I was wondering if there is some kind of organized effort to ask photographers and image agencies for donations (read: GFDL- or CC-licensing) of images.
I am thinking especially of images that we cannot take ourselves; dead celebrities for example (and no, don't go grave-digging ;-)
There must be a huge amount of photos that have next no no commercial value anymore, because they are not good enough for a magazine cover, but would do well for documenting an encyclopedia article. Of course, we would prominently credit the source in the image description (which will be transcluded to every wikipedia that uses it), or even in the image title. Images could be watermarked, of course, and for largeer amounts of photos, we'd create a category, gallery and all. Repeaded mentioning (in a good light!) in a project of the wikimedia magnitude might be worth more than paid advertisement, fo virtually no cost.
We could even offer a service: I'm sure some of us have (semi-)professional film scanners (I do). Deal goes like this: mail us your films (encyclopedia/commons-style only; not your family picknick;-) and a note that releases them under GFDL/CC/PD/whatever, and we'll upload them in high-res on commons, where you can download them. Free film digitization!
With people on commons obviously interested in media, there must be some of us with ties to "the industry" who can initiate such contacts. "The Yorck Project" already donated a lot of PD images, as you might remember. If we can get just a few photographers/companies to release images as well, others might follow just to not lag behind.
Magnus
Museums are good repositories of such information; also non-digitized archives. For them digitization is an expense; if we can reliably offer this for free, many will be glad to release copyright in exchange for more usable access to their own materials.
The Library of Congress has a sizable collection of materials that they want to distribute more broadly; it is indeed already PD or equivalent, but not digitized -- or more commonly, digitized somehow but not in many formats, not classified, not easily available.
A commons-project to create form requests and a queue for processing inbound content would be useful.
You could say the same about archived books that have no commercial value anymore. The same analysis goes for processing book materials donated to wikisource; which requires image processing and OCR and should perhaps have a commons aspect (raw page images, raw ocr output files, images from within the book extracted from the raw page images), and a wikisource text aspect (text transcript, translations). And again ties to the book industry would be useful here.
Finally, source texts that are educationally useful could generate a third set of materials : living wikibooks built on their foundation, updated and improved over time.
SJ <copynig all 3 project lists>
On 6/15/06, Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
I was wondering if there is some kind of organized effort to ask photographers and image agencies for donations (read: GFDL- or CC-licensing) of images.
I am thinking especially of images that we cannot take ourselves; dead celebrities for example (and no, don't go grave-digging ;-)
There must be a huge amount of photos that have next no no commercial value anymore, because they are not good enough for a magazine cover, but would do well for documenting an encyclopedia article. Of course, we would prominently credit the source in the image description (which will be transcluded to every wikipedia that uses it), or even in the image title. Images could be watermarked, of course, and for largeer amounts of photos, we'd create a category, gallery and all. Repeaded mentioning (in a good light!) in a project of the wikimedia magnitude might be worth more than paid advertisement, fo virtually no cost.
We could even offer a service: I'm sure some of us have (semi-)professional film scanners (I do). Deal goes like this: mail us your films (encyclopedia/commons-style only; not your family picknick;-) and a note that releases them under GFDL/CC/PD/whatever, and we'll upload them in high-res on commons, where you can download them. Free film digitization!
With people on commons obviously interested in media, there must be some of us with ties to "the industry" who can initiate such contacts. "The Yorck Project" already donated a lot of PD images, as you might remember. If we can get just a few photographers/companies to release images as well, others might follow just to not lag behind.
Magnus _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
We could even offer a service: I'm sure some of us have (semi-)professional film scanners (I do). Deal goes like this: mail us your films (encyclopedia/commons-style only; not your family picknick;-) and a note that releases them under GFDL/CC/PD/whatever, and we'll upload them in high-res on commons, where you can download them. Free film digitization!
On the subject of digitizing, you might be interested by the project Wikimedia Deutschland just completed, that of digitizing a 16th century book for Wikisource.
http://www.wikimedia.de/index.php?p=127
It might be an interesting thing to have the chapters and/or the Foundation vouch for the people proposing this kind of service. I believe not everyone is ready to give their pics/files whatever to people they've never seen and who just say "I have a scanner, I can do this for you". There are practical issues to take into consideration which go from conservations of the documents to returning them to their owner.
