Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening

[Gerard Meijssen-3]

Hoi,
When you indicate that the relation between Commons and en.wp is clunky, you
will acknowledge that the policies re images of the English Wikipedia are
rather different. This prevents a common understanding about procedures and
policies. So I will grant you that it is not only language that makes for
rocky relations. However, people who can read / write English are the ones
that have the necessary ability to get value out of Commons, they are the
only ones who really benefit from the project

The big argument for Commons at the time was the ability to share pictures
between the various projects. When you analyse the use of pictures, I do not
doubt that many projects use the same pictures even when quality
alternatives exist. As a whole this is boring. There have been many
initiatives that I do qualify as sensible. When Commons cannot host a
picture under its doctrines it now delinks pictures from other projects. It
now even allows other MediaWiki projects (outside of the WMF) to share
pictures. I think Commons is indeed providing the service it can provide
within its restrictions and its means.

When Commons is to do a "better" job, it is important to realise what it
currently can and cannot do. In my opinion, the lack of usability is why
Commons does not have 25 million pictures. The consequence of the lack of
usability is that fewer uploads are done from people who do not communicate
in English, Commons is consequently not the resource for worldwide education
that it could be.
Thanks,
        GerardM

2008/12/7 David Gerard <dgerard@...>

> 2008/12/6 Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh@...>:
>
> > I can think of two solutions here. One is to simply have more
> > multi-project admins. Wikimedia ought to be one big community with a
> > commons goal. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly) Wikimedia has
> > been separated into many different islands separated by language
> > borders, which are very hard to open up. Commons was born as a
> > multilingual project, but in that aspect has failed I believe.
>
>
> Relations between Commons and en:wp are clunky at the best of times,
> so it's certainly not just a language issue at all.
>
> It's Commons forgetting it's a service project or Commons admins
> actively working against being a service project, because they want to
> be regarded as a completely independent project.
>
>
> - d.
>
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[Teun Spaans]

Cite: <i>Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has
infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two.  </i>
I think on the whole i can agree with this. And it is not limited to
copyright violations. Commons has turned celf-centered more and more over
the past years.

Out of disgust over its bad organization, i have limited my presence on
commons as much as possible. But one of the last times I logged on, there
was a poll or vote which looked like it was designed to limit voting to hard
code commonists: volunteers had to do at least 20-50 edits a month to be
able to vote. I think it is ridiculous that a small bunch of hard core
volunteers try to lock out those of who are actually contributing the media.
Luckily it was stopped, but mainly on technical grounds, not because it is
ethically incorrect to lock contributors out.

(But may be I am prejudiced, once an enthousiastic supporter of commons, i
nowadays avoid it as much as possible in wiki contexts - which forces me to
use it regularly, much to my charin).

A good question is of cource: why are flickr, webshots and picassa so much
more popular than commons? And: can we create a free alternative that can
compete with them?

Sometimes i wonder if some wikia like organization could do a better
service, with a wider scope of images - if i would try to upload my holiday
pix on commons they would speedily get deleted as "not encyclopedic". But
while some are not encyclopedic, many would qualify for free usage, such as
cities, panoramas, and even some people pix.

I wish you health and happiness,
Teun Spaans


On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 11:31 PM, Lars Aronsson <lars@...> wrote:

> Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
>
> > That might be a hell of a incentive to change. Before we talk
> > about getting out the torches, I think we should see if we can
> > make Commons functional. The incentive of being shuttered makes
> > it more relevant to those who are in denial. I have made two
> > suggestions on improvements. One is a training program with
> > specific handling, i.e. no more we delete in 7 days, a different
> > template that is more collegial. The second is to cross appoint
> > administrators from underrepresented projects who agree to
> > undergo a boot camp program. Thoughts?
>
> Maybe we are too fast to discuss solutions now, when we should
> first discuss the problem.  I brought this up on commons-l before
> it spread to foundation-l.  With the risk of making myself a
> target for "tl;dr" (too long; didn't read), here's the problem
> that I see:
>
> Wikipedia in many languages is at a stage where the basic articles
> are written (apple is a fruit, Paris is the capital of France) and
> we need to recruit more people who know more areas, both academics
> and people who lived through the politics of the 1960s.  This
> includes events such as Wikipedia Academy and also courses for the
> elderly.  We can't hope that these people are skilled in PHP
> programming or fluent in English, as many people are on this list.
> Some might be able to write good text, but not used to wiki
> markup, and completely disabled in wiki template design.  Perhaps
> they should stick to scanning and uploading their old photos from
> the 1970s.
>
> We still have all kinds of vandalism on Wikipedia.  If patrolling
> is efficient and finds and reverts 95% of vandalism, it might also
> spill over to falsely "fighting" 1% of beginner contributions.
> We're scaring serious people away by our own mistake.  This is
> where we need to improve.  It's like having a zero tolerance on
> crime, without becoming a brutal fascist state. Within each
> (small/medium) language of Wikipedia, this is quite easy.  We all
> speak the same language and we know each other.
>
> But as soon as it comes to image uploading, an area where the
> elderly have decades of photos to contribute, we're sending our
> beginners off to Wikimedia Commons.  Even if the menues and most
> templates are localized in every major language, this is not true
> of the admin community there. If a beginner fails to fill out all
> details of free licensing, their user talk page will receive an
> image deletion request in English. Even if there is a translated
> version of that notification, the user's explanation in a local
> language might not be understood by the admins.  If the user has
> good credentials that are easily verified (retired schoolteacher,
> museum manager, ...) and has built a solid reputation in the local
> language Wikipedia, a Commons admin from another language might
> not fully understand this.
>
> Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has
> infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two.  So many
> copyright violations and half-free images are deleted, that little
> attention is paid to the individual contributors. The focus is on
> the image, not on the user. This system is also an open target for
> abuse. Sometimes deletions are requested anonymously or without
> substantial reasons, but this is not preceived as a problem. Only
> copyright violations are preceived as a problem.  Wikimedia
> Commons might have a shortage of admins and other problems, that
> need to be sorted out.  But that's not my main issue.
>
> My main issue is this: If we invest in recruiting newcomers and in
> fostering our local admin community to receive and greet
> newcomers, how can we get the best value from that investment?
> Sending our beginners away to Wikimedia Commons and a whole new
> set of foreign language admins doesn't seem optimal.  That's like
> pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
>
> Either we should send newcomers and admins in pairs to Commons,
> somehow stating that this new user account is a Swedish speaker
> and that Swedish speaking admins can take care of any issues, or
> we should allow local uploads again, so the newcomers can stay
> within the Swedish Wikipedia.  After images have been patrolled
> locally, they can be forwarded to Commons by a system of bots, and
> only the bot operators would have to deal with the international
> admin community at Wikimedia Commons.
>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars@...)
>  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
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[Brion Vibber-3]

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Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Dennis During <dcduring@...> wrote:
>> Is there not a record of what projects actually link to commons material? If
>> not, why not
>>
>
> There is none because nobody made one.
>
> There is of course Duesentrieb's checkusage, but that only works per image.

Native support for usage tracking would be rather useful; I'm going to
bump priority on this...

- -- brion
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[Ray Saintonge]

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> So I will grant you that it is not only language that makes for
> rocky relations. However, people who can read / write English are the ones
> that have the necessary ability to get value out of Commons, they are the
> only ones who really benefit from the project

An extension of that point is that it takes a somewhat greater skill in
English to participate in policy discussions.


Ec

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[phoebe ayers-3]

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 1:00 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@...> wrote:

> I speak as a big fan of and participant in Wikimedia Commons.
>
> But: Is it time to deprecate Commons as a WMF service project? It's
> clearly failing and the local "community" is actively hostile to
> contributors from other wikis.
>
> Commons appears to have forgotten it was created as a service project
> for other WMF wikis. It's not doing the job any more.
>
> Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)

I don't participate in Commons (photography's not really my thing).
But I *do* actively promote it as an awesome place to find free media.
I was under the impression that the project had some time ago moved
beyond simply being a technically convenient service project, and
everyone was pretty well agreed on that. Am I wrong? Is this about the
idea of Commons per se, or about issues with the individual people
involved?

