[Foundation-l] 100,000 files uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons

Mon May 23 22:25:08 UTC 2005

Besides the 100K milestone, the project also received an honorary 
mention at this year's Prix Ars Electronica. Please help with the 
distribution and translation of the press release at:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/100K

The online copy also includes various media examples.

NB: The Commons now has more than half as many files as the English 
Wikipedia and more than any other project. Soon it will be the single 
largest repository of files in the Wikimedia world.

See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:First_steps for 
information on getting started to use the Commons.

All best,

Erik

100,000th file uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, a free media repository

Free images, sounds, and videos can be used by anyone for any purpose

St. Petersburg, Florida, United States
May 24, 2005

The Wikimedia Foundation announced today that the 100,000th file had 
been uploaded to its online repository of free images, sounds, and 
videos, the Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/). These 
files have been chosen or created by 5,259 registered users from more 
than 12 different languages gathered in a single lively community. The 
young project received additional encouragement and recognition on 
Monday in the form of an honorary mention at the 2005 Prix Ars 
Electronica awards.

The Wikimedia Commons, launched on September 7 2004, is a unique free 
and open media archive (including images, sounds, and video), using the 
same "wiki" technology that has made Wikipedia, a community-written 
encyclopedia, the second most popular reference website on the web 
(Hitwise.com report, April 2005). Wikis are websites that anyone can 
edit, allowing for rapid growth and constant peer review of all 
contributions. All files uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons are available 
royalty-free for any purpose. Most files require attribution of the 
creator, and some are under copyleft licenses, meaning that derivative 
works also have to be made available for free re-use. Both Wikipedia and 
the Wikimedia Commons are operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.

The 100,000th file was an illustration drawn by a French Wikipedia user 
named Stephane Tsacas. He manages the computer network of the Curie 
Institute, a research center on biology and physics in Paris. "I 
recently did some searches in the French Wikipedia and discovered some 
incomplete information in a few articles in the field I know, computer 
science. I then decided to register and do the modifications myself."

The file Stephane Tsacas uploaded is a diagram of the experimental 
dataflow computer architecture. It is used in the detailed French 
article http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_Dataflow. As soon as a 
file is uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons, it is instantly available for 
use on all Wikimedia projects without needing to be uploaded to the 
local project. This feature is encouraging the Wikimedia projects to 
move towards a multimedia approach rather than the simple text-based 
approach they relied on in the past.

"Wikimedia Commons is of critical importance for all the Wikimedia 
projects, and beyond that, it is critically important for the entire 
free culture movement," said Jimmy Wales, president of the Wikimedia 
Foundation. Since the inception of the project in September 2004, 
thousands of Wikimedia contributors have joined to make their multimedia 
available to the larger community. As such, the Commons is one of the 
most diverse collections of files imaginable. It includes many 
independent collections of free content:

     * 7,733 pronunciation files in various languages, notably Dutch 
(5,926), German (499), Farsi (464), and Italian (249). These voice 
recordings made by editors of the project are mostly used in Wiktionary, 
a wiki-based dictionary and thesaurus.
     * Reproductions of 10,000 public domain paintings from ancient to 
modern times, donated by Directmedia Publishing, a German publishing 
company. This includes the works of artists like Leonardo da Vinci, 
Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Hieronymus Bosch, and many 
others. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Yorck_Project.
     * Hundreds of public domain recordings of classical music by 
composers like Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. See 
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Classical_music.
     * A growing collection of videos of historical speeches, excerpts 
from public domain films such as Charlie Chaplin's "The Bond", and 
scientific videos such as bacterial broths being deposited into a Petri 
dish or the Space Shuttle Columbia going through the sound barrier. See 
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video.

Besides these collections, it is the work of individuals which defines 
the Wikimedia Commons -- like Wikinews user "Belizian", who took photos 
during civil unrest in the small Central American nation of Belize in 
January 2005 for the Wikinews article on the subject 
(http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Unrest_in_Belize), or Wikibooks author 
Robert Engelhardt, who has added photos of various beekeeping tools to 
his growing reference work on the topic 
(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Beekeeping). From lovingly drawn subway 
maps to print quality photos of insects, from physics diagrams to photos 
of exotic locations, the members of the Wikimedia Commons cover 
virtually all areas of human interest with great attention to detail.

Like Wikimedia's other projects, the Wikimedia Commons is open for 
everyone to edit, to enrich it with new content, to help in the 
categorization of existing media, and to remove problematic materials. 
Given the proven successes of the wiki model, it may soon become the 
largest repository of free media on the web.

Additional information

For questions and interviews, please contact:

In English only:

Jimmy Wales, Chair, Board of Trustees, Wikimedia Foundation
Phone: (+1)-727-644-3565
Email: jwales at wikimedia.org (mailto:jwales at wikimedia.org)

Angela Beesley, Executive Secretary, Board of Trustees, Wikimedia Foundation
Phone: (+44)-208-816-7308
Email: angela at wikimedia.org (mailto:angela at wikimedia.org)

In English or French:

Florence Devouard, Vice President, Board of Trustees, Wikimedia Foundation:
Email: anthere at wikimedia.org (mailto:anthere at wikimedia.org)

Prix Ars Electronica

The Prix Ars Electronica is a yearly prize in the field of electronic 
and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It 
has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), one of 
the world's major centers for art and technology.

The 2005 honorary mentions can be viewed at: 
http://www.aec.at/en/prix/honorary2005.asp