- Why is BCBot doing this?
The Wikipedia Foundation issued a non-free media licensing policy on March 23, 2007 that required all Foundation projects (including Wikipedia) to enforce an non-free fair use Exception Doctrine Policy (EDP) that requires all non-free media to be reviewed for compliance by March 23, 2008. In the case of Wikipedia, this means that images need to conform to our non-free content criteria. The Resolution requires that such images include machine readable aspects to allow for such compliance, which is where BCBot comes into play; it has been approved to tag images that fail based non-free rationales. Its owner, User:Betacommand has been running the bot over the past year in several stages to aim towards compliance, but as the deadline nears, it must complete the task, requiring it to perform the evaluation on the 100,000s of some images it has yet to check.
- I've been told BCBot is going to delete my image.
- BCBot is only a bot used to perform the automatic task of checking parts of our non-free content policy. Because bots can be programmed incorrectly or make mistakes, a bot cannot actually delete an image; instead, this image is tagged to be reviewed after some time (typically 7 days) by human Wikipedia adminstrators, who will then decide whether the image should be deleted or not.
- I have received a warning message form BetaCommandBot that my image does not have a proper fair use rationale, but it does so.
- There's several possible reasons for that. Depending on the warning message, you should look for the following:
- Does the message mention WP:NFCC#10c?
- WP:NFCC#10c requires that a fair use rationale include the exact name of the page for each page that the image is used on. This does not need to be wikilinked to the page though this is useful, but it must be present. BCBot will attempt to follow any redirects from the name of a page to the actual page it is used in, in case of page moves, but cannot follow more complicated routes (such as through a disambiguation page). The best way to check to make sure you have satisfied this is to copy the section of your rationale with the name of the page, paste it into the Wikipedia search box on the left sidebar, and see if this takes you directly to the page if it is used on. If not, BCBot will likely warn you about it. In case of this warning, simply add or correct this page name (again, one is needed for each page the image is used on), and remove the warning.
- Does it mention the lack of a fair use rationale?
- Non-free images are required to have two items on its page — a copyright license and a fair-use rationale. You likely have selected the license or used a license template when uploading the image, but be aware that this license does not constitute a fair-use rationale, as this needs to be provided separately. If you lack such a rationale, you may use {{non-free rationale}} to easily fill in the typical parts of a fair-use rationale, including the parts that BCBot is looking for, in order to satisfy the bot. Again, note that you need one of these for each page that the image is used on. Once you have completed this, you may remove the warning.
- I have received a warning message from BetaCommandBot that my image is orphaned, but it is being used on a page.
- When a page is vandalized or an image temporarily removed from a page but then restored, there is a brief period in which the servers may report the image as orphaned, and this is likely when BetaCommandBot checked the image. If you are sure the image is not orphaned, you may simply remove the warning message. However, be aware that non-free images may only be used on article articles: they may not be used on categories, templates, user pages, or talk pages, and BCBot will warn about images that are only used in these namespaces.
- I am getting spammed with warning messages from BCBot.
- BCBot is programmed to try to notify as many people as possible about the image in question: the original or any other uploaders of the image, the talk page of the image itself, and the talk pages of the articles it is reported to be used on. At present, it is not programmed to simplify and collapse its warnings into a single message to be given to a user so it will report on each image that fails its checks. Unfortunately, the bot is run in large batches of 10,000 images at a time due to the deadline of the Foundation resolution, and generally in an order that will cause a user to receive many such warnings in a short time period. If there was more time to correct the problem through the bot, this step would be done, but at this point we are close to missing the deadline. You should not ignore these warnings, but you may delete them once you have dealt with the images.
- I did not get notified that an image failed to have a correct non-free rationale and it got deleted.
- There are a couple points where BCBot may fail to notify a user. If you change your user name, it will take some time to propagate through the servers, and during this time, if BCBot processes images, it may fail to leave a message on your talk page. Also, if the database becomes locked during a run for short periods, it may be impossible for BCBot to leave a message about this. Unfortunately, both of these are beyond the technical scope of the bot to correct as they deal with how the MediaWiki software operates. If this does occur, please notify an administrator (through WP:ICHD) to restore the image so you can fix the rationale.
- There's no way I can correct all the rationales for these images in 7 days.
- While under normal circumstances, images without fair use rationales are to be deleted in 7 days from the point of being tagged. However, because of the nature of the amount of images that are being processed in a short time by BCBot, administrators have given more time to allow images to be corrected, typically at least another week if not more, relative to the size of the BCBot runs. There is also a task force that is trying to save such images that simply need small corrections to the rationale (such as a missing article name) to prevent their deletion. However, be aware that by March 23, 2008, any images that are not corrected will be deleted per the Foundation resolution. Additionally, if an image was deleted too soon before you could correct the rationale, please notify an administrator (through WP:ICHD) to restore it so that you may correct it.
- If the bot can tell the rationale is wrong, why can't it fix it itself?
- The bulk of the non-free rationale needed for each image is something that has to be determined to be valid by a human, though portions such as the article it is used in can be identified by a bot (as necessitated by the Foundation Resolution). However, even if the image is only used on one page, the bot cannot create a rationale if it doesn't exist, nor can it necessarily fix it if the rationale is failing WP:NFCC#10c. For example, if you created a rationale for the image on Article A, but since that point, that article has been deleted but the image was reused on Article B for a different reason, the rationale on the image cannot just simply be corrected to point at Article B, as the purpose of the image has been changed.