Dear Commonists,
Starting on Thursday Dec 4, Wikimedia Commons will witness a massive
upload of new images. We are anticipating about 100.000 files from a
donation from the German Federal Archive. These images are mostly related to
the history of Germany (including the German Democratic Republic) and
are part of a cooperation between Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive.
These images are licensed cc-by-sa. Wikimedia Germany and the Federal
Archive have signed a cooperation agreement that, among other things,
asserts that the Federal Archive owns sufficient rights to be able to
grant this kind of license.
The images are 800 pixel in size on the longer side, which is near the
lower bound for being useful on the internet. We are aware of that,
and we hope that after some time, we will be able to get the Archive to release
the images in a higher resolution. The quality of the work of
Wikimedia Commons might help this negotiation process.
The other part of the cooperation is a a tool for linking people from
a list compiled by the Federal Archive to the de.wp Persondata and to
the person authority file of the German National Library (something
de.wp already
does since 2005).
Daniel Kinzler is working on the upload process to Commons and
eventually on (semi-)automatically categorizing them.
100.000 images is to my knowledge the single largest donation to
Wikimedia Commons so far and I am very hopeful that this is only the
start of a long lasting relationship that might serve as an example to other
archives and image databases.
All the best,
Mathias Schindler
FYI:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=…
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Hi
I have updated Cropbot[1] a bit.
I spend him a new selection tool, which is much more handy than the
old one. Due this update it works now with the Opera browser too. (IE
is not supported furthermore).
New he has also the feature to crop lossless or exactly. If you crop
lossless, it have to be cropped at the JPEG block boundary, which is
mostly not exact there where you have selected. Because of that the
feature "crop exactly", which is not lossless, but it cuts exactly
that what you have selected. see [2] for more information.
Greetings
Luxo
[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Cropbot
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#Lossless_editing
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As a spinoff of the discussion of category intersections on
wikitech-l, I have ported my toolserver-powered JavaScript add-on to
Commons.
Screenshot:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Category_intersection_screenshot.png
The tool will add a new link beneath the category list of a page. A
click will open the list of categories of this page(/image) as
checkboxes. Chose two or more of these, and you can preview 20 files
in that intersection, or go to the toolserver to see them all.
To use, add
importScript('User:Magnus_Manske/category_intersection.js');
to your monobook.js. We can turn it into a gadget if wanted.
Cheers,
Magnus
I would suggest another approach, decentralized and maybe simpler.
There are two reasons behind having this separation between a common repository and local uploads:
1) understanding of fair-use is different across different countries and legislations and local uploads reflect the local understanding => locally only fair-use uploads should be tolerated, if any.
2) freely licensed stuff should be equally accessible to all projects => saving resources from multiple local re-uploads of the same stuff.
On the other hand, we know the mechanism to separate fair-use from free images - by means of different templates and categories : relatively few number and variety and repeating over all projects.
So, my question is: is there a way for our developers to loosen the restrictions which nowadays technically prevent local uploads from being accessible crosswiki? I see a possible solution in linking the crosswiki accessibility to the image copyright template/category:
* if tagged as fair-use, the image remains inaccessible from other wikis, or only accessible to a set of wikis whose fair-use exemption doctrine is compatible with the local one.
* freely licensed images can be linked to from elsewhere, without the need of multiple local uploads which waste resources.
* images without any license tag again do not become accessible crosswiki, until properly tagged/categorized.
This will return the admin maintenance boomerang back to the local wikis but should solve the problems with novices, with language understanding and the Commons-specific procedures which are obscure to community members who rarely attend or do not engage so much in Commons community life. It would further ease the maintenance if once proven their copyright status as fair-use or free, the images be protected so that the their accessibility don't get compromised by changing the tag/category.
Cheers,
Vassia
>-------- Оригинално писмо --------
>От: Lars Aronsson
>Относно: Re: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
>До: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
>Изпратено на: Събота, 2008, Декември 6 22:46:15 EET
>Patricia Rodrigues wrote:
>
>> That's a wonderful idea! But many times our main problem is the
>> lack of manpower in different languages to actually address
>> different users.
