Commons:Village pump/Deleting of images

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Short: User:Paddy deleted a Wikimedia-Logo which was labeled as redundant. But sadly this picture was used by many wiktionaries. Some people were very upset by this and started Commons:Administrators#Requests_for_de-adminning. Because I think that the problem (deleting/moving images in commons) needs discussion/clarifying and that the former location is no good place to do so, I moved the discussion to this place. --Avatar 08:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Discussion from desysop page

Comments Paddys statement

I very strongly agree with Paddy that Category: Redundant should be eliminated, and never ever used as a criteria for deletion. --Connel MacKenzie 21:23, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Paddy, you talk status quo; it doesn't happen yet as far as we know. On the other hand, Commons admins deleted shared images on the Main Page of other projects without notice nor even checking and annoy them. It is reality. I expect Commons admin accept this fact and won't annoy us three time because of "redundant" image deletions. We need a certain image under a certain name in a certain size because we are now using it as is. It is no help nor consolation to know a similar image exists under another name. You refered to ohne-text series. I would like to point out the fact "WikiThanks.png" is labelled as redundant because there is a larger and clearer but bizarre (I know it is French but I confess I can't spell it properly because "es ist mir ganz fremd") --- you are threatening us and trying to force us to use an image whose meaning can't be understood by most of editors (at least on Japanese projects). such differences shouldn't be treated as redundancy.

Yes, you are right. Still give me a chance to repair. Maybe we can find out what is redundant and what is not? The logos are not so important as they seem. The German Wikiquote project had no logo whatsoever (top left) for some months and no developer cared. Throw out all developers? No, find a way to tackle and solve the redundant logo problem. mfg --Paddy 04:14, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

CIA Logo

Requested for deletion by "Thuresson 16:50, 3 May 2005 (UTC)" and "00:28, 22. 5. 2005 Paddy" deleted after the discussion here: Commons:Deletion_requests/Archives03#Image:Central_Intelligence_Agency_logo.png. I really do not see any consensus there. See also the links from there: [1] and [2]. I am quite sure that the seal is not commercial and copyrighted. Therefore it does not go with commons policies. I even back checked with a couple of people in the IRC. There have been long disputes about those kind of logos. And all that there has been was speculation. Some of the arguments were, that it belongs to the US people. But can I really use ist commercially in a german Wiki-Reader? I am quite sure that I may not do this! --Paddy 15:10, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Regardless, whether to delete the image was not your choice to make. You should have attempted to convince others, and waited for a consensus to develop. dbenbenn | talk 15:30, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

The Wiki* projects are (for the most part) housed in Florida, USA. US copyright law is rather explicit that the government itself is not permitted to copyright anything. If it is a Federal US logo, then it cannot be covered by copyright. Period. Federal employees are not allowed to use copyrighted materials for such logos. --Connel MacKenzie 21:21, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

cite "...commercial activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression that such use is approved,..." CIA Act of 1949 (50 U.S.C. section 403m) I agree with the fact that texts/images are PD. They are fine! The logo however is as soon as I sell a Wikireader about the CIA in any country legally extremely controversial IMHO. I am still talking only about commercial (and about copyright). As soon as I have the logo on the front page saying "CIA" the Reader will inevitably convey the impression that it is approved. Pure "Wikireader: Encyclopaedic articles about the CIA" would not though without the logo (bear in mind). So the pic might be PD but not fully commercial. Also a "Wikireader:Encyclopaedic articles about the CIA" and a pic of a cup of coffee would not convey the impression that it is approved. Long thoughts but finally the pic is not fully commercial. However commons is a place for images that I can use commercially anywhere in any context. It is a free repository for commercially usable images. The CIA Logo is however not. Period (to cite you ;-) greetings --Paddy 00:01, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

This is exactly the kind of thing you should have said at the deletion discussion. Deleting the image while the question was being discussed was inappropriate. Admins aren't allowed to use their admin privileges to enforce their own opinions. Your talk page has two other examples of similar behavior (May 24 and July 12). dbenbenn | talk 00:40, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

