[Commons-l] An interactive copyright tutorial as a requirement for uploading?

[Erik Moeller]

On 6/18/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hm, I'm not sure what would stop users just guessing and hitting
> 'back' a lot to get through it.

I think the first question we should ask is why users upload obvious
copyvios on Commons. Here are some factors I can think of:

Most importantly, copyright policies are fairly lenient in many
projects and languages. This is in spite of the fact that the user
interface typically warns very strongly against uploading copyright
violations. I think standardizing copyright policy to a certain extent
will help in dealing with that. We cannot communicate clearly while
the facts are blurry to begin with.

Users come to Commons from one of the existing projects. Why do they
go to Commons? Because the projects advertise it quite actively. And
this is not limited to links on the local upload form. It is part of
the social dynamic ("Why did you not upload X to Commons?"). There are
also sister project links to Commons in many articles. The projects
portray using Commons as a good and right thing to do.

When users come to Commons, do they set their UI language? Many may
not be aware that this is possible. If they aren't native English
speakers, this means that they are likely to ignore any message above
a certain complexity. So they understand how to upload, but they don't
understand anything else.

I believe Commons newbies are often clueless or semi-cluess about the
purpose of Commons, and only discover it more or less by accident. I
think if we can ensure that every user who visits Commons views a
tutorial in _their_ language, we might be able to address many of the
factors that are currently leading to copyvio uploads.

> And what questions would we ask? That
> would be the hardest bit. (Well, maybe collecting all the translations
> would be the hardest...)

I think the questions wouldn't be so hard, really. For example, "Can
you upload a movie poster to Commons?" Many people seem to think that
press photos, promotional materials and such are OK. This is also in
line with the "fair use" policy of the projects. We need to explain
clearly that this is not so.

Andre's suggestion that it should be hard to complete the tutorial by
randomly clicking is a good one. It could be done with a JavaScript
that checks several multiple choice boxes on a page, and only allows
you to continue if all the answers are correct. If we accept that
users without JavaScript (a minority) can just click through it, this
is relatively easy to code.

> I had an idea which would hopefully achieve a similar outcome, that we
> could introduce "throttled" or "reviewed" uploads. Once a user uploads
> say, 5 files, an admin has to review the files before they can upload
> any more. If they made any mistakes, they stay on reviewed upload. If
> they didn't make any mistakes with licensing, they can go onto
> unreviewed upload (what we have at the moment).

Hmm, negative points I can see here:
- complex: you need a good and effective review interface for admins.
- a lot of additional work for admins; if they do not catch up, users
will have frustrating waiting periods.
- takes away from the wiki notion of doing things "quickly".

The tutorial solution is also somewhat un-wiki, but at least you would
only have to go through it once, and then the normal wiki processes
apply. We probably want to try multiple strategies, though.

Erik