Hello, Although 2007 is already 1/12 over, there's no reason we can't still think about what we'd like to achieve in the remaining 11/12 of it. :) This has two parts - my hopes for 2007 (medium-term future), and my hopes for the next 3-5 years (long-term, or still medium?). Here are some things I would like to see Commons achieve or continue to do, for 2007. * Continue its aggressive approach to multilinguality. By this I mean actively seeking out translations and translators, rather than passively waiting for whoever feels like it to translate whatever they feel like. This also refers to making sure the most vital pages (policy, newbie guides, signup process) are translated, and making an effort to communicate with users in their preferred language (for example, by asking a bilingual admin to work with them). * Continue its relaxed and welcoming approach to new administrators. Our current attitude is doing a good job of attracting reliable admins. By 'reliable' I mean: I can't recall any case where a month after sysopping someone, we have had reason to doubt that decision. (Or even any length of time, really...) We have also shown respect for users' local experience and there are many cases where a 'image warrior' on a local project has gained adminship at Commons - not *because* of that, but it certainly helps. (I like to think such folk would be successful without the inevitable flood of local project voters such cases usually attract. :)) * Improve clarity and appropriateness of help documentation, and consolidate information on a topic in one area. This is always tricky in a wiki environment, because of the dispersed and usually undriven approach (whoever feels like writing something writes it, as opposed to something being ordered to written because it is needed). But it's something we need to keep reviewing and checking. Consolidating our help files is useful because it decreases the translation needs, and it decreases the potential for conflicting information to exist. The number of users who clearly ignore or don't understand our requirements shows that this needs constant improvement. We have to concentrate on finding SUCCINCT and clear ways to express ourselves. I would suggest that Special:Upload as it stands, needs to be rewritten again. I don't know exactly how. But this is a constant process. For a start, I would like to see us emphasise and separate help files for people contributing their own work. There is no reason these people really need to look at Commons:Licensing and get so scared (or worse, ignore it). For these people, who are our BEST USERS, because they are typically contributing original, unique, exclusive work, we really need to make their lives easy. I suggest we start by writing a guide [[Commons:Contributing your own work]]. * Continue to develop quality review mechanisms, and highlight high-quality work. The development of [[Commons:Quality Images]] is a great one I think, and I hope mechanisms like this continue to grow. [[Commons:Picture of the Year]] is also proving very successful which is fantastic. One area we are possibly lacking in is in pushing our high quality stuff back out to wikis. It is easy to miss this small %age which is our best of the best. We can promote this stuff by perhaps organising more translations, organising a weekly/monthly newsletter out to wikis that lists these images and suggests possible uses, ...? how else? * Reach out to local Wikimedia wikis and actively promote "Commons only" upload policies. Switching to Commons only has massive benefits for both the local wiki (hugely reduced maintenance burden) and us (new contributions). But we all know now that preparation is required to make the transition a success. WE need language-speaking active admins; THEY need to promote Commons policy beforehand and attempt to educate their users as much as possible before the switch. I suggest we create a guide [[Commons:Turning off local uploads]] (or choose another name) to smooth the path for wikis who want to go down this road. We can offer tips from the ES.wp and PT.wp cases (is there another?? I have a feeling there was but I can't remember it, maybe SV.wb?). Maybe one of the steps will be a small group (even one?) of volunteers from the local wiki making contact with a small group of volunteers from Commons, and both groups committing to work together to move to Commons only uploads (community approval pending, of course). For example the Commons person can look for existing language speakers and encourage them to become admins or translate, and identify key pages for translating. I suggest we also start finding out more about the new-wiki creation process, and get involved with groups there, to encourage groups to consider starting their wiki with "Commons only" uploads from the very start. Also, it should be a much easier task to convert non-Wikipedia projects, where there is already a large number of that language admins. For example: EN, DE, ES, FR, NL?, PL. Wikinews, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikiversity. Some thirty-odd projects there that we already have the capacity to deal with, were they to turn off local uploads. * Adopt a simple-to-use media rating system. Having a star-rating system (a la Youtube) on all Image: pages would be an incredibly simple way to quickly amass information on media quality. Imagine how useful it would be to view a category ordered by average star rating - a very simple and effective filter. http://www.wikihow.com/WikiHow:RateArticle-Extension should be able to be developed towards this purpose. I'm not sure we'd be able to get it adopted within 11 months, but I hope we should make some progress towards putting this on the radar for the developers. * Continue to push local projects to adopt CommonsTickers. Related to several points above. Vital tool for inter-project harmony! * SUL implemented. (bug 57) We don't have anything to do with this, but it will be a major improvement for us of course. * Introduce user recognition system. We are all volunteers, but there's no reason we can't develop an award system that aims to recognise the time-intensive effort and/or outstandingly high-quality contributions that longterm users have made. The benefits of such a system are two-fold: they give the contributors in question tangible, public and formal recognition of their efforts, which thanks and encourages them; and it offers concrete examples to other users of what kind of conduct is appreciated and needed. I have started writing about this on my user page, but I have some more ideas in my head, that I hope the community will welcome when I finally write them down. :) Here are some things that I hope Commons can achieve over the next 3-5 years. * FileStore implemented This will allow image moving/renaming (bug 709), and extension-free image names (I think). * Core functionality integrated into native MediaWiki. ** Bulk uploading (bug 488) ** User galleries (bug id?) ** CheckUsage (bug 1394) ** Automatic transfer of images from local projects to Commons (automatic as in when requested by admins) (bug 5283) * Some progress towards resolution of galleries/categories into one tool. (bug 3712) * Some progress in multilingual support for categories (bug 3311, 5638) * Some degree of press recognition and fame :) We have a great project, let's get it out there! How can we promote it? I noticed my newspaper now runs about 6 blogs, and the bloggers regularly use photos from Flickr. One recently was 'licensed under a Creative Commons license' and I went and checked the Flickr page, and it actually said 'All rights reserved'. So I left a comment on the blog to that effect, and with links to two lovely photos from Commons. they didn't publish my comment, but the blogger emailed me to say thanks. :) there's no awareness out there! Why are we a fantastic media archive? * All media free to use however you like in any publication, with minimal conditions * Huge range, constantly being expanded * Multilingual access (potentially...) * High quality original contributions found nowhere else on the web, especially in the SVG field * Useful specific descriptions and annotations (this is totally missing from all stock photography archives I've seen) * ... Comments on any of this, or further ideas or hopes are always welcome, of course. regards Brianna user:pfctdayelise