I speak as a big fan of and participant in Wikimedia Commons.
But: Is it time to deprecate Commons as a WMF service project? It's clearly failing and the local "community" is actively hostile to contributors from other wikis.
Commons appears to have forgotten it was created as a service project for other WMF wikis. It's not doing the job any more.
Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se Date: 2008/12/6 Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Patricia Rodrigues wrote:
That's a wonderful idea! But many times our main problem is the lack of manpower in different languages to actually address different users.
The more I think about this human side of the problem, the more I think we should go back to local uploading. The forwarding to Commons could be implemented by adding a "category:Suitable for Commons" and a bot that scans this category. Then if the image is deleted from Commons, the local copy would still exist.
If we want Wikipedia to scale from the narrow nerd community to a wider society, including elderly, we need to greet them with respect and in their own language. I don't see how we could manage this on Commons, even if uploaded images were marked with the uploader's interface language. We will always have the narrow nerd community too, which can act as admins and an interface towards the international community.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
_______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
2008/12/6 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)
If you want to encourage discussion, don't start by restricting the discussion to only people that agree with you. You won't get any useful results that way.
Are you speaking hypothetically, or don't you think this is a problem?
- d.
2008/12/6 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2008/12/6 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)
If you want to encourage discussion, don't start by restricting the discussion to only people that agree with you. You won't get any useful results that way.
Are you speaking hypothetically, or don't you think this is a problem?
I'm speaking hypothetically, I know very little about the subject in question.
on 12/6/08 4:10 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/12/6 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)
If you want to encourage discussion, don't start by restricting the discussion to only people that agree with you. You won't get any useful results that way.
Are you speaking hypothetically, or don't you think this is a problem?
What I hear in what he is saying is that your pathological need to control is surfacing again.
Marc Riddell
Civility much, Mark?
Snark apart, the basic problem with commons isn't the people (although they don't help), it's the software. MediaWiki is just not terribly well suited to this sort of thing. Categorisation is problematic. On encyclopedia projects this isn't the end of the world, because there's a search button and wikilinks to find your way to other articles: it's not a killer that en's categorisation sucks (and probably everyone else's catting too).
But on a project like commons it's the end.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 16:48:57 -0500 From: michaeldavid86@comcast.net To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
on 12/6/08 4:10 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/12/6 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)
If you want to encourage discussion, don't start by restricting the discussion to only people that agree with you. You won't get any useful results that way.
Are you speaking hypothetically, or don't you think this is a problem?
What I hear in what he is saying is that your pathological need to control is surfacing again.
Marc Riddell
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_________________________________________________________________ Are you a PC? Upload your PC story and show the world http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/122465942/direct/01/
Denying a problem is not necessarily discussion, but an attempt to keep things as they are. Although I could be wrong.
________________________________ From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, December 6, 2008 1:04:45 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)
If you want to encourage discussion, don't start by restricting the discussion to only people that agree with you. You won't get any useful results that way.
_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
on 12/6/08 4:04 PM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)
If you want to encourage discussion, don't start by restricting the discussion to only people that agree with you. You won't get any useful results that way.
Excellent point, Thomas!
Marc
That might be a hell of a incentive to change. Before we talk about getting out the torches, I think we should see if we can make Commons functional. The incentive of being shuttered makes it more relevant to those who are in denial. I have made two suggestions on improvements. One is a training program with specific handling, i.e. no more we delete in 7 days, a different template that is more collegial. The second is to cross appoint administrators from underrepresented projects who agree to undergo a boot camp program. Thoughts?
________________________________ From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, December 6, 2008 1:00:29 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
I speak as a big fan of and participant in Wikimedia Commons.
But: Is it time to deprecate Commons as a WMF service project? It's clearly failing and the local "community" is actively hostile to contributors from other wikis.
Commons appears to have forgotten it was created as a service project for other WMF wikis. It's not doing the job any more.
Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se Date: 2008/12/6 Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Patricia Rodrigues wrote:
That's a wonderful idea! But many times our main problem is the lack of manpower in different languages to actually address different users.
The more I think about this human side of the problem, the more I think we should go back to local uploading. The forwarding to Commons could be implemented by adding a "category:Suitable for Commons" and a bot that scans this category. Then if the image is deleted from Commons, the local copy would still exist.
If we want Wikipedia to scale from the narrow nerd community to a wider society, including elderly, we need to greet them with respect and in their own language. I don't see how we could manage this on Commons, even if uploaded images were marked with the uploader's interface language. We will always have the narrow nerd community too, which can act as admins and an interface towards the international community.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
_______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
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Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
That might be a hell of a incentive to change. Before we talk about getting out the torches, I think we should see if we can make Commons functional. The incentive of being shuttered makes it more relevant to those who are in denial. I have made two suggestions on improvements. One is a training program with specific handling, i.e. no more we delete in 7 days, a different template that is more collegial. The second is to cross appoint administrators from underrepresented projects who agree to undergo a boot camp program. Thoughts?
Maybe we are too fast to discuss solutions now, when we should first discuss the problem. I brought this up on commons-l before it spread to foundation-l. With the risk of making myself a target for "tl;dr" (too long; didn't read), here's the problem that I see:
Wikipedia in many languages is at a stage where the basic articles are written (apple is a fruit, Paris is the capital of France) and we need to recruit more people who know more areas, both academics and people who lived through the politics of the 1960s. This includes events such as Wikipedia Academy and also courses for the elderly. We can't hope that these people are skilled in PHP programming or fluent in English, as many people are on this list. Some might be able to write good text, but not used to wiki markup, and completely disabled in wiki template design. Perhaps they should stick to scanning and uploading their old photos from the 1970s.
We still have all kinds of vandalism on Wikipedia. If patrolling is efficient and finds and reverts 95% of vandalism, it might also spill over to falsely "fighting" 1% of beginner contributions. We're scaring serious people away by our own mistake. This is where we need to improve. It's like having a zero tolerance on crime, without becoming a brutal fascist state. Within each (small/medium) language of Wikipedia, this is quite easy. We all speak the same language and we know each other.
