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
Dear ones,
Where might I get or mirror a dump of Commons media files?
> It seems worth mentioning on the front page of
https://dumps.wikimedia.org/
> It looks like the compressed XML of the ~50M description pages is ~25GB.
> It looks like wiki-team set up a dump script that posted monthly dumps to
the internet archive; in 2013 it stopped include the month+year in the
title; in 2016 it stopped altogether.
https://archive.org/details/wikimediacommons
Greetings,
Today, 28th February 2021 is the last date to receive creative works.
We are still waiting to witness your creative way to celebrate Wikipedia's
20th Birthday celebration, write a poem, sing a song, draw a painting,
click a photograph and more..
For more information, kindly have a look at the event page: *"Wikipedia
20th celebration the way I & my family feels"
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20th_celebration_the_way_I_%26_my…>*
We like to thank you for your immense contribution so far to our event
titled *"Wikipedia 20th celebration the way I & my family feels"
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20th_celebration_the_way_I_%26_my…>*
To know about already submitted creative work, kindly visit here
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_20th_birthday>
Let's all be creative and celebrate Wikipedia20 birthday, *"the way I and
my family feels"*.
If you are interested to contribute please participate. Do feel free to
share the news and ask others to participate.
Namaste,
Rajeeb.
(U:Marajozkee)
This post is onwiki at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Moving_toward_Speci…
-------
=== Background ===
Special:MediaSearch [1]–in addition to using Commons categories and
wikitext from templates–uses structured data on Commons and information
from Wikidata to find the most relevant and extensive results. This is a
new back-end approach to search for Commons, combined with a new interface
that makes the media results larger and the prominent focus of the page,
accessing some file information like licensing and description information
directly on the page as well as various ways to filter results.
Special:MediaSearch also natively supports all languages supported by
MediaWiki, and will utilize Wikidata’s concept-linking abilities and
multilingual labels to find relevant results regardless of the language of
the search term.
Special:Search [2], as a tool designed and built for the text-heavy side of
the projects, has always struggled to properly find and display media from
Commons without some of the more advanced features like Category search.
Special:Search also functions at its best in English, and is not
necessarily friendly to other languages.
One of the last remaining goals of the Structured Data on Commons project
is building and deploying a new search on Commons, a search created
specifically for Commons (ref: Structured Data on Commons grant
application, page 6, "Make searching for media files much more effective"
[3]). Special:MediaSearch has been in development for the past year to
complete this goal, keeping Special:Search available for users for cases
when its purposeful wikitext-based search may be more appropriate to use.
Release timeline and feedback along the way
=== Release timeline and feedback along the way ===
After completing bug fixes, updates, new features, and design changes based
on community feedback over the past year, the Structured Data team is ready
to begin the process of making Special:MediaSearch the default landing page
for the search bar. This also means that the “files depicting…” feature
will be removed, since MediaSearch uses depicts as a search input. A/B
testing and user experience testing has demonstrated a superior search
experience for all users of Commons, and survey feedback indicated a need
by some users to keep Special:Search available for their preference.. The
development team will honor the desire from the community to still be able
to get to Special:Search–there will be a link to access the page through
Special:MediaSearch, and there will be a preference to make Special:Search
the default landing page if someone would like to keep using it as their
primary source.
The team will release the default setting in stages, starting with
anonymous/not-logged-in users first at the end of March and then moving to
logged-in users at the end of April. The time between each release phase
will be approximately four weeks, and during this time I'll post about the
release and provide an opportunity for the community to leave feedback or
notice of crucial bugs or breaks in the feature that may need to be
addressed before the deployment continues. The team is still receptive to
community input, to make sure any small pain points in MediaSearch are
addressed before the default setting is released to all users [4]. It is
important to the team that the release goes as smoothly as possible for the
community, and they're here to listen and respond in case of problems.
Thanks for your time, I'll be sure to post updates as needed as we get
closer to the default setting change.
1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MediaSearch
2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search
3.
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Public_Copy_-_Struc…
4.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Structured_data/Media_search
--
Keegan Peterzell (he/him)
Technical Collaboration Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation
Hello friends
This is a short announcement to inform you that the latest edition of
Wiki Loves Africa has launched !
