Hey Chris,
The most inspiring thing, what will have a huge effect on our community
happened in the last week or so. It started with a proof of concept by Hay
Kranen [1]. It works and it brought search to Commons. Multi lingual search
to Commons. In the example you search for a "kamsalamander" in Russian.
Contrast that with the current Commons that is hardly usable and English
only.
After quite a bit of attention seeking, the official prototype of the multi
lingual search of the Wikimedia Foundation made its entry. Boy is THAT an
important experience. To given you one example, an English Wikipedia
article had the name in Urdu for a prominent Pakistani scientist. Adding
this label to Wikidata now enables people in Pakistan to find [2] مجدد احمد
اعجا ز . People are looking for cats in Czech [3]... What this changes is
that Commons, the "collection of 61,807,201 freely usable media files to
which anyone can contribute" becomes "a collection of 61,807,201 freely
usable media files to which anyone can use".
It does not stop there. For any Wikipedia article, in any language, we can
now provide a pre filled search that will show what Commons has in
media files. Let this sink in...
It is a prototype and yes, it needs major improvements to make it sing.
That is however not what is important in a Wiki environment. It took months
for the original Commons to be usable as the place where images were to be
found and could be linked from Wikipedia articles. Special:MediaSearch is
already functional. Functional in all our languages. What will immediately
improve it are labels in Wikidata and "depict" statements on pictures.
When we are to know how important this is, collect statistics on the use
of Special:MediaSearch. Split this in the language it is used for and
market the hell out of this.. Expand our public, make Commons what it
should be; the most important resource of freely available media files.
This is imho the most important new functionality since Wikidata.
Thanks,
GerardM
[1]
https://tools.wmflabs.org/hay/sdsearch/?locale=ru#q=haswbstatement:P180=Q13…
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MediaSearch?type=bitmap&q=%D…
[3]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MediaSearch?type=bitmap&q=Ko…
On Sat, 30 May 2020 at 21:22, Chris Koerner <ckoerner(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hello Wikimedians around the world
In these difficult times many of us miss the chance to connect in person
with other Wikimedians. We miss the events and meetings where we could
learn from and about each other. So we thought to use this time to learn
from each other more about the great people that make up our communities.
We would like to give some of them a bit of a spotlight in our virtual
spaces like our blogs and social media in the absence of physical
connection points.
Do you know a community member who has accomplished something new or
inspiring in the last year? Someone who you think the rest of the community
should know about? If so, please take a few minutes and nominate them in
the survey below.
Let us know about their inspiring work, whatever form it took, online or
offline. This can include but is not limited to adding important content
directly to one of our projects, encouraging and supporting others in
adding content, teaching the public about Wikipedia or other Wikimedia
projects, building partnerships, or organizing events and helping your
local community thrive. We are also curious to learn about the different
ways people enrich our movement!
Use the following link to take the survey.
-
https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0plqKWa1o1ztZ1b?target=ML-l
<
https://wikimedia-dot-yamm-track.appspot.com/Redirect?ukey=1_JszED7z9mHJlC_…
Thank you in advance for helping us highlight more wonderful people and
accomplishments from all over the world!
Your privacy is important to us and is governed by the linked privacy
statement. In this survey, we will request your contact information and
that of the individual you are nominating. Please be sure that the person
you are nominating understands you are providing us with their information.
We will use this information to get in touch with nominees, should they
meet our selection criteria. We will retain this contact information
indefinitely unless you or the person you nominate request its deletion or
update it in a subsequent survey; please see the privacy statement
<
https://wikimedia-dot-yamm-track.appspot.com/Redirect?ukey=1_JszED7z9mHJlC_…
for details.
Kind regards,
Chris Koerner (he/him)
Community Relations Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation
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