Commons:Upload Wizard feedback/Archive/2009/12

This page is a place for you to tell the Multimedia Usability Team what issues you encounter when using Commons or contributing multimedia content to Wikimedia projects. We are already aware of many bugs and wishes, but we also wanted to provide an open forum for less formal storytelling.

We welcome your ideas, but please focus on the issues rather than on possible solutions. If you want to propose a solution or request a feature, please do so but also tell us what problem it would fix.

Tell us your stories, tell us your frustrations. We will read them carefully and try to remedy as much as possible.

→ Add your story

• Archive 1: 21 October - 4 December 2009 archived from [1]

Enable several types of categories

Currently we only have two types of categories: hidden and normal categories. The first are only visible to users that are logged in and enable the option. They generally include categories by camera type, copyright tag, and image source.

Rather than grouping categories into hidden and non-hidden categories, it should be possible to split the non-topical categories into groups and display these separately, e.g.

This image was selected as picture of the day on Wikimedia Commons for 6 December 2009. It was captioned as follows:

English: "Passage" group, Hautecombe Nights, Savoie, France, 2008.

Other languages:

Čeština: Vystoupení skupiny Passage na Nuits de Hautecombe

Dansk: Gruppen "Passage" under Nuits de Hautecombe i Savoie i Frankrig, 2008.

Deutsch: Die Gruppe Passage bei den Nuits de Hautecombe

English: "Passage" group, Hautecombe Nights, Savoie, France, 2008.

Español: Grupo Passage, Noches Hautecombe, Savoya, Francia, 2008.

Esperanto: La grupo Passage en la muzika festivalo Nuits de Hautecombe en Savojo, Francio

Français : Groupe Passage, Nuits de Hautecombe, Savoie, France, 2008.

Italiano: Esibizione dei francesi Passage durante le Nuits de Hautecombe, manifestazione che si svolge nell'Abbazia di Hautecombe. I Passage sono un gruppo di musica d'ispirazione sacra i cui membri fanno parte della Comunità Chemin Neuf.

Magyar: „Passage“ csoport, Hautecombe Nights, Savoie, Franciaország, 2008

Nederlands: optreden van de groep "Passage" tijdens de Nuits de Hautecombe (2008) in de Abdij van Hautecombe aan het Lac du Bourget (meer van Bourget) in het Oost-Franse departement Savoie.

Português: Grupo "Passage" (Hautecombe Nights) em Saboia, França.

Македонски: Настап на групата „Пасаж“ на Откомбските вечери во Савоја, Франција во 2008 г.

Русский: Выступление группы Passage на «Nuits de Hautecombe» в Савойе в 2008 году

বাংলা : ২০০৮ সালে ফ্রান্সের স্যাভয়-এ হুতাকম্বে নাইটস পালনরত ফরাসী প্যাসেজ গোষ্ঠী।

中文： 图为2008年法国上库姆之夜，“通道”乐团在上库姆修道院表演。“通道”乐团是一个灵感音乐组，其成员都是舍曼诺伊夫社区的一部分。

中文（繁體）： 2008年法國上庫姆之夜，「通道」樂團在上庫姆修道院表演。「通道」樂團是一個靈感音樂組，其成員都是舍曼諾伊夫社區的一部分。

Sample File:Passage - Nuits de Hautecombe 2008 - 7.jpg (featured picture of today)

Topical categories

Nuits de Hautecombe | Males with microphones | Shadows | Arms

License/copyright categories

License migration redundant | GFDL | CC-BY-SA-3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0

User or image source categories

Photographs and images by Yann Forget | Quality images by Yann Forget

Date taken

Photos taken August 2008

Image type category

image/jpeg

Camera categories

Taken with Sony DSC-R1

Commons Assessment

Pictures of the day (2009) | Featured pictures on Wikimedia Commons | Quality images

Warnings

Personality rights warning

Work source type

Self-published work

It should also be possible to search for a combination of these types of categories. As many of the categories should be added manually rather than automatically (or the other way round).

-- User:Docu at 10:29, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I like this idea. mahanga (talk) 18:40, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Je trouve que cela apporte une grande clarification. Si on réussit à bien classer et hiérachiser les informations, on peut ensuite se poser la question : "quelle visibilité donner à quelle information ?". Les informations importantes vont être les plus visibles, les plus proche du haut de l'écran (ou du quart en haut à gauche de l'écran), et les autres vont être plus éloignées voire cachées. Dans les catégories il y en a qui sont les plus importantes qui doivent être les plus visibles, et d'autres qui le sont moins et qui peuvent rester cachées. Teofilo (talk) 17:45, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

See page 6 and following

This is actually very close to the mock-up I did (see document on the right). guillom 22:44, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Looking at it closely, probably yes, even though I can't tell where the links lead. Excellent work.

