Hi,
I posted a message about this to the Village Pump but got no replies,
so either I'm making no sense or everybody agrees with me (perhaps
not!).
My proposal was to prompt for specific information on the file upload
form for photos, such as Location, Country, Date and some technical
information. All of this information could then be embedded into the
file page, and displayed with the photo. I think this would help in
categorising the photos, gives some information to users in all
languages, and at some future point could allow for searching by
country/date/photographer etc. Given the amount of meta-data digital
cameras now save automatically with each photograph it seems daft not
to use it.
I did a quick mock-up of what I mean at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wombat/Upload
although the forms are not interpreted.
please respond!,
Richard.
Hello everyone!
Is there a way to subscribe to this mailing list as a newsgroup? I know
that WikiEN-l and Wikipedia-l have that feature, but I can't find any
mentions of it for this the Commons mailing list.
Thanks,
Josh Gerdes (User:JoshG)
For some reason, i'm not getting any mail from commons-l. I just found
this reply to my proposal (Why not treat every page as a category?) in
the archive and would like to answer it in the hope that the list will
work now. (full quote, because this mail also goes to wikitech-l, as it
is a request for a software feature)
Delphine (notafish) wrote:
> OK, I think I get the idea now.
>
> However, it still leaves open the discussion of multilingualism. If we
> want to allow for every language to put in their categories, or do a
> redirect, display will still be in whatever language has been
> considered default, and not of any use to non-default language
> speakers.
>
> On another note, while this may work for images, the display of other
> media files will be rendered very complicated if those files are not
> self-comprehensive, ie. if they're not named accoding to their
> content, in a language everybody understands.
>
> How do you plan to address that ?
Multi-Language-Support was not on my mind when I wrote that proposal.
But thinking about it, I belive by adding a few more feature we would be
able to cope with this, too. As I already wrote on [1], i would suggest
the following:
1) It was much discussed that it would be good to show the link-title
which is placed after the "|" in the category link in the category
listing/as the thumbnail label, in order to have meaningful names in
categories, especially for images. Also, as of 1.4 people can choose
their preferred interface languag. We could combine those two features
with the concept of named parameters [[...|foo=bar|...]] as used with
templates:
Allow a category-link to look like this:
[[category:something|Something|de=Irgendwas|jp=....]]
giving a default label and labels for specific languages. Then, when
building the category listing, use the label corresponding to the users
interface language, if it is given. If not, use the default label. The
label should be used for sorting, and should be shown as the link
text/thumbnail label respectively.
2) Maybe one could even use the same concept to implement localized
image labels: [[Image:Foobar.png|The Foo bar|de=Der Fuh-Balken|jp=...]]
- that should not be too hard.
3) The one think still missing would be localizing the name of the
page/category. Maybe an #ALIAS [[category:xyz]] directive could be added
for categories (or the categorisation-aspect of pages, as by my original
proposal): If #ALIAS [[Foo]] is placed in category/article Bar, plages
and images added to cat Foo and to cat Bar would end up in the same
"pool". The Pages for Foo and Bar would have different textual content
and titles, but would list the exact same articles, images and
subcategories. Subcategories would need some more thought, though,
because in the german cat I want to have the german names of the
subcategories, etc.
Dolphin already said on [1] there that he likes my first idea. what do
you think?
And especially to the developers - how hard would it be to do that?
d.
[1]: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:VP#More_on_categories
--
Homepage: http://brightbyte.de
Hello
I just send the following mail to the wikitech-l list. As it mainly
concerns the commons, i'll repost it here:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi all
As you may now, there is some discussion about wether to use page to
form galleries on the commons, or to use the new
thumbnails-in-categories feature of 1.4 to do that. Both have their pros
and cons, and no real solution has yet been found for this question (see
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:VP for some discussion).
I would like to propose to simply do away with the difference between
pages and categories (see
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:VP#Categories_or_.27normal.27_pages:_…)
by treating every page as a category. That is, IMHO it would be best to
drop the "Category:" namespace and list articles and images the contain
a category link like [[category:Foo]] directly at the bottom of page
"Foo". This way, pages can be used as a structured article or as an
unstructured category, as need be. The category-ish list at the bottom
could also serve as a todo-list of stuff that need to be integrated into
a structured page.
This would resolve the problem that categories aren't readily found by a
simple search, and that there often is a category and a page for the
same topic, containin different but overlapping sets of images, which
would need to be kept in sync manually. This is annoying when looking
for images about a specific topic.
