the most part I think images that wikipedia needs should not be deleted. But give the sheer size of the task no one person can fix them all. My de-facto position is to get the image fixed, if its not fixed then it should be deleted. βcommand 00:54, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Are you honestly telling me that if no one had changed "Litton" to "Litton Industries" on Image:Litton logo.png then you would have been happy to see it go? —Remember the dot (talk) 00:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- No, Like I have said, I tag the image let all involved parties know about the issue. if they dont fix the issue (what ever it is) the image will be deleted. For the most part I think images that wikipedia needs should not be deleted. But give the sheer size of the task no one person can fix them all. My de-facto position is to get the image fixed, if its not fixed then it should be deleted. βcommand 00:54, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- So, you'd rather delete the image than fix the minor problem with it. —Remember the dot (talk) 00:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- never said that deleting images makes me happy, that is an image that I hope would either be fixed by the users involved or the admin when reviewing it. βcommand 01:02, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- (ec)Do you expect him to go around fixing every single image? No! It's a minor error, either the editor who received the message would fix it or the reviewing admin would. But Betacommand cannot fix every single issue with a rationale. The bot certainly can't be expected to check that the rationale is applicable to the page the image is being used on, even if it is technically capable of adding the link. Which is somewhat questionable, since rationales may include many links, and the bot cannot know where to put the right link. Which is why it tags it as having an invalid rationale. WP:NFCC#10c says it has an invalid rationale, and it is tagged for deletion and the uploader is warned. I see no problem with this action. Betacommand never said he'd rather delete it than fix a problem. He said he'd rather not delete it, but it is impossible for him to fix the minor problem over all images. Therefore, he tags it so the task is distributed to an appropriate community member. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 01:13, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- My point is that it's a little harsh to say that an image must be deleted if no one changes "Litton" to "Litton Industries". BetacommandBot treats minor problems as though they were grievous errors. —Remember the dot (talk) 01:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- If the image is so important to you, why didn't you fix it? Someone else did, however. So why are you whining about it? Do you seriously expect Betacommand to go through the tens of thousands of images tagged during his runs and find the minor issues and correct them himself? Be for real. He is one step in a process. This is precisely the laziness that we've been talking about. Your talk page is riddled with notices from Betacommandbot, but instead of fixing the issues, you're leaving them for someone else and are bitching about it here. You could go fix these images, but instead you're here demanding that Betacommand do it. How can you possibly, in this thing we call reality, expect such a burden to fall on anyone but yourself, as the uploader. Even worse, how can you possibly expect that burden to fall on the operator of the bot that tagged it? Lara❤Love 02:31, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- I'm not expecting Betacommand to write rationales for every image I've uploaded. I'm requesting that he rethink his policy of tagging images for deletion due to minor problems, such as saying "Litton" instead of "Litton Industries". —Remember the dot (talk) 02:35, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Don't confuse them with the facts. It's not fair. Nandesuka (talk) 02:39, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- What do you mean? —Remember the dot (talk) 02:41, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- I mean that the IRC-understood narrative of this page is as follows: "Evil copyright infringers want to destroy BetacommandBot by any means possible. If they claim to want to achieve more moderate goals, they are lying! Their real goal is the destruction of the Foundation." Reiterating that you're simply asking for a dialogue about how BetacommandBot could best implement the Foundation's policies is not an argument that they are going to be able to comprehend, let alone be willing to talk about in calm, measured terms. Their narrative requires that you be unreasonable. If you are not unreasonable, they will argue against strawmen who are unreasonable, and then claim that those strawmen are you.
- The gold standard of this particular sort of back and forth is up above, where Carcharoth says "Hey, let's talk about how we can improve the process here" and various parties say "Oh, so you're going to block us if we disagree with you, is that it?"