Since I inverted the display of categories and the remaining description (see below), I tend to look at categories first, forgetting that the same information is also available in the information template and/or exif below. Most current tools at Commons don't make much use of these though. The main advantage of the categories is that they lead to images with similar attributes, e.g.:

1. Taken with Sony DSC-R1 lists images while the same in exif only links to Wikipedia.
2. The date in exif doesn't do anything, the one in {{Information}} only localizes. Compare with Category:Switzerland by month that allows to browse new (and old) images by the month they were taken.
3. The author's name links to the user page and eventually to the gallery tool, but this isn't as convenient as, e.g. Category:Photographs and images by Yann Forget.
4. The license tags link to texts about the license, etc. ..

BTW your mock-up lists location. This isn't readily available as a field, except in the rare cases of descriptions using {{Information2}}. It is generally included in the description field of {{Information}}. Obviously it can be derived from {{Location}} and categories. For categories, in the sample above, it would be Abbaye d'Hautecombe or Saint-Pierre-de-Curtille, parent categories of Nuits de Hautecombe.

In the mock up, "See other media files about" is fairly far down the screen. It doesn't necessarily need to be above the description, but preferably close to it.

Back to the initial point, in the mock-up, do the fields link to categories? (I noticed it mentions categories on page 17 and the license should link to an explanatory page (which could be the category page)). -- User:Docu at 14:42, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Display categories below the image

Currently an option in Special:Preferences allows to display categories directly below the images. These seems to be reasonable default for Commons. -- User:Docu at 10:29, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree. Categories have a more important role in Commons than Wikipedia which often have wikilinks or see also sections. Thus, they should be in a more prominent location, maybe even row-based on the side like Flickr has their tags. mahanga (talk) 15:23, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree; we would like to make navigation easier, and that includes within categories. guillom 22:44, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Changing of file formats

It would be great to allow a change of file formats of existing files. For example: If I wann change a jpg Image to be a png, I currently cannot update that file by uploading a new png-version of it.--Juxn (talk) 16:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

This is bugzilla:20971 - Upload new versions of files with different file type. guillom 22:44, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Allow multiple uploading

For multiple uploads of files with same/ similar values (license, description, etc) it would be very nice to have a interaction that allows this as a massupload.--Juxn (talk) 16:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

This is bugzilla:488 - Upload more than one file at a time. guillom 22:44, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Download link for Timed Text subtitles

There should be a download link to download Commons:Timed Text as a .srt file. This will make it easier for people who download videos and still use subtitles. Example: TimedText:051118-WSIS.2005-Richard.Stallman.ogg.en.srt. The current way to do save the text is by copying and pasting. mahanga (talk) 15:45, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thumbnail picture for videos

Maybe there could be an option to select one of three thumbnails (beginning, middle, end) for a video. We're able to do this when linking to the file (ex. [[file:video.ogv|thumbtime=13]]) but not when going to the file page. mahanga (talk) 04:57, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

This is bugzilla:20647 - Allow way to choose thumbnail frame for video on its File: description page. guillom 22:44, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Le nouveau répertoire des utilisations des fichiers dans les autres wikis

• Traduction et vocabulaire

Traduire "usage" par "usage", c'est de la traduction de paresseux : Cf fr:calque (linguistique).

Si l'on tient vraiment à afficher cette section directement sur la page, le vocabulaire devrait être harmonisé avec la section qui précède, à savoir actuellement : "Utilisations du fichier". Je propose de renommer ce titre en "utilisations locales du fichier" ou "utilisations du fichier sur Commons".

"frwiki" "enwiki" "dewiki" "fiwiki" etc... ce sont des termes de jargon. Je préconise l'utilisation d'un langage non jargonisant lisible par les débutants. Donc "Wikipédia en français", "Wikipédia en finnois", etc...

• Allourdissement de la page

Chacun rajoute son petit bout de logiciel et la page devient de plus en plus lourde. On a eu le gadget "ajouter une note" l'été dernier. Ensuite c'est l'automne, et on voit apparaître ce répertoire des utilisations qui est potentiellement très long (autant que de langues dans le monde : 100, 200...).

Et donc on accumule, on rajoute sans la moindre vision d'ensemble. On fait programmer des informaticiens sans leur donner de cahier des charges. C'est à dire qu'on ne sait pas ce qu'on veut, mais on fait quand même, et on se préoccupe aucunement des conséquences. Comme on ne sait pas quels sont les objectif, on ne sait pas si ils sont atteints.

