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
I recently hacked together a thing [0] which allows you to add and edit
descriptions on file pages in an Ajaxy way. Nobody has told me that I
broke everything yet, so I'm making sliiiightly more calls for testing
for it. Bug reports and feature requests can go to the talk page [1] and
I will try to get to them as quickly as possible.
Things I already want:
* Delete descriptions
* Default to user's interface language if it's not present
* Parse and display the new descriptions without page reload
* Slightly less clunky interface (but not too much less clunky!)
Thanks in advance for the input, I look forward to making this nicer.
[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MarkTraceur/editDescriptions.js
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MarkTraceur/editDescriptions.js
--
Mark Holmquist
Software Engineer, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation
mtraceur(a)member.fsf.org
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:MHolmquist
Ever thought of seeing your own photos on Wikipedia ?
This is your chance to take part in our annual photography competition to improve Wikipedia. The encyclopaedia is visited by 500 million people every month, and needs you to help improve its photos.
Wiki Loves Monuments UK is aimed at the UK's listed buildings and ancient monuments, and starts on Monday 1st September. The contest is supported by the Royal Photographic Society, English Heritage, and Wikimedia UK.
We've got lots of pictures of Tower Bridge and Stonehenge, but there's so much more of the country's heritage to celebrate. There are tens of thousands of eligible sites, so check out the UK competition website (http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org.uk) and see what's nearby. As well as prizes for the best image, we have a special prize this year for the best image of a listed building on one of the 'At Risk' registers.
It doesn't matter when your photos are taken so long as they're uploaded by the end of September. If you took some stunning pictures back in April, or five years ago, you can still upload them.
To enter, you'll need to agree to release your entries under a free licence allowing them to be freely used by anyone for any purpose, including Wikipedia. You retain copyright, and can require anyone using your images to attribute them to you as photographer.
Help us show off your local history!
Michael
___
Michael Maggs
Wiki Loves Monuments volunteer
Greetings,
Please note that the time of the IRC chat was changed to 18:00 (UTC)
i.e. one hour earlier than previously announced. (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=next&oldid=132667852 )
You can see how it converts to your timezone using this tool:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Structured+Data+IR…
On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Fabrice Florin <fflorin(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Greetings!
>
> We invite you to join a discussion about Structured Data on Commons, to help
> us plan our next steps for this project.
>
> The Structured Data initiative proposes to store and retrieve information
> for media files in machine-readable data on Wikimedia Commons, using
> Wikidata tools and practices, as described on our new project page (1).
>
> The purpose of this project is to make it easier for users to read and write
> file information, and to enable developers to build better tools to view,
> search, edit, curate and use media files. To that end, we propose to
> investigate this opportunity together through community discussions and
> small experiments. If these initial tests are successful, we would develop
> new tools and practices for structured data, then work with our communities
> to gradually migrate unstructured data into a machine-readable format over
> time.
>
> The Multimedia team and the Wikidata team are starting to plan this project
> together, in collaboration with many community volunteers active on
> Wikimedia Commons and other wikis. We had a truly inspiring roundtable
> discussion about Structured Data at Wikimania a few weeks ago, to define a
> first proposal together (2).
>
> We would now like to extend this discussion to include more community
> members that might benefit from this initiative. Please take a moment to
> read the project overview on Commons, then let us know what you think, by
> answering some of the questions on its talk page (3).
>
> We also invite you to join a Structured Data Q&A on Wednesday September 3 at
> 19:00 UTC, so we can discuss some of the details live in this IRC office
> hours chat. Please RSVP if you plan to attend (4).
>
> Lastly, we propose to form small workgroups to investigate workflows, data
> structure, research, platform, features, migration and other open issues. If
> you are interested in contributing to one of these workgroups, we invite you
> to sign up on directly on our hub page (5) -- and help start a sub-page for
> your workgroup.
>
> We look forward to some productive discussions with you in coming weeks. In
> previous roundtables, many of you told us this is the most important
> contribution that our team can make to support multimedia in coming years.
> We heard you loud and clear and are happy to devote more resources to bring
> it to life, with your help.
>
> We are honored to be working with the Wikidata team and talented community
> members like you to take on this challenge, improve our infrastructure and
> provide a better experience for all our users.
>
> Onward!
