2014-12-12 16:40 GMT+02:00 Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com:
From: Craig Franklin cfranklin@halonetwork.net
Am I the only one that sees the irony in asking folks not to pick on the Commons community, then immediately asserting that enwp is the source of all drama?
Not just that, but also... Am I the only one that sees the irony in how this thread started by arguing that the Commons community "...cares more about strict free licensing than it does about utility to people who need knowledge", and then the conversation quickly veered off into an omnibus of WikiLawering about strict free-licensing minutiae: Tunisian Freedom-of-Panorama, Tractor logos and Israeli Government Works!?!
So we're incapable to focus on the main issues. That happens when everyone has it's on "main" problem. That doesn't mean we have to dismiss the whole thread. Branching on smaller problems might help.
2014-12-12 16:40 GMT+02:00 Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com:
There are at least three independent *software *projects that are underway which will hopefully help to address this issue:
They sound great, but they will take years [1], time that we don't know if we have. You might convince GLAMs to collaborate with you later on, but not individual contributors. A person "lost" for the Wikimedia community is most likely lost for good. We need an solution sooner, and it needs to involve some social networking - tech is never the only solution when it comes to interactions between people.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Overview#What_is_...
2014-12-12 13:56 GMT+02:00 Fæ faewik@gmail.com:
Some of the structure of Commons is frustrating, often because of the clumsy workflow for file uploading, moving, deleting. I hope to see many improvements over the next two years. As there are only around 150 active admins on Commons (a tenth of the English Wikipedia's), it is worth asking one for help, the response you get will tend to be personal and common sense rather than bureaucracy or wikilawyering.
You keep speaking about moving, deleting and other administrative tasks, while this thread was about making Commons a place where it is at least predictable if a file will be kept or not, or better yet, about making Commons a real alternative to Flickr Commons and similar repositories. I am sorry, but your messages do not offer any solution in that direction.
I'm sorry if you had a bad experience in the past. If you are familiar with IRC, it sometimes helps to discuss an issue in real time on the Commons channel before responding to issues on-wiki.[2]
I had more than one bad experience, with some downright incredible. Luckily for me, I happened to be a Wikipedian long before I started uploading to Commons, so I was prepared for most of it. But the average newcomer that comes through, say, WLM but wants to continue contributing will not have the kind of patience it takes to upload and keep a debatable image from being deleted.
Does that happen on Wikipedia as well? Yes, with the notable difference that Commons should have a somewhat lower entry barrier than English Wikipedia at this point (uploading an image is easier that adding to articles that are either quite big or on difficult subjects). So it should be much easier to get external people to contribute to Commons and then to Wikipedia than the other way around. Unfortunately, we are currently light-years away from this, and this is easily visible in the percentage of conversions from WLM.
Strainu