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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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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@wikimedia.org>

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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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> TygAoMcWp+0sQtAGo5ky28hl1usgLpTF
> =twDY
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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@wikimedia.org>
>
>
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>> 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-----
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>> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>>
>> iEYEARECAAYFAkk9y5AACgkQwRnhpk1wk45ATACgmK2BtPl5YFs2ht1QcspC1zvE
>> TygAoMcWp+0sQtAGo5ky28hl1usgLpTF
>> =twDY
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>>
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>>
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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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On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> 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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On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 11:18 AM, Magnus Manske
<magnusmanske@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> 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 "ßððïò" and
>> you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
>
> They might not be able to find "ßððïò". However, they might be able to
> use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate
> "ßððïò" 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


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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@googlemail.com>

> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> 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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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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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@eunet.yu> 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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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@gmail.com> 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@googlemail.com>
>
>> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen
>> <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> 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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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@googlemail.com>

> 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@gmail.com> 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@googlemail.com>
> >
> >> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> >> <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> 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@lists.wikimedia.org
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> >>
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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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On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@eunet.yu> wrote:
> 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 "ßððïò" 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

Something like this looks pretty good for starters. Why don't we just
flip a switch?

Thanks,
Pharos

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Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Finn Rindahl wrote
>> If there was more active admins, we could have done our job
>> better - especially when it comes to take the necessary time to
>> communicate with the other users who need help. The only way as
>> I see it to actually get volunteers to work at Commons is to
>> build a "community feeling" at commons like in other projects.
>>
> You need a community feeling among admins, so they can learn to
> know and trust each other and collaborate against individual
> admins who abuse their rights (which surely will happen
> occasionally). And you need to foster a community feeling between
> admins and regular/occasional/beginner users. But I doubt that
> the latter is possible. If it fails, I wouldn't blame you.
>
Trust is the key to success in any of these projects. Presumably the
current admins on Commons have built that trust among themselves, but to
the extent of being a closed community, Aspiring to join a closed
community requires a person to comply with the norms and standards of
that closed community until it is satisfied that the supplicant is fully
compliant. This strongly discourages any kind of innovative behaviour
or individuality, and protects the received wisdom of the controllers.

Commons is not unique in wanting more admins, but really experienced
admins from other projects are not going to be overly anxious to join a
project when that project would require them to swim among sharks.
> The problem is that many users don't feel at home in Commons.
> Many of them just upload a few images as part of writing Wikipedia
> articles. Having to enter Commons is more of a necessary evil,
> just like we all have to learn some wiki markup.
>
I don't participate in Commons, and do my best to avoid it. I have had
concerns about it ever since Erik first suggested the idea. Commons now
houses many page scans on behalf of Wikisource. Uploading the 500 page
scans for a single book can quickly inflate the Commons page count seems
to support an obsession for quantity over quality.
> Consider this recent comment from one user: "I don't understand
> the title: 'Please link images'. All my pictures are linked to
> articles in the Swedish Wikipedia." This user didn't categorize
> his images on Commons, and received a complaint for this from a
> bot. He has no interest in categorizing images on Commons, he
> only wanted to illustrate his articles.
>
Whatever happened to the old wiki notion of leaving things for others to
do. There is no need for an uploader to do his own categorisation when
there are admins available to do this.
> Maybe he should just upload the images locally to the Swedish
> Wikipedia, where they are used, and someone else, with a primary
> interest in Commons, should forward them to Commons and categorize
> them there.
>
Indeed. If the Commons bot then finds that the image does not meet its
copyright or other standards it just leaves that image where it is found.
> This is how we normally distribute tasks among users within each
> language of Wikipedia: One person creates an article, another adds
> wiki markup, a third adds categories. But once you upload an
> image, you need to go out through the door, across the street,
> into the Wikimedia Commons building, and there you have to feel as
> part of a new community which doesn't fully speak your language,
> and each image must be categorized and correctly licensed and
> attributed (including the incomprihensible distinction between
> "source" and "author"), or else all your actions will be reverted.
>
If it were just a language problem that could be helped by insisting
that any uploaded image must have all its data in two languages. ;-)
By insisting on this as strongly as for categorisation and other
requirements. Any image without two language data could be speedy
deleted. This should only create problems in that small handful of
countries where knowing a second language is an exception. :-P
> Commons was set up in 2004. It was a great idea and has served
> its purpose well. But as we recruit new users, less experienced
> users who we have to actively recruit, this is not a vehicle for
> the best possible user experience and productivity.
>
>
>
I support the notion that we should start moving away from the single
monolithic Commons.


