One thing that's happened is that Wikimedia Common's is utilizing IP range blocks for the country. (meaning users will have to request exempt accounts) [0] Howe

One thing that's happened is that Wikimedia Common's is utilizing IP range blocks for the country. (meaning users will have to request exempt accounts) [0] However, users can also upload files to their local Wikipedias and the Portuguese Wikipedia couldn't really range block a whole country of its participants. That's what this article and the mailing list [1] is having trouble with. Wikipedia does have a permissions system so that's the likely avenue they might pursue. For example, on the English Wikipedia, users have to be "autoconfirmed" to create pages or upload files. However, it is very easy to attain: an account just has to be older than 4 days and made at least 10 edits. Maybe they'll create a stricter group for uploading files. (though who knows, maybe they'll start encoding the files as text comments into articles) Another possibility is making each upload subject to review, similar to a pending changes system, but that has its own problem in having enough reviewers. [2] When I looked at the mailing list discussion when it was just starting, the foundation was suggesting user education over blanket banning policies. It's certainly not a problem with an easy solution, and in my opinion it's much more of a people problem; throwing tech at it might exacerbate matters. Not to mention that any potential solutions will also make it harder for new would-be editors, making it a tragedy of the commons. (where I'm referring to the open nature of Wikipedia rather than the free data) [3] [0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Steinsplitter&oldid=190598884#Unblock https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:St... [1]: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/thread.html#83440 https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons Sidenote: Wikipedia and commons already have a concept of "patrolling", which puts up every new article or file to be patrolled by another editor for spam/copyright violations. That's likely how these bad uploads were caught. Unfortunately this doesn't stop the upload in the first place and requires work to look at and delete the files which is hard to keep up with. (Not to mention that not enough people patrol pages either. On the English Wikipedia, nearly every page I've had patrolled was by one user called SisterTwister. I was also given autopatrolled rights on commons even though I'm hardly a prolific uploader)