- Hope that helps! Nandesuka (talk) 02:46, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- What do you mean? —Remember the dot (talk) 02:41, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Don't confuse them with the facts. It's not fair. Nandesuka (talk) 02:39, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- I'm not expecting Betacommand to write rationales for every image I've uploaded. I'm requesting that he rethink his policy of tagging images for deletion due to minor problems, such as saying "Litton" instead of "Litton Industries". —Remember the dot (talk) 02:35, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- If the image is so important to you, why didn't you fix it? Someone else did, however. So why are you whining about it? Do you seriously expect Betacommand to go through the tens of thousands of images tagged during his runs and find the minor issues and correct them himself? Be for real. He is one step in a process. This is precisely the laziness that we've been talking about. Your talk page is riddled with notices from Betacommandbot, but instead of fixing the issues, you're leaving them for someone else and are bitching about it here. You could go fix these images, but instead you're here demanding that Betacommand do it. How can you possibly, in this thing we call reality, expect such a burden to fall on anyone but yourself, as the uploader. Even worse, how can you possibly expect that burden to fall on the operator of the bot that tagged it? Lara❤Love 02:31, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- My point is that it's a little harsh to say that an image must be deleted if no one changes "Litton" to "Litton Industries". BetacommandBot treats minor problems as though they were grievous errors. —Remember the dot (talk) 01:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Nandesuka, can I remove your comment as non-productive? Anyway... Rtd, here's the thing. Your image did not have an adequate FUR. It was tagged, you were notified, you ignored it. Someone else fixed that particular one, perhaps you'll let the others sit until they are deleted then get pissy about it. Regardless, the point is that the bot searches images for adequate FURs, when an image fails, it tags. It looks for one specific thing. It doesn't see how much it fails, only that it fails. It's an undue burden to place on him to rank these images by how wrong they are. They're wrong, they need to be fixed. Period. Lara❤Love 02:53, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Yes, that is basic stuff. Can we please not confuse the simple "here's what you should have been doing to fix your image" with the genuine concerns. How about addressing each of the points Wikidemo raises at Wikipedia:Bots/BetaCommandBot and NFCC 10 c#Bot problematic but no good alternative. It would be nice if those calling this an "attack page" actually engaged with some of the non-attack stuff posted here. I await the careful reasoned response to Wikidemo's points with interest, though my response to any responses may have to wait until tomorrow. Carcharoth (talk) 02:58, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Your approach is less than ideal, Beta. Useful images get deleted and editors sometimes get ticked off. Had this been a slow and steady process, with an organized effort to fix images for absentee or ignorant users, we wouldn't be here. Had the NFCC10c tag been a maintenance tag instead of one that listed images for deletion, we wouldn't be here. So, how do we proceed without pissing everyone off? Start by striking the "lies and bullshit" part. You're a reasonable person so don't take these criticisms personally. If every image doesn't get fixed by the resolution deadline, the world is not going to end and users' heads will not explode. The WMF resolution refers to compliance with local EDPs, so lets allow for a constructive way to implement the EDP and fix rationales. 10c is just a start, semi-automated processes could be used to identify incorrect license tags and improperly formatted rationales. The philosophical difference here is whether to allow time (think months) for fixing the fair use image mess or to simply wipe the lot. Judging from personal observations, I think the latter approach only invites more non-compliant image description pages to take the place of the deleted but easily-fixable images. The latest deletion queue compromises and development of tools like WP:FURME are a great start. ˉˉanetode╦╩ 14:27, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Anetode, I respect the useful comments on this page, but there is a lot of outragous mis-statements that where no-where near the truth of how BCBot operates. those comments where not based on any kind of facts but were instead pulled out of thin air and were completely wrong, in an attempt to make me look incompantant and un-willing to work with users, I have addressed most of these unfounded lies and BS statements. I have no problems with reasonable converstation backed up with facts. (which none of the attacks here were). βcommand 15:28, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- So as per Wikipedia one has to be civil and assume good faith, if BC insists on calling other statements as BS, how is he keeping the civility policy ? And how come BC is then trying to enforce another policy ? If BC is not even willing to change comments and continues to call others words as BS how is he "listening" and reasonable ? If BC has chosen this role, BC needs to take the attention that goes with it and not drop civility, it would do the debate / discussion a great favour if BC and a certain fan of BC's avoid the attacks and look to use logic and reasoning. An apology and a change of heading would also be appropriate. Haphar (talk) 20:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- That's the thing. Most of us have to keep up with its talk page and contributions to see how and when BCBot runs image maintenance tasks. On rare occasion, an unannounced or buggy test run occurs and all shit breaks loose at WP:AN/I or another forum. So those users who don't aren't familiar with the bot or don't hang around IRC or NFC often become annoyed at having to play catch-up in the hopes of saving useful images from deletion. I know that you're a competent programmer and willing to address some requests. I hope that you are able to take away a couple of positive suggestions from the above mess, even if you are offended by the accusatory tone of some of the comments. Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria compliance is a decent read too. ˉˉanetode╦╩ 19:12, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- Anetode, I respect the useful comments on this page, but there is a lot of outragous mis-statements that where no-where near the truth of how BCBot operates. those comments where not based on any kind of facts but were instead pulled out of thin air and were completely wrong, in an attempt to make me look incompantant and un-willing to work with users, I have addressed most of these unfounded lies and BS statements. I have no problems with reasonable converstation backed up with facts. (which none of the attacks here were). βcommand 15:28, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Backlog not over
Apparently the backlog of Pre-2006 images hasn't been exhausted Category:Disputed non-free images as of 18 February 2008. I'd really really like to know the schedule for this sort of thing. MBisanz talk 05:31, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Me too. Betacommand has said above that he has given a schedule. I can't find it. He may be referring to various ANI and AN notices and threads, but what people (obviously) are after is a stable, regularly updated, and accurate schedule in his or the bot's user pages. And he should have been providing that all year. Carcharoth (talk) 10:13, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Fix the problems
I find myself defending Betacommand all the time - I'll simply start by saying that he does a laborous task that not many others would be willing to do. Many of the complaints are completely without merit, and simply because one doesn't understand NFCC - I would however say that there is a problem with the code, it does have a lot of problems and always have done - I urge betacommand to release the code so others can check it over and see how tight it is. I suspect some minor improvements could vastly improve the overall performance. Then we have the problem of the bot occasionally doing things that it isn't approved for (in some cases like the main page null edit saga, things which were a huge deal and should have had a strong consensus to do) - this needs to be cut out, it makes it hard for us all who defend his image work when he goes off tangent like this. My suggestion to Betacommand would be to stick to the areas he knows best, don't move away deviate into new areas, especially without approval and work hard at getting the code upto 100% so we don't see it make silly errors that it can be prone to. Ryan Postlethwaite 13:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
- I'd like to echo Ryan's suggestion to release the code and tread carefully, and also note that most of BCBot's tasks aren't concerned with NFCC tagging and work just fine. ˉˉanetode╦╩ 19:17, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- And as I have stated. if you want to look at the code and possibly help, you have to agree to my terms. No one has come forth who is willing to do that. I am constantly improving the code, and I dont like releasing my code to the masses, I wrote a minor script once, trying to help someone out, and they abused it. that abuse caused a lot of problems. I dont like handing code out that reaches 700 edits a minute to just anyone. If I can trust you and you are willing to follow my Terms of Service with my software, it is open source. βcommand 19:40, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- That's not what open source means. If you give me your code with open source, then I can give it to someone else, and I don't have to enforce your terms of service.
