[Foundation-l] The status of smaller languages on the Wikimedia Commons

[Erik Moeller]

On 5/6/06, Daniel Arnold <arnomane at gmx.de> wrote:

> It is completely different if we officially have InstantCommons. If people
> reuse Commons content now they know that they have nothing to say and thus do
> not complain inside Commons but if we have an InstantCommons they will
> complain like local Wikimedia wikis are doing right now an people like me
> somehow need to handle that huge amount of different wishes.

When I first showed the External Editor MediaWiki feature to Angela,
she said that it would probably increase the amount of image
vandalism. Of course it hasn't. The reason: In order to use it, you
have to install an obscure Perl script and set it up in your browser.
A vandal who can do that could also quickly hack together their own
vandalbot and do much more damage.

InstantCommons will not be that difficult, but in order to use it on a
wiki which has the feature enabled, you will initially have to search
for a filename on Commons to embed. I think this process of looking up
media on a separate wiki will lead to gradual adoption, rather than a
rapid increase of external usage.

Only over time, we hope to build better media search features for
Commons, and then even embed these in other wikis.

Furthermore, files will be locally cached, and it will be very clear
that Commons has no responsibility, legal or otherwise, for the
content. It is essentially little more than an easier way to copy
images and description pages from Commons to another wiki. Site admins
will get a maintenance script to delete images which have been deleted
from Commons (selecting the ones they want to purge using checkboxes).

If you have further concerns about the project, feel free to let me
know by private mail.

Erik