http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/186182.html
(a friend who is a Unix sysadmin so is used to finding his way around annoying crap that doesn't work, but was beaten by the old version of the form)
Quick Guide for How To Upload Your Own Pictures: 1. Create a Commons login. Say something about yourself on your user page. 2. Upload your stuff. Pick one of the "Own work" options. 3. Fill in some categories, etc. (wikitext, same as on Wikipedia).
Would that be worth putting in above or in place of one of the huge walls of text presently on the upload form?
- d.
2008/8/1 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/186182.html
(a friend who is a Unix sysadmin so is used to finding his way around annoying crap that doesn't work, but was beaten by the old version of the form)
Quick Guide for How To Upload Your Own Pictures:
- Create a Commons login. Say something about yourself on your user page.
- Upload your stuff. Pick one of the "Own work" options.
- Fill in some categories, etc. (wikitext, same as on Wikipedia).
Would that be worth putting in above or in place of one of the huge walls of text presently on the upload form?
Nope adding further text to the page is hardly going to help matters.
2008/8/1 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2008/8/1 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
Quick Guide for How To Upload Your Own Pictures:
- Create a Commons login. Say something about yourself on your user page.
- Upload your stuff. Pick one of the "Own work" options.
- Fill in some categories, etc. (wikitext, same as on Wikipedia).
Would that be worth putting in above or in place of one of the huge walls of text presently on the upload form?
Nope adding further text to the page is hardly going to help matters.
Well, yeah. Can any of the tl;dr be removed? I realise instruction creep only works upward ...
- d.
2008/8/1 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2008/8/1 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2008/8/1 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
Quick Guide for How To Upload Your Own Pictures:
- Create a Commons login. Say something about yourself on your user page.
- Upload your stuff. Pick one of the "Own work" options.
- Fill in some categories, etc. (wikitext, same as on Wikipedia).
Would that be worth putting in above or in place of one of the huge walls of text presently on the upload form?
Nope adding further text to the page is hardly going to help matters.
Well, yeah. Can any of the tl;dr be removed? I realise instruction creep only works upward ...
- d.
Probably not but I'm not sure which of our collection of simplified upload forms you are talking about. The situation went critical some time back and with various projects taking different approaches or more than one some of which may or may not have been been broken by changes to wikimedia since they were introduced.
2008/8/1 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2008/8/1 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
Well, yeah. Can any of the tl;dr be removed? I realise instruction creep only works upward ...
Probably not but I'm not sure which of our collection of simplified upload forms you are talking about.
Per context, [[Special:Upload]] on Commons.
- d.
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David Gerard wrote: | 2008/8/1 geni geniice@gmail.com: |> 2008/8/1 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com: | |>> Well, yeah. Can any of the tl;dr be removed? I realise instruction |>> creep only works upward ... | |> Probably not but I'm not sure which of our collection of simplified |> upload forms you are talking about. | | | Per context, [[Special:Upload]] on Commons.
See, at one time, when there were many fewer uploads, and many fewer admins, we looked at new people's uploads and helped them out with understanding what they were doing wrong, why something is not free, what they need to say while uploading, maybe show them a bit of template magic, while we're at it. We'd do this by going to their talk page, and ~ leaving a few kind words. If it was evident it was a language we didn't understand, we'd find a nice admin in their language who would also help them.
Now it's like a video game; search for copyvios and destroy... beep beep, boop boop... pow pow! don't hit that one, that's a friendly one!
Pow! 2500 points!
- -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator
Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Phone: 415.839.6885 x 601 Fax: 415.882.0495
E-Mail: cary@wikimedia.org
If we could turn deleting copyvio's into a video game.... I'd never stop deleting things. Oh wait, I don't already.
Moving on to the topic at hand. How about instead of revamping the upload page - we create an easy to find "GETTING STARTED" page for all newbies to commons. Maybe revamp COM:Welcome. It is wayyy too long. My screen res is set to 1680x1050 - and it is still more than a page long.
We really need a simple page that gives the ultra short version of what commons is (like 1 sentence). What type of pictures we accept (1 sentence). Then a "How to get started guide", preferably with picture - which is how to signup, how to upload. Obviously we'll need lots of links to other places, like COM:L. But at least one small page to be less intimidating.
As Cary said, copyvio'rs are going to figure a way in. Hell, most of the Copyvio'rs we have now _know_ wiki's inside and out. So we might as well make it dead stupid easy for newbies.
-Jon [[Commons:User:ShakataGaNai]]
On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 5:33 PM, Cary Bass cbass@wikimedia.org wrote:
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David Gerard wrote: | 2008/8/1 geni geniice@gmail.com: |> 2008/8/1 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com: | |>> Well, yeah. Can any of the tl;dr be removed? I realise instruction |>> creep only works upward ... | |> Probably not but I'm not sure which of our collection of simplified |> upload forms you are talking about. | | | Per context, [[Special:Upload]] on Commons.
See, at one time, when there were many fewer uploads, and many fewer admins, we looked at new people's uploads and helped them out with understanding what they were doing wrong, why something is not free, what they need to say while uploading, maybe show them a bit of template magic, while we're at it. We'd do this by going to their talk page, and ~ leaving a few kind words. If it was evident it was a language we didn't understand, we'd find a nice admin in their language who would also help them.
