Forum:Image problem

hi

See:
 * Forum:Banning_pony_images_from_being_uploaded_to_the_wiki
 * Forum:Personal_Images
 * Forum:Eliminating_the_upload_of_Pimp_My_Gun_Images.
 * Call of Duty Wiki:War Room/Archive1

So, after a recent argument in chat over the upload of Pimp My Gun images and pony images - an agreement was reached that both are not useful - which is why the problem is that we only banned one of them. And after that, we started focusing on renaming images in order to keep other images. Why would we do that?


 * As an encyclopedia, the images are far from useful. They do nothing but make our files an absolute mess, they're completely random, and they do absolutely nothing for the encyclopedia - and are unnecessary.
 * As a community site, the images can easily be uploaded somewhere else, such as an actual image database. We are not entitled to host these images and there is no reason they should be uploaded here for personal use.

So, it's fairly obvious that we have some sort of issue here with these images. Which is why we can either do two of these options:


 * 1) Unban PMG images from being uploaded to the wiki
 * As we banned them awhile ago due to them being useless and being an issue to rename, we left countless other categories of personal images that are also useless - and we've started image renaming projects that help us deal with this sort of thing. We're pretty much going against our own reason for removing them by still allowing all other personal images.
 * 1) Completely disallow all personal images from being uploaded to the wiki.
 * Notice "uploaded to the wiki". This won't be entirely removing them and disallowing them from the wiki, as a lot of people have made the assumption in previous forums involving this topic (see a few of the links above). The point is: we're an encyclopedia, there is absolutely no reason these images should still be uploaded here if they aren't going to benefit the wiki as an encyclopedia but will only be used for personal reasons. As for the argument "we have unlimited storage space", there is absolutely no reason we should keep these images purely because they have some use. This is exactly the same reason we removed COD:G - because there are some articles that are not beneficial to the wiki and are pretty much just extra stuff. -- 03:55, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

Sometime back we banned the uploading of PMGs seen here. The main reason of this was because they were not being licensed correctly, now that we have an image project in full swing, and most users are fully behind this I feel it's time to lift the ban, given the main reason behind the last forum was licensing, I don't see any other reasons why not to lift this ban at this time. 03:55, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

tldr That we've had this issue for a long time, and in the past we've failed to reach an actual solution. So I figure we should use either of the options above in order to finally solve it. -- 03:47, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

Discussion
No, we are not an image hosting site. I and several other users just had a long discussion about this. Instead of lifting the ban on PMG's, all personal images should be uploaded elsewhere and than posted here. They should not be uploaded to CoD Wiki. 03:28, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * That's going to be much harder to mediate. 03:34, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * In what way? *Not trying to sound rude sorry* 03:39, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * Admins will need to look out for every image that may be used for personal use, most other wikis allow personal images. Also, you may be interested in these two forums a previous attempt at removing them and The allowance of them in the first place. 03:42, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * For moderation, any images that benefit the wiki and are still used for some sort of infobox or w/e are still beneficial - and in most cases are just duplicates of an existing image. It wouldn't be that difficult to moderate. -- 03:55, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm mainly refering to every admin having to delete and warn every user about the uploading of an image that's clearly not for a mainspace page. 04:04, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * That could be just a short-term issue though, right? If we were to advertise any new changes through the sitenotice/community corner I'm sure that new/other users will get the picture over time. -- 04:08, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

PMG's aren't helping the wiki at all. When they were allowed, more and more were getting uploaded everyday. It got to the point where more PMG's where getting uploaded then pictures for mainspace articles. Just look at the forum that got them banned for reasons why they shouldn't return. Conqueror of all Zombies 03:37, June 29, 2012 (UTC) Since we're talking about allowing PMG's or not allowing all personal images, I'd go for allowing PMG's. Per what I said on the banning PMG's forum and Crazy Sam. Conqueror of all Zombies 04:06, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * At one point in time the same could be said about MLP images, the only difference is MLPs forum for banning didn't go though. Given the ammount of time that's passed, I don't think PMGs are going to be uploaded en masse as soon as this forum closes. 03:48, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

I feel like PMG might have just been a fad. I wouldn't be opposed to allowing them again, but if it gets out of hand, we'll have to ban them again. Joe Copp 03:45, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * But what separates PMG from other images that are "just a fad" that may get out of hand? Banning only certain types of images is ridiculous. -- 03:58, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

