> Ariel:
>> Providing multiple terabyte sized files for download doesn't make any kind of sense to me.
>> However, if we get concrete proposals for categories of Commons
images people really want
>> and would use, we can put those together. I think this has been said before on wikitech-l if not here.
The Picture of the Year (POTY) collections are truly stunning! I am not very interested in having terabytes of random snapshots on my computer, instead I find smaller collections of "best of the best" much more suiting for the public. This way, it will be accessible to those with smaller amounts of diskspace and they'll be equally impressed.
I doubt there are many people interested in the image tarballs at all, they're just going for the principle of accessibility. Presumably wikipedia has plenty of back-up capabilities and there are enough gurus doing everything to prevent possible data loss. Offering public back-ups has no additional value in this perspective. Most of us probably use the wikipedia XML's for offline usage or research. I have not yet come across image research projects requiring tens of terabytes of images to be successful!