Hello,
While thinking about categories/galleries again lately (it really never goes away), I came up with some broad definitions of the types of users that the Commons serves, how they have different needs and responsibilities, and how we can maybe use this kind of thinking to identify priorities for future directions.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/Principles If anyone feels up for some high-level thinking, I welcome comments, additions or criticism here or on the talk page. In particular, are there other types of users that are useful to define, who are they and why? Is any of my reasoning illogical? Are there other conclusions I've missed?
cheers, Brianna user:pfctdayelise
Here's some of my thoughts, as someone who you would call a contributor:
Contributors who make a mistake: Often time someone comes from some random wiki (most likely wikipedia en) and uploads an image. They make a mistake - no source, no license, unclear licensing terms etc. The image is perfectly usable by commons, but no one knows it. They get a deletion notice on their commons talk page - which is quite useless, as they're not coming back there for at least a year, if they ever come back. However if a message was left at their home wiki, the image would be saved. However its totally unrealistic for CM's to track them down against everything listed at [[special:sitematrix]]. perhaps a bot is needed or something like that, but I think it would go a long way to having more contributors trust commons.
Default search: yes, something, anything/random monkeys picking results. Improvement is vastly needed in this area. Any thoughts on a keyword based system based on semantic mediawiki? (assuming I read the page on semantic mediawiki right). That way, I think you could do much better searching - I think you could do combo searches with it - all yellow things + alll bird things = all yellow birds.
Failing that, maybe some DPL - like search (special page - choose DPL criteria, it makes list). however I'm no programmer, I really don't know what I'm talking about in that area, thoose are just some things that came to mind.
Easy categorization for random uploaders: How about an javascript/ajax version of common sense that comes up when your editing or uploading an image? If its esentially 0-clicks away to fining proper categories, I think a lot more people would categorize.
[[user:Bawolff]]/[[commons:user:Bawolff]]/[[wikinews:user:bawolff]]/[[w:user:Bawolff]] On 11/10/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
While thinking about categories/galleries again lately (it really never goes away), I came up with some broad definitions of the types of users that the Commons serves, how they have different needs and responsibilities, and how we can maybe use this kind of thinking to identify priorities for future directions.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/Principles If anyone feels up for some high-level thinking, I welcome comments, additions or criticism here or on the talk page. In particular, are there other types of users that are useful to define, who are they and why? Is any of my reasoning illogical? Are there other conclusions I've missed?
cheers, Brianna user:pfctdayelise _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
On 10/11/06, bawolff bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote:
Here's some of my thoughts, as someone who you would call a contributor:
Contributors who make a mistake: Often time someone comes from some random wiki (most likely wikipedia en) and uploads an image. They make a mistake - no source, no license, unclear licensing terms etc. The image is perfectly usable by commons, but no one knows it. They get a deletion notice on their commons talk page - which is quite useless, as they're not coming back there for at least a year, if they ever come back. However if a message was left at their home wiki, the image would be saved. However its totally unrealistic for CM's to track them down against everything listed at [[special:sitematrix]]. perhaps a bot is needed or something like that, but I think it would go a long way to having more contributors trust commons.
Waiting... for.. SingleUserLogin... :/
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_login_specifications says "a final push to implement this is underway"... in mid-July. Well. I personally feel that getting information out of developers is like wringing water from a stone, and I have no feeling that any of the problems of Commons are anything like a priority, ever, for the developers. Look at the single most useful tool on Commons - CheckUsage. Is it part of MediaWiki? No. Or the extremely useful, but not so important, Gallery tool. Is it part of MediaWiki? No. Or how about CommonsTicker? Also no.
There is talk recently about "rewriting the whole backend for images", which might allow image renaming/moving... or it might be something like SUL, and I look forward to hearing about it in 2009. The category limitations are probably the most restrictive, for simple day to day requirements. (Most images don't need to be renamed.) Our mulitlingual support is ultimately pretty poor, when we have to require categories to be in English because category redirects don't work, or there is no way to alias a category. Let alone plural/singular, capitalisation, common name/Latin name for species is still a big problem.
Default search: yes, something, anything/random monkeys picking results. Improvement is vastly needed in this area. Any thoughts on a keyword based system based on semantic mediawiki? (assuming I read the page on semantic mediawiki right). That way, I think you could do much better searching - I think you could do combo searches with it - all yellow things + alll bird things = all yellow birds.
There are two problems. One is the technical thing of how we index descriptive information about files. The second is how we encourage/enforce people to actually DO this. Contributors (and I say this in my capital C meaning) are typically focused on their page at hand in another wiki. So to them it is immediately obvious what the purpose of this file is, and how it is useful. They're not at all concerned about making sure other people will be able to use it, first and foremost by being able to *find* it. People often make comments, when they see their Gallery for the first time, like "Oh, that's wrong, I /know/ that file's not an orphan." They know because they inserted it in a Wikipedia article elsewhere. It is still an orphan on Commons, which is precisely the problem for anyone else who the file might be relevant to.
cheers, Brianna
On 11/10/06, bawolff bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote:
They get a deletion notice on their commons talk page - which is quite useless, as they're not coming back there for at least a year, if they ever come back. However if a message was left at their home wiki, the image would be saved. However its totally unrealistic for CM's to track them down against everything listed at [[special:sitematrix]]. perhaps a bot is needed or something like that, but I think it would go a long way to having more contributors trust commons.
Turning on email notification when you get a message on your talk page would be a good solution in the mean time. In fact, for some people (like myself) who don't check their Wikipedia talk page that much either, it might even be a better solution.
I believe this email notification has already been coded up. What would be the problems with turning it on? Can someone be specific here and answer exactly why it hasn't been turned on? How many additional servers would be needed to support it?
It seems like a big enough problem that it's worth solving.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 11/10/06, bawolff bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote:
They get a deletion notice on their commons talk page - which is quite useless, as they're not coming back there for at least a year, if they ever come back. However if a message was left at their home wiki, the image would be saved. However its totally unrealistic for CM's to track them down against everything listed at [[special:sitematrix]]. perhaps a bot is needed or something like that, but I think it would go a long way to having more contributors trust commons.
Turning on email notification when you get a message on your talk page would be a good solution in the mean time. In fact, for some people (like myself) who don't check their Wikipedia talk page that much either, it might even be a better solution.
I believe this email notification has already been coded up. What would be the problems with turning it on? Can someone be specific here and answer exactly why it hasn't been turned on? How many additional servers would be needed to support it?
It seems like a big enough problem that it's worth solving.
It's enabled on meta. Then again, meta doesn't get it's own server to index searches...
"Anthony" wrote:
Turning on email notification when you get a message on your talk page would be a good solution in the mean time. In fact, for some people (like myself) who don't check their Wikipedia talk page that much either, it might even be a better solution.
I believe this email notification has already been coded up. What would be the problems with turning it on? Can someone be specific here and answer exactly why it hasn't been turned on? How many additional servers would be needed to support it?
Anthony
I guess the problem of email notification could be a lot of emails being sent. But email notification wouldn't be necessary. When the Single User Login gets implemented, it'd be easy to have a second "You have new messages" text. Someone edits your user talk: The newmessages bit is sent on that wiki and a newmessages counter is incremented on the central user table. When you're at a wiki you can get two messages: "You have new messages on this wiki" or "You have new messages on another wiki" (counter != 0) The second wouldn't show if the first is shown and the count is 1 (most messages will be received and sent on its main wiki). When he sees his local talk page, if the local newmessages flag was set, the global counter is decremented (better make sure it never gets negative numbers...).
The link of "new messages anywhere else" would send you to a page similar to the CheckUsage, where the full wikis are checked for your user to see if you have a new message there (there can be multiple matches). That would be the only case where it's ?(n)
Platonides wrote:
I guess the problem of email notification could be a lot of emails being sent.
There are actually not that many messages to be sent: Yesterday there were 246 changes on user talk pages. Some of them were edited several times, some were edited by the users themselves. So it might be about 150 messages - a surprisingly low number, I think.
But email notification wouldn't be necessary. When the Single User Login gets implemented, it'd be easy to have a second "You have new messages" text.
But compared to single user login (SUL), email notification is ready to use (according to Enotif on meta). Who knows when SUL is going to be implemented? Until then it is useful to reach users of other Wikipedias that only come to commons only to upload an image every once in a while.
Cheers Matthias
user:matt314
Platonides wrote:
"Anthony" wrote:
Turning on email notification when you get a message on your talk page would be a good solution in the mean time. In fact, for some people (like myself) who don't check their Wikipedia talk page that much either, it might even be a better solution.