I say ban immages form being uploaded here anyway as we're an encyclopedia not an image database just upload them to like imgur or such Actually just allow PMG's though it's going to be a eye sore for me might as well

I've always been an advocate of keeping wikis clear of personal images. On Crysis Wiki, I developed a policy forbidding anything not related to Crysis (or anything the wiki needed, such as File:Replacement filing cabinet.svg; personal images are allowed, they just need to be hotlinked. While it would indeed take a long time to delete all personal images, I believe it would be to our advantage as an encyclopedia. Joe Copp 04:26, June 29, 2012 (UTC)


 * Deleting all of them is an option, but it may take a long time to do so - so I don't know if everybody will be on-board with that. -- 04:30, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Joe Copp. A wiki with no personal images is a wiki that can be more easily maintained. 04:26, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * How so? Personal images are still images, they're maintenanced in the exact same way as other images (name, license, and soon, category). 07:52, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

Arby took the words right out of my mouth. Qw3rty! 04:38, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd just like to say, in response to you and Arby, that deleting all of them that are here now is only an option if we are to disallow all personal images. They would still be uploaded to external sites, can be posted here, and will function the exact same way as now - but we won't have to deal with them anymore after that. -- 04:41, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

Disallow personal images. It's not very hard to use imgur posting sites and personal images just leads to more maintenance overall. Deleting images could be a problem, as only administrators have the ability to do so. That is, unless, we created a new user right, but we can just simply disallow the uploading of personal images. 05:21, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not necessary to delete all currently used personal images - it's merely another option if we are to go ahead and disallow them from being uploaded onto the site. -- 07:35, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

Lift the PMG ban if we want to be fair. The large majority of users do not have more than 4 personal images uploaded to the wiki. Not to mention we have a way of naming (and soon of categorising) personal images. The maintenance aspect of it is fine if we can distinguish them in this way. We shouldn't ban personal images if they're not a problem, and since PMGs will no longer stand as a problem (due to the fact most of those PMG usergroups died out anyway) it is probably worth it to re-allow them. 07:50, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we're an encyclopaedia, but what harm do personal images have? They're on personal userpages, away from the mainspace. Yes we delete unused and unneeded files from time to time to clear up space, but we have room if a user wants to add something to their page. Also certain sites can't accept the images we have, on my sandbox I currently have an .svg. By replacing personal uploads with Imgur what exactly are we changing? Userpages will still be decorated with the same images, and we have to spend time making sure people don't upload personal images, and then what if they do? Do we ban them and take away editing privileges? In short personal images are out of sight and out of mind. 08:00, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * ^. --MLGisNot4Me talk 10:55, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * He's talking about how they clutter up the filespace. 11:41, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * To me they don't seem to clutter it up that much that they should be disallowed from being uploaded here. And that's why we have plenty of custodians. --MLGisNot4Me talk 11:46, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

Granted, I use the R template for all the images on my userpage, but why do people keep making the argument that PMGs were banned? The reason PMGs were banned is that they were so badly named and licenced we banned them to remove the excessive maintenance they caused. (That and users would replace other users' PMGs with their own.) 11:41, June 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * We banned them for that reason then launched our image renaming project. PMGs weren't even banned because of that project, and we established what to do with images a while ago. I don't see it being a problem anymore. -- 22:42, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

I'm honestly fine with either solution. It's fair to reallow Pimp my Gun images, but it would not be a bad idea to disallow the uploading of personal images. At the moment, I can't decide on what would be the better choice. 14:52, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

While I think it would be nice to have a large wiki such as this without personal images, it just isn't feasible at this point. To delete all the images we've amassed so far would take a long time and lots of hard work, and it would be an unnecessary allocation of resources and effort to watch the upload of files to make sure they're not for personal use, and delete those that are. I like the system of "no personal images" on smaller wikis such as Crysis Wiki or Wikitroid, but for a wiki of this size, especially when we have almost limitless server space and it's not causing us a problem, it simply won't work.