Now it's like a video game; search for copyvios and destroy... beep beep, boop boop... pow pow! don't hit that one, that's a friendly one!
Pow! 2500 points!
Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator
Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Phone: 415.839.6885 x 601 Fax: 415.882.0495
E-Mail: cary@wikimedia.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 1:54 AM, Jon wiki@konsoletek.com wrote:
If we could turn deleting copyvio's into a video game.... I'd never stop deleting things. Oh wait, I don't already.
Moving on to the topic at hand. How about instead of revamping the upload page - we create an easy to find "GETTING STARTED" page for all newbies to commons. Maybe revamp COM:Welcome. It is wayyy too long. My screen res is set to 1680x1050 - and it is still more than a page long.
We really need a simple page that gives the ultra short version of what commons is (like 1 sentence). What type of pictures we accept (1 sentence). Then a "How to get started guide", preferably with picture - which is how to signup, how to upload. Obviously we'll need lots of links to other places, like COM:L. But at least one small page to be less intimidating.
I've started something ''really'' brief and informal: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/START
Magnus
2008/8/1 Jon wiki@konsoletek.com:
If we could turn deleting copyvio's into a video game.... I'd never stop deleting things. Oh wait, I don't already.
Moving on to the topic at hand. How about instead of revamping the upload page - we create an easy to find "GETTING STARTED" page for all newbies to commons. Maybe revamp COM:Welcome. It is wayyy too long. My screen res is set to 1680x1050 - and it is still more than a page long.
We really need a simple page that gives the ultra short version of what commons is (like 1 sentence). What type of pictures we accept (1 sentence). Then a "How to get started guide", preferably with picture - which is how to signup, how to upload. Obviously we'll need lots of links to other places, like COM:L. But at least one small page to be less intimidating.
My one-liner for uselang=experienced is this: "Quick tips: upload full-resolution files - use meaningful destination filenames - write a meaningful description - add categories/galleries - give evidence (URL/OTRS) of free license release for work by someone else. "
In a way, we can be scientific about this. We should try that. We can measure upload stats. We can record how many files get deleted within N days. (It would be super interesting to see that curve. Probably there is a value for N after which if a file survives that long, it basically survives forever.) We can record how many files get particular deletion tags.
We can get the stats for a month based on our current forms.
Then we can modify the forms, and record more stats.
If the %age of suspect files stays the same or decreases, we have a winner. Especially if the absolute number of files uploaded increases (more than projection).
I think in a big way, deliberately or non-deliberately, we nag people with info overload to discourage them from uploading, because that inherently discourages uploading of copyvios. And we do that because it's nearly the worst possible user experience to have your content deleted. (and it's more work for us.)
Should we as a community push a lot harder for an extension that forces a user to go through a basic licensing quiz before being granted upload rights? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/Licensing_quiz
and then massively simplify our upload forms.
?
cheers Brianna
2008/8/1 Cary Bass cbass@wikimedia.org:
See, at one time, when there were many fewer uploads, and many fewer admins, we looked at new people's uploads and helped them out with understanding what they were doing wrong, why something is not free, what they need to say while uploading, maybe show them a bit of template magic, while we're at it. We'd do this by going to their talk page, and ~ leaving a few kind words. If it was evident it was a language we didn't understand, we'd find a nice admin in their language who would also help them.
Commons was once a small project yes. Some things don't scale too well. the upload forms are more targeted at accidental copyvios rather than deliberate (en takes a more extreme version of this of course). In order to keep the post upload situation manageable we need to use the pre-upload experience to try and make sure people know what they are doing to an extent. At the same time we have to come up with a mechanism that doesn't drag you through an already done tutorial a second time around. The result is always going to be a compromise that isn't optimized for any one thing.
Remember we pretty much have 4 levels of user.
Complete newbies newbies regular users Power users.
Power users are not really a problem it is fairly easy to set them up with their own upload tools but splitting up the other three is much harder.
2008/8/1 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2008/8/1 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2008/8/1 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
Well, yeah. Can any of the tl;dr be removed? I realise instruction creep only works upward ...
Probably not but I'm not sure which of our collection of simplified upload forms you are talking about.
Per context, [[Special:Upload]] on Commons.
Not really. Oh we could probably move most of the help stuff onto a separate page but that is about it. Beyond that you start to lose functionality and making sure people understand what they are doing.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
David Gerard wrote: | 2008/8/1 geni geniice@gmail.com: |> 2008/8/1 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com: | |>> Quick Guide for How To Upload Your Own Pictures: |>> 1. Create a Commons login. Say something about yourself on your user page. |>> 2. Upload your stuff. Pick one of the "Own work" options. |>> 3. Fill in some categories, etc. (wikitext, same as on Wikipedia). |>> Would that be worth putting in above or in place of one of the huge |>> walls of text presently on the upload form? | |> Nope adding further text to the page is hardly going to help matters. | | | Well, yeah. Can any of the tl;dr be removed? I realise instruction | creep only works upward ...
I agree with this. We want to make things simpler, less complicated, not more complicated--I realize our admins have a tough time combating copyvios, but a determined copyvio person is going to ignore anything we throw at them and upload anyway--we want to make it easier on the regular person!
- -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator
Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Phone: 415.839.6885 x 601 Fax: 415.882.0495
E-Mail: cary@wikimedia.org