[Mediawiki-l] FileCheck extension probably a good idea for wikipedia and/or commons

[M Sz]

Hello!

There's a new extension called FileCheck that probably would be a good idea for wikipedia and/or wikimedia commons!
I noticed that MediaWiki doesn't check back if a file already exists on uploading. Of course, it checks if a file with the same name already exists, but not the exact same file even if its saved under another name. So I have written the FileCheck extension. It uses the SHA1 hashcode MediaWiki saves with every file (since MediaWiki 1.11) in the database. The extension checks back if the same hashcode is already in the database, and if so, ckecks back if the already uploaded file and the new file are one and the same. Since the SHA1 hashcode has an index in the database, it shouldn't be fast enough. If the extension finds the same file has already been uploaded, it prevents the uploading and prints out the name and link to the already existing file, along with an error message.

I think this would be a perfect extension to use on wikipedia and wikimedia commons. The preventing of duplicate uploads is certainly better than the tagging of and searching for duplicates like it's currently the case.

You'll find the MediaWiki extension page at:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FileCheck

And the projects homepage at:
http://www.chaosreligion.com

If you have any more questions or something else you want me to tell, just email me at echalone at hotmail.com

greetings from Austria,
Markus Szumovski

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