I would like to make all pages categories for the commons - maybe the
same thing would be a good idea for the wikipedias, too, but i'm not yet
sure about this.
I had a conversation about his with Jamesday on IRC the other day, i'll
try to summary some of the concerns and my answers below.
Q: List-Articles would still be needed, because categories can only show
articles that exist.
A: We could still do that, either by simply not using the
category-aspect of the respective page, or be keeping the missing things
at the top and the existing ones in the category-ish listing.
Q: Replication is a good thing, so users have a choice of how to ciew a
gallery.
A: Keeping the different views in sync is tedious and unrealistic. We
already have a lot of images on the commons that can't be found because
they are on no page and in no category. In cases where both exist, they
are nearly never in sync, and they often do not link to each other. The
entire structure is very inconsistent, and the distinction between pages
and categories only makes things worse.
Q: Galleries can not represent internal structure.
A: In cases where internal structure is needed, just don't use the
category-aspect of the page, or use it as a todo-list.
A feature that allows for structure in categories is a different
matter: maybe we could have sections in categories, using a syntax like
[[Category:Foo#section-name]] or something. Or we could have a switch
the shows sub-categories "inlined". Also, it would be extremely useful
to show the link-text after the "|" in the category link (now only used
for sorting) as the image-label in categories. But this does not really
touch my idea.
Q: Categories can be very lagre. This would hinder the loading / viewing
of the respective Articles.
A: In most cases, large categories (just like large pages) should be
split into subcategories - that would resolve this isse in most cases.
Bot some categories are large by nature, especially ones that are
used for tagging images with copyright-information, etc. Those
categories do not have a meaningfull article associated with them, they
are simply very long lists, and it does not matter in which namespace
they show.
Keep in mind that categories are simply pages that are filled in a
diferent way and have no internal structure. With regards to the
commons, there is no "logical" difference: they both consitute galleries.
In a nutshell: I can see only advantages to showing things in category
"Foo" at the bottom of page "Foo". The distinction between articles and
categories seems artificial and unneccessary, at least for the commons.
I was thinking about submitting this as a feature request - but i'm not
sure if this would be the right way to go, as this is not only a little
software feature, but a request for a structural change, too. So i'd
like to discuss it here first - and maybe on some of the other mailing
lists? I'm not sure which one would be most appropriate.
--
Homepage: http://brightbyte.de
Hi.
>If the flag is correct, and I would create another
>correct flag, however, it would be exactly the same, and
>it would be free. Legally, drawing the same flag again,
>pixel for pixel, would alter its license, wouldn't it?
I think this would a copyright violation as long as you
immitate an existing copyrighted work to create another
without permission. Similarly, for example, if you
draw a painting which looks like someone else's,
and it is not a coincident but a result of an influence,
it could be a violation. Degree of similarity matters,
but in this case, we are talking about exact reproduction.
>If so, can I let an image program do this? Suppose I find a correct flag
>in .gif format, download it, convert it to .png. It then is a different
>flag with the same content. If the license of the source is unknown,
>what do I know about the license of the new .png?
Converting a file into different format, or taking a
picture of, say, copyrighted painting, copying a text
from one format to another (from PDF to RTF), are
usually considered reproduction, not derivative works. And
rights to reproduce, as well as to create derivative works
are exclusively held by authors or other copyright holders.
Finally, I have not checked if flags are copyrighted, and
who are the copyright holders. Quite a few flags exist since
long before, so they might be in the public domain
already. As you know, copyright protection expires. I think
investigating that is a shorter way to get copyright free flags.
I also wonder if all flags are copyrightable. Some flags are
very simple, so I am not sure if they are copyrightable at
all. If a country has a simple blue recutangular flag
with 3:2 proportion, is that recutangular copyrightable? I
don't think so. What if there is a flag with two colors -
a recutangular and a circle in it? I don't know.
Well, I know only Japanese and American copyright laws,
and I am not a lawyer, so I could be wrong.
Tomos
I am not sure why no-one has responded, but many of your ideas sound very good.
I think there are many people who have a large amount of photos and other media files to offer, some already on the web under free license. But they might feel hesitant to upload one-hundred picture.
I, with help from others, am indeed creating some sound files for each of basic Japanese letters and some compounds to be used in Japanese language wikibook. There are about 100 of them. I am very sure there will be others, if not yet, doing very similar things for similar projects. So I find a batch uploader would be very helpful for others like me.