Compiling a list of people interested by such a project though would be indeed a great idea, and commons probably is the place to start.
Delphine
On 6/15/06, Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
I was wondering if there is some kind of organized effort to ask photographers and image agencies for donations (read: GFDL- or CC-licensing) of images.
Last year I thought a bit about the idea of having a dedicated "image fundraising" campaign for Commons, which could perhaps run alongside the next regular fundraiser. The idea is that there would be a simplified upload process, and a post-upload vetting system to determine which material is actually useful. I proposed this to another Wikimedian, who unfortunately did not end up finding the time to work on it. Here are a few of the mock-ups I made on paper:
http://scireview.de/wiki/donations1.jpg http://scireview.de/wiki/donations2.jpg http://scireview.de/wiki/donations3.jpg
(Sorry for the poor quality, this is done with a camera, not a scanner.)
The idea is, as is hopefully clear, to have a simple two-step process for uploading and describing the pictures. All the licensing stuff would be made as simple as possible, with reasonable default choices. Aside from advertising this online, we could approach some publications systematically. Given how much Wikipedia is loved by the media, I think getting a story out there "Wikipedia asks for photo donations" wouldn't be too hard.
The actual post-upload review would be done in a collaborative review process similar to my FlickrLickr project. In fact, the FlickrLickr codebase might be a useful basis for this.
Magnus, are you interested in working on such a project? Anyone else?
Best, Erik
On 20/06/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/15/06, Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
I was wondering if there is some kind of organized effort to ask photographers and image agencies for donations (read: GFDL- or CC-licensing) of images.
Last year I thought a bit about the idea of having a dedicated "image fundraising" campaign for Commons, which could perhaps run alongside the next regular fundraiser. The idea is that there would be a simplified upload process, and a post-upload vetting system to determine which material is actually useful.
Er...you mean for the general public? I support seeking image donations for historical topics or specific holes in our coverage, but I don't know that we need more general amatuer my-dog-in-my-backyard,sunset-over-my-fence,my-street-my-school-my-car whatever photos. It seems to me the vetting system would have to discard 90% of what they were offered, so I rather question if it would be a worthwhile exercise.
Also given how much trouble even Wikipedians have understanding that WM content can be used commercially, it might be very difficult to succinctly put across the extent to which a free license is free.
Also, and this is a more general comment, there is still quite a disconnect between Commons and the projects, although it is definitely getting better as more projects switch to Commons-only and just time goes on. Sometimes there is a wealth of good pictures on Commons and no link on the WP article, or worse still no image at all. Sometimes (or often?) the beautiful FP nominations are not used in any Wikimedia project, anywhere!! Now I really wonder about that. We almost need another "project" of Commons people pushing the best content to all the WPs (they tend to be the most straightforward to illustrate for outsiders, plus maybe Wiktionary). So, I don't see that there is a good point to ask for image donations if we are not going to have people ensuring that the images will actually be used in some Wikimedia project. Same with the FlickrLickr content. Sitting around Commons is nice for us, but it could be so much better...
and yes I know in some cases a Commons gallery is a natural extension of a W* page. not every image has to be a lead photo, obviously.
Back to the topic of image donations. Not just image donations, actually - it would be really good if we could find out if there were some unis with, for example, recorded speech excerpts or phonemes or whatever, that they were willing to donate. Someone would have to convert them to OGG. This would be fantastic support for Wikibooks language-learning books as well as linguistics articles in /all/ language Wikipedias. I don't know how good our recordings are of clicks and trills, or uvuvular sounds, for example, are. It would be great to have native speakers' recordings.
I just wonder how hard it is to convince unis to tighten their grip on the IP rights...
cheers, Brianna
Er...you mean for the general public? I support seeking image donations for historical topics or specific holes in our coverage, but I don't know that we need more general amatuer my-dog-in-my-backyard,sunset-over-my-fence,my-street-my-school-my-car whatever photos. It seems to me the vetting system would have to discard 90% of what they were offered, so I rather question if it would be a worthwhile exercise.
I would think there could be some large university collections, etc. that would be well worth making an effort to acquire (not that that's the right word). I think a strategy to go after some of these extensive collections would be well worth the effort.
