[WikiEN-l] Vandalism concerns with commons images

Tue Sep 13 14:52:04 UTC 2005

>Any failures to gain commons adminship probably has more to do with
>the attitude of those applying then any general policy (I note that
>you failed in your application, uninvited).

>It is not unreasonable to reject adminship requests made by those who
>have no interest in the well-being of the project. I was recently
>voted an admin unopposed despite having no uploads and very few edits
>- but I have actively fought image vandalism there.

>Quite a number of other en.wp admins have also succeeded - because
>they did not simply "demand" adminship because they already have it
>elsewhere, but because they demonstrated that they care about the
>Commons.

I did not "demand" adminship on the commons.  I asked politely and was
turned down, based on my lack of involvement at commons.  Commons has
its own wikipolitics, which should be unsurprising.  The "official"
criteria is 100 uploads or other edits.  Sometimes this is enforced,
sometimes not.  As is the case on en, commons adminship requirements
appear to have become more demanding with time.

The point is that vandalism on commons affects en.wikipedia, and such
vandalism is likely to become a growing problem as more images get
migrated.  For technical reasons alone it is harder for en admins to
track such vandalism, because it does not appear in recentchanges on
en, or in the "related changes" pages.  The fact that vandalism, once
identified, cannot be properly addressed by en. admins (at least in
cases where page protection or a block is appropriate), makes matters
even more difficult.

If commons is a completely independent of en.wikipedia, perhaps we
should reconsider our present drive to move images to commons.  I don't
think that would be wise.  The original intent of commons was to create
a project that would serve all wikipedias rather than to create a
freestanding media archive unrelated to any of them.