[Kicking this thread back to life, full-quoting below only for quick reference.]
I've collected some additional notes on this here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Restricted_uploads Would appreciate feedback & will circulate further in the Commons community. Thanks, Erik 2010/10/25 Erik Moeller <e...@wikimedia.org>: > 2010/10/25 Brion Vibber <br...@pobox.com>: >> In all cases we have the worry that if we allow uploading those funky >> formats, we'll either a) end up with malicious files or b) end up with lazy >> people using and uploading non-free editing formats when we'd prefer them to >> use freely editable formats. I'm not sure I like the idea of using admin >> powers to control being able to upload those, though; bottlenecking content >> reviews as a strict requirement can be problematic on its own. > > Yeah, I don't like the bottleneck approach either, but in the absence > of better systems, it may be the best way to go as an immediate > solution. We could do it for a list of whitelisted open formats that > are requested by the community. And we'd see from usage which file > types we need to prioritize proper support/security checks for. > >> What I'd probably like to see is a more wide-open allowal of arbitrary >> 'source files' which can be uploaded as attachments to standalone files. We >> could give them more limited access: download only, no inline viewing, only >> allowed if DLs are on separate safe domain, etc. > > It seems fairly straightforward to me to say: "These free file formats > are permitted to be uploaded. We haven't developed fully sophisticated > security checks for them yet, so we're asking trusted users to do > basic sanity checks until we've developed automatic checks." We can > then prod people to convert any proprietary formats into free ones > that are on that whitelist. And if they're free formats, I'm not sure > why they shouldn't be first-class citizens -- as Michael mentioned, > that makes it possible to plop in custom handlers at a later time. A > COLLADA handler for 3D files may seem like a remote possibility, but > it's certainly within the realm of sanity. ZIP files would have to be > specially treated so they're only allowed if they contain only files > in permitted formats. > > So, consistent with Michael's suggestion, we could define a > 'restricted-upload' right, initially given to admins only but possibly > expanded to other users, which would allow files from the "potentially > insecure" list of extensions to be uploaded, and for ZIP files, would > ensure that only accepted file types are contained within the archive. > The resultant review bottleneck would simply be a reflection that we > haven't gotten around to adding proper support for these file types > yet. On the plus side, we could add restricted upload support for new > open formats as soon as there's consensus to do so. > > The main downside I would see is that users might end up being > confused why these files get uploaded. To mitigate this, we could add > a "This file has a restricted filetype. Files of this type can > currently only be uploaded by administrators for security reasons" > note on file description pages. > -- > Erik Möller > Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation > > Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate > -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