-- phoebe

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[Gerard Meijssen-3]

Hoi,
Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people
who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and
consequently for them Commons is useless. Add to this the extreme loads of
work of the Commons admins resulting in an unfriendly attitude towards
people who do not frequent Commons and those who do not speak English and
you appreciate why Commons has only 3.600.201 media files.
Thanks,
      GerardM

2008/12/8 phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@...>

> On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 1:00 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@...> wrote:
> > I speak as a big fan of and participant in Wikimedia Commons.
> >
> > But: Is it time to deprecate Commons as a WMF service project? It's
> > clearly failing and the local "community" is actively hostile to
> > contributors from other wikis.
> >
> > Commons appears to have forgotten it was created as a service project
> > for other WMF wikis. It's not doing the job any more.
> >
> > Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.)
>
> I don't participate in Commons (photography's not really my thing).
> But I *do* actively promote it as an awesome place to find free media.
> I was under the impression that the project had some time ago moved
> beyond simply being a technically convenient service project, and
> everyone was pretty well agreed on that. Am I wrong? Is this about the
> idea of Commons per se, or about issues with the individual people
> involved?
>
> -- phoebe
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@...
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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[Judson Dunn-2]

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 1:51 PM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:

> Hoi,
> Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people
> who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and
> consequently for them Commons is useless. Add to this the extreme loads of
> work of the Commons admins resulting in an unfriendly attitude towards
> people who do not frequent Commons and those who do not speak English and
> you appreciate why Commons has only 3.600.201 media files.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>

Right, it's baffling to me why a non-english speaking wikipedia would
decide to be commons-only. Enwiki doesn't do it, and we speak english,
why would they? That a new user who doesn't speak english could
successfully upload an image to commons, and integrate it into their
local wikipedia is completely unlikely in my opinion.

I would also *very strongly* opposed making enwiki commons only for
different reasons. I do not support a degradation of people's rights.
Wikipedia servers should be placed in a country that is most legally
convenient, and we should follow those laws. Maybe that's the US,
maybe not. Playing to the most restrictive laws is a losing game, and
one I don't see any reason to play. It is very much the *game* that
exists on commons now.

Having said that, I don't see any reason to shutter commons, or even
talk in that direction. Wikipedia's should have their own images, some
of which can be moved to commons, by people that care. If commons
wants to be a repository who are in no way beholden to the other
projects, and not a service wiki for them I think that's their
decision to make. People should be aware of that change if it's what
they want to do though, so they can plan accordingly.

Judson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Users:Cohesion

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[Gerard Meijssen-3]

Hoi,
I would prefer work done on the usability of Commons. Not solving the issues
means that we will never get a repository of images that because of its
composition offers a non biased view of the world.  Once people who do not
speak English share in the benefits of Commons and are able to find images
as well as anyone else we will have largely overcome the bias because once
these people profit from Commons, they are likely to upload to Commons as
well.

Policies and stuff are evolved and determined by discussion,.Commons needs
the adoption of the idea that these other languages need to be supported as
much as English is. Once this idea has been adopted, software can be adopted
or developed that gives Commons relevance in the rest of the world.
Thanks,
     GerardM

2008/12/8 Judson Dunn <cohesion@...>

> On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 1:51 PM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people
> > who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and
> > consequently for them Commons is useless. Add to this the extreme loads
> of
> > work of the Commons admins resulting in an unfriendly attitude towards
> > people who do not frequent Commons and those who do not speak English and
> > you appreciate why Commons has only 3.600.201 media files.
> > Thanks,
> >      GerardM
> >
>
> Right, it's baffling to me why a non-english speaking wikipedia would
> decide to be commons-only. Enwiki doesn't do it, and we speak english,
> why would they? That a new user who doesn't speak english could
> successfully upload an image to commons, and integrate it into their
> local wikipedia is completely unlikely in my opinion.
>
> I would also *very strongly* opposed making enwiki commons only for
> different reasons. I do not support a degradation of people's rights.
> Wikipedia servers should be placed in a country that is most legally
> convenient, and we should follow those laws. Maybe that's the US,
> maybe not. Playing to the most restrictive laws is a losing game, and
> one I don't see any reason to play. It is very much the *game* that
> exists on commons now.
>
> Having said that, I don't see any reason to shutter commons, or even
> talk in that direction. Wikipedia's should have their own images, some
> of which can be moved to commons, by people that care. If commons
> wants to be a repository who are in no way beholden to the other
> projects, and not a service wiki for them I think that's their
> decision to make. People should be aware of that change if it's what
> they want to do though, so they can plan accordingly.
>
> Judson
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Users:Cohesion
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@...
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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[Brion Vibber-3]

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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people
> who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and
> consequently for them Commons is useless.

