On 7/21/10 10:05 PM, John Vandenberg wrote:
My upload of non-free "Bulogo.gif" went ahead because it was uploaded _before_ I was presented with the licensing dilemma. Will there be an automatic purge of incomplete uploads?
Correct.
When we're finished, it won't even touch the database until you've given it a license and appropriately described it and so on.
It may seem a bit weird to upload and then add metadata but this is the best solution we could come up with that works in all current browsers. It's also a workflow that more people are familiar with anyway.
Previously, Commons has been extremely careful to ensure that every last bit of metadata was right before uploading, but not in a very friendly way (in our testing, many users lost the data they entered *multiple* times before being able to complete an upload).
We also do the upload before adding metadata because it helps usability -- the server can give you a nice thumbnail, and by analyzing EXIF and the filename it can prefill certain fields. Very modern browsers are actually able to do that all in Javascript, so perhaps one day we'll perform the upload at the end of the wizard.
Generally, our goal is to strengthen policies around having an appropriate license for media, not just for Commons but any MediaWiki that needs it.
Currently the list of appropriate licenses is managed in a very ad-hoc way, via hacking and then parsing translation strings. Not only is this fragile and extremely obscure, it only works on Commons. In the UploadWizard, any MediaWiki can configure (a) whether the wiki requires a license (b) exactly which licenses (or kinds of licenses) are acceptable.
Of course, nothing stops people from mucking with the license after the fact, since it's just a template, but this is a step in the right direction.
My upload of PD-US "MajorGeneralHood.jpg" hung in the "Describe" phase.
It's a prototype and that tends to happen right now, sorry.
IMO, the only safe use for a preferred license is in the case of 'entirely my own work'.
That was what I meant -- perhaps I didn't make that clear.
The ability to upload multiple files would be a nice feature, however given that the licensing phase of the wizard is simplifying the options, the design needs to be careful to ensure that the user confirms that all uploads files are of the same license type.
Yes. We have tried to make that very explicit. Some users still had difficulties so we have a few more interfaces we want to test about this. Stay tuned.