Commons-l October 2010

commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org

35 participants
23 discussions

Video skills and equipment
by Lars Aronsson 16 Apr '25

16 Apr '25

I just tried to watch some presentation videos from Wikimania. Some had very weak sound, some had no sound in the first minutes, some only played the first minute and then stopped. I don't think the Wikimania videos are unique in having such problems. Video is new to Commons, and the expert contributors are more familiar with still images. How can we learn to make better videos? Are there some good instructions? Perhaps a free instruction video (Wikibooks, but a video instead of a book) on how to produce good videos is what we need. In fact, the English Wikibooks has a title on "Video Production", http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Video_Production but it doesn't have a clear focus (pun not intended). It starts out with discussing satellite TV and has long sections on file formats in different operating systems. There is a help page on Commons for converting video to the Ogg Theora format, but that is only the last step in a long chain. Given that video is new, how can we find and rate videos, nominate "good/featured videos", and give advice on how to improve quality? Is the Commons village pump enough for this? Commons has a separate graphics village pump. Do we also need a separate video village pump? Current digital video cameras use hard disks or memory cards, instead of tape cassettes. Many new models cost less than 300 euro (or dollars), some as little as 120 euro (memory card perhaps not included). Some have a special "Youtube mode", and I guess that kind of usage is what drives the price down. What models are good, and what should one watch out for? We can find free still photos on Flickr and copy them to Commons. Is there somewhere we can find free videos and copy them? Yes, at the Internet Archive. Somewhere else? -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

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What do you like of the various Flickr upload tools
by Bryan Tong Minh 04 Jan '11

04 Jan '11

Hi all, As most of you probably know, I wrote Flickr upload bot back in May 2007 because there was a lot demand for uploading free images from Flickr to Commons. And apparently people find it useful, since as of September 2010, over 80k images have been uploaded via this bot. In addition over 50k images have been uploaded via a similar bot by Magnus Manske. Unfortunately as you may know, every other day those tools break (mine more than Magnus'). Both have an annoying authentication mechanism, which requires you to do extra stuff to be able to upload (either post a token to a file page, or use TUSC). Both problems would be solved if there was a MediaWiki extension to handle this task. I eventually plan to write a MediaWiki extension that does such a thing and get it enabled on Commons. Therefore, I need to know what you like and dislike about those tools, so that I can take this feedback into account when writing this extension. Don't expect to see something in the short term though, but I hope that in the mid-long term we will have such an extension on Commons. -- Bryan

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Wikidata
by John Vandenberg 24 Nov '10

24 Nov '10

It looks like a solution to bug 4547 is on the horizon. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4547 See also [Wikitech-l] Reasonably efficient interwiki transclusion http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/197322 This will be very useful for templates which Commons has developed, especially language related templates, however I am concerned that people are also planning on using Commons as a repo for Wikipedia infoboxes, and including the *data* on Commons rather than just the template code. e.g. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Peter17/GSoc_2010#Interest This centralisation of data makes sense on many levels, however using Commons as the host of this data will result in many edit wars moving to the Commons project, involving people from many languages. Even the infobox structure can be the cause of edit wars. I think it is undesirable to have these Wikipedia problems added to Commons existing problems. ;-) Tying Wikipedia and Commons closer together is also problematic when we consider the differing audience and scope of each project, especially in light of the recent media problems. If the core templates and data used by Wikipedia are hosted/modified on Commons, it will be more difficult to justify why Commons accepts content which isn't appropriate on Wikipedia. A centralised data wiki has been proposed previously, many times: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/historical http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata_%282%29 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiDatabank Non-WMF projects, such as freebase, dbpedia, etc., have been exploring this space. Isn't it time that we started a new project!? ;-) A wikidata project could use semantic mediawiki from the outset, and be seeded with data from dbpedia. A lot of existing & proposed projects would benefit from a centralised wikidata project. e.g. a genealogy wiki could use the relationships stored on the wikidata project. wikisource and commons could use the central data wiki for their Author and Creator details. -- John Vandenberg

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Use labels in Commons and increase coverage
by Gerard Meijssen 29 Oct '10

29 Oct '10

Hoi, I am writing a series of blog posts about Commons. My aim is to identify the issues that I have with how it functions. There are several and I do not bother to write about the ones that are being tackled by the team around Guillaume (as far as it is clear to me what they are doing). The latest blog is about the difficulty of finding pictures, I am also of the opinion that we have the opportunity to be more of a resource of stock images that are freely licensed. We should stimulate this. Yes Commons is growing rapidly. Its coverage leaves a lot to be desired. In my opinion we need to concentrate on search and coverage to make Commons truly kick ass. Thanks. GerardM http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/search/label/Commons

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Active projects on Commons
by Lars Aronsson 29 Oct '10

