Maybe I can give a bit of input from my experience at transferring images from pt.wikipedia to Commons. Local uploads were disabled last year on pt.wiki and from then on a slow, painstaking process of moving images to Commons has started. I don't know what I would do without CommonsHelper ;)
The question of which images would be good to transfer or not came about; naturally, people transferring images to Commons didn't want to end up in a "Commons blacklist" for uploading images without all the proper information.
So we turned into forming a task force to tackle the problem. All images were tagged with {{a verificar}} (to be verified), which put them in a category where people could go through and check such images. "People" in this context means a small group of users with good knowledge about licensing and such, including two Commons admins. Images deemed to be good to go to Commons were then tagged with {{move-to-commons}} which added the CommonsHelper button. It
has been mostly the same group of people transferring the images to Commons anyway.
So in this particular case, there was a double screening. It takes a LOT of time (it's a small task force), but we've had very little to no problems with such uploads.
The point is: maybe local wikis can develop processes of screening good images to upload to Commons and continue to inform/improve knowledge in local communities on the advantages of using Commons as a global repository, leaving local uploads only for fair use images and such (am I wrong or Icelandic Wikipedia did just this recently?)
Adding a category to a bot-uploaded image is good to have a further level of screening in Commons, in the end it's as Magnus has said: it's another upload to check anyway, regardless of who made it; the category will ease the screening, so thanks for that :)
Bots do wacky stuff sometimes too, and I certainly don't trust the Flickr uploads because of the licensing problems already
addressed before.
We still have a couple of hundreds of images to go on pt.wiki, so *yay to direct upload!* ;)
Sorry for the long message and for the (slight?) off-topic
Cheers,
Patrícia
Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@googlemail.com> wrote: On 10/17/07, samuli@samulilintula.net wrote:
> > On 10/16/07, Samuli Lintula wrote:
> >> On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:15:26 +0300, Magnus Manske
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> > OK, state of the union:
> >> > * WatchFlickr now adds {{flickrreview}} again
> >> > * CommonsHelper has a "direct upload" switch (off by default)
> >> > * Direct upload by CommonsHelper will add {{BotMoveToCommons}} with
> >>
> the appropriate source language, so things will end in subcategories
> >> > of [[Category:Files moved to Commons requiring review]]
> >> >
> >> > An example of how it looks:
> >> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image%3ARosemary_Clooneys_home_in_Augusta.jpg
> >>
> >> I'm a bit lost in this conversation. Did any human review the license
> >> information and such before or right after the image was transferred to
> >> Commons?
> >
> > Well,
> > * /presumably/ it was checked when it was uploaded in the original
> > wikipedia
> > * /presumably/ the guy who transfers it checked (how else does he know
> > the name?)
> > * /presumably/ the guy who transfers it checks the end result
> > * /presumably/ the good people at commons check it when it is transfered
> >
> >
IMHO that's an improvement over the "normal" upload to commons ("oh, I
> > found a pretty image on the web, I'll upload it to commons!";-)...
> >
> > If the original wikipedia image has a valid license tag, how should
> > one check anyway? The obvious criteria are:
> > * Image is too large to be a thumbnail stolen from some webpage
> > * Image does not contain borders, logos, or "(c)" texts
> > * Image either has a source given (eg., nasa.gov), or
> > * looks amateurish enough to be made by the original uploader ;-)
> >
> > Yay for reasonable doubt!
>
> Do I detect a bit of a mocking attitude here?
Just a little, maybe :-)
> I don't see any reason for
> that. Why would we want to lose a chance to check images that are being
> uploaded on Commons? It is very good practice that we check if source is
> provided, if the source seems
plausible, if permission is provided, if
> there is anything dubious about the image etc. We should try to check
> these things with fresh uploads and transfers from other projects.
Absolutely. And there's nothing to stop anyone from checking the
uploads through the bot account. They are no different from "normal"
uploads, except many (most?) of them will already have been checked on
a wikipedia, as well as by the "transferer", and they all have an
{{Information}} template.
> If we are to presume something, I presume that local projects have at
> least as many copyvios or sourceless/permissionless images as Commons.
> That is, within the range of 10-30 %.
Probably. But by that reasoning, even if we were to blindly transfer
every image from, say, en.wikipedia that has {{GFDL}} in it, 70-90% of
the uploads through the bot would be acceptable for commons. Is that
the case for "normal" uploads? I'd think that
the upload rate of
copyvios on commons through "normal" means will increase with the
popularity of the project.
I'm not saying that all images on en.wikipedia that are tagged
{{GFDL}} are good for commons. All I'm saying is that most of it is,
and that the average copyvio rate will likely be lower that what we
get through "normal" uploads. /Especially/ for en.wikipedia, where it
is (relatively) easy to call something "fair use" instead of GFDL, and
be done with it. Those won't even make it through CommonsHelper in the
first place.
Cheers,
Magnus
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