On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 9:27 AM, Carl (CBM) cbm.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 8:50 AM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
The original version of Instant Commons had it right. The files were sent straight from the WMF to the client. That version still worked last I checked, but my understanding is that it was deprecated in favor of the bandwidth-wasting "store files in a caching middle-man".
If I were a site admin using InstantCommons, I would want to keep a copy of all the images used anyway, in case they were deleted on commons but I still wanted to use them on my wiki.
- Carl
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
A valid suggestion, but I think it should be configurable either way. Some sites will like to use Wikimedia Commons but don't necessarily have the space to store thumbnails (much less the original sources).
However, a "copy source file too" option could be added in, for sites that would also like to fetch the original source file and then import it locally. None of this is out of the realm of possibilities.
The main reason we went for the "render there, show thumbnail here" idea was to increase compatibility. Not everyone has their wikis set up to render things like SVGs. By rendering remotely, you're assuming the source repo like Commons was set up to render it (a valid assumption). By importing the image locally, you're then possibly requesting remote files that you can't render.
Again, more configuration options for the different use cases are possible.
-Chad