That is an interesting citation. How do *you* as a commons admin know how an image is being used? Who asked you to make such decisions? And why would not fixing the referential page be the correct answer? How can you possibly know what else the image might be being used for? Avatar has a tool that TRIES to approximate what the uses are, but there is no way for you to know. And, you have not been asked to make such decisions. You've been asked to be a guardian over media types, clearing away wreckage of vandals. Not second guess others. --Connel MacKenzie 01:34, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

• "May 24" is about CIA logo yes. I can see that but as I said "00:28, 22. 5. 2005 Paddy" I deleted it after reading the discussion and the facts. An Admin must not under any circumstances get involved in the discussion if he deletes later. It will make him bias and I will not enforce my own opinion. I therefore do not delete images that I myself marked for deletion or that I was discussing about (if I am not 100% sure about what I am doing). An Admin must read the facts and the discussion and make up his mind delete/not delete. Getting me into a discussion late (2 days after deletion) does not really help. The image was not marked for big discussion. I waited 19 days that is more than I need to. Nobody marked the image otherwise.
• To come to the children's drawings from "July 12" Image:Child Art Aged 2.5 Blue Fish Large and Small.png Image:Child Art Aged 2.5 Smiley Face with Writing Underneath.png which I somehow must have not seen in my discussion. Anyway I do not want to judge about the quality of the child's drawing and not about the quality of the scan or photoshop work (that made the whole drawing even worse than it was originally). Fact is that someone pointed out this picture to me and people I consulted at least 5 other (wikipedians on commons and de) not including myself (and it was a very difficult decision to make) decided it is totally, utterly, completely, etc. useless. IMHO commons is not the place to promote meaningless "images" from parents that are proud of their children. You might say "it is not for me to decide". Well then let us discuss every single image that I will upload from my godchild and the drawings of children in my neighbourhood in future that have been badly scanned an worked on with the gimp image programme. Maybe we should consider having images from old aged people that are shaking already and that are on heavy drugs too? OK I am joking I will not do that! Seriously I get the images in Category:Child art even Image:Child Art Aged 4.5 Person 1.png and Image:Child Art Aged 4.5 Person 2.png but really not Image:Child scribble age 1y10m.jpg and the other two. We all know that children can not draw, speak, ride the bike, calculate, write,... what is the point of having the proof on commons? And it is used in none of the projects [3] and [4] to be frank no use and use flickr for that kind of stuff please. greatings --Paddy 03:43, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

When you want an image deleted, you are required to list it at Commons:Deletion requests, unless it is a candidate for speedy deletion. Just because you're an admin doesn't mean you get to make that kind of decision. The idea is that even if you're sure an image isn't appropriate, you might be wrong. dbenbenn | talk 15:51, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikitionaries

Have all been fixed by me. There where quite some other mistakes, unavailable images (that I did not delete!!!11eleven), wrong descriptions, unscaled images, etc. that have been fixed by me now. --Paddy 19:42, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

• comment the *35px.png logos were separately created as maximally compressed versions of the logos specifically for main page usage across a wide number of Wikimedia projects. ImageMagic conversions of larger files are notoriously inefficiently compressed. Of course this consideration has not been considered in the current "naming convention" deletion madness.

Further, the issue is not merely one of having specific logos deleted, but an admin who has a history of deleting images without reasonable justification despite repeated attempts to ameliorate the behavior. IRC, skype, and user talk page messaging has been used. As has Village Pump. All, apparently, without any compromise or change in behavior. This is my perception and opinion, and probably not that of others. But it is an element of why Wikinews now has image hosting separate from Commons, and why other projects are choosing to forego the benefits of the Commons project: it is no benefit to centrally locate images if they cannot be expected to remain available. - User:Amgine 18:54, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I changed wikinews images to commons images: [5] where is the problem? It was all fine until you changed it back: [6] Where did I do anything wrong with Wikinews? --Paddy 19:52, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I did not say you did anything specifically wrong regarding logos on Wikinews. However, you have deleted logos in the past, and the logos you have replaced them with are sometimes inaccurately licensed (you cannot relicense a derivative GFDL afaik), so I have copied the original images to Wikinews. And I'll be updating them with the pngcrushed versions when I can get them from the person who did that. This is a preventive measure. - Amgine

