James Hare wrote:
I'll be blunt: I will be using the toolset to
upload millions of files.
Taking that into consideration: what kind of marginal cost are we looking
at having an external tool interfacing with the API instead of something
built directly into the software? These are media files, not byte-sized
edits to Wikidata. Also, how is uploading files—even large numbers of
them—not a core function of a media repository?
Hi.
I personally think we must give a lot more thought to the broad strategy
being used here. For example, if you want to upload millions of files, why
not put them on a hard drive and ship them? It will be dramatically faster
and a lot less wasteful of bandwidth and time. In my opinion, we need to
figure out what the actual scope of this tool is and then build around
that, recognizing that the scope probably doesn't (or shouldn't) include
the ability to import a nation's archives into Wikimedia Commons.
There's also a larger conversation that needs to happen about whether
Wikimedia Commons is ready to accept such large media donations. Yes, I
realize that people have been bulk-uploading to Commons for years now, but
that doesn't mean that this is acceptable nor sustainable, it's just
currently tolerated. There are both technical costs (disk space comes to
mind) and social costs (flooding a wiki with content that can't be
reviewed or curated in a timely manner) to understand and account for.
MZMcBride