Commons-l February 2018

commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org

8 participants
6 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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Google removes "View image" button from image search results
by Chris Koerner 26 Feb '18

26 Feb '18

Preemptive apology for the cross-post I haven't seen this noted anywhere in our community and thought it was worthy of discussion. Google has removed an easily accessible button that would take you directly to the image file in search results. I wonder what impact this may have, if any, on the discovery and use of images hosted on Wikimedia projects (most notably Commons) that appear in these Google search results. https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/964226180776845312 See also: https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/15/17017864/google-removes-view-image-butto… Hat tip to Quim Gil for sharing. Yours, Chris Koerner Community Liaison Wikimedia Foundation

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3D objects can now be uploaded to Commons
by Chris Koerner 22 Feb '18

22 Feb '18

Greetings Commonists, Commons now supports the uploading of 3D objects in the STL file format. 3D files will show a static preview image when viewing, and an interactive viewer will load when that preview image is clicked. To upload a 3D file, log in (or create a new account) and click the “Upload file” link on the left of the page. When viewing 3D files, please make sure you have the MediaViewer enabled to use the interactive 3D features. Please help us test the feature and upload your 3d objects. There are a few bugs the team is tracking. Please ping me if you need help filing a Phabricator task. For more information on the feature, you can read he help documentation and the technical documentation on how the MediaWiki extension works. [0] [1] The first object to be uploaded is a 3D model of a Asad Al-Lat statue that was destroyed in the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria along with most of the main world heritage ruins in the city. [2] The image is tagged with #NEWPALMIRA in honor of Bassel Khartabil. [3] You can search for all uploaded 3D objects by using "filetype:3d" in your searches. [4] There is also a Wikimedia blog post announcing this to the rest of the world. :) [5] [0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:3D [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:3D [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asad_Al-Lat.stl [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassel_Khartabil [4] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=filetype%3A3d&title=Specia… [5] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/02/20/three-dimensional-models/ Yours, Chris Koerner Community Liaison Wikimedia Foundation

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Structured Data on Commons feedback - What gets stored where (Ontology)
by Keegan Peterzell 22 Feb '18

22 Feb '18

Greetings, There is a new feedback request up on Wikimedia Commons regarding Structured Data on Commons. The topic is a very important discussion: between wikitext-in-Mediawiki, Wikibase on Commons, and Wikibase on Wikidata, what file metadata gets store where? The discussion is here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Get_involved/Fee… [0] It will formally run for two weeks, closing on 1 March. There will not be decisions made at that time, this is a part of the information-gathering process in order to make the informed decisions. Thank you for your time, see you on the wiki. 0. Plaintext link: < https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Get_involved/Fee… > -- Keegan Peterzell Technical Collaboration Specialist Wikimedia Foundation

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IRC office hours - Structured Commons - Tuesday 13 February
by Keegan Peterzell 13 Feb '18

13 Feb '18

Greetings, As the subject line says, there will be a Wikimedia Foundation-hosted IRC office hours [0] this coming Tuesday, 13 February 2018, from 18:00-19:00 UTC [1]. The topic is Structured Data on Commons, and the subjects are mainly whatever those who attend would like to discuss. The Structured Data hub has information about what the development team has been up this past year as well as upcoming plans [2] for those who might like to prepare or find interesting things to talk about. The Structured Data team also issues a newsletter every few months. You can subscribe to have it delivered to a talk page, receive a notification instead delivery, and read past issues. Find out more on Meta [3]. I'll be sending out a reminder email a few hours before this occurs in one week's time. Thank you for your time, I hope to see you there. 0. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours 1. To check your local date and time for the office hours < https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=18&min=00&sec=0&… > 2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Development 3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Structured_… -- Keegan Peterzell Technical Collaboration Specialist Wikimedia Foundation

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Supporting data formats (csv, ods) on Commons
by Samuel Klein 06 Feb '18

06 Feb '18

This has been missing for some time -- there is no way for researchers to use commons to share and archive freely-licensed data files. It came up again at the dev summit as a persistent problem (despite the existence of the Data namespace); has there been any recent talk about enabling this? SJ

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Commons-l February 2018