Kevin
On 6/20/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Er...you mean for the general public? I support seeking image donations for historical topics or specific holes in our coverage, but I don't know that we need more general amatuer my-dog-in-my-backyard,sunset-over-my-fence,my-street-my-school-my-car whatever photos. It seems to me the vetting system would have to discard 90% of what they were offered, so I rather question if it would be a worthwhile exercise.
Maybe. I think if we clearly define, in big friendly letters and with pretty icons, what we want and what we don't want, we could get a lot of good stuff. People aren't stupid. I suspect that there are quite a few amateur photos of celebrities, for instance. In any case, the campaign would be two-sided: an interface for instantly sharing media, and a contact form for negotiations. If we advertise this broadly, I think we could get contacts from places we don't expect.
Back to the topic of image donations. Not just image donations, actually - it would be really good if we could find out if there were some unis with, for example, recorded speech excerpts or phonemes or whatever, that they were willing to donate. Someone would have to convert them to OGG. This would be fantastic support for Wikibooks language-learning books as well as linguistics articles in /all/ language Wikipedias. I don't know how good our recordings are of clicks and trills, or uvuvular sounds, for example, are. It would be great to have native speakers' recordings.
If we organize a "media donation" campaign well and make it part of the next fundraiser, I think it could lead to such people coming to us and talking to us. But I do think we should be open for contributions from the general public. Yes, a lot of images uploaded to Commons aren't used. But from my own checks of the FlickrLickr uploads, a lot of them _are_ used. FlickrLickr also automatically generates wikitext for galleries like this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr/Slice_55
This is meant for easy copy and pasting of links into Wikipedia articles, and I encourage all "my" FlickrLickr reviewers to add images to articles wherever they can. If we use a similar, somewhat more refined process for a media donations campaign, I think it could work.
Erik
Erik Moeller schrieb:
On 6/20/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Er...you mean for the general public? I support seeking image donations for historical topics or specific holes in our coverage, but I don't know that we need more general amatuer my-dog-in-my-backyard,sunset-over-my-fence,my-street-my-school-my-car whatever photos. It seems to me the vetting system would have to discard 90% of what they were offered, so I rather question if it would be a worthwhile exercise.
Maybe. I think if we clearly define, in big friendly letters and with pretty icons, what we want and what we don't want, we could get a lot of good stuff. People aren't stupid. I suspect that there are quite a few amateur photos of celebrities, for instance. In any case, the campaign would be two-sided: an interface for instantly sharing media, and a contact form for negotiations. If we advertise this broadly, I think we could get contacts from places we don't expect.
I don't have pretty icons yet, but a working form with "this is missing" feedback and a simplified license selection:
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/image_donations.php
I've added my default tools header so those of you interested can view the source.
As some of you know, I can use the Eloquence bot to automatically upload images to the commons. I didn't add that capability to the script yet, as it is merely a demonstration.
When you "upload" an image, the script will generate a demo "Information" template, as well as a (yet to be created) "{{check-automatic-upload}}" template that will ease checking for admins.
Comments, please :-)
Magnus
On 21/06/06, Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
I don't have pretty icons yet, but a working form with "this is missing" feedback and a simplified license selection:
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/image_donations.php
I've added my default tools header so those of you interested can view the source.
As some of you know, I can use the Eloquence bot to automatically upload images to the commons. I didn't add that capability to the script yet, as it is merely a demonstration.
When you "upload" an image, the script will generate a demo "Information" template, as well as a (yet to be created) "{{check-automatic-upload}}" template that will ease checking for admins.
Comments, please :-)
* Please forbid any image below say 800px on one side, and ALL mobile phone pictures. They are the worst! (Even if they still upload a small image, it might be fine, the important thing is to discourage it) * Please enforce the user to pick a better name than the default one. We have more than enough D23435646 and IMG345456456 and QZ23545657 image names already. * Please DON'T encourage sunsets. :( :( :( :( :( Maybe encourage pictures of their local area? at least they can ID that and we can figure out if we can use it or not. * Please ONLY allow this option: "I am the creator of this image, and hold its copyright." The other option will be such a pain and near impossible to verify, and trust me, there will be enough problems with their own work. * "The public domain (only recommended for images which are in the public domain already)." Why??? I would remove this disclaimer and list this first, from most-free to least-free (GFDL only). [OK not least free but biggest hassle.] Just say "You grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose including commercial use, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law." That's scary (and true) enough. * CC-BY-SA: "...and to be released in turn under a free license" - change to "any derivatives of this work to be in turn released under this license" (to my knowledge you can't just choose something else!) * Please emphasise that licensing decisions cannot be undone in the future and if unsure, they should not contribute
Instead of just having a big blank space, let's be smarter than MediaWiki ;) and have separate fields for the required info. "Description (Who or what is shown? Where is it located? Why is it interesting or important?)" Source should be self-made as I stated above "Date (when was the image taken?)" Author and Permission, no probs - but please don't put the {{license}} in the permission field, put it separately below and in the Permission field put a text statement like "X chose to release this image under the Y license as part of the Z image donation drive."
