It would be far more effective to make community and project proposals
or run a wider community RFC about how the "common" projects work
together rather than become a board member to make a difference in
this area. The detail of how projects work and their policies is not
something that the WMF board is well placed to dictate. Trustees are
busy with WMF operational oversight and strategy, not lobbyists for
how technical implementation might work.
A board that starts dictating how projects must function, is probably
a board that volunteers would never elect, if they have a choice.
Thanks,
Fae
On Fri, 16 Jul 2021 at 15:26, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)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&searc…
> [2]
https://hay.toolforge.org/sdsearch/#q=haswbstatement:P180=Q181191
>
> On Fri, 16 Jul 2021 at 13:42, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 6 Jul 2021 at 17:32, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)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(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae