Commons-l February 2012

commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org

12 participants
13 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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translation of categories
by bawolff 19 Jul '12

19 Jul '12

Someone in the thread on friendliness mentioned that categories are always in one language (usually english). Well still a long way from fixing the issue, perhaps if we allowed unrestricted {{DISPLAYTITLE:...}}, combined with the {{int: hack, that'd allow better translatable categories. (of course you'd only be able to use the actual category name in [[category:Foo]] links. I suppose one could use a bot to automatically change links to redirect categories to their canonical name, but then we're getting really really hacky). Anyways, just a thought. cheers, bawolff

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Re: [Commons-l] Commons-l Digest, Vol 81, Issue 8
by Stanqo 28 Feb '12

28 Feb '12

Гледам, че са си махнали личните имейли, но това може да стане чрез личните им страници като се кликне на "Писмо до потребителя". Спас - http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%… Спирития - http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%… Успех

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please remove me from your email list
by norman mackay 28 Feb '12

28 Feb '12

-- Best wishes Norm

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The categorisation backlog
by WereSpielChequers 27 Feb '12

27 Feb '12

In case anyone on this list isn't aware of it, we have a very large categorisation backlog on Commons. The Geograph load of UK images alone includes hundreds of thousands of uncategorised images, and as many only categorised by bot. However there are some recently improved tools out there that people may not be aware of, so I thought I'd email the United Kingdom and Commons lists to make sure everyone knew about the changes. The UK mailing list is relevant because we have a very large part of the Common categorisation backlog, and it has come up as a problem for our Wiki loves monuments plan. There have been two major enhancements to Catalot in the last few weeks. It now has an autoprompt/complete feature similar to Hotcat to make it much easier to add categories, and crucially for our Geograph backlog, it is now possible to use Cata a lot on uncategorised Geograph images such as in the categories in http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_the_Geograph_British… you have to copy rather than move as you are replacing a template with a category rather than moving from one category to another). http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot The other big change is that Rillke has written some code to change the way that Hotcat works, so that if you open an a Geograph image that needs its categories checked you can confirm the categories eiter with one click or by using Hotcat to ad or remove a category. Previously Hotcat would remove the Geograph uncategorised template but not the partially categorised template, so if bots had added some categories you couldn't remove the cats need review template other than by editing. The Rillke's js code can be accessed by installing importScript('User:Rillke/checkCat.js'); Details at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:HJ_Mitchell#Check-categories-au… I've been using it, it works well and is many times quicker than confirming categories manually. If everyone who is active on Commons installs it I think we'll see the backlog reduce quite noticeably. Regards WereSpielChequers

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Fwd: [Wikitech-l] Using computer vision to categorize images at Commons
by David Gerard 20 Feb '12

20 Feb '12

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Maarten Dammers <maarten(a)mdammers.nl> Date: 20 February 2012 21:08 Subject: [Wikitech-l] Using computer vision to categorize images at Commons To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Cc: pywikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Hi everyone, Some time ago I played around with computer vision to get images categorized on Commons. I documented this at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Multichill/Using_OpenCV_to_categori… . I don't think I'm going to spend time on it soon, but the results were quite promising, so maybe someone else feels like working on this? Would probably be a pretty nice student project or just fun to do. Maarten _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Wikimania scholarship deadline: Feb 16
by aude 14 Feb '12

14 Feb '12

Reminder that the deadline to apply for a Wikimania 2012 travel scholarship is February 16 (23:59 UTC). We encourage you to apply! http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships Full travel scholarships, funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and chapters (France, UK, Israel, Austria), will cover transportation, hostel accommodations, and conference registration. Partial scholarships are also offered by WMF (and Wikimedia Hungary). Wikimania 2012 will take place July 12-15 at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. The call for participation is also open now (deadline: March 18), and registration is open. Cheers, Katie

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Remove from mailing list
by norman mackay 13 Feb '12

13 Feb '12

Please remove my email from your mailing list -- Best wishes Norm

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Upcoming deployment of MediaWiki 1.19 to Wikimedia sites.
by Guillaume Paumier 12 Feb '12

12 Feb '12

Greetings, The Wikimedia Foundation is planning to upgrade MediaWiki, the software powering Wikipedia and its sister sites, to its latest version. The upgrade will happen in several stages over the month, starting this week. You can still help to test it before it is enabled, to avoid disruption and breakage. More information: * Announcement on the Wikimedia blog: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/02/11/mediawiki-1-19-deployment/ * The announcement in other languages: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.19/Deployment_announcement Thank you for your understanding. -- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation

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Remove from Mailing List
by norman mackay 09 Feb '12

09 Feb '12

Please remove me from the Wikimedia mailing list -- Best wishes Norm

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Commons-l February 2012