I think we should limit uploads to something like 2 per person per day. If they're uploading dozens of images they should probably get an account (in fact, make that the alternative: do you have heaps of great images to contribute? Sign up to WM commons and upload as many as you want!) and also to discourage WM users from "anonymous" uploading (WM users are probably a significant majority of donors anyway, come fundraising time).
* How are we going to communicate to them where if anywhere their image will be available? The email... eh. If we have to email them to find something out it's already too much hassle, dump it. (IMO) * Also categories... suggest five (somehow) based on their description text & CommonSense and get them to pick the most relevant, or just leave it up to the reviewers?
BTW this doesn't mean I support this idea yet, I just like critiquing Magnus' UIs ;P
Brianna
Brianna Laugher wrote:
- Please forbid any image below say 800px on one side, and ALL mobile
phone pictures. They are the worst! (Even if they still upload a small image, it might be fine, the important thing is to discourage it)
This is now forbidden by text, and by script ;-)
- Please enforce the user to pick a better name than the default one.
We have more than enough D23435646 and IMG345456456 and QZ23545657 image names already.
Enforcing this is difficult, unless "IMG*" and "Q*" are the only patterns to watch out for, which I'm sure they aren't.
- Please DON'T encourage sunsets. :( :( :( :( :( Maybe encourage
pictures of their local area? at least they can ID that and we can figure out if we can use it or not.
Don't talk bad about sunsets. One of my sunsets made it to image oif the day on commons, after all. They're pretty. Don't tread on them! ;-)
- Please ONLY allow this option: "I am the creator of this image, and
hold its copyright." The other option will be such a pain and near impossible to verify, and trust me, there will be enough problems with their own work.
Disagree. I have uploaded one or two pictures on commons that my mom took. If we force people to lie on the very first item of the form, how long do you think their discipline will be holding up?
- "The public domain (only recommended for images which are in the
public domain already)." Why??? I would remove this disclaimer and list this first, from most-free to least-free (GFDL only). [OK not least free but biggest hassle.] Just say "You grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose including commercial use, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law." That's scary (and true) enough.
Disagree. While copyright in its current from is in place, public domain is not a good license (yes, not a license at all, technically) for our purposes. Only GFDL/CC-BY guarantees freedom by restricting it, perversely. IMHO public domain should be chosen only for old images and USGov-type ones. Pictures that a user took should get a free license instead, or at least we should encourage that. GFDL can't be at the end of the list anyway, because otherwise dual licensing wouldn't make sense ;-)
- CC-BY-SA: "...and to be released in turn under a free license" -
change to "any derivatives of this work to be in turn released under this license" (to my knowledge you can't just choose something else!)
Done.
- Please emphasise that licensing decisions cannot be undone in the
future and if unsure, they should not contribute
Done.
Instead of just having a big blank space, let's be smarter than MediaWiki ;) and have separate fields for the required info. "Description (Who or what is shown? Where is it located? Why is it interesting or important?)" Source should be self-made as I stated above "Date (when was the image taken?)" Author and Permission, no probs - but please don't put the {{license}} in the permission field, put it separately below and in the Permission field put a text statement like "X chose to release this image under the Y license as part of the Z image donation drive."
Mostly done. If we ever get serious about this, maybe I should transclude the whole text from a wiki page or something.
I think we should limit uploads to something like 2 per person per day. If they're uploading dozens of images they should probably get an account (in fact, make that the alternative: do you have heaps of great images to contribute? Sign up to WM commons and upload as many as you want!) and also to discourage WM users from "anonymous" uploading (WM users are probably a significant majority of donors anyway, come fundraising time).
I've added a brief notice to that end.
