I am quite appalled about how things have a nasty tendency to a nasty
outcome on commons. München is being moved to Munich, Praha is moved
to Prague,... and all on a specious kind of based argumentation. I
know how the cities are called. I have seen the traffic signs! The
cities are actually called München, Praha,...
I read e.g. that [München, Germany] would look silly. Yes it does.
That is why it should have been [München, Deutschland] in the first
place with the redirect being [Munich, Germany] or even a
disambiguation on [Munich] as it already is on the en-WP. What was
clear to many people in the beginnig of commons now gets overthrown
and people keenly start their bots.
Moreover I do not mind having [東京] as log as there is a
redirect on [Tokyo], [Tokio] etc.
As far as I remember commons was planed for all projects to coexist
but not to assimilate them until a bad english gets the upper hand.
I am appalled about this and do not know if I carry on in this pile of
shards.
disappointed greetings
paddy
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Why not just edit stuff in the [[mediawiki:*]] namespace to make the
uploader field more prominent in the file history? Whomever uploaded
it is usually the author, and you don't need users to do the "right
thing" its automatic.
-bawolff
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/29/photojournalism_and_copyright/
I note that free-content is not quite mentioned. I am somewhat pleased
that many photographers' sense of entitlement *is* mentioned.
(Mind you, I already get phone calls from journalists who can't work
out what the hell is where on the typical image description page. The
current format *sucks* for reusers, even when they find their image.
Anyone want to work out an Image: page that looks more like something
you'd see in a commercial photo archive, or on Flickr?)
- d.
On 29/12/06, Chris McKenna <cmckenna(a)sucs.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Dec 2006, David Gerard wrote:
>> On 29/12/06, Chris McKenna <cmckenna(a)sucs.org> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 29 Dec 2006, David Gerard wrote:
>>>> (Mind you, I already get phone calls from journalists who can't work
>>>> out what the hell is where on the typical image description page. The
>>>> current format *sucks* for reusers, even when they find their image.
>>>> Anyone want to work out an Image: page that looks more like something
>>>> you'd see in a commercial photo archive, or on Flickr?)
>>> What about the current layout do journalists not understand/not like?
>> Finding the author/uploader or even being able to work out which bit
>> of the interface is the username. Working out that clicking on that
>> will take them to the uploader's user page. If the uploader has a
>> userpage on Commons at all. Etc.
> Well the {{information}} template that is the encouraged standard has a
> prominent field for Author. In that all of my images that I upload are
> shown as:
> Author - Chris McKenna (Thryduulf)
Yes, that's useful. Though for images one is not the original creator
of, a reuser may want to contact the original uploader in the hope of
a better-quality image.
(The image in question was a public-domain image scanned at web size
from a book published almost a hundred years ago. So the uploader
would be the person to contact for a better-quality scan.)
It should be easy enough to make "Original uploader:" clearly stated
on the page.
> I am not certain that a redesign of the page is needed,
I think it could really do with some UI review. I was having trouble
over the phone even directing her to the place with the link to the
uploader's user page when we both had the page in front of us on our
computers. To a technophobe, the stuff below the image appears to be
technical gibberish in UI terms.
> but perhaps
> mandatory use of the {{information}} template - possibly with an
> auto-generated link to the userpage of teh uploader if this is possible.
Putting {{information}} templates on all Commons pages without them
would also be good.
> Is it technically possible to include a blank {{information}} template on
> the image description page for new uploads? Or maybe redesign the upload
> page to have several input fields corresponding to the template rather
> than one single free-form box as now? Would this require a hack to
> MediaWiki?
Not sure. cc: to wikitech-l for opinions. (Did the German UI review
cover Image: pages?)
- d.
I think that one of our sister projects, the English Wikipedia, is
feeling a little ill and needs some help.
There is a vote going on about for a proposal which would dramatically
increase the amount of Fair Use Image permitted by policy in the
English Wikipedia. I'm not asking anyone here to go stack the poll,
especially since the poll count won't matter anyways.
