On 11/12/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If a user uploads an image without information and we're unable to get ahold of them we must delete it. This is a pretty different situation from a user who makes a few copyedits to the text of an article.
This substantial difference is demonstrated clearly by the relative deletion rates of images and article on enwiki. Images are deleted at a much higher rate relative to new image uploading than articles are relative to new article creation.
I welcome contributions from new users on commons... but I think it's both unfair and masochistic to demand users who are currently unwilling to undertake the burden of participating in a multilingual project to make their uploads to commons.
Your problem and solution don't seem to be properly coordinated. The problem is people who come to commons, create accounts, and then never check those accounts. It really has little to do with multilingualism. If English WP shut off uploads and sent people to commons it would be mostly the same problem.
Commons isn't ready for a large influx of contributions by what I'll call "drive-by contributors from other projects".
It probably will be some day. I hope we are all in agreement that that's what we want, even if we can't agree on whether or not to start working on it *now*.
I wonder if it's time to take this to foundation-l, as it's a major issue which affects pretty much all of the projects.
Anthony