On the matter of PMG images, it doesn't make any sense to keep them banned if the main reason we banned them in the first place was because they were poorly licensed. If it becomes a problem again, we can ban them again, but I highly doubt that as many users as before will be so obsessed with PMG, a game so old and overdone. Joe Copp 03:10, July 1, 2012 (UTC)

Comment - Just ban any images that do not contribute to the Call of Duty Wiki's function as an encyclopaedia, of which personal images definitely do not come under the banner of. There is a multitude of image hosting sites that users can use to display personal images on their userpages e.g. imageshack, imgur. Personal images are a maintenance nightmare, and are a waste of effort to deal with. If personal images were banned. We can simply place a blanket ban on any new images being uploaded, and over time, remove any existing images editors come across. 05:56, July 1, 2012 (UTC)

While I wouldn't normally mind personal images being banned, using image hosting sites is quite different than on the wiki. Sites like Imgur are known for compressing files above 1MB in size down from a .png to a .jpg (as opposed to simply compressing the file) which causes a large amount of compression artifacts to be created. A lot of these sites also do not support transparency, as again transparency adds an alpha layer which makes the file much bigger in terms of size, and sites like Imageshack are far from user-friendly. Ironically, Wikia doesn't compress images, supports transparency fully and is rather easy to upload an image to. Yes, Wikia is a better image host Imageshack. So unless you have a test wiki to upload pictures to or you're going to compress every single image you want to upload onto Imgur, you're going to get as a result worse images on userpages. (Not by much, but it's an argument against banning them anyways.) Smuff[  The cake is a lie  ]


 * I agree, we shouldn't need to force users to reduce the quality of their images just because of some unfounded fear that they cannot be maintenanced properly (which we've proven as a wiki to be untrue - we have a naming scheme, proper licensing and soon, categories).
 * On a semi-related note, I feel compelled to complement you on the example image you used there. Brilliant. 13:53, July 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, on the note about maintenance. Where has this sudden fear of all personal images come from? We got rid of PMGs, because there were obvious complications, we got rid of "images I uploaded", because there were complications, but when it comes to personal images I've seen no complaints prior to this, in fact it's popped up as soon as we were about to start maintaining personal files better. 14:05, July 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * So what's the point of R then? That template was used exactly for this reason. And, as an encyclopedia - we don't even need to care about personal images on userpages if they were uploaded somewhere else - so I don't see how that's something we should be concerned about. -- 01:48, July 7, 2012 (UTC)

Just something I'd like to point out, there are tons of PMG images that were renamed just to have the PMG tag on them, but weren't even replaced on the page it was on. It then shows up as unused, gets deleted and its name gets put on Special:WantedFiles. Once PMGs start becoming a trend again (and I hope it won't) this may start happening again and WantedFiles will get clogged up (again). Just something to consider... 14:59, July 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * We have a project running about this exact issue. If this does happen again then clearly the custodians we've chosen weren't choseen very well. 19:49, July 1, 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, "Problem"..? *Snort snort* 20:00, July 1, 2012 (UTC)

Next stage
It seems like most agree that banning all personal images would be a hassle to everyone, and that it's not a road we should go down. I want to be clear on whether the community feels solidly this way, because then we can discuss the PMGs. Joe Copp 16:18, July 2, 2012 (UTC)


 * Vote time? Conqueror of all Zombies (talk) 04:00, July 3, 2012 (UTC)

We should probably clean up the PMGs from last time by clearing red links and stuff before we start allowing PMGs again. That way we start out fresh. 14:57, July 3, 2012 (UTC)
 * Good idea. Joe Copp 14:58, July 3, 2012 (UTC)

There's a Pimp My Gun wiki that is specialized in PMG uploads, could users not just use that and then use the R template? 12:31, July 5, 2012 (UTC)
 * They could have done that for a long time. PMGs are banned from being uploaded, not placed via R. 12:39, July 5, 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, but while there isn't a personal images wiki, there is a PMG wiki. I'm not sure if the interest in PMGs is still here at the wiki, if it's not then there's no real point reversing the ban. 12:58, July 5, 2012 (UTC)
 * If there isn't a huge interest it would be stupid to keep the ban in place. If one user wanted to upload one or two properly licensed PMGs, it wouldn't be morally correct to say they couldn't just because we were too lazy to change the policy. Joe Copp 01:12, July 6, 2012 (UTC)
 * We could make a wiki specifically for uploading personal images to. Could we not just use that and use R? -- 10:13, July 6, 2012 (UTC)

