On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 8:51 AM, Magnus
Manske<magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 8:29 PM,
Durova<nadezhda.durova(a)gmail.com> wrote:
You might be surprised. The biggest obstacle is
that most of the people who
own copyrights simply don't understand wikis and free culture. They're used
to thinking in terms of reproduction permission, which presupposes an older
type of static publication. That can change; what we need to do is
communicate while we have the public's attention.
Fortunately many copyrights have almost zero commercial value. When
individuals hold those copyrights they often regard it as flattering that a
site such as Wikipedia could use them. Think of it in terms of someone
whose aunt was an Olympic bronze medalist decades ago: photographs of her
would be treasured within the family, but elsewhere she's just a name on a
long list of athletes.
The default action that people take when they discover Wikipedia would
publish their photos is to offer permission. When we try to answer 'that
doesn't work, you need to go to OTRS and...' nine times out of ten their
eyes glaze over and they wander away. They simply don't comprehend. We
need to stop being defeatist and get serious about commuincating on a
broader scale that yes, these things are possible. The solutions are
simple, but they require a paradigm shift.
Some time ago, I had started implementing a way for people to mail
pictures in. These would then end in a staging area on the toolserver,
and wiki(p|m)edians could then ask back for more information (e.g.
description), or push them through to Commons. The mails would be
stored on the toolserver as a papertrail.
However, I was told that this would interfere with/duplicate effort of
OTRS, so I stopped.
Any way to measure how effective the OTRS method is versus other
methods? And which route is more effective in getting people engaged
and actually submitting pictures? There is a need to cross the t's and
dot the i's, so OTRS might still be needed to handle the paperwork,
but the entry level needs to be lower to avoid discouraging people.
Carcharoth