[Wikipedia-l] A few more commons ideas

Sun Mar 21 00:53:43 UTC 2004

In my original proposal I suggested that images on the commons would have  
to be referenced as

[[Image:co:Airplane.jpg]]

I realize now that this is not necessary. We can instead just use

[[Image:Airplane.jpg]]

If you would add this instruction on the English Wikipedia, and  
Airplane.jpg exists locally, it would use that one. If it doesn't, but it  
exists on the Commons server, it would use the remote version instead.

This makes the use of the Commons transparent. There should be links on  
the image (really file) pages to quickly move files to and fro.

We can even provide this functionality for other MediaWiki sites, or wikis  
which implement the necessary interface. Say you would type

[[Image:Paris-Metro.jpg]]

on Wikitravel; again, if the image exists locally, the local version is  
displayed, if it does not, the remote version is downloaded and cached for  
future use (compare timestamps when using cached commons images).

This would also make it relatively easy for a mirror to use our images  
without downloading our entire collection of them. They would just have to  
enable that option, and images would be transparently fetched (and  
updated!) when needed.

As an additional advantage, we no longer need to worry about the fair use  
issue. Sites which want to allow fair use would download a tarball of  
these images generated from the files on the *local* wiki (e.g. English),  
the others would only accept images that are stored on the commons server,  
guaranteed to be under a free license.

The same principle could even be applied to articles. If you link to  
[[Declaration of Independence]] from a Commons-connected wiki, and that  
page does not exist, the wiki would fetch it from the Commons and enter it  
into the edit box that is normally blanked (like Wikinfo's Wikipedia  
import interface). You can then copy and paste content from there as  
wikisource [*], or you can save it locally to get a copy of that page.

What would be really neat, of course, would be transparent transclusion of  
articles from the Commons:

{{commons:Declaration of Indepdence>p2s1}}

becomes:

        We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
        equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
        unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
        pursuit of Happiness.

p2s1=paragraph 2, sentence 1 - this only works for pages which rarely  
change, of course.

Look Alice, we're in Xanadu! Again, these segments could be stored locally  
and compared with timestamps from the Commons on demand.

This is advanced stuff, but could certainly be entered into our roadmap.  
Any wiki which would implement our interfaces could transclude material  
when needed.

Regards,

Erik

[*] I actually typed "wikisource" without thinking, referring to wiki  
source code, not to the Wikisource project. I think that illustrates my  
point about the name being ambiguous nicely.