It would be nice if uploaded files had a "history" like articles do. That way a vandalism like overwriting with junk could be easily undone.
How would that work though? Suppose we both use the same image of a German flag on different articles. Now I decide that I like my flag bigger, and upload the new one. Which one will be displayed on your page? And, which one will be displayed on yesterday's version of my article?
Axel
At 11:49 PM 5/19/02 +0200, Axel Boldt wrote:
It would be nice if uploaded files had a "history" like articles do. That way a vandalism like overwriting with junk could be easily undone.
How would that work though? Suppose we both use the same image of a German flag on different articles. Now I decide that I like my flag bigger, and upload the new one. Which one will be displayed on your page? And, which one will be displayed on yesterday's version of my article?
I would vote for all references to the flag in articles pointing to the latest version of the uploaded file, just like how all links to other articles point to the latest version of that article. I mainly proposed the uploaded file individual history record as a way to prevent vandalism, so that the overwritten file would not be irrevokably lost; in all other respects it would work like uploads already work right now.
Trying to keep track of which versions of the article pointed to which versions of the uploaded file would be overly complex and unnecessary, as bad as trying to keep track of which version of an article links to which version of other articles. I don't see what significant advantage would be gained by that, other than forcing you to somehow hunt down and update all links to an image when you update it with a better one.
If someone changes an uploaded file that's used on two different articles, so that it now works well on one article but not on the other, then someone should go into the history of that file to find the old version and re-upload it as a separate image instead. The image would be "forked" that way, like how overly-long articles sometimes get broken up into multiple articles.
-- "Let there be light." - Last words of Bomb #20, "Dark Star"
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