Talk:Global file deletion reviewer

An issue to be incorporated

Speedy deletions will sometimes refer to a deleted image on another project as a reason for deletion. These rights would allow Commons admins to check that they are the same etc. Can't think how to word that at present! Thanks for the word so far. Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Global deleted image review questions

I left these questions with Gmaxwell, but I figured I should cross post them to here as well:

Are you proposing that commons' admins be able to view only deleted images or other deleted material as well? I think you need to be very explicit on this point as any confusion is going to lead to an uproar and opposition to this policy. Have you talked with the developers to see if a view deleted images only feature is even possible? As the new Global sysops feature has shown, the English Wikipedia appears to be hesitant to allow others extensive rights without local approval. Thanks. KnightLago 00:03, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Only deleted images - because we know that some wiki's (en) would object to being able to see everything that has been deleted. Seeing deleted images actually isn't technically possible at the moment. But Gmaxwell says he is capable of writing the patches to allow this ability, and said that he had talked to Brion V (WMF CTO) about the possible changes. --ShakataGaNai ^Talk 00:43, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, that really takes care of my objections. What is typically required to be an admin on commons? Just curious how rigorous the process is. Thanks. KnightLago 01:07, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

See commons:COM:GTA - essentially you need to have shown you do good work, and are then voted for by the community. Mattbuck 10:04, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I have rephrased much of the page. One question I had was if this proposal was only for the image namespace, or also for the image talk namespace. Potentially, if one understood the language or if the templates were fairly easy to figure out, image talk may be useful, though it would increase the number of people who would oppose the proposal. - BanyanTree 12:57, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Seeing deleted image talk pages could be useful, as could seeing deleted articles. This could help contextualise to see if the image was uploaded for vandalism, for example. However, I think we should be conservative about granting rights until we can show that the basic minimum is not enough. The option of contacting local admins for details on deleted contents from other namespaces will of course still be there. —LX (talk, contribs) 13:48, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

• General question - if it can't be done (technically) to only give viewdeleted for images, what're thoughts on this? giggy _(:O) 11:54, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Adding my comment here rather than at COM:AN, that we who are admins at Commons would support something like this is hardly suprising. The problem would of course be getting support from the other projects that Commons admins should have a special right to see these deleted image pages. If there's global support - fine, if there's opposition we could consider that this right is only activated at projects who specifically has approved, or that each commons admin who wants this tool activated has to get a special right to do so at each project. Each of the latter alternatives has a huge potential of getting lost in a desert of bureaucrazy or policydiscussions but that's the way it goes in wikiworld. I would hope that the fact that this proposal is a "view only" right could help projects overcome what scepticism there may be against global rights. Finnrind 12:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

True. On a purely social level, I would suggest waiting until the uproar over Global sysops dies down before pushing this, as it will certainly require a similarly widely advertised vote and en.wiki's suspicions that Metawikians trying to sneakily infringe upon their community are at a height right now. - BanyanTree 12:57, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

What about "Global media sysops"? Rocket000 18:43, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I think we should avoid the use of sysop in general. Global sysops are true sysops with all the priveleges. This is image related viewing only. I think the present title sums it all up nicely and will not lead to unnecessary objections or confusion. KnightLago 18:24, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I didn't mean this proposal. I meant creating a different user rights group that would be in charge of all the media. They would get all sysop powers but only for the Image namespace, namely delete/restore. It would be like a specialized global sysop role. Of course, this doesn't have anything to do with Commons admins. I'm not that serious about it, it was just an idea. Rocket000 15:22, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

List users' deleted contributions in the Image namespace

The ability to see a version of users' deleted contributions list (limited to the Image namespace) would be useful and seemingly complementary to this proposal. This doesn't reveal any additional information compared to the proposal as it is, but it would present it better. Evaluating claims made regarding a deleted image is often easier seen in the context of other deleted images uploaded by the same user. —LX (talk, contribs) 13:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I support that as well. Rocket000 18:32, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I think we need to find out if this is technically possible. And if it is, it sounds like a reasonable request with the caveat that it is again limited to image namespace. KnightLago 18:27, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

