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.