[Commons-l] Image donations?

Tue Jun 20 22:19:55 UTC 2006

Magnus,

thanks for hacking this.

First, I think the most important difference between your
implementation and my concept is that you want to upload images
directly to Commons. I think images uploaded through a simplified
process that is advertised e.g. as part of the next fundraiser should
go into a pre-approval queue, where their descriptions can be edited,
and bad material can be filtered. This would also allow us to enable
the usage of this system by anonymous users, as any vandalism, porn
etc. wouldn't become immediately visible.

Please have a closer look at FlickrLickr, if you haven't already. We
have reviewed over 90,000 photos and uploaded over 5,500. The process
looks like this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Flickrlickr.png

You have 50 of these boxes per page, and for each one, you edit the
metadata and select the image if you want it to be uploaded. This
allows us to exercise quality control. I can send you the FlickrLickr
source code (Perl) and database structure if you want to play with it.
I think it might make a reasonable backend for an image donations
process. We might want to generalize it to deal with other media. The
script could also be expanded to notify the uploader whether their
files have been accepted (only a couple of lines of Perl really).

One idea that is part of the concept I posted is to enable uploading
media archives (ZIP files etc.). This would be useful for individuals
and institutions which want to share a set of images. Your script
would have to uncompress the archive, and ask the user to describe
each file that is in it.

Regarding the specific implementation at the moment, I may be alone in
this, but I think we should greatly simplify the licensing part. What
I would prefer is something like:

[ ]  You agree to donate your picture to the general public under the
terms of the
     GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 or higher and the Creative Commons
     Attribution/Share-Alike license 2.5 or higher. This means that
anyone can use
     it for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as modified
copies are
     made available under similar terms (copyleft).

Perhaps below this there could be a link "Other licensing options",
which would expand a selection of radiobuttons like the one you have
now. But I'd prefer something very simple for the casual user.

I would also suggest hacking a separate contact form for people who do
not want to use this process. This would have some questions like:
- Describe the media you want to donate
- Choose the licensing conditions (here a more advanced form would be available)
- Tell us where we can reach you.
- Other comments.

It could send a nicely formatted e-mail into an OTRS queue created
specifically for this purpose.

Erik