On 12/11/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/12/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Possibly we should start a separate project ... a service project for other Wikimedia projects to use as an image repository, to avoid duplicated images between wikis. Since Commons thinks it's toooo haaaard to stoop to that any more. Does that sound like it might be a useful idea?
I think that would be kinda redundant.
Well, uh, *yeah*.
Commons was not started as a free-culture media repository of spectacular cultural potential. It was started as a shared image repository service project for the Wikimedia projects. Here we have Commons admins claiming it's toooo haaaard to do the job Commons was invented for, so they'll start behaving in an actively hostile manner to other Wikimedia projects.
I don't think I've seen anyone on commons claim that duplicate images are too hard to stop (or that they are a major problem when we can't stop them).. rather, it's impossible to fix the copyright status of an image when a drive-by user uploads since they never set an email, and never check back (most likely they create a new account for their next upload). ... and even when we can get their attention we often find ourselves understaffed in the language the uploader speaks.
So when a new language starts using Commons for its images - the way all projects are supposed to with their free-content images - then Commons needs to add an admin or two from that project. If Commons can't do the job with the admins it has now, it needs to add a new procedure to allow admins from said projects to be trusted to do the same job on Commons.
Else Commons fails in its original purpose, and will need replacing with a project that will work.
- d.