I would suggest another approach, decentralized and maybe simpler.
There are two reasons behind having this separation between a common repository and local uploads: 1) understanding of fair-use is different across different countries and legislations and local uploads reflect the local understanding => locally only fair-use uploads should be tolerated, if any. 2) freely licensed stuff should be equally accessible to all projects => saving resources from multiple local re-uploads of the same stuff.
On the other hand, we know the mechanism to separate fair-use from free images - by means of different templates and categories : relatively few number and variety and repeating over all projects.
So, my question is: is there a way for our developers to loosen the restrictions which nowadays technically prevent local uploads from being accessible crosswiki? I see a possible solution in linking the crosswiki accessibility to the image copyright template/category: * if tagged as fair-use, the image remains inaccessible from other wikis, or only accessible to a set of wikis whose fair-use exemption doctrine is compatible with the local one. * freely licensed images can be linked to from elsewhere, without the need of multiple local uploads which waste resources. * images without any license tag again do not become accessible crosswiki, until properly tagged/categorized.
This will return the admin maintenance boomerang back to the local wikis but should solve the problems with novices, with language understanding and the Commons-specific procedures which are obscure to community members who rarely attend or do not engage so much in Commons community life. It would further ease the maintenance if once proven their copyright status as fair-use or free, the images be protected so that the their accessibility don't get compromised by changing the tag/category.
Cheers, Vassia
-------- Оригинално писмо -------- От: Lars Aronsson Относно: Re: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening До: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List Изпратено на: Събота, 2008, Декември 6 22:46:15 EET
Patricia Rodrigues wrote:
That's a wonderful idea! But many times our main problem is the lack of manpower in different languages to actually address different users.
The more I think about this human side of the problem, the more I think we should go back to local uploading. The forwarding to Commons could be implemented by adding a "category:Suitable for Commons" and a bot that scans this category. Then if the image is deleted from Commons, the local copy would still exist.
If we want Wikipedia to scale from the narrow nerd community to a wider society, including elderly, we need to greet them with respect and in their own language. I don't see how we could manage this on Commons, even if uploaded images were marked with the uploader's interface language. We will always have the narrow nerd community too, which can act as admins and an interface towards the international community.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
In general, I like you idea, but I am concerned about every project being allowed to host images which any other project can access. Smaller projects simply don't have the manpower to check incoming uploads, so copyvio uploaders wanting to endorse images will upload them at very small projects and it will be days before an admin can be found who is able to delete the images. Also images are harder to find. You will have to search about 700 projects to find out whether there is a suitable image for your article. Also it will be harder to keep track of images, duplicates, image histories etc.. After all, this might be very nice for the users, but will be unreasonably hard to manage over a longer period of time.
Regards,
ChrisiPK
2008/12/7 Vassia Atanassova spiritia@abv.bg:
I would suggest another approach, decentralized and maybe simpler.
There are two reasons behind having this separation between a common repository and local uploads:
- understanding of fair-use is different across different countries and legislations and local uploads reflect the local understanding => locally only fair-use uploads should be tolerated, if any.
- freely licensed stuff should be equally accessible to all projects => saving resources from multiple local re-uploads of the same stuff.
On the other hand, we know the mechanism to separate fair-use from free images - by means of different templates and categories : relatively few number and variety and repeating over all projects.
So, my question is: is there a way for our developers to loosen the restrictions which nowadays technically prevent local uploads from being accessible crosswiki? I see a possible solution in linking the crosswiki accessibility to the image copyright template/category:
- if tagged as fair-use, the image remains inaccessible from other wikis, or only accessible to a set of wikis whose fair-use exemption doctrine is compatible with the local one.
- freely licensed images can be linked to from elsewhere, without the need of multiple local uploads which waste resources.
- images without any license tag again do not become accessible crosswiki, until properly tagged/categorized.
This will return the admin maintenance boomerang back to the local wikis but should solve the problems with novices, with language understanding and the Commons-specific procedures which are obscure to community members who rarely attend or do not engage so much in Commons community life. It would further ease the maintenance if once proven their copyright status as fair-use or free, the images be protected so that the their accessibility don't get compromised by changing the tag/category.
Cheers, Vassia
-------- Оригинално писмо -------- От: Lars Aronsson Относно: Re: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening До: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List Изпратено на: Събота, 2008, Декември 6 22:46:15 EET
Patricia Rodrigues wrote:
That's a wonderful idea! But many times our main problem is the lack of manpower in different languages to actually address different users.
The more I think about this human side of the problem, the more I think we should go back to local uploading. The forwarding to Commons could be implemented by adding a "category:Suitable for Commons" and a bot that scans this category. Then if the image is deleted from Commons, the local copy would still exist.
If we want Wikipedia to scale from the narrow nerd community to a wider society, including elderly, we need to greet them with respect and in their own language. I don't see how we could manage this on Commons, even if uploaded images were marked with the uploader's interface language. We will always have the narrow nerd community too, which can act as admins and an interface towards the international community.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Vassia Atanassova wrote:
I would suggest another approach, decentralized and maybe simpler.
There are two reasons behind having this separation between a common repository and local uploads:
- understanding of fair-use is different across different countries and legislations and local uploads reflect the local understanding => locally only fair-use uploads should be tolerated, if any.
- freely licensed stuff should be equally accessible to all projects => saving resources from multiple local re-uploads of the same stuff.
On the other hand, we know the mechanism to separate fair-use from free images - by means of different templates and categories : relatively few number and variety and repeating over all projects.
So, my question is: is there a way for our developers to loosen the restrictions which nowadays technically prevent local uploads from being accessible crosswiki?
Yes, we could create something like [[Image:fr:Foo.jpg]]
I see a possible solution in linking the crosswiki accessibility to the image copyright template/category:
- if tagged as fair-use, the image remains inaccessible from other wikis, or only accessible to a set of wikis whose fair-use exemption doctrine is compatible with the local one.
There is some bug whoch proposed a similar tagging.
- freely licensed images can be linked to from elsewhere, without the need of multiple local uploads which waste resources.
Not all wikis treat "freely" the same way. Dealing with commons, is dealing with just one set of policies.
- images without any license tag again do not become accessible crosswiki, until properly tagged/categorized.
This will return the admin maintenance boomerang back to the local wikis but should solve the problems with novices, with language understanding and the Commons-specific procedures which are obscure to community members who rarely attend or do not engage so much in Commons community life. It would further ease the maintenance if once proven their copyright status as fair-use or free, the images be protected so that the their accessibility don't get compromised by changing the tag/category.
It will also complicate image categorization (on which of the hundreds of wikis will I find an image for this?), and you move the "I got an image deleted on commons" to "I got an image deleted on Chinese wikisource". It also multiplies the vandals space for uploading shock images.