Anyway, as much as I am surprised that no top WLM organizer is a Commons admin (although there's clearly at least one admin on this mailing list), it's possible to get around this, although not easy. Lily has a good channel to the WMF and most of us are long-time users who know many others + many developers. The solution can be technical, and it can come from the WLM: perhaps a new user group that can only see historical revisions and restore without some of the other admin rights, perhaps an options to archive images that "need" to be deleted on groups of Commons policy, but aren't opposed by the foundation's legal team (might be a solution for URAA images as well), etc.

I know that many in the community don't want any WMF interference, and the WMF wants to repair community ties—both are completely understandable. I don't want to suggest that we should interfere with these processes, but do think we can implement some kind of solution on the side. After all, WLM is a big project that costs a ton of resources. Just in terms of money, the WMF (or sometimes local donations) funds it with tens of thousands of dollars, directly or indirectly. It's therefore worth investing a little bit more to technically support projects like WLM.

—Yan (Ynhockey).