I'm largely inactive / 99% retired. There are more important things in life.
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Logo speedy deletion
Hi, I understand the speedy deletion policy for our orphaned fair use logo is that the image is to be deleted after 7 days if it is not present in any article. However the article to include the logo is currently a draft at an advanced stage in my user page. Can an exception be made for this image, since I uploaded it for an upcoming article? Thanks --Br wind (talk) 01:00, 5 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Non-free images are not permitted to be used in outside of article space - even in drafts of future articles. If you have an article draft in user space, the correct approach is to use a "placeholder" Put a different image in there, temporarily while you are developing the article. Then, once you are ready to promote the article into article space, replace it with the correct image.
Speedy deletion nomination of File:Edward Lehman and Dick Cormack of DMACK and DMACK Holdings LTD.jpg
and
Orphaned non-free image File:E Lehman &a D Cormack of DMACK-DMACK Holdings Ltd.jpg
Situation is as follows: the first item, speedy deletion, is the first version of this photo I posted and I posted it as nonfree use.
Subsequently I received permission and re-uploaded the image with a free use tag.
Both files are in danger of deletion. I am requesting that you go ahead and delete the: Orphaned non-free image File:E Lehman &a D Cormack of DMACK-DMACK Holdings Ltd.jpg
But please keep the free image in the article.
I am very new to this and I appreciate any assistance you can give me.
Hi there, back in 2013 you deleted an article here [1]. Would you mind userfying it for me? You can put it in my existing sandbox. The subject actually seems to be notable. I'm working on sourcing but I'd like to see what was written previously. Thanks much. The Master---)Vote Saxon(---03:22, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@The Master: I'm sorry, but this article was created by a banned user in defiance of his ban and is not eligible for restoration - to do so would encourage that behavior. (Obviously, if you believe the topic is notable, you are welcome to create an article on that topic. But the existing one cannot be restored.) --B (talk) 11:51, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your concern... I don't want to restore the deleted article, I just want to see what they wrote and what sources they used. I'm 100% writing my own article. Actually, strike that. Probably not necessary and I don't want to press you to do something you're uncomfortable with. Thank you in any case! The Master---)Vote Saxon(---15:09, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Stefan2: I actually came here to report the same thing - the underlying query hasn't run for four days. (quarry:query/3268, though I'm sure you'd already found it; if not, though, I've already executing a fork, and I'll start tagging those manually as a stopgap.) —Cryptic06:31, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
User:Cryptic, I have tagged the remaining files. I hope that the bot resumes its task soon, though. It takes a lot of time to tag files manually, and the bot is able to check a few extra things such as ensuring that uploaders get a few hours to add recently uploaded files to articles before they are tagged. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:27, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sigh. There's maybe value in per-task shutoff switches, but if a bot's gone genuinely berserk, it's not like there's going to be a lack of admins willing to block it. —Cryptic04:32, 1 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Most tasks seem to be running ok, but Orphaned Non-free Image Tagger's still broken, with a blank error message ("ERROR - @B: Error updating list of orphaned images: --B-bot (talk) 02:00, 2 May 2016 (UTC)"). —Cryptic05:16, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Cryptic, the bot seems to update the pages User:B-bot/List of orphaned images/day-0, User:B-bot/List of orphaned images/day-1 & User:B-bot/List of orphaned images/day-2, so I assume that the bot is working, but I think that the bot was designed to only tag files which have been orphaned for at least 48 hours to give uploaders some time to add recently uploaded files to pages and to give users some time to revert obvious mistakes in articles before the files are tagged. You recently tagged all files, so you need to wait for a few days until there are files which have been orphaned for a sufficiently long time before the bot finds anything to tag. --Stefan2 (talk) 10:44, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Stefan2 and Cryptic: Ideally, it would be 24 hours (and change), not 48 hours, if all is working correctly. The bot runs twice per day, so it would hit the /day-2 list on the next run after 24 full hours have passed. But ... I'm using a query on Quarry to populate the list of orphaned docs and it looks like that query hasn't been run successfully in three weeks. I can test it and see if maybe they have changed something in their interface so that I'm not successfully connecting any more. From my error log, it looks like it's immediately failing to query it (as opposed to simply not running quickly enough), so that to me says they probably changed something. So my backup is to use Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused non-free files, which is only updated once per day, meaning it takes 48 full hours. Also, it's worth noting that I get a boatload of timeout errors (at least 2-3 per day). I seriously doubt it's my connection - I have a great connection, both up and down. I'm assuming that it's either that I'm being throttled by Wikipedia or just that the Wikipedia servers are overburdened and they put API traffic as the lowest priority. --B (talk) 01:13, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(←) Okay, it looks like they changed something on their site ... when I try to update the Quarry data, I'm getting "The remote server returned an error: (405) Method Not Allowed.". Looking into it ... --B (talk) 01:23, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Simple problem actually, they apparently have stopped allowing http queries as of, well, three weeks ago. I am changing it to use https and it will hopefully work correctly from now on. --B (talk) 01:29, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
B, looking at User:B-bot/Event log#Orphaned Non-free Image Tagger - 01:31, 16 May 2016 (UTC), it looks as if the bot only allows 20 minutes for the query to generate. Quarry's time limit was changed from 20 to 30 minutes some time ago, so you might wish to ask your bot to wait for 30 minutes if the query sometimes is too slow.
