[Commons-l] Introducing FlickrLickr

Tue Sep 20 09:40:33 UTC 2005

Erik Moeller wrote:
> Using the Flickr API, I am building a database of free photos from
> Flickr, and users can apply for access to the frontend to review slices
> of 1,000 photos each. After a slice is finished, I review it and run the
> upload bot to upload the selected photos to the Commons. See the above
> page for more information.

This sounds fantastic, but I worry about a few things.

How accurate is the metadata at flickr?  Presumably for photos that
people take themselves and upload, it is 100% accurate by definition.

But I worry about copyvios at Flickr leaking into Commons.

One of the things that prevents rampant copyvios at Wikimedia projects
generally is community reputation.  It is essentially impossible to
imagine any prominent contributor uploading copyvios and lying about the
license data to Wikipedia itself.  And if we ever caught someone doing
so, we would quickly review all of their contributions and nuke them all.

But if we're importing large quantities of questionably-licensed data
from Flickr, and then Flickr bans the person for doing something wrong,
how do we know about it?

This is not an insurmountable problem of course.

Reviewing things 1,000 at a time sounds reasonable, but we need to be
pretty rigorous somehow.

> Please help by applying for access to a slice of Flickr. Best send me a
> private email with a link to your username so I can look at your past
> contributions.

I'm known as user Jimbo Wales in most projects.  I have the most edits
in English Wikipedia, but still not that many.  I think if you ask
around, though, despite my weak history of editing, a lot of people know
me and will tell you that I'm ok. :-)

--Jimbo