[Commons-l] The disastrous popularity of Commons

[Bryan Tong Minh]

On 4/8/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> + more good stuff under free licenses
Absolutely.

> + awareness as a separate project
It would be good, but the reality is that Commons is merely seen as a
support project than a project on its own. If I for example want to
ask somebody's permission to license a file under a free license, I
will say "Wikimedia Commons, the project that provides media to
various Wikimedia projects, inclusive Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia." Why? Simply because this convinces people more easily
that need to license their work freely; they are more likely to accept
that there works may be used commecially and derivative if this is
necessary to get a great exposure at wikipedia, than "just for
storage" on Wikimedia Commons.

> - 10% copyvio rate as is; need more copyright paranoid admins ready to
> just go through crap allll the tiiiime
Sure, we need that. Gmaxwell has some graphs on how fast we delete
images. Moreover, since we have elected 3 new checkusers, we have
found several users who use sockpuppets to evade bans. We do however
indeed more admins to delete the crap.
Recently, odder has started a project to target all untagged images.
It is somewhere near the bottom of [[Commons:Village pump]]

> - search still sucks
We have Mayflower, but it needs to be improved of course.

> - Commons is not Flickr - will people try to use it as their personal gallery?
Interesting question how far we want to extend our hosting services:
I've had a chat with a political youth organisation, who wants to
distribute podcasts over Commons, because they do not have the funding
to do it themselves. The question is of course whether we want this:
It is great to help the freedom of expression, but we are not a free
media host. See also somewhere near the bottom of [[Commons:Village
pump]].

Recently there have been a few deletion requests of users that use
Commons as their personal photo album. The outcome was almost always
'''delete'''. Those kind of images are also sometimes speedied if it
is clear that they have no value for Commons.

> - what to do when people who don't quite get it realise what they've
> done (e.g. released pictures of selves or kids under a free content
> licence) and want to change their mind?
We recently got some of those cases. On one hand we [[don't want to be
a dick]], on the other hand it is very hard whether users really were
not aware that GFDL means commercial use. We are having a case, where
a user cited these reason; it turned out to be that he had a conflict
on his local wiki and wanted to leave all projects and have all his
images deleted. What to do in such cases?

> - stratospheric bandwidth bills. You think it's bad now.
>
> More pluses and minuses please.
>
> I still think Wikipedia got way too popular way too quickly and I
> would be much happier if it were a Top 100 site rather than a Top 10
> site. It would also be cheaper in bandwidth.
I don't know whether bandwith is the real problem. I think that
computing power is more of a problem (am I correct?). Better ask the
Wikimedia Devs.
I don't think that technical problems are the problems with the growth
of Wiki[mp]edia. It is more likely that we simple can't handle the
enourmous amount of (good willing) newcomers.

Bryan