I have to say I share Russavia's bafflement around this issue. The accomplishments people have made on the platform of Wikimedia Commons are, in my view, staggering. Just this morning, a couple Wikipedian friends told me about the photography of JJ Harrison, somebody who has uploaded an extraordinary collection of bird photos, among many others. It's worth a look.[1]
The collection of freely licensed photos and other files at Commons is enormous, diverse, and useful. It is fairly well organized. Tons of useless junk gets weeded out. Hundreds of Wikimedia projects are supported in their various missions. All this happens in spite of there being a firehose of junk and copyright violations pointed at Commons every single day.[2] In spite of the fact that native speakers of many, many languages have to find ways to work together. In spite of the fact that people bring astonishingly varied projects and dreams and hopes and expectations to their work on Commons. What is the thing that makes all this possible? The dedication of the volunteers. The people who sit down at their computers day after day to pitch in whatever way they see fit. Sorting through deletion nominations, filling requests to rename files, considering policy changes, and -- my personal favorite -- gradually amassing probably the best compendium of knowledge about certain aspects of international intellectual property law ever assembled in human history. When I hear people refer to this community as "broken," I am amazed how out of touch they are with the reality and exquisite beauty of what Commons is. I can only assume they are overly influenced by a small number of edge cases that have come to their attention god knows how, and have generalized on those experiences to draw a fallacious conclusion. With all that said, of course, there's a tremendous amount of stuff that could and should be done to make Commons work better, to make it a more inviting and respectful environment, to make it more effective at advancing the Wikimedia mission. But one thing I am damn sure is not part of that solution is offhand insults directed at the community of dedicated volunteers who sustain and nurture Commons. Even if there are unhealthy social dynamics in the way the site functions (and there certainly are), I can't begin to imagine what theory of progress would rely on calling them out as a reflection of the overall health of the project. -Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles/JJ_Harrison [2] For instance, one recent day saw 48 nominations for deletion: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/2013/05/04 On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Russavia <russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com>wrote: > And of course I love how you skirted the issue of your statement that > Commons produces nothing beyond photos of genitals. > > I'll be waiting for your numbers of how many genitals files are on > Commons, out of the 17 million files in total we have. I'm having a > guess here; perhaps 3,000? Maybe 5,000. > > But I do know that > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Uncircumcised_human_penis > and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Circumcised_human_penis > basically pales in comparison to > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:All_Nippon_Airways_aircraft_at_Tokyo_International_Airport > > And yet we have a problem on the amount of cock pics on Commons? Seriously? > > Any time you feel like reasonable discussion on things Ironholds, feel > free to chime in; because your comments were nothing more than > ill-informed opinion. > > Cheers, > > Russavia > > > On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 4:59 AM, Oliver Keyes <ironho...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > >> > >> Quite honestly, is it any wonder when people make such statements that > >> editors from Commons basically ignore them, and don't bother > >> responding -- much like the weekly "Commons is broken" threads we see > >> elsewhere...you know the ones I am talking about. > >> > > I would suggest that if you have a weekly "your project is broken" thread > > something is going terribly wrong. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Gendergap mailing list > > Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap > > > > _______________________________________________ > Gendergap mailing list > Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap >
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