Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-1739368-20131220095711/@comment-188432-20131228163938

I would advise caution on using Special:UnusedFiles as your basis for deletion. There are several false positives on that list. For instance, file:favicon.ico usually appears on Special:UnusedFiles, unless someone has linked to it in a discussion about the file. File:Wiki-background is also often marked as not appearing on any page. And any image called through CSS will also appear on Special:UnusedFiles.

Put another way, Special:UnusedFiles is not truly a lat of unused files, but a list of files that are not called in this format:.

Additionally, images end up on the unused list for all sorts of reasons. User:Johnny could think that User:Sally's infobox picture of a character named Bob isn't their favourite. So Johnny switches out the pic, leaving Sally's perfectly good picture on the unused list. That doesn't mean that the picture is in any sense something you want to throw away. Sally could have added an appropriate license and cropped it beautifully. Johnny's pic could actually be a horrible, out-of-focus mess without a license. And because you're using a policy that says, "Delete everything on the unused list", you'll sweep away some good images.

I recommend you revise your policy. You should think in terms of creating image libraries. Save the good pictures and ditch the bad. Deletion needs to be done, in my view, on the basis of two simple criteria: whether the image is licensed, and whether the image is any good.

In my view, people mistakenly think that because there's a report generated by the software, it implies that the report is giving you a call to action. For instance, just cause there's Special:WithoutInterwiki doesn't mean there's anything you might be able to do about reducing the number of members on that list. Just because a page appears on Special:FewestRevisions doesn't mean that a page on that list could actually be improved by more revisions.

Equally, just because there is a report on unused files doesn't mean it's bad to have unused files. It harms absolutely nothing to have unused images on your site.