On 11 Mar 2010 at 11:06, Erik Moeller wrote:
Hello all,
together with Frank Schulenburg and Naoko Komura, I just participated
in a video-conference with the winners of the Google Kiswahili
Wikipedia challenge (
http://www.google.com/events/kiswahili-wiki/ ),
and we talked about some of the challenges they encountered when
contributing to the Swahili Wikipedia.
One of the issues was that it was very hard for them to upload files.
Specifically, when you're a new user on a small wiki like sw.wp, you
_cannot upload_ locally due to a restriction of uploads to
autoconfirmed users. The upload link isn't even visible in the sidebar
until you're autoconfirmed, and you get a confusing error message if
you happen to call up Special:Upload.
From a user experience standpoint, this is horrible.
For the immediate future, I suggest lifting this restriction for wikis
between 1,000 and 50,000 articles in size (large enough to have a few
active users, small enough to not yet have lots of policy around these
issues). Ultimately we'll want to integrate Commons better into the
user experience, but until then, IMO we should eliminate artificial
impediments like this which prevent people from growing their
communities and frustrate them -- unless there's a proven issue of
large scale abuse. Does that make sense?
Thanks,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Erik,
[2c opinion]
To me it doesn't make sense. Commons is the home for files that are in the public
domain,
as that enables crosswiki use. Why would we want to change that message, and in fact work
against that message? Some could argue that we would be starting to embed a counter-
culture that we know that some will be resistant to change.
To me it would seem far more practicable to put efforts into having images seamlessly be
able to be uploaded to Commons, and provide the interface at the wiki, or direct them to
those resources at Commons. Alternatively if you do allow uploads for all, and then have
an automated process in place to move the images to Commons.
The maintenance task of moving images to Commons from the wikis is quite significant, and
I am not sure why we would be wanting to add to that. If administrators have time, it
should be for valued tasks, not for "make work", for decisions that seem not to
pay heed
to our own history, and current events.
In fact, it would be interesting to see some of the data of images on small and large
wikis, including the numbers transferred from each to Commons, and who undertook such
actions (local vs Commons users).
Regards, Andrew