On 10/06/06, Essjay essjaywiki@gmail.com wrote:
Magnus Manske wrote:
Solution A: Increase the number of admins, which will increase the number of deletions.
True, but also increases the number of controversial deletions; on a normal project, any time you delete something, you risk being yelled at by the people on that project. On Commons, you risk being yelled at by everybody involved with Wikimedia. That's a lot of pressure to put on someone, especially when they can't easily leave a "Hey, I noticed [image] seems to need deletion, but you're using it" message (because we have hundreds of languages, and nobody can hope to speak them all).
Essjay!!!!!!!!!! http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/Translations
Apparently our policies officially say that copyvios (+ maybe NSD/NLD? I can't remember) can be deleted without removing the image from use. At least Arnomane and Duesentrieb argue this line and presumably carry it out. But myself, Fred, Bastique, Angr...don't know who else... we fear the wrath of 100+ WM projects too much, so we follow this removing method for all image deletion.
Also: we have at least one functioning "Delinker Bot", but we're not allowed to use it (even with translated messages) because local projects get shitty about unregistered/anonymous bots. Can you imagine registering a bot on some 200 projects?
I hope with the universal login (which was coming "soon" in January, sigh), we can offer an ultimatum and say, "Let our bot work on your project or else DEAL with redlinks", because the situation is too ridiculous.
I am a Commons admin, and the thing that scares me most about Commons admin work is deletion: Almost everything on Commons, if deleted, cannot be recovered, and Commons materials are used on all Wikimedia projects.
But think: most of the things that need deleting are random things that people got off the internet. I figure if they got it off the internet once, if it's really important, odds are they can go and do it again, especially if deletion is close to upload date.
And if it's their own work (or they claim it is ;)), then of course they would have a copy on their own computer. No one would upload something precious to the Commons and then delete it off their own computer! Right?
Brianna