- How are we going to communicate to them where if anywhere their
image will be available? The email... eh. If we have to email them to find something out it's already too much hassle, dump it. (IMO)
I just put it in because it was on that weird drawing ;-) Well, it is optional, and email is better than no email IMHO.
- Also categories... suggest five (somehow) based on their description
text & CommonSense and get them to pick the most relevant, or just leave it up to the reviewers?
AFAIK CommonSense can only "sense" categories for existing MediaWiki pages. I could probably write some two-step mechanism, but that feels weird somehow. I'll leave it as it is for the time being.
BTW this doesn't mean I support this idea yet, I just like critiquing Magnus' UIs ;P
Please try it again! I've added new confusing colors especially for you :-)
Magnus
On 6/20/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
- Please enforce the user to pick a better name than the default one.
We have more than enough D23435646 and IMG345456456 and QZ23545657 image names already.
If we use a FlickrLickr-like process, the renaming can be done as part of the review process. FlickrLickr already does a check on the filenames from Flickr, and if they match a simple regular expression like this, it forces the reviewer to rename the file.
- Please ONLY allow this option: "I am the creator of this image, and
hold its copyright." The other option will be such a pain and near impossible to verify, and trust me, there will be enough problems with their own work.
I tend to disagree here, but an e-mail address should be required if this option is selected.
I think we should limit uploads to something like 2 per person per day.
This depends really on whether images go directly to Commons, or through a review process. If they go through a review process first, someone uploading hundreds of images wouldn't be a problem. We would just have to explain to users that becoming part of the community is the best way to contribute.
- Also categories... suggest five (somehow) based on their description
text & CommonSense and get them to pick the most relevant, or just leave it up to the reviewers?
The point shouldn't be to clone the upload UI we have, but to provide a simplified process for people who don't know how to use Commons, something which we can advertise widely and broadly. Again, with a review process, the categories can be handled by the reviewers.
Erik
Magnus,
thanks for hacking this.
First, I think the most important difference between your implementation and my concept is that you want to upload images directly to Commons. I think images uploaded through a simplified process that is advertised e.g. as part of the next fundraiser should go into a pre-approval queue, where their descriptions can be edited, and bad material can be filtered. This would also allow us to enable the usage of this system by anonymous users, as any vandalism, porn etc. wouldn't become immediately visible.
Please have a closer look at FlickrLickr, if you haven't already. We have reviewed over 90,000 photos and uploaded over 5,500. The process looks like this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Flickrlickr.png
You have 50 of these boxes per page, and for each one, you edit the metadata and select the image if you want it to be uploaded. This allows us to exercise quality control. I can send you the FlickrLickr source code (Perl) and database structure if you want to play with it. I think it might make a reasonable backend for an image donations process. We might want to generalize it to deal with other media. The script could also be expanded to notify the uploader whether their files have been accepted (only a couple of lines of Perl really).
One idea that is part of the concept I posted is to enable uploading media archives (ZIP files etc.). This would be useful for individuals and institutions which want to share a set of images. Your script would have to uncompress the archive, and ask the user to describe each file that is in it.
Regarding the specific implementation at the moment, I may be alone in this, but I think we should greatly simplify the licensing part. What I would prefer is something like:
[ ] You agree to donate your picture to the general public under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 or higher and the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license 2.5 or higher. This means that anyone can use it for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as modified copies are made available under similar terms (copyleft).
Perhaps below this there could be a link "Other licensing options", which would expand a selection of radiobuttons like the one you have now. But I'd prefer something very simple for the casual user.
I would also suggest hacking a separate contact form for people who do not want to use this process. This would have some questions like: - Describe the media you want to donate - Choose the licensing conditions (here a more advanced form would be available) - Tell us where we can reach you. - Other comments.
It could send a nicely formatted e-mail into an OTRS queue created specifically for this purpose.
Erik
Erik Moeller schrieb:
Please have a closer look at FlickrLickr, if you haven't already. We have reviewed over 90,000 photos and uploaded over 5,500. The process looks like this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Flickrlickr.png
Using FlickrLickr to filter donated images sounds like a great idea. I could upload them to the FlickrLickr database if there's an interface.
After the safe-upload experience, I wouldn't want to store the image on the toolserver ;-)
The script could also be expanded to notify the uploader whether their files have been accepted (only a couple of lines of Perl really).
