On 7/4/07, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On 7/4/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with this. Wikimedia Commons is a repository for free media. The
> "wiki" part is very important for Wikipedia, Wikinews or other projects, but
> on Commons it is less useful. I think a name such as "Media Commons" would
> be faithful to our goal (free media repository) and would allow us to maybe
> switch to a better software in the future without having to rename the
> project.
I beg to differ. Wiki-style collaboration is very much applicable to
media files. It already happens quite strongly on the metadata level
-- people fixing other people's categories, adding and removing
hundreds of different template types, translating descriptions, and so
on. There is also some per-file collaboration (improvements to images
in particular), and a lot of media-related discussion.
Certainly. I am not saying wiki brings nothing to Wikimedia Commons. Though, I feel Commons is the less "wiki" of our projects, because the content itself is not directly editable.
Certainly MW could be improved to better support e.g. multilingual
tagging, tag synonymy, media search, and some nice UIs, but MW itself
_is_ the right tool for the job.
MediaWiki may be the right tool for the job. Though, I am not enough a techie to know if the amount of work needed to achieve the improvements you cite will require more or less time than a brand new software.