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
X-posting as of special Commons interest.
On 27 September 2016 at 01:57, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps of interest: "...We’re making the latest version of our image
> captioning system available as an open source model in TensorFlow."
> https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/show-and-tell-image-captioning-open…
>
> Pine
I wonder if anyone would be prepared to set this up in Wikimedia-Labs
as a callable tool to test out? This would be great for, say,
pre-filtering Flickr uploads to help avoid copyright issues or limit
photographs to those of particular educational value. It's a set of
Python modules, but I'm unsure of how complex the dependencies would
be.
I'm currently uploading someone's 8,000 photograph stream, and
it would great to limit it to just the ones of birds, plants and
landscapes, leaving out the shots of people on holiday or family
photos.
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
Perhaps of interest: "...We’re making the latest version of our image
captioning system available as an open source model in TensorFlow."
https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/show-and-tell-
image-captioning-open.html
Pine
Hi all,
I've been working on improving the Wikimedia Commons Android app[1] for the
past couple of months. In addition to several bugfixes and minor
improvements, we've just rolled out a new feature - a list of nearby places
that need photos!
This feature pulls locations without photos from a file maintained by the
Wiki Needs Pictures[2] project and arranges them in order of proximity to
the user's position. Tapping on an item in the list brings the user to
their phone's map app with the coordinates pinned. To access this feature,
select 'Nearby' (or the icon of a guy with a flag) from the action bar
(menu) of the app.
The current implementation is a very basic/bare-bones version, as we want
to gauge users' response and feedback before working on any enhancements.
So please do try it out, see how it works for you, and feel free to report
any bugs or suggest any enhancements on our Google Group forums[3] or
GitHub issues page[4].
Please note that you will need to allow the app to access your location in
order for this feature to work. Also, as the list is rather large, initial
loading might take a while.
Thanks!
[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.free.nrw.commons
[2]: https://github.com/alemela/wiki-needs-pictures
[3]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/commons-app-android
[4]: https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons/issues/
--
Regards,
Josephine
Hi all,
You may have seen my email earlier this week announcing the copyright
strategy—a new effort to improve how we identify, prioritize, and address
copyright issues throughout the Wikimedia movement. (I’ve copied it below,
in case you missed it.)
As part of getting feedback on the strategy and communicating its vision,
goals, and process, the Wikimedia Foundation legal team will be holding an
office hour on IRC:
*Thursday, September 15, 2016. 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT).*
Please stop by #wikimedia-office at that time to discuss the copyright
strategy and ask any questions you have about it. There are instructions
for participating on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
We have timed the office hour to correspond with when we expect to shift
our focus from meta-discussion about the strategy to following the strategy
and addressing individual copyright issues.
In the meantime, please take a look at the copyright strategy itself, and
feel free to provide feedback on the talk page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Copyright_strategy
Best,
Charles
> Hi all,
We on the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Team have been working on creating a
> better and more collaborative process for organizing, streamlining, and
> completing Wikimedia’s copyright-related work. We’d like to hear from you
> about it in the next couple weeks, and then we’d like to work together to
> identify, prioritize, and address copyright issues.
You can read more about the copyright strategy on Meta at
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Copyright_strategy and leave questions and
> comments on the talk page.
Thanks!
==
Charles M. Roslof
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
croslof(a)wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged
information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please
delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the
Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice
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