1

Hey, All,

So, we’ve all had the pleasure  of going through and uploading images to wikiHow to use on articles. Now, for someone like me, who uses tools like mac2imgur, Gyazo, Lightshot or ShareX may find that the process of capturing the screenshot, having it automatically uploaded to a site, going to the site, downloading the image, going to wikiHow.com/Special:Upload , uploading the image then pasting the image code to the article, it’s quite annoying how you can’t link to off-site images. That’s basically my suggestion.

Make a change to the way that MediaWiki works with the WikiText allowing images from off-site to be displayed on the site. It could be that only certain sites could be linked to (like Gyazo or Imgur). Not only would this save time for many, but it also relieves some stress on wikiHow’s servers, meaning that less storage is needed. By no way is this a replacement for Special:Upload, but it’d be a simple extension.

Simple lol

2

I think we’d have some major copyright concerns if this was possible, unfortunately. Also, from my limited understanding of MediaWiki, I think this would be a huge undertaking to try to fix something that isn’t really broken. (Even though I know it’s several steps to get from screenshot to image in the article.) ;p

3

That would be useful but at the same time I have to agree with Eric.

4

Maybe Boosters and Administrators would be able to add image links to an exclusion list if they’re copyrighted? And, yeah, I guess this would be a large change to MediaWiki (idk), but maybe if it’s just on the sideburner or for a summer intern?

5

I agree with Eric that we’d likely run into some big copyright issues with any outside-based image system, as well as increased trolling/spamming/vandalism/etc (remember, you can only upload images to wikiHow with an account, largely for that reason). There’d also be the potential issue of dead links and broken images we couldn’t detect from within our platform (the way we detect and fix broken image links currently). 

The existing system has served us pretty well for a long time, and has seen many improvements over the years, so even if it weren’t a huge undertaking (which it would be, I’m guessing!)… my hunch is our best bet is to continue on the track of what’s been working here, even if it means having to upload through wH:slight_smile:

6

Mmmmmm I guess so. Maybe if there was a change made to the system so you could upload more then one file at a time? 

7

Once upon a time, there used to be a multiple image uploader, but it was rarely used, hard to maintain, and eventually MediaWiki stopped supporting that particular tool. More relevantly now, with the to-do list our engineering team has on its plate, I don’t see it being feasible to make big changes to the system here at this stage. The current system is working well for most cases, and any big change would be resource-intensive both to build and to maintain. Never say never, but this isn’t on the engineering radar right now.

8

Fair enough. Thanks, though:slight_smile:

9

Sure thing - Thanks for understanding! I wish we could build every neat idea that came up… but the prioritization juggle is always a tough one, on top of factoring in potential downsides and all that jazz. Just rest assured there’s a method to the madness of how these features evolve:slight_smile:

10

I came across the message on https://www.wikihow.com/Special:MultipleUpload in the past, but I don’t believe the proposed feature is necessary at this time.