2010/11/24 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>:
1. What coding is needed? Do we have coders?
My provisional understanding of what needs to be coded:
1) Add new restricted-upload permission,
2) When file extension is in something like
$wgRestrictedFileExtensions and user has said permission,
2 a) permit upload of file
2 b) render a MediaWiki: message explaining the restricted upload
concept on the file description page
2 c) add a security warning click-through in any context where a
direct file link would normally be rendered
3) For formats that wrap contents inside an archive, and for other
formats that require multiple files, implement a general archive
crawler to ensure that all archive contents are in permitted file
formats
3) seems like something that could be skipped for a first release.
I've not seen any major technical dealbreakers pointed out in the
wikitech-l thread. I'll want us to do a fuller tech assessment before
engaging in such an effort, but at this point in time, it's time to
get some general public feedback on the idea in principle. If the
Wikimedia Commons community doesn't embrace this (e.g. due to admin
workload as you suggest might be the case), there's not much point
directing resources towards it.
That said, I consider it of pretty deep and fundamental importance for
a free content repository to retain source data. Our inability to
support key source file formats is a major drawback right now. So, if
this particular solution path seems desirable and doable with
reasonable effort, I'll seek to get WMF support behind it.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
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