Author: arnomane

Description:
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.

Version: 1.6.x
Severity: normal
OS: Linux