MediaWiki &Wiki &Wikimedia robchurch on 03 May 2007 11:03 pm
Commons sneezes, Wikimedia gets bird flu…
While a lot of people know what Wikipedia is, or at least, know it exists, a lot less people know that behind the Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikibooks, etc.) sits the Wikimedia Commons, which aims to become a repository of free media, including all manner of graphical goodies, audio and video. Commons is driving much of the need to develop better media support in MediaWiki, as referenced in a previous post.
The administrators on the Commons work damn hard to ensure that the content uploaded is free, and for the most part, do a good job. The main problem that seems to be developing right now is the deletion of images on Commons, and the reason that’s a problem is because when Commons sneezes, Wikimedia gets a cold, or less metaphorically, if Commons deletes an image, that image stops being available to all the Wikimedia projects, and a bunch of pages including that image breaks.
Of course, some of this deletion is needed, but there’s also a lot of carelessness going on. While I appreciate that we do need some sort of tracking mechanism to keep tabs on pages using those images, I think it’s important to note that applications such as InstantCommons, which is under development, and aims to allow third parties to use the Commons repository, depend on that project not deleting a ton of images.
One example that sparked this little rant is http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Bug.png – it’s a little cartoon bug, and we use it on the MediaWiki BugZilla. We’ve been asked to change this, although we haven’t been given a good reason. I rather suspect that, sooner or later, the image is going to be deleted, although as of writing, it isn’t tagged for deletion. All this does is break a bunch of links to the image and causes some inconvenience.
Now, if InstantCommons starts being used (and I gather an alpha or beta of some sort is not far off), then it’s going to be useless if stuff gets deleted. If wiki operators notice that images can’t be relied upon to be in one place, then they’ll just stop using the Commons.
The Commons, as a project, needs to wake up and realise that it’s responsible for providing images to more than just Wikimedia now, and as far as I can tell, this was always the case. If they start breaking stuff, then we might as well abandon the idea altogether.
on 04 May 2007 at 1:08 am 1.Bryan said …
If you check out the image’s description page at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bug.png there’s a reason to switch given there; an SVG version of the image has been made that is likely superior to the PNG. Perhaps introducing some method for “redirecting” images instead of deleting them would allow the best of both worlds in this situation?
on 04 May 2007 at 1:15 am 2.David Gerard said …
No shit. I need to make Commons admin so I can contribute usefully to the cabal.
on 04 May 2007 at 2:02 am 3.Erik Möller said …
The current IC implementation makes copies, rather than loading the images directly from Commons. Therefore, a deletion on Commons has no effect on IC users. We plan to have a script that allows users to query Commons for relevant deletions or updates on Commons and to apply them to their local wiki.
Many wikis also run the amazingly useful CommonsTicker bot in order to stay informed about transactions on Commons:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Duesentrieb/CommonsTicker
on 04 May 2007 at 5:56 am 4.Titoxd said …
Aye. It is a pain in the arse to then go and clean up a mess such as the one that occured at MediaWiki.org the other day…
on 04 May 2007 at 9:17 am 5.Phil Boswell said …
Who asked you to remove that image from BugZilla, and why? It’s GFDL, after all.
There is a new SVG version, but I wouldn’t know whether that would be usable in the context.
Maybe someone just got confused (he says, being hopeful)…
on 04 May 2007 at 1:16 pm 6.robchurch said …
Bryan: What makes you think the SVG form is in any way superior? The image would still need to be rasterised due to the lack of SVG support in browsers; deleting the image is completely pointless.
Erik: A deletion on Commons might not affect InstantCommons users, but if we’re going to keep witnessing deletions “for the sake of it” as noted above, then Commons’ utility as a repository is harmed.
Phil: It’s a (now closed) bug report.
on 06 May 2007 at 7:41 am 7.Titoxd said …
Erik: CommonsTicker requires, AFAIK, a working installation of the wiki project’s database on the Toolserver. It is useful for projects for which the database is up to date, but for the English Wikipedia… well… *looks away* Ideally, this should be done through MediaWiki itself.
Phil: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9771. Someone asked on MediaWiki.org, and I copied it to BugZilla, so someone with authority could say “Hell no”.