Commons-l June 2014

commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org

27 participants
13 discussions

The tragedy of Commons
by Yann Forget 27 Jun '14

27 Jun '14

Hi, Some Commons contributors like to ask impossible requirements, and threaten to delete files if these are not met. We have now a case of famous pictures from the government of Israel and Israel Defense Forces. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Matanya#Files_and_pages_that_w… https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Beba_Idel… https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Abba_Hush… https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Aharon_Me… https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Avraham_S… These are famous and valuable pictures, including two featured pictures on the Hebrew Wikipedia. These files have already been deleted and restored 3 times. When the URAA issue was not convincing enough, a new reson for deletion was advanced: that publication details were not given. Anyone with 2 bits of common sense can understand that these famous pictures were published soon after they were taken. There is no reasonable doubt about that. In addition, publication is not a requirement for being in the public domain in Israel. After I restored these images, I was threatem by LGA, who is a delete-only account: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Us… There, more contributors argue on this issue. By asking absurb requirements about publication details, these contributors threaten the project as a whole. If insisting, it will lead people to upload pictures like these locally instead of Commons. Then the idea of a central repository for all Wikimedia projects is gone. Instead of looking for a reason to destroy these files, they should try to find a reason to keep them. Regards, Yann

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Documents on Wikidatification of Commons
by Gerard Meijssen 23 Jun '14

23 Jun '14

Hoi, I refuse to post this link under the heading "the tragedy of Commons". The Wikidatification is not a tragedy and it has taken a long time before it actually started to happen in a manner that the WMF may adopt. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Wikimedia_Commons Remember, the most important part of it all is to make the data usable in multiple languages and to improve finding images in Commons. All the rest is not in scope for now. Thanks, GerardM

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Re: [Commons-l] The tragedy of Commons
by WereSpielChequers 22 Jun '14

22 Jun '14

Hoi Gerard, Interesting to hear that such planning and development "Wikidatification" for media files is already underway. Would you mind giving us a link to where that planning is taking place? Apologies if such a link has previously been posted to this list. Regards Jonathan > > > > Message: 3 > Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 11:10:12 +0200 > From: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> > To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: Re: [Commons-l] The tragedy of Commons > Message-ID: > < > CAO53wxX+1Zsvr5WVzHOFKyCUmHXe_RTe7+EMPBZQjwoRTGuVZQ(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Hoi, > The planning and development for the "Wikidatification" for media files is > already under way. > Thanks, > GerardM > > > >

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1 image per km2 globally
by Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada 21 Jun '14

21 Jun '14

Hi all; Since I watched the project Geograph Britain[1] long time ago, I dreamed with a global version. I have been playing with maps (mostly Google Maps) in the past years, but now that I'm migrating my tools to Wikimedia Labs, I started to read about OpenStreetMap and Leaflet. I have made some tests and coded a pretty alpha version of the concept.[2] It shows circles of 500m radius for every geolocated image on Commons (there are about 4 million). Not all are shown at the same time, but only 10,000 per zoom level. So you only have to make zoom on your city or in the search box. Some examples: * Barcelona http://tools.wmflabs.org/commons-coverage/#12/41.3927/2.1407 * Moscow http://tools.wmflabs.org/commons-coverage/#10/55.7252/37.6290 * Montevideo http://tools.wmflabs.org/commons-coverage/#11/-34.8200/-56.2269 So, I would like to hear your opinions and suggestions about the idea of scaling Wikimedia Commons into a project with at least 1 image per km2 globally. The code is in GitHub[3] and it is forked merging 2 examples of the thousands of Leaflet library examples available. Currently the code is pretty simple and you can help to improve it. Regards [1] http://www.geograph.org.uk/ [2] http://tools.wmflabs.org/commons-coverage/ [3] https://github.com/emijrp/commons-coverage

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Media Viewer is now live on all wikis
by Fabrice Florin 20 Jun '14