• Structuration de la page

Comme je l'avais déjà dit, il y a un problème de hiérarchisation des informations dans la page. Il me semble qu'il faudrait mettre le plus près de l'image les informations qui intéressent le plus d'utilisateurs, et éloigner les choses les moins intéressantes. Mon avis personnel (mais il y a une discussion à faire, peut-être que d'autres personnes pensent différemment) est que les catégories, c'est important. Le répertoire des utilisations éloigne encore plus les catégories de l'image.

• Déplacement dans un onglet

Je préconise donc leur déplacement dans un onglet dédié, comme c'est déjà le cas pour l'outil "checkusage" qui fait exactement la même chose. Mais on pourrait utiliser un indicateur de couleur pour dire si cet onglet est vide ou non-vide (pour éviter de cliquer dessus s'il n'y a rien à lire).

• Gel des développements de logiciels "fait accompli".

Je pense qu'il faut des cahiers des charges, des maquettes, et des discussions sur ces cahiers des charges et ces maquettes avant de mettre en oeuvre des bouleversements de l'espace de travail des bénévoles et l'espace de ressources des internautes en quête d'images libres.

J'ai l'impression qu'on a plus besoin d'une méthode de prise de décision que de logiciels en tant que tels. Et donc il vaudrait mieux tout geler tant qu'on a pas trouvé cette méthode. Tant qu'on ne sait pas où l'on va.

• Multi-modal

Il faut prévoir différents modes d'accès en utilisant les "préférences" et les "peaux" (skins). Un accès épuré (philosophie de la page d'accueil de Google) pour les débutants. Un mode d'accès "pour les curieux". Un mode d'accès "pour le travail" et "à la carte" pour les bénévoles.

Teofilo (talk) 18:08, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Not censoring Commons, but yet giving an option to censor this site's content

While I have no problem with the fact that Commons is not censored, there are other people who do. Often, this leads to talk page posts, image description page edits or (malformed) deletion requests where it's complained about "porn". It would be good if people (also unregistered users) could set in some kind of preferences how to censor Commons. I've thought about something similar to the Safe Search from Google (meaning that offensive images will be excluded from the search results, categories and galleries), though probably "No filtering" should be the default at Commons. --The Evil IP address (talk) 11:03, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Who, then, would decide whether something ought to be subject to the filter? Powers (talk) 19:44, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Users would decide for themselves. Something like the old spam filter lists: several lists were offered for various purposes and each user could select none, some or all filters. In fact users can (I do myself in my HOSTs file for example) add their own additional filters. I think this is a good idea if taken further than just an on or off preference. It might need some technical coordination with Commons (maybe html tags, classes, whatever). I would like one to suppress very large GIFs for example, to avoid wasting the bandwidth of the server and my own. I have linked to this idea from Commons:Village_pump#Simplified_proposal. -84user (talk) 13:47, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Commons in the web 2.0 world

The usability of the Commons would be substantially improved by a genuine web 2.0 platform. Ideally, the project should aim to provide a seamless end-user experience that rivals sites like Flickr and YouTube. Here are a few observations:

Issue: Newcomers are not sufficiently enticed to join the community.

Solution: Expand access to the project by allowing users to log in via alternative (OpenID, Google, ...) authentication systems.

Issue: Our category system discourages inexperienced users and is overall very inefficient.

Solution: Rename categories to tags, and introduce a low-latency smart tagging system that engages drive-by editors.

Issue: The Commons interface is overtly pedantic.

Solution: Transform talk pages into vibrant discussions that are presented directly below the media, and create an annotation platform. Significantly improve aesthetics, speed, and accuracy of default search functionality; use an AJAX gallery by default.

Issue: The Commons does not accommodate rich media content.

Solution: Automatically convert uploaded videos to Theora, and raise the file size limit to 4.7 GB.

Issue: Current content guidelines antagonize casual contributors.

Solution: Liberalize policy to indiscriminately permit all free content regardless of quality or practicality, and instead develop a quality control scheme that prioiritizes the results of media searches based on user ratings.

Issue: Very few members of the general public are familiar with the Commons.

Solution: Attract, facilitate, and encourage the layperson to painlessly (and perhaps even inadvertently) contribute quality media. Take advantage of the viral effects of social media by incorporating an interface that enables users to share and embed media (e.g. email, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc) across the web.

Issue: The Commons is not "usable" from a corporate perspective, and virtually no media conglomerates or commercial ventures contribