On 10/28/2010 2:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi,
I am writing a series of blog posts about Commons. My aim is to
identify the issues that I have with how it functions. There are
several and I do not bother to write about the ones that are being
tackled by the team around Guillaume (as far as it is clear to me what
they are doing).
I have to admit that I strongly disagree with the blog post
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/10/stimulating-commons-stock-photo…
I think that photoshopped images like that one about Dyslexia have
no place anywhere around wikipedia. An image like that just screams
"lie", "false" and "designed to manipulate your emotions";
I see that
and I think of a cheezy informerical for a phonics program that's going
to cure your kid's dyslexia, or some foundation that takes donations to
support the lifestyles of the people who run it. It's fundamentally
dishonest.
I'm not saying there's no art in that kind of thing, or that it
doesn't have a place, but it's not in Wikipedia. If I saw this photo on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia
I'd remove it. In my mind, images used on Wikipedia need to be
veridical, which not all commercial illustration is (or needs to be.)
As for the project of "better organizing images" that doesn't
necessarily have to be done inside Commons, where a consensus-based
culture might inhibit the ability to get things done. I'm taking a
crack at it at
http://ookaboo.com/
That site is nowhere near where I plan it to be in a year, and in
the long term it's going to take images in from other sources, but at
the moment it's basically a collection of commons images organized a
different way. I've got more navigational axes under development.