[Foundation-l] WMF is planning to install a video player that harms creator attribution and ties between Wikipedia and Commons

[Michael Dale]

Teofilo did open a bug, I tried to explain that the mwEmbed player
gadget is not identical to the mwEmbed player in the extension. The
Extension has a bit better handling of license i.e by default shows the
credit page on menu click and on clip end. The extension also does a bit
better job of parsing info templates.

I agree that we could make licence info more predominate. There are
constraints of player size make it difficult to translate page based
templates into a the small player credit space. Keep in mind we don't
have monolithic licence tags or 'real structured data' for wikimedia
commons so its not trivial to translate licence info into different use
contexts. It may be possible to leverage some of the recent licence
template work, if anyone has suggestions on how to do that I am happy to
apply it. We do prominently link to the asset description page on clip end.

peace,
michael

On 10/11/2011 05:10 AM, Lodewijk wrote:
> I assume that you, before sending this email to a mailing list that is not
> exactly technical in nature, have submitted bug reports about this on
> bugzilla so that the technical magicians can actually fix it? I'm confident
> they would appreciate any constructive input.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lodewijk
>
> No dia 11 de Outubro de 2011 12:25, Teofilo <teofilowiki at gmail.com>escreveu:
>
>> I have learnt this morning that the "Timedmedia" extension "is not yet
>> installed on wikimedia sites, but its meant to replace the existing
>> player" (1).
>>
>> As I was uploading videos, and needed some specific tools, I happened
>> the other day to use the mwEmbed gadget on Wikimedia Commons which
>> seems to be a prefiguration of what the WMF plans to install
>> everywhere on its sites. My experience as guinea pig of that
>> experiment is negative:
>>
>> Clicking on the "i" option of the polar bear video inserted on commons
>> village pump (2) produces the following screenshot:
>>
>> http://prototype.wikimedia.org/timedmedia/File:Screenshot_of_commons_village_pump.jpg
>> (3). What the video viewer can read is "Credits: Title :
>> File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv Kaltura". This is not a proper
>> way of providing author name (which should be Nehrams2020 ) and
>> license (which should be Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
>> Unported license with a link). The "share" menu provides "< i frame
>> src = " //
>> commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv?withJS=MediaWiki:MwEmbed.js&embedplayer=yes
>> "
>> width="220" height="165" frameborder="0" >< /iframe > ". There is no
>> "Attribution" code similar to the one you can find when clicking on
>> "Use this file" on the photostock toolbar on the Commons description
>> page (4). The small polar bear icon displayed in the "i" option of the
>> "menu" is too small (it is only about 50x30px, while the standard
>> "thumb" size is 220px!). Using the full 220px rectangle as a link is
>> the way by which we tell readers/viewers that the Commons description
>> page is an important page. Most users will not be aware that they may
>> click on that 50x30px icon to find valuable information about the
>> file. The File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv text is in grey color.
>> This is not the standard way to make the viewer aware that it is a
>> clickable link. Usually, clickable links are blue. This video player
>> is putting the Wikimedia commons description page 3 clicks away from
>> Wikipedia instead of just one (you must click on "menu", then on "i"
>> then on "File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv"). If installed on
>> Wikipedia, this gadget will not be an improvement, but a huge drawback
>> for the quality of the relation between Wikipedia and Wikimedia
>> Commons. Wikimedia Commons will be unknown from Wikipedia readers or
>> seen as something far away. I guess a lot of people are going to
>> believe that the person who deserves credit is the company named
>> "Kaltura" instead of the real video creator. The "i" symbol is
>> meaningless for people whose languages do not have the word
>> "information" in their vocabularies. Even in English or in French
>> "information" is vague and does not mean "credit" or "license" or
>> "attribution". The efforts Wikimedia Commons has been doing on
>> description pages (indicating the source of the file, provide a
>> description, provide a date, provide categories to find related files,
>> etc.) are put aside for the purpose of the promotion of the "Kaltura"
>> brand name. And again a download link seems to be provided straight
>> away from the "menu" even if the user has not made the effort to learn
>> about the licensing conditions.
>>
>> (1) Michael Dale 2011-10-11 02:54:09 UTC
>> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31583
>> (2)
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#mwEmbed_gadget:_Videos_no_longer_properly_linked_to_description_pages_by_clicking_on_the_thumbnail
>> (3)
>> http://prototype.wikimedia.org/timedmedia/File:Screenshot_of_commons_village_pump.jpg
>> (4) screenshot of "use this file" toolbar tool:
>> http://prototype.wikimedia.org/timedmedia/File:Use_this_file_screenshot.jpg
>> ( the "stockphoto.js" toolbar)
>>
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