On Fri, Jan 26, 2024 at 2:53 AM Jan Ainali jan@aina.li wrote:
Brion wrote:
- Overturn the requirement to avoid handling h.264 files on Wikimedia
servers or accept them from users or serve them to users. Allow importing h.264 uploads and creating h.264 transcodes for playback compatibility.
Yes, this is essential. Can be via a separate videowiki in the short term (or NCcommons) if the WM Commons community is united in opposition.
I disagree. Using non-open tools in our workflows is a poison that should be resisted by any means possible.
You've single-handedly contributed massively to free knowledge outputs and education across a range of formats, so surely something poisonous to your work (or enthusiasm!) would be problematic. But I don't think tools that allow people to share free knowledge in whatever format they have and thereby convert it to free formats, are remotely harmful.
People who have existing media will generally not use a new app; the most impactful missing steps are a) a stickier intake wizard (iterative uploading and license-clearing) b) automatic transcoding (without the uploader having to grok + do it)
geni wrote:
I really doubt we will ever get much in the way of encyclopaedic videos
on our platforms
? Many creators say they are glad to relicense their existing fantastic work, but don't have time/will to overcome the current obstacles to such reuse that they have to [personally] overcome for each video. So we only get bulk contributions, through a third-party who is familiar with the wikis, once in a while... a modest homegrown example: depthsofwiki has a range of great short videos that are partly educational and mainly inspiring to delve into the wikis and learn things. I suspect none of them are on Commons despite obvious relevance to the movement for outreach, illustration, and the like.
SJ.