29 Oct '10

Today I attended yet another workshop where a brave volunteer tried to explain the usefulness of Wikimedia Commons to teachers/scientists. During the following exercise, a very computer literate senior geneticist tried to access wikimedia.org and landed on the Wikimedia Foundation website. After this mistake was corrected, she soon found category:genetics, but from there couldn't find anything about DNA. Category:DNA exists, but is hidden some levels down. The immediate subcategories to Genetics are not the obvious ones to a geneticist. People who are very excited and want to learn, constantly run into these stupid mistakes. Can we please get rid of the name Wikimedia? The M-and-P confusion is among the very worst. Call it "Wikipedia Foundation". Rename Commons to be "Wikipedia Pictures". These two simple changes would save sooooooooooo much time. Yes, I know Wikimedia is more than just Wikipedia, that it also covers Wikisource, Wikibooks and all the other side projects. I also know that Commons is more than just pictures. I've been with Wikipedia since May 2001. But the everyday struggle of having to explain M-and-P is taking all the fun out of it. Is it really worth that? Now, the second part. Finding pictures in Commons is really hard. It seems that categories and textual descriptions are added by the uploader, and rarely modified or enhanced by others. Finding a map of bird migration paths across Europe might be easy, but finding a plain and simple map of Europe is hard. Images that appear directly in top categories (such as Category:Maps of Europe) are a very random mix, and not the most useful generic maps of Europe. The "next 200" navigation is a total disaster, that not a single newcomer understands. Anything that is beyond the first 200 (e.g. subcategories that start with M-Z) are not found. Is there any topic category on Commons that is actively maintained for easy searching, i.e. where subcategories are well defined and where new images are systematically monitored and recategorized with enhanced descriptions? If I could find such an example, perhaps it could provide inspiration for other topics where a specialist with some extra time (or a grant application) could improve the actual usefulness of Commons. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

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Born of the monument portuguese Project on Commons
by Otourly Wiki 28 Oct '10

28 Oct '10

Hello, There are know three monuments projects on Commons. A Nederland one, a French one and the last Portuguese one. Objectives are to place médias on right categories and geotagged them. See the template specialy created for: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Rijksmonumenten http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Mérimée http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:IGESPAR These projects are also like a bridge from Wikipedias. I assume that could help newcomers. Florian Farge aka Otourly Sur lesprojets wikimédiens et l'Association française,sur OxyRadio, OSM, et sur MOVIM Socio di Wikimedia Italia

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Fwd: Commons ZIP file upload for admins
by Erik Moeller 28 Oct '10

28 Oct '10

FYI, posting this question on wikitech-l mostly to get a security perspective on this. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> Date: 2010/10/25 Subject: Commons ZIP file upload for admins To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Hello all, for some types of resources, it's desirable to upload source files (whether it's Blender, COLLADA, Scribus, EDL, or some other format), so that others can more easily remix and process them. Currently, as far as I know, there's no way to upload these resources to Commons. What would be the arguments against allowing administrators to upload arbitrary ZIP files on Wikimedia Commons, allowing the Commons community to develop policy and process around when such archived resources are appropriate? An alternative, of course, would be to whitelist every possible source format for admins, but it seems to me that it would be a good general policy to not enable additional support for formats that aren't officially supported (reduces confusion among users about what's permitted -- there's only one file format they can't use). Thoughts? Thanks, Erik -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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IRC Office Hours with Sue Gardner today (23:00 UTC)
by Steven Walling 27 Oct '10

27 Oct '10

Hi all, Today Wikimedia Foundation Exec. Director Sue Gardner will be in this week's installment of IRC office hours at 23:00 UTC. As usual, the format is completely open, so bring any burning questions you might have to the #wikimedia-office channel on irc.freenode.net. Local times and instructions for accessing the chat, including for those without an IRC client, can be found on Meta at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours. The log of the discussion will be publicly posted on that page afterwards for those cannot attend. Many thanks, -- Steven Walling Wikimedia Foundation Fellow (wikimediafoundation.org)

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NPG, reloaded?
by Magnus Manske 24 Oct '10

24 Oct '10

<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101020/04044411496/english-heritage-orga…>

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The Licensing tutorial needs you
by Guillaume Paumier 23 Oct '10

23 Oct '10

(adapted from the message I left on the Village pump: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#The_Licensing_tutori… . The on-wiki text has all the handy links, too.) Hi. As you may know, I'm working on a Licensing tutorial, as part of the Multimedia usability project. The goal is to separate the "educational" part of the current upload page (that no one reads) from the actual upload form, and at the same time encourage more users to actually read it. The illustrator we're working with just delivered the first drafts of his designs, and we have until the end of the week to provide feedback. Per our agreement with him, the final artwork will be released under CC-by-sa, but the in-progress designs can't be shared publicly. However, as a long-time community member, I know it's critical for the community to weigh in, and I certainly don't expect to make all the decisions alone. As a compromise, I've temporarily published the PDF outside Commons. I'm going to send private e-mails to a number of Commons users who I think can provide useful feedback, but I'm happy to send the link to the PDF to anyone who's interested in helping. Just sign-up on the village pump. In the meantime, I'll also do some hallway user testing of the tutorial with people who don't know about free licenses. Many thanks in advance to everyone who'll be willing to help out! Sign up at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#The_Licensing_tutori… PS: Did you know you could still test the upload wizard prototype at http://commons.prototype.wikimedia.org/uwb/Special:UploadWizard ? It's been improved: the new "temporary upload" system now works, and it doesn't require file renaming any more. -- Guillaume Paumier Product Manager, Multimedia Usability Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Commons-l October 2010