Hoi,
The other day I blogged about a Wikimedian in Iran who is sitting on 5Gb of
images and it is too much of a pain for him to upload it. Commons is
disfunctional for several reasons and the complicated and clunky user
interface is one.
When people use Google to search for a دِرَخت they do not find the same
quantity and quality of images. When they search for વૃક્ષ they find only 18
images most not about a tree. Gujarati is spoken by some 50 million people.
The notion that Google is functional for most languages is a myth.
When we want to have people use Commons, be it for uploads or for later
usage, we need to make sure that Commons actually works for our editors who
do not speak English. As it is, people look for pictures by going through
interwikilinks and using the material that they find in this way.
Consequently we have an overabundance of images used everywhere that
originate in the "first" world. This does contribute to a systemic bias and
it is not conducive to our much desired "neutral point of view".
If Google is to become usable, it needs to support languages like Persian,
Gujarati, Amharic to make the images we have available to all of our
community. It has been demonstrated that we can show the category trees and
the categories in many languages. If we are to go for funding, this means
that we can actually deliver the goods.
Given that Commons has only 3.7 million files is hardly a sign of its
success, compare it to Flickr and you see what the "competition" is doing.
Thanks,
GerardM
PS It is still a great achievement, but it is could and should be so much
more.
2009/1/9 phoebe ayers <[email protected]>
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Desilets, Alain
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> MediaWiki supports a upload from URL feature, thus skipping the need
> > to
> >> local save. But it's disabled on WMF projects.
> >
> > I suspect that will not be easy enough for many folks. For example, I
> > suspect many people will do something like this:
> >
> > * Go to google and search for a picture of a tree
> > **
> > http://images.google.com/images?hl=fr&q=tree&btnG=Recherche+d%27images&g
> > bv=2
> >
> > * Click on a tree that looks interesting, which would lead them
> > somewhere like here:
> > **
> > http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.freefoto.com/images/15
> > /19/15_19_1---Tree--Sunrise--Northumberland_web.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www
> > .freefoto.com/preview/15-19-1%3Fffid%3D15-19-1&usg=__OFzLWf5V_u5Jq7HX_6o
> > TYEBMQYA=&h=400&w=600&sz=129&hl=fr&start=2&sig2=Sgr35XjTpKJsBElvgz8QOQ&t
> > bnid=rL2dCnuYhy7MAM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&ei=FCNmSb-0EaX6NNS0jZYE&prev=/imag
> > es%3Fq%3Dtree%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Dfr
> >
> > * Copy and paste that google URL into the wiki image upload box
> >
> > * Of course, we tech-oriented folks know that the above URL is not the
> > URL of the actual image (it's the URL of a page that CONTAINS the
> > image). To get the URL of the actual image, you of course, have to first
> > click on the google link that says: "Display full size image", which
> > gets you to:
> > **
> > http://www.freefoto.com/images/15/19/15_19_1---Tree--Sunrise--Northumber
> > land_web.jpg
> >
> > * But given that the previous google URL is largely dominated by the
> > image of interest, I suspect (based on my observations) that most
> > "normal" folks would use that as the URL for the image.
> >
> > Now, if the user could drag the image from the google URL onto the wiki
> > page, and the wiki was able to figure out from that the URL of the image
> > and upload it, now that would be REALLY COOL!
> >
> > Alain
>
> ... cool, but probably not that great a feature for WMF projects,
> because copyright violations are widespread as it is. There's a fine
> line between making images easily uploadable and, well, discouraging
> people from uploading stuff.
>
> But improving the interface for working with images once you've got
> them, for embedding them in existing pages, etc. would be great. And
> it would be nice to not make the upload/licensing wizard just that,
> and not a crazy templated hack.
>
> I can't think of good ways to "prove" that commons is useful, however,
> beyond the standard arguments about making free materials accessible
> to a global community, reducing duplication and improving quality
> among all editions of our projects, providing a resource for (more
> than just the encyclopedia) to tap, etc.
>
> -- phoebe
>
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