Honestly, just unban them. They aren't as big of a problem as they used to be, and now a lot more users properly license them.
 * Exactly, they're not a big problem because they're banned. 10:14, July 6, 2012 (UTC)
 * What I meant was that there aren't a lot of new users uploading them, the fad seems to have died down. 02:23, July 7, 2012 (UTC)
 * Because they're banned? 14:13, July 8, 2012 (UTC)
 * Most new users do not know that rule. 14:42, July 8, 2012 (UTC)
 * The PMG fad has died down severely now due to other bandwagons. And we created a proper solution to dealing with images /after/ we banned them. MLP images, for example, were proposed to be banned pretty much for the same reason as PMGs - and that forum resulted in image-related projects and an increase in image-maintenance. I don't see why we need to ban specific off-topic images when we have a surplus of users who spend their time with images. Or, you know, we could just ban all off-topic images and have our users focus on other things while gradually deleting/replacing what's left of them. -- 15:26, July 9, 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with you on the PMG side of banning personal images. It doesn't make much sense to keep them banned. Joe Copp 20:02, July 9, 2012 (UTC)
 * With the PMG fad died down severely, it seems that the PMGs won't be much of a hassle otherwise, I don't see much harm in bringing them back at this rate. 20:17, July 9, 2012 (UTC)

What if PMGs that are uploaded wouldn't be deleted only if they're properly named and licensed? --MLGisNot4Me talk 12:01, July 6, 2012 (UTC)
 * That could turn out well. However, all this hinges on users still wanting to upload PMGs. Joe Copp 18:49, July 6, 2012 (UTC)
 * Or if the vast majority of users will even bother to do it.18:55, July 6, 2012 (UTC)

First off, we have been doing this for months and not a single problem has happened (if there was name a couple please, since I have only been here for 4 months), we have infinite storage, and personal images are just for fun, since we are not all adults, and most of us are teenagers or even kids, we should at least have fun and not look completely professional, look at 4chan. Uploading them via another location and then posting them could be a problem also. Second, PMGs were also just for fun, except licensing made it nearly impossible for it to work. MLP images are ALL licensed (except a few) and even so, it's not so much of a big deal, since we have 24/7 maitnance. We are all young men and women hanging out on a fan-based wiki, not a corporate buisness in New York City. 00:22, July 7, 2012 (UTC)
 * As I've stated multiple times in previous forums about this issue: just because we have unlimited storage space doesn't mean we can put whatever on the wiki. If we were to not care due to unlimited storage - we'd go ahead and bring COD:G into effect. We removed COD:G just because it was a waste to have an article on /everything/, and it's a waste to have images that don't benefit the wiki at all. The reason MLP images are all licensed is because we launched our image maintenance projects after we banned PMG images - and, in fact, MLP images were also thrown on the table to be banned due to them not being maintained and turning Special:NewFiles into a mess. As for uploading them somewhere else - we could just as easily use an external wiki for personal images, otherwise we have R for this reason. I'd like you to realize that the wiki is not a pub or anything other place to "hang out", it's an encyclopedia that is supposed to be supported by a community. The encyclopedia should always be our main focus. -- 01:59, July 7, 2012 (UTC)


 * Okay, I guess we can move them to a externel. But still, this is a FAN-BASE wiki, and not a corporate buisness. I just think we should let them keep it. But having it external is not a problem for me. 04:15, July 7, 2012 (UTC)
 * We're fan-based pretty much because the wiki isn't supported/funded by Activision, and is maintained only by fans of the series. Disallowing the upload of personal images wouldn't be deterring any fans from editing. -- 14:52, July 7, 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay. I just want personal images to stay the way they are. However, i do think PMGs should stay banned. 16:02, July 7, 2012 (UTC)
 * http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/callofduty4s/images/c/cc/Emoticon_Seriously_meme.png Why? What makes PMG an issue compared to other images? -- 04:41, July 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * ^ Joe Copp 06:24, July 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing as PMG where uploaded so fastly and the quantity on how much was being produced is why he feels PMG is an issue instead of the other images.12:12, July 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * That was when we had a few PMG usergroups and it was a "thing". If we re-allow them, we don't even need to make it known, we can keep it silent to stop a huge influx of PMG images. -- 16:35, July 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * Since that is an option, should we move to voting to see if unbanning the PMG would be a good option?18:21, July 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * I think yes. --MLGisNot4Me talk 11:08, July 11, 2012 (UTC)