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