[Commons-l] Fwd: "Did you know?" ... The family tree of [[Category:Copyright statuses]] and our broken category system.

[Brianna Laugher]

On 30/01/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Go over to Getty images
> (http://creative.gettyimages.com/source/home/home.aspx) and try out
> their search and see just how much we suck.  Do a 'search all
> creative' and type in 'black child eating icecream'.
>
> Their system is quite simple but very powerful. They have many tags,
> from very broad to very specific, and images are marked with all that
> apply (sometimes many dozens). A simple tag suggestion system makes it
> easy to find the tags that are in use, and clear up ambiguities (do
> you want black the color or black the race?).  You then query them
> with a simple and quick intersection tool. You can drill down or
> adjust your search string, but it's all very simple quick and easy.
> There are no complex query languages, no snazzy semantic markup, no
> funky idea hierarchies.  It just WORKS. And it works for many tens of
> thousands of people every day.

Credit where credit's due: I think Commons is stronger when it comes
to species identification. Stock photo archives like this tend to
offer lots of generally pretty pictures of plants and animals, but
Commons has a much stronger structure and identification info on
species generally I think.

At Getty I searched for 'banksia serrata' and it returned this
http://creative.gettyimages.com/source/classes/FrameSet.aspx?&UQR=ojqlag&pk=4&source=front&lightboxView=1&txtSearch=melbourne%20landmark&selImageType=7&chkLicensed=on&chkRoyaltyFree=on&chkNLM=on
which is identified as a Banksia ericifolia, not to mention this
http://creative.gettyimages.com/source/classes/FrameSet.aspx?&UQR=ojqlag&pk=4&source=front&lightboxView=1&txtSearch=melbourne%20landmark&selImageType=7&chkLicensed=on&chkRoyaltyFree=on&chkNLM=on
which is simply 'a Banksia flower'. Commons, however, led me straight
to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Banksia_serrata . :P

cheers
Brianna