Hello.
The usability beta has been tried out by over 570,000 users across all
Wikimedia projects and roughly 80% of those beta users continue using it
[1]. As for Commons, about 7,500 users tried out the beta as of end of
February and 86% of users are still using it. The usability team is planning
to roll out the current beta interface including the new toolbar as the
default interface in April and May; please refer to these blogs for more
details.[2][3]
As the acceptance rate of the beta by Commons users is relatively high, we
would like to make the switch for Commons at first in the second week of
April. In order to facilitate the transition and to avoid critical issues,
we would like to ask as many of you as possible to try Beta before that
date, so that most issues are discovered and fixed before we go default. You
can opt-in via the 'Try Beta' link at the top of your interface.
We appreciate that Commons heavily relies on custom user scripts and
site-specific JavaScript; Our changes are not especially related to
multimedia usability, but we need your help to make sure the most used tools
are compatible with the new interface. If you encounter issues using the
beta, please share your feedback on the dedicated page [4].
Many thanks in advance.
Naoko Komura and the User Experience Programs Team
Wikimedia Foundation
[1] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Beta_Feedback_Survey
[2]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/25/wikimedia-gets-ready-for-some-big-chan…
[3] http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/the-change-in-interface-is-coming/
[4] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Usability_issues_and_ideas
--
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
People interested in the future of Commons as a platform should take a
look at what's been happening with Flickr and astronomy photos.
1) The Royal Observatory ran a contest for "Astronomy Photographer of
the Year" on Flickr. This was a really sophisticated website that used
Flickr as a backend.
2) The Blind Astrometry Server is a bot that automatically figures out
where astronomical images are in the sky, and tags them appropriately.
In both cases, the Flickr staff weren't even aware these things were
going on, for quite a while.
Anyway, I was reminded of all this today since someone sent me a link to
the Royal Observatory's retrospective on the whole thing:
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2010/papers/romeo/romeo.html
And here's two blog posts I wrote for Flickr some time ago:
http://code.flickr.com/blog/2009/02/18/found-in-space/http://code.flickr.com/blog/2009/03/20/tags-in-space/
In my view there isn't anything that Flickr is doing which Commons
couldn't be doing. And as much as I have faith in the Flickr team, I
have doubts about whether Yahoo is the right place, long term, for the
world to be relying on for such resources.
--
Neil Kandalgaonkar <neilk(a)wikimedia.org>
Hey,
inspired by the Djakota postig I whipped up a little wrapper around
IIP [1] and VIPS [2]. It is basically the same think as Djakota, but
as a compiled fast-cgi program (rather than Java).
A couple of examples:
http://toolserver.org/~dschwen/iip/wip.php?f=LC-39_Observation_gantry_pano.…http://toolserver.org/~dschwen/iip/wip.php?f=Chicago.jpghttp://toolserver.org/~dschwen/iip/wip.php?f=Seattle_7.jpg
The examples use a flash viewer, but you can append &flash=no to the
urls to get a Javascript viewer.
It should work to replace the names with arbitrary images on commons,
but new images will have to be processed into a pyramidal tiled tiff
image (with jpg compression) first. That takes time, about a minute.
After that the image is cached and the viewer appears immediately. Be
warned, there is no visual feedback that anything is happening while
the image is processed. So be patient and try a reload after waiting a
minute or so.
I'll write a gadget to integrate this into commons (the gadget will
only appear on images with a certain minimum size).
Best,
Dschwen
[1] http://iipimage.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/index.php?title=VIPS
Hi,
I'm wondering why we have a green sitenotice about earning money by
helping Commons.
I have my interface on Dutch and I get a big ugly thing that have no
use for me.
Could it be possible that it will only show it to people with English
interface? I don't think it will have much use when you show it to
Dutch people... Because most people in the U.S Will have English
interface.
Huib
--
"The soldiers graves are great preachers of peace...."
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Abigor
This past weekend, at the SXSW conference, a new initiative
was launched to "get video on Wikipedia",
http://videoonwikipedia.org/
That sounds like a great idea.
(I wasn't there, but I was told.)
But among the first videos to be uploaded since the
announcement are two that show some construction
equipment and both break my browser every time I try
to watch them. How can this be possible with a fully
updated Mozilla Firefox 3.5.8 on Ubuntu Linux?
I suppose something went wrong in the OGG encoding,
but still, browsers should not be fooled by this,
and/or Wikimedia Commons needs to make sure videos
are correctly encoded so they can be safely watched.
