Commons-l October 2006

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38 participants
25 discussions

Dream a little...
by Jimmy Wales 21 Oct '06

21 Oct '06

I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be purchased and freed. Dream big. Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you like to see purchased and released under a free license? Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific, be general, brainstorm, have fun with it. I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own. --Jimbo

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Scheduled attendance for Wikinews or Commons
by bawolff 20 Oct '06

20 Oct '06

Do to some recent confusion about overlaps of attendance of events (at wikinews), theres now a new page for coordinating event attendance, and I thought it probably should be announced on the mailing list: Summary from the page: Anyone planning to schedule attendance at an event, as a representative of Wikinews or Wikimedia Commons, should announce their plans as soon as possible on [[meta:Scheduled attendance for Wikinews or Commons]] , in order to not cause unnecessary overlap. Formally arranged coverage is best registered here. This is not necessary if you're attending informally, such as a tourist attraction, a protest, etc. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler#Page_for_coordination http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scheduled_attendance_for_Wikinews_or_Commons -bawolff

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And in other news...
by Brianna Laugher 19 Oct '06

19 Oct '06

Brief comments on happenings around the wiki: * A process to recognise "featured galleries" has been started. (A "gallery" is a Commons main namespace page that is used to display/organise/annotate/present media files.) If you are interested in helping develop the criteria, or suggest some of your favourite galleries as possible models, please comment at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Featured_galleries . Innovative and unusual presentations are especially welcome. * Commons is rapidly approaching one million files. How can we celebrate and mark the occasion? See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Commons:One_million_… * A new process has been started [for admins] to review images from Flickr, as license changes or license mismatches are a common problem. No decision has been made about how to handle the images with differing licenses. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Para/Flickr http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Flickr_review_needed http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Att… * There is a fledging project developing to organise and encourage Commons maintenance and cleanup work to be done. Mop and bucket optional. Your help needed at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:CommonTasks . * A new process for photography feedback has been started. It doesn't offer any shiny awards, but could give you more expansive feedback than COM:QI (Quality images, ala 'Good articles', but only for Wikimedian-created works) or COM:FP (Featured pictures). See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photography_critiques . regards, Brianna user:pfctdayelise

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Language
by damodar vinayak bale 19 Oct '06

19 Oct '06

Can one refer to book "How Language Works" By:David Crystal, published by Penguin Books. Shyam.

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Re: [Commons-l] Dream a little...
by damodar vinayak bale 17 Oct '06

17 Oct '06

TRUTH only will WIN,is the meaning of the words SATYA MEVA JAYATE. There is no need to Dream."Arogyam Dhana Sampada" is translated as "Health is Wealth".So converting every moment of living in terms of dollars will not lead the world to good.We have harmed the Nature more than enough.We now should think on the basis of recycling from the waste that has been left,in search of good.End of the globe is very near,if Nature is disturbed any more.So GOOD LUCK. Shyam. On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 Jimmy Wales wrote : > >I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you >would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of >generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be >purchased and freed. > >Dream big. Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase >copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you >like to see purchased and released under a free license? > >Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific, >be general, brainstorm, have fun with it. > >I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a >position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what >we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would >expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own. > >--Jimbo >_______________________________________________ >Commons-l mailing list >Commons-l(a)wikimedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

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Ogg Theora is too hard to play. We need YouTube-style Flash streaming video.
by Jason Spiro 16 Oct '06

16 Oct '06

Hi all, Click this link: http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/SynBERC:MIT/Lab_video_tours It's far different from most video on Commons: it's Flash streaming video and it works in 99% of web browsers. (The VLC web browser plugin is supoosed to support Flash video too, though I've never tried it. Also I don't know if Flash video is based on patented codecs or not. But assuming that no such problems come up...) Perhaps we should put in a MediaWiki feature request: MediaWiki should convert all our videos to low-rez Flash Video format for streaming previewing as soon as the .ogg original is uploaded. This way, more people will be able to view our videos, so we'll get more uploads. Agree or disagree? Cheers, Jason -- Jason Spiro: computer consulting with a smile. I also provide training and spyware removal services for homes and businesses. Call or email for a FREE 5-minute consultation. Satisfaction guaranteed. 416-781-5938 / Email: info(a)jspiro.com / MSN: jasonspiro(a)hotmail.com

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Re: [Commons-l] Dream a little...
by daniwo59＠aol.com 16 Oct '06

