"there are way less people maintaining it than it is needed" is naif summary of what is going on. IMHO. There are people maintaining it in a way that is counterproductive. You can always create an efficient workflow, if you want it.
We don't need people that delete an image of a statue in the USA because of no:fop even if it is a small size in a big composition and than keep the other ones in the category that are in any case used on enwikipedia. We don't need people copying and pasting quickly motivations without even reading them confusing countries or scenarios, as it happened (they almost never apologize, of course, because they are so busy). We don't need people that when a deletion procedure is rejected keep insisting looking at the contribution of an user stressing them until they find something. We don't need people deleting low-resolution files that were few months short form entering the public domain, when in the same time they could have deleted 100 times more of useless images. We don't need people arguing to delete ancient images that couldn't be proved "not to be recent" against good faith. We don't need people starting deletion procedure if an image is on line instead of simply asking the uploader.
However, it's a fact that some active members of the community created over the years a system where such people are encouraged to act in such a rigid way and probably even believe that their behaviour is necessary. Given these circumstances, it is not the moral duty of the silent majority of users to deal with the consequences of such behaviour. They can go on and try to delete everything the way they do and they will also deal with the huge amount of backlog they create wasting the time of users. It's only fair to me that whoever keep encouraging such unefficient workflow should be the one to clean the mess. A.
Il domenica 17 maggio 2020, 12:15:30 CEST, Yaroslav Blanter ymbalt@gmail.com ha scritto:
Concerning using Commons as a photo hosting, I have written a blog post earlier this year:
https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-commons-as-private-photo-hosti...
However, I can not see how it can become anything close to social media, nor do I think it should be. It already has a lot of garbage, and there are way less people maintaining it than it is needed. That it is one of the nastiest communities among all Wikimedia projects, with people being allowed to do things for which they would become instantly long-term blocked on other projects, does not help either
Best Yaroslav
On Sun, May 17, 2020 at 10:32 AM Tito Dutta trulytito@gmail.com wrote:
This discussion, although started with a question "why don't people contribute to Wikimedia Commons, now after actually the discussion above, covers more topics. A few notes, observations and comments:
- I remember a major discussion took place somewhere on Wikimedia Commons
when one of the strategy2030 draft recommendations suggested uploading non-free images on Wikimedia Commons. That discussion was also on the scope of Wikimedia Commons. I wish I could recall where exactly it took place. However, I am pretty sure that many of you have read or participated there. Most probably there I first read the idea of "uncommon/uncommons" (or an alternative version of Commons). 2) Wikimedia Commons is most possibly/definitely less popular than Wikipedia. I believe many editors start from Wikipedia and then move to Wikimedia Commons. There is, of course, another reason, when someone gradually becomes more experienced on Wikipedia, they learn they need to spend some time on Wikimedia Commons for the article–photos they are working on. I "personally" do "not" feel the solution of this "popularity" problem is rebranding. We need more Wikimedia Commons-focused plans, initiatives, and strategies (I find this is true for all other projects). 3) Yes, the difficulty of using the app/web interface might be an issue of seeing less contribution as well. You have different photo-sharing platforms which uploads photos in 1-click. Commons upload process is longer. (I am not saying the process is bad, of course, we need all the steps, and there is not an unnecessary step there.) 4) The human emotion and interaction part is kind of missing: On Facebook, Instagram the likes, comments etc one gets, work as a motivation. This is a major issue. On FB, or Instagram an uploader can connect with people instantly, and their responses/reactions are quick as well. (Here also, I am not really suggesting anything, just keeping it as an observation) Let's talk about Google Photos, their badges, photo views analytics, and email time to time (eg: Your photo is making a difference, or You are a star) is good for motivation as well.
Thanks User:Titodutta
On Sun, 17 May 2020 at 13:03, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, 17 May 2020 at 07:20, Roland Unger roland.unger@soziologie.uni-halle.de wrote:
There are several causes why people do not upload their photos to
Commons.
Wikimedia Commons is less known like the other Wikimedia sisters. We
had to
increase the awareness of these projects including the Foundation itself. But all people speak only about Wikipedia, and nobody starts an ad campaign for the sisters to overcome this. Not only the scope of
Commons is broader, that of the movement is broader, too. Maybe the Foundation can improve its support for the sisters to attract new users
for
the movement.
see:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/02/07/how-does-the-world-see-wikim...
Many photographers (and Wikipedians) will be become famous. There is
the question why to
publish at Wikimedia Commons instead of Instagram, Flickr, or
Pinterest?
There is almost no support for the sister projects by Wikipedians.
Some
Wikipedians are
living in their own world, and sometimes they argue against their sisters.
- For many users it is difficult to use Commons or other Wikimedia
projects. They have to fight against an ancient and not user-friendly
user
interface (for instance manual edits of things stored in EXIF data or in the user account, adding categories without any automatic support, etc.).
I am not really sure if an investigation should be done because most
problems are known already now.
I think we should keep the opportunity of commercial use, because all
Wikimedia products should be used freely. For instance, what shall an officer at a travel agency do if she/he cannot use Wikimedia products freely because of commercial-usage restrictions?
Roland
Benjamin Ikuta benjaminikuta@gmail.com 05/17/20 5:07 AM >>>
Anecdotally, it seems people sometimes don't upload their photos to
Commons because they don't realize that the scope of Commons is much broader than that of Wikipedia.
Has there been, or should there be, any research into this, or why
people don't contribute more broadly?
~Benjamin
A "share" link on image pages would go a long way to fixing this. If folks on instagram, flickr etc. got used to seeing nice images with links back to Commons, we might expect 1% to 4% of those readers to follow the link back to the source, so if a few go viral, that might actually attract a few high quality photographers.
A "mirror" tool would also be a great addition. If a photographer could easily share some of their photos by picking from their gallery and pushing to their flickr/instagram and a Commons account at the same time, all on a cc-by-sa license, they would come to see Commons as part of increasing their own internet footprint.
Fae
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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