[WikiEN-l] NYT: Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It’s a Desert for Photos

[Magnus Manske]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 8:29 PM, Durova<nadezhda.durova at gmail.com> wrote:
> You might be surprised.  The biggest obstacle is that most of the people who
> own copyrights simply don't understand wikis and free culture.  They're used
> to thinking in terms of reproduction permission, which presupposes an older
> type of static publication.  That can change; what we need to do is
> communicate while we have the public's attention.
>
> Fortunately many copyrights have almost zero commercial value.  When
> individuals hold those copyrights they often regard it as flattering that a
> site such as Wikipedia could use them.  Think of it in terms of someone
> whose aunt was an Olympic bronze medalist decades ago: photographs of her
> would be treasured within the family, but elsewhere she's just a name on a
> long list of athletes.
>
> The default action that people take when they discover Wikipedia would
> publish their photos is to offer permission.  When we try to answer 'that
> doesn't work, you need to go to OTRS and...' nine times out of ten their
> eyes glaze over and they wander away.  They simply don't comprehend.  We
> need to stop being defeatist and get serious about commuincating on a
> broader scale that yes, these things are possible.  The solutions are
> simple, but they require a paradigm shift.

Some time ago, I had started implementing a way for people to mail
pictures in. These would then end in a staging area on the toolserver,
and wiki(p|m)edians could then ask back for more information (e.g.
description), or push them through to Commons. The mails would be
stored on the toolserver as a papertrail.

However, I was told that this would interfere with/duplicate effort of
OTRS, so I stopped.

Magnus