Forum:Upload revamp

I discussed this with Pi a few weeks ago, but I only did a half-assed job back then (making the upload link in the toolbox preload Template:Information, which some people, and adding a link to upload your own work that fills in some of the parameters, which noone noticed).

So now I made this, which was heavily inspired by Wikipedia's upload form. The idea is that the upload link in the toolbox would lead you to RationalWiki:Upload, which would contain the topmost table on my sandbox. This contains links to 4 different upload forms with different instructions at the top (instead of MediaWiki:Uploadtext) and different preloaded templates, list of selectable licenses etc. The links already work, except the instructions are the default mediawiki instructions.

The rest of my sandbox (the uploadtext section) contains replacements for MediaWiki:Uploadtext. User:Nx/sandbox is for the normal upload form and when you click Other. The other three are specific to one kind of file (own work, free media, fair use).

Also, MediaWiki:Upload (the text of the toolbar link) should be "Upload file", not "Upload image".

tl; dr: Make upload link in toolbox go to special page that gives you four links to different upload forms with different instructions and options.

What does the mob say?

Note: Improvements are welcome. You may edit my sandbox, especially if it's grammar/spelling. -- Nx  / talk 22:00, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Been watching you for a while & I like it.  22:03, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Interesting. 23:03, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * So, do we need to wait for more people to chime in, or can I go ahead? -- Nx  / talk 23:10, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks good. Can we have more information about fair use on the fair use upload screen? 23:28, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I copied some stuff from Fair use. Anyone wanting to improve it is free to do so. -- Nx  / talk 00:18, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think we should wait until after the hols when more people are around, and post a quick note for people to look at it and chime in. The only downside I see to it is the one extra click along the way to uploading.  There seem to be many upsides - one is mostly semantic, in that it explains what can be uploaded far better; another is the more fine-tuned "choose a license" process, also the partial automation of the "file details" template (whatever it's called).  How about adding some sort of automatic category-adding box as well?  00:24, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, if you look at Commons, they have a very nifty javascript-powered upload form. I copied the preview button from them. They also have hotcat integrated into the form. But porting that would probably be a lot of work, so I justified being lazy with the fact that you can't add categories with hotcat when you're creating a new article either. -- Nx  / talk 00:35, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe later? The reason I ask is we tend to forget to add cats to files when uploading.  Perhaps after this new version gets up and running we can have a special version of hotcat built that only pulls up file-related cats... Oh, and, um, you bring up another good idea, adding hotcat or something similar to the article creation page, and perhaps to mainspace edit screens...  00:48, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Hotcat doesn't know which categories are file-related. -- Nx  / talk 00:56, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I know, but we could teach it. For instance, we could put all the image/file cats in one master "files" category.  Or build a database of all categories that have words like "image" in their names?  01:24, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The category approach would be best (i.e. categorize all file-related categories in one special, hidden category; and it has to be flat, i.e. subcategories have to be categorized even if their parent is already), but it would require invasive surgery on hotcat. -- Nx  / talk 10:48, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I've done everything except replacing MediaWiki:Uploadtext and changing the toolbox link. This is your final chance to complain. Anyone can edit RationalWiki:Upload and bureaucrats can edit the upload messages (we can also move them out of the MediaWiki namespace to allow anyone to edit them), but only Trent and I can change the upload link in the toolbox. -- Nx  / talk 14:14, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Go ahead. Looks fine to me. 14:37, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, it's done. -- Nx  / talk 08:08, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Link name
""Upload file", not "Upload image"" That's funny, I was thinking that before coming here again. And I just realized that Nx can't edit it, right? So I fixed it. 00:05, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I took my powers back to be able to work on the forum/some other stuff. -- Nx  / talk 00:16, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

More wrong mediawiki messages
MediaWiki:Nolinkstoimage says "There are no pages that link to this file." This is wrong, because there might be pages that link to a file, but don't embed it. I propose we change it to something like:

There are no pages that embed this file. There may be pages that link to this file without embedding it.

MediaWiki:Imagelinks (the section header that says "File links" on File pages) is also wrong, because it only lists embeds, not all links, so it should be something like "Pages that embed this file" or "Pages that use this file" -- Nx  / talk 20:17, 1 January 2010 (UTC)


 * How about changing "embed" to "embed (or display)", more clearer to noobs to the jargon? Otherwise, yeah, I agree. 21:42, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I was thinking "use", but that raises the philosophical question of whether linking to an image is using it. -- Nx  / talk 21:45, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Same problem with MediaWiki:Linkstoimage and MediaWiki:Linkstoimage-more, although the latter has a link to whatlinkshere -- Nx  / talk 20:27, 1 January 2010 (UTC)


 * So is there still a "todo list" on this project of MW messages that need to be improved/rewritten, or did you fix them all? 00:49, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I did not change the ones in this section. -- Nx  / talk 07:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I did the first two, using your suggested changes. 02:16, 7 January 2010 (UTC)