[Commons-l] All about Wikimania, future projects, licenses, etc etc

[Florence Devouard]

Hi

I saw a few hours ago, your "commons wish list" on wikitech 
(http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2007-August/032652.html)

Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> 0. intro/about Wikimania
> 1. POTY07
> 2. 1000FP book
> 3. Project with Wikimedia Israel
> 4. Goals statement
> 5. Tech
> 6. SVGs
> 7. FLOSS Manuals
> 8. Joi, CC
> 9. Licenses, GFDL, GSFDL drafts (long)
> 
> I'm back now from Wikimania. It was a really exciting event, and just
> so cool to be able to speak to so many different people about lots of
> different things. I will write below a summary of some of the
> Commons-related things I talked to people about.
> 
> Florence used a slide of the Wikimedia logo mosaic in her opening
> speech. I felt very proud for us :) and I still think that was a great
> project. I think maybe it made a good impression on the board in terms
> of our relationship with them.

Dunno if it made a good impression on the board. I just thought the idea 
very very cool :-)

> I gave a 'Commons HOWTO tutorial' which started with about a dozen
> people attending and by the end there was another dozen or two. I
> talked briefly about how Commons works, deriv works, licenses,
> categories, CommonSense tool, Mayflower, Extra-tabs.js (although I
> didn't call it that, and one person commented that they had never seen
> them before - we DO have them installed for EVERYONE, right??). We did
> a transfer of an image from en.wp to Commons. We got some tough
> questions like 'I'm uploading these for my wife - what should I do
> vis-a-vis permission?' (I said ask her to send you a confirmation
> email. This case of genuine verbal permission is tricky to handle.) It
> was fun.

Looks like there is no proceeding about your talk :-(
And I could not go to it. Can you orient me to the right place, or 
quickly summarize what CommonSense and Extra-tabs is ?

I saw you considered changing the regular default search box to put the 
mayflower tool, a priority. I kinda agree :-) I have two questions though.
Why is that (does anyone know ?) that the regular search box and the 
mayflower tool are NOT giving the same results ? If I search 
"agriculture", I get widely differing set of results. It is a bit scary.
Second, in the regular tool, the result display the legend of the 
picture, in several languages when available. Not so apparently on the 
mayflower tool. Am I correct ? It would be logical that this appear on 
the little rollover thumbnail, perhaps english by default if there is no 
description in the language chosen on the bottom right. Is it planned ?

> BTW I hope next time that a lot more Commoners are there. :) This was
> more or less your Commons representation:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimania_2007_Commons_puzzle_piece.jpg
> It was super fun, and anyone who is a 'wikiholic' should at the very
> least apply for a scholarship!!
> 
> ==POTY07==
> I will post separately about this. But I think we should start getting
> into gear or at least thinking about things. I think we should close
> submissions by the end of Nov, hold two weeks of voting, and use the
> results to make calendar/s. I also think we should have 12-15
> different categories of voting and more or less use those as the
> calendar pictures.
> 
> ==1000FP book==
> I did a 5-min lightning talk mentioning the idea about the 1000FP talk
> and Evan P... (Wikitravel guy) was there. He told me he knew that
> Flickr had done some partnership with Blurb.com (print on demand) with
> a book called something like '24 hours on Flickr'. And apparently they
> are interested in this kind of 'new technology' internet stuff. So I'm
> going to try and talk to Blurb and see what they think.
> 
> Blurb was something I originally thought might work because
> print-on-demand saves a lot of hassle like worrying about sales
> numbers, and Blurb also have a special template for photobooks. Let's
> face it if you're going to make a photobook you really want decent
> print quality.
> 
> I think we should try to distribute books (of Wikimedian works)+CDs
> (with all 1000FP). According to CatScan we are up to 913.
> 
> I now think that instead of asking/wishing for the board to promote
> us, we need to force them to have to talk about us by creating the
> interest ourselves. I really think this project could create some
> serious interest. And maybe if enough proceeds go to the WMF, then we
> can demand with a little more conviction that they should be earmarked
> for Commons-specific development. :)
> 
> Reminder: if you're interested in book development, please join
> http://groups.google.com/group/commonsbook .

eh :-)
Note that I used the neat logo picture several times in talks, but fact 
is, it is difficult to talk of a project one has never participated a 
lot in, even if one think it is a great project.
But there is something else to fight, the desire for journalists for 
"big stories" (understand, shocking stories). For example, during the 
Wikimania press conference, we had 4 messages to give. One was

MESSAGE 3: Our projects are becoming more sophisticated and accessible 
thanks the millions of volunteers we have worldwide

* WIKIMEDIA COMMONS LAUNCH RSS FEED

* Wikimedia Commons created a RSS Feed for Popular "Picture of the Day".
* Picture of the Day are certified as Quality Images or Featured 
Pictures, and represent the best of the best in freely licensed media 
content available today.
* A great resources for creative individuals.

