[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons reaches 2 million files

[Majorly]

On 16/10/2007, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> 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
> March 2007 we routinely have over 100,000 files uploaded every single
> month. It is becoming more and more common to have over 5,000 files in
> a single day.
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/2M
>
> This is not much of a traditional press release but will be
> interesting for Wikimedians who are not closely involved with Commons
> (and maybe those who are, too). It lists some recent innovations and
> tools that we have introduced to improve the quality and ease of
> access of the Commons collection.
>
> I expect most people here are aware of the Picture of the Year
> competition, and Quality Images, and the Mayflower search engine (
> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/ ), and the improved
> Ogg video/audio playback thanks to Tim Starling.
>
> 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
>
> - category RSS feeds - thanks to Magnus Manske each category now has a
> RSS feed for new files that get added to that category. If you are
> interested in some topic X and it has a category, you can keep tabs on
> what new files get added to it without having to go to Commons to
> check all the time. Just add the RSS feed link (it's on the category
> page under the toolbox) to your favourite feed reader.
> A full list of types of feeds available is here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Feeds
>
> The 2M mark draws some comparison with English Wikipedia which
> recently passed the same milestone. However the comparison is not
> really valid. Where Wikipedia may expect basically one topic == one
> article (give or take section expension such as 'History of X' having
> its own article instead of just 'X'), Commons would hope to have one
> topic == dozens of files.
>
> Commons is still a very young project and it is both exciting and
> scary to imagine what it will be like with 10M files.
>
> By #files we are the largest project. ;)
> By #users we are the 8th largest project.
> By #edits we are the 9th largest project.
>
> 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.
>
> regards,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>
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Let's hope most of those are actually within the project scope...

-- 
Alex (Majorly)