Last modified: 2014-11-09 16:38:47 UTC
$wgUseInstantCommons protocol appears to be relative according to this bugfix: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32219 However, in some countries (like Syria) Wikimedia Commons is blocked if you're using http, so if you're on another wiki that doesn't have ssl, you'll not be able to see any image form the commons, which is really odd. I think that $wgUseInstantCommons should always use https, I tried to use $wgForeignFileRepos code here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgUseInstantCommons and changed the apibase to use https and everything worked just fine, it'll be better if just the easy $wgUseInstantCommons use https always. Thanks.
Better is subjective. Some people cannot use HTTPS. There's a lovely discussion of this going on for WMF projects. See https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/08/01/future-https-wikimedia-projects/