I have learnt this morning that the "Timedmedia" extension "is not yet installed on wikimedia sites, but its meant to replace the existing player" (1). As I was uploading videos, and needed some specific tools, I happened the other day to use the mwEmbed gadget on Wikimedia Commons which seems to be a prefiguration of what the WMF plans to install everywhere on its sites. My experience as guinea pig of that experiment is negative: Clicking on the "i" option of the polar bear video inserted on commons village pump (2) produces the following screenshot: http://prototype.wikimedia.org/timedmedia/File:Screenshot_of_commons_villag… (3). What the video viewer can read is "Credits: Title : File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv Kaltura". This is not a proper way of providing author name (which should be Nehrams2020 ) and license (which should be Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license with a link). The "share" menu provides "< i frame src = " // commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv?withJS=Medi… " width="220" height="165" frameborder="0" >< /iframe > ". There is no "Attribution" code similar to the one you can find when clicking on "Use this file" on the photostock toolbar on the Commons description page (4). The small polar bear icon displayed in the "i" option of the "menu" is too small (it is only about 50x30px, while the standard "thumb" size is 220px!). Using the full 220px rectangle as a link is the way by which we tell readers/viewers that the Commons description page is an important page. Most users will not be aware that they may click on that 50x30px icon to find valuable information about the file. The File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv text is in grey color. This is not the standard way to make the viewer aware that it is a clickable link. Usually, clickable links are blue. This video player is putting the Wikimedia commons description page 3 clicks away from Wikipedia instead of just one (you must click on "menu", then on "i" then on "File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv"). If installed on Wikipedia, this gadget will not be an improvement, but a huge drawback for the quality of the relation between Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons will be unknown from Wikipedia readers or seen as something far away. I guess a lot of people are going to believe that the person who deserves credit is the company named "Kaltura" instead of the real video creator. The "i" symbol is meaningless for people whose languages do not have the word "information" in their vocabularies. Even in English or in French "information" is vague and does not mean "credit" or "license" or "attribution". The efforts Wikimedia Commons has been doing on description pages (indicating the source of the file, provide a description, provide a date, provide categories to find related files, etc.) are put aside for the purpose of the promotion of the "Kaltura" brand name. And again a download link seems to be provided straight away from the "menu" even if the user has not made the effort to learn about the licensing conditions. (1) Michael Dale 2011-10-11 02:54:09 UTC https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31583 (2) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#mwEmbed_gadget:_Vide… (3) http://prototype.wikimedia.org/timedmedia/File:Screenshot_of_commons_villag… (4) screenshot of "use this file" toolbar tool: http://prototype.wikimedia.org/timedmedia/File:Use_this_file_screenshot.jpg ( the "stockphoto.js" toolbar) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l