CommonsDelinker
Please feel free to create a page locally. Active wikis: Most Wikimedia wikis Approved in 2006 operator bugreports
File:Deleted images cause red links

CommonsDelinker is a service brought to local wikis by Wikimedia Commons administrators, maintained by grin (and was originally created and maintained by Orgullomoore). It aims to prevent image links from visibly breaking on local wikis after a Commons file is deleted.

"File delinking" is the remedial action performed by CommonsDelinker in response to it detecting a Commons file having been deleted due to policy infractions (Non-free media, vandalism, etc). If you want to know why your file has been removed, please ask the Commons administrator that deleted your file.

Latest news

  • 2023-01-21 - Got a large batch of updates, fixing removal of empty lines, closing gallery tag on the same line as description, and smallish fixes. Tests seriously extended.
  • 2023-01-06 - Someone have patched a problem where wikis with irregular SUL have killed/stuck the bot. Mystery angels walk among us.
  • 2022 - the bot got various updates based on reports, and got a test framework to prevent fixed functions getting unfixed. Problems shall be reported to User talk:CommonsDelinker and grin shall be pinged. Also there is no public repository right now, all public repos are outdated (and inaccessible to me). Do not report there, do not use them; or use them and stay unnoticed.
  • 2022 - the bot have been migrated to the new toolserver cluster framework (k8s). Fingers crossed.
  • 19:40, 11 March 2021 (UTC) The bot has been sleeping for 4 months, and turns out there was nobody to fix the problems, so I, grin chimed in to fix various problems; it looks good now. I can't promise anything but ping me if you see any problems.
  • 05:36, 20 July 2015 (UTC) Logs are now available here.
  • 15:06, 19 January 2015 (UTC) CommonsDelinker rewritten by Magnus in PHP, see (phabricator:T86483)
  • 23:42, 18 February 2014 (UTC) CommonsDelinker moved to Tool Labs
  • 21:08, 8 November 2007 (UTC) CommonsDelinker is now running two plug-ins: on delinking media inside flag galleries on nl.wp, it does not delink, but replace with a place holder. It does the same on fr.wikibooks with other criteria.
  • 21:06, 8 November 2007 (UTC) Bugs and feature requests can be reported here
  • 21:04, 8 November 2007 (UTC) CommonsDelinker logs are now available here
  • 21:04, 8 November 2007 (UTC) CommonsDelinker is one of the first projects to run on the new stable toolserver

How it works

The bot periodically checks the Commons deletions log and for each deleted file, performs the following:

  • Wait ten minutes to give Commons administrators time to undo accidental deletions.
  • Consult GlobalUsage. If the image "Foobar.jpg" were deleted, for example, the bot would retrieve Special:GlobalUsage/Foobar.jpg
  • For each page returned by GlobalUsage:
  • Skip page if the associated wiki has a local image by that name.
  • Fetch the wikitext source of that page via the API.
  • Search and remove (or replace) any instances of the deleted image (e.g., [[File:Foobar.jpg]], [[File:Foobar.jpg|description|other|parameters]], or <gallery>Image:Foobar.jpg</gallery>).
  • The bot saves the page with a summary in English by default. See #Edit summary for localisation support.

Active wikis

  • All public Wikimedia wikis, except for private, closed and fishbowl wikis and:

The following wikis are disabled due to manual request, SUL errors, bans or other irregular behaviour/errors.

  • wikimania wikis
  • strategy wiki
  • foundation wiki
  • test wikidata
  • usability wiki
  • donate wiki
  • en wikinews
  • uk wikimedia
  • mx wikimedia
  • rs wikimedia
  • id wikimedia
  • bd wikimedia
  • mai wikimedia
  • am wikimedia
  • ge wikimedia
  • ten wp
  • st wp
  • mni wp
  • mnw wikt
  • mni wikt
  • shn wikt
  • nia wikt
  • waw wsource
  • ban wsource

Edit summary

The bot's edit summary can be translated via the following page names on the relevant wiki:

  • [[User:CommonsDelinker/summary-I18n]] (for image removals)
  • [[User:CommonsDelinker/replace-I18n]] (for image replacements).

Note: The page must be created on the target wiki, not on Meta-Wiki! If no such page exists on a wiki, the bot will first (for non-Wikipedia wikis) look for an edit summary in a similar language edition of a Wikipedia, after falling back to the default summary configured in the bot software.

It is recommended to protect these pages to prevent vandalism.

The bot's edit summaries incorporate the collaborative beauty of wikis. Individual wikis should feel free not only to translate the edit summary, but to tweak it, modify the style, add links, etc. Do keep the following variables in mind (all are optional and can be placed anywhere in the summary as many times as desired):

summary-I18n

  • $1 - The name of the file deleted on Commons. This does not include the prefix "Image:"
  • $2 - The username of the administrator on Commons that deleted the image being delinked.
  • $3 - The comment/summary/reason given by the Commons admin.

replace-I18n

  • $1 - The original filename
  • $2 - The new filename
  • $3 - The administrator that issued the replacement.
  • $4 - The reason the administrator gave.

Feedback

Report all problems on User talk:CommonsDelinker and don't forget to ping grin.

Report any comments, feature requests, complaints, bugs, etc. to https://bitbucket.org/magnusmanske/commons-delinquent/issues.

Source code

The current source code is at this repository.

The very old and outdated CommonsDelinker code is available under the terms of the MIT license in the pywikibot Git repository (github hosted version). The old and outdated version (rewritten by Magnus Manske) is available at Bitbucket. Further outdated code may be found here.

License

As administrators we think that the edits of CommonsDelinker are a necessary evil, and not copyrighted. They should be considered Public Domain.