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Preventing filename conflicts when new images are uploaded
For some reason, at least ten new users have at various times uploaded pictures of themselves, probably to illustrate their individual user pages. Unfortunately, they all chose the same rather unimaginative filename "File:Me.jpg". Check it out here: [[1]], taking care to scroll down to see all the replaced images. It's not a pretty sight.
Naturally, each new user's image overwrites a previous user's image. Sometimes a user will notice this and re-upload her or his own image, again with the name "Me.jpg." I visited the user page of an owner of one of the replaced "Me.jpg" images (Matthew Brown, Msb334) and could see that his earlier user page is now illustrated with an image of Philip Van Der Mude, currently the latest person to have uploaded and named his image like this.
I think this chaos could be prevented if the upload system could do two things:
- Give a strong warning/encouragement to choose a unique name, emphasizing that if this is a user page picture, it would be best to name it either with the first and last real name of the user or with the username that they chose on joining Appropedia.
- Prevent a new file from overwriting a previous file UNLESS the file to be replaced had been uploaded by the same user.
Objectivesea 17:22, 26 August 2012 (PDT)