User blog:SamwiseFilmore/Wiki Images

As many of you have noticed, we have a bit of a problem with images on the wiki right now. We have more than 8,000 images uploaded right now, and most of them are useless crud that are located on the forums. I'd like to delete, rename, and replace as many images as possible in the span of one week. I'm going to lay forth a plan to do this below:

Human Resources
8,000 images are not going to delete, move, or rename themselves. We are going to need a huge amount of manpower. We'll conscript all our admin team, and all moderators, but we need more. I propose that we promote 10-15 more content mods for the space of a week, and have a massive push to standardize our image collection. These people would have to be approved, I'll include an application template below. We will use our past knowledge of you as much as filling out the form. Apply in the comments here, or on an Admin message wall. The work won't be straitforward, and it will be long, so you need to think about whether or not you can have enough time to help out in a big way. I'll explain the work below.

Application form (assuming you are posting from your account):
 * Amount of time you plan to be on during your week of promotion.
 * Your understanding of how images, files, filesystems, etc. work on the wiki, having read as much as you can on the topic if you need to. No prior knowledge is necessary, but you need to understand quite well in order to be allowed to help out.
 * Staff position on the wiki.
 * Why you want to help.

Current Image Standards
We have a number of current image standards listed on the Wiki Style Guide. I'll reiterate them here for convenience, and add a few more specific to the cleanout.


 * No Screenshot time date format for names. Any image that has this format needs to be changed. No redirects, just to keep clean and tidy, but when called in page code, these files need to use an English name, not just date.
 * Item Images must be scaled without blurring, turned into a 1 second spaced GIF if necessary, and uploaded with a descriptive name. All the scaled mod assets, kept up to date, can be found on my dropbox, via a link on the wiki style guide.
 * Names should be descriptive of the content of the image.
 * Mob images should be backgroundless, like most of what is used now. They make very nice infobox images. Any images that aren't backgroundless but are still up-to-date can be moved on to the main body of the page.
 * No texture packs. Images currently used are pretty good about this, though there are a few. Remove them, and either retake them or mark them with NewImageNeeded for later.
 * No shaders or graphical mods that make blocks look any different than with just LOTR. Optifine is alright, so long as grass blocks don't have grass on the sides as well.
 * No GUI. If you show your hotbar, compass, alignment bar, damage indicators, minimap, or anything else, the picture should not be used. Use F1 to take screenshots.
 * Graphics settings. We link to see fancy graphics, smooth lighting, and a render of 8 or more (16 if possible) when taking screenshots. Minimap levels and Aniostroic filtering should be set to max.
 * Upload new versions of files, if updating, not a whole new file with a different name. This keeps a good change record.

Cleanout standards
Here is another list of things that has to be adhered to during the cleanout, to make sure things are nicely organized.
 * Forum Pictures. If an image is only used on a forum thread, then it can be deleted. Just delete the image, staff can clean out the redlinks later. If you have those privileges, please remove the redlink/image as well, to keep neat. If the thread has not been dead more than a month, don't remove the image.
 * Crafting Images. All crafting images should be named as follows: Craft_(item name).png The item name should be appropriately hyphenated if necessary, and spelled correctly, according to the wiki style guide. Anything else on the image name should be removed. Redirects aren't picky.
 * Mob Infobox images: (mob name).png Fairly straitforward. This is according to it's in-game name.
 * Item Icons: (item name).png
 * Equipment/Other Item gifs: (equipment set name).png Or a name that accurately describes the content of the gif fairly concisely.
 * Other images, in general, should be fairly standard in naming scheme. The rule is to try and keep images that appear on pages with fairly short descriptive names.
 * Duplicates should be merged into one file, either by deleting the lower quality image, or by updating the lower quality image with a copy of the higher quality image and then removing the old file of the higher quality image, thus keeping a nice change record.
 * Block images: (block name).png With these, we'd like to have rendered GIF's, but a cropped screenshot or layout is fine as well. We're still working on the renders problem.
 * File extensions. Many times I notice files that have their extension GIF or PNG instead of gif or png. Since the lower case is more commonly used, and since the wiki sees these things as two separate filetypes, we want to standardize. Just rename and use the appropriate file extension.

Timing
The plan is for this to go on for a fairly short period of time, ideally, a week, so that we can get the work done, but short enough to keep all the effort concentrated. I won't announce the start time until we've received enough applications for helpers, and seen how the idea is received and worked out all the kinks.

As you may have noticed, this is a long blog, so I may have missed something. Let me know what needs to be added/explained better, and if you aren't already a content mod/admin, post your application below. Promotions will be rolled back after the wee is over, and will not give you any guarantee of a permanent staff position.

 SamwiseFilmore (Admin) (Fill My Mailbox)