[Wikipedia-l] Multimedia and file uploads

[Robert Bihlmeyer]

[I'm a bit late in the thread ...]

Stephen Gilbert <sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca> writes:

> Until then, is there any reason why we couldn't use FTP to upload images?
> An anonymous FTP account allowing us to upload to, say,
> www.wikipedia.com/images would do the trick, and we could simply link the
> pictures from there.

Opening Wikipedia up to unchecked binary upload would also allow a lot
of things in that we'd rather not have. Remember that when ftp was
most popular, /incoming direcories where invariably (ab)used
for illegal exchange of copyrighted material. This has mostly been
mitigated by removing read access to the upload directory to the
public. Probably also by the prolification of gratis web hosters,
where warez can still easily be stored for a few days as well. So I
don't know if this would become a problem.

In true WikiWiki spirit, people should be able to delete/modify
uploaded material as well. This could keep us abreast of the warez
problem, since our editorial staff (aka everybody) could wipe out any
occurance of these. On the other hand, to prevent mischief, we would
probably want to keep past revisions of binaries as well, so that
people could undo changes, or merge them. Unfortunately, here the
warez pop up again.

Binaries, even when they replace a thousand words, usually take more
space than a thousand words. Therefore, resources may also pose a
problem: disk space, access speed, network bandwidth.

While I recognize the fact that images (maybe sounds, much less
animations), genuinely complement some entries (hey, one of the two
pictures in /images/ came from me!), I argue for a very sparing use of
these. The encyclopedias I knew and loved all had only few images. I
know that these are becoming more, and the "multimedia encylopedia" is
the current craze. Call me old-fashioned in that repect, but I think
the advantages of these are by far over-hyped.

As an afterthought, I would want Wikipedia to stay as useful as
possible to people who can't view pretty pictures (because their
hardware won't show them properly, because they lack eye-sight). Add
pictures if you want, but don't replace explanatory text with them.

To wrap up, these concerns make me belief that the current state of
affairs with images trickling in slowly (actually, the installing of
my image was not slow!) is fine. Optimisations of the process, like
setting up a write-only ftp area for people to use instead of mail,
are of course good.

Implementing unchecked binary upload, and keeping it until it becomes
a nuisance, is also an option. You will surely survive any potentially
"I told you so" calls by me. The main loss will be the implementor's
time, then.

-- 
Robbe
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