Hi Amir, Thanks for the heads up on this. I'm confused about the idea of standard "sizes", as listed. Thumbnails have two dimensions, two sizes, width and height right? Do both dimensions have to be one of the standard sizes? What if that causes image stretching?
Thanks, -Travis On Fri, Jan 23, 2026 at 10:28 AM Amir Sarabadani via Wikitech-l < [email protected]> 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 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 to [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
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