That's simply ridiculous.

Many files, categories, and galleries are labeled in multiple
languages... or even not in English at all. :)

Certainly it'll be *more useful* as we're able to add more widespread
tag/category translations to help automate cross-language search, but
the notion that people "cannot possibly find pictures" or that the site
is "useless" is ridiculous and undermines the legitimate portion of your
position (that it would be good to add more multilingual features to
Commons).

- -- brion
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[Gerard Meijssen-3]

Hoi,
When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why
they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find
"paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the
search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"  and
you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.

It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English,
Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find
freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask
people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic,
Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you
try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things
that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse...

I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that demonstrates
that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were limited so the
result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does include the
category tree translated.

So the bad news is that Commons is unusable for everyone who does not read
English and the good news is, that it is a solvable problem.
Thanks,
      GerardM

2008/12/9 Brion Vibber <brion@...>

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people
> > who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and
> > consequently for them Commons is useless.
>
> That's simply ridiculous.
>
> Many files, categories, and galleries are labeled in multiple
> languages... or even not in English at all. :)
>
> Certainly it'll be *more useful* as we're able to add more widespread
> tag/category translations to help automate cross-language search, but
> the notion that people "cannot possibly find pictures" or that the site
> is "useless" is ridiculous and undermines the legitimate portion of your
> position (that it would be good to add more multilingual features to
> Commons).
>
> - -- brion
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>
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> TygAoMcWp+0sQtAGo5ky28hl1usgLpTF
> =twDY
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[Waerth]

The commons issue is not just a language issua. If it was it was
solvable. It is a hositility issue. Where people who upload the second
picture of the same object (like a TukTuk) get told it is not necassary
because the project already has one picture of a TukTuk ..... The
problem is that the commoners do not understand that the project was
started to make things easier for all the other wikimedia projects.
Instead they have now become a hindrance to the wikimedia projects.

And when you try to upload something locally it is removed and moved to
commons where it will be removed again ... so a lot of work for nothing.
Which is exactly why I do not upload any of the 100's of pictures of
Thai artists that I have taken while performing with them. I can do
without the hassle. And I am an experiences wikimedian. Can you imagine
how strangers perceive the aggressive behaviour at commons?

Waerth

> Hoi,
> When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why
> they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find
> "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the
> search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"  and
> you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
>
> It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English,
> Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find
> freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask
> people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic,
> Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you
> try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things
> that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse...
>
> I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that demonstrates
> that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were limited so the
> result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does include the
> category tree translated.
>
> So the bad news is that Commons is unusable for everyone who does not read
> English and the good news is, that it is a solvable problem.
> Thanks,
>       GerardM
>
> 2008/12/9 Brion Vibber <brion@...>
>
>  
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>    
>>> Hoi,
>>> Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people
>>> who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and
>>> consequently for them Commons is useless.
>>>      
>> That's simply ridiculous.
>>
>> Many files, categories, and galleries are labeled in multiple
>> languages... or even not in English at all. :)
>>
>> Certainly it'll be *more useful* as we're able to add more widespread
>> tag/category translations to help automate cross-language search, but
>> the notion that people "cannot possibly find pictures" or that the site
>> is "useless" is ridiculous and undermines the legitimate portion of your
>> position (that it would be good to add more multilingual features to
>> Commons).
>>
>> - -- brion
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin)
>> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>>
>> iEYEARECAAYFAkk9y5AACgkQwRnhpk1wk45ATACgmK2BtPl5YFs2ht1QcspC1zvE
>> TygAoMcWp+0sQtAGo5ky28hl1usgLpTF
>> =twDY
>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
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>>
>>    
> _______________________________________________
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[Nikola Smolenski]

Waerth wrote:
> The commons issue is not just a language issua. If it was it was
> solvable. It is a hositility issue. Where people who upload the second
> picture of the same object (like a TukTuk) get told it is not necassary
> because the project already has one picture of a TukTuk ..... The

It's interesting that I don't notice anything mentioned in this thread.
For example, recently I uploaded a picture of a scarlet ibis, and it was
not deleted despite the fact that there are 40 other scarlet ibis pictures.

