On 4/8/07, David Gerard dgerard@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