View image history only

I'm sure it would very useful to see an image's talk page, but seems like more of a technical challenge (two namespaces instead of one, I don't know). I'm pretty sure full access will not get the support, so I really think we need to go with the "images only" plan. I mean, think of the common image page. It's usually a license tag and a description. Not very interesting stuff there (talk page maybe), but very important stuff. Commons ends up deleting so much just because users happen to leave out some important detail (like the license!) I know Commons gets a bad rap sometimes for all deletion, but many of those issues could be solved by allowing Commons' admins to see the image's history. It would also allow them to fix some GFDL violations regarding missing history. This has much potential but we really need to stress the image namespace only to get the support. (Full disclosure: Commons admin here.)> Rocket000 18:27, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

And just to be clear: history in this case should, I believe, be understood as both deleted revisions of the files themselves and deleted revisions of the media description page. —LX (talk, contribs) 19:06, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Image's talk page are rarely used, neither at Commons or at local projects (as far as I've seen). On those rare occasions where it might be useful to know the content of a deleted talk page the "old method" of asking a local sysop for help would do just fine. What we need to be able to verify is that the image transferred to Commons is indeed the same image that was uploaded under the given license. Thus being able to view the files and the media description would do just fine. (but I'm waiting for someone who's not sysop at Commons to comment on this discussion...) Finn Rindahl 19:48, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

The deleted files themselves are just as important or else we can be sure it's the same image. How to word that so it would be clear... "view only deleted files and their history." Non-Commons admins, speak up! :) Rocket000 20:12, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I've asked an en.wiki admin who has been quite vocal about his opposition to global sysops to review, and hopefully point out flaws in the draft that we can address. - BanyanTree 01:35, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I have managed to find this page! Anyway, I am the "en.wiki admin who has been quite vocal about his opposition to global sysops" and, as BanyanTree has asked, I have shown up to take a look at this proposal. Firstly, I think that this proposal is much more reasonable than the Global sysops proposal, for a number of reasons. It does not require users to not use rights they have, which is the major, if not only, reason for the opposition to global sysops. It also is more limited in scope, and has a clear application. Commons admins do have a reason for using this right, though I believe that how often Commons admins actually need it is likely to be questioned. Not being active on commons (though I have uploaded a few images there :)) I can't really judge how common this sort of deleted image on another wiki situation is, so, in order to make it easier to quell any possible problems, I would try to get some statistics on how often deleted image pages actually have to be viewed. It also might not be easy, on a technical level, to seperate out viewing deleted image pages, from viewing all deleted pages. I can't imagine the BLP/personal information complaint would be a problem, especially with only deleted images. Overall, I would support this proposal, preferably with giving the right automatically to commons sysops. However, that probably isn't possible, so whether this right would be limited to commons sysops only would have to be looked in to. (for example, commons users? other wiki's sysops?) Prodego ^talk 02:28, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

re. How often would this be needed? Commons gets a lot of images transferred from other projects (mostly EnWP, I find) without ALL the information copied across, and then these images are (usually be a good faithed mistake) deleted from the source project as they're on Commons. When the image is marked on Commons as missing something essential, it's a real pain for a Commons admin not on an admin in the source project to have to find one and ask them to take a look... considering the number of cases of this that take place, in the end most Commons admins just don't bother with it and delete. I don't want to speculate on exact numbers... I'll just say it's definitely a lot. giggy _(:O) 05:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, thank goodness! Errr... I mean, I have a friend who is a Commons admin, who is definitely not me, and he did that, and he'll be relieved to know that he's not unique in throwing up his hands after trying to figure out how to access the deleted information, it never having occurred to him to ask a steward for a temporary adminship. <shifty eyes> - BanyanTree 06:42, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, no, that never occurred to me either. How do they pick these Commons admins? (What I did was just bug random EnWP admins on IRC, but that's inconvenient and they do get sick of it, surprisingly.) giggy _(:O) 08:19, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Image talk

er. Why has image talk been excluded? None of the past discussion involved excluding image talk. I've seen a few cases where copyright discussions happened on image talk, and evidence of past deletion debates on EnWp sometimes gets copied to image talk. I haven't personally heard anyone object to it. The way I've coded the mediawiki change grants permission for both image and image talk. Unless someone actually is opposed to including image talk I'm going to revise the proposal. --Gmaxwell 23:42, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Go ahead, makes sense to me. Mattbuck 00:18, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

No objections. giggy _(:O) 02:19, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

My main concern was technical, but as long as that's settled, I'm all for it. However, if it causes opposition, let's drop it. I doubt it will; image talk pages are hardly used and when they are it's usually very relevant to the copyright status of the image and can be essential in some cases. I know on Commons, before we had the various upload bots, the image's history was put on the talk page if it was transwiki'd. Rocket000 04:58, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Should we put the current version of this proposal to a vote?