>
>The more I think about this human side of the problem, the more I
>think we should go back to local uploading. The forwarding to
>Commons could be implemented by adding a "category:Suitable for
>Commons" and a bot that scans this category. Then if the image is
>deleted from Commons, the local copy would still exist.
>
>If we want Wikipedia to scale from the narrow nerd community to a
>wider society, including elderly, we need to greet them with
>respect and in their own language. I don't see how we could
>manage this on Commons, even if uploaded images were marked with
>the uploader's interface language. We will always have the narrow
>nerd community too, which can act as admins and an interface
>towards the international community.
>
>
>--
> Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
> Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
>_______________________________________________
>Commons-l mailing list
>Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 11:31 PM, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote:
>
> But as soon as it comes to image uploading, an area where the
> elderly have decades of photos to contribute, we're sending our
> beginners off to Wikimedia Commons. Even if the menues and most
> templates are localized in every major language, this is not true
> of the admin community there. If a beginner fails to fill out all
> details of free licensing, their user talk page will receive an
> image deletion request in English. Even if there is a translated
> version of that notification, the user's explanation in a local
> language might not be understood by the admins. If the user has
> good credentials that are easily verified (retired schoolteacher,
> museum manager, ...) and has built a solid reputation in the local
> language Wikipedia, a Commons admin from another language might
> not fully understand this.
>
I can think of two solutions here. One is to simply have more
multi-project admins. Wikimedia ought to be one big community with a
commons goal. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly) Wikimedia has
been separated into many different islands separated by language
borders, which are very hard to open up. Commons was born as a
multilingual project, but in that aspect has failed I believe.
Another solution is to make image uploading much more transparent.
Uploading from the local wiki should be possible without needing to
browse to Commons. I cannot see unfortunately how we should handle
messaging in that case, but it would certainly make it easier to
communicate and monitor users.
I do not believe that returning to local uploading is a solution. It
will simply mean that the problem of categorizing images, deleting
copyright violations and similar will move to local projects where
obviously less attention will be paid to them.
> Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has
> infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two. So many
> copyright violations and half-free images are deleted, that little
> attention is paid to the individual contributors. The focus is on
> the image, not on the user.
That is certainly true. I have noticed myself that if you patrol new
uploads for some time your threshold for deleting or marking as bad
image is going down. It is then time to stop doing that for a while.
What I am wondering is how we can change the focus from the image to
user. What fundamental changes should be made for this?
> This system is also an open target for
> abuse. Sometimes deletions are requested anonymously or without
> substantial reasons, but this is not preceived as a problem. Only
> copyright violations are preceived as a problem.
Every system where anybody can make edits is inherently an open target
for abuse. The question is how we deal with abuse. I actually
currently do not know how we handle this. Do you have any examples?
Bryan
The idea of decentralizing languages off to home wikipedias sounds like a good idea. A 26 language wiki simply cannot function effectively. I have a further idea because the images coming to Commons may be copyright violations. Make sure that contacts who speak English for each participating project are listed somewhere.
________________________________
From: Patricia Rodrigues <snooze210904(a)yahoo.se>
To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 6, 2008 12:08:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
That's a wonderful idea! But many times our main problem is the lack of manpower in different languages to actually address different users. Don't let [[Special:ListUsers/sysop]] fool you: only a handful of those 244 sysops is actually very active. The problem runs deeper than multilingualism; it's the cultural differences between communities that really messes things up.
This said, I still think such a categorization would be very useful :).
Patrícia
--- On Sat, 6/12/08, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
From: Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@googlemail..com>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Saturday, 6 December, 2008, 6:06 PM
On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>> Maybe we should turn the system around, so our Swedish newcomers
>> can upload images to the Swedish Wikipedia, where they are
>> patrolled by Swedish speaking admins. Then, the patrolled images
>> can be automatically forwarded to Commons, instead of the other
>> way around. Even though this would require software development,
>> this seems a lot easier than trying to manage the admin community
>> on Commons.