I'm asking you to step in and help some of our newer contributors
understand [[Free content]].
Jimbo has already commented on the proposal:
"This is horrifyingly bad proposal which would reverse one of the
healthiest trends in the history of Wikipedia at the very moment when
major successes are being had every single day. We should NOT rely on
promotional images under unclear license conditions for a number of
reasons. First, we are powerful enough now to demand, and get, freely
licensed promotional images. This proposal undermines our credibility
in making such demands. Second, we undercut all the flickr-types who
are very very happily trying to create freely licensed alternatives.
Many photographers report that it is a lot of fun to see an article
improve from no picture, to *their* picture (freely licensed), and
disheartening when people whine about not being able to use the
professional photo, licensing be damned.
I very very strongly oppose this proposal.--Jimbo Wales 21:33, 23
December 2006 (UTC)"
To an extent this proposal is a reaction to some of the more recent
attempts to reduce the amount of excessive non-free material in
enwiki... but I fear the greater cause of this is the massive influx
enwiki has had over the last year.
These new users are familiar with sites like YouTube and MySpace and
the rampant copyright violations all over them, many started their
involvement with computers with things like Napster. They have a very
expansive idea of what Fair Use is which is inconsistent with the law.
This gives me great hope for the future of fair use law, but great
fear for the future of English Wikipedia.
They have learned wiki-ways much faster than they have learned of the
importance of Free content and I fear that if we do not educate them
now we will suffer an [[Eternal September]].
A failure of our most largest and prominent community to maintain a
commitment to truly free content, I fear, will not be contained to
just one project.
And example of this problem can be seen here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Elimination_of_Fair_Use_Rationa…
In the post below we see a newish (July 2006) user claim that the
discouragement to use fair use is a totally new event and, well, also
an evil plan by Jwales to line his pockets with money!
I'm asking here because:
* Of all the foundation projects, I think commons has the densest
concentration of active english speakers who truly understand and care
about Free Content.
* The character of the enwiki community does have a big influence on
us at commons.. They provide us with users, they are our customers,
and more than any other single group, they pick the board of the
Wikimedia Foundation.
So please, take a look at the threads.. Find some people who are
confused. Engage them in discussion, on the talk page I've linked
above.. or on their user talks.
Thank you in advance for your time and help,
[[commons:User:Gmaxwell]]
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. It is quite remarkable how far
we have strayed from our original mission and sacrificed our position in the
forefront of the free culture movement for the sake of some "easy way out."
It's time that we reclaim the high ground.
Danny
Considering this thread, I want to report on the story of Terry, otherwise
known as [[User:Googie man]]. Terry has two passions, baseball and photography,
and he knows a lot about both. He is also a veteran Wikipedian, from the
days before there even was a Wikipedia.
Looking through his contributions,
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Googie_man_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Googie_man) , you will see that Terry has contributed some amazing free images of
baseball players (and other subjects). He lug his camera equipment to the
games, takes the pictures, and spends hours cleaning them up to make them high
quality, wikipedia-worthy FREE images. He then gets into endless arguments
with people who would rather have "professional" images instead of the ones he
took. It is frustrating.
Since we are discussing free images, I just want to point out that we need
more people like Terry, not like the people who go out and rob copyrighted
images under the claim of fair use. After all, that's what this project is all
about. He shouldn't have to argue with people in defense of his images.
Danny
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Travis Derouin <travis(a)wikihow.com>
Date: 09-Dec-2006 07:57
Subject: [Wikitech-l] ImportFreeImages Extension
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org>
I've converted some code we've been using into an extension for importing
properly licensed photos from flickr into a Mediawiki installation:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ImportFreeImages
It makes use of the phpFlickr package for the API calls.
Feel free to play around with it here:
http://wikidiy.com/mediawiki-1.8.2/index.php/Special:ImportFreeImages
Travis
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