[Commons-l] Commons-l Digest, Vol 69, Issue 21 - Friendliness

[Turelio001 at aol.com]

"users from Germany are the root of the problem" (Lars Aronsson, Commons-l, 
27 Feb 2011)

Wow. I never expected to read such a phrase on Commons-l. Though I hate to 
possibly fulfil Godwin's law, when reading Aronsson's above cited claim, the 
infamous Nazi slogan "The Jews are our misfortune" (sv: "Judarna är vår 
olycka") came to my mind.

Mr. Aronsson obviously hasn't understood the Wiki system: if you think 
something can (or needs to) be improved, just DO IT or make a substantial 
proposal at the right place, but without spitting your contempt in the face of 
those who have done the pioneer work (even, if somewhat lousy). 

Though Mr. Aronsson's second focus seems to be on German admins, it may 
have slipped his attention that default message templates used for notifying 
uploaders that one of their uploads is considered copyvio, derivative-work, 
missing permission, missing source or missing a license, etc. were not 
necessarily written by the admins who use them on a daily basis. But if Mr. 
Aronsson prefers, I can ask all 48 de-native-tagged admins on Commons to stop all 
their admin-work until we get Mr. Aronsson's personal approval. 

The problem Commons is facing since a while, is massively missing 
admin-power/resources.
On February 23rd, Commons had 9 mio files. (read on [[:de:WP:Kurier]])
Today (Febr 28th), Commons has 9.35 mio files. (as of 
[[Special:Statistics]])

That means, in 5 days 350.000 uploads needed to be checked for detecting 
blatant and not so overt copyvios, for attack images/pages, for personality 
rights violations, for useless bullshit, for clearly promotional material,  
for missing source entry, for missing license, for missing permission (when 
uploader not identical to author), etc. etc.

Yes, we have 270 admins on our list. Surely all are doing valuable work. 
But rather few are active in the dirty work of upload patrol (To get a surely 
incomplete impression: 
http://toolserver.org/~vvv/adminstats.php?wiki=commonswiki_p&tlimit=15768000). Why? Though upload patrol may keep Commons 
existing (instead of being closed down by WMF after getting the 10.000th DMCA 
takedown-request), it doesn't make you any friends. You get angry reactions from 
clueless, careless or reckless uploaders, you are personally insulted, you 
even get death threaths, your userpage is vandalized, etc. but you NEVER get 
a thank-you from WMF or any institutional body of WMF or Commons (except 
from a few single users or fellow sysops). I'm not really asking for the 
latter, but mentioning it may help to understand the "constructive" impact of your 
rant.

Túrelio

(COI disclosure: admin on Commons, who is de-native, but has never written 
a default message template;  Disclaimer: speaking strictly for myself, not 
for a non-existing de-admin cabal)


In einer eMail vom 28.02.2011 02:52:19 Westeuropäische Normalzeit schreibt 
commons-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org: 

> Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2011 20:30:00 +0100
> From: Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] "
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <4D6AA638.7090607 at aronsson.se>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> 
> Magnus Manske wrote MediaWiki, Commons was suggested
> by Erik M?ller, and the Toolserver is German. The Germans
> have contributed more than most to the Wikimedia projects,
> especially in software and technology. Not to mention
> the huge archive photo donations and Wikipedia Academy,
> pioneered by the German chapter. However, the German
> Wikipedia has a different set of standards, more strict rules
> for inclusion and notability, and more speedy deletions. This
> adds to the "focus on content, rather than people", and when
> this is described as a problem on Commons, what I can see
> is that users from Germany are the root of the problem.
> 
> Spanish or Norwegian admins on Commons are not the
> problem, as far as I can see, despite using the same
> ..
> 
> 
> -- 
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.s
e
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