20 Jun '14

Hi folks, We're happy to announce that Media Viewer is now live on all wikis hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation! Media Viewer is testing well on all remaining Wikipedias (e.g.: Chinese, Arabic, Hindu, Indonesian, etc.) and sister sites (e.g.: MetaWiki, Wikibooks, Wikiquotes, Wikiversity, Wiktionary). The multimedia team worked hard in the last few weeks to develop a range of final features, in response to frequent community requests. We hope you will try them out and let us know what you think on the Media Viewer discussion page (1). 1. Features on All Wikis These features are now available on all wikis as of today: * View original file (#630) * Scroll down to see more info (#697) * Show Commons link to logged out users (#429) * Easy opt-out for registered users (#703) * Opt-out for anons (#704) You can test these features on this Featured Pictures page. (2) 2. Features on MediaWiki.org only: These features are now available on MediaWiki.org and will be deployed to all wikis in coming days: * Make it easier to find image information (#706) * Prominent links to different image sizes (#664) * Add more tooltips to Media Viewer (#546) * Disable MediaViewer for certain images (#511) * Track 'View original file’ and ‘Commons link' clicks (#715, #726) * Track Media Viewer Opt-outs (/#558, #675) You can test these features on this demo page (3) — and learn more on the updated help page (4). 3. Features in development Other tasks in development or analysis include: * Show attribution credits in download tool (#598) * Make 'Commons link' and 'Use this file' more discoverable (#732) * Click on image in Media Viewer to help view original file (#712) * Improve Media Viewer UI on tablets (zoom/scroll) (#716) * Remember the last selection for ‘Use this file' (#660) You can view more details about these features on our planning site. (5) 4. Feedback We keep getting generally positive feedback worldwide, with these latest results: (6) * A majority of global respondents find the tool useful (60% average across surveys) * Cumulative approval by language: English 29%, French 70%, Spanish 78%, Dutch 59%, Portuguese 81%, German 28%, Hungarian 62%, Catalan 71% * Daily approval rates have increased on English Wikipedia from about 23% a day after launch to 39% two weeks after launch (and German approval has also increased from 23% to 56% in the same period). * We anticipate further approval increases on these sites, as more new features get rolled out in coming days, based on community feedback. We are also starting to track the opt-out rates to see how many people turn off Media Viewer in their preferences. As of June 16, about 875 users had disabled this feature on the English Wikipedia, two weeks after launch: this represents about 0.34% of all registered users who viewed images on the site since launch. We are sorry that this small minority of users don’t like the tool, but we are glad that so many other users are finding it useful. Please let us know what you think of these new features on our main discussion page (1). Which do you like most? least? Are there other must-have features that need to be developed right away, before we move on to other projects? Thanks to all the community and team members for all you’ve done to make Media Viewer possible. :) Onward! Fabrice — for the Multimedia Team (1) Discussion page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer#New_featu… (2) Featured Pictures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_pictures (3) Demo page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo (4) Help page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Multimedia/Media_Viewer (5) Planning site: http://ur1.ca/gtyrp (6) Survey results: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Survey _______________________________ Fabrice Florin Product Manager, Multimedia Wikimedia Foundation https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)

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Multimedia Next Cycle Plan
by Fabrice Florin 18 Jun '14