I believe this email notification has already been coded up. What would be the problems with turning it on? Can someone be specific here and answer exactly why it hasn't been turned on? How many additional servers would be needed to support it?
I guess the problem of email notification could be a lot of emails being sent. But email notification wouldn't be necessary. When the Single User Login gets implemented, it'd be easy to have a second "You have new messages" text.
It's actually closer than that:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/API#userinfo_.2F_ui
Parameters: uiprop=isblocked|hasmsg|rights|groups, uioptions=<opt name>|...
On 11/10/06, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
"Anthony" wrote:
Turning on email notification when you get a message on your talk page would be a good solution in the mean time. In fact, for some people (like myself) who don't check their Wikipedia talk page that much either, it might even be a better solution.
I believe this email notification has already been coded up. What would be the problems with turning it on? Can someone be specific here and answer exactly why it hasn't been turned on? How many additional servers would be needed to support it?
Anthony
I guess the problem of email notification could be a lot of emails being sent. But email notification wouldn't be necessary. When the Single User Login gets implemented, it'd be easy to have a second "You have new messages" text.
Email notification is done *today*. Someone just has to flip the switch. Single user login has been talked about literally for years, and still isn't done.
If the only problem with flipping the switch is that "a lot of emails [will be] sent", then someone should probably do it. That's why I was hoping someone could be specific. How many additional servers would it take to support it? Or are there problems that throwing servers at a solution will not fix?
Someone edits your user talk: The newmessages bit is sent on that wiki and a newmessages counter is incremented on the central user table. When you're at a wiki you can get two messages: "You have new messages on this wiki" or "You have new messages on another wiki" (counter != 0) The second wouldn't show if the first is shown and the count is 1 (most messages will be received and sent on its main wiki). When he sees his local talk page, if the local newmessages flag was set, the global counter is decremented (better make sure it never gets negative numbers...).
The link of "new messages anywhere else" would send you to a page similar to the CheckUsage, where the full wikis are checked for your user to see if you have a new message there (there can be multiple matches). That would be the only case where it's ?(n)
Yes, this doesn't even require single login to implement. All it needs is some way to link up the accounts.
But it isn't here, whereas email notification is.
Anthony
"bawolff" bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote on Friday, November 10, 2006 7:49 AM:
[...] They get a deletion notice on their commons talk page - which is quite useless, as they're not coming back there for at least a year, if they ever come back. However if a message was left at their home wiki, the image would be saved. However its totally unrealistic for CM's to track them down against everything listed at [[special:sitematrix]]. perhaps a bot is needed or something like that, but I think it would go a long way to having more contributors trust commons.
We at de.wp started emailing "our nld-uploaders" with A FEW basic links and the opportunity to solve the problem via e-mail. Any useful emails are forwared to the OTRS after improving the image description.
The result: Some people change the descriptions of the pictures by themselves and some do it via email. The best reply ratio is found when we mention that the image was requested for deletion.
Maybe this can be optimized by using a bot (as long as the emails are not caught in every spam blocker).
Of course this can only work, if they either specify there home-wiki or their email adress. Maybe we can force them someone to do at least one of these things when they register ...
Best regards,
Flo
Florian Straub wrote:
"bawolff" bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote on Friday, November 10, 2006 7:49 AM:
[...] They get a deletion notice on their commons talk page - which is quite useless, as they're not coming back there for at least a year, if they ever come back. However if a message was left at their home wiki, the image would be saved. However its totally unrealistic for CM's to track them down against everything listed at [[special:sitematrix]]. perhaps a bot is needed or something like that, but I think it would go a long way to having more contributors trust commons.
We at de.wp started emailing "our nld-uploaders" with A FEW basic links and the opportunity to solve the problem via e-mail. Any useful emails are forwared to the OTRS after improving the image description.
The result: Some people change the descriptions of the pictures by themselves and some do it via email. The best reply ratio is found when we mention that the image was requested for deletion.
Maybe this can be optimized by using a bot (as long as the emails are not caught in every spam blocker).
Of course this can only work, if they either specify there home-wiki or their email adress. Maybe we can force them someone to do at least one of these things when they register ...
I think "require valid email before allowing uploads" is one of those proposals which everyone but the people with the power to make it happen thought was a good idea.
