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
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/historicalhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidatahttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata_%282%29http://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
Hello, Wikimedians. My name is Robert Harris and I'm the consultant the
Board has asked to look at the various issues around potentially
objectionable content as outlined by the Board resolution and FAQs
posted to Foundation-l June 24, 2010. I've created a page on Meta-Wiki
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content)
to serve as a place where I can post the research I'm collecting for
the study and also hope that that page can act as a forum for
discussions around the various issues I've been asked to consider. The
page includes my own series of FAQs to help introduce myself. Hope to
hear from you as I look at these complex and significant issues.
Robert Harris
סקר מעודכן של חברת קומסקור קובע שאתרי קרן ויקימדיה (כיחידה אחת) נמצאים
במקום העשירי בישראל מבחינת מספר המבקרים היוניקים (הייחודיים).
מדובר על 1.736 מיליון מבקרים ישראלים ייחודיים מעל גיל 15, בבית או
בעבודה, בחודש מאי 2010. לשם השוואה, פייסבוק במקום השני עם 3.528 מבקרים,
אתרי ואינט במקום הרביעי עם 2.995 מיליון. בקיצור, זוהי קבוצת האתרים
הלא-מסחרית עם הכי הרבה מבקרים יוניקים מגיל 15 ומעלה, ומתברגת בעשירייה
העליונה, גם אם במקום האחרון.
נתון מעניין נוסף - ישראל במקום השני מבחינת הזמן שאנשים מגיל 15 ומעלה
מבלים במרחב הקיברנטי. מעלינו רק קנדה.מתחתינו בסדר הזה: ארה"ב, בריטניה,
הולנד ודרום קוראה.
זו ההודעה לעיתונות של קומסקור:
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/6/comScore_Reports…
וזה תרגום שלה לעברית באדיבות "דה מרקר":
http://www.themarker.com/tmc/article.jhtml?ElementId=nh20100623_09
דרור ק
Dear Wikimedians,
The 2009 Picture of the Year competition has now concluded
and we are happy to announce the results:
WINNER:
<Sikh pilgrim at the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib) in India>
Credit: Paulrudd; 62 votes
RUNNER-UP:
<Elakala Waterfalls in the Blackwater Falls State park, USA>
Credit: Forest Wander; 56 votes
2ND RUNNER-UP:
<Russian honor guard at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier>
Credit: MC1 Chad J. McNeeley; 52 votes
In Round 1, there were 890 candidates, the images promoted to Featured Pictures in 2009.
The category winners and top 10 over all in Round 1 made it to the final, where 742 voters voted.
The detailed results of the competition is available at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2009/Results .
Congratulations to all the contributors who helped create these beautiful works and make them available to the world as free content.
Thanks to all the voters for participating. :)
Thanks
Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year committee
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2009
Hi, I'm looking for the API call can be used to get the "File Usage On
Other Wikis" that is commonly seen on pages in commons.wikimedia.org,
for example, near the bottom of:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Almogaren_roquebentayga.jpg
I'm curious also about the origin of the "metadata" that's at the bottom
of the page... does that come directly from the EXIF data in the *.jpg
or is it stored in a database table and accessable via the API?
Reminder: this is starting in a few minutes, and will run until 1830 UTC.
SJ
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 12:59 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> There will be another open meeting tomorrow on IRC.
>
> For those who are available, please join us in #wikimedia at 1700 UTC.
> (There's a link to a web-based client you can use.) All are welcome
> to add discussion topics.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings#June_17.2C_2010
There will be another open meeting tomorrow on IRC.
For those who are available, please join us in #wikimedia at 1700 UTC.
(There's a link to a web-based client you can use.) All are welcome
to add discussion topics.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings#June_17.2C_2010
I also cleaned up the pages for Board meetings and open Wikimedia
meetings; we're having our next IRC meeting on Friday, after which we
should be publishing the minutes from the past two in-person meetings.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings
SJ
Hi all,
since there's already several million iPad (and soon, other tablet)
users out there, I thought I'd try one in the Apple store to see what
Wikipedia looks/feels like. Generally, I think it's very nice, with
one exception. In "portrait" mode, the sidebar takes up a lot of real
estate. Especially when you scroll down a long page, there's this
annoying white bar on the left that serves no real purpose. Also,
IMHO, it destroys that "book feeling" that would fit so well with the
iPad.
So I wrote a quick JS hack that /should/ hide the sidebar on the iPad.
Instead, it shows an icon in the top left corner that, when
"finger-clicked", will show the sidebar again, in case you really want
it.
Demo (on Commons, because of the "withJS" option there):
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?withJS=MediaWiki:Adjust4iPad.js
Now, that should /only/ work on the iPad. Could someone please confirm
this and tell me if it's an improvement. On image pages it probably
doesn't matter a lot, but more text-laden pages like
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Welcome?withJS=MediaWiki:Adjust4i…http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia…
it should make a visible difference.
If it is as good as I suspect, we could use it by default on the
Wikipedias etc. There's lots of room for improvement; maybe the
sidebar could appear when switching to landscape mode (as in the mail
app). The usability experts may want to take a look :-)
Cheers,
Magnus
