On 17/05/07, Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com wrote:
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.
It does. During the upload you will receive a token, which you must save to Commons. Then the bot will query Commons for the user who editted this page. It will only upload if if the username that has been given matches the username of the user who editted the page. So unless you know my password, the bot will refuse uploading under my name.
That is very nifty. I didn't notice this second step, in fact. So sorry for jumping the gun and nice work after all. ;)
Prod Magnus. This method should be ok for Wikimedia transfers too.
It probably should. I will see whether everything works as expected, and will submit an approval request, explaining the full details of the security.
Some of the error messages could be more specific (e.g. 'no user exists by that name', 'your logged in user name doesn't match the one provided'). Also I don't suppose it can check if the image has already been transferred to Commons? (perhaps by a linksearch?)
Also, some way to check image pages that get created but never subsequently populated by an image might be cool. I made a couple attempting to test the tool. :)
Final note, it looks very pretty. and that's important. things that look technical and complicated make people unfamiliar with technology afraid and nervous. things that look simple and pretty inspire courage. :)
cheers, Brianna