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[Magnus Manske-2]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:
> Hoi,
> When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why
> they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find
> "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the
> search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"  and
> you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.

They might not be able to find "ίππος". However, they might be able to
use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate
"ίππος" into English "horse" and search for that.

Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim.

Magnus
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[Michael Bimmler]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 11:18 AM, Magnus Manske
<magnusmanske@...> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why
>> they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find
>> "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the
>> search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"  and
>> you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
>
> They might not be able to find "ίππος". However, they might be able to
> use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate
> "ίππος" into English "horse" and search for that.
>
> Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim.

I guess one of the points is (and I admit that I'm just jumping in
here, without having read the entire thread due to time constraints,
so please mercifully ignore this if I'm completely off the mark), that
the English speakers do not need to take this extra step of looking
for a dictionary (online or hard copy) first. Of course this is one of
the inherent problems of international collaboration but still, if you
put it this way, it does leave this spirit of "Why the drama about all
these non-English speakers, if they want to partake in the glories of
Wikimedia Commons, they'll have to get their act together and find a
dictionary (or else learn English)" and while I'm sure you do not mean
it in this way, I do understand people who object to this...after all,
the internationalization of a project is hardly promoted if you just
focus on one language and distribute dictionaries to the rest.

So much for the nice, idealistic theory. I'm not even going to start
venturing into the shallow waters of how to put this into
practice...and I do realize that this limitation makes this post
less-than-useful :-)

Michael


--
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler@...
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[Gerard Meijssen-3]

Hoi,
An answer like that justifies and inforces the notion that Commons is only
for those that can read / write English. To me this is not acceptable
because it degrades Commons to less then what it should be, what it could
be.
Thanks,
      GerardM

2008/12/9 Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@...>

> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons
> why
> > they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find
> > "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the
> > search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"
>  and
> > you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
>
> They might not be able to find "ίππος". However, they might be able to
> use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate
> "ίππος" into English "horse" and search for that.
>
> Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim.
>
> Magnus
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@...
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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[Patricia Rodrigues]

I'd love to know how many English native speakers know what is this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Rami%C4%99_urabiaj%C4%85ce_kombajnu_chodnikowego.jpg
Uncategorized, used in an article on pl.wikipedia without interwikis, and described only in Polish. I'm guessing some sort of drill, but for all I know it could be a work of art.

Sorry, but the language difficulties go both ways.

You are asking for Commons to be absolutely multilingual now, that people are instantly and magically warned of deletion requests across projects, when in the end it's managed by a software that is not handling multilingualism in a straightforward way, taken care of by a couple of hundred people that have to put up with all the crap (to not use a stronger word) from hundreds of other wikis, that are beginning to put deletion requests for things that should be deleted straight off so that the uploader actually has time to read through it, that have their actions being questioned on two mailing lists because we don't work hard enough (?) to be fluent in ten different languages and sapient in 200 different copyright laws... sorry but Lars was criticizing things that I think he has right to criticize and at the same time he was giving out ideas to improve things. People who are just bashing for the sake of it better come and try to work ten days in a row on
 Commons and see the crap we have to go through.

If I have to delete one more image of an African minor prostitute taken by so-called artists, I'm going to scream. You come and see what we have to deal with everyday, then start complaining how bad the whole thing works.

There are a few people working hard in making Commons a bit more appealing to pt users: there's a specific Commons tutoring program for pt users on pt..wikipedia (http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutoria/Commons), there's a local page for local admins to list images with potential problems (http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Páginas_para_eliminar/Registros), and following Lars first e-mail I asked the local community for some feedback on what could be improved in usability (http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Esplanada/geral#Wikimedia_Commons_e_a_sua_rela.C3.A7.C3.A3o_com_os_demais_projetos_Wikimedia). I got *excellent* feedback about things that could be made clearer and will start working on specific documentation to help pt users. And I'll continue to nag devs to solve bug 5925 https://bugzilla..wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5925 which is nothing of importance to most people but has actually makes some difference for non-English users.

Yes, I am angry now. I suggest you start woking more on multilingualism on Commons and complaining less. I apologize for being human.

Patrícia




     
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[Teun Spaans]

Many times it works well.
But the procedures also irregularly goes amiss.