Header says it all, should we send the current version of this proposal to Metapub for the standard voting process. Standard  Support and  Oppose apply. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 21:30, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

•  Support --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 21:30, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
•  Support gah! don't hold a vote over holding a vote! --Gmaxwell 21:31, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
• Go do it or I kill a puppy. Mattbuck 21:32, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
• We should vote first to establish who is allowed to vote in this vote. Or whatever. -- Bryan (talk|commons) 21:38, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
•  Support. Multichill 21:50, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Ahem Done by Gmaxwell Finn Rindahl 22:49, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Reciprocity?

Is there any reason why this right shouldn't be awarded to the sysops at the different projects as well? For projects like nowiki where (as good as) all media-content is located at commons, this could be a very helpful tool for us local project-admins. Now, we'll most probably not need it at all the wikis, but at least at commons. --Stigmj 07:11, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

If your project could present a specific, significant, need for this tool, it could be proposed. The difference with Commons is sysops there can influence hunderds of wikis - it's a tough ask to say "get adminship on every project" or to force them to find someone through IRC every time. In the other direction (ie. what your problem is), it's not that difficult. giggy _(:O) 07:28, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, in my humble opinion, I think this should be an absolute reciprocal exchange. You get to see ours if we get to see yours.. ;) But, seriously, commons argues that it's overly bureaucratic and/or troublesome (if i understand correctly) to check out deleted images on the local wikis. To remedy this, they have proposed a global right to do exactly this. Well, your argument of "In the other direction (ie. what your problem is), it's not that difficult." doesn't sound too good in my ears. It's like; "Yeah, we are exhausted from the extra burden of work and want this right to ease our job... but you can't have it unless you have a specific, significant need for it". Well my immidiate reponse would be that we all too often see images/media disappear apparently due to lack of information (that be source or license). There are a great number of these images which then are unlinked in the pages, and some of the projects may notice this and do something about it, but it's too often not done. What we need then is the ability to see what the information about the image was and therefore understand the reason for the delete. This is needed to be able to remedy the situation by getting a hold of the image again and try to provide the needed information/tag it correctly. --Stigmj 07:55, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

If you do see a large number of images/media disappear, and if you need this access (and can show some data proving you do), then by all means go ahead and request it! :) I wasn't trying to throw obstacles in your way... I think that everyone (in theory) could get access to this if they can show a reason for needing it - I just don't think it a good idea to give it out willy nilly. So yeah, if you can show why you need it, then by all means request (my opinion). giggy _(:O) 08:48, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think reciprocity should be incorporated in this proposal as such, giving such a "view only" right at Commons to administrators from other projects would not be a new "global right" but a new userright-class at Commons (I think giving viewdeleted at any project for any admin would be going to far, an most certainly en:wiki would not accept that). That being said, if this proposal goes through it sets a precedent for cross-wiki trust and transparancy, and giving local admins similar viewdeleted at Commons is something I believe I would support. Finn Rindahl 11:32, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. They are separate issues. Commons having global view delete and everyone else having view delete on Commons. That being said - If a sysop from another project said "hey, I need this" I wouldn't see why not to give it to them. After all there are valid reasons why Non-commons sysops would need to see our deleted images (just like we have valid reasons for needing to see non-commons deleted). Mainly I think it would be good so some admins can "recover" deleted images on Commons that they _can_ have on their local wiki that may not be anywhere else (IE: It was transferred from say en.wp to commons, de.wp uses it, then commons deleted it - and en.wp has already deleted it too. Then a de.wp admin can come in and "recover" said image).

