[Wikipedia-l] images from one wikipedia to another (Re: Money, money)

Mon Oct 13 22:00:40 UTC 2003

Arnaud G wrote:

> Sascha Noyes wrote:
>
>> On Monday 13 October 2003 02:12 pm, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
>>
>>  
>>
>>> This is a problem to be attacked ASAP.  We need one image server for
>>> all wikipedias--simply because images are language independend.
>>>   
>>
>
> I don't agree with the statement image are "language independent". All 
> the schema, map, etc are language dependant. As soon as you have text 
> (whatever letter or number) in an image, it becomes a language 
> dependant image.

We do officially discourage the inclusion of text in images because of
this very problem. Alas, not every uploader has gotten the memo... At some
point we'll want to make overlays work, so that diagram legends can be
multilingual - then wikipedia will be so studly that all other encyclopedias
must bow down before it! :-)

> Moreover can you tell us why the description of the image should 
> contain the copyright notice in english? If we have the same image for 
> multiple wiki, this image should contain the copyright statement in 
> all the language as you cannot expect everyone to understand english, 
> and then the description will be not very readable. People should take 
> care when they import an image from another wikipedia to translate the 
> copyright statement and not only say: this image is ok it comes from 
> kw: !

That is a problem.  One answer is to require copyright snoopers to be
multilingual. The most important info, such as names, urls, and "GFDL"
are the same in different languages, and we could be tough like the UPU
and require the use of Latin letters in addition to local scripts.

If there were a tabular form of image page, with checkboxes for the standard
kinds of info, that page could be localized, which would also help the
non-English understand the images in English wikipedia.  (Alas, I can't help
develop this kind of thing until I get Apple to make an exception to their
ownership of everything code-related that I write, on or off the job - not
impossible, done it before, but bureaucratic.)

Stan