- I'm sorry that you feel that you've been burned by open source, but now you're getting burned by keeping the code to yourself. And to address your one particular concern, I assure you that no admin would let an unauthorized version of BetaCommandBot run for long. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 22:46, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- BCB is not open source. "I am constantly improving the code" - perhaps if there was a clear understanding of what it did, (as is normal in most community code projects), before it was ran at 700 edits a minute, there might not be so many issues. The fact is, all the defenders of BCB bot frankly do not have a clue what it does, hence the equaly "bullshit" statements that it enforces policy so back off and stop 'attacking' the user. MickMacNee (talk) 23:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- I have stated in English what the bot does. it checks for the name of the article or a redirect to that page. MickMacNee, please show me where the bot improperly tagged an image that did not violate policy. BCBot checks for WP:NFCC#10c which any rationale must have. βcommand 23:40, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- "BCB checks for NFCC10c" - this statements is false, as per the actual policy: The image or media description page contains the following: The name of each article (a link to the articles is recommended as well) in which fair use is claimed for the item, and a separate fair-use rationale for each use of the item, as explained at Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline. The rationale is presented in clear, plain language, and is relevant to each use.. Your bot checks one tiny part of that policy, nothing more. People can write complete nonsense on the page, as long as it has a reference to the article, it passes. Continued assertions that the bot "enforces NFCC10c" are false. MickMacNee (talk) 23:53, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- In fact, on reflection, BCB bot "enforces" such a small insignificant part of the whole non-free use policy, as it stands it is practically useless, and was never worth this much debate to begin with, seeing as how little impact it actually has on mitigating WP exposure to copyright violation. MickMacNee (talk) 23:57, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- ...Or he's creamskimming images that fail a part of the policy that is bot checkable. Just because all parts can't be checked via bot, doesn't mean those parts that can, shouldn't MBisanz talk 00:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
- And just because a minor part of it can be tagged at a million images a second, it should? On my anecdotal evidence, (real life figures are absoloutely not forthcoming), half the images tagged had an FUR, just not a reference. Fair use of an admins time? MickMacNee (talk) 00:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
- ...Or he's creamskimming images that fail a part of the policy that is bot checkable. Just because all parts can't be checked via bot, doesn't mean those parts that can, shouldn't MBisanz talk 00:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
- In fact, on reflection, BCB bot "enforces" such a small insignificant part of the whole non-free use policy, as it stands it is practically useless, and was never worth this much debate to begin with, seeing as how little impact it actually has on mitigating WP exposure to copyright violation. MickMacNee (talk) 23:57, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- "BCB checks for NFCC10c" - this statements is false, as per the actual policy: The image or media description page contains the following: The name of each article (a link to the articles is recommended as well) in which fair use is claimed for the item, and a separate fair-use rationale for each use of the item, as explained at Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline. The rationale is presented in clear, plain language, and is relevant to each use.. Your bot checks one tiny part of that policy, nothing more. People can write complete nonsense on the page, as long as it has a reference to the article, it passes. Continued assertions that the bot "enforces NFCC10c" are false. MickMacNee (talk) 23:53, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- And as I have stated. if you want to look at the code and possibly help, you have to agree to my terms. No one has come forth who is willing to do that. I am constantly improving the code, and I dont like releasing my code to the masses, I wrote a minor script once, trying to help someone out, and they abused it. that abuse caused a lot of problems. I dont like handing code out that reaches 700 edits a minute to just anyone. If I can trust you and you are willing to follow my Terms of Service with my software, it is open source. βcommand 19:40, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- Yes, I have made this point before (that NFCC#10c is only a small part of NFCC compliance enforcement). I don't want to look desperate or anything... :-) But please, those who are genuinely interested in using bots and humans to work together to enforce the NFCC, please come and read, edit and comment on WP:NFCC-C (there, a snazzy shortcut, that is all that was needed to get more people clicking through). Carcharoth (talk) 11:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)