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Ability to block categories of images from Commons
Open, MediumPublicFeature

Description

At English Wikisource, and also known at other WMF sites, there is a person from an Indian ISP who likes to undertake shock tactics of posting images of a sexual nature on pages in other wikis, especially user talk pages (which is a bit disquietening when at work or when children are working with you).

Blocking IP ranges can be ineffectual due to the dynamic IP ranges, and the vastness of some IP ranges managed by a provider; and blocking individual images is problematic for the numbers in the system and totally reactive. It would be useful to have a more effective mechanism to control the images of a sexually explicit nature across wiki. One means that I see that could be effective is to block images based upon categories or their subsequent position in a category tree. Alternatively images that are in certain categories are able to be dynamically grabbed, and held in a universal do not show file that wikis could turn on or off the use of that file.

I am open to other solutions, with the outcome that there is the ability to (b)lock the use of images that are irrelevant to a site.


Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement

Details

Reference
bz26826

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 21 2014, 11:16 PM
bzimport set Reference to bz26826.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

Re-opening this. "Bad image list" doesn't support categories, which is what the bug filer asked for. Individual images are a pain in the ass to try to list, so category-based filtering makes more sense.

This request sounds similar to http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Simetrical/Censorship. I'm not sure if that subpage has an associated bug report. This could be that bug report. In any case, the "bad image list" is a fairly bad hack. We can and should do better.

Oh my follow the link and guess what? It is being used and it is being actively updated. Who'da thunk it! Sheesh, a little check would have been worthwhile rather than the derisory "Use".

As we have someone actively placing sexually orientated images on user pages surely you are not suggesting that we have to go and proactively check and grab hundreds or thousands of the image names and then load them into that file. Should I stay awake late at night and wait for all to be in bed for my research? Or maybe I should sit and the kitchen table and do that research in front of the whole family. Brilliant idea! Or not.

There should be no downside like this from a common image server and there needs to be a REASONABLE and PRACTICAL means to filter out that sort of abuse of the system.

No ability for "Mediawiki:Bad_image_category"? No ability to import all the filenames of files listed in categories? Something that could be updated by a bot on a regular basis?

aaron.adrignola wrote:

(In reply to comment #3)

No ability for "Mediawiki:Bad_image_category"? No ability to import all the
filenames of files listed in categories? Something that could be updated by a
bot on a regular basis?

At the least, maybe something like the global title blacklist at Meta (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Title_blacklist)--only for files--could be set up. Then a bot could run at Meta and update a global list. Projects could add further entries to the local MediaWiki:Bad_image_list as they do now and grant local exceptions via a MediaWiki:Good_image_list.

Sheesh, a little check would have been worthwhile
rather than the derisory "Use".

It looks like you are referring to the typo at the end of my comment. I apologize for any perceived insult.

There should be no downside like this from a common image server and there
needs to be a REASONABLE and PRACTICAL means to filter out that sort of abuse
of the system.

I took this complaint seriously and raised the issue with people on #countervandalism. They pointed out that someone who wanted to get around the block could just change the category and they pointed to the already existing Bad_image_list.

I think Aaron's comment about Meta's Title_blacklist has some merit, though.

Aklapper changed the subtype of this task from "Task" to "Feature Request".Feb 4 2022, 12:24 PM
Aklapper removed a subscriber: wikibugs-l-list.