[Foundation-l] The Mediawiki 1.18 image rotation bug on Commons and on all Wikimedia projects

[Teofilo]

The Mediawiki 1.18 image rotation bug on Commons and on all Wikimedia projects

1 - Bug or feature ? It is a bug.
2 - The human bug
3 - The technical bug
4 - Unexhaustive list of related talks


1 - Bug or feature ? It is a bug.

Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arameans&oldid=463282677
: both pictures File:Aramean funeral stele Louvre AO3026.jpg and
File:Si Gabbor funeral stele Louvre AO3027.jpg are tilted.

It is somehow intentional, because it seems that the devs have
suddenly decided that the exif orientation tag should be taken into
account, while in the past users used had to use other ways to define
image orientation.

But even if it is intentional, we should call it a bug, because it is
annoying to a lot of readers and uploaders whose pictures have been OK
sometimes for years, and without warning they must suddenly change the
orientation of their uploaded pictures. What about the pictures whose
uploaders are no longer active ?

So I hope everybody agrees that it is a bug.

2 - The human bug

I think the Wikimedia Foundation should present officially its excuses
to the readers and active users annoyed by the bug. The excuses could
be linked from the rotatebot template, so that the concerned users
could read them.

The devs should find out what went wrong in the decision process to
implement the 1.18 version, and try to find preventive measures so
that big problems of this size do not occur again when a version
upgrade is done. Is it really OK not to consult the Commons community
before changing a picture-related feature ?

3 - The technical bug : deadline

A lot of people should be thanked for having spared no energy to find
the first steps toward solutions to the bug. A lot has been done. In
particular a lot has been done to provide users easy access to a bot,
called "rotatebot" which rotates pictures when needed. A lot of users
have spent time tagging pictures with a "rotate" template, which calls
the bot for help. Really a lot of people. The bot is busy, and the bot
should be thanked, if it had brains to understand what "thank you"
means.

Despite all of that, despite the fact that the bot's speed was lately
increased, we are still lacking a systematic solution which would
correct all wrongly rotated pictures and a deadline.

Let us stop asking users to individually tag every wrong picture! Let
us have some developers create a tool to find wrong pictures and
rotate them back to their original orientation!

We need a deadline. We need to be able to say, In X month's time, all
pictures will be back to normal.


4 - Unexhaustive list of related talks


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/10#Autorotation_using_EXIF_tag_with_MW_1.18
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/10#Autorotation_using_EXIF_tag_with_MW_1.18_.28old.29
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/10#Rotatelink_on_filedescription-pages
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/10#problem_with_rotation
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/10#Rotation_error
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/11#New_autorotation_based_on_EXIF_data_problem
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/11#Wrong_rotation_of_image_when_used_in_Wikipedia
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/11#.22Request_rotation.22_link
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2011/12#Direction_issue_with_File:Cyril_and_Methodius_monument_Sofia.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bistro#Monast.C3.A8re_Andronikov_:_image_.C3.A0_redresser
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bistro#Monde_.C3.A0_l.27envers
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro/5_d%C3%A9cembre_2011#Pourquoi_certaines_images_ont_subi_des_rotations_sans_modification_apparente
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Image_rotation_-_I_am_desperate
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bots/Work_requests#Maintenance_category_for_files_with_EXIF_rotation_other_than_0_degrees
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Rotation
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Rotatebot#Rotation_on_Wikipedia

It is unexhaustive because I did not check Commons' help desk, nor
every Wikipedia language version.