But as soon as it comes to image uploading, an area where the elderly have decades of photos to contribute, we're sending our beginners off to Wikimedia Commons. Even if the menues and most templates are localized in every major language, this is not true of the admin community there. If a beginner fails to fill out all details of free licensing, their user talk page will receive an image deletion request in English. Even if there is a translated version of that notification, the user's explanation in a local language might not be understood by the admins. If the user has good credentials that are easily verified (retired schoolteacher, museum manager, ...) and has built a solid reputation in the local language Wikipedia, a Commons admin from another language might not fully understand this.
Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two. So many copyright violations and half-free images are deleted, that little attention is paid to the individual contributors. The focus is on the image, not on the user. This system is also an open target for abuse. Sometimes deletions are requested anonymously or without substantial reasons, but this is not preceived as a problem. Only copyright violations are preceived as a problem. Wikimedia Commons might have a shortage of admins and other problems, that need to be sorted out. But that's not my main issue.
My main issue is this: If we invest in recruiting newcomers and in fostering our local admin community to receive and greet newcomers, how can we get the best value from that investment? Sending our beginners away to Wikimedia Commons and a whole new set of foreign language admins doesn't seem optimal. That's like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Either we should send newcomers and admins in pairs to Commons, somehow stating that this new user account is a Swedish speaker and that Swedish speaking admins can take care of any issues, or we should allow local uploads again, so the newcomers can stay within the Swedish Wikipedia. After images have been patrolled locally, they can be forwarded to Commons by a system of bots, and only the bot operators would have to deal with the international admin community at Wikimedia Commons.
On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 11:31 PM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
But as soon as it comes to image uploading, an area where the elderly have decades of photos to contribute, we're sending our beginners off to Wikimedia Commons. Even if the menues and most templates are localized in every major language, this is not true of the admin community there. If a beginner fails to fill out all details of free licensing, their user talk page will receive an image deletion request in English. Even if there is a translated version of that notification, the user's explanation in a local language might not be understood by the admins. If the user has good credentials that are easily verified (retired schoolteacher, museum manager, ...) and has built a solid reputation in the local language Wikipedia, a Commons admin from another language might not fully understand this.
I can think of two solutions here. One is to simply have more multi-project admins. Wikimedia ought to be one big community with a commons goal. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly) Wikimedia has been separated into many different islands separated by language borders, which are very hard to open up. Commons was born as a multilingual project, but in that aspect has failed I believe.
Another solution is to make image uploading much more transparent. Uploading from the local wiki should be possible without needing to browse to Commons. I cannot see unfortunately how we should handle messaging in that case, but it would certainly make it easier to communicate and monitor users.
I do not believe that returning to local uploading is a solution. It will simply mean that the problem of categorizing images, deleting copyright violations and similar will move to local projects where obviously less attention will be paid to them.
Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two. So many copyright violations and half-free images are deleted, that little attention is paid to the individual contributors. The focus is on the image, not on the user.
That is certainly true. I have noticed myself that if you patrol new uploads for some time your threshold for deleting or marking as bad image is going down. It is then time to stop doing that for a while.
What I am wondering is how we can change the focus from the image to user. What fundamental changes should be made for this?
This system is also an open target for abuse. Sometimes deletions are requested anonymously or without substantial reasons, but this is not preceived as a problem. Only copyright violations are preceived as a problem.
Every system where anybody can make edits is inherently an open target for abuse. The question is how we deal with abuse. I actually currently do not know how we handle this. Do you have any examples?
Bryan
2008/12/6 Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com:
I can think of two solutions here. One is to simply have more multi-project admins. Wikimedia ought to be one big community with a commons goal. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly) Wikimedia has been separated into many different islands separated by language borders, which are very hard to open up. Commons was born as a multilingual project, but in that aspect has failed I believe.
Relations between Commons and en:wp are clunky at the best of times, so it's certainly not just a language issue at all.
It's Commons forgetting it's a service project or Commons admins actively working against being a service project, because they want to be regarded as a completely independent project.
- d.
I guess I'm one of the Commons admins "actively working against being [just] a service project" for the various other wikimedia projects. I don't want it to be regarded as a "completely independent project" though. There's two reasons why I do that.
1. Wikimedia Commons serves a purpose on it's own, in being the project where we (wikimedians) make free media files avvailable to the public. That's well within the aim of WMF, just like wikipedia is bringing free encyclopedic content etc.
2. For Commons to be able to serve the other wikimedia projects in a satisfactory manner, there has to be a lot of committed volunteers doing the (most often) tedious task of maintaining the media files, among other things ensuring that the content indeed is free and that the files are marked an categorised so that others easily can find them. Most of these volunteers are the "commonsadmin", who in my opnion has one of the most ungrateful jobs in the wikimedia world. If there was more active admins, we could have done our job better - especially when it comes to take the necessary time to communicate with the other users who need help. The only way as I see it to actually get volunteers to work at Commons is to build a "community feeling" at commons like in other projects. If I only pop by Commons to fix something upon a request from another user at Norwegian Wikipedia - that's well and good but not something that will motivate me to spend and hour or two working on a backlog or actively look up some new Dutch user to see if I can help them learn how to best upload images at commons.
Finn Rindahl
2008/12/7 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
2008/12/6 Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com:
I can think of two solutions here. One is to simply have more multi-project admins. Wikimedia ought to be one big community with a commons goal. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly) Wikimedia has been separated into many different islands separated by language borders, which are very hard to open up. Commons was born as a multilingual project, but in that aspect has failed I believe.
Relations between Commons and en:wp are clunky at the best of times, so it's certainly not just a language issue at all.
It's Commons forgetting it's a service project or Commons admins actively working against being a service project, because they want to be regarded as a completely independent project.
- d.
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Finn Rindahl wrote:
I guess I'm one of the Commons admins "actively working against being [just] a service project" for the various other wikimedia projects.
This was David Gerard's wording and not mine. Overly general and harsh descriptions are not productive.
If there was more active admins, we could have done our job better - especially when it comes to take the necessary time to communicate with the other users who need help. The only way as I see it to actually get volunteers to work at Commons is to build a "community feeling" at commons like in other projects.
You need a community feeling among admins, so they can learn to know and trust each other and collaborate against individual admins who abuse their rights (which surely will happen occasionally). And you need to foster a community feeling between admins and regular/occasional/beginner users. But I doubt that the latter is possible. If it fails, I wouldn't blame you.
The problem is that many users don't feel at home in Commons. Many of them just upload a few images as part of writing Wikipedia articles. Having to enter Commons is more of a necessary evil, just like we all have to learn some wiki markup.
