[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening

[Platonides]

Pharos wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
>> On Tuesday 09 December 2008 08:23:07 Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>> When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why
>>> they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find
>>> "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the
>>> search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"  and
>>> you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
>>>
>>> It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English,
>>> Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find
>>> freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask
>>> people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic,
>>> Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you
>>> try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things
>>> that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse...
>>>
>>> I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that
>>> demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were
>>> limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does
>>> include the category tree translated.
>>
>> Me too - perhaps not as perfect solution, but hopefully adequate:
>> http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php
>>
>> Examples:
>>
>> http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=nl&search=paard
>> http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=el&search=%CE%AF%CF%80%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%82
> 
> Something like this looks pretty good for starters.  Why don't we just
> flip a switch?
> 
> Thanks,
> Pharos

+1
We should help using this tool from the search interface.