AFAIK scaled images are cached (might be wrong there!). So I see no reason to have the cache spammed with hundreds of other versions that is if my first assumption is correct. The License is another problem we need to tackle separately. --Paddy 20:38, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

As I mentioned in the previous conversation, the image itself is not cached - only the link to it is. However even if it were cached, the image would still be transferred in its entirety for each new main page view and thus use up bandwidth. None of which impinges on why you are deleting images without a specific reason to do so. - Amgine 21:28, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

This is not correct. The very first time a picture is called in a scaled version, it is written to disk and gets cached on the servers. So the very first time a picture is called (by ONE person - not for every person who pull the picture!) there will be a minimal delay compared to pulling an original size picture. The image won't be transferred in its entirety EVER (not at the first call, nor any later call). The bandwidth used is always the size of the scaled picture. Just to clarify this point. --Avatar 21:49, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I was unclear. The scaled picture is a file, and it is not as efficiently compressed as the 35px series. The "overhead" of using the scaled, as opposed to the purpose-compressed image, is 5x the bandwidth, but not that of the unscaled image. The entirety of the scaled image will be downloaded at each new user page view whether or not the image is part of the memcached page. - Amgine 22:09, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree to your clarification. An automatically scaled file will be almost everytime bigger then a "hand-scaled-down" version. --Avatar 23:28, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Good but:

1. Coming to another project using its own images my browser cache will fail! Therefore I must load another image in each project using another image :-( OK, it hits people that have been the first time to WP but those who are constantly browsing WP have the images in the cache of their browser.
2. Projects that are not very active may suffer if the image is not central and it is changed, modified, replaced, etc.
3. Overview is entirely lost if we do not know where the image has been uploaded to. People will use any image even if the name is not clear what the name means. I had a big laugh seeing german named logos on other language projects. I agree on names like Image:Wikipedia-logo-fr.png if it really differs from Image:Wikipedia-logo-en.png.
4. ... --Paddy 00:28, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

We agree on all these points. Unfortunately, with the unreliability of Commons because of deletions without justification it is less harmful than having main pages and articles with broken image links. - Amgine 00:51, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

• Comment Avatar and Arnomane said formerly on VP, checking tools check only projects with over 10,000 articles. It means it is beneficial to no Wikiquote nor Wikinews. And I complained about logo deletion. If you read VP carefully, you could be aware of it. Honestly I am very shocked the logo used on WMF site was deleted again. I am not sure if Paddy should be desysoped, but should confess I am not happy without Wikinews logo from elsewhere. And such deletion makes me very anxious if it is a right attitude to rely on Commons as repository. --Aphaia 19:26, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

---

1. Avatar, I apologize for being rude. I am actually relieved that your have voted the silly de-sysop request away. I am perturbed that the root problem has not been addressed.
2. I can't believe the filename, AFTER ALL THIS, has disappeared again. IIRC, some sites reference the 35 px file by name, with no resize parameters. So replacing it with the huge version is not always the best idea.
3. One concern that was recently presented to me, was that you did not wish to have duplicate images on en.wikt:, en.wikibooks, en.wikipedia, en.wikines. HOWEVER, because we cannot rely on our images being kept on commons.wikimedia.org, we must now all duplicate our files all over the place. Starting with 143 Wiktionaries, 146 Wikipedias... Boy, it sure seems more efficient to me, to just leave the files on commons. But since that cannot happen, efforts should be made to ensure content is not lost elsewhere.
4. Where is the appropriate place on commons for this discussion to take place?