18 Jun '14

Hello everyone, This week, the multimedia team completed its planning for our next development cycle, which started on June 11 and ends on July 22, 2014. Here are our plans for this 6-week cycle, which are informed by results of our last cycle. 1. Last Cycle Results Here are our key accomplishments from the last cycle, which ended on June 10: * released Media Viewer on most large wikis (25 million image views/day !) * developed metrics system to track image views, key actions, image load and network performance * collected 13k survey responses (~60% approval) and talk page feedback, processed comments to identify key issues * developed final features and bug fixes based on community feedback (e.g. view original file, file page link, metadata visibility) * solved critical bugs and technical debt for other multimedia tools (e.g. Image Scalers, GW Toolset, TimedMediaHandler) * started Upload Wizard project: planning, bug fixes, code review, refactoring, metrics, user feedback, designs * started Structured Data project: planning, discussions, research, code review * defined annual plan for multimedia in 2014-15 We completed about 112 points in the last 6-week cycle (vs. 128 points in previous 6-week cycle, with 4 engineers instead of 3). That's about 19 points per week (or 15 points of planned development per week, excluding scope increase and meetings). Our estimated capacity for this new cycle is about 10.5 points/ week of planned development, as two of our engineers are taking vacations this cycle. 2. Next Cycle Goals For this next 6-week cycle, we plan to wrap up the Media Viewer project and start work on our next two big projects for the coming year: Upload Wizard and Structured Data — while reserving about a third of our time to address critical bugs and technical debt for other multimedia tools. This cycle, we propose to invest our time evenly between these main projects: * Media Viewer - fix critical bugs, important feature tweaks (to address latest community feedback) * Upload Wizard - planning and first steps (bug fixes, metrics, feedback, discussions, designs, code review, unit tests) * Critical Bugs / Tech Debt - fix serious issues that need quick solutions (e.g. image scalers, GW toolset, timed media handler) * Structured Data - planning with Wikidata and first steps (mockups, specifications, discussions, code review) The Current Cycle wall now includes separate columns for Media Viewer (14-22 points), Structured Data (9 points), Tech Debt (18 points) and Upload Wizard (14-22 points). We don't expect to complete all these tasks in this cycle, as they exceed the anticipated team capacity for this period, but wanted to have the flexibility to choose between different options as circumstances dictate. For an overview of the tasks we are planning on, read below or visit this updated cycle wall: http://ur1.ca/h7w5s 3. Media Viewer For our first two weekly sprints, our focus will be on these Media Viewer improvements, to address community concerns on English and German Wikipedias: * View original file (#630) * View different image sizes (#664) * Scroll down to see more info (#697) * Show Commons link to logged out users (#429) * Instant Opt-out (#703) * Opt-out for anons (#704) * Add tooltips to Media Viewer (#546) * Disable MediaViewer for certain images (#511) The features above are expected to deploy on all wikis tomorrow. Many of them are live already on Media Viewer sites, and we are starting to hear positive responses on our talk pages, with survey approvals trending up for English and German users. Other tasks in development or analysis include: * Make it easier to find image information (#706) * Show attribution credits in download tool (#598) * Make 'Commons link' and 'Use this file' more discoverable (#732) * Improve Media Viewer UI on tablets (zoom/scroll) (#716) * Remember the last selection for ‘Use this file' (#660) * Track Media Viewer Opt-outs (/#558, #675) * Track 'View original file’ and ‘Commons link' clicks (#715, #726) To learn more, click on the relevant cards in our current sprint wall: http://ur1.ca/gtyrp 4. Upload Wizard We have started planning and development on Upload Wizard, which will be our main user-facing project in the coming year. For now, we are focusing on metrics, feedback, bug fixes, unit tests, code refactoring and a few small user interface improvements. Here are some of the tasks we plan to take on this cycle: * Metrics & Funnel Analysis (#305, #541, #603, #587) * Analyze user feedback for Upload Wizard (#624) * Code Refactoring Plan (#344) * UI Improvement Plan (#342) * First Unit Tests (#70) * Show progress bar during upload (#651) * Upload Wizard FAQ links (#625) To learn more, check out this updated project page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/UploadWizard 5. Structured Data We are starting to work with the Wikidata team to plan this project, which aims to provide machine-readable data for media files on Wikimedia Commons. Our main activities this cycle include: * Planning meetings with Wikidata * Mockups and schemas for a new metadata structure * Community discussions to understand user needs and workflows * Definitions for a high-level class for image metadata To learn more, check out this new project page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Structured_Data 6. Critical Bugs / Tech Debt We will continue to allocate about a third of our time to address urgent bugs and technical debt to gradually improve our multimedia infrastructure. Here are some tasks we are considering for this cycle: * Create poolcounter group for expensive thumbnails (#623) * Pre-render thumbnails in all sizes on the back-end (#301) * Fix TimedMediaHandler resource loading (#543) * Push messages to logstash from JS (#127) * Create vagrant role for Commons (#632) * TimedMediaHandler Improvements (e.g. #729) * GW Toolset Improvements To learn more, click on the relevant cards in our Technical Debt wall: https://wikimedia.mingle.thoughtworks.com/projects/multimedia/cards?favorit… For a roadmap of our goals for these projects in future cycles, visit this planning page for 2014-2015: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/2014-15_Goals Please let us know what you think of this plan — and if you have any questions or comments. You are invited to post your feedback on this mailing list, or on the discussion for this cycle plan page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Meetings/Next_Cycle_3_Q4_2013-14 We look forward to discussing these topics with some of you in coming weeks. Onward! Fabrice - for the Multimedia Team _______________________________ Fabrice Florin Product Manager, Multimedia Wikimedia Foundation https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)

