Up until now, the use of files and pictures in contributions has been a bit
obscure. People don't upload too much compared to how much they edit.
Another problem has been the fact that people, admins, editors, and even
Jimbo don't _completely_ understand fair use, and other applicable laws.
Idealy, we need a lawyer, even better though, we need public domain images.
I want to propose that Wikipedia post a request for ammateur/proffessional
photographers to take pictures and contribute their high resolution versions
to the Wikipedia, placing them underpublic domain. We could run a contest
sort of and have prizes for people who contribute many (valid and useful)
images. I would be willing to host the high quality versions in my server,
as well as the tracking program, upload script and cron'd tarball's of both
the HQ, and lower resolution versions at the end of the night to facilitate
importing into Wikipedia. I would also make a mirror of the images in my
private fotki account, providing free high-bandwidth access to the download
of the originals in case my server is unreachable at any point. I'm also
willing to volunteer write the point system etc. and to a certain extent
sponsor the prizes.
I have a company, I make novelty t-shirts and stickers, I would be willing
to give away this stuff for free, and donate a small ammount of cash, and
hopefully other people would too. I would leave it to someone who is more
trusted in the Wikipedia community to be a "treasurer" of sorts since I
would not expect people to trust me with money, since my name is not too
prominent in the Wikipedia community. With sufficient support we could
probably get independent thir parties to donate other things for use as
prizes, like for example, we could get a subscription-only website to donate
a 1 month subscription or something similar.
The system in my mind would work sort of like the livejournal "growpot"
system. We try to raise some initial money and prizes and we make a list of
pictures that we would like. Based on different criteria we could assign
them a token ammount of points that they are worth, and have the points be
points be redeamable for the prizes or cash, which could be easily paid via
paypal or such, with an option to donate these credits back to the contest,
for those of us who consider the joy of knowing we contributed a sufficient
reward.
In case Wikipedia does not wish to be involved in this directly, I would
like to propose the idea as sort of a side project, with (hopefully) some of
the more involved members helping out. I really consider this to be a
promising idea for creating a wider base of organized public domain images
suitable for use in projects like Wikipedia.
This seems like a tough task, but the great part about this, is that images
do not need a language, a picture of a horse can be used in any "horse"
article, in any language. So, if I can gather a sufficient ammount of
support from the community, I'd be willing to start on the programing work
needed for this task. so please reply with any ideas, suggestions, problems
I have not forseen, or your support.
Lightning Will