16 Oct '06

My own thoughts on this, which I also expressed on the meta page: 1. There is plenty of material out that that is already public domain. Part of the problem is that it can take forever and a day to digitize it all. In the case of books and magazines, digitization often involves destroying the hard copies in the process. There are, however, specialized scanners that can do the work without ruining the books themselves. These are expensive (about US $30,000 a machine). Ten machines, strategically located around the world, along with student staff to operate them around the clock could help to preserve these texts and store them for prosperity. Additional people (paid and volunteer) will be needed to OCR, proof, and hyperlink the material to ensure that it doesn't get lost in a glut of material (I have visions of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Ark was finally stored in some crate in an army warehouse). 2. While OCR capacities exist for some languages, they do not exist for other languages, where the material is much more likely to get lost. Manuscripts in Tibetan monasteries, for example, can be scanend but not OCRed easily. To make this information available, developers should be paid to create adequate OCR tools for these languages. Rough cost: $5 million. 3. Music has been recorded around the world for well over a century, yet many of the early recordings are being lost, especially those on wax cylinders and porcelain records. Preservation includes locating, identifying, and remastering. People must be trained to do this. Rough cost: $35 million over two years. 4. This is true of old films as well. Celluloid copies are extremely rare and extremely flammable. Restoration is exceedingly costly. For example, [[Theda Bara]] is a well-known vamp of early Hollywood (the word "vamp" was first used to describe her), yet none of her films survive, and they were made less than a hundred years ago. Films are international, they include important historic documents such as newsreels, and they are being lost every day. Today, most preservation work is being done by major studios, since it is so costly. In other words, they are taking important works now in the public domain, restoring them, and contending that the restoration is an original work, i.e., another hundred years at least until some Vigo or Charlie Chaplin films enter the public domain ... and little attention is being paid to newsreels of events like the Russian revolution, World War I, etc. Like music, people should be offered scholarships to learn the art of film restoration and work on these projects. Until this happens it can be outsourced. Rough cost: $50 million. 5. To ensure all of this remains accessible, we will need a LOT of servers and bandwidth: Initial outlay: $10 million. Total $100 million dollars, spent over 5 years. Costs include staffing, identifying prospective targets, transportation, overhead, etc. Just coordinating a project of this scope will take a lot of effort. And there is competition too. As an example, _http://historical.library.cornell.edu/IWP/_ (http://historical.library.cornell.edu/IWP/) is a collection of Internation Women's Journals, some of which are very important historically. They are already scanned, but they are inaccessible because a private company has (rightfully or wrongfully) copyrighted the scans. Lots to be done. You will see how quickly $100 million can be spent. Danny In a message dated 10/15/2006 11:27:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time, jwales(a)wikia.com writes: I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be purchased and freed. Dream big. Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you like to see purchased and released under a free license? Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific, be general, brainstorm, have fun with it. I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own. --Jimbo _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

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Re: [Commons-l] Dream a little...
by Larry Pieniazek 15 Oct '06

15 Oct '06

I rarely, if ever comment on the mailing lists, but this topic drew me out. I find myself in the camp that, while excited at the idea of acquiring new content, is more excited at the idea of doing something significant about content that will be lost before too long, and (without having taken shedfuls of time to evaluate all the possible pros and cons) favour a scanner project. The idea of very high quality scanners, distributed globally, (10 scanning centers, another poster put it, I believe) that might also give some employment boost in areas that could well need it, is very attractive. I'd put the bulk of any largesse into that, and maybe 20% into film (still/movie) preservation. Better to preserve and be able to use what already exists than to buy things. Lobbying I'd give exactly $0.00 USD to. I think it best WMF stay out of politics. Leave that to the EFF and the Libertarian Party, et al. Hope that is of some help. Larry Pieniazek (commons and en:wp user Lar) Hobby mail: lar at miltontrainworks.com

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Re: [Commons-l] Dream a little...
by daniwo59＠aol.com 15 Oct '06

15 Oct '06

For every award winning photo that a photographer takes, there are hundreds of other photos of that exact event, the minutes leading up to the event, and the minutes immediately after the event. A photographer will shoot a roll of film, and the remaining photos, deemed "not quite so good," are put away forever in what photo houses and newspapers call the "morgue." These are the "second-best" images, and the images that did not quite make the light of day because, although they were good, they were not quite good enough. Perhaps, instead of getting Corbis's best shots, we should try to liberate the second-best ones--the ones in the morgue that aren't quite as famous but could serve our ends as well. Danny In a message dated 10/15/2006 3:48:44 PM Eastern Daylight Time, wgfinley(a)dynascope.com writes: Go to apimages.com and you will see a few hundred images we can't produce. They are timeless and unique just like the two photos I worked with them to get permissions on -- Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima and Trang Bang. Same thing with CORBIS, go to their website, type in a name and start watching all the photos that come up. Could we get some of these as press publicity photos? Probably, asserting fair use. How about having an agreement in place with CORBIS about our use of them so there is never a question about the legitimacy of the use of an image? We should never stop looking for the free sources of images that we can obtain. But there are a whole slew of historical photographs owned by these media houses we do not have access to and that's what I was getting at. I know, because I've deleted them before. The press is everywhere and over decades has acquired scores of important images, I'd like to use them, LEGALLY while protecting the rights of their creators. A big pile of money would help us do that. --Guy On Oct 15, 2006, at 1:41 PM, geni wrote: > On 10/15/06, W. Guy Finley <wgfinley(a)dynascope.com> wrote: >> Ahhh, i'm remembering why I'm on hiatus. Dream a little........so >> someone can come and piss on it. >> > > If you don't identify problems you can't improve things. What do AP > have that we don't and have no reasonable way of getting? > > Photos of newsworthy events where there was no US miltitry presence. > Now aside from AP and simular who has these photos? > > Buying up big photo archives has some attactions but it is likely we > would waste a lot of money on stuff we could have produced anyway. > > > > -- > geni > _______________________________________________ > Commons-l mailing list > Commons-l(a)wikimedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

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Re: [Commons-l] Dream a little...
by daniwo59＠aol.com 15 Oct '06

15 Oct '06

In a message dated 10/15/2006 2:35:06 PM Eastern Daylight Time, wikilegal(a)inbox.org writes: On 10/15/06, W. Guy Finley <wgfinley(a)dynascope.com> wrote: > I think if you go to AP or CORBIS with a hundred mill and say "hey, > we want to work out a bulk licensing deal for copyright permissions" > I'm certain something would get done. Would it be every single thing > they do with unlimited rights? No. Wold it be an enormous chunk of > images we could sorely use? Most definitely. > Does Corbis even own the copyright on the images they archive? What about AP? Yes and yes. Danny _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

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Commons-l October 2006