[Commons-l] Appropriate surprise (Commons stuff)

[Michael Peel]

On 9 May 2010, at 12:15, Ting Chen wrote:

> If let's say we have already hundreds of 
> panorama of the Rhine river in the city of Mainz than I would not add 
> any value to our repository if I put another panorama depicts the same 
> scene. But if it is took by a festival, or by a daytime that is not yet 
> depicted, or by a certain weather phenomenon then it would add value 
> into the gallary.

I've isolated this from the rest of the email, as it touches on a much broader issue, which it seems I disagree with Ting on. Every image is different - at the very least it will have different lighting and a different perspective - which means that it may be more useful in any given situation than another (remember that it's not just Wikipedia using the images, or even just Wikimedia projects). It may also be technically better quality, given that technology improves over time. There's rarely a downside* to posting that onto Wikimedia Commons, even if the upside to posting it is not as great as for a picture showing something completely different than what we have already. There is always value.

There is also a big downside with this sort of exclusion: you have to turn around to people and say "thanks for releasing your reasonably good image, but we don't want it." That's not only somewhat unpleasant to do, but it also puts people off making other images available that might be more useful.

To me, this leads into the difference between categories and galleries/pages, though - the latter should be much more selective and shouldn't include very similar photographs.

* cultural sensitivities aside, there are also worries about impact of an increased workload on the Wikimedia community and strain on the servers, but not large ones at the current time IMO.

Mike Peel