[WikiEN-l] Too announcement : WatchFlickr

[Steve Bennett]

On 10/4/07, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Do you have a better way to preview the image? Maybe some JavaScript
> expansion thing within the tool page itself?


Possibly - even a frame or something. Bigger thumbnails would also help.

> 2.Return to main tab (if it's not, close the tab)
> > 3. Open the "Brian's Upload Tool" link in a new tab
> > 4. Click the Continue button
> > 5. Type categories, adjust description and filename if necessary.
> (sometimes
> > this page displays wrongly in my browser) [most of this step seems
> > redundant, as you can change all the information except the filename on
> the
> > next page anyway]
> > 6. Click Continue
> > 7. Click Save Page
> > 8. Click "Flickr Uploader" link.
> > 9. Click "Comment" link
> > 10. Type a comment, usually referring to the page you'll be adding the
> image
> > to. Tense can be complicated as the image isn't actually visible *yet*.
> > 11. Close the tab and return to your main tab.
> > 12. Click the Edit link next to the original article, opening in a new
> tab.
> > 13. Type the name of the image somewhere, either as part of an infobox,
> or
> > an [[image:...]] link. Usually involves flipping back somewhere to get
> the
> > exact image name.
> > 14. Type an edit summary (usually "Add image")
> > 15. Click save.
> > 16. Check that everything looks ok.
> > 17. Close the tab.
>
> So, just to clarify, steps 4-17 are actually the upload tool :-)


Yup. I'm making observations about the whole process, not just your bit :)

Hmm. Categories on wikipedia are about articles, categories on commons
> are about images. Even if we could somehow link the two, most images
> in the commons category would only apply to few articles in the
> wikipedia category.


"About images"? I don't quite understand - they're generally concepts,
the way that categories in a Wikipedia are.

What's the difference between [[:en:Category:Martin Luther King, Jr]] and
[[:Commons:Martin Luther King]]? Both refer to the same person. One has
articles in that category, and the other has images, but the central concept
- a very specific person - is the same.

So what I'm thinking is that if there was some sort of central repository of
concepts, you could do something like this:

1. On the article in each Wikipedia, you stamp the article with a link to
this concept. Say [[rep:Martin Luther King, Jr]].
2.
All the cross language links are automatically generated and
maintained - everything stamped with that concept automatically links
to every other language article that has that concept.
3. On the relevant article or category on Commons, you again link to the
concept.
4. By default (or perhaps with a tag like {{{SHOWCOMMONSIMAGES|3}}}) images
from the linked category are shown.

There are of course issues when different Wikipedias divide the world up
different ways, and of course naming: are the concepts all in English,
multiple languages (so that one wikipedia could link to "Turin" and another
to "Torino" and they would both "find each other",
or in some conventional local language (ie, the local transliteration
of a name is always used). But in many cases, like names of people or
places, you see this kind of thing a lot:

[[de:Henri Oreiller]]
[[fi:Henri Oreiller]]
[[fr:Henri Oreiller]]
[[it:Henri Oreiller]]
[[no:Henri Oreiller]]
[[pl:Henri Oreiller]]

Now, when I translated that from French to English, theoretically I should
have updated all the other interwiki links as well. But that's a lot of
work. Bots help a bit, but a central repository would be "the next level".


Note that it might be easy to semi-automatically link categories
> between wikipedias:
> * Get all articles in a category on xx.wikipedia
> * For each of these, find the language link to yy.wikipedia, and list
> the categories of that article
> * sort categories at yy.wikipedia by number of occurrence
> * the most occurring category is most likely to be the same as the
> original one on xx.wikipedia
> If this is desparately wanted, I might write Yet Another Tool ;-)


Sounds a bit hit-and-miss. I think we should be moving in the
direction of attempting to actually encode higher levels of
meta-information, rather than attempting to deduce such information by
heuristics.


So, which category to chose for [[en:Horse-ripping]]?


Ah, I think you've misunderstood. I'm suggesting using a
direct link to Commons, so in this case, either [[commons:Horse-ripping]] or
[[Commons:Category:Horse-ripping]]. Not using the article's category.

> 3. With a single click, the flickr image is prepared for upload to Commons
> > with appropriate categories. You simply tweak image name and
> description,
> > then press save.
>
> So the commons categories that match the (say) en categories of the
> article for which flickr images were found are added to the uploaded
> flickr image? Sounds good. But isn't that what CommonSense [1] does?


Maybe. CommonSense has never really worked for me, and it's not
integrated fully. These tools have to move from being an optional
third-party utility used by a tiny fraction of editors to being a
fundamental part of the editing process.

> 4. The Wikipedia page (or pages) is then shown with the new image for
> > approval. Since this is automatic, you simply have to check that there
> > aren't any special issues to know about.
>
> That would be the end point of any (manual or automated) upload
> process anyway, right?


I should have been clearer: I really do mean the Wikipedia article, no
the Commons image page. So it would (in this hypothetical, perfect
tool) edit the article text to add the new image for you.

Counter-suggestion: Have a commons upload tool that will
> 1. Take the flickr URL and optionally a new filename
> 2. Check if the flickr image has a suitable license
> 3. Run CommonSense (or the like) to find appropriate categories on commons
> 4. Upload the image to commons under the appropriate bot name, using
> the new filename, flickr template, and categories
> 5. Open the final image page and present it to the user (the other
> steps are "invisible")


This is good. If MediaWiki supported image renaming and user-deletion,
even better would be the following:
1. Take the flickr URL
2. Upload it and show the user the final, uploaded image with template
and some guessed categories.
3. (Optional) User renames image, tweaks text, categories etc.

Alternatively, if my "upload from URL" extension were enabled on
> commons, it could fill in the entire upload form. The user could check
> the wikitext before uploading, and upload under his own name with a
> single click.


I think the "upload under his own name" concept is problematic when
you're uploading images that aren't self-made.

Steve