Consider this recent comment from one user: "I don't understand the title: 'Please link images'. All my pictures are linked to articles in the Swedish Wikipedia." This user didn't categorize his images on Commons, and received a complaint for this from a bot. He has no interest in categorizing images on Commons, he only wanted to illustrate his articles.
Maybe he should just upload the images locally to the Swedish Wikipedia, where they are used, and someone else, with a primary interest in Commons, should forward them to Commons and categorize them there.
This is how we normally distribute tasks among users within each language of Wikipedia: One person creates an article, another adds wiki markup, a third adds categories. But once you upload an image, you need to go out through the door, across the street, into the Wikimedia Commons building, and there you have to feel as part of a new community which doesn't fully speak your language, and each image must be categorized and correctly licensed and attributed (including the incomprihensible distinction between "source" and "author"), or else all your actions will be reverted.
Commons was set up in 2004. It was a great idea and has served its purpose well. But as we recruit new users, less experienced users who we have to actively recruit, this is not a vehicle for the best possible user experience and productivity.
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Finn Rindahl wrote
If there was more active admins, we could have done our job better - especially when it comes to take the necessary time to communicate with the other users who need help. The only way as I see it to actually get volunteers to work at Commons is to build a "community feeling" at commons like in other projects.
You need a community feeling among admins, so they can learn to know and trust each other and collaborate against individual admins who abuse their rights (which surely will happen occasionally). And you need to foster a community feeling between admins and regular/occasional/beginner users. But I doubt that the latter is possible. If it fails, I wouldn't blame you.
Trust is the key to success in any of these projects. Presumably the current admins on Commons have built that trust among themselves, but to the extent of being a closed community, Aspiring to join a closed community requires a person to comply with the norms and standards of that closed community until it is satisfied that the supplicant is fully compliant. This strongly discourages any kind of innovative behaviour or individuality, and protects the received wisdom of the controllers.
Commons is not unique in wanting more admins, but really experienced admins from other projects are not going to be overly anxious to join a project when that project would require them to swim among sharks.
The problem is that many users don't feel at home in Commons. Many of them just upload a few images as part of writing Wikipedia articles. Having to enter Commons is more of a necessary evil, just like we all have to learn some wiki markup.
I don't participate in Commons, and do my best to avoid it. I have had concerns about it ever since Erik first suggested the idea. Commons now houses many page scans on behalf of Wikisource. Uploading the 500 page scans for a single book can quickly inflate the Commons page count seems to support an obsession for quantity over quality.
Consider this recent comment from one user: "I don't understand the title: 'Please link images'. All my pictures are linked to articles in the Swedish Wikipedia." This user didn't categorize his images on Commons, and received a complaint for this from a bot. He has no interest in categorizing images on Commons, he only wanted to illustrate his articles.
Whatever happened to the old wiki notion of leaving things for others to do. There is no need for an uploader to do his own categorisation when there are admins available to do this.
Maybe he should just upload the images locally to the Swedish Wikipedia, where they are used, and someone else, with a primary interest in Commons, should forward them to Commons and categorize them there.
Indeed. If the Commons bot then finds that the image does not meet its copyright or other standards it just leaves that image where it is found.
This is how we normally distribute tasks among users within each language of Wikipedia: One person creates an article, another adds wiki markup, a third adds categories. But once you upload an image, you need to go out through the door, across the street, into the Wikimedia Commons building, and there you have to feel as part of a new community which doesn't fully speak your language, and each image must be categorized and correctly licensed and attributed (including the incomprihensible distinction between "source" and "author"), or else all your actions will be reverted.
If it were just a language problem that could be helped by insisting that any uploaded image must have all its data in two languages. ;-) By insisting on this as strongly as for categorisation and other requirements. Any image without two language data could be speedy deleted. This should only create problems in that small handful of countries where knowing a second language is an exception. :-P
Commons was set up in 2004. It was a great idea and has served its purpose well. But as we recruit new users, less experienced users who we have to actively recruit, this is not a vehicle for the best possible user experience and productivity.
I support the notion that we should start moving away from the single monolithic Commons.
Ec
On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 10:03 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Finn Rindahl wrote
If there was more active admins, we could have done our job better - especially when it comes to take the necessary time to communicate with the other users who need help. The only way as I see it to actually get volunteers to work at Commons is to build a "community feeling" at commons like in other projects.
You need a community feeling among admins, so they can learn to know and trust each other and collaborate against individual admins who abuse their rights (which surely will happen occasionally). And you need to foster a community feeling between admins and regular/occasional/beginner users. But I doubt that the latter is possible. If it fails, I wouldn't blame you.
Trust is the key to success in any of these projects. Presumably the current admins on Commons have built that trust among themselves, but to the extent of being a closed community, Aspiring to join a closed community requires a person to comply with the norms and standards of that closed community until it is satisfied that the supplicant is fully compliant. This strongly discourages any kind of innovative behaviour or individuality, and protects the received wisdom of the controllers.
Trust is indeed the key. But that trust needs to come from from both sides. I agree that Commons should work into getting more trusted by other projects, but it certainly should also work the other way around, other projects should at least try to get trusted by Commons. Every once in a while users from other projects come by claiming "What? Why do you follow the law of XYZ country? That is ridiculous, we should boycot Commons!" That is certainly not helpful in building trust. (exaggerated and not specifically pointed at anybody)
I wrote a lot of messages ago that it was all about language. Perhaps it's not, but it's more about culture and misunderstandings. Some people do not understand that the rules on their own project are not universal. Then they get warnings or their images are deleted, and they get hostile at Commons admins, and Commons admins get hostile at them and eventually we end up in the current we-versus-them situation.
Perhaps we should step back from making comments like "I try to avoid Commons at much as possible" and "Your kind of people is exactly what we don't need on Commons". We don't need this story to become a self fulfilling prophecy, if it hasn't happened already.
Bryan
Hello,
how about thinking about a channel between commons admins and local admins, for example a subpage under the Request for Administrator Attention (or some similar page), so that in case a non-english-speaking user is doing something odd, at first the local admins can be consulted.
Ting
Finn Rindahl wrote:
I guess I'm one of the Commons admins "actively working against being [just] a service project" for the various other wikimedia projects. I don't want it to be regarded as a "completely independent project" though. There's two reasons why I do that.
