I guess it's related to [1] in some way?

References

• [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Standardized_thumbnails_sizes

This should be handled through the RFC process, not via a bug request :-)

During the Amsterdam hackaton, we have agreed to review the list of pending RFC to cleanup / assign priorities to them. Hopefully the Standardized Thumbnails Size will receive some focus and have some team "in charge".

(In reply to comment #1)

I guess it's related to [1] in some way?

References

• [1]

<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/
Standardized_thumbnails_sizes>

Related but not identical. The bug request is about the site request "increasing the default thumbnail size" rather than a solution to the caching problems, CPU usage, etc. Though it seems the caching issues etc. have to be solved first.

• Bug 67709 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Marco, this request is old and was overlooked, it seems, when this newer request was filed here:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67703
"Change default thumbnail size to 300px based on user behavior"

Would a change to 300px be sufficient for closing this bug as well?

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Time_for_the_semi-annual_enlarging_of_thumbnail_images

Shouldn't this apply to all MediaWiki installations if implemented, meaning not only to Wikimedia projects?

I think that is the ultimate plan, yes

(In reply to Vogone from comment #7)

Shouldn't this apply to all MediaWiki installations if implemented, meaning
not only to Wikimedia projects?

Bug 67703 is the bug for making the change to the default settings of MediaWiki itself, as opposed to the WMF cluster of wikis.

JamesF logged that bug and it got closed as a duplicate of this one. But yes the goal is that it affect wikimedia wikis and or the default on mediaeiki as well

(In reply to Jared Zimmerman (WMF) from comment #10)

JamesF logged that bug and it got closed as a duplicate of this one.

Whoops. I'll reopen.

Why is bug 67709 not a duplicate? There are two separate issues here:

• this bug (and bug 67709) - increase thumb size on WMF cluster
• bug 67703 - increase thumb size for MediaWiki

Let's make this a tracking bug for increasing size and bug 67709 a request for particular size (300px). That's going to be less messy than duping them.

In T155892#2997519, @Quiddity gave an insightful, comprehensive statement of the connected challenges:

This is a very complex topic, that was last addressed as a whole (AFAIK) in ~2014.
IIUC (I am not a developer), the performance issue, is that if any large wiki (or many small wikis) request custom sizes, then

• (A) the thumbnail-generating machines will have to work harder (and might run into hardware limitations, and thus slow responses) - This is especially a problem for the busiest wikis, because if we change the default then it will take hundreds of hours to generate new thumbnails, yet they'll be needed instantaneously. The devs want to pre-emptively generate the desired sizes, en-masse, once we firmly decide on a size.
• (B) the thumbnail storage/caching requirements will rapidly increase (but not in a way that benefits all Wikimedia users). I.e. If XXwiki requests 260 and YYwiki requests 250 and ZZwiki requests 270, then the storage requirements will more than triple.

Hence, T51357: Increase WMF cluster default image thumb size is the main task,
with further details & discussion in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Standardized_thumbnails_sizes and related tasks (including debate/research of the optimal set of sizes).

We (everyone) want to determine one optimal solution (i.e. one set of available sizes, and one new global wikimedia-default) that works best for the largest number of users (low-bandwidth/high-bandwidth, small-screen/large-screen), whilst remaining feasible given the software/hardware limitations (the more options there are, the more complex everything becomes), and also whilst looking ahead to changes in the near-future or recent-past (e.g. HiDPI) so that we don't have to change our decision within a couple of years.

There are several sizes in use, and 250 px (as the nowiki community want) is one of the existing choices for logged in people. If someone chose one of those choices the thumbs will be generated for visited pages. Hence, when a community start to change to a larger thumbsize the thumbs will be resized anyhow.

A proper solution would be to set the default size according to what the users that has set their thumbsize, as that will reflect the most common screen sizes for the project. I wonder if the screen size would actually be different between geographic areas, even areas pretty close to each other.