Hello!
There's a new extension called FileCheck that probably would be a good idea for
wikipedia and/or wikimedia commons!
I noticed that MediaWiki doesn't check back if a file already exists on uploading. Of
course, it checks if a file with the same name already exists, but not the exact same file
even if its saved under another name. So I have written the FileCheck extension. It uses
the SHA1 hashcode MediaWiki saves with every file (since MediaWiki 1.11) in the database.
The extension checks back if the same hashcode is already in the database, and if so,
ckecks back if the already uploaded file and the new file are one and the same. Since the
SHA1 hashcode has an index in the database, it shouldn't be fast enough. If the
extension finds the same file has already been uploaded, it prevents the uploading and
prints out the name and link to the already existing file, along with an error message.
I think this would be a perfect extension to use on wikipedia and wikimedia commons. The
preventing of duplicate uploads is certainly better than the tagging of and searching for
duplicates like it's currently the case.
You'll find the MediaWiki extension page at:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FileCheck
And the projects homepage at:
http://www.chaosreligion.com
If you have any more questions or something else you want me to tell, just email me at
echalone(a)hotmail.com
greetings from Austria,
Markus Szumovski
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