On 30/06/06, brion@svn.leuksman.com brion@svn.leuksman.com wrote:
Revision: 15165 Author: brion Date: 2006-06-29 16:54:01 -0700 (Thu, 29 Jun 2006)
Log Message:
- (bug 6491) Apply bad image list in category galleries
Patch from Ilmari Karonen http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/attachment.cgi?id=2024
Some thoughts on this...when I fixed whatever bug it was that caused galleries to ignore the bad image list, I considered doing this, however, I wondered whether it didn't quite make sense. The purpose of the bad image list as designed was to allow a few dodgy pictures to be specified and quietly suppressed upon parse actions.
Leaving the fact that I don't support this behaviour in categories aside, I'm starting to think about whether or not we need to be storing this information elsewhere. A page with a bunch of regular expressions on it[1] that is evaluated in the manner the bad image list is...doesn't scale well if the administrators start adding several hundred/thousand odd images to it. It might be more effective to look at migrating this information to the database somewhere.
As I see it, there's a few options springing to mind:
1. Add an extra column to the image metadata; treat it as a boolean value and use it to determine whether the image is bad
2. Add a whole new table for the purpose and introduce special pages to manipulate it
3. Similar to option two, but do it through an extension; don't make it part of the core code; expose the check via hooks in wfIsBadImage()
Personal preferences lie with options two and three. We'd want logging for it, of course, but that is rather trivial. :)
Anyway, just throwing out some thoughts, concerns and ideas...
Rob Church
Rob Church wrote:
Leaving the fact that I don't support this behaviour in categories aside, I'm starting to think about whether or not we need to be storing this information elsewhere. A page with a bunch of regular expressions on it[1] that is evaluated in the manner the bad image list is...doesn't scale well if the administrators start adding several hundred/thousand odd images to it. It might be more effective to look at migrating this information to the database somewhere.
Actually, I rather agree. The bad image list, as currently implemented, is a hack that doesn't scale. The only question is, does it need to? As it stands, the limited usefulness of the feature rather deters anyone from adding too many images to the list. The patch I wrote, which allows page-specific exceptions to the list, would likely make it a more attractive solution, but it _still_ is only useful for a rather narrow set of images: ones that are "good" enough that we do want to keep them, and maybe use them on a page or two, but still nasty or shocking enough that they can be used for massive vandalism that can cause significant outrage before it is cleaned up. As long as the list remains (or is kept) short enough that the parsing time isn't significant, a database solution isn't likely to make it any faster.
I'm not actually even convinced the list is useful at all. The only reason I wrote that patch, besides the fact that it has been repeatedly requested on-wiki, was in an attempt to make the list at least somewhat more useful given that it does exist.
(You seem to be missing a footnote up there, so I'll supply one: [1] They're not actually regexps, just a list of image names that are read into a hash.)
- Similar to option two, but do it through an extension; don't make
it part of the core code; expose the check via hooks in wfIsBadImage()
This would be my personal favorite, assuming we think the bad image feature is worth spending the effort on. I doubt most wikis really find it useful, so making it an optional extension sounds good. If I was confident I could implement something like that cleanly in a reasonable timeframe, I might've done that myself, but I still consider myself a newcomer to the wonderful world of MediaWiki source code.
On 30/06/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
(You seem to be missing a footnote up there, so I'll supply one: [1] They're not actually regexps, just a list of image names that are read into a hash.)
The footnote was intended to be relating to the spam blacklist, actually. Namely, "the spam blacklist does not work in the same way, so don't bring that one up."
This would be my personal favorite, assuming we think the bad image feature is worth spending the effort on. I doubt most wikis really find it useful, so making it an optional extension sounds good. If I was confident I could implement something like that cleanly in a reasonable timeframe, I might've done that myself, but I still consider myself a newcomer to the wonderful world of MediaWiki source code.
It's the preference I had too. I was downstairs making coffee just after sending that email, and I could almost see the code. :D
Rob Church
On 30/06/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
I'm not actually even convinced the list is useful at all. The only reason I wrote that patch, besides the fact that it has been repeatedly requested on-wiki, was in an attempt to make the list at least somewhat more useful given that it does exist.
Well, en.wp insists on having explicit and confronting images for certain topics, so...
At the Commons we occasionally get irate requests to delete certain images because they've been used in vandalism attacks. We are somewhat hesitant to delete them, assuming they're licensed correctly, for the likely backlash of "censorship!". So once we found out about the existence of this, we have been advising wikis to use the Bad image list. But we still delete some images when they seem particularly superfluous and particularly confronting.
And by "we" I mean like, me and two other guys who follow these deletion requests on Commons.
I'm not a big advocate for the list, but this is my interaction with it.
Brianna en.wp,commons:User:pfctdayelise
Brianna Laugher wrote:
At the Commons we occasionally get irate requests to delete certain images because they've been used in vandalism attacks. We are somewhat hesitant to delete them, assuming they're licensed correctly, for the likely backlash of "censorship!". So once we found out about the existence of this, we have been advising wikis to use the Bad image list. But we still delete some images when they seem particularly superfluous and particularly confronting.
Good point.
Of course, projects that _really_ don't want to see a particular Commons image anywhere on their pages could always upload a red X on top of it locally and protect that.
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