Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Thehelpfulbot 6

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. The result of the discussion was Withdrawn by operator.

Thehelpfulbot 6

• (BRFA
• Approved BRFAs
• talk
• contribs
• count
• SUL
• logs
• page moves
• block log
• rights log
• flag)

Operator: The Helpful One

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): Python

Function Overview: Will delete files that are also present on Wikimedia Commons on a local wiki (in this case en.wikipedia). Pywikipedia - nowcommons.py is the script for those that are interested (source code)

Edit period(s): Periodically

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Y

Function Details: Script to delete files that are also present on Wikimedia Commons on a local wiki. Files are downloaded and compared. If the files match, it can be deleted on the source wiki. If multiple versions of the file exist, the script will not delete. If the MD5 comparison is not equal, the script will not delete. - This script will obviously require for the bot to have the admin flag to carry out the deletions and will save time as the task is tedious to do manually.

Discussion

Hmm you are going to need some form of protection against deleting files that have been uploaded locally for a specific reason (although not deleting protected stuff should cover most of that). How well would the bot handle 100 meg files?Geni 17:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Currently, there are no safeguards against deleting protected images and there is nothing about licences. However, it could be coded in if required - although this would require a lot of work, or so I've been told. The Helpful One 17:20, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

• I doubt this bot can see the difference between a copyright violation, or a fake license. In my opinion, a human doing these deletions is necessarily. --Kanonkas :  Talk  17:14, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I agree with Kanonkas. A human has to make sure that fair use images are not uploaded to commons, and this bot cannot do that. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 20:36, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Technical questions: What list are you going to use to determine which images you look at? Are you just going to look for duplicate images that have the same name in both places? How do you plan to determine duplication?

Non-technical question: Does the bot-author have experience doing this kind of deletion? I am an admin with some experience in both moving images to commons and deleting images and I avoid deleting commons duplicates because I have never felt like I could get a firm grasp on the requirements. I would oppose having someone automate this process unless they were intimately familiar with the manual process.  ★  Bigr Tex 21:10, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi. No, I don't have experience in this particular aspect of deletion, and after talking with a fellow administrator (before seeing your question), I think that to be fair, the images will actually need close scrutiny to make sure that the tags are correct - therefore I am withdrawing this task request. The Helpful One 22:05, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Withdrawn by operator. Richard⁰⁶¹² 22:09, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.