- Wikimedia Commons serves a purpose on it's own, in being the project
where we (wikimedians) make free media files avvailable to the public. That's well within the aim of WMF, just like wikipedia is bringing free encyclopedic content etc.
- For Commons to be able to serve the other wikimedia projects in a
satisfactory manner, there has to be a lot of committed volunteers doing the (most often) tedious task of maintaining the media files, among other things ensuring that the content indeed is free and that the files are marked an categorised so that others easily can find them. Most of these volunteers are the "commonsadmin", who in my opnion has one of the most ungrateful jobs in the wikimedia world. If there was more active admins, we could have done our job better - especially when it comes to take the necessary time to communicate with the other users who need help. The only way as I see it to actually get volunteers to work at Commons is to build a "community feeling" at commons like in other projects. If I only pop by Commons to fix something upon a request from another user at Norwegian Wikipedia - that's well and good but not something that will motivate me to spend and hour or two working on a backlog or actively look up some new Dutch user to see if I can help them learn how to best upload images at commons.
Finn Rindahl
2008/12/7 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
2008/12/6 Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com:
I can think of two solutions here. One is to simply have more multi-project admins. Wikimedia ought to be one big community with a commons goal. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly) Wikimedia has been separated into many different islands separated by language borders, which are very hard to open up. Commons was born as a multilingual project, but in that aspect has failed I believe.
Relations between Commons and en:wp are clunky at the best of times, so it's certainly not just a language issue at all.
It's Commons forgetting it's a service project or Commons admins actively working against being a service project, because they want to be regarded as a completely independent project.
- d.
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I think of the problem as more of a systemic one, and I don't see a ready way around it. I consider myself a moderately active user on commons, and the thing is that Commons has no payoff. At Wikipedia, there can be the satisfaction of an article well written, an obscure fact well sourced, &c. The content is (usually) interesting and engaging and begging for your participation. Commons, by contrast, is a forum for content that is ALREADY COMPLETE. It needs no participation, only handling. Commons editors are more or less just shepherds and custodians, tagging, categorizing, sourcing. I don't say this disparagingly. I myself hope to become a Commons admin one day. But the difference in incentive, in intellectual remuneration, is vast.
FMF
On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 6:19 AM, Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de wrote:
Hello,
how about thinking about a channel between commons admins and local admins, for example a subpage under the Request for Administrator Attention (or some similar page), so that in case a non-english-speaking user is doing something odd, at first the local admins can be consulted.
Ting
Finn Rindahl wrote:
I guess I'm one of the Commons admins "actively working against being
[just]
a service project" for the various other wikimedia projects. I don't want
it
to be regarded as a "completely independent project" though. There's two reasons why I do that.
- Wikimedia Commons serves a purpose on it's own, in being the project
where we (wikimedians) make free media files avvailable to the public. That's well within the aim of WMF, just like wikipedia is bringing free encyclopedic content etc.
- For Commons to be able to serve the other wikimedia projects in a
satisfactory manner, there has to be a lot of committed volunteers doing
the
(most often) tedious task of maintaining the media files, among other
things
ensuring that the content indeed is free and that the files are marked an categorised so that others easily can find them. Most of these volunteers are the "commonsadmin", who in my opnion has one of the most ungrateful
jobs
in the wikimedia world. If there was more active admins, we could have
done
our job better - especially when it comes to take the necessary time to communicate with the other users who need help. The only way as I see it
to
actually get volunteers to work at Commons is to build a "community
feeling"
at commons like in other projects. If I only pop by Commons to fix
something
upon a request from another user at Norwegian Wikipedia - that's well and good but not something that will motivate me to spend and hour or two working on a backlog or actively look up some new Dutch user to see if I
can
help them learn how to best upload images at commons.
Finn Rindahl
2008/12/7 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
2008/12/6 Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com:
I can think of two solutions here. One is to simply have more multi-project admins. Wikimedia ought to be one big community with a commons goal. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly) Wikimedia has been separated into many different islands separated by language borders, which are very hard to open up. Commons was born as a multilingual project, but in that aspect has failed I believe.
Relations between Commons and en:wp are clunky at the best of times, so it's certainly not just a language issue at all.
It's Commons forgetting it's a service project or Commons admins actively working against being a service project, because they want to be regarded as a completely independent project.
- d.
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Is there not a record of what projects actually link to commons material? If not, why not
On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 12:16 PM, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.comwrote:
I think of the problem as more of a systemic one, and I don't see a ready way around it. I consider myself a moderately active user on commons, and the thing is that Commons has no payoff. At Wikipedia, there can be the satisfaction of an article well written, an obscure fact well sourced, &c. The content is (usually) interesting and engaging and begging for your participation. Commons, by contrast, is a forum for content that is ALREADY COMPLETE. It needs no participation, only handling. Commons editors are more or less just shepherds and custodians, tagging, categorizing, sourcing. I don't say this disparagingly. I myself hope to become a Commons admin one day. But the difference in incentive, in intellectual remuneration, is vast.
FMF
On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com wrote:
Is there not a record of what projects actually link to commons material? If not, why not
There is none because nobody made one.
There is of course Duesentrieb's checkusage, but that only works per image.
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Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com wrote:
Is there not a record of what projects actually link to commons material? If not, why not
There is none because nobody made one.
There is of course Duesentrieb's checkusage, but that only works per image.
Native support for usage tracking would be rather useful; I'm going to bump priority on this...
- -- brion
On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 1:59 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/12/6 Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com:
I can think of two solutions here. One is to simply have more multi-project admins. Wikimedia ought to be one big community with a commons goal. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly) Wikimedia has been separated into many different islands separated by language borders, which are very hard to open up. Commons was born as a multilingual project, but in that aspect has failed I believe.
Relations between Commons and en:wp are clunky at the best of times, so it's certainly not just a language issue at all.
It's Commons forgetting it's a service project or Commons admins actively working against being a service project, because they want to be regarded as a completely independent project.
Please provide an example of what you call "actively working against being a service project".