I have asked that these two broken videos be removed,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:6hpPowerTrowel.ogvhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:13hpBoren.ogv
We discussed for a long time why OpenOffice documents
can't be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons because the
ZIP encoding wasn't safe and could explode in the
face of the user. Well, maybe OGG isn't safe either?
Should we just ban video all together?
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Hello all,
I am working on a research project related to the idea of community and the
extent to which Wikipedia constitutes a community, or may contain a
community (in the group of editors, the WikiCommons or some other group). I
would like to interview people who consider themselves part of a
Wikipedia-related community, people who participate in Wikipedia but do NOT
consider it a community, people who consider Wikipedia a community but see
themselves as outside that community, or anyone at all who would like to
talk about their experiences interacting with others in Wikipedia.
Those who are interested in talking to me about this can contact me at
jessyrob(a)gmail.com.
Jessica
--
Jessica Roberts
Ph.D. Student
University of Maryland
Philip Merrill College of Journalism
This is an "Ask Slashdot" on how to digitise large, fragile old maps
that are too fragile to just put on a scanner:
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/10/03/10/2041245/Digitizing-and-Geocoding-Old…
Anyone want to go there and help?
How would you approach this problem? Say you've gotten your hands on a
serious ancient map collection and want to scan them and put them on
Commons before they turn into dust.
- d.
For anyone in the UK (or willing to visit the UK ;-) that hasn't seen
the below, please take a look. Apologies for the cross-posting. This
event is also hosting Wikimedia UK's AGM, so it is fairly
important. ;-) Please distribute it to anyone else that you think
might be interested.
Thanks,
Mike
Begin forwarded message:
> From: joseph seddon <life_is_bitter_sweet(a)hotmail.co.uk>
> Date: 25 February 2010 12:01:55 GMT
> Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] Open Knowledge Conferece - Wikimedia Track
> (Call for Participation)
> Reply-To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> This year Wikimedia UK is partnering with the Open Knowledge
> Foundation in the organisation of the 2010 Open Knowledge
> Conference ("OKCon"), an interdisciplinary conference that brings
> together individuals from across the open knowledge spectrum for a
> day of presentations and workshops.
>
>
> At this year's conference, Wikimedia UK will be supporting and
> organising a track dedicated to the projects and communities
> central to Wikimedia.
>
>
> We need your help to create an exciting and interesting track that
> will inspire and challenge Wikimedians and others alike. Could you
> give a presentation or host a discussion on a Wikimedia theme? Any
> subject relevant to the Wikimedia communities, free content or
> Wikimedia UK are welcome.
> Timeline
> February 25 (Thursday): Submissions will open
> March 28 (Sunday) 23:59 UTC: Closure of submission dates
> April 7 (Wednesday): Notification of acceptance of submission
> April 24 (Saturday): Open Knowledge Conference 2010
>
> If you wish to participate but with good reason cannot meet one of
> the above deadlines please email conferences(a)wikimedia.org.uk
> before the deadline as it may be possible to accomodate late
> submissions Themes Submissions should address one or more of the
> following themes:
>
>
> Wikimedia Communities - Interesting projects and characteristics
> within the communities; policy creation; conflict resolution and
> community dynamics; reputation and identity; multilingualism,
> languages and cultures; the development of Wikimedia UK.
> Free Content - Open access to information; ways to gather and
> distribute free knowledge, usage of the Wikimedia projects in
> education, journalism, research; ways to improve content quality
> and usability; copyright laws and their interaction with Wikimedia
> projects.
> Culture and Heritage - Ideas for potential partnerships, building
> on previous partnerships and the legal, technical and resource
> issues that are barriers to such partnerships.
> Technical infrastructure - Issues related to MediaWiki development
> and extensions; Wikimedia hardware layout; the Toolserver; the
> Usability Project; new ideas for development (including Usability
> case studies from other wikis or similar projects).
> Submission Guidelines Please email submissions to
> conferences(a)wikimedia.org.uk. Please email the following details,
> all in English:
> Title:
> Theme: Closest category from above for your submission.
> Abstract: 50-100 words summarising the topic
> Summary: Detailed description of the topic - 300 words or more. May
> contain a link to a more details.
> Contact information: Email/Telephone and whether we may publish
> these details
> Additional Information:
> 1-3 sentence biography of the author(s).
> any special requirements (e.g. flipchart; OHP. A digital
> presentation will be assumed as standard)
> whether you will attend the 2010 Open Knowledge Conference (a)
> definitely, (b) probably, (c) only if your submission is accepted.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia UK mailing list
> wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
