[Foundation-l] Re: 100,000 files uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons

[Anthere]

Since you decided to announce it yourself, could you be good enough to 
put an announcement on the foundation website please Erik ?


Thanks.

Ant

Erik Moeller a écrit:
> Besides the 100K milestone, the project also received an honorary 
> mention at this year's Prix Ars Electronica. Please help with the 
> distribution and translation of the press release at:
> 
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/100K
> 
> The online copy also includes various media examples.
> 
> NB: The Commons now has more than half as many files as the English 
> Wikipedia and more than any other project. Soon it will be the single 
> largest repository of files in the Wikimedia world.
> 
> See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:First_steps for 
> information on getting started to use the Commons.
> 
> All best,
> 
> Erik
> 
> 100,000th file uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, a free media repository
> 
> Free images, sounds, and videos can be used by anyone for any purpose
> 
> St. Petersburg, Florida, United States
> May 24, 2005
> 
> The Wikimedia Foundation announced today that the 100,000th file had 
> been uploaded to its online repository of free images, sounds, and 
> videos, the Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/). These 
> files have been chosen or created by 5,259 registered users from more 
> than 12 different languages gathered in a single lively community. The 
> young project received additional encouragement and recognition on 
> Monday in the form of an honorary mention at the 2005 Prix Ars 
> Electronica awards.
> 
> The Wikimedia Commons, launched on September 7 2004, is a unique free 
> and open media archive (including images, sounds, and video), using the 
> same "wiki" technology that has made Wikipedia, a community-written 
> encyclopedia, the second most popular reference website on the web 
> (Hitwise.com report, April 2005). Wikis are websites that anyone can 
> edit, allowing for rapid growth and constant peer review of all 
> contributions. All files uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons are available 
> royalty-free for any purpose. Most files require attribution of the 
> creator, and some are under copyleft licenses, meaning that derivative 
> works also have to be made available for free re-use. Both Wikipedia and 
> the Wikimedia Commons are operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.
> 
> The 100,000th file was an illustration drawn by a French Wikipedia user 
> named Stephane Tsacas. He manages the computer network of the Curie 
> Institute, a research center on biology and physics in Paris. "I 
> recently did some searches in the French Wikipedia and discovered some 
> incomplete information in a few articles in the field I know, computer 
> science. I then decided to register and do the modifications myself."
> 
> The file Stephane Tsacas uploaded is a diagram of the experimental 
> dataflow computer architecture. It is used in the detailed French 
> article http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_Dataflow. As soon as a 
> file is uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons, it is instantly available for 
> use on all Wikimedia projects without needing to be uploaded to the 
> local project. This feature is encouraging the Wikimedia projects to 
> move towards a multimedia approach rather than the simple text-based 
> approach they relied on in the past.
> 
> "Wikimedia Commons is of critical importance for all the Wikimedia 
> projects, and beyond that, it is critically important for the entire 
> free culture movement," said Jimmy Wales, president of the Wikimedia 
> Foundation. Since the inception of the project in September 2004, 
> thousands of Wikimedia contributors have joined to make their multimedia 
> available to the larger community. As such, the Commons is one of the 
> most diverse collections of files imaginable. It includes many 
> independent collections of free content:
> 
>     * 7,733 pronunciation files in various languages, notably Dutch 
> (5,926), German (499), Farsi (464), and Italian (249). These voice 
> recordings made by editors of the project are mostly used in Wiktionary, 
> a wiki-based dictionary and thesaurus.
>     * Reproductions of 10,000 public domain paintings from ancient to 
> modern times, donated by Directmedia Publishing, a German publishing 
> company. This includes the works of artists like Leonardo da Vinci, 
> Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Hieronymus Bosch, and many 
> others. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Yorck_Project.
>     * Hundreds of public domain recordings of classical music by 
> composers like Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. See 
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Classical_music.
>     * A growing collection of videos of historical speeches, excerpts 
> from public domain films such as Charlie Chaplin's "The Bond", and 
> scientific videos such as bacterial broths being deposited into a Petri 
> dish or the Space Shuttle Columbia going through the sound barrier. See 
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video.
> 
> Besides these collections, it is the work of individuals which defines 
> the Wikimedia Commons -- like Wikinews user "Belizian", who took photos 
> during civil unrest in the small Central American nation of Belize in 
> January 2005 for the Wikinews article on the subject 
> (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Unrest_in_Belize), or Wikibooks author 
> Robert Engelhardt, who has added photos of various beekeeping tools to 
> his growing reference work on the topic 
> (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Beekeeping). From lovingly drawn subway 
> maps to print quality photos of insects, from physics diagrams to photos 
> of exotic locations, the members of the Wikimedia Commons cover 
> virtually all areas of human interest with great attention to detail.
> 
> Like Wikimedia's other projects, the Wikimedia Commons is open for 
> everyone to edit, to enrich it with new content, to help in the 
> categorization of existing media, and to remove problematic materials. 
> Given the proven successes of the wiki model, it may soon become the 
> largest repository of free media on the web.
> 
> Additional information
> 
> For questions and interviews, please contact:
> 
> In English only:
> 
> Jimmy Wales, Chair, Board of Trustees, Wikimedia Foundation
> Phone: (+1)-727-644-3565
> Email: jwales at wikimedia.org 
> (mailto:jwales at wikimedia.org)
> 
> Angela Beesley, Executive Secretary, Board of Trustees, Wikimedia Foundation
> Phone: (+44)-208-816-7308
> Email: angela at wikimedia.org 
> (mailto:angela at wikimedia.org)
> 
> In English or French:
> 
> Florence Devouard, Vice President, Board of Trustees, Wikimedia Foundation:
> Email: anthere at wikimedia.org 
> (mailto:anthere at wikimedia.org)
> 
> Prix Ars Electronica
> 
> The Prix Ars Electronica is a yearly prize in the field of electronic 
> and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It 
> has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), one of 
> the world's major centers for art and technology.
> 
> The 2005 honorary mentions can be viewed at: 
> http://www.aec.at/en/prix/honorary2005.asp