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Media Viewer: New features are live!
by Fabrice Florin 12 Jun '14

12 Jun '14

Hi everyone, To follow up on our earlier update on Media Viewer, I’m happy to report that we just deployed a range of new features today, based on community feedback. 1. New features These features are now live on English Wikipedia, German Wikipedia and other Media Viewer sites: • View original file: A prominent button to open the original image in your browser (#630) • Show Commons link to logged out users: now all users can quickly access the file description page (#429) • Scroll down for more info: Use either up or down arrows to open the metadata panel below the image (#697) Try them out with these sample images (1) and let us know what you think using the built-in feedback tool in Media Viewer — or in this discussion page (2). You can find these new buttons at the lower right corner of the Media Viewer tool. All three features address frequent community requests — especially the ‘View original file’ button, which lets you use your browser to zoom in, or download images for re-use. 2. Next features We're now working on these next features, to address other community requests: • Instant Opt-out (#703) (*) • Opt-out for anons (#704) (*) • View different image sizes (#664) • Add tooltips to Media Viewer (#546) • Make it easier to find image information (#706) • Disable MediaViewer for certain images (#511) • Show attribution credits in download tool (#598) The first two opt-out features asterisked above (*) can now be tested on MediaWiki.org, on this demo page (3) — open the metadata panel and scroll down to the bottom, then click ‘Disable Media Viewer’. To learn more about these features, click on the relevant cards on the current sprint wall of our planning site. (4) We aim to deploy these next features on MediaWiki.org by next Thursday, then to all other sites the following week. To accelerate deployment, we may back-port the most important improvements to all Media Viewer sites next week, if they test well on production. 3. Next releases We are preparing to deploy Media Viewer on all wikis next Thursday, June 19, if all goes well with the testing of these new features. We’ll keep you posted as the release date approaches. 4. Metrics We are now logging about 24 million global image views per day for Media Viewer, doubling overall traffic since last week. The most active sites are the English Wikipedia (10M views/day), the German Wikipedia (3M views/day) and the Spanish Wikipedia (2M views/day), as shown on our global image view dashboard (5). Global network performance has remained stable, at about 2.5 seconds per image served for 90% of our users (~4 seconds for the 95th percentile) (6). 5. Surveys We continue to see favorable global feedback across all surveys: • about 60% of 13,891 global respondents find the tool useful, on average. • approval breakdown by language: French 71%, Spanish 78%, Dutch 60%, Portuguese 81%, Hungarian 63%, English 29%, German 26%. • approval rates have stabilized for all languages that have used the tool for over a month (excluding English and German). • English and German approval rates are lower than other languages, partly because Media Viewer was only launched one week ago on their sites. • English daily approval rates have increased from 23% a day after launch — up to 35% a week after launch. We expect approval rates on Enwiki and Dewiki to keep increasing over time, as new features get rolled out based on community feedback. For comparison purposes, approvals on the Hungarian Wikipedia started at 42% and grew to 63% in just a few weeks, once we addressed the most important community issues. To learn more, visit the survey results page (7). Please let us know if you have any questions. We’ll keep you posted on the next major developments. Thanks to everyone who gave us constructive feedback in recent days: we really appreciate your guidance and look further to improving Media Viewer further in coming days, with your help. :) Fabrice - for the Multimedia Team (1) Sample Images on English Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_pictures#mediaviewer/File:… (2) Media Viewer Discussion: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer#New_featu… (3) MediaWiki.org Test page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo (4) Current Sprint Wall: http://ur1.ca/hg4ws (5) Global Image Views: http://multimedia-metrics.wmflabs.org/graphs/mmv_image_views_global (6) Global Network Performance: http://multimedia-metrics.wmflabs.org/dashboards/mmv#overall_network_perfor… (7) Survey Results https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Survey _______________________________ Fabrice Florin Product Manager Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)

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Media Viewer Update: New features
by Fabrice Florin 11 Jun '14

