Gerard, Fæ and others,

You are both correct, if we treat commons as an auxiliary tool for media hosting, then yes, it’s ok and working fine. And to Gerard point, it’s effectively saying commons is difficult to use and navigate as a website for non-English speakers, which is totally understandable. I don’t see any conflict here. I think Gerard’s wish to improve commons in that regard is respectable. Though it is my opinion that it would be better if Gerard didn’t start his reply with 'you are essentially wrong’, which sounded a little bit harsh (maybe just to me). There is no conflict in your statements, they are opinions on the two facets of the same thing. 

Leo,
On Jul 16, 2021, 10:26 PM +0800, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>, wrote:
Hoi,
You make your point and you are essentially wrong. When you search in English for "beaver" you do not find  beavers. They are mostly false positives related in one way or other to "beaver" but they do not depict a beaver[1] . This is true for all languages. My point is that Commons is not useful when people cannot find what they are looking for. Compare this to a search using the Wikidata labels linked to "depicts" statements in any and all languages, this is where they DO find beavers [2] (this app is by Hay Kranen and it shows the same functionality special:mediasearch used to have in a previous iteration).

I am totally aware that it is only a subset of the images at Commons that can be found in this way. It however works for a general public and it does work in any language. The current search is however not functional when you "just" want to find a picture. When you argue that special purpose files with a Spanish description are a reason not to provide a functional search, I do wonder what Commons is for. Why have the biggest freely licensed resource of media files when it has no functional search, when it is essentially closed in all languages to the public. 

The reason why I aim to be a member of the board is exactly that we need a public for all the work that we have done. I do not mind when we start with a minimal service that works over a service that does not bring us the attention to Commons that it deserves. We do not truly value the data that we have.
Thanks,
      GerardM


[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MediaSearch?type=image&search=beaver
[2] https://hay.toolforge.org/sdsearch/#q=haswbstatement:P180=Q181191

On Fri, 16 Jul 2021 at 13:42, Fæ <faewik@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, 6 Jul 2021 at 17:32, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi.
> One reason why I am a candidate for the board of the WMF is that in my opinion one function is lacking. There is no reflection of the fact that all that we do is to share the sum of all knowledge. It is not only about the creation of content but also about sharing the sum all the knowledge that is available to us.
>
> For obvious reasons, the contributors to the projects are heard. I do not subscribe to the notion that the "projects" need to be in the organisational chart. With 300 languages and potentially multiple projects for each language it is impossible to have equity among these projects. The point that I have made repeatedly: Commons is not useful in any language but English, this does not need to be as there is software that works equally well in any language dependent on the availability of labels in Wikidata. This is just one example, there are more.
> Thanks,
>       GerardM

"Commons is not useful in any language but English" is nonsense. The
idea that displaying "labels" and imposed transclusions from Wikidata
would make, say, a Commons image page Spanish description of a PDF
book in Spanish redundant, and an English description is all that
Commons should aim for, disregards the valued work that many Commons
contributors make to keep the project multilingual.

I would hope that the WMF board would understand how the projects
function and their value to public reuse rather better than this.

Thanks,
Fae
--
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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