--Connel MacKenzie 21:35, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Apology accepted, of course. I understand that you and other people are not very pleased with the situation (like we all). I also see the problem and the need of a bigger discussion - perhaps we should move this to the Village pump or a Village pump subpage? --Avatar 21:57, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that would be better. Could a commons admin please trim/move this over there please? --Connel MacKenzie 01:50, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Done. --Avatar 08:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

General discussion on policy of redundant image

Commons deletion policy

(Originally posted at Commons:Village pump#Commons deletion policy)

There continues to be disagreement about the Commons policy of deleting media files which admins feel are "redundant". This is actually a two-part problem:

1. Duplicate files are uploaded.

   There are two reasons for this - the original uploaded image was not found, or there is a specific reason for the duplicating file. In the former case the files will, for all intents and purposes, be exactly same including image dimensions and file size. In the latter case it is likely there will be significant differences, especially in image dimensions and file size.

2. Files are deleted without a specific justification.

   Although ease of management, and searching, and so on is an important ideal to work toward, this is not one of the goals of the Commons project¹. "[I]ts primary function [is] as a supporting project for the other Wikimedia web sites," according the Wikipedia article. Deleting media files which might be currently in use is specifically not supportive; in fact it is something which is potentially so harmful to the projects they reserve the responsibility to very trusted community members.

   Commons is becoming an untrusted community member.

   Of course commons must manage the archives with limited volunteer time, but they must keep in mind that hundreds of sites are giving them admin privileges on their sites, and should act in the best interest of *all* wikimedia projects and not only for their own convenience. Just as each project reserves the right to remove admin status from those who abuse their privileges, indiscriminate file deletion will continue to cause projects to host files locally, creating massive duplication of effort while at the same time wasting copious amounts of precious server disk space.

I strongly suggest that Commons change the deletion guidelines such that so-called "redundant file" is not a justification for deletion. Until Commons has a tool to check all WMF sites, this should also cover exact duplicates because you cannot ascertain where a file might be linked from. - Amgine 08:06, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest keeping the logos for the time being! Although an estimated 95% (of an estimated 10-20% which where being used) have been changed already and at a great deal of the sites the wikipedians where already aware of the duplicates. In many cases there was a confusion which logos to use. Some use logos with text, some use the coloured Species-Logo, some used the black and white Species-Logo, etc. and in some cases you got the whole lot especially in the wiktionaries. So you might say: "We do not need to be uniformed". No, we definitely do not. But we have to keep in mind that what makes WP so great is that you find everything in any language. The shortcuts work in any language, etc. If newbies do not get that for sister project navigation it is really bad. The newbie must be able to recognise the logo immediately. That is achieved by having one Logo of a project used in all other projects sister navigation. The process of creating different versions of these textless logos should have been stopped in the beginning or thoroughly discussed. I brought forward many arguments to make my case why this development was not so good. I have accepted the argument, that manually scaling is more effective than what the PHP-function does. But I think we agreed that there are features like browser cache (if you do not use the Internet Explorer ;-)

What I always do not get is that you may without discussion upload anything but getting rid of it is very hard. For example there was a picture of a naked eastern European prostitute on commons for ages with endless discussions with the uploader that it is non free. For most of the people it was obvious. But it only could be deleted when someone had a look at the HEX-code and found "F*U*C*K". Now uploading is very easy. Getting some system in the whole thing and cleaning up is relentless work. Just to show you the other side of the commons Admin story.

My approach is to change all the logos in all projects and eventually have them cleaned up lets say in half a year?

Now we are talking about two different things. Wiki*-Logos and other images. There are redundant images only used in 1 or the top 5 projects. These have never caused trouble in the past. Of cause that is different to logos that are used in nearly every single project. The trouble only comes form this handful of logos. --Paddy 14:07, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

The trouble comes when someone deletes an image as redundant and breaks another WMF page - popular or not. Redundant images should be tagged - but not deleted - until a global WMF "what links here" tool is created or some other assurance is guranteed that other WMF pages are not broken via deletion. Redundancy is not tidy - but is less harmful than breaking other WMF pages. Davodd 06:50, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Summarisation

