Commons-l September 2012

commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org

23 participants
11 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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Metadata Games
by Robinson Tryon 27 Oct '12

27 Oct '12

Hi Wikimedia Commons folks! Metadata Games (MG) is a FOSS project that we've been working on at Tiltfactor Lab at Dartmouth College. It's a bit of an experimental project using online games to help with the collection of metadata for images in various collections (libraries, archives, etc...). There's a bit of basic information up on the Tiltfactor website about the background and main goals of the project: http://www.tiltfactor.org/metadata-games And (because talk is cheap :-), source code is up on Gitorious here: http://gitorious.org/metadatagames If you promise not to explode our server too much, you can point your browser over to http://metadatagames.com and see a version of the software in action. Right now that's pointing to a test install with some pictures from Dartmouth's archives. We have some great black-and-white images from old Winter Carnivals, as well as some more modern color photographs from around the campus. We're mostly done collecting data with that particular test, so feel free to play around with the images and games we have up there. The MG system currently has a couple of different games for single and multi-player tagging of images. In the next couple of months we're hoping to add support for more media types (including audio and video) as well as making some big improvements to the backend of the system so that we can scale-up for big installs. We're currently collaborating with a couple of different groups including the Rauner Library here at Dartmouth, and we're eager to see more groups benefit from tagging media with MG. Sam Klein pinged me about working with Wikimedia, and we'd definitely be excited to collaborate on improvements or expansions to the current system. The simplest way to use MG would just be to funnel images from Commons through the system, and then export and use the highest-ranked tags. I haven't been very active in the Wikimedia community for the last few years, so I'm not quite up to date on all of the projects percolating out there, but there might also be some more creative ways in which the MG system could be employed :-) Cheers, Robinson Tryon (User:Womble on various wikimedia sites)

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Re: [Commons-l] [Wikimedia-l] : Copyright of deep space objects (DSOs) outside of the solar system
by John Vandenberg 06 Oct '12

06 Oct '12

Where is the onwiki discussion about this? I could find '[1]' Or a wikipedia page that describes the copyright status of imagery of DSOs? John Vandenberg. sent from Galaxy Note On Sep 15, 2012 1:25 PM, "とある白い猫" <to.aru.shiroi.neko(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > I am not seeking legal advice. I am asking the pursuit of the issue. I am > not a US citizen so I do not have a congress person to contact. The laws > governing copyright can be amended to address the issue of deep space > objects (DSO). I do not expect a result next week, I merely want the issue > to enter into an agenda of some sort. If the Foundation is going to take > the lead, this probably would only be possible through a board decision. In > such a case I want to work with people to come up with such a draft > proposal to the board. > > I realize this is an unusual request but there seems to be a lack of > clarity on this issue[1]. Argument is that copyright can be an issue since > not every organization observing or assisting NASA's observations are > PD-USgov compatible. We may be forced to permanently delete all deep space > objects as a result. > > I'd like to provide a short technical explanation why copyright of deep > space objects or DSOs (objects outside of the solar system) are > meaningless. For ordinary photographs copyright is determined by factors > such as lighting, perspective, exposure and other such settings that > creates a different image of the same object. You can distinguish the > difference between a daylight photo and an evening photo. > > With deep space objects however, even the stellar parallax[2] has a very > small value. The closest object outside of the solar system is 4.24 light > years (268,136 AU's) away. The semi-major axis of earth is about 1AUs. The > difference in perspective is like looking at a 2cm (width of a nickel) wide > object 5.3km (3.29 miles) away and the perspective difference is switching > left eye to the right eye. We lack scientific instruments to even detect a > stellar parallax for objects much further. In other words our perspective > of the nearest star and beyond is more or less constant and the objects > themselves look the same for hundreds of years. > > So any photo of a deep space object I or someone else takes from the > solar system will look identical regardless of when and where on earth I > take it within multiple lifetimes. I think this can bring legal precedent > for us to either disregard any copyright claim or at least pursue lawmakers > in congress to amend the copyright law to make an exception in the law. > People who worked with congress such as Neil Degrasse Tyson could be > consulted to this end. Also international treaties[3] can be consulted to > this end as copyrighting photos of deep space objects could be interpreted > as an unfair exploitation of resources. > > I realize this reads like something out of Star Trek but this is growing > to be quite a problem as we see more and more weird copyright claims even > when dealing with NASA which traditionally had a PD-USgov mentality. NASA > regularly contracts its more recent projects and to be fair we do not know > how NASA contracts these projects which could potentially lead > to legitimate copyright claims in the future. > > > [1]: > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Potential_deletion_o… > > [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax > > [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law#International_treaties > > -- とある白い猫 (To Aru Shiroi Neko) > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l >

