<rant>
I'm currently working on the Scott Forseman image donation, cutting
large scanned images into smaller, manually optimized ones.
The category containing the unprocessed images is
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:ScottForesman-raw
It's shameful. Honestly. Look at it. We're the world's #9 top web
site, and this is the best we can do?
Yes, I know that the images are large, both in dimensions
(~5000x5000px) and size (5-15MB each).
Yes, I know that ImageMagick has problems with such images.
But honestly, is there no open source software that can generate a
thumbnail from a 15MB PNG without nuking our servers?
In case it's not possible (which I doubt, since I can generate
thumbnails with ImageMagick from these on my laptop, one at a time;
maybe a slow-running thumbnail generator, at least for "usual" sizes,
on a dedicated server?), it's no use cluttering the entire page with
broken thumbnails.
Where's the option for a list view? You know, a table with linked
title, size, uploader, date, no thumbnails? They're files, so why
don't we use things that have proven useful in a file system?
And then, of course:
"There are 200 files in this category."
That's two lines below the "(next 200)" link. At that point, we know
there are more than 200 images, but we forget about that two lines
further down?
Yes, I know that some categories are huge, and that it would take too
long to get the exact number.
But, would the exact number for large categories be useful? 500.000 or
500.001 entries, who cares? How many categories are that large anyway?
200 or 582 entries, now /that/ people might care about.
Why not at least try to get a number, set a limit to, say, 5001, and
* give the exact number if it's less that 5001 entries
* say "over 5000 entries" if it returns 5001
Yes, everyone's busy.
Yes, there are more pressing issues (SUL, stable versions, you name it).
Yes, MediaWiki wasn't developed as a media repository (tell me about it;-)
Yes, "sofixit" myself.
Still, I ask: is this the best we can do?
Magnus
</rant>