On 6/18/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Hm, I'm not sure what would stop users just guessing and hitting 'back' a lot to get through it.
I think the first question we should ask is why users upload obvious copyvios on Commons. Here are some factors I can think of:
Most importantly, copyright policies are fairly lenient in many projects and languages. This is in spite of the fact that the user interface typically warns very strongly against uploading copyright violations. I think standardizing copyright policy to a certain extent will help in dealing with that. We cannot communicate clearly while the facts are blurry to begin with.
Users come to Commons from one of the existing projects. Why do they go to Commons? Because the projects advertise it quite actively. And this is not limited to links on the local upload form. It is part of the social dynamic ("Why did you not upload X to Commons?"). There are also sister project links to Commons in many articles. The projects portray using Commons as a good and right thing to do.
When users come to Commons, do they set their UI language? Many may not be aware that this is possible. If they aren't native English speakers, this means that they are likely to ignore any message above a certain complexity. So they understand how to upload, but they don't understand anything else.
I believe Commons newbies are often clueless or semi-cluess about the purpose of Commons, and only discover it more or less by accident. I think if we can ensure that every user who visits Commons views a tutorial in _their_ language, we might be able to address many of the factors that are currently leading to copyvio uploads.
And what questions would we ask? That would be the hardest bit. (Well, maybe collecting all the translations would be the hardest...)
I think the questions wouldn't be so hard, really. For example, "Can you upload a movie poster to Commons?" Many people seem to think that press photos, promotional materials and such are OK. This is also in line with the "fair use" policy of the projects. We need to explain clearly that this is not so.
Andre's suggestion that it should be hard to complete the tutorial by randomly clicking is a good one. It could be done with a JavaScript that checks several multiple choice boxes on a page, and only allows you to continue if all the answers are correct. If we accept that users without JavaScript (a minority) can just click through it, this is relatively easy to code.
I had an idea which would hopefully achieve a similar outcome, that we could introduce "throttled" or "reviewed" uploads. Once a user uploads say, 5 files, an admin has to review the files before they can upload any more. If they made any mistakes, they stay on reviewed upload. If they didn't make any mistakes with licensing, they can go onto unreviewed upload (what we have at the moment).
Hmm, negative points I can see here: - complex: you need a good and effective review interface for admins. - a lot of additional work for admins; if they do not catch up, users will have frustrating waiting periods. - takes away from the wiki notion of doing things "quickly".
The tutorial solution is also somewhat un-wiki, but at least you would only have to go through it once, and then the normal wiki processes apply. We probably want to try multiple strategies, though.
Erik