[Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening

[Bryan Tong Minh]

The problems on Commons are a direct result of the enourmous growth in
Commons. Currently the counter is at 3.5M and that number is
increasing with 120K each month. Last time I checked (about a year
ago) about 10% to 20% of those images is deleted. If this value is
still the same, which I expect, then an unhealthy total of 20K images
per month are deleted.

A significant amount of the deletions could be avoided if every user
was helped personally in fixing the images. I'd wish every image could
go through a community review but with the amount of images this is
simply not possible. The backlog for regular deletion requests reaches
to 11 Feburary 2008. 10 months, and I have seen it slowly increase: 6
months ago the backlog reached to 30 December 2007, a backlog of 6
months. The backlog has thus increased by 4 months in 6 months. If
this trend continues we will have a backlog of one and a half year in
one year.

The problem is not specifically the lack of admins, but the lack of
community. Many deletion requests could use community input. Many new
users could use an experienced member guiding them through Commons and
help them fix their mistakes.

Unfortunately I see no solution (except, say, disabling uploads for
the coming month ;))


Bryan