On 2/23/2011 6:29 PM, Daniel Schwen wrote:
Have you ever taken the possibility into
consideration, that Billy
does not want the 'praise' and 'recognition'?
Maybe he is just happy with the fact that his pictures are being used.
This is all just speculation. And a single person is anecdotal evidence at best.
I do not quite understand the fuss about "Billy Hathorn"
You've got a good point. Some people might not be motivated by
recognition, and some might have a strong desire for privacy and would
be repelled by recognition.
On the other hand, I think that the large majority of people do
like getting recognition and get unhappy if they aren't getting
recognition for what they do (in work, family life, etc.) Now, it
could be that commons, by offering little recognition, has selected
for a special population of people who don't want recognition, but I
think you'll attract more new people if people get recognition.
"Billy Hathorn" isn't remarkable because he's got an empty User page
-- an overwhelming majority of commons users have empty User pages.
He's remarkable because he's taken a lot of pictures. I found him by
looking at a list of top contributors in my database; after I skipped
over the top few users (that I knew were bots) he was the second person
I looked at. I'd have no trouble finding 50 more people who've made
major contributions and have no talk page.
Note that any privacy that Billy gets from not having a descriptive
User page is weak privacy. If he keeps the clock in his camera
accurate, I can use my database to put together a remarkably detailed
description of places he's been and when he was there. The average
cyberstalker might have a hard time putting his story together, but an
intelligence agency or industrial espionage outfit would have no
problem. [If he's putting bad timestamps on his pictures, he's harming
the veridicality of both Wikipedia and Commons]
Even if Wikimedia Commons doesn't put together a useful 'summary'
page for users, there's no reason why a third party can't use a fully
automated process to make a 'photostream' page for Billy much like the
photostream page on flickr -- and I'm certain that this is going to
happen. ;-)
Better information about users would have many social benefits.
For instance, if Billy was a bit more visible and recognized, his
friends might decide to chip in a little money here and there and help
him get a better camera. If he was connected to a community of
photographers, he might find that he can improve his pictures greatly
by buying $15 worth of supplies and learning to think a little more
about light.
Just the other day I got an email from a woman who wanted to use
this image
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abolqassem-Aref-Ghazvini.jpg
in a book. She was concerned with the validity of the public
domain declaration of the image. Well, the best I can do is play
jailhouse lawyer, look at the evidence, and put together an argument
that the image is in the public domain. If we go back to the uploader,
we see that he's got a User page but he's basically a cipher,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BehnamFarid
looking at what I can see there, plus what's in my database, I
believe he's an Iranian who takes pride in his heritage -- but I don't
know if he lives in Iran. It's plausible that he scanned this image out
of a book or other document, but I really don't know. Somebody who
wanted to put together the story of this image would need to contact
him, but looking at the talk page I see "*I do /not/ visit Wikipedia
very often so that there may be a considerable lapse of time before I
respond to your message or messages placed on this page".
* Now, quite likely, Behnam Farid is as excited to answer this sort
of question as I am (that his, he's not) but when users can't get
answers to questions about the provenance of images, that degrades the
value of PD declarations and CC license grants. And note that CC
doesn't just protect the rights of content creators, it protects the
rights of content consumers by maintaining information about
provenance... For instance, if an image is photoshopped or staged,
provenance information makes it possible for us to hold the manipulator
responsible.
On the other hand, Behnam Farid might live in Iran, which has a
repressive government which might give him trouble if they don't like
the information he's posting to Wikipedia. He might have a really good
reason to keep his head low.
As you see, like anything having to do with online identity,
there are a lot of tradeoffs here and no one simple answer.