Okay, it was not so new, but...
Anyway, it does not tickle journalists.

So, the good question is "who do we want to tickle ?" Do you want to 
tickle "those who talk about things" (reaching out for journalists 
working in professional press in video/audio/image), or "producers of 
content" (reaching out to artists, perhaps in art conferences ?), or 
"users of content" (including a CD of images in a distribution of 
professional press for teachers ?)

I'd be more than happy to travel to conferences with a bunch of CD 
containing works, but before doing anything, the best would be to define 
which audience you want to reach out.

A project I would find rather cool is distribution of a CD in one of 
these professional monthly dedicated to photo. I am not sure they would 
agree though.
Another I would find cool is distribution of a CD in one of these 
professional monthly distributed to teachers. I am more convinced of 
possible success.
Or making a deal with a publisher so that he included an image gallery.
Or a calendar to distribute at the end of the year, in all 
conferences/workshops/panels or generally visits, we go to. I am sure it 
would be nicer than a fireman calendar. But this would be significantly 
more expensive than distribution of a CD I guess.

I'd say, come with a neat idea, and partners, and the job largely be 
done already :-) and I guess we can probably spare bucks.

In case of the suggestion you have above, "book+CD", what would be the 
goal ? Promotion ? Distribution ? Audience ?

One suggestion I would also have (but which is more time consuming 
probably) is to produce selections according to audience. For example, 
if you have a CD with pictures of famous buildings in one country, 
distribute to the touristic network. But it is really much more a hassle.


> ==Project with Wikimedia Israel==
> I spent some time talking to a lovely chap named Dror (User:Drork) who
> describes himself as the "foreign minister" of the Wikimedia Israel
> chapter. Their chapter is planning to start a big project with another
> company in Israel to ask people to look for historically significant
> images in their private collections and donate them to the public
> domain. (Israel is having some anniversaries so it is timely for
> them.) He basically wanted to know that such images would be welcome
> in Commons. I said of course! Then we discussed about how the images
> should be collected. We decided it would be better if the images were
> submitted to a gateway before being added to Commons. The organisation
> that he is working with is willing to write the open source SW to
> collect all the structured data that they want to collect (and also
> deal with hebrew, arabic etc interface stuff which we do poorly at
> best). So the idea at the moment is that their partner org will write
> this interface, we will install it on the toolserver, and from there
> it can be appropriately formatted etc and go into Commons.
> So we have quite a few toolserver users working for Commons, that
> won't be a problem I think, just thought that was a pretty cool
> project. They plan to run a pilot project and if it's successful (they
> don't know what kind of stuff people will even submit), then a full-on
> project may run for like a year.
> 
> ==Goals statement==
> I am even more convinced now that having a clear goals/aims statement
> will help guide the growth of the wiki by providing direction. So I
> plan to try and work on this. If you are interested in it then let me
> know (or keep an eye on my userspace :)).

200% behind you !


> ==Tech==
> I spent a little time talking to Tim Starling about Commons' tech
> priorities and even showed him  the Mayflower search engine which he
> was unaware of (!). I intend to write up a summary for wikitech-l
> about what I consider are Commons' tech priorities. One of them will
> be replacing/integrating Mayflower as our search engine. I really
> consider this a major priority for us.

I read your list. My worry is the lack of feedback. I did not see one 
developer immediately jumping on one suggestion and saying "this one is 
cool, let me give it a try". My worry is really the lack of technical 
support, not enough developers. A lead. Hmmm

