Re: Standardisation of thumbnail sizes
Sam Wilson via Wikitech-l <[email protected]> Sun, 25 Jan 2026 13:02:33 +0800
| Newsgroups | gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Looks great, thanks! On 25/1/26 12:32, Travis Briggs wrote: > Added an "FAQ" section to that article. How does it look now? > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Common_thumbnail_sizes > > Cheers, > -Travis > > On Fri, Jan 23, 2026 at 10:38 PM Sam Wilson via Wikitech-l > <[email protected]> wrote: > > This is great, and I'm sure many 3rd party installs will be glad > of it too (to reduce their thumb storage requirements). > > A couple of times lately I've had the "429 Use thumbnail steps > listed on https://w.wiki/GHai" message, and because I'm a bit slow > on the uptake I went looking for the steps to follow to get > thumbnails. Has anyone else been confused by this? If it's just > me, ignore this, but perhaps we could update the message to say > "Use the values of $wgThumbnailSteps listed on…" instead. > > > On 24/1/26 02:27, Amir Sarabadani via Wikitech-l wrote: >> Thumbnails shown on-wiki are already quantized to a set of >> standard sizes (if a non-standard size is requested, the >> next-larger standard size is used, and scaled to the requested >> size by the browser). We have recently extended the set of >> standard sizes, and are now moving to only allow standard sizes >> to be used. Regular editing and viewing will not be impacted by >> this change at all. >> >> * What isn't changing? >> >> Thumbnails served on wiki (via the "thumb" argument to File:, and >> via the Media API) will continue to behave as they do now - if >> you request a non-standard size, the next-larger standard size >> will be provided, and scaled in-browser if appropriate. >> >> * What is changing? >> >> Requests for non-standard thumbnail sizes using other methods >> (e.g. constructing an upload.wikimedia.org >> <http://upload.wikimedia.org> URL with a non-standard thumbnail >> size) will be blocked by our CDN. These are already being >> rate-limited for requests that we assess are not coming from a >> web-browser. >> >> During this quarter, we will be broadening the scope of the >> existing rate-limiting and making it increasingly strict, with >> the aim being to refuse such requests entirely by the end of >> March 2026. >> >> * Why are WMF doing this? >> >> Historically, we have generated thumbnails of whatever size was >> requested; this has been a drain on our thumbnailing >> infrastructure and cost us in network bandwidth and storage >> volume. With the increasing prevalence of highly aggressive >> scrapers, this has become an intolerable burden on our network, >> infrastructure, and staff, who have spent a lot of time over the >> holiday period working hard to keep the wikis available for >> people to read in the face of automated abuse. >> >> * What do I need to do? >> >> Most likely, nothing: we have already tracked down some of the >> more widely-deployed sources of nonstandard thumbnail requests >> (e.g. Popups extension) and fixed them. If you own or operate >> something that requests thumbnails by constructing a thumbnail >> URI directly, then now is the time to either use the Media API >> instead or to make sure you only request standard thumbnail sizes. >> >> * What are the standard thumbnail sizes? >> >> They are: 20px, 40px, 60px, 120px, 250px, 330px, 500px, 960px, >> 1280px, 1920px, 3840px >> >> They are defined in config as $wgThumbnailSteps - >> https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/mediawiki-config/+/refs/heads/master/wmf-config/CommonSettings.php >> >> And also documented on MetaWiki - >> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Common_thumbnail_sizes >> >> To help fix the existing instances, please see >> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T414805 for search-links, and >> examples of how to fix them. >> >> Best >> -- >> *Amir Sarabadani (he/him)* >> Staff Database Architect >> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] >> To unsubscribe send an email [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/ > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/ > _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/