[Commons-l] Direct transfer of properly licensed images from wikipedias to commons?

[Magnus Manske]

My watchflickr tool [1] includes an option to upload an image with a
suitable CC license to commons using a "bot" account [2]. So far, I
have received no complaints about bad uploads, and from its gallery it
seems OK as well (except some duplicate uploads).

Now, anyone can upload an image to flickr, and release it under
CC-BY(-SA). Same as wikipedia, right? Except that wikipedia uploads
are probably screened much more thoroughly for cases that are clearly
not under the given license.

My CommonsHelper tool [3] eases the transfer of images from wikipedia
to the commons, and has been used a whooping 93435 times this year.
Assuming that every use results in an upload on commons, over 330
images /per day/ enter commons this way, a not unimportant proportion
of the 5000 uploads per day, especially considering that it will only
take images that have a commons-compatible license.

However, users still have to save the image on their own computer,
then upload them under their own user account, which is annoying and
time-consuming.

CommonsHelper does have the functionality to do direct uploads via the
aforementioned bot account, however, that has been deactivated since
forever, due to concerns.

I would like to propose the reactivation of that feature. Concernes
about unsuitable uploads through the bot account are superflous, IMHO,
since images are screened thrice this way:
1. On the wikipedia where the image was originally uploaded
2. By the CommonsHelper (e.g. it will reject "fair use" images from en)
3. On commons, by the usual suspects :-)

Which is two levels of screening more than direct uploads to commons,
which were, last time I checked, enabled ;-)


With SUL in sight, new uploads will shift from wikipedias to commons,
but there's still a lot of images around:
en : >766,000 (but that includes "fair use")
de : ~119,000 (no "fair use")
fr : ~37,000

All in all, I'd estimate that there's between 0.5 and 1 million images
on the wikipedias that would be suitable for commons. You can see how
"save locally, then upload manually" annoyance can scale up :-)

Cheers,
Magnus

[1] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/watchflickr.php
[2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:File_Upload_Bot_%28Magnus_Manske%29
[3] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/commonshelper.php