Bryan
Hoi, When you indicate that the relation between Commons and en.wp is clunky, you will acknowledge that the policies re images of the English Wikipedia are rather different. This prevents a common understanding about procedures and policies. So I will grant you that it is not only language that makes for rocky relations. However, people who can read / write English are the ones that have the necessary ability to get value out of Commons, they are the only ones who really benefit from the project
The big argument for Commons at the time was the ability to share pictures between the various projects. When you analyse the use of pictures, I do not doubt that many projects use the same pictures even when quality alternatives exist. As a whole this is boring. There have been many initiatives that I do qualify as sensible. When Commons cannot host a picture under its doctrines it now delinks pictures from other projects. It now even allows other MediaWiki projects (outside of the WMF) to share pictures. I think Commons is indeed providing the service it can provide within its restrictions and its means.
When Commons is to do a "better" job, it is important to realise what it currently can and cannot do. In my opinion, the lack of usability is why Commons does not have 25 million pictures. The consequence of the lack of usability is that fewer uploads are done from people who do not communicate in English, Commons is consequently not the resource for worldwide education that it could be. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/7 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
2008/12/6 Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com:
I can think of two solutions here. One is to simply have more multi-project admins. Wikimedia ought to be one big community with a commons goal. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly) Wikimedia has been separated into many different islands separated by language borders, which are very hard to open up. Commons was born as a multilingual project, but in that aspect has failed I believe.
Relations between Commons and en:wp are clunky at the best of times, so it's certainly not just a language issue at all.
It's Commons forgetting it's a service project or Commons admins actively working against being a service project, because they want to be regarded as a completely independent project.
- d.
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
So I will grant you that it is not only language that makes for rocky relations. However, people who can read / write English are the ones that have the necessary ability to get value out of Commons, they are the only ones who really benefit from the project
An extension of that point is that it takes a somewhat greater skill in English to participate in policy discussions.
Ec
i would agree that decentralizing the image upload appears to be the best process.
________________________________ From: Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, December 6, 2008 2:31:57 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
That might be a hell of a incentive to change. Before we talk about getting out the torches, I think we should see if we can make Commons functional. The incentive of being shuttered makes it more relevant to those who are in denial. I have made two suggestions on improvements. One is a training program with specific handling, i.e. no more we delete in 7 days, a different template that is more collegial. The second is to cross appoint administrators from underrepresented projects who agree to undergo a boot camp program. Thoughts?
Maybe we are too fast to discuss solutions now, when we should first discuss the problem. I brought this up on commons-l before it spread to foundation-l. With the risk of making myself a target for "tl;dr" (too long; didn't read), here's the problem that I see:
Wikipedia in many languages is at a stage where the basic articles are written (apple is a fruit, Paris is the capital of France) and we need to recruit more people who know more areas, both academics and people who lived through the politics of the 1960s. This includes events such as Wikipedia Academy and also courses for the elderly. We can't hope that these people are skilled in PHP programming or fluent in English, as many people are on this list. Some might be able to write good text, but not used to wiki markup, and completely disabled in wiki template design. Perhaps they should stick to scanning and uploading their old photos from the 1970s.
We still have all kinds of vandalism on Wikipedia. If patrolling is efficient and finds and reverts 95% of vandalism, it might also spill over to falsely "fighting" 1% of beginner contributions. We're scaring serious people away by our own mistake. This is where we need to improve. It's like having a zero tolerance on crime, without becoming a brutal fascist state. Within each (small/medium) language of Wikipedia, this is quite easy. We all speak the same language and we know each other.
But as soon as it comes to image uploading, an area where the elderly have decades of photos to contribute, we're sending our beginners off to Wikimedia Commons. Even if the menues and most templates are localized in every major language, this is not true of the admin community there. If a beginner fails to fill out all details of free licensing, their user talk page will receive an image deletion request in English. Even if there is a translated version of that notification, the user's explanation in a local language might not be understood by the admins. If the user has good credentials that are easily verified (retired schoolteacher, museum manager, ...) and has built a solid reputation in the local language Wikipedia, a Commons admin from another language might not fully understand this.
Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two. So many copyright violations and half-free images are deleted, that little attention is paid to the individual contributors. The focus is on the image, not on the user. This system is also an open target for abuse. Sometimes deletions are requested anonymously or without substantial reasons, but this is not preceived as a problem. Only copyright violations are preceived as a problem. Wikimedia Commons might have a shortage of admins and other problems, that need to be sorted out. But that's not my main issue.
My main issue is this: If we invest in recruiting newcomers and in fostering our local admin community to receive and greet newcomers, how can we get the best value from that investment? Sending our beginners away to Wikimedia Commons and a whole new set of foreign language admins doesn't seem optimal. That's like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Either we should send newcomers and admins in pairs to Commons, somehow stating that this new user account is a Swedish speaker and that Swedish speaking admins can take care of any issues, or we should allow local uploads again, so the newcomers can stay within the Swedish Wikipedia. After images have been patrolled locally, they can be forwarded to Commons by a system of bots, and only the bot operators would have to deal with the international admin community at Wikimedia Commons.
Cite: <i>Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two. </i> I think on the whole i can agree with this. And it is not limited to copyright violations. Commons has turned celf-centered more and more over the past years.
Out of disgust over its bad organization, i have limited my presence on commons as much as possible. But one of the last times I logged on, there was a poll or vote which looked like it was designed to limit voting to hard code commonists: volunteers had to do at least 20-50 edits a month to be able to vote. I think it is ridiculous that a small bunch of hard core volunteers try to lock out those of who are actually contributing the media. Luckily it was stopped, but mainly on technical grounds, not because it is ethically incorrect to lock contributors out.
(But may be I am prejudiced, once an enthousiastic supporter of commons, i nowadays avoid it as much as possible in wiki contexts - which forces me to use it regularly, much to my charin).
A good question is of cource: why are flickr, webshots and picassa so much more popular than commons? And: can we create a free alternative that can compete with them?
Sometimes i wonder if some wikia like organization could do a better service, with a wider scope of images - if i would try to upload my holiday pix on commons they would speedily get deleted as "not encyclopedic". But while some are not encyclopedic, many would qualify for free usage, such as cities, panoramas, and even some people pix.
I wish you health and happiness, Teun Spaans
On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 11:31 PM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
That might be a hell of a incentive to change. Before we talk about getting out the torches, I think we should see if we can make Commons functional. The incentive of being shuttered makes it more relevant to those who are in denial. I have made two suggestions on improvements. One is a training program with specific handling, i.e. no more we delete in 7 days, a different template that is more collegial. The second is to cross appoint administrators from underrepresented projects who agree to undergo a boot camp program. Thoughts?
