[Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Principles of organisation - who do we serve?

[Jan Kulveit]

Hi,

On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 10:30:13AM +0000, David Gerard wrote:
...
> This discussion appears to demonstrate Commons simply isn't making
> admins through its own processes anywhere near fast enough and its
> processes need radical revision.
> 
...

for me,  this disscussion again clearly demonstrates the principal 
problem that not  everybody understands the mission of Commons in 
the same way. 
There are basically two main alternatives

A. Commons as free media library. In a way, free counterpart to 
stock media agencies and the like. Such libraries have much added value 
compared to the "raw material" - description, tagging, categories, some 
copyright inspection, possibly some quality checks.

In this case, Commons are viable as an independent project, which may 
attract it's own community. Helping to build and improve such library 
may be interesting.

B. Commons as a Wikimedia-wide file storage facility. Main requirement
on storage is security (so a file doesn't suddenly disappear) and
maybe ease of access (so any wikimedian can upload a file without much
knowledge of commons). 
The "sweet part" is, the file storage is still expected to have some
functions demanding expensive human resources: 1. copyright inspection.
 
In this case, IMO Commons are not viable as independent project.
I can hardly imagine people who would be interested in doing 
copyright inspection of what would be, in quality terms, mostly pile 
of poorly described rubbish, dumped from Wikipedias in high speed.

As in this alternative commons are IMO not self-sustainable as a 
community, Commons tasks would have to be somehow adopted as another
janitorial task by other Wikimedia projects (those with a mission
which is able to attract people). 

Jan Kulveit [[User:Wikimol]]