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

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 8:51 AM, Magnus
Manske<magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Any way to measure how effective the OTRS method is versus other
methods? And which route is more effective in getting people engaged
and actually submitting pictures? There is a need to cross the t's and
dot the i's, so OTRS might still be needed to handle the paperwork,
but the entry level needs to be lower to avoid discouraging people.

Carcharoth