Board Thread:Technical Updates/@comment-26339491-20191203204132/@comment-3403151-20191207140027

Ah, I had been wondering why people were complaining of downloaded images being broken.

Exactly how are anon users supposed to be able to download the original version of the file?

If they click "See full size image", they aren't taken to "&format=original", they are taken to your shitty webp version, which saves as a .jpg or .png, and they are told it is corrupt if they try to open it on their computer.

'''Here's an idea: when you display an image recompressed as a webp, simply don't LIE about what type of file it is. It you're going to convert it to webp, then show .webp instead of .jpg!'''

Mira Laime wrote:

[...]we tested file page redirects for several weeks[...]

[...]we found no negative consequences[...]

Several weeks? In less than 1 week, someone told me an image they downloaded was corrupted.

Now that I know what is going on, I've thought about this for several minutes, and come up with a list of negative consequences.


 * Anon users have no convenient way to download a usable image.
 * Anon users have no convenient way to download the original image.
 * Anon users have no convenient way to see the page history.
 * Anon users have no convenient way to see the file upload history.
 * Anon users cannot see previous file versions at all.
 * Anon users have no convenient way to see where else a file is used.
 * Anon users have no convenient way to access the file talk page.
 * Anon users have no convenient way to add a delete template to a file page.
 * When redirected to an article after clicking a used file, there is no indication that a redirect has taken place, no "redirected from file". An anon user will have no idea why they were taken to that page, and will think they clicked the wrong link.
 * When redirected to an article after clicking a used image, there is no lightbox displayed, and the user has to hunt through the page to find the image they were looking for.
 * If an image is formatted in the article as Image.jpg, (EDIT: and is only used in that 1 article) then clicking that link just refreshes the article, and does not show the lightbox, so the anon user has no convenient way to see a larger version of the image. (Edit: if the image linked that way is used in multiple articles, then it will take them directly to the other article instead of opening the lightbox)

This may be the first time I've agreed with something Andrewds1021 has said, but simply allowing "?redirect=no", and using it in a "see file page" link in the lightbox, would fix the majority of these. (And if you don't want Google to index the "?redirect=no" File page, there's "noindex, nofollow" to do that.)

The other 2 can be fixed by ALWAYS showing the lightbox popup when redirected, and not only for unused images.

edit: And exactly how the FLYING EXPLETIVE are anon users supposed to view/download PDFs now?

Or did you forget AGAIN that other files exist which are not images?

Edit: Also: File:Anon_users_CAN_see_the_image_licence.png

edit:

I think I've figured out what is going on, and why Wikia Staff are making this change, which is fundamentally against the principles of wikis.

This is step 1 in their "path to Lucy".

First, they are going to desensitise anons - the silent majority - into the concept that they do not have access to page history and large images.

A later step will probably involve a complete shift to the kind of images used in Discussions: No file pages, no history, nothing.

Experiments like Venus and Lucy show us exactly what Wikia WANT.

Everyone was vocally against Venus, and they scrapped it, but then slowly added in multiple elements over time. They were less public with Lucy, but people were still vocally against it. But why wouldn't they follow the same pattern with Lucy and implement it piece by piece?