[Commons-l] Deleting the old WeatherBot images

Sat Jun 3 19:36:20 UTC 2006

Recently I was asked [1] to delete the obsolete WeatherBot images.
(Background: Over most of 2005, User:WeatherBot uploaded about 25000
images depicting current temperature worldwide.  WeatherBot is now
defunct, and the old temperature maps are no longer used.  Deletion
was discussed in a bunch of places on the Commons over many months.)

Today, I started deleting the old maps, with a bot.  My bot archives
each image before deleting, so if it makes a mistake, any image can
easily be restored.  I deleted 2284 images (in 88 minutes, or 2.3
seconds per).  Then Duesentrieb pointed out [2] that by flooding the
deletion log, I was breaking his CommonsTicker tool.

Duesentrieb suggested I should post to the mailing list before
continuing.  (My bot stopped running automatically as soon as he
posted his comment to my talk page.)

At full speed, the remaining 23000 images will take about 15 hours to delete.

Does anyone else have a tool that watches the delete log?  If you'll
be affected by me deleting 23000 images, please let me know.  I'm open
to suggestions.  Two possible ideas: I could run the bot in 3-hour
chunks at a particular time each day.  I could also throttle the bot
slightly.  As slow as 1 image every 10 seconds would still get the job
done in 3 days.

If no one says otherwise, I'll plan to restart the bot next Saturday,
June 7, and allow it to run at full speed until it's done.

-- Commons:User:Dbenbenn

Links:

[1]: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dbenbenn#Deleting_WeatherBot_images
[2]: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dbenbenn#Weather_Images
[*]: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:WeatherBot