[Foundation-l] Possible solution for image filter

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 11:10, WereSpielChequers
> <werespielchequers at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Forking and creating "safe" versions of all our wikis has the same
>> disadvantage of any other fork, the wisdom of crowds is dissipated if the
>> crowd is ever further divided. In that sense this would be as much a mistake
>> as it was to spin Outreach, Strategy and Ten off as separate wikis rather
>> than projects on meta. Better to encompass both "safe" and existing wikis
>> within the same wiki by making the image filter an opt in user choice, that
>> way you achieve all the advantages of "safe" and unsafe wikis without any of
>> the overheads. I think you'll find that was always the intention, I don't
>> recall anyone arguing for it to be compulsory for everyone to opt in to the
>> filter and pick at least one thing they object to.
>>
>> Commons is a different matter, and I can understand the concern there that
>> this might lead to arguments as to the categorisation of particular
>> articles. Personally I think that it would be progress to replace arguments
>> as to whether an image is within scope with arguments about the category.
>> But this does depend on the way in which the filter is implemented; If we
>> implement a filter which offers 8-15 broad choices to those who opt in to
>> it, then  those filters probably don't currently exist on Commons, so by
>> implication we as a community are vetting all of commons to see what fits
>> into those filters. Such a system also conflicts with other things we are
>> doing, in particular the GLAM collaborations and the large releases of
>> images that we are getting from various institutions. But if we go down the
>> more flexible personal image filter route then there is far less reason to
>> fork Commons as it makes no difference on Commons whether an image is
>> blocked by one reader on their personal preferences or by one million. There
>> would still be the issue that not everything is categorised, but if we
>> release this in beta test and don't over promise its functionality that
>> should not be a problem - we just need to make clear that it is currently x%
>> efficient and will improve as people identify stuff they don't want to see
>> again, and categories where they want to first check the caption or alt text
>> in order to decide whether to view them.
>
> You didn't understand me well. It's not about fork(s), it's about
> wrappers, shells around the existing projects.
>
> * en.safe.wikipedia.org/wiki/<whatever> would point to
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<whatever>
> * When you click on "edit" from en.safe, you would get the same text
> as on en.wp.
> * When you click on "save" from en.safe, you would save the text on
> en.wp, as well.
> * The only difference is that images in wikitext won't be shown like
> [[File:<something sensible>.jpg]], but as
> [[File:fd37dae713526ee2da82f5a6cf6431de.jpg]].
> * safe.wikimedia.org won't be Commons fork, but area for image
> categorization to those who want to work on it. It is not the job of
> Commons community to work on personal wishes of American
> right-wingers.
>
> (Note: "safe" is not good option for name, as it has four characters
> and it could be used for language editions of Wikipedia; maybe
> safe.en.wikipedia.org could be better option.)
>
>

The real problem here is that if there was a real market for stupid
sites like that, they would already be there. And they are not, which
does seem to point to the conclusion that there isn't a real market
for such sites. Doesn't it?


-- 
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]