This has been a problem on Wikinfo. We have set a limit of 200kb for images
(Wikipedia has a 2mb limit). Some images simply can't be used but reducing
the size and generally using thumbs produces difficulties in formatting
which have to be corrected by hand which is quite laborious. A Wikipedia
solution would have to be expressed as policy and have general support among
editors.
Fred
From: "John R. Owens"
<jowens.wiki(a)ghiapet.homeip.net>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
Date: Sun, 22 May 2005 16:11:26 -0500
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article size consistency 32k
Geoff Burling wrote:
<snip>
Download times are a very off-putting experience
whenever one deals with
the Web, & very few web developers bother to optimize for speed -- or
even consider it a problem. Google is an amazing -- & very rare exception.
(I've had this discussion with a web designer friend several times, who
at least understands this issue -- although he's still a bit hobbled
with the "I want them to see the site how I choose, not how they may want
to choose" attitude.)
And turning images off is not the solution. Much of the time, I want to
see some of the images in an article, such as a map, or specific
photographs of a person or a place; I'm not interested seeing in every
known image with the proper license that could be related to the
subject. Which is why I mentioned commons: not only does it support a
competition for the best images in a given category by allowing a
practically unlimited number of images to be uploaded, it does not
require the losers to be deleted because they are unused -- & allows
them to be available to compete in other categories.
I don't know if this might have ever been suggested before already, but
perhaps a change in software could allow us to set a maximum image size
in our user preferences? Either in width/height, e.g. "always shrink
images to less than 200 pixels wide or 150 pixels high, whichever is
smaller", or in kB, e.g. "always shrink images to less than 10 kB".
There should probably be a limited number of selections, so that the
images could be cached the same way they are for regular thumbnailing.
And of course, you probably wouldn't want the rule applied to Image:
namespace pages.
How hard would this be to implement, and would it strain the servers
much to have to serve up even more different-size versions of the same
picture?
It seems to me it could certainly speed up the page loads for those on
<56kb/s connections. But then again, you might also end up with weird
formatting, when the author/editor inserting into a page doesn't know
how large the image ends up being displayed.
--
John R. Owens
ProofReading Markup Language :
http://prml.sourceforge.net/
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