Please let us collect all the pros and cons so the discussion does not turn in circles. The issue discussed is deleting redundant orphaned images. An image is redundant if it is a scaled version of another image. An image is defined as an orphan, for the purpose of this discussion, if it is not used in a specific list of wikimedia projects, as checked by a check-usage. The list consists of: Commons, Wikipedias (en, de, fr, ja, sv, nl, pl, pt, es, it, zh, no, eo, fi, da, ru, he, uk, bg, ca, sl, sr, ro, hu, cs, sk, et, id, ko), Wikinews (en, de), Wikibooks (en, de), Wikiquote (en, de), Meta, Wikispecies and Wikimedia Foundation [added Wiktionary (en, de) on 10.08.2005] [7]. The arguments for images vs. logos are seperated.

Pro deleting redundant images

1. Save disk space if you determine at an early stage (before it spreads through the projects) that it is redundant

Con deleting redundant images

1. With high usage of images deletion will become harmful.
2. It is POV to determine what is "redundant".
3. It is not possible to find all links within WMF to an image.
4. It is not possible to determine the motivation of a project for using a given version of an image.
5. Commons is acting as an admin on all WMF projects, and may be violating their deletion policies and traditions regarding deletion.
6. Commons is a highly-linked media file repository on the internet, and while it is not a priority in the Commons mission to be supportive of the internet it is also not a priority to be unnecessarily harmful.
7. It is impossible to know what Wiki* external resources reference an image, once it has been available for some time. If an image is deleted in its first week, it is probably not much of a problem, but the longer an image has been around, the more likely it is referenced externally:
8. MediaWiki software currently has no soft-link or file-redirect capability. Without such a capability, no files (other than the most extreme vandalism) should be deleted.
9. MediaWiki software currently has no duplicate checking-on-upload feature. Trying to address a perceived "duplicates" problem can then only exacerbate the problem by causing additional re-uploads.
10. Deleting used images causes a backlash of duplicate uploads on the hundreds of individual projects, quickly outweighing any disk space saved by initially deleting the duplicates.

Pro deleting redundant logos

1. Uniformity. All Wikimedia projects identify through the same logo.
2. Logos are cached in browser.
3. Performance. All logo-images are cached in memory on the front-most web servers. Having three (or two dozen) versions of the same image cached "costs" memory of those front-most web servers, causing less to be cached in memory, of what should be.
4. Anti-vandalism: having fewer images to rabidly protect means vandal is stopped faster.

Con deleting redundant logos

1. We have no 100% certainty that all images have been replaced.
2. Wikimediafoundation uses them.
3. Is causing multiple projects to locally host copies of logo images.
4. The reason for a given version is not always known by Commons.
5. Loss of historical record of logo development.
6. Forces use of scaled logos.
7. Offending other projects whose websites appear vandalized at the hands of Commons admins.
8. Not all Wikimedia sites use the 35 pixel scale down syntax, therefore referencing large image puts a full sized image on page instead.
9. Not all browsers cache logos.
10. deleat it

Proposed solutions

Again, I have spent several hours in communication with Paddy, and later also with Amgine (both.) I feel these were productive conversations. Several ideas presented themselves as helpful short-term and long-term solutions.

1.) Stop deleting logos

• Paddy (personally) agreed to stop deleting orphaned redundant logos for a minimum of six months.

2.) Software enhancement

• I agreed to make a formal software enhancement request for some kind of file-redirect implementation on commons. This could use a bit more discussion.

Comments

3.) Try to unify front page look

• It was a very unique experience for me tonight, to view the front pages of most of the Wiktionaries. I had no idea there is so little consistency. It would be nice if we can devise some kind of minimum bottom-of-page navigation logo scheme.

• It was also apparent that "we" do not encourage or assist the smaller wikis. The infant wiki projects are the ones that need coddling and encouragment and diaper changes and bottle feedings. I suspect that most small wiki projects would be more prolific if there were specific "encourage the little guys" kinds of drives. Once a week hold a "cleanup Estonian Wiktionary" or "reformat ku.wikibooks" type events?