Maybe we are too fast to discuss solutions now, when we should first discuss the problem. I brought this up on commons-l before it spread to foundation-l. With the risk of making myself a target for "tl;dr" (too long; didn't read), here's the problem that I see:
Wikipedia in many languages is at a stage where the basic articles are written (apple is a fruit, Paris is the capital of France) and we need to recruit more people who know more areas, both academics and people who lived through the politics of the 1960s. This includes events such as Wikipedia Academy and also courses for the elderly. We can't hope that these people are skilled in PHP programming or fluent in English, as many people are on this list. Some might be able to write good text, but not used to wiki markup, and completely disabled in wiki template design. Perhaps they should stick to scanning and uploading their old photos from the 1970s.
We still have all kinds of vandalism on Wikipedia. If patrolling is efficient and finds and reverts 95% of vandalism, it might also spill over to falsely "fighting" 1% of beginner contributions. We're scaring serious people away by our own mistake. This is where we need to improve. It's like having a zero tolerance on crime, without becoming a brutal fascist state. Within each (small/medium) language of Wikipedia, this is quite easy. We all speak the same language and we know each other.
But as soon as it comes to image uploading, an area where the elderly have decades of photos to contribute, we're sending our beginners off to Wikimedia Commons. Even if the menues and most templates are localized in every major language, this is not true of the admin community there. If a beginner fails to fill out all details of free licensing, their user talk page will receive an image deletion request in English. Even if there is a translated version of that notification, the user's explanation in a local language might not be understood by the admins. If the user has good credentials that are easily verified (retired schoolteacher, museum manager, ...) and has built a solid reputation in the local language Wikipedia, a Commons admin from another language might not fully understand this.
Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two. So many copyright violations and half-free images are deleted, that little attention is paid to the individual contributors. The focus is on the image, not on the user. This system is also an open target for abuse. Sometimes deletions are requested anonymously or without substantial reasons, but this is not preceived as a problem. Only copyright violations are preceived as a problem. Wikimedia Commons might have a shortage of admins and other problems, that need to be sorted out. But that's not my main issue.
My main issue is this: If we invest in recruiting newcomers and in fostering our local admin community to receive and greet newcomers, how can we get the best value from that investment? Sending our beginners away to Wikimedia Commons and a whole new set of foreign language admins doesn't seem optimal. That's like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Either we should send newcomers and admins in pairs to Commons, somehow stating that this new user account is a Swedish speaker and that Swedish speaking admins can take care of any issues, or we should allow local uploads again, so the newcomers can stay within the Swedish Wikipedia. After images have been patrolled locally, they can be forwarded to Commons by a system of bots, and only the bot operators would have to deal with the international admin community at Wikimedia Commons.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
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On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 1:00 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I speak as a big fan of and participant in Wikimedia Commons.
But: Is it time to deprecate Commons as a WMF service project? It's clearly failing and the local "community" is actively hostile to contributors from other wikis.
Commons appears to have forgotten it was created as a service project for other WMF wikis. It's not doing the job any more.
Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)
I don't participate in Commons (photography's not really my thing). But I *do* actively promote it as an awesome place to find free media. I was under the impression that the project had some time ago moved beyond simply being a technically convenient service project, and everyone was pretty well agreed on that. Am I wrong? Is this about the idea of Commons per se, or about issues with the individual people involved?
-- phoebe
Hoi, Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and consequently for them Commons is useless. Add to this the extreme loads of work of the Commons admins resulting in an unfriendly attitude towards people who do not frequent Commons and those who do not speak English and you appreciate why Commons has only 3.600.201 media files. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/8 phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com
On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 1:00 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I speak as a big fan of and participant in Wikimedia Commons.
But: Is it time to deprecate Commons as a WMF service project? It's clearly failing and the local "community" is actively hostile to contributors from other wikis.
Commons appears to have forgotten it was created as a service project for other WMF wikis. It's not doing the job any more.
Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)
I don't participate in Commons (photography's not really my thing). But I *do* actively promote it as an awesome place to find free media. I was under the impression that the project had some time ago moved beyond simply being a technically convenient service project, and everyone was pretty well agreed on that. Am I wrong? Is this about the idea of Commons per se, or about issues with the individual people involved?
-- phoebe
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On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 1:51 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and consequently for them Commons is useless. Add to this the extreme loads of work of the Commons admins resulting in an unfriendly attitude towards people who do not frequent Commons and those who do not speak English and you appreciate why Commons has only 3.600.201 media files. Thanks, GerardM
Right, it's baffling to me why a non-english speaking wikipedia would decide to be commons-only. Enwiki doesn't do it, and we speak english, why would they? That a new user who doesn't speak english could successfully upload an image to commons, and integrate it into their local wikipedia is completely unlikely in my opinion.
I would also *very strongly* opposed making enwiki commons only for different reasons. I do not support a degradation of people's rights. Wikipedia servers should be placed in a country that is most legally convenient, and we should follow those laws. Maybe that's the US, maybe not. Playing to the most restrictive laws is a losing game, and one I don't see any reason to play. It is very much the *game* that exists on commons now.
Having said that, I don't see any reason to shutter commons, or even talk in that direction. Wikipedia's should have their own images, some of which can be moved to commons, by people that care. If commons wants to be a repository who are in no way beholden to the other projects, and not a service wiki for them I think that's their decision to make. People should be aware of that change if it's what they want to do though, so they can plan accordingly.
Hoi, I would prefer work done on the usability of Commons. Not solving the issues means that we will never get a repository of images that because of its composition offers a non biased view of the world. Once people who do not speak English share in the benefits of Commons and are able to find images as well as anyone else we will have largely overcome the bias because once these people profit from Commons, they are likely to upload to Commons as well.
Policies and stuff are evolved and determined by discussion,.Commons needs the adoption of the idea that these other languages need to be supported as much as English is. Once this idea has been adopted, software can be adopted or developed that gives Commons relevance in the rest of the world. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/8 Judson Dunn cohesion@sleepyhead.org
On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 1:51 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and consequently for them Commons is useless. Add to this the extreme loads
of
work of the Commons admins resulting in an unfriendly attitude towards people who do not frequent Commons and those who do not speak English and you appreciate why Commons has only 3.600.201 media files. Thanks, GerardM
Right, it's baffling to me why a non-english speaking wikipedia would decide to be commons-only. Enwiki doesn't do it, and we speak english, why would they? That a new user who doesn't speak english could successfully upload an image to commons, and integrate it into their local wikipedia is completely unlikely in my opinion.
