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
Here's an interesting project from the British Library - interesting
both because people may wish to enter (there's £25000 available), and
because it touches on a lot of the same questions we have about the
value and impact of content donations
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2014/03/tracking-pu…https://ictomorrow.innovateuk.org/web/digital-innovation-contest-data/briti…
----
The British Library has a large and growing collection of material in
the public domain, available through online platforms, such as Flickr
(www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary) and Wikimedia Commons, for
anyone to use, remix and repurpose. However, once released online, the
British Library has little way of following that content as it is
re-used, which makes it difficult to measure any creative and economic
benefit.
The successful solution will allow public institutions to better
quantify and optimise the economic impact of releasing content into
the public domain (...)
----
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
«For years, Flickr has been one of the most important repositories of
Creative Commons imagery in the world; now, thanks to a new design, it's
all but useless for serving and attributing the CC-licensed images it's
been entrusted with by museums, galleries, national archives, libraries,
and millions of individuals.»
http://boingboing.net/2014/04/07/restoring-cc-attribution-to-fl.html
Didn't pass here yet I think, though many commoners care a lot about
this sad fate of Flickr for obvious reasons including the ease with
which stuff à la
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Flickr_files/Appeal_for_license_…>
earns us new material daily.
Nemo
Hi folks,
Here are our plans for the multimedia team’s next development cycle.
This 6-week cycle starts tomorrow, May 1, and ends on June 11 (second half of fiscal Q4), and will include 6 weekly sprints. In this next cycle, we plan to switch our focus to Upload Wizard and Technical Debt, while addressing Media Viewer's most critical issues, as needed.
For this cycle, we propose to divide our time evenly between these three main projects:
* Media Viewer - address remaining critical tasks (e.g. serious bugs, global load estimates, basic zoom feature)
* Technical Debt - fix serious issues that need quick solutions (e.g. image scalers, timed media handler update)
* Upload Wizard - start planning for this project (metrics, feedback, UX designs, code review, unit tests)
In subsequent cycles, we expect work on Upload Wizard and Technical Debt to continue to be a primary focus for us. We also hope to start work on Structured Data and File Notifications this summer, as time allows.
Here are our meeting notes, for your review:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Meetings/Next_Cycle_2_Q4_2013-14
And here is our updated wall for what is now our current cycle:
http://ur1.ca/h7w5s
This cycle wall now includes separate columns for Media Viewer (~28 points), Tech Debt (~29 points) and Upload Wizard (~21 points). We moved all leftover Media Viewer cards into either this cycle wall -- or in one of the Media Viewer Release walls in Team Favorites (see upper right corner of Mingle site). We could easily spend another quarter or two working on Media Viewer, but our team is needed on other projects that were neglected during this big product push. For the next few weeks, we will continue to front-load Media Viewer tasks to address critical issues from our worldwide deployment, but then start shifting more and more to Technical Debt and Upload Wizard projects.
The meeting notes also include results of the previous cycle and a team retrospective, which will give you a sense of the agile development process we have been using in recent months. We have found this agile process invaluable, and we note that it has helped improve our overall performance, so we are now getting more work done, more efficiently. Music to our ears … :)
Please let us know if you have any questions about these plans. We will be sure to consult you as we start new projects like Upload Wizard -- and Gilles will update you shortly on our current sprint, which we just planned today.
Onward!
Fabrice
for the Multimedia Team
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
Greetings!
I’m happy to announce that we just enabled Media Viewer by default on nine more pilot sites: Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Hebrew, Polish, Romanian, Thai, Slovak, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
1. Overview
We’re releasing Media Viewer gradually, a few wikis at a time, to test it carefully before deploying to the next batch of sites. So far, the tool has been well received on our first pilot sites: Catalan, Hungarian and Korean Wikipedias, as well as on English Wikivoyage, as outlined below. Next Thursday, we plan to deploy to some of our first large wikis: Dutch, French, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish Wikipedias. Learn more about this release plan here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Release_Plan
2. Metrics
We’re now logging about 336,000 image views per day on a global basis, as shown on this graph:
http://multimedia-metrics.wmflabs.org/dashboards/mmv
About half of these views are coming from the Hungarian Wikipedia, and the rest from Wikimedia Commons, English Wikipedia and other pilots. More metrics dashboards are available for selected sites on this page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Metrics
3. Performance
We are now tracking image load performance globally, and fist results suggest that images take over a second to load on average (50th percentile), but can take up to 5 seconds when looking at worst case for most users (90th percentile), as shown in this graph:
http://multimedia-metrics.wmflabs.org/graphs/mmv_performance_image_global
We’re also encouraged by early comparisons of the time it takes to open an image with Media Viewer versus on a Commons File, the current default: the mean load times for these two methods seem to be very close, on the order of 2-3 seconds on a cold cache, as shown in this preliminary graph:
http://multimedia-metrics.wmflabs.org/dashboards/mmv#media_viewer_vs_file_p…
4. Surveys
We are now running surveys in multiple languages, to validate whether or not this feature is useful to readers and editors alike. Overall response so far is generally favorable. Here are the current results:
* English Survey: 64% find the tool useful, 12% don’t find it useful, 24% are not sure (50)
* Hungarian Survey: 47% find the tool useful, 47% don’t find it useful, 5% are not sure (268)
* Catalan Survey: 62% find the tool useful, 15% don’t find it useful, 23% are not sure (13)
We’re also starting new surveys in French, German and Portuguese. You can find links to live results and comments from all these surveys here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Survey#Results
5. Usability
For the past few months, we have been running a series of usability studies, with positive results. Testers are typically able to complete most common tasks successfully, and they have helped us find new ways to improve the user experience for areas they found confusing.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Usability_testing
6. Your feedback
How can we improve Media Viewer? Are there any critical issues that should be addressed for this first release? Please let us know what you think of this tool — and join other users from around the world on this discussion page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer
We’d also be grateful if you could take this quick survey, to let us know how Media Viewer works for you. It only takes a minute and means a lot to us:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/media-viewer-1?c=email
Many thanks to all the team and community members who made this launch possible!
