Update from Paris - Commons-l

9 Nov 2009

Hoi.
The French chapter did a wonderful job organising some of the brightest
lights that deal with Commons in one place. Many subjects were discussed and
some things were achieved.

The two (technical) things that stand out on the achieving part..

   - there is now global usage for images from within MediaWiki itself.. so
   no need for using the toolserver... The process of gathering all the
   necessary data may now have ended..
   - a first stab has been made at subtitles for video

   - In the discussion there were many things I found absolutely wonderful:

   - the workflow of uploads will be reconsidered; this means that a
   "working area" will exists where pictures can have a temporary home. This
   will allow to upload a batch of images and tag them all with shared
   attributes.. It will also allow for the checking of known issues BEFORE they
   go live
   - This working or staging area would also exist for GLAMs or competitions
   - A demo was given for what a competion workflow might look like
   - Pictures are now deleted when certain attributes are wrong or missing..
   When they are pushed back into the staging area, we are less nasty and allow
   for cooperation
   - Social networking tools help us support newbies, resolve issues in a
   quiet way.. This helps us realise our objectives; write an encyclopaedia,
   build a kick arse freely licensed resource of multi media
   - there is a mailing list for people involved in GLAM and the outreach to
   GLAM, many people subscribed and hopefully this will lead to better
   coordination and in shared lessons learned

It was a great meeting.. There were a few critical issues as far as I am
concerned:

   - several relevant people refuse to post / answer on the foundation-l.
   The list proves to be irrelevant because this list does not get that message
   - currently there is no alternative... LiquidThreads may help as it is a
   pull not a push mechanism ...
   - some people I missed at the meeting, Durova being the most notable
   - our focus was about improving Commons for the people that use it
   particuarly as contributors.. The success of our project is however the
   result of use and reuse. \
   - subtitles was one of the more important novelties, we need to make the
   reuse in WordPress, Drupal .... as easy as the reuse of Commons in MediaWiki
   !! The API is getting to the stage where that is doable

Thanks,
    GerardM