@Stefan2:screenshot showing timestamps of errorsI can update the time to 30 minutes. The timeout is on Wikipedia - it's extremely rare when I see a timeout on Quarry. I included a screenshot showing the timestamps of the errors. The "Error in B-bot" errors are nearly always timeouts and the "Error connecting to https://en.wikipedia.org" errors are always that it can't establish a connection to Wikipedia to begin with. (Occasionally, the error is that the wiki is in read-only mode or one of those meaning there is actual server trouble.) If the problem were more severe, I could log the failures and try them again at the end of the run or the next day or something like that, but when I'm editing 200 pages per day and have probably an overall average of a 1% failure rate, it just hasn't seemed worth it - most of the tagging will happen the next day anyway. The only problem would be, I suppose, if I fail to send the notification, then that never gets sent. (If I fail to tag the image to begin with, it's already smart enough to not send the notification.) --B (talk) 00:39, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@GeoffreyT2000: Can you link me to the documentation of that somewhere? I guess it doesn't matter that much anyway since it doesn't create pages very often (mostly just if someone being warned of a pending image deletion doesn't have a talk page already). I don't doubt you, but I'm looking for the documentation that it's implicit for bots and I can't find it. --B (talk) 14:39, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@PraeceptorIP: Please see WP:NFCC#8. Non-free images are only permitted where their inclusion would significantly increase the reader's understanding of the topic and their exclusion is detrimental to that understanding. Does seeing a logo increase your understanding of a court case? --B (talk) 11:04, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi B,
i see u control a bot. If posiible can u programme a bot for me since i dont know programmming. The bot can inform uploaders that their data needs citation
Please I'd be very grateful if u help me
thanks and Regards
--VarunFEB2003 (talk) 08:41, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@VarunFEB2003: Unfortunately, I don't presently have time for such a project. You can float your idea at Wikipedia:Bot requests, though. You may want to provide more clarity about what exactly you are looking for. (All uploaders? Uploaders who upload a chart? Something that is triggered if a {{fact}} tag is added to an image description page?) --B (talk) 12:58, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@B: B first of all thanks for ur reply. second, nobody is able to much help me. I'd be really grateful if u can create a bot THAT DOES ANY FUNCTION. Any function bot will do. Pls B Help me out. Take AS MUCH TIME AS U NEED but pls create the bot for me. Thanks and Regards. please help me, I shall wait for ur reply.
I'm sorry VarunFEB2003, but "any function" doesn't really tell me what you want it to do. It would be like going to Wal Mart and saying "just buy anything". Do you want a steak, a shirt, or a power drill? They all serve completely different purposes. --B (talk) 15:54, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Precious anniversary
A year ago ...
"grant each other the presumption that we are acting in good faith"
... you were recipient no. 1255 of Precious, a prize of QAI!
@Jo-Jo Eumerus: This came up at the BRFA and my suggestion there was, rather than blocking the bot from editing the page, to "kick the can down the road" by setting the orfud timer to one month. I think, though am not 100% sure, that if you used {{nobots}} on there, I would obey that — the SDK that I use has that built into it and I've never felt compelled to change it. On user talk pages, I wrote a nice function to parse all of the different incarnations of the bots and nobots flags, but I don't use that on image description pages - my thinking at the time was that if something is an orphaned fair use image, it should be deleted and I didn't want someone blocking the bot in order to keep their walled garden of copyrighted images. (I'm open to changing that — my view at the time of the BRFA was that the benefits of preventing copyrighted images from sitting there forever outweighted the downside of tagging something in the midst of a discussion, when the latter problem can be resolved by editing the date on the tag to be well in the future.) In this particular case, there is no question whatsoever that these images are not subject to copyright protection and my suggestion would be to simply remove the tags and re-tag them as PD-ineligible — an IFD seems like overkill. Had I encountered these images on my own, I would have just re-tagged them and moved on with life. --B (talk) 15:52, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm ... that's definitely a thought - I could just ignore anything with an FFD tag or log it for manual review. --B (talk) 16:02, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi B. I see you've undeleted these screenshots. Unfortunately, while adding them to an article may satisfy WP:NFCC#7, the decorative way they are being used in that particular article still seems problematic per WP:NFCC#8 and also possibly WP:NFCC#3. I'm not sure if it's acceptable to tag an undeleted image via an undeletion request with Template:di-disputed fair use rationale for speedy deletion or whether it should be discussed at WP:FFD instead, so please advise on which of the two is more appropriate in this particular case. Thanks in advance. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:43, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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