4.) Placeholder image & template

• One thing that was clear, was that I, as an en.wiktionary: admin, had very few clues that the images disappearing off the main page (of en.wikt:) were not local images. Once I did realize the images were commons' images, I then had to trek into unknown territory, get lost and post (rude) requests for help in the wrong place. What would be very beneficial to someone as clueless as I, would be a way to get to commons, when a commons image is deleted.

Proposed solution for item #4

1. Replace image with some kind of small "deleted" logo; red circle with slash, red X, whatever (<2kb).
2. Add template with link to commons page where image deletion was discussed. With information where to find the new image, signiture of the admin to contact, a category deletedIn-Month.
3. Leave deleted logo in place for some amount of time (one week or one year/one month/one quarter/one decade; whatever commons decides is the right amount of time.)

Have a look at Template:Deleted Duplicate, and Image:Square and compasses.png that is the proposal for now.

That way, a wiktionary admin can just click on the silly red X icon and find themselves magically transported to commons where they have an "A-ha" moment (sooner, rather than later.)

Notes:

1. The above would be a procedural fix, implemented by commons.wikimedia.org sysops, instead of waiting for bugfix #1850 to accomplish essentially the same thing.
   • Bugzilla bug #1850 has nothing to do with "2.) Software enhancement" above.
2. I would hope the above could be procedurally implemented for all non-vandalism deletions on commons.

--Connel MacKenzie 08:15, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Comments

Wikiquote

I'm a sysop on wikiquote. Wikiquote has had its front page mutilated a couple of times by "redundant" logo removals, and I occasionally see red picture links which I assume resulted from such issues. I am strictly against any such thing, as we are soon going to disable image uploading on wikiquote and rely on commons completely. Wikiquote has 4K articles, so it's below the check-usage threshold. MosheZadka 17:44, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

FYI: Wikiquote en and de are checked. If you look on this page - all listed projects are checked by the template(s) or by hand if someone chooses 'Check all'. --Avatar 17:53, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

They're not marked to check "by default". That means someone just clicking the button will get "this picture is not used" if it's just used on en.wikiquote. If you detail an exact procedure for removing "redundant offers", we'd have something concrete to object to or approve of. MosheZadka 02:47, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I have no intention to change the default for use by hand - this tool isn't only for admin-use - and admins mostly know what they do. For removing redundant files we HAVE an "exact procedure" - using check-usage from templates like Template:Redundant - which checks all of the projects listed. --Avatar 06:23, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the information! I have updated the summary with a short explanation of the exact issue (that is, which criteria for image deletion we are talking about) since this was not discussed in the summary (and not clearly explained anywhere else, until you expanded here). I hope the addition of a clear statement (as clear as I could make it, anyway) of the issues will help move the discussion forward. MosheZadka 07:21, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I added Wiktionary en an de to check usage a few minutes ago. --Avatar 21:51, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Definition of "Redundant" on commons

Am I the only one to have noticed this? Since there's presently no interwiki checking for "what links here" from images on Commons to other Wikimedia projects with less than 10,000 pages at present, then there's no way to know if an image is 'redundant' or not, thus the entire summarization is based on flawed reasoning, and is thus bogus. It may as well say "Pro eating cake" vs. "Con eating cake". However, the premise for my argument is based on chatting to other users in IRC, and may not necessarily represent the truth. Discuss. - Aya 17:56, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

An image is redundant if it is a duplicate or thumbnail of another image here. Redundant does not imply orphan. Only redundant orphans are candidates for speedy deletion. At the moment there is no way to verify that a redundant image is really an orphan, but it's redundant either way. dbenbenn | talk 18:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I do hope that that is the case: only redundant orphan images are candidates for deletion. Yesterday, and the day before, and the week before, and the month before, that did not seem to be the case. Also, what is commons' definition of "speedy"? Not all projects make that distinction amongst deletions. --Connel MacKenzie 23:15, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

"speedy" means: "delete on sight" (after verifying the criteria for speedy deletion, of course), a normal deletion requires at least 7 days of discussion. -- Duesentrieb 21:23, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I would very much like Commons to amend their definition of redundant to reflect that "in use" means the duplicate is not "superfluous". - Amgine

Deletion warning

It would be cool to have a software feature that could "insert" a "deletion warning" logo into the image, so it is visible everywhere the image is used. This is, however, not simple for technical reasons. -- Duesentrieb 21:23, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

This is fantastic. For the logos, how much effort would it be to do such a thing manually? --Connel MacKenzie 04:50, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Has this been implemented for the lastest round of .png deletions being planned? --Connel MacKenzie 04:19, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

CheckUsage

I expect all Wikinews project to be added to check-users option. Because by the board discretion all of them rely on Commons and image uploader is disabled. Deletion flaw based on false-positive will more harmful on those project. --Aphaia 22:04, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

In principle I agree, but at the moment this should not be the default, because the script puts considerable load on the servers. I hope we soon get a server-side solution for this, which would run much more efficiently. -- Duesentrieb 00:00, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

There are currently 462 WMF project sites which have RC bots, undoubtedly others exist which also utilize the Commons repository. While it would be highly desirable to have all these sites examined by CheckUsage this could be very intensive. (Although a separate CheckUsage script reserved for maximum depth checks before deletion might be a possibility, as the occurence of "redundant" image deletions should be relatively small in number?)

Yes, please! dbenbenn | talk 18:34, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps what is needed are strict warnings about how to use this tool? Or perhaps adding a feature, where searching for "all" can only be done after a search of the largest wikis turned up nothing. Note also, that you should not be able to run a search against "all" if any of the "big" projects have hits...since their links very likely have been copied elsewhere. Also note that a single instance of an image being used somewhere, is a reason not to delete it. --Connel MacKenzie 02:45, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

This discussion brought up some interesting points, I will think about. At the moment I'm a little bit in stress because of en:Evoke, but I will at least a) add a sentence in red about not deleting a file which is found in any project b) trying to build a "check (almost) all projects"-feature but I will have to talk with Brion and think about how to call it. --Avatar 12:05, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Agreed with Connel. And I am still afraid if all commons sysops are aware of this problem. Recently I mentioned this problem on foundation-l and a certain kind guy let me know check-usage can solve the problem ...! --Aphaia 16:30, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

When I checked today, it appeared that the CheckUsage tool has been overhauled and now is somehow able to check all sites. --Connel MacKenzie 04:21, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Disputed remarks

Please, I try to gather as much information as I can in the pros and cons. I know some of you are frustrated. But let us try to stay NPOV, short and precise. If you disagree then delete the point and have a small comment why you did it in the discussion here. If you do not like the sound of it change the words according to your needs. What I am trying to do is to get a reasonable summary. If a point needs discussion please discuss and please do not change it until people agree. Discussion here and proven facts up there. And if Dbenbenn disagrees on one point please put it to disagree. Please sort it. We need this not for me, not for you, but for the future of all projects and for commons. In this case I do not want a huge discussion but a summery. I need everybody to be absolutely frank and honest. Otherwise it will not work. Always consider it is not about you but about all the projects. Please gather information from the devs and others. Quote the devs if they/you are sure that they have a point as a pro or con. No speculation in the summary please. --Paddy 00:00, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikibooks

I find this whole thing to be much ado about nothing. Really. On Wikibooks we have been fighting some rampant vandalism and at first I thought the removal of the Wikinews logo was one of those attacks, but rather benign compared to some of the really juicy images that have been showing up on the front page (due to the nature of the project and the MediaWiki savvy of the vandals). I did a little checking of it at first, and then saw the e-mail on Foundation-l (see http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-August/003841.html for the gory details)

I saw the redundant logos on Commons earlier, and I figured that eventually there was going to be some cleanup there of some sort eventually. It surprised me that it happened when it did, and even more that it got the reaction that it did. The only real complaint that I can see is that this has affected so many wikis that it was bound to raise a few eyebrows and some complaints here. --RHorning 02:04, 12 August 2005 (UTC)