> ==SVGs==
> Apparently the Inkscape founder went to Wikimania. I only found this
> out at the airport as I was leaving. :( I am thinking of trying to
> contact him to make them aware of the work we are doing with SVGs,
> because as far as I can see no one else anywhere is doing the kind of
> things we do with them. Surely someone somewhere must care! :P
> 
> ==FLOSS Manuals==
> I ended up spending quite a bit of time talking to Adam from FLOSS
> Manuals. http://flossmanuals.net/ He gave me a copy of their first
> printed manual on Audacity. Part of their thing is really
> concentrating on high-quality documentation. I suggested a chapter on
> how to edit human voice recordings would be really useful for
> Wikimedians. He told me they use TWiki. If you check out their site
> and the section called 'Remix' you can see how it's possible to pick
> and choose particular chapters to be included in a print-on-demand
> book. Now this is amazingly cool. I imagine a really useful thing -
> FLOSS Manuals having a 'Wikimedia Commons Media Handbook' with
> chapters on Inkscape & GIMP, and Audacity & Ogg Theora (same book?
> separate book?).
> 
> Now our Images for Cleanup people already know a lot of this stuff. If
> Commons people think something like this could be useful, I will let
> them know there is interest in it. If Commons people are interested in
> writing for it, that's all the better I think. I think he is even
> trying to get sponsorship to be able to retrospectively pay
> contributors.
> 
> I think there's just great power in having something in your hands to
> demonstrate what you're doing and help spread the word, convince
> others. Those of us who find this kind of tech second nature are a
> very small minority.
> 
> ==Joi, CC==
> Joi gave a speech about the 'sharing economy' and I managed to talk to
> him briefly afterwards, about how I have this feeling that we have
> this great resource that no one knows anything about. We have the
> Commons know-how, he has the media contacts, maybe we can make
> something happen.
> 
> I think it's a very cool thing that some of  the Creative Commons
> people take part on this list. To me it shows that they are reaching
> out and want to work with us and I think we should be reaching back
> too. Wikimedia is a bit insular sometimes... We have much more in
> common than we do different.
> 
> ==Licenses, GFDL, GSFDL drafts==
> So there was actually a surprising number of talks about licenses and
> licensing. Although there are some of us who know a ton about licenses
> there are still many of us who don't. So although some of us will feel
> like we are repeating ourselves it still seems really important that
> we keep re-iterating the basic messages about how copyright works, how
> free licenses work, how to use them, etc. I mean at the same time we
> still have to deal with the nitty-gritty crap like interpreting
> licenses in different jurisdictions and deriv works and the like. So
> it's not  easy but I think it's really important we keep walking along
> both lines.
> 
> I went to this talk
> http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:MH1 in which I
> found out a new draft of the GFDL is open for comment at the moment.
> The new GFDL has a clause about 'excerpts' where an excerpt can be
> distributed without the full license text. see
> http://gplv3.fsf.org/fdl-draft-2006-09-22.html clause 6.
> Bizarrely this mentions how an excerpt of a text document should be
> interpreted, and an audio and video document, but not an image. Er????
> Is it that an excerpt of an image cannot exist? Is an excerpt of an
> image like a crop, or a thumbnail, or like nothing at all? If
> 'excerpt' has no meaning the field of images then they should
> explicitly say that, I  think.
> 
> The other complaint I have about this new draft is that the wording is
> still oriented to text documents (and even very long ones at that),
> despite the fact that they acknowledge other works can and are used.
> How should a 'title page' be interpreted in terms of an image? I
> intend to make a comment asking them to reword such things or else
> explicitly state the interpretation of the terms for various media.
> 
> It also has this important clause 8a: "If the Work has no Cover Texts
> and no Invariant Sections then you may relicense the Work under the
> GNU Simpler Free Documentation License."
> 
> So maybe we (Wikimedia) could have this:
> (now) GFDL1.2 -> GFDL2 -> GSFDL === CC-BY-SA?
> 
> OK why is this important? Creative Commons' goals are not necessarily
> ours, etc etc. I think this is a direction we should try to go forward
> in because in essence we have the same goals, and keeping distinct
> licenses for no good reason makes understanding the situation
> unnecessarily complex, and thus harms our ability to communicate our
> mission and vision to as wide an audience as possible.
> 
> Note 'no good reason'. If good reasons exist, we should keep the distinctions.
> 
> Is the 'fulltext-copy' condition of the GFDL a good reason? I don't
> recall ever seeing anyone put forward a reason why it's actually
> vitally necessary.
> 
> So, GSFDL.
> 
> The GSFDL currently has a very stupid clause called '0a. FREE MANUALS
> ARE ESSENTIAL'. When they just acknowledged that the license can be
> used for even non-text works, I dislike the inclusion of this
> unnecessary clause a lot.
> 
> The GSFDL also has the 'Excerpts' thing. The main difference between
> the GFDL and the GSFDL is this in the GSFDL:
> 
> "You need not include a copy of this License in the Work if you have
> registered the work's license with a national agency that maintains a
> network server through which the general public can find out its
> license."
> 
> Hm, I don't know quite what that implies, but hopefully it leads to a
> situation of not needing to copy the license fulltext with each use.
> That was my impression from the talk.
> 
> regards
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise

Can you better explain what a "coffee table book" is ?

ant