Tomos
Hello,
Wikimedia Commons currently insists all images to have a free license. I
completely agree with this policy. However, I have a question about the
license of a flag.
A flag is a sort of drawing. If I find a flag somewhere on the internet,
it may not be free. If the flag is correct, and I would create another
correct flag, however, it would be exactly the same, and it would be
free. Legally, drawing the same flag again, pixel for pixel, would alter
its license, wouldn't it?
If so, can I let an image program do this? Suppose I find a correct flag
in .gif format, download it, convert it to .png. It then is a different
flag with the same content. If the license of the source is unknown,
what do I know about the license of the new .png?
It may be a derivative work, but the result would have been exactly the
same if I would have followed the exact instructions at
http://www.freewebs.com/mahabadassociation/flag.html . It confuses me:
can a flag be licensed at all?
regards,
Gerrit Holl.
--
Weather in Twenthe, Netherlands 14/11 10:25:
5.0°C wind 0.9 m/s WNW (57 m above NAP)
--
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.
-Dwight David Eisenhower, January 17, 1961
Wikimedia desparately needs more artists. Projects like Wikijunior - a
collection of Wikireaders for kids - need high quality illustrations in
order to flourish.
In my opinion, the Wikimedia Commons should become the central artistic
hub of the Wikimedia community.
What can we do to make it so?
Well, there are a few technical changes that will help:
- New upload form that makes it easier to choose licenses and write
descriptions. I'm planning to hack something together here soon, but it
won't be the super-ultra form that I've created mock-ups for in the
original Commons proposal.
- An external media manager to collect files and batch-upload them to the
Commons, with a nice Windows GUI to boot.
- A better discussion page system. The whole Image talk:, Commons talk:
etc. wiki page system is confusing for newcomers and difficult to track
for us.
But except for the first one, these changes will take months. There are a
few things we can do right now:
Create portals for different communities
----------------------------------------
- 2D artists
- 3D artists
- photographers
- filmmakers
- sound experts
The purpose of these portals would be that we can pass on these URLs to
people who know nothing about Wikimedia. Each portal should give a brief
description of the type of files that we want - useful to Wikimedia
projects - and the free content principle. It should also highlight a few
of the existing works in that category as examples, including links to the
Wikimedia projects that use them.
Featured content separated by category
--------------------------------------
Successful community art sites have some kind of comment and feedback
process. For us right now, that is [[Commons:Featured picture
candidates]]. I think we need to create this site in all the categories
mentioned above, and link the individual featured content candidate pages
from the portals.
Catalog and systematically approach existing projects
-----------------------------------------------------
The largest community art website I know is deviantart.com. Much of their
content is not of interest to us as it is purely artistic. However, they
have many excellent photos. Alas, most of them are not under an open
content license.
First, we need a list of these projects.
Second, for each of them we need volunteers who search existing content
and browse new content. Virtually all of them have contact forms. In cases
where the content is useful to us, we could post standard messages:
Hi Xy,
your picture [bla] could be useful for the Wikimedia project [abc].
In order to use it there, we would need it under an [[open content]]
license, such as the GNU Free Documentation License.
Would you be willing to put your picture under such a license? I would
then upload it to the Wikimedia Commons, our shared media repository.
If you want, you can also upload it there yourself - see the
[portal link] for further instructions.
I think if these messages are sufficiently personalized, they will not be
considered spam.
Press release
-------------
Once we have the portals more or less in operation, we need to start
working on our first real press release. One good occasion would be the
50,000th media file. I'm picking a reasonably high number so we have some
time to prepare this properly.
This press release would include a real press kit, with examples of our
media and information about the Wikimedia projects. It would also
prominently describe each of the different portals. We could create
variant versions to send to different communities - e.g. photo magazines,
artist weblogs etc.
Rules of exclusion
------------------
During all of this, we need to make it very clear that the Wikimedia
Commons is for Wikimedia projects. People will be pissed off if we delete
excellent artistic works that have no relation to anything we do.
Maybe in the future, art itself will become one of our missions, but right
now it isn't. Anything that's created needs to be tied to the distribution
of knowledge. So that should be emphasized on all the portals.
Getting all of this off the ground will be a huge undertaking, especially
since our community is still small. I will be occupied by Wikinews in the
next few weeks, so I would appreciate it if anyone else took the
initiative to start working on this.
Regards,
Erik