Hi, On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 10:30:13AM +0000, David Gerard wrote: ... ... for me, this disscussion again clearly demonstrates the principal problem that not everybody understands the mission of Commons in the same way. There are basically two main alternatives A. Commons as free media library. In a way, free counterpart to stock media agencies and the like. Such libraries have much added value compared to the "raw material" - description, tagging, categories, some copyright inspection, possibly some quality checks. In this case, Commons are viable as an independent project, which may attract it's own community. Helping to build and improve such library may be interesting. B. Commons as a Wikimedia-wide file storage facility. Main requirement on storage is security (so a file doesn't suddenly disappear) and maybe ease of access (so any wikimedian can upload a file without much knowledge of commons). The "sweet part" is, the file storage is still expected to have some functions demanding expensive human resources: 1. copyright inspection. In this case, IMO Commons are not viable as independent project. I can hardly imagine people who would be interested in doing copyright inspection of what would be, in quality terms, mostly pile of poorly described rubbish, dumped from Wikipedias in high speed. As in this alternative commons are IMO not self-sustainable as a community, Commons tasks would have to be somehow adopted as another janitorial task by other Wikimedia projects (those with a mission which is able to attract people). Jan Kulveit [[User:Wikimol]] _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 14/11/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf(a)gmail.com> wrote: There isn't anyone advocating that; this discussion started with a Commons admin threatening to block all es:wp users from Commons to stop copyvios from es:wp, because the Commons admins can't keep up, evidently because their admin process is strict enough that pretty much no-one even bothers trying. - d. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf(a)gmail.com> wrote: On en.pedia we have tried asking, explaining, pleading, beging and threatening and still the copyvios come. Rather a lot of the internet doesn't care about copyright. They want their image of dancing pigs and will lie to us to get it.

Is it 90%? I haven't seen anyone actually define what the problem is on foundation-l at least. Is it images with no info, or false info? Or is just that the new users aren't using Commons category system unrelated to copyright? I tried to read the Commons-l archive to catch up, but I am still unclear on what scope of the problem is. Does anyone actually have numbers? Without really knowing the situation, I would say that I believe all communities struggle to keep up on these things. Everyone has backlogs they are working through and these things happen in cycles. One month you make great progress, another month things are overwhelming and ground is lost. Perhaps threatening drastic action is a good way to draw attention and hopefully solutions when the situation gets particularly bad. However I think it would really be useful to talk about the real numbers in this situation. How much worse is it than what others are dealing with? Birgitte SB

On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf(a)gmail.com> wrote: Of course we advocate housing copyrighted media in commons. Commons is not limited to public domain material.

Technically, anything that isn't public domain is copyrighted. Even if it's GFDLed. But generally in a Wikimedia context, when people say "copyrighted" they're referring to the icky all-rights-reserved stuff.

On 11/14/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I was sloppy and using shorthand. Commons has differently licensed material on it than PD alone, however, we are restrictive in which licenses are acceptable. That should not be controversial, even to you, Anthony.