---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mark Clements gmane@kennel17.co.uk Date: 01-May-2007 01:43 Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Commons deletion issue To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
MediaWiki.org has just been a victim of the 'Commons deletion issue'. An image from the Crystal icon set that was prominently used in many navigational pages, including the main page, was deleted from Commons and suddenly MediaWiki.org is full of broken images. The deletion was valid (it was a duplicate file) but the fact that the actions on SiteA can affect SiteB so radically is really rather worrying...
A technical solution would be for people deleting files on commons (for this kind of reason) to replace the page with a redirect page, and for these redirects to be resolved by MediaWiki when linking to a shared file. This won't solve all problems of course, but it would help for this kind of situation (or e.g. a GIF being replaced by an SVG). Of course, I'm sure there are many ways this could be abused as well...
I don't know if anyone has any suggestions to deal with this kind of problem, or even if it has already been recognised as an issue. The non-technical answer is, of course, to copy the commons images to the local wiki, but that kind of defeats the point of commons, doesn't it?
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)
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I don't know if anyone has any suggestions to deal with this kind of problem, or even if it has already been recognised as an issue. The non-technical answer is, of course, to copy the commons images to the local wiki, but that kind of defeats the point of commons, doesn't it?
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)
It's commons policy not to delete images as long as the images are used anywhere, if the deletion is not urgent (copyvios and policy-vios can be deleted right away). Some people don't seem to get that into their head, though.
Note that commons admins often rely on my CheckUsage tool to check where an image is used. Due to the way to database is fed from the parser, this might miss some uses, though. Specifically, it may miss any ''conditional'' use of an image, i.e. used directly or indirectly inside a {{#if}} or {{#switch}} clause.
-- Daniel
On 30/04/07, Daniel Kinzler daniel@brightbyte.de wrote:
I don't know if anyone has any suggestions to deal with this kind of problem, or even if it has already been recognised as an issue. The non-technical answer is, of course, to copy the commons images to the local wiki, but that kind of defeats the point of commons, doesn't it?
It's commons policy not to delete images as long as the images are used anywhere, if the deletion is not urgent (copyvios and policy-vios can be deleted right away). Some people don't seem to get that into their head, though.
If it's not right there on the image page, they won't see it.
What needs to be done for it to show up right there on the image page?
- d.
On 30/04/07, Daniel Kinzler daniel@brightbyte.de wrote:
I don't know if anyone has any suggestions to deal with this kind of problem, or even if it has already been recognised as an issue. The non-technical answer is, of course, to copy the commons images to the local wiki, but that kind of defeats the point of commons, doesn't it?
It's commons policy not to delete images as long as the images are used anywhere, if the deletion is not urgent (copyvios and policy-vios can be deleted right away). Some people don't seem to get that into their head, though.
Note that commons admins often rely on my CheckUsage tool to check where an image is used. Due to the way to database is fed from the parser, this might miss some uses, though. Specifically, it may miss any ''conditional'' use of an image, i.e. used directly or indirectly inside a {{#if}} or {{#switch}} clause.
It strikes me that the problem is - does the toolserver, and by extension the CheckUsage tool, encompass mediawiki.org? I have a sneaking suspicion it doesn't...
It strikes me that the problem is - does the toolserver, and by extension the CheckUsage tool, encompass mediawiki.org? I have a sneaking suspicion it doesn't...
It does: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/CheckUsage.php?i=Bulbgraph.png&a...
-- Daniel
On 4/30/07, Daniel Kinzler daniel@brightbyte.de wrote:
Note that commons admins often rely on my CheckUsage tool to check where an image is used. Due to the way to database is fed from the parser, this might miss some uses, though. Specifically, it may miss any ''conditional'' use of an image, i.e. used directly or indirectly inside a {{#if}} or {{#switch}} clause.
I don't think this is accurate. If an image is actually *displayed* on a page it should show up, although only on the page which the image is being displayed on. If some use of parserfunctions is causing an image to not currently be displayed it will not show up.
What doesn't show up are images pulled in via javascript or css. There is no way we can expect the mediawiki software or commons admins to be aware of these cases automatically. Even local images used from CSS do not show up in file links.
For this latter case the only thing we can do is advise people who include images via css to note this fact on the image page, and ask that the image page be protected. I do this for enwiki every once in a while.