Patrolling photographs of living people - Wikimedia-l

13 Mar 2015


      http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:BLP_overwrites
A quick reminder about this report which helps vandalism patrollers
for the English Wikipedia spot when images used in Wikipedia
biographies are being overwritten by "newbie" accounts. I recommend
more admins add the report to their watch-list. It is not too much of
a pest, as in a day it tends to change between 4 to 10 times with
normally only 1 or 2 new images being added.
The report has been running continuously on Labs for 5 months, changes
being added to the on-wiki report within 5 minutes of upload. In that
time there has not been another "revenge porn" type attack. Commons
remains open for contributors to overwrite images and vandalism can
happen. Based on this report a number of less desirable image
overwrites have been promptly spotted and reverted, mostly with the
only action being an explanation to the uploader of the the Commons
overwriting policy as they were acting in good-faith.[1]
I consider the report useful and very stable, the only recent change
being to filter out svg format images as this was adding a lot of
flags and symbols used in BLPs that have not been an issue to date.
The most active Commons patrollers I have noticed taking action on
reported images being Deniss and Mattbuck; so hats off to them for
lots of useful admin work. :-)
If there are other Wikipedias that may benefit from a similar report,
please drop me a note on Commons or email me.
P.S. If haphazard copyright violations being uploaded from Flickr have
worried you, then you may enjoy taking a look at my "Flickrstreams of
concern" report which has a more than 50% hit rate for identifying
problem sources that may need to be black-listed.[2]
Links:
1. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Overwriting_existing_files
2. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Faebot/Flickrstreams_of_concern
Cheers,
Fae
-- 
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

On 20 October 2014 at 08:51, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
> Based on discussion with 99of9 at
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:F%C3%A6/BLP_overwrites#Boundary_conditions
> the report has been changed to include editors with up to 1000 edits
> on Commons and 2000 edits on Wikipedia. The images list has jumped to
> 20 from 6, still a small and manageable list for new image patrollers.
> A previous minor change was to how often the report runs - checks are
> made every 5 minutes now, previously it was every 15.
>
> If you would like to see other improvements, please raise suggestions
> on the above talk page and I would be happy to discuss what would be
> sensible to include or adapt.
>
> Fae
>
> On 17 October 2014 08:37, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
>> Due to recent vandalism a new report on Commons for page patrollers
>> has been started at
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:F%C3%A6/BLP_overwrites.
>>
>> This page shows images actively used on English Wikipedia biography
>> articles, where a new upload has overwritten the original by a
>> "newbie"* account. The report should be automatically refreshed within
>> 15 minutes of a new image upload/overwrite of this type.
>>
>> Instances of deliberate image vandalism of this type are rare, but
>> important to handle promptly. If you have suggestions for improvement
>> of this report, I would be happy to do my best to accommodate them.
>>
>> Notes:
>> * For convenience newbie accounts have been arbitrarily taken as
>> accounts with fewer than 200 edits on the English Wikipedia or fewer
>> than 100 edits on Wikimedia Commons.
>> * The report is maintained by Faebot and should be considered in a
>> draft state as it may be moved to a more 'official' location or be
>> taken on by more skilled bot operators.