The 2021 theme is "Health and Wellness" (surprised ?)
and can include representations of/traditional or western medical
interventions or personnel/,/healthy eating/, or/exercise/etc..
Contest page is here :
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2021
There is a lot of info being published at the moment from the main
twitter account and facebook account. Do not hesitate to follow, like,
share etc. (links on the contest page)
Many country teams are involved and you are welcome to support them in
whatever way you will feel most helpful and relevant ;)
WLA over the last 6 years is
* Over*64,000 images*collected
* *8,120 unique*submitters
* Images viewed*520 millions*times altogether (Sept 2020)
* 270+ events in 23 African countries
* Submitted images*viewed 41 million times*each month (April 2020);
* *80%+ of competitors*are newbies;
For those interested by meta topics:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Africa_2021
Florence
PS: we are looking for some volunteer jury members from ANY country to
help serve on national juries to support the small teams. If interested,
please contact us.
(French, English or Arabic speaking please).
Greetings,
Good news!! We have further extended the last date to receive creative
works.
The event is still on till 28th February 2021.
We are still waiting to witness your creative way to celebrate Wikipedia's
20th Birthday celebration, write a poem, sing a song, draw a painting,
click a photograph and more..
For more information, kindly have a look at the event page: *"Wikipedia
20th celebration the way I & my family feels"
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20th_celebration_the_way_I_%26_my…>*
We like to thank you for your immense contribution so far to our event
titled *"Wikipedia 20th celebration the way I & my family feels"
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20th_celebration_the_way_I_%26_my…>*
To know about already submitted creative work, kindly visit here
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_20th_birthday>
Let's all be creative and celebrate Wikipedia20 birthday, *"the way I and
my family feels"*.
If you are interested to contribute please participate. Do feel free to
share the news and ask others to participate.
Namaste,
Rajeeb.
(U:Marajozkee)
Greetings,
Last few days left to receive creative works. We are still waiting to
witness your creative way to celebrate Wikipedia's 20th Birthday
celebration, write a poem, sing a song, draw a painting, click a photograph
and more..
For more information, kindly have a look at the event page: *"Wikipedia
20th celebration the way I & my family feels"
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20th_celebration_the_way_I_%26_my…>*
The event is still on till 14th February 2021.
We like to thank you for your immense contribution so far to our event
titled *"Wikipedia 20th celebration the way I & my family feels"
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20th_celebration_the_way_I_%26_my…>*
To know about already submitted creative work, kindly visit here
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_20th_birthday>
Let's all be creative and celebrate Wikipedia20 birthday, *"the way I and
my family feels"*.
If you are interested to contribute please participate. Do feel free to
share the news and ask others to participate.
Namaste,
Rajeeb.
(U:Marajozkee)
My initial cc to *commons-l* was rejected because I wasn't subscribed to
the mailing list, so just forwarding this again.
Ryan
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ryan Kemper <rkemper(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Mon, Feb 8, 2021 at 2:26 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikidata] WCQS Beta Downtime beginning Feb 4 18:30 UTC
To: Discussion list for the Wikidata project <wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Closing the loop here:
WCQS service has been restored. Our apologies again for the unexpected
service interruption.
> Last time I checked WCQS was short for "Wikimedia Commons Query Service"
( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SPARQL_query_service ) so I'm
a bit puzzled why you posted this on the Wikidata mailing list instead of
the Wikimedia Commons list? I hope it will be back soon.
This is a great point Maarten - the Wikimedia Commons list would have made
a lot more sense. We'll do that instead going forward.
--
Notice also published on:
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SPARQL_query_service#Updates
-
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Unscheduled_mainten…
Ryan
On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 1:49 AM Guillaume Lederrey <glederrey(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 10:11 PM Maarten Dammers <maarten(a)mdammers.nl>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Ryan and Guillaume,
>>
>> Last time I checked WCQS was short for "Wikimedia Commons Query Service"
>> ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SPARQL_query_service ) so
>> I'm a bit puzzled why you posted this on the Wikidata mailing list instead
>> of the Wikimedia Commons list? I hope it will be back soon.
>>
> You're right! Oversight on my part, thanks for propagating the information.
