I would suggest another approach, decentralized and maybe simpler. There are two reasons behind having this separation between a common repository and local uploads: 1) understanding of fair-use is different across different countries and legislations and local uploads reflect the local understanding => locally only fair-use uploads should be tolerated, if any. 2) freely licensed stuff should be equally accessible to all projects => saving resources from multiple local re-uploads of the same stuff. On the other hand, we know the mechanism to separate fair-use from free images - by means of different templates and categories : relatively few number and variety and repeating over all projects. So, my question is: is there a way for our developers to loosen the restrictions which nowadays technically prevent local uploads from being accessible crosswiki? I see a possible solution in linking the crosswiki accessibility to the image copyright template/category: * if tagged as fair-use, the image remains inaccessible from other wikis, or only accessible to a set of wikis whose fair-use exemption doctrine is compatible with the local one. * freely licensed images can be linked to from elsewhere, without the need of multiple local uploads which waste resources. * images without any license tag again do not become accessible crosswiki, until properly tagged/categorized. This will return the admin maintenance boomerang back to the local wikis but should solve the problems with novices, with language understanding and the Commons-specific procedures which are obscure to community members who rarely attend or do not engage so much in Commons community life. It would further ease the maintenance if once proven their copyright status as fair-use or free, the images be protected so that the their accessibility don't get compromised by changing the tag/category. Cheers, Vassia _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l