I sent this to foundation-l. Input from Commons folks obviously welcome... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> Date: 20-Feb-2007 01:35 Subject: Commons request for input: policy on automatic image replacement To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Hello, (If your project doesn't have a CommonsTicker... GET ONE... http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Duesentrieb/CommonsTicker and if nobody maintains it... well don't complain you were never informed :P ) CommonsDelinker is a Wikimedia-wide bot designed to remove image redlinks from pages after an image has been deleted at Commons. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:CommonsDelinker At the moment it is in the "testing" stage of image "relinking" -- replacing one image with another. I want to get some input from communities about under what circumstances it would be acceptable for Commons to use the bot for "relinking". There are several reasons why replacing images might be desired: 1. Avoid conflicts with local image of the same name (bug 889, 2717) [although usually this would be done at the local wiki rather than Commons, but if the Commons image is poorly named, it can be appropriate] 2. Rename images: as redirects don't work, the only option to upload under the new name (bug 709, 4470) 3. Consolidate use of duplicate images at just one of them 4. Replace an image with a distinct, "improved" version I guess (hope) 1 and 2 are not controversial. So I want to talk a bit about 3 and 4. Regarding 3: some people feel that there is no need to consolidate duplicate images together. While it is true that there is no argument to do this for "disk space reasons", consider it like a 'fork' of the image. We don't allow forks of articles. One reason, for sure, has to do with NPOV, but another reason is just about efficiency and the natural human tendency to sort, collate, collect and organise. It makes sense to have all the info about one thing in one place, whether that is a topic (article) or an image. Now regarding 4. This is the first point where the image being replaced is not a true duplicate to the original. The most contentious point has been where images are converted from raster (GIF, JPG, PNG) to vector (SVG) format. I don't want to hash out the details of a PNG vs SVG debate here. Some PNGs are superior to SVGs, some SVGs are superior to PNGs. I want to establish: what process should take place before a bot replacement like this is acceptable? Because it's a bot, I want Commons to have really clear guidelines about when it is OK to use it, to avoid disrupting local projects. Currently, such images are tagged with {{superseded}} and listed at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Superseded . This page is quite backlogged (nearly 5 months, over 5000 items in [[category:superseded]]) and almost no-one works on it (since our copyvios are also backlogged, and they are more urgent, this is OK, IMO). Note: we have {{superseded}}, which usually means the old one will be nominated for deletion, and we also have {{vector version available}}, which merely advertises the existence of a vector file and does not imply the old one should be deleted. So basically my question is, assuming someone putting a {{superseded}} tag on an image appears on your local CommonsTicker, how long is it acceptable to wait before we replace such images? A week, a fortnight, a month? What should consensus look like in such discussions? Since we don't have to delete things for copyright reasons, is *one* person objecting enough to keep the image? What if that person is the uploader? What reasons should ensure an image gets kept? Here are some main ones I know of: * Art. IMO no art "near-duplicates" should be deleted unless they are TRUE duplicates (eg by hash). Colour differences are too subjective to rule which one is the most accurate, so best idea is to keep them all and let local projects decide which to use. * Small size PNGs used as icons - may be hand-optimised for rendering in IE, which SVGs will still suffer from (as they thumbnail to PNG but without special treatment). * Errors in SVG rendering (there are many in bugzilla) * PNGs as source files - should be kept for historical record (luckily we can undelete now, this is not such a big deal, but still something to keep in mind) So, please take this as an opportunity to describe the most open and accessible way Commons can work with your project, and how you would like to see it operate to best benefit your project in this regard. cheers, Brianna user:pfctdayelise