As an additional note, I do think it should be requested on Commons ("requested" does not mean vote), rather than an automatic ability. Mainly because for the thousands of admins out there - most will never need it. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 22:35, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see the need for this frankly. That said, there is no way to give that right automatically, so it will have to be granted by some method as you say.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 01:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

When I started writing this proposal, I thought that Commons administrators should automatically have this specific privilege. Talking about reciprocity for local administrators, I do support the idea, but whether this should be automatic or by separate request is to be further determined. For example, Chinese Wikipedia sometimes takes fair-use images from English Wikipedia without full information. If English Wikipedia delete any of them, Chinese admins not being English admins may wonder what exactly is happening. In this scenario, reciprocity for local administrators will apply. If there is no major objection, I would like to propose amending who should receive this proposed privilege.--Jusjih 02:48, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Been there, done that

I'm a Commons admin and I applied for adminship on en.wikipedia some time ago, just so that I could have a look at deleted files. Naturally, I didn't meet the requirements for adminship but when I was able to convince people that I was only going to use my rights for my work on Commons, I was, to my surprise, granted adminship with ~75 % support. And I can tell, these rights have been useful and I have been able to save and delete quite a few images. However, I would prefer to have just viewing rights and giving up my adminship. For the system, global viewing rights are also better than 250 requests for adminship. Samulili 08:38, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

250? There are over 730 wikis!  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 21:30, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

783 to be exact. Rocket000 20:16, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Global users

Will I have access to deleted revisions on the 31 wikis where my account name is already taken? Or will I need to get control of the other 31 accounts, get renamed, or having a sockpuppet admin account? --Maxim_(talk) 21:28, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I believe it would only work for people using SUL. -mattbuck (Talk) 01:04, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm using SUL, but I didn't take care of the 31 accounts that aren't mine because it was such a pain... Maxim_(talk) 01:09, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Only unified accounts would have the permission.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 01:13, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Maxim, usurp them.--Ahonc 11:09, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Some of them have major edits on them, and then policies on various wikis vary, and doing that could take a month (for example, en.wikiquote takes three weeks for usurp). Maxim_(talk) 12:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand, are these 31 wikis a) likely to contain deleted images (e.g. wikiquote isn't), b) do you speak the language used on the wiki. For the wikis that fail these two points there isn't really a need to usurp, not for Global deleted image review purposes at least. /Lokal Profil 00:42, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the last point doesn't come into play much. Commons admins normally only need to look at the image itself, the image description page itself (to see any backlinks to Flickr or other originating sites, as well as cut-and-paste to the Commons page), the license tag (which will be linked by interwiki to a language that the admin does understand, in case the template doesn't use an easily understandable PD or CC image), and occasionally the page history to see if the image or license was changed while it was on the local wiki. Knowing the local language well enough to follow an argument is pure bonus. - BanyanTree 06:23, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

time's up

The deadline for the poll has passed and the proposal currently has over 80% approval, which meets every definition of "consensus" I've seen on-wiki. What needs to be done to implement? - BanyanTree 05:57, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I think a developer will need to make the necessary changes, but I may be wrong. In any case, the first thing to do is "close" the poll at Metapub. —Giggy 06:06, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, I closed the poll. Now we have to talk to a dev, I presume. —Giggy 06:19, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I've been very naughty and have not checked in the changes I did. Didn't want to jinx the poll, in part. Also, I'm not happy with the way I did it the first time.. doing it again. --Gmaxwell 07:29, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Any progress? —Giggy 09:21, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

We should check if there's already a request on Bugzilla. If not, we should make one :P (sorry dude(tte)s, I'm not really familiar with that page, although I've got an account there). →Christian.И 18:53, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

See bugzilla:14801 and feel free to comment. →Christian.И 20:35, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Please do not comment on bugs unless you are furthering the technical implementation - bugzilla is not for discussing Global deleted image review, it is for discussing technical implementation of it. Use Talk:Global deleted image review for other discussion.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 12:54, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

They also don't like it when you ask them what's taking so long... so any news? :) Rocket000 20:22, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Just pinged the bug with a sufficiently-relevant comment to avoid the scathing wrath.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 00:35, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you kindly, sir. I have to admit that until I got the tools myself, I was more supporting the change on an ideological level--now that I have them and have seen first-hand how indescribably useful viewing deleted images on en-wiki is to my Commons work, I'm doubly eager for other Commons admins to have the same ability. --jonny-mt ^{en me!} 15:17, 13 August 2008 (UTC)