I also received deletion messages of a pic i had uploaded with a correct
license. Some wikimedian had accidently removed the license, making a bot
come along and warn me. By pure coincidence i happened to come along at
commons - sometimes months go by without me dropping in - and was able to
restore the license, protest angainst its deletion, and so on.
7 days is awfully short. One easy thing that can be approved is an email
instead of a bot message on a talk page.

But that wont change the self centered attitude of commonists.

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 9:28 AM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@...> wrote:

> Waerth wrote:
> > The commons issue is not just a language issua. If it was it was
> > solvable. It is a hositility issue. Where people who upload the second
> > picture of the same object (like a TukTuk) get told it is not necassary
> > because the project already has one picture of a TukTuk ..... The
>
> It's interesting that I don't notice anything mentioned in this thread.
> For example, recently I uploaded a picture of a scarlet ibis, and it was
> not deleted despite the fact that there are 40 other scarlet ibis pictures.
>
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[Magnus Manske-2]

Please don't puts words (or notions) in my mouth.

At the moment, Commons works best for you when you can read/write English.
But if you don't, you can still do simple searches using a dictionary,
and find many useful images.
This fact contradicts your earlier statement that Commons is useless
to non-English speakers.

That's what I said, nothing more.

Magnus


On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 10:27 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:

> Hoi,
> An answer like that justifies and inforces the notion that Commons is only
> for those that can read / write English. To me this is not acceptable
> because it degrades Commons to less then what it should be, what it could
> be.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> 2008/12/9 Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@...>
>
>> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen
>> <gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:
>> > Hoi,
>> > When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons
>> why
>> > they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find
>> > "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the
>> > search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"
>>  and
>> > you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
>>
>> They might not be able to find "ίππος". However, they might be able to
>> use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate
>> "ίππος" into English "horse" and search for that.
>>
>> Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim.
>>
>> Magnus
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@...
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
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[Gerard Meijssen-3]

Hoi,
If you want to hear that Commons is not completely useless because people
can use a dictionary, I grant you that. However Commons is still considered
to be useless by several Wikipedias who do not promote its use. I also
consider this argument lame.

When the categories of Commons are shown in the language selected in the
user preferences, when the search engine is dependent on this same
selection, Commons actually provides a service for people who do not read
English. By enabling people to make effective use of Commons you create the
base for people to put up with all the perceived nonsense from Commons.

Perceived nonsense because Commons has to walk a different thin line between
what is acceptable to it and what is acceptable elsewhere The "Virgin
killer" picture cannot be found on Commons because Commons does not accept
"fair use". Just one of the differences between the en.wp policies and the
Commons policies.
Thanks,
       GerardM

2008/12/9 Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@...>

> Please don't puts words (or notions) in my mouth.
>
> At the moment, Commons works best for you when you can read/write English.
> But if you don't, you can still do simple searches using a dictionary,
> and find many useful images.
> This fact contradicts your earlier statement that Commons is useless
> to non-English speakers.
>
> That's what I said, nothing more.
>
> Magnus
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 10:27 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > An answer like that justifies and inforces the notion that Commons is
> only
> > for those that can read / write English. To me this is not acceptable
> > because it degrades Commons to less then what it should be, what it could
> > be.
> > Thanks,
> >      GerardM
> >
> > 2008/12/9 Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@...>
> >
> >> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> >> <gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:
> >> > Hoi,
> >> > When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the
> reasons
> >> why
> >> > they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to
> find
> >> > "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the
> >> > search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"
> >>  and
> >> > you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
> >>
> >> They might not be able to find "ίππος". However, they might be able to
> >> use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate
> >> "ίππος" into English "horse" and search for that.
> >>
> >> Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim.
> >>
> >> Magnus
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> foundation-l mailing list
> >> foundation-l@...
> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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[Nikola Smolenski]

On Tuesday 09 December 2008 08:23:07 Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why
> they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find
> "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the
> search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"  and
> you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
>
> It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English,
> Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find
> freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask
> people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic,
> Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you
> try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things
> that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse...
>
> I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that
> demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were
> limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does
> include the category tree translated.

Me too - perhaps not as perfect solution, but hopefully adequate:
http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php

Examples:

http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=nl&search=paard
http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=el&search=%CE%AF%CF%80%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%82

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