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Getting corporate representatives to donate photos
by David Gerard 29 Sep '12

29 Sep '12

In my volunteer job as Wikimedia press contact, I've been doing rather a lot of liaison with public relations people and other corporate representatives wanting to get their clients onto Wikipedia. You can see how this is a rather conflicted area. [1] *However*, it occurs to me that one thing we could do with more of is high-quality imagery, and companies have a pile of this stuff. Often professional shots of whatever that they've taken for promotion that sit in a box forever. What good approaches, phrases, soundbites are there that could be spread to get them into donating this stuff to the commons? Let's say CC by-sa, it's simple and works. In my experience, the head-explody bit is "you relinquish control". But PR people are not stupid and know a PR advantage when they see one :-) Durova's piece from a few years ago advocating SEOs give us pictures may be apposite: http://searchengineland.com/an-untapped-seo-opportunity-image-link-love-fro… Any other ideas? - d. [1] Off-topic for this email, but there's a bit on my blog: http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/?p=803 http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/?p=965

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Re: [Commons-l] Priorities for copyright and freedom (was: Copyright of deep space objects)
by J JIH 20 Sep '12

20 Sep '12

Long time ago, I tried to start a petition at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/American_non-acceptance_of_the_rule_of_the_s… get U.S. to apply rule of the shorter term, but extremely limited signatures and the lack of spam control at http://www.petitiononline.commade me stop the campaign. If anyone is interested, I do allow someone with better skill to take over the petition signature campaign. Chinese Wikisource also uses PD-EdictGov, similar to English Wikisource, but https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/Template:PD-EdictGov does warn Hong Kongers and Singaporeans that many English-speaking countries and areas, including English- and Chinese-speaking Hong Kong and Singapore, do copyright their own governmental works. For Point 9 to get works by U.S. states added to public domain, PD-EdictGov already does it for some but not all such works. Jusjih Administrator on Meta, Commons, English and Chinese Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote Message: 5 > Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 22:46:41 +0700 > From: John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> > To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Priorities for copyright and freedom (was: > Copyright of deep space objects) > Message-ID: > < > CAO9U_Z4o2a_dtdkwANutD_t4DAfJOecNpN+210HPSDXJXayS7w(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > On English wikisource we use the absence of case law regarding foriegned > government and judicial documents as sufficient justification for all these > being PD in the US. > > See http://enws.org/Template:PD-GovEdict< > http://enws.org/Template:PDGovEdict> > > Most countries explicitly refuse copyright on these works. It would be good > to have a universal declararion that these works are PD worldwide. > > John Vandenberg. > sent from Galaxy Note > On Sep 18, 2012 9:01 PM, "Samuel Klein" <meta.sj(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > A lovely exercise. I would put freedom and accessibility of legal > > documents, from government standards to case law, high on that list. > > Starting in larger countries where there is already motion to make this > > happen. SJ > > > > On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 12:30 AM, Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)frontier.com > >wrote: > > > >> On 9/17/2012 5:22 PM, Ryan Kaldari wrote: > >> > >> Personally, I would prefer that people pursue freedom of panorama before > >> we pursue "freedom of deep space objects". The later I would put pretty > far > >> down the priority list, actually. How about the following agenda: > >> > >> 1. Freedom of orphaned works > >> 2. Freedom of panorama in U.S. > >> 3. Get Library of Congress to digitize all U.S. copyright records > >> 4. Get U.S. to apply rule of the shorter term > >> 5. Get U.K. to officially kill sweat of the brow > >> 6. Repeal database rights in EU > >> 7. Repeal Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act > >> 8. Fix absurd copyright terms in Mexico > >> 9. Get works by U.S. states added to public domain > >> 10. Freedom of deep space objects > >> .... > >> 99. Profit > >> > >> I'd probably use a different order, but that would be quibbling. I think > >> just the thought of prioritizing like this is a good exercise, and would > >> love to hear how other people stack up these priorities. It's an > >> interesting challenge to balance which of these ideas would have the > most > >> impact with which are the most realistically achievable in the near > future. > >> > >> --Michael Snow > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Commons-l mailing list > >> Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l > >> > >> > > > > > > -- > > Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj > ...... >