I would also *very strongly* opposed making enwiki commons only for different reasons. I do not support a degradation of people's rights. Wikipedia servers should be placed in a country that is most legally convenient, and we should follow those laws. Maybe that's the US, maybe not. Playing to the most restrictive laws is a losing game, and one I don't see any reason to play. It is very much the *game* that exists on commons now.
Having said that, I don't see any reason to shutter commons, or even talk in that direction. Wikipedia's should have their own images, some of which can be moved to commons, by people that care. If commons wants to be a repository who are in no way beholden to the other projects, and not a service wiki for them I think that's their decision to make. People should be aware of that change if it's what they want to do though, so they can plan accordingly.
Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Users:Cohesion
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and consequently for them Commons is useless.
That's simply ridiculous.
Many files, categories, and galleries are labeled in multiple languages... or even not in English at all. :)
Certainly it'll be *more useful* as we're able to add more widespread tag/category translations to help automate cross-language search, but the notion that people "cannot possibly find pictures" or that the site is "useless" is ridiculous and undermines the legitimate portion of your position (that it would be good to add more multilingual features to Commons).
- -- brion
Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος" and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English, Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic, Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse...
I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does include the category tree translated.
So the bad news is that Commons is unusable for everyone who does not read English and the good news is, that it is a solvable problem. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/9 Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and consequently for them Commons is useless.
That's simply ridiculous.
Many files, categories, and galleries are labeled in multiple languages... or even not in English at all. :)
Certainly it'll be *more useful* as we're able to add more widespread tag/category translations to help automate cross-language search, but the notion that people "cannot possibly find pictures" or that the site is "useless" is ridiculous and undermines the legitimate portion of your position (that it would be good to add more multilingual features to Commons).
- -- brion
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The commons issue is not just a language issua. If it was it was solvable. It is a hositility issue. Where people who upload the second picture of the same object (like a TukTuk) get told it is not necassary because the project already has one picture of a TukTuk ..... The problem is that the commoners do not understand that the project was started to make things easier for all the other wikimedia projects. Instead they have now become a hindrance to the wikimedia projects.
And when you try to upload something locally it is removed and moved to commons where it will be removed again ... so a lot of work for nothing. Which is exactly why I do not upload any of the 100's of pictures of Thai artists that I have taken while performing with them. I can do without the hassle. And I am an experiences wikimedian. Can you imagine how strangers perceive the aggressive behaviour at commons?
Waerth
Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος" and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English, Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic, Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse...
I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does include the category tree translated.
So the bad news is that Commons is unusable for everyone who does not read English and the good news is, that it is a solvable problem. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/9 Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and consequently for them Commons is useless.
That's simply ridiculous.
Many files, categories, and galleries are labeled in multiple languages... or even not in English at all. :)
Certainly it'll be *more useful* as we're able to add more widespread tag/category translations to help automate cross-language search, but the notion that people "cannot possibly find pictures" or that the site is "useless" is ridiculous and undermines the legitimate portion of your position (that it would be good to add more multilingual features to Commons).
- -- brion
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Waerth wrote:
The commons issue is not just a language issua. If it was it was solvable. It is a hositility issue. Where people who upload the second picture of the same object (like a TukTuk) get told it is not necassary because the project already has one picture of a TukTuk ..... The
It's interesting that I don't notice anything mentioned in this thread. For example, recently I uploaded a picture of a scarlet ibis, and it was not deleted despite the fact that there are 40 other scarlet ibis pictures.
Many times it works well. But the procedures also irregularly goes amiss.
I also received deletion messages of a pic i had uploaded with a correct license. Some wikimedian had accidently removed the license, making a bot come along and warn me. By pure coincidence i happened to come along at commons - sometimes months go by without me dropping in - and was able to restore the license, protest angainst its deletion, and so on. 7 days is awfully short. One easy thing that can be approved is an email instead of a bot message on a talk page.
But that wont change the self centered attitude of commonists.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 9:28 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
Waerth wrote:
The commons issue is not just a language issua. If it was it was solvable. It is a hositility issue. Where people who upload the second picture of the same object (like a TukTuk) get told it is not necassary because the project already has one picture of a TukTuk ..... The
It's interesting that I don't notice anything mentioned in this thread. For example, recently I uploaded a picture of a scarlet ibis, and it was not deleted despite the fact that there are 40 other scarlet ibis pictures.
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teun spaans wrote:
Many times it works well. But the procedures also irregularly goes amiss.
I also received deletion messages of a pic i had uploaded with a correct license. Some wikimedian had accidently removed the license, making a bot come along and warn me. By pure coincidence i happened to come along at commons - sometimes months go by without me dropping in - and was able to restore the license, protest angainst its deletion, and so on. 7 days is awfully short. One easy thing that can be approved is an email instead of a bot message on a talk page.
But that wont change the self centered attitude of commonists.
You *will* get an email if have chosen on your Preferences to get an email whenever your talk page is modified. Having that option available on WMF wikis was pushed from commons community, and in fact Commons was one of the first projects where it was added. Now it is enabled on all wikis but the big ones.
On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
teun spaans wrote:
Many times it works well. But the procedures also irregularly goes amiss.
I also received deletion messages of a pic i had uploaded with a correct license. Some wikimedian had accidently removed the license, making a bot come along and warn me. By pure coincidence i happened to come along at commons - sometimes months go by without me dropping in - and was able to restore the license, protest angainst its deletion, and so on. 7 days is awfully short. One easy thing that can be approved is an email instead of a bot message on a talk page.
But that wont change the self centered attitude of commonists.
You *will* get an email if have chosen on your Preferences to get an email whenever your talk page is modified. Having that option available on WMF wikis was pushed from commons community, and in fact Commons was one of the first projects where it was added. Now it is enabled on all wikis but the big ones.
Thank you, I now have this enabled on commons. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 13 Dec 2008, at 14:02, Platonides wrote:
teun spaans wrote:
Many times it works well. But the procedures also irregularly goes amiss.
