[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons reaches 2 million files

[Samuel Klein]

> I am happy to relay that Wikimedia Commons now has over two million
> files. This is around 11 months after we reached one million. Since

This is really exciting.  Any stats on how quickly audio and video 
filetypes are growing?

> A couple of features people may not be aware of:
> - geocoding - every picture that is geotagged gets a little "Earth"
> icon and clicking on it launches a map that shows the image located on
> the map, as well as other geotagged images  nearby. It's really cool.
> The geocoding folk are very innovative and welcoming so if you are
> interested in helping them out or just finding out other cool ways
> this can be used, please talk to them.
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Geocoding

These folks are amazing.

> By #users we are the 8th largest project.
> By #edits we are the 9th largest project.
and by # of languages on one wiki, the largest by far...

> It is a very interesting time to be involved with Commons. We face
> many social and technical problems that are yet to be resolved. Are
> our current processes for dealing with things (eg: uploading, tagging
> as copyvio, deletion discussion, deletion, adminship) scaling well -
> will they continue to cope or will they get overloaded? How can we
> face the joint challenges of welcoming new users on one hand and yet
> tackling the never-ending stream of copyvios on the other? How can we
> provide equal opportunity for our users to participate regardless of
> the languages they do or don't speak?
>
> The social problems are ours to ponder, yet I can't help feeling that
> our work is made more difficult by using inappropriate tools.
> MediaWiki is a great tool for writing an encyclopedia in  a single
> language, but it has some significant shortcomings when used in a
> multilingual media-based environment that only become more problematic
> as Commons gets larger. Therefore I sincerely hope that the Foundation
> will consider hiring or contracting developers specifically for
> problems that affect Commons, within the next couple of years.

Is there a list of outstanding feature requests for active commons
users?  A place for gathering problems that don't yet have good solutions?

SJ