[Commons-l] Two new tools for Flickr

[Larry Pieniazek]

> Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 13:07:59 +1000
> From: "Brianna Laugher" <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Two new tools for Flickr
> To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List"
> 	<commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<d20d84ea0705162007r4cd29ba0kd38820d055c2b5b0 at mail.gmail.com>
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> 
> On 17/05/07, Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As you might, or might not know, I have been quite busy with Flickr 
> > lately, especially with [[User:FlickreviewR]]. I have written two 
> > tools (or actually, one tool with two functions) with helps Commons 
> > users with images for Flickr.
> >
> > The first is a database of all images reviewed images from Flickr:
> > http://tools.wikimedia.de/~bryan/flickr/browse You can 
> search on nsid, 
> > username, photo_id, link, and Commons image. The database contains 
> > over 28,000 images, which is over 70% of the total number of Flickr 
> > images on Commons :) [1]
> 
> Whose username, Flickr or Commons? And if Commons is that 
> reviewer or uploader or what? What is nsid? No search I tried 
> actually returned any results. Bit more help, please?
> 
> > Now the second tool is really handy (imho ;P). It allows 
> you to easily 
> > upload images from Flickr:
> 
>  If you find any security bug in
> > the upload part, the bot that performs the uploads and to 
> be blocked 
> > is Flickr_upload_bot.
> 
> Magnus had a similar idea, a bot that performed transfers 
> from (eg) Wikipedia to Commons. I asked him to disable it...
> 
> I kind of have a problem with this is in that it allows 
> essentially anonymous uploads.  At least in this case they 
> are restricted to images from flickr with suitable licenses, 
> that is better than totally anonymous, but still. What stops 
> me putting the username 'Bryan' in and putting up whatever 
> irrelevant, offensive, invasive, stupid images I can find on 
> Flickr? oh... nothing.
> 
> I think there's a good reason MediaWiki requires users to be 
> logged in before uploading, and I don't think we should use 
> bots that circumvent that requirement.
> 
> At the very least I think there should be a bot approval 
> thing for this bot, where we can discuss as a community if we 
> want to allow this kind of thing to happen.
> 
> cheers
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise

The idea of a tool to help bring images over from flickr and put them on
commons, properly tagged and with nice {{information}} templates filled in,
is very attractive. However toolserver restrictions prevent tools from
asking for passwords. That seems a bit of a conflict that will require some
thought to get round. I agree with Briana that such uploads, even when done
with tools, really ought to be verifiably associated with the real user, not
with a bot ID.

I think we might want to try to look for ways to do this

AWB for instance gets around this by being client side, and requiring the
user to log in. It's also heavily intertwined with windows machines, as it
relys on .net and on IE services... 

I wonder if there are other ways to do this that are platform independent
but that do not require the user to give their commons password to a
toolserver hosted tool...

Larry Pieniazek
Work mail:   lpieniaz at us.ibm.com 
Hobby mail:  lar at miltontrainworks.com