Enjoy,
Fabrice — for the Multimedia Team
P.S.: New improvements take about 2 weeks to get deployed to all wikis. If you would like to test the latest version of Media Viewer, follow the test tips on this demo page on MediaWiki.org:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
Hi folks,
I’m happy to let you know that Media Viewer has just deployed on our first pilot sites today!
1. First Pilots
We just released Media Viewer enabled by default on Catalan, Hungarian and Korean Wikipedias, as well as English Wikivoyage. Next Thursday, we plan to deploy to more pilot sites: Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Hebrew, Polish, Romanian, Thai, Slovak, and Vietnamese. Try it out for yourself on the Hungarian Wikipedia:
https://hu.wikipedia.org
2. First Metrics
MediaWiki.org, we jumped from 100 image views per day to 1k/day, about a 10 x increase. And on Commons it was much higher, due to the ‘View Expanded’ button: from 240 image views per day to 24k/day yesterday — that’s a 100 x increase ! You can track the adoption of this tool on these first metrics dashboards.
http://multimedia-metrics.wmflabs.org/dashboards/mmv
3. Share your feedback
Please let us know what you think of Media Viewer — and join other beta users from around the world on this discussion page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer
If you’re short on time, please take this quick survey to let us know how Media Viewer works for you:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/media-viewer-1?c=email
Many thanks to all the team and community members who made this launch possible!
Enjoy,
Fabrice — for the Multimedia Team
P.S.: If you haven’t tried Media Viewer yet, follow the test tips on this demo page on MediaWiki.org:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
Hi folks,
We’d love to hear what you think of Media Viewer, our new multimedia browser, as we get ready to release it more widely in coming weeks.
Is Media Viewer useful to you? What do you like most? least? How can we improve this tool? Are there any critical improvements we should consider before launch?
Here are three ways you can share your feedback about this new viewing experience:
1. Join our IRC chat
We’re hosting a live IRC chat in a few hours, this Wed. Apr. 9 at 18:00 UTC on #wikimedia-office.
All are welcome! Drop by to meet the team, share your comments, ask questions about this release, or make suggestions for improvement.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours
2. Discuss this tool
Meet other beta users from around the world on our Media Viewer discussion page. Here, we talk about new features, bugs and ideas with our community.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer
3. Take a quick survey
Can you tell us how Media Viewer works for you? It only takes a minute and means a lot to us.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/media-viewer-1?c=email
Hope to hear from you on one of these channels. Your feedback will help us improve the tool and launch it more smoothly.
Speak to you soon,
Fabrice — for the Multimedia Team
P.S.: If you haven’t tried Media Viewer yet, visit this test page on MediaWiki.org:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
Greetings!
I am happy to let you know that we have just launched Media Viewer 0.2 on our first pilot site, MediaWiki.org, where it is now enabled by default for all users (previously, it was only available as a Beta Feature).
Media Viewer aims to improve the multimedia viewing experience on Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites, to display images in larger size and with less clutter — as well as invite more people to use our images.
We invite you to try out this new tool today, which you can do on this test page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo
Please let us know what you think on this discussion page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer
You can learn more about this new feature here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer
After this first pilot, we plan to enable Media Viewer by default for these next pilot sites:
• April 17 - Confirmed: Catalan, Hungarian, Korean, English Wikivoyage
• April 24 - Proposed: Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Hebrew, Polish, Romanian, Thai, Slovak, Vietnamese
Based on these first pilot results, we plan wider releases on larger wikis in the following weeks, with a goal to deploy to all wikis next month. Our release schedule will be based on new findings at each stage of deployment. If this product performs well and meets user needs, we may accelerate the deployment pace -- or we may slow it down for some sites, as needed.
More details are available on our updated Release Plan:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Release_Plan
To discuss this release and review the final product together, we invite you to join our next IRC chat, on Wed. Apr. 9 at 18:00 UTC (11am PT). We also invite you to try out the tool on your own wikis, where it is available for early testing as a Beta Feature in your user preferences, as described above.
Please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or comments about this release. And many thanks to all the community members who helped create this feature with us in recent months!
We look forward to bringing a richer multimedia experience to your community very soon.
Regards as ever,
Fabrice
on behalf of the Multimedia Team
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
I have made a proposal to relax the scope of the Commons so-called Precautionary principle to allow the site to host more of the locally public domain files that are being deleted because of the US URAA law, and also to keep more photos that have freedom of panorama in their home country but which might (or might not) be copyright-protected in the US.
This proposal comes out of an extremely long and complicated argument about copyright, which you don't necessarily need to get into, but it is an attempt to allow Commons to host more media files while at the same time ensuring that the site remains fully legal under US law. We can legally take a much more nuanced position than 'Definitely Free' or 'Definitely Unfree', which is pretty much what we do at present.
Some editors have suggested ignoring US law, which the WMF simply cannot allow to happen, and this is an attempt to allow us to keep more non-US Public Domain material while still remaining on the right side of US law.
Put simply, do you agree that Commons should aim to host more files that are public domain in their home country even if they *might* still be copyright-protected in the US?
Please contribute here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Review_of_Precautionary_principle
Michael