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Api Query for thumbnail images, title etc in a category
by vjkumar 19 Sep '12

19 Sep '12

I am trying to get by media API query the url of thumbnail, image and description for all images in the following category web page: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Coins_in_the_Walters_Art_Museum I tried the following query: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?format=xml&action=query&list=categor… which produced an XML output which gave me all the Image file names. With a file name I am able to construct the url for this file. For example with "File:Ethiopian - Coin Depicting an Anonymous King - Walters 59793 - Reverse.jpg" I am able to construct the URL for the image as http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ethiopian_-_Coin_Depicting_an_Anonym…. However I would like to get the thumbnail url, Title and the description for the images in this category with a query and get the output in XML or JSON format . Is it possible to construct such a query? Thanks. The XML output is given below: <?xml version="1.0"?> -<api>-<query>-<categorymembers><cm title="File:Ethiopian - Coin Depicting an Anonymous King - Walters 59793 - Obverse.jpg" ns="6" pageid="18842729"/><cm title="File:Ethiopian - Coin Depicting an Anonymous King - Walters 59793 - Reverse.jpg" ns="6" pageid="18842732"/><cm title="File:Ethiopian - One of Two Coins Depicting Ousanas and an Anonymous King - Walters 59794.jpg" ns="6" pageid="18809697"/><cm title="File:Greek - Apollo - Walters 59533.jpg" ns="6" pageid="18787772"/><cm title="File:Greek - Athena - Walters 59519 - Obverse.jpg" ns="6" pageid="18801612"/><cm title="File:Greek - Athena - Walters 59519 - Reverse.jpg" ns="6" pageid="18801616"/><cm title="File:Greek - Athena - Walters 59702 - Back.jpg" ns="6" pageid="18787788"/><cm title="File:Greek - Persephone - Walters 59693.jpg" ns="6" pageid="18787786"/><cm title="File:Greek - Tetradrachme with King Nicodemus II - Walters 59723 - Back.jpg" ns="6" pageid="18787795"/><cm title="File:Matthes Gebel - Medal of Arnold and Nicholas Wenck - Walters 59480 - Obverse.jpg" ns="6" pageid="18839416"/></categorymembers></query>-<query-continue><categorymembers cmcontinue="file|7e524f4d414e202d20434f494e2057495448204120484950504f504f54414d555320414e4420504f525452414954204f46204f544143494c494120534556455241202d2057414c54455253203539373531202d204241434b2e4a50470a524f4d414e202d20434f494e2057495448204120484950504f504f54414d555320414e4420504f525452414954204f46204f544143494c494120534556455241202d2057414c54455253203539373531202d204241434b2e4a5047|18787799"/></query-continue></api> -- View this message in context: http://wikimedia.7.n6.nabble.com/Api-Query-for-thumbnail-images-title-etc-i… Sent from the WikiMedia Commons mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Fwd: [Wiki Loves Monuments] MIBAC agreement for Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy
by Federico Leva (Nemo) 14 Sep '12

14 Sep '12

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Script to transfer videos from YouTube/Vimeo to Wikimedia Commons
by Jean-Frédéric 08 Sep '12