Well if they have an email listed, It is (I assume) fairly easy to email them. However sometimes, If Commonsticker lists an image deleted, I go look and investigate it, Figure out who uploaded it. Then I look at their talk page. - it usually has only a deletion notice, and nothing else. I notice that the user page link is blue - look at that, it says basicly "I'm never going to be back here again - goto wikipedia to talk to me". If we were able to make a bot that saw that (yes I know this is more or less impossible), and put a notice on the wiki that pointed to, it would go a long way to getting users to listen/hear. ~~~~
-user:Bawolff
On 11/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Florian Straub wrote:
"bawolff" bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote on Friday, November 10, 2006 7:49 AM:
[...] They get a deletion notice on their commons talk page - which is quite useless, as they're not coming back there for at least a year, if they ever come back. However if a message was left at their home wiki, the image would be saved. However its totally unrealistic for CM's to track them down against everything listed at [[special:sitematrix]]. perhaps a bot is needed or something like that, but I think it would go a long way to having more contributors trust commons.
We at de.wp started emailing "our nld-uploaders" with A FEW basic links and the opportunity to solve the problem via e-mail. Any useful emails are forwared to the OTRS after improving the image description.
The result: Some people change the descriptions of the pictures by themselves and some do it via email. The best reply ratio is found when we mention that the image was requested for deletion.
Maybe this can be optimized by using a bot (as long as the emails are not caught in every spam blocker).
Of course this can only work, if they either specify there home-wiki or their email adress. Maybe we can force them someone to do at least one of these things when they register ...
I think "require valid email before allowing uploads" is one of those proposals which everyone but the people with the power to make it happen thought was a good idea.
-- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
On 11/10/06, bawolff bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote:
Well if they have an email listed, It is (I assume) fairly easy to email them. However sometimes, If Commonsticker lists an image deleted, I go look and investigate it, Figure out who uploaded it. Then I look at their talk page. - it usually has only a deletion notice, and nothing else. I notice that the user page link is blue - look at that, it says basicly "I'm never going to be back here again - goto wikipedia to talk to me". If we were able to make a bot that saw that (yes I know this is more or less impossible), and put a notice on the wiki that pointed to, it would go a long way to getting users to listen/hear. ~~~~
-user:Bawolff
could set up welcome notices which include asking people to provide a link to thier home project in a certian format.
On 11/10/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/10/06, bawolff bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote:
Well if they have an email listed, It is (I assume) fairly easy to email them. However sometimes, If Commonsticker lists an image deleted, I go look and investigate it, Figure out who uploaded it. Then I look at their talk page. - it usually has only a deletion notice, and nothing else. I notice that the user page link is blue - look at that, it says basicly "I'm never going to be back here again - goto wikipedia to talk to me". If we were able to make a bot that saw that (yes I know this is more or less impossible), and put a notice on the wiki that pointed to, it would go a long way to getting users to listen/hear. ~~~~
-user:Bawolff
could set up welcome notices which include asking people to provide a link to thier home project in a certian format.
-- geni
That could work, Just using a template e.g. {{redirMesg|fr:Wikipedia:user talk:foo}}, or maybe getting them to do a #Redirect[[fr:wikipedia:user talk:foo]] could work also, as eventhough it wouldn't technically redirect (I assume) that would be easy for a bot to pick out+many users already do that. Actually what someone said previously about enabling talk messages emailing by default would be a good solution as well imho (As its really just flicking a switch) but that goes back to them having an email.
-bawolff
could set up welcome notices which include asking people to provide a link to thier home project in a certian format.
-- geni
Won't work. You find there's no user page, probably a new user on commons, and you don't even have babel templates. If they don't read their talk page, they won't also read that they are asked to provide their project. This restrictions (like providing an email) were talked to add as restrictions to create the account. Otherwise, they're quite useless.
On 11/10/06, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
could set up welcome notices which include asking people to provide a link to thier home project in a certian format.
-- geni
Won't work. You find there's no user page, probably a new user on commons, and you don't even have babel templates. If they don't read their talk page, they won't also read that they are asked to provide their project. This restrictions (like providing an email) were talked to add as restrictions to create the account. Otherwise, they're quite useless.
How about adding somthing to [[MediaWiki:Signupend]] makeing the request then?