Forum:Picture Cleanup

Hi all,

I've made this into a forum post in hopes that this will appear as a notification for all users to see.

I am in the works currently of going through our 7,442 images on the wiki and clearing out duplicates and unused photos. I do this usually once a year. Please help me out and be considerate of the following:


 * If you upload a higher resolution photo (or one with a transparent background), PLEASE replace this photo on EVERY page that the old photo used. Otherwise, the old photo will be still be in use and it won't be flagged for me to delete. This will create a mixture of high quality photos and low quality photos on pages. You can see in the example below that we have duplicate photos of Mary, Rick and Karen. These were replaced with bigger and better high resolution photos. However, the old photos were still floating around on other pages. I've also recently replaced photos for Grand Bazaar images as well as Puzzle de Harvest Moon and Animal Parade/ToT. The goal is to have ONE photo that is universally used on gallery pages, character pages and the disambiguation page. If you don't know how to do this (or do not want to), either flag the old photo with the 'Articles for Deletion' category, or bring it to my attention and leave me a message on my talk page.

This process usually takes me several weeks to complete. Any and all help in this process is much appreciated!!
 * Having one photo (or less photos) with similar names makes it easier to find when searching for an image when adding to a gallery or slideshow. This makes things smoother overall!
 * Please label your photos appropriately. It can be hard to figure out where a photo goes if it's just labeled 'art', 'character', or a random assortment of characters and symbols. This is covered in the Style Manual already, but I thought I'd just reiterate.
 * The special 'Unused Photos' portal in the screen shot above refreshes every 24 hours (or so). It is the single most efficient way for me to look at what needs to be deleted and take care of it. I also screen the photos before deleting them, just to make sure that there really is no use for them. I can see up to 500 photos at a time, so don't be afraid to take initiative if there really are a lot of duplicates that you are noticing!
 * If you see me make an edit on your talk pages, blog posts or your profile page, please do not be alarmed. I've only done so to replace one of these duplicate photos. I was guilty of this myself and had to replace several older photos that have since been replaced. I will replace only the photo and no other information.
 * If you upload a photo, please do so with the intention of using it. If not, I'll see that it isn't being used and delete it. This is especially true if it's for a game I haven't played and have a harder game deciding whether or not it's something that would actually be useful or helpful.
 * It's necessary to to through everything individually because some photos register as being used, even though they are not. This usually happens when categories are added when the photo is uploaded (for some reason). That means 100's of images flying under the radar.