>
>
> Fabrice — for the Structured Data team
>
>
> (1) Structured Data Hub on Commons:
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data
>
> (2) Structured Data Slides:
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Structured_Data_-_Slides.pdf
>
> (3) Structured Data Talk Page:
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Structured_data
>
> (4) Structured Data Q&A (IRC chat on Sep. 3):
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data#Discussions
>
> (5) Structured Data Workgroups:
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data#Workgroups
>
>
> _______________________________
>
> Fabrice Florin
> Product Manager, Multimedia
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
--
Guillaume Paumier
Hello friends of Commons,
We would like to invite you to join a global community consultation about Media Viewer.
Please take a moment to join the discussion and add your suggestions for improvement here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_(Product)/Media_Viewer…
The goal of this consultation is to review the status of this project and identify any critical issues that still need to be addressed -- so we can plan our next steps based on your feedback.
The consultation will be open until September 7th. If agreed upon critical issues cannot be resolved in the near term, the Wikimedia Foundation will temporarily move the feature back into opt-in beta globally.
Here’s our latest Media Viewer Improvements plan, where our team will post regular updates on planned development tasks:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Improvements
Note that the proposed tasks on that page are still preliminary, and may be adjusted based on community feedback and ongoing user studies.
We look forward to hearing from you soon on the consultation page.
Regards as ever,
Fabrice
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
FYI - User:TheDJ has made a very handy tool that will let you see the
machine-readable data (per COM:MRD) for a given file on the File: page.
This helps ensure that any automated re-use can be done in a manner that's
license compliant and consistent with authors' wishes. To give it a spin,
import this guy into your common.js:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:TheDJ/datacheck.js
This should definitely help leading into the systematic structured data
efforts. Still early days and would make a nice gadget down the line :)
Erik
This should have gone to you folk as well.
Long story short: developing structured metadata for Commons is starting in
the very earliest planning/discussion phases - not a line of code has yet
been written - and the community members driving the discussions with the
WMF Multimedia team and WMDE Wikidata team invite you to participate *from
the very start.*
Initial IRC office hours: Wednesday September 3 at 19:00 UTC
Initial reading material:
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Wikimedia_Commons>
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Fabrice Florin <fflorin(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 3:48 AM
Subject: Structured Data on Commons
To: Multimedia Mailing List <multimedia(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Greetings!
We invite you to join a discussion about Structured Data on Commons, to
help us plan our next steps for this project.
The Structured Data initiative proposes to store and retrieve information
for media files in machine-readable data on Wikimedia Commons, using
Wikidata tools and practices, as described on our new project page (1).
The purpose of this project is to make it easier for users to read and
write file information, and to enable developers to build better tools to
view, search, edit, curate and use media files. To that end, we propose to
investigate this opportunity together through community discussions and
small experiments. If these initial tests are successful, we would develop
new tools and practices for structured data, then work with our communities
to gradually migrate unstructured data into a machine-readable format over
time.
The Multimedia team and the Wikidata team are starting to plan this project
together, in collaboration with many community volunteers active on
Wikimedia Commons and other wikis. We had a truly inspiring roundtable
discussion about Structured Data at Wikimania a few weeks ago, to define a
first proposal together (2).
We would now like to extend this discussion to include more community
members that might benefit from this initiative. Please take a moment to
read the project overview on Commons, then let us know what you think, by
answering some of the questions on its talk page (3).
We also invite you to join a Structured Data Q&A on Wednesday September 3
at 19:00 UTC, so we can discuss some of the details live in this IRC office
hours chat. Please RSVP if you plan to attend (4).
Lastly, we propose to form small workgroups to investigate workflows, data
structure, research, platform, features, migration and other open issues.
If you are interested in contributing to one of these workgroups, we invite
you to sign up on directly on our hub page (5) -- and help start a sub-page
for your workgroup.
We look forward to some productive discussions with you in coming weeks. In
previous roundtables, many of you told us this is the most important
contribution that our team can make to support multimedia in coming years.
We heard you loud and clear and are happy to devote more resources to bring
it to life, with your help.
We are honored to be working with the Wikidata team and talented community
members like you to take on this challenge, improve our infrastructure and
provide a better experience for all our users.
Onward!
Fabrice — for the Structured Data team
(1) Structured Data Hub on Commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data
(2) Structured Data Slides:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Structured_Data_-_Slides.pdf
(3) Structured Data Talk Page:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Structured_data
(4) Structured Data Q&A (IRC chat on Sep. 3):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data#Discussions
(5) Structured Data Workgroups:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data#Workgroups
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
--
Keegan Peterzell
Community Liaison, Product
Wikimedia Foundation