LDC wrote:
Images should not be shared among Wikipedias. it is our goal to have each Wikipedia be complete and self-contained, except for links to the Internet at large. Disk space is cheap--if the same image appears in 10 wikis, then it should be uploaded 10 times and linked locally in each. That way, when we make a backup of each wiki, each backup contains the whole content.
And how difficult would it be to add meta tags to each shared image for every language that links to it? Not very I imagine (what links here already works in a similar way). I already own Wikimedia.org (notice the "m") which would be a great place to have a centralized media repository (and non-profit too, BTW).
Hard drive space isn't the only resource to consider here; more important is our human resources:
The way it is now somebody has to go to where the image is located, copy the image onto their computer's hard drive, upload the image to a different language, edit the image's description page and then link to the image in the article.
But if we had a centralized media repository then all the user has to do is make the wiki link. Done.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)