Hi Erik,
to keep wts and shared repositories did not mean a bulk
transfer to Commons. But it makes the media files directly
accessible to the wikis.
Now there is a slow bulk transfer organized by some bots
like MGA73bot. This bot is checking nothing -- no freedom
of panorama standards -- nothing. What's the difference
to make the repositories available at the WMF?
Surely, it's necessary to check the files before (but this
was not done by the bot). Now it makes a huge effort to
check the images twice -- at Wikivoyage and at Commons.
The original place as noted by the bot will vanish after some
days. No community member has the chance the check the
original file to get the category, for instance. And we will
have maybe about 40.000 ownerless objects at Commons.
The use of wts and shared repositories will give us enough
time the check all carefully. And you can have a sitenotice
that all images are subject of a check.
And I repeat by myself that red links are a catastrophe.
Maybe we should give the advise at the wikis to go to
wikivoyage-old.org to find the articles in complete. The
red links will be a state for several months or years which
could not be accepted by the communities and readers.
And as compared to Wikitravel the readers will go Internet
Brands. And others will laugh about the inability of the
WMF staff to make the technical job. The Wikivoyage staff
made a good job transferring all date from Wikitravel --
and you?
Please tell your legal department that is more important
to have a good and and a big community than having strong
reservations. And they think only about media files. What
about the Textual information of the Wikis?
Therefore, I ask you again to transfer the repositories.
Yours Roland
----- Original Message -----
From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Saturday, November 3, 2012 8:30 pm
Subject: Re: [Wikivoyage-l] Migration without the repository "shared"
To: Wikivoyage Mailing List <wikivoyage-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi Berthold,
the short version:
1) All files will continue to be accessible via
wikivoyage-old.org.
For how
long only depends on Wikivoyage e.V. but Roland suggested multiple months
would not be a problem.
2) Files need to be transferred by the community because
- not all files may be eligible for Commons due to its licensing policies
(freedom of panorama standards and other copyright specifics). Some files
may be eligible under the new EDP that is being developed, but then they
would have to be uploaded to the local wiki.
- licensing and description templates as well as categories may need
to be
updated to work on Commons.
- files should generally be checked for copyright issues, we need to sort
out different standards and practices for things like email
permissions to
grant the rights to use an image, and so on.
Our legal department has strong reservations about a bulk transfer,
and I
have strong reservations from a community perspective. This is not just
Wikivoyage being hosted by Wikimedia, this is Wikivoyage becoming a
Wikimedia project. That means taking the time to do this properly.
Technically it is easy for anyone to do a bulk transfer. The reason this
hasn't happened is precisely that people want to take the time to do it
right.
If people are really worried about having red links, we can defer the
migration date until more files have been transferred. Technically there's
nothing forcing us to do it next week. Hans however will have greatly
reduced availability after that and we currently depend on him to produce
the database dumps.
It continues to be my recommendation to live with the red links at launch,
and to just make it a priority to do the files migration through November.
We can help with tools advice/support, and I would not underestimate the
Wikimedia community's ability to pull this off.
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
_______________________________________________
Wikivoyage-l mailing list
Wikivoyage-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivoyage-l