[Commons-l] [Foundation-l] 1.6 Billion USD to spare? How about liberation of some pic...

[David Gerard]

On 23/01/2008, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:

[Getty Images]
> Looking at their site, I found that they pride themselves on four  advantages
> that make all the difference between a media dump and a media  collection. It
> is worth considering how our own image bank meets these  standards, which, as
> they say, have emerged as industry standards over the past  several years.


http://gettyimages.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=company_overview


> How can we improve our own platform to simplify the process for people
> wishing to use free images?


Our search is rubbish. That's the big need.

The other part of the problem is how to use images in compliance with
the licence. To this end, I started
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reuse a while ago, with the intended
audience being casual readers who know nothing about Wikimedia but who
call up or email asking if they can reuse an image they saw on
Wikipedia. Any improvements anyone can make for accuracy and *CLARITY*
are most welcomed.


> How can we expedite any number of processes so that people get what they
> want, and quickly?


RSS of categories or tags? This means making categories or tags much
easier. I try to remember to categorise my Commons uploads, but it's
more work than it should be just to find the right category.


> Do we have the kinds of images that people really want to use/reuse? How is
> that determined?


At the moment our remit is stuff that is used on a project or
reasonably would be used on a project. Is that good enough? How would
we reasonably expand on that?

(cc'd to commons-l - this thread belongs there too)


- d.