[Mediawiki-l] Multiple uploads via browsing?

[Birger]

Hello,

A few weeks ago i was looking for a way to upload multiple files on a
wiki at once. Thereby i came across a link to an extension called
SpecialUploadLocal
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SpecialUploadLocal), but normal users
(without the necessary server rights) are not able use it. Another
extension is the SpecialMultiUploadViaZip
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SpecialMultiUploadViaZip)...which
works perfectly for normal users: they zip the files they want to
upload and upload the zip-file; finally the zip-file gets unpacked and
the seperate files are on the wiki.

My question now is: why so complicated? Why do users first have to zip
their files? I am curious why nobody ever came to the idea (or why
nobody ever mentioned it on this list) of giving multiple
browse-buttons on the upload page, so users can directly upload
multiple files just via browsing instead of zipping them first. Or is
there some problem with that?

greetings,
B.