I haven't used Perl for some time now, and only very basic stuff back then.
One idea that is part of the concept I posted is to enable uploading media archives (ZIP files etc.). This would be useful for individuals and institutions which want to share a set of images. Your script would have to uncompress the archive, and ask the user to describe each file that is in it.
Two problems with this: * Each image in a zip file would basically get the same description. Otherwise, you'll have to include a text file with the descriptions, which is probably more hassle than uploading them one by one. * Zip files can be manipulated to grow into extreme amounts of nonsense data. Even a small zip fil could potentially result in hundreds of GB of uncompressed data. A potential attack vector.
Regarding the specific implementation at the moment, I may be alone in this, but I think we should greatly simplify the licensing part. What I would prefer is something like:
[ ] You agree to donate your picture to the general public under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 or higher and the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license 2.5 or higher. This means that anyone can use it for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as modified copies are made available under similar terms (copyleft).
I have altered the text to show that option more prominently. I'd prefer to give the uploader some choice, though. Choice makes people think, whil a single checkbox just gets, well, checked ;-)
I would also suggest hacking a separate contact form for people who do not want to use this process. This would have some questions like:
- Describe the media you want to donate
- Choose the licensing conditions (here a more advanced form would be available)
- Tell us where we can reach you.
- Other comments.
It could send a nicely formatted e-mail into an OTRS queue created specifically for this purpose.
Here's a thought: Let people mail their images, descriptions, and license to a central e-mail directly. Volunteers could then upload them after checking.
And, we'd automatically get the senders e-mail address ;-)
Magnus
On 6/21/06, Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
Using FlickrLickr to filter donated images sounds like a great idea. I could upload them to the FlickrLickr database if there's an interface.
I could hack an authenticated HTTP POST form that would allow you to add metadata to the DB. Would that be good enough?
After the safe-upload experience, I wouldn't want to store the image on the toolserver ;-)
Sorry, I didn't follow this - what is the problem with storing images on the toolserver? I'm not sure my server could handle all the incoming image donations, and I've been thinking about migrating FlickrLickr to the toolserver anyway.
Two problems with this:
- Each image in a zip file would basically get the same description.
Otherwise, you'll have to include a text file with the descriptions, which is probably more hassle than uploading them one by one.
See http://scireview.de/wiki/donations2.jpg - for each file in the ZIP, the user would have to enter metadata after the upload.
- Zip files can be manipulated to grow into extreme amounts of nonsense
data. Even a small zip fil could potentially result in hundreds of GB of uncompressed data. A potential attack vector.
Listing archive contents should be a trivial operation. With PHP, you could use the Zip module, which has a zip_entry_filesize function (not sure if the toolserver has that installed). Or you could parse the output of the "unzip -l" command. If a file is much larger uncompressed than compressed, that's probably an indication of something foul.
I have altered the text to show that option more prominently. I'd prefer to give the uploader some choice, though. Choice makes people think, whil a single checkbox just gets, well, checked ;-)
I don't think most users of the form would have enough of a basis of knowledge about copyright and licensing to make an informed decision. If you want to make people think, prominently linking to a licensing tutorial might work better.
Please remove the GFDL from the list of licenses. We really should _never_ have images which are only under the GFDL. The GFDL is completely unsuitable for such materials due to the requirement to reprint the full license with every use. There is no dispute about this as far as I know -- GFDL/CC-BY-SA dual licensing is the preferred option.
Here's a thought: Let people mail their images, descriptions, and license to a central e-mail directly. Volunteers could then upload them after checking.
Free form e-mail is difficult to process because every mail looks different. It also makes it more difficult to collaborate using interfaces like FlickrLickr.
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 6/21/06, Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
<snip>
Here's a thought: Let people mail their images, descriptions, and license to a central e-mail directly. Volunteers could then upload them after checking.
Free form e-mail is difficult to process because every mail looks different. It also makes it more difficult to collaborate using interfaces like FlickrLickr.
Agreed. MUAs like Apple Mail have this horrible habit of "embedding" attachments into the message so that the email ends up being (2n+1) MIME parts for each attachment:
* Initial text * Attachment * Next bit of text * Attachment * Next bit of text
etc. These sort of messages are *horrible* to process using something like OTRS. At least with a web interface, we get to decide what format things are arriving in...