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

[Magnus Manske]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 8:57 AM, Carcharoth<carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Questions:
* If I were to mail an image to OTRS, stating what it is, when and
where it was taken, stating the author, and the license, would it go
through to Commons?
* How long would this take?
* If 500 people were to mail in 2 pictures each day like this, would
the system cope?

If the answers are "yes, quickly, yes", why not put up a prominent
page with OTRS email on it, and spam^W inform some photography
wikis/forums/mailing lists?

Magnus