Ec

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teun spaans wrote:
> 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.

You *will* get an email if have chosen on your Preferences to get an
email whenever your talk page is modified.
Having that option available on WMF wikis was pushed from commons
community, and in fact Commons was one of the first projects where it
was added. Now it is enabled on all wikis but the big ones.


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Pharos wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@eunet.yu> wrote:
>> 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 "ßððïò" 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
>
> Something like this looks pretty good for starters. Why don't we just
> flip a switch?
>
> Thanks,
> Pharos

+1
We should help using this tool from the search interface.


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On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 10:03 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>> Finn Rindahl wrote
>>> If there was more active admins, we could have done our job
>>> better - especially when it comes to take the necessary time to
>>> communicate with the other users who need help. The only way as
>>> I see it to actually get volunteers to work at Commons is to
>>> build a "community feeling" at commons like in other projects.
>>>
>> You need a community feeling among admins, so they can learn to
>> know and trust each other and collaborate against individual
>> admins who abuse their rights (which surely will happen
>> occasionally). And you need to foster a community feeling between
>> admins and regular/occasional/beginner users. But I doubt that
>> the latter is possible. If it fails, I wouldn't blame you.
>>
> Trust is the key to success in any of these projects. Presumably the
> current admins on Commons have built that trust among themselves, but to
> the extent of being a closed community, Aspiring to join a closed
> community requires a person to comply with the norms and standards of
> that closed community until it is satisfied that the supplicant is fully
> compliant. This strongly discourages any kind of innovative behaviour
> or individuality, and protects the received wisdom of the controllers.
>

Trust is indeed the key. But that trust needs to come from from both
sides. I agree that Commons should work into getting more trusted by
other projects, but it certainly should also work the other way
around, other projects should at least try to get trusted by Commons.
Every once in a while users from other projects come by claiming
"What? Why do you follow the law of XYZ country? That is ridiculous,
we should boycot Commons!" That is certainly not helpful in building
trust. (exaggerated and not specifically pointed at anybody)

I wrote a lot of messages ago that it was all about language. Perhaps
it's not, but it's more about culture and misunderstandings. Some
people do not understand that the rules on their own project are not
universal. Then they get warnings or their images are deleted, and
they get hostile at Commons admins, and Commons admins get hostile at
them and eventually we end up in the current we-versus-them situation.

Perhaps we should step back from making comments like "I try to avoid
Commons at much as possible" and "Your kind of people is exactly what
we don't need on Commons". We don't need this story to become a self
fulfilling prophecy, if it hasn't happened already.


Bryan

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On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Platonides <Platonides@gmail.com> wrote:

> teun spaans wrote:
> > 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.
>
> You *will* get an email if have chosen on your Preferences to get an
> email whenever your talk page is modified.
> Having that option available on WMF wikis was pushed from commons
> community, and in fact Commons was one of the first projects where it
> was added. Now it is enabled on all wikis but the big ones.
>
> Thank you, I now have this enabled on commons.
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On 13 Dec 2008, at 14:02, Platonides wrote:

> teun spaans wrote:
>> 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.
>
> You *will* get an email if have chosen on your Preferences to get an
> email whenever your talk page is modified.
> Having that option available on WMF wikis was pushed from commons
> community, and in fact Commons was one of the first projects where it
> was added. Now it is enabled on all wikis but the big ones.

From personal experience, this feature doesn't work reliably. I have
a fairly large number of items on my watchlist at Commons and on
Meta, such that there are edits made on average once a day, but I
only receive the emails about those edits sporadically, and often in
bursts.

It is still a very useful feature, though. It's a pity that you can't
have two watchlists on en.wp, such that you can use one to keep an
eye on articles you're particularly attached to, with the other
handling all the rest.

Mike

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2008/12/16 Michael Peel <email@mikepeel.net>:

> It is still a very useful feature, though. It's a pity that you can't
> have two watchlists on en.wp, such that you can use one to keep an
> eye on articles you're particularly attached to, with the other
> handling all the rest.

I find that a useful method is to have a subpage of your userspace,
link to every article you care about, and keep an eye on
Special:Recentchangeslinked.

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk

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This is sort of unrelated, but may be of interest to the people
discussing language issues with search:

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2008/12/cross-language-enterprise-search.html

Google is announcing some cross language searching for enterprise now
anyway, where you might search in one language, and have your query
translated, and search against multiple other languages. Something to
keep an eye on anyway.

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

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