11 Jun '14

Hi folks, Thanks for all your helpful feedback about Media Viewer in recent days. We really appreciate your candid recommendations on our main discussion page (1), as well as on English and German Wikipedia pages — and survey comments confirm many of the issues you and other community members have raised. The multimedia team is taking your feedback to heart, and we are sorry for any inconvenience caused by this tool. To respond quickly to the most frequent requests, we have now pushed back other projects to focus on Media Viewer for the next few weeks. Here are some of the new features we are now developing for you, based on community suggestions. 1. Disable Media Viewer quickly: * Instant Opt-in: A more prominent way for registered users to disable Media Viewer, without having to go to preferences. (#703) * Opt-out for anons: An easy way for anonymous users to disable Media Viewer, using localstorage. (#704) 2. View images in larger/different sizes: * View original file: A prominent button to open the original image in your browser, so you can zoom in to see its details, or download it for re-use. (#630) * View different sizes: Prominent links to view images in different sizes from the Download panel, so you can open them in your browser. (#664) 3. Discover image information: * Make it easier to find image information: Provide clear visual cues that more information is available, with links to open the metadata panel. (#706) * Scrolling down to see more info: Use either up or down arrows to open the metadata panel below the image, to make it easier to find. (#697) 4. Edit / Learn more on Commons * Show Commons link to logged out users: Show a prominent link to the Commons file page to all users, so they can learn more about this image. (#429) 5. Learn to use Media Viewer: * Add tooltips to Media Viewer: Show more tooltips in Media Viewer, so that users can tell what each button will do. (#546) You can view more details about these features on our planning site. (2) We are working hard to get these changes completed by tomorrow, so we can test them before releasing them to production. If all goes well, we expect to deploy some of them to the English Wikipedia and other Media Viewer sites by Thursday evening. The rest of them will be deployed the following week. Please let us know what you think on our main discussion page (1). Which of these features seem most useful to you? Are there other critical features that you think we should consider next? Thanks again for all you’ve done already to make this a better product. We are grateful for all the constructive suggestions we’ve received for our community and look forward to improving Media Viewer together. Onward! Fabrice — for the Multimedia Team (1) Media Viewer discussion page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer#New_featu… (2) Media Viewer planning site: http://ur1.ca/gtyrp _______________________________ Fabrice Florin Product Manager Wikimedia Foundation https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)

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De-Zoomifying 50, 000 images from the Imperial War Museum
by Fæ 10 Jun '14

10 Jun '14

I am considering automating an upgrade of a large number of images that I previously uploaded from the Imperial War Museum's (IWM) website.[1] My original uploads were carefully selected to be public domain by having expired Crown copyright (over 50 years old) and since uploading a small number have been deleted on other grounds, most notably those taken or created by members of the German military and where the photographs were seized during the war and claimed by the UK Ministry of Information. Here's the rub - by doing this, the IWM may argue that I am bending database rights by systematically accessing their website for downloads. At the current time, the IWM make no statement with regard to this aspect of copyright, see [2]. I am thinking of writing to the IWM's IP Manager (again) before starting this upload/upgrade project, so that I can produce good faith correspondence to protect myself if this is challenged in the future. Any thoughts from fellow Commoners? PS though I am pondering raising this on the Village Pump, I am hesitant to do this yet, based on past experience I suspect someone would prime the IWM as soon as I do so. Links: 1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:F%C3%A6#Higher_resolution_IWM_… 2. http://www.iwm.org.uk/corporate/privacy-copyright Fae -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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Challenge: develop tools to track and identify reuse of PD material
by Andrew Gray 05 Jun '14

05 Jun '14

Here's an interesting project from the British Library - interesting both because people may wish to enter (there's £25000 available), and because it touches on a lot of the same questions we have about the value and impact of content donations http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2014/03/tracking-pu… https://ictomorrow.innovateuk.org/web/digital-innovation-contest-data/briti… ---- The British Library has a large and growing collection of material in the public domain, available through online platforms, such as Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary) and Wikimedia Commons, for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. However, once released online, the British Library has little way of following that content as it is re-used, which makes it difficult to measure any creative and economic benefit. The successful solution will allow public institutions to better quantify and optimise the economic impact of releasing content into the public domain (...) ---- -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

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Commons-l June 2014