08 Sep '12

Hi, I wanted to let you know that I extended youtube-dl [1] to allow upload to Wikimedia Commons (or any MediaWiki). Youtube-dl is a utility written in Python to download videos from a variety of websites. It handles the actual download and extraction of metadata - thus most of the work. The extension adds: * License retrieving from YouTube and Vimeo (AFAIK the only services providing CC-licensing). * Converting the extracted video to Ogg Theora (using ffmpeg2theora [2]) * Formatting the metadata to {{Information}} * License checking to see if compatible with Wikimedia Commons * Upload to Wikimedia Commons using Pywikipedia In the end, my extension merely glues together youtube-dl (with added license handling), ffmpeg2theora and Pywikipedia. It is called from command line like this : ./youtube-dl --wikimedia-commons-export --convert-theora --theora-audio-quality 8 --theora-video-quality 8 --theora-optimise http://vimeo.com/46348011 Code is available on GitHub : <https://github.com/JeanFred/youtube-dl/tree/WikimediaCommonsPP> And some test uploads : < https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Uploaded_with_youtube-dl/Wikimedia… > Afterthoughts: it certainly makes more sense to have a dedicated pywikipedia module only relying on youtube-dl for the video and metadata extraction, and taking care of the rest, and not the other way around like here. I went for this because it was the most straightforward way to do it, maybe I will rewrite it if I find the time. Any feedback is welcome! :) [1] <http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl/> [2] <http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/> -- Jean-Frédéric

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Making it easier for non-Commons users to describe minimally described images
by Gaurav Vaidya 07 Sep '12

07 Sep '12

Hi there! Over the next year, the Missouri Botanical Gardens plans to identify and extract illustrations from the BHL's 39.3 million scanned pages as part of the Art of Life project [1], and then to publish those illustrations to the Wikimedia Commons [2] (as well as to Flickr [3] and ArtStor). My colleagues and I have spent the last few months developed a metadata schema to provide structured information describing an image -- subjects, "agents" (i.e. publishers, painters, engravers and writers) and inscriptions. Within the Commons, we've created a template to handle this structured data, which we call "Information Art of Life" (based on the ubiquitous Information template): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Information_Art_of_Life Since the BHL doesn't have the resources to comprehensively describe all the images itself, our plan is for BHL staff members to minimally describe the illustrations and then to rely on the Commons community to improve metadata, descriptions and categorization. So when images are uploaded to the Commons from the BHL, they will have basic metadata in their "Information Art of Life" templates and basic categorization, and nothing else. We hope to encourage users of BHL illustrations (artists, biologists, humanities scholars, library staff and educators, among others) to take it from there, improving the metadata, descriptions and categorization on the uploaded images. However, as many of them would not have much experience with Wikipedia, we fear that the learning curve in understanding the Commons' template-based metadata system might turn away potential contributors. To make it easier for non-Wikimedians to contribute, we have been considering developing tools to simplify updating these templates, such as by creating user scripts [5] to provide a form based interface to our template; maybe something visually similar to the Index page form that the ProofreadPage extension creates on Wikisource [6]. Do such tools already exist for the Commons somewhere? What do you think would be the easiest way to simplify the ways in which non-Wikimedians can use the Commons' cataloging system? Thanks so much for your attention! cheers, Gaurav http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gaurav [1] http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Art+of+Life [2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Files_from_the_Biodiversity_Heri… [3] http://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary [4] Based on an external links search, see: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&limit=500… [5] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:User_scripts [6] An example of an index page form created by the ProofreadPage extension on Wikisource: http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Index:Field_Notes_of_Junius_Hend…

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BUONGIORNO!
by alessandro bubani 05 Sep '12

05 Sep '12

Buongiorno a tutti! Mi chiamo Alessandro e mi sono registrato ieri per la prima volta in Wikimedia Coomons. Siccome mi piace fare fotografie ho pensato di caricare qualche mio file. Per la prima volta ho anche caricato foto su un paio di pagine di Wikipedia ma essendo un principiante (non solo di Wikimedia Commons, ma dell'utilizzo di internet in generale..sono tutt'altro che esperto!!!) volevo sapere se tramite questa mailing list (ed è la prima volta che utilizzo una mailing list) posso avere qualche risposta per eventuali dubbi che ho...o per informazioni precise riguardo a come poter utilizzare eventualmente alcune mie foto. Grazie e buonagiornata a tutti!! Alessandro

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Commons-l September 2012