I agree with Mark on this. Turning off external linking, if such a
thing could be made possible, would be much more helpful than
disabling images. Having all non-fair-use images go to commons would
be great, but I'd rather wait until Single Login was implemented
before enforcing this.
I've included Mark's post below since it was sent only to wikitech and
this thread should be kept on foundation-l.
Angela.
On 8/22/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with what you said about the German Wikipedia,
however:
I sharply disagree with what you said about "all the smaller wikis
which are not constantly watched"... which Wikis are you talking
about? The Small Wikis Monitoring Team (SWMT) closely watches all
recent changes on all inactive / low activity Wikimedia wikis
(excluding inactive Wikinewses) -- Wikipedias, Wiktionaries,
Wikiquotes, Wikibookses... -- and this includes image uploads.
So far, there have been no such abuses of image uploads on any of
these wikis. There has been uploading of porn images (all of which
Angela or someone else has expressly deleted), and to strange images
(for example of a frog wearing a hat, for a spam page on the Gothic
Wikipedia), but these are relatively infrequent, especially compared
to linkspam (largely from China, Russia, Germany, and also
pharmaceutical and porn linkspam in English).
Besides, "small wikis" is a very imprecise term. What do you define as
"small"? Does it need more than 10.000 articles? More than 1.000? More
than 100? More than 10? More than 1? "Small" is a relative term. A
user of the Sicilian Wikipedia may not nessecarily think of theirs as
a small Wikipedia, with nearly 2.000 articles now, but they would
probably consider the Friulian Wikipedia to be small, with nearly 90
articles. German Wikipedians might consider the Chinese Wikipedia to
be small, with under 30.000 articles. It's a matter of perspective --
many English Wikipedians seem to think that the English Wikipedia is
THE Wikipedia, and that it is somehow entitled to better treatment or
that it is much more important or something, as one can see from some
of the complaints lodged by English Wikipedians against the transition
to the international portal, and the incessant whinging that followed
for a number of weeks. Yes, the English Wikipedia is the largest, but
it did certainly get a head-start because it was started earlier than
all other Wikipedias. The German Wikipedia, for example, is doing
quite well considering it was founded well after the English
Wikipedia.
Mark