>
> Note that this notice has also been published on:
>
> * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SPARQL_query_service#Updates
> *
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Unscheduled_mainten…
>
>
> Have a great day!
>
> Guillaume
>
>> Maarten
>> On 03-02-2021 22:39, Guillaume Lederrey wrote:
>>
>> We ran some numbers and it looks that the data reload is going to take
>> around 2.5 days, during which WCQS will be unavailable. Sorry for this
>> interruption of service.
>>
>> On Wed, 3 Feb 2021, 21:16 Guillaume Lederrey, <glederrey(a)wikimedia.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 8:53 PM Ryan Kemper <rkemper(a)wikimedia.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> Our host *wcqs-beta-01.eqiad.wmflabs* is running low on disk space due
>>>> to its blazegraph journal dataset size. In order to free up space we will
>>>> need to take the service down, delete the journal and re-import from the
>>>> latest dump. Service interruption will begin at *Feb 4 18:30 UTC* and
>>>> continue until the data reload is complete.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Just to be clear, this is the host behind https://wcqs-beta.wmflabs.org/
>>> .
>>>
>>>
>>>> We'll send out a notification when the downtime begins and when it ends
>>>> as well.
>>>>
>>>> *Note*: This doesn't affect WDQS, only the WCQS beta.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Wikidata mailing list
>>>> Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> *Guillaume Lederrey* (he/him)
>>> Engineering Manager
>>> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikidata mailing listWikidata@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikidata mailing list
>> Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
>>
>
>
> --
> *Guillaume Lederrey* (he/him)
> Engineering Manager
> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikidata mailing list
> Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
>
Hi Ryan and Guillaume,
Last time I checked WCQS was short for "Wikimedia Commons Query Service"
( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SPARQL_query_service ) so
I'm a bit puzzled why you posted this on the Wikidata mailing list
instead of the Wikimedia Commons list? I hope it will be back soon.
Maarten
On 03-02-2021 22:39, Guillaume Lederrey wrote:
> We ran some numbers and it looks that the data reload is going to take
> around 2.5 days, during which WCQS will be unavailable. Sorry for this
> interruption of service.
>
> On Wed, 3 Feb 2021, 21:16 Guillaume Lederrey, <glederrey(a)wikimedia.org
> <mailto:glederrey@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 8:53 PM Ryan Kemper <rkemper(a)wikimedia.org
> <mailto:rkemper@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Our host *wcqs-beta-01.eqiad.wmflabs* is running low on disk
> space due to its blazegraph journal dataset size. In order to
> free up space we will need to take the service down, delete
> the journal and re-import from the latest dump. Service
> interruption will begin at *Feb 4 18:30 UTC* and continue
> until the data reload is complete.
>
>
> Just to be clear, this is the host behind
> https://wcqs-beta.wmflabs.org/.
>
> We'll send out a notification when the downtime begins and
> when it ends as well.
>
> *Note*: This doesn't affect WDQS, only the WCQS beta.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikidata mailing list
> Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org>
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
>
>
>
> --
> *Guillaume Lederrey* (he/him)
> Engineering Manager
> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikidata mailing list
> Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
Hi Wikimedians,
Greetings from Wiki Loves Butterfly team. As you might know, for the last 4
years, we have been documenting butterfly taxon endemic to eastern and
north-eastern part of India through the Wiki Loves Butterfly project. Our
aim is to increase the amount of free license materials along with
enrichment of related content on different Wikimedia sites. Our project has
been previously supported by 4 Rapid Grants. Since the beginning of the
project in 2016, we have gained considerable amount of expertise, maturity
and confidence to successfully plan and execute field-documentations and
expanded our area of activity in remote deep forests of North East India.
But the range of activities in all of our previous endeavors were much
restricted due to budget constraints, which has now encouraged us to apply
for the Project Grants Program for the coming phase, for vaster and more
extensive qualitative documentation related to the topic. The WLB team is
requesting all interested Wikimedians to visit our Project Grants proposal
and provide honest and valuable feedback and suggestions here -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Atudu/Wiki_Loves_Butterfly_-…
Regards,
Ananya
(On behalf of WLB team)