[Foundation-l] The Mediawiki 1.18 image rotation bug on Commons and on all Wikimedia projects

Mon Dec 12 18:18:23 UTC 2011

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 7:55 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> * How many existing uploads, used on the wikis, were previously
> wrongly rotated and were fixed by the feature?
> * How many existing uploads, used on the wikis, were previously
> correctly rotated and were messed up by the feature?

As far as I understand the issue, and others can jump and correct me
if I'm getting it wrong:

Technically, nothing was "messed up" by the feature. Rather, the
software previously did not take EXIF rotation into account, and some
images had incorrect EXIF rotation information to begin with. Those
images are now shown in an incorrect rotation to the user, because the
incorrect EXIF rotation info is being evaluated.

It's important to understand this, because it means that those images
have been causing problems for re-users all along. If you open those
images with modern image editing/viewing software, they will either be
automatically rotated, or you'll be prompted by the software whether
to apply the rotation noted in the EXIF tag.

The situation has been significantly exacerbated by a recent need to
purge old thumbnails to free up diskspace.

So, while the cleanup that's happening now is very frustrating (and I
definitely agree we could have anticipated and communicated this
better), it's a cleanup that's long overdue. (Either by stripping EXIF
info from files altogether, or by ensuring that the rotation of the
image matches the one in the metadata.)

Is there more that we can do at the present time to help?

Thanks,
Erik
-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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