> That's an interesting proposal.
How about this: Keep uploads at Commons, but automatically tag the
image description with a (hidden) category of the interface language
used on the upload page (except maybe for en)? That would allow for
* determining the
language to use when contacting a user
* subgroup/filter images (e.g. all deletion requests uploaded in Swedish)
Should be easy enough to incorporate into the software. Initially, we
could fall back to JavaScript (wgUserLanguage), which we use in the
upload form anyway...
Magnus
_______________________________________________
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Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Hello Samantha, this E-Mail is sent in reply to a comment on my
Wikimedia Commons talk page [1] where you asked for permission to use
the "Cumulus clouds in fair weather" image hosted on Wikimedia
Commons. I'm sending a copy of this E-Mail to the general Wikimedia
Commons discussion list so as to keep a record of this correspondence,
and in case anyone else would like to chime in and offer you further
advice.
Firstly, to answer your request, yes you may use that image as long as
you attribute the author (Michael Jastremski) in some way and inform
your users that the image came from Wikimedia Commons, e.g. by
supplying a hyperlink to the image page. There's further information
on using media from Wikimedia Commons on the commons wiki [3].
Secondly, you don't have to ask for permission to use media from
Wikimedia Commons, it is a repository of freely licensed media which
means you never have to ask for permission to use the media hosted
therein. You merely have to fulfill the license requirements
applicable to each piece of media you use. Usually this means stating
the author of the image, its source, and informing the user what
license the image is under.
1. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ævar_Arnfjörð_Bjarmason#Cumulus…
2. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Cumulus_clouds_in_fair_weather.jpeg
3. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia
On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 17:51, Mathias Schindler
<mathias.schindler(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Starting on Thursday Dec 4, Wikimedia Commons will witness a massive
> upload of new images. We are anticipating about 100.000 files from a
> donation
> from the German Federal Archive. These images are mostly related to
> the history of Germany (including the German Democratic Republic) and
> are part of a cooperation between Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive.
>
> These images are licensed cc-by-sa.
[snip]
>
> The images are 800 pixel in size on the longer side, which is near the
> lower bound for being useful on the internet. We are aware of that,
> and we hope
> that after some time, we will be able to get the Archive to release
> the images in a higher resolution. The quality of the work of
> Wikimedia Commons
> might help this negotiation process.
One thing that might be interesting to track is the outgoing traffic
from the images to the website of the Bundesarchiv (I suppose the
credits link to them?). This might give us some insight as to what
visibility these things actually bring to the organisations involved.
Even better would be to get statistics of how these outgoing links
actually result in people buying the higher resolution prints to
integrate in some publication (if they are for sale, of course).
Delphine
--
~notafish
NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost.
Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org
Of interest (and related to the recent wikitech-l threads on uploading
large files) is this new firefox extension that handles transcoding
from * to Ogg/Theora and uploading: http://firefogg.org/
Not only is this something we may wish to use, but it demonstrates the
viability of a complex uploading widget via a firefox extension. The
extension is GPLed, so it could serve as a starting point for a
commons-uploader firefox extension.
2008/12/3 Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler(a)gmail.com>:
> Dear Commonists,
>
> Starting on Thursday Dec 4, Wikimedia Commons will witness a massive
> upload of new images. We are anticipating about 100.000 files from a
> donation
> from the German Federal Archive. These images are mostly related to
> the history of Germany (including the German Democratic Republic) and
> are part of a cooperation between Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive.
Got to love any email that starts out with "dear commonists" ;-).
Many, many heartfelt congratulations to WM-DE on this. I don't think
it can be easily overstated how significant this is: I've talked to
many organizations over the years about media donations, and the
awareness and understanding of open access is still very limited. I
can very much imagine the kinds of conversations you've been having.
Kudos to the archive as well for "getting it" and taking this bold
step.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing these files used in Wikipedia
and elsewhere.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
