[Wikipedia-l] Uploads being abused

[Robert Graham Merkel]

Hi all, it is perhaps unfortunate that my first post to the list is
a bit of a rant, but I'm very concerned about the abuse of the file
upload feature and so far I haven't seen any responses to the discussion
on meta from people with the power to do something about it.

It seems to me from following the upload queue that it is
being deliberately abused to store distinctly non-encyclopedia
and copyright-infringing material on a disconcertingly large scale.

I would assume that this would be of direct financial concern
to Bomis, both for the potential of large bandwidth costs and
the potential for being sued, and to the rest of the project
because of the risk of being shut down by a lawsuit.

Are we just going to attempt to keep this under control by
the vigilance of a few dedicated Wikipedians, or might, in this
case, some technical measures to discourage abuse be appropriate?

For instance, it might be feasible to restrict uploads to registered
users, limiting the size and number of files that a user can upload in
a day, perhaps even restricting the types of files that can be uploaded by
checking with the "file" file type checking utility - that would at least
prevent the uploading of executables).

I would be prepared to help implement some of the above.  I'm a decent
programmer, though I don't have any experience with PHP so it'd take me
some time to get up to speed.

Obviously, I think technical measures to slow things is
justified in this case, otherwise I suspect too much time will
be wasted weeding out rather noxious material.


-- 
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Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk at mira.net

Go You Big Red Fire Engine
-- Unknown Audience Member at Adam Hills standup gig
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