Last modified: 2013-12-20 20:48:46 UTC
I was thinking about this last night: 1. If a file is updated on commons we'll remove all the flags that prevent duplicates from showing up. We certainly should fix this quickly. 2. If a file is on a wiki, then uploaded to commons it won't be marked with the flag until we perform a noop edit on the wiki that used to have it. One option we have to prevent both of these is to have commons search _all_ other wikis after a file is updated and mark the duplicates. That seems like too much overhead. An option for preventing just #1 is to have commons know that it is special and needs to note clear those flags on update. Another option for just preventing #1 is to move those flags into the common's database somehow and yank them out when building the commons page. If we integrate commons with some wikidata like thing then this might be a good option. An option for masking number 2 is to remove the duplicate search results on the client side if they would appear on the same page. It is a parlour trick, but might be worth it.
Marking as resolved because https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/102967/ is merged and handles #1. #2 I think we can live with for now.