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  1. Null filenames. It seems people are able to upload a file that is just an extension, i.e no descriptive file name attached to it. See here: http://www.wikihow.com/Image:.jpg . For obvious reasons, this is very annoying. I would ask the engineers to consider implementing some more filename sanitization checks. 2. OverwritingIt’s easy for people to overwrite images that are being used on existing articles. There really is no good reason to overwrite images unless you are improving the quality of the image(s) or making a different version of the same base image. In any case, people mostly ignore the warning that is given about an existing filename. The only good solution I could see here is to not allow overriding a file name via the normal insertion method in the editor, but only from a link on the image page like “Upload a new version of this file”. 3. Caching. For images that are reuploaded, it can take a very long time for the cache to be cleared. If the cache were purged only on the upload of a new version of an image, it might make for less confusion without using too many resources. Thanks! I hope you’ll consider these ideas:slight_smile:
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For the overwriting bit - I’m not a fan of it - http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Draw-a-Wolf-on-Paper&diff=9648871&oldid=9224791 – This was the most interesting. - http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Complete-Mission-1-on-Kalabesh-in-Pirate-Galaxy&diff=9714652&oldid=9293513 - http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Add-Your-John-Jay-Email-to-Your-iPhone&diff=9706858&oldid=9467436 - http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Build-a-Creature-Villa&diff=9701103&oldid=8825992 - http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Make-a-Hello-Dolly-Cake&diff=9700470&oldid=9247973 - http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Do-a-Back-Extension-Roll-to-Handstand&diff=9700095&oldid=9400607 - http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Eliminate-Mites-from-a-Pet-Hermit-Crab-Tank&diff=9699958&oldid=9660157 - http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Be-Creative-when-Playing-With-Your-Barbies&diff=prev&oldid=9696808 - http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Write-a-Welcome-Card-for-the-New-Kid&diff=9695378&oldid=9301140 - http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Make-a-Healthy-Mango%2FStrawberry-Smoothie&diff=9694475&oldid=9177078

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I like these ideas you present, @SudoKing . It’s such a shame when good content is overwritten. I think there’s a lot we could do to encourage image uploaders to name their uploads better too. Some additional ideas to further the ones you presented: we could ask users to rename their images when choosing a name if their filename is fewer than 10 characters (but not enforce this limit – just give a warning). We could encourage users to provide very descriptive names of the image content if we detect that the content has multiple digits in a row in the image (addressing the problem of uploads like IMG0852.jpg). We could remove the UI option to overwrite an image via the Easy Image Uploader or the other most common ways of uploading files. One of the issues with MediaWiki (especially with wikiHow’s changes to it) is that there are a few different ways to upload images. Does anyone know what methods of upload do people use the most? Do most of the filename problems lie with user-generated image uploads, or is this problem very common with images scraped from Wikipedia/Flickr too? I don’t know when we could work this project to make tweaks like this, but I’ll talk with Elizabeth and Jack, and maybe we can spend some time on this soon. Reuben

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From what I’ve seen personally, it’s a littlemore common dealing with the image adder tool. If an image filename is a quote, phrase, or personal statement, they will never get overwritten on wikiHow. I have no godly idea why the ratio is higher on http://www.wikihow.com/Image:.jpg , but the history looks like it. So for an example of common Flickr caption titles, Image:Love .jpg - wikiHow (which was overwritten a week ago) and Image:Heart .jpg - wikiHow , etc. As far as user generated images, if they are overwritten, about 95% of them are found to be copyrighted (from Google Images, etc).

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Another question: when you rename an existing image that’s referenced in a bunch of articles, what’s the workflow? Do you need to edit the wikitext of all the affected article by hand to reflect the new image file name? @Maluniu It definitely seems like parts of the filenames are being stripped out with those examples you gave.

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I get a “404 Not Found” if I attempt the “Move” option (on the terms of 'rename an existing image). Everything that has been done was by hand – I have to save all of the cached versions (from the date/time link list) on my hard drive, and reupload them as if I was the original creator (with a filename specific to the article affected) and then match the new filenames with the old ones to keep the image placement intact.

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The only time it is useful to rename an image when you put it into an article is when the existing image with that name is totally different. (It frequently happens to me when I search for images of fruits/vegetables/other foods. I guess “chocolate ice cream” is descriptive enough for most people, but one could be in a supermarket container and one could be in a fancy dish. That’s when I have to rename the image.)

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This is actually something different – what you’re describing is a part of the uploading process before the image is actually uploaded. The renaming issue as explained above, is when the image is already uploaded to the server thereafter.