Sage Ross wrote:
For what it's worth, I love Flickr and happily pay my yearly fee, but I agree with Neil that Commons can and should be the go-to platform for a lot of what currently happens on Flickr, like the awesome astrometry.net project. In many cases, the value in Flickr as a platform for civic-minded projects is as much the type of community it has as the technology; Flickr is a photo playground, and a lot of its community aspects are rooted in the that playground feeling. But Commons could do a lot more to emulate some of the community-attracting features of Flickr and give users more ways to play and interact (with each other and with the photos). And for a lot of other worthwhile projects (like astrometry) just the technology would be enough, even without a more Flickr-like community.
-Sage (User:Ragesoss)
What would you say if I uploaded a bunch of pictures of my son to Wikipedia Commons? Would they be deleted? For me there's a lot of value of Flickr being a space I can upload photographs that I choose, rather than needing to wonder if "it likely to be useful to a Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/ project?" I'd rather give my $25 a year to Flickr than face the prospect of arguing about the inclusion of my photos.
There's a guy on Flickr who appears to have photographed every culvert pipe on Staten Island. Is this "notable?" Is this guy a nut or is he a world expert on urban hydrology? Different people could have different opinions.
There's also no clear line between "pictures of our kids" and "pictures that document notable things"... For instance, this is my favorite photo of the Unisphere:
http://ny-pictures.com/nyc/photo/picture/13176/girl_poses_picture_unisphere_...
It's definitely somebody's vacation photo, and it could be better composed than it is, but I like the way that a person in the scene adds life and scale.
Personally I think the only way you get good photographs is by selection out of a large pool of bad and mediocre photographs. Much like professional sports teams recruit from college teams which recruit from high school teams, which in turn recruit from youth leagues, it takes multiple steps of selection and refinement.
A "user interface" isn't just something that's painted on, it really reflects the intention that a system has: Flickr is designed to be a "fun photo playground" and it does that admirably, better than anybody else. There are a lot of great photos on flickr that just don't fit in the "useful" mode
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sakura-kame/4446997021/
but these photos get a strong community reaction... And personally, I've found participating in the community forums on Flickr has pushed me to grow as a photographer.
If Wikipedia Commons were to get too much Flickr envy, it might not do a good job at what it's doing now.