In the Mystical Future, VE will handle it all transparently anyway. Let's
just make it *work*, then let VE make it easier on editors.
To clarify, we're thinking about adding some special handling in VisualEditor's paste for the HTML of images from a MediaWiki instance, probably via a special custom attribute VE would sniff for, that would make VE try to find the image from Commons.
This would mean that the HTML given for "hot linking" from Commons (or other wiki) for use in WordPress etc. would also transparently work in VE.
J.
-- James D. Forrester Product Manager, VisualEditor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.