So VisualEditor allows for selecting existing files from not only local files but as well as Wikimedia Commons by opening a drop down menu (forgot which one) and then clicking on media. If it's possible in VE, could we possibly implement the same feature in the social tool extensions that allow uploading? I believe we should do away by completely rewriting and replacing MiniAjaxUpload.

@ashley: thoughts on this? Do you know anyone who's familiar with VE's infrastructure who would be able to provide insight on how selecting the files feature work?

In T155955#3060228, @SamanthaNguyen wrote:

I believe we should do away by completely rewriting and replacing MiniAjaxUpload.

YES PLEASE! I hate MiniAjaxUpload with a burning passion and have hated it ever since I had to rewrite it in 2013. Also, well, it is pretty crappy and limited (feature-wise).

@ashley: thoughts on this? Do you know anyone who's familiar with VE's infrastructure who would be able to provide insight on how selecting the files feature work?

Replacing MiniAjaxUpload probably won't be easy, but if we could build something that's better and more flexible, it'd definitely be worth it. Right now the workflow in all extensions which (re)implement MiniAjaxUpload is pretty ugly and has the potential to lead into lots and lots of "randomly" named images (MiniAjaxUpload usually prefixes the file name with the output of time(), which is something like 1487187439 or so), some of which can be duplicates of pre-existing wiki images, not to mention the obvious flaws: no support for the upload-by-URL feature or for picking an existing image.

All that being said, I don't know who specifically could help out with this.

This is finally partially/mostly done as of yesterday (see patches on gerrit) with FanBoxes, PictureGame, PollNY and QuizGame all supporting locally uploaded images via MediaSearchWidget. The legacy MiniAjaxUpload form still exists and will continue to exist for the forseeable future, so leaving this ticket open nevertheless.