I also received deletion messages of a pic i had uploaded with a correct license. Some wikimedian had accidently removed the license, making a bot come along and warn me. By pure coincidence i happened to come along at commons - sometimes months go by without me dropping in - and was able to restore the license, protest angainst its deletion, and so on. 7 days is awfully short. One easy thing that can be approved is an email instead of a bot message on a talk page.
But that wont change the self centered attitude of commonists.
You *will* get an email if have chosen on your Preferences to get an email whenever your talk page is modified. Having that option available on WMF wikis was pushed from commons community, and in fact Commons was one of the first projects where it was added. Now it is enabled on all wikis but the big ones.
From personal experience, this feature doesn't work reliably. I have a fairly large number of items on my watchlist at Commons and on Meta, such that there are edits made on average once a day, but I only receive the emails about those edits sporadically, and often in bursts.
It is still a very useful feature, though. It's a pity that you can't have two watchlists on en.wp, such that you can use one to keep an eye on articles you're particularly attached to, with the other handling all the rest.
Mike
2008/12/16 Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net:
It is still a very useful feature, though. It's a pity that you can't have two watchlists on en.wp, such that you can use one to keep an eye on articles you're particularly attached to, with the other handling all the rest.
I find that a useful method is to have a subpage of your userspace, link to every article you care about, and keep an eye on Special:Recentchangeslinked.
This is sort of unrelated, but may be of interest to the people discussing language issues with search:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2008/12/cross-language-enterprise-searc...
Google is announcing some cross language searching for enterprise now anyway, where you might search in one language, and have your query translated, and search against multiple other languages. Something to keep an eye on anyway.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος" and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
They might not be able to find "ίππος". However, they might be able to use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate "ίππος" into English "horse" and search for that.
Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim.
Magnus
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 11:18 AM, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος" and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
They might not be able to find "ίππος". However, they might be able to use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate "ίππος" into English "horse" and search for that.
Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim.
I guess one of the points is (and I admit that I'm just jumping in here, without having read the entire thread due to time constraints, so please mercifully ignore this if I'm completely off the mark), that the English speakers do not need to take this extra step of looking for a dictionary (online or hard copy) first. Of course this is one of the inherent problems of international collaboration but still, if you put it this way, it does leave this spirit of "Why the drama about all these non-English speakers, if they want to partake in the glories of Wikimedia Commons, they'll have to get their act together and find a dictionary (or else learn English)" and while I'm sure you do not mean it in this way, I do understand people who object to this...after all, the internationalization of a project is hardly promoted if you just focus on one language and distribute dictionaries to the rest.
So much for the nice, idealistic theory. I'm not even going to start venturing into the shallow waters of how to put this into practice...and I do realize that this limitation makes this post less-than-useful :-)
Michael
Hoi, An answer like that justifies and inforces the notion that Commons is only for those that can read / write English. To me this is not acceptable because it degrades Commons to less then what it should be, what it could be. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/9 Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons
why
they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"
and
you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
They might not be able to find "ίππος". However, they might be able to use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate "ίππος" into English "horse" and search for that.
Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim.
Magnus _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Please don't puts words (or notions) in my mouth.
At the moment, Commons works best for you when you can read/write English. But if you don't, you can still do simple searches using a dictionary, and find many useful images. This fact contradicts your earlier statement that Commons is useless to non-English speakers.
That's what I said, nothing more.
Magnus
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 10:27 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, An answer like that justifies and inforces the notion that Commons is only for those that can read / write English. To me this is not acceptable because it degrades Commons to less then what it should be, what it could be. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/9 Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons
why
they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"
and
you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
They might not be able to find "ίππος". However, they might be able to use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate "ίππος" into English "horse" and search for that.
Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim.
Magnus _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hoi, If you want to hear that Commons is not completely useless because people can use a dictionary, I grant you that. However Commons is still considered to be useless by several Wikipedias who do not promote its use. I also consider this argument lame.
When the categories of Commons are shown in the language selected in the user preferences, when the search engine is dependent on this same selection, Commons actually provides a service for people who do not read English. By enabling people to make effective use of Commons you create the base for people to put up with all the perceived nonsense from Commons.
Perceived nonsense because Commons has to walk a different thin line between what is acceptable to it and what is acceptable elsewhere The "Virgin killer" picture cannot be found on Commons because Commons does not accept "fair use". Just one of the differences between the en.wp policies and the Commons policies. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/9 Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com
Please don't puts words (or notions) in my mouth.
At the moment, Commons works best for you when you can read/write English. But if you don't, you can still do simple searches using a dictionary, and find many useful images. This fact contradicts your earlier statement that Commons is useless to non-English speakers.
That's what I said, nothing more.
Magnus
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 10:27 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, An answer like that justifies and inforces the notion that Commons is
only
for those that can read / write English. To me this is not acceptable because it degrades Commons to less then what it should be, what it could be. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/9 Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the
reasons
why
they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to
find
"paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"
and
you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
They might not be able to find "ίππος". However, they might be able to use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate "ίππος" into English "horse" and search for that.
Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim.
Magnus _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Tuesday 09 December 2008 08:23:07 Gerard Meijssen wrote:
When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος" and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English, Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic, Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse...
I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does include the category tree translated.
Me too - perhaps not as perfect solution, but hopefully adequate: http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php
Examples:
http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=nl&search=paard http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=el&search=%CE%AF%CF%80%CF%...
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Tuesday 09 December 2008 08:23:07 Gerard Meijssen wrote:
When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος" and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English, Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic, Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse...
I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does include the category tree translated.
Me too - perhaps not as perfect solution, but hopefully adequate: http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php
Examples:
http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=nl&search=paard http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=el&search=%CE%AF%CF%80%CF%...
Something like this looks pretty good for starters. Why don't we just flip a switch?
Thanks, Pharos
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Pharos wrote:
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Tuesday 09 December 2008 08:23:07 Gerard Meijssen wrote:
When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος" and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English, Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic, Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse...
I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does include the category tree translated.
Me too - perhaps not as perfect solution, but hopefully adequate: http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php
Examples:
http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=nl&search=paard http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=el&search=%CE%AF%CF%80%CF%...
Something like this looks pretty good for starters. Why don't we just flip a switch?
Thanks, Pharos
+1 We should help using this tool from the search interface.
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