Last modified: 2006-04-29 22:01:43 UTC
Often people transfer an image from a local Wikimedia wiki to Wikimedia Commons that has been deleted previous in Wikimedia Commons due to copyright problems. Thus around 30% of all worked up deletions need to be repeated at least one time (very often even three times and more). This causes quite some maintenance overhead for the very tiny group of active Wikimedia Commons maintainers and of course also frustration on all sides. Most of the uploaders that did reupload an already deleted image are not malicious but simply were not aware of the problems with that file (eg. because the file was wrongly tagged PD in the local project) and of course copyright and proper free licensing is no easy matter. So if uploaders get a small warning at upload of an already deleted file they would be alerted of the problem and would stop uploading it. So it would be very helpful for Wikimedia Commons (not to mention the reduction of frustration on all sides because less files need to be deleted then) if there would be an additional warning with cancel and continue button (like the messages when overwriting existing files and so forth) in case someone does upload an already deleted image. This is technically possible as the image page does not really get deleted but is just made invisible for average users. So it would be technically possible checking at image upload in MediaWiki with a simple SQL query if an "deleted" image page with the same name as the file you want to upload exists and give a warning in case there are identical names (customizable warning like all other interface strings and pages via a MediaWiki:-page). Of course this solution would as well helpful for all other public MediaWiki installations that allow image upload.
Added in SVN trunk, r13941.
