Then you wouldn't notice of a missing image. Moreover, people adding
non-existant images will be puzzled of why it doesn't show.

You may add a new class for these images so it can be CSS hiddenable (for
anonymous users, for example) but it should show.

I agree with #1: "broken" image references must be visible, at least to editors.
But even to "readers" it may be confusing to not see the "broken" image, if the
text references it explicitely.

Generally: A Wiki is never finished, and pages in it are never perfect. If
there's something wrong with a page, fix it, don't ignore it.

As an afterthought: it would probably help if it would show on the watchlist
when an image used on a watched page gets deleted. I'm planning to add a feature
to CommonsTicker that would achieve something like this. Anyway, this would be a
separate feature request.

It would be nice to be able to see "usage history" for an image, but that would
likely be something suitable for the toolserver.

usage history is impossible to do efficiently. it would require to search the
fulltext of every revision of every article, since the image was uploaded. And
that would still miss usage through a template.

brianna.laugher wrote:

OK, I actually agree, there should be something. That doesn't mean it couldn't
be more subtle than what we have at the moment.

(In reply to comment #2)

Generally: A Wiki is never finished, and pages in it are never perfect. If
there's something wrong with a page, fix it, don't ignore it.

And do you think the current method is working, with projects screaming blue
murder at Commons for deleting images being used? Don't you agree this proposed
solution could help this problem?

robchur wrote:

People need to be able to hunt down broken image links, as with broken template
links etc.