Comments on: Commons sneezes, Wikimedia gets bird flu…

By: Titoxd

Titoxd — Sun, 06 May 2007 07:41:44 +0000

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”.

By: robchurch

robchurch — Fri, 04 May 2007 13:16:17 +0000

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.

By: Phil Boswell

Phil Boswell — Fri, 04 May 2007 09:17:43 +0000

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)…

By: Titoxd

Titoxd — Fri, 04 May 2007 05:56:55 +0000

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…

By: Erik Möller

Erik Möller — Fri, 04 May 2007 02:02:45 +0000

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

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Fri, 04 May 2007 01:15:45 +0000

No shit. I need to make Commons admin so I can contribute usefully to the cabal.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 04 May 2007 01:08:15 +0000

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?