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

Mon Oct 13 22:13:06 UTC 2003

On Monday 13 October 2003 04:53 pm, Arnaud G wrote:
> 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. 

Your assessment that there are both language dependent and independent 
pictures is correct. This does however not address the issue that in the 
language independent pictures there will be massive duplication between 
different languages. At the moment this is not that much of a problem, with 
the wikipedia still being pretty small, and harddrive space being cheap. In 
the long run however this will have to be solved. I can only think of two 
possible solutions:

1) Keep language dependent and independent pictures strictly appart. The 
independent ones are in a central repository, while the each language has a 
repository for the dependent ones.

2) Keep them together but make a strict rule that all language dependent 
pictures must end in a language code. eg: 
wikilogo.en.jpg 
wikilogo.fr.jpg
wikilogo.simple.jpg
using the already established codes for the different languages.

I personally prefer #2 more, but am obviously open to better solutions.

> Moreover can you tell us why the description of the image should 
> contain the copyright notice in english? 

I never said that. All I said is that images on the english wikipedia need to 
have an english copyright info description. It does not suffice to say that 
the image was copied from another language wikipedia in order to constitute a 
copyright info description. Which is the case with the example from the 
korean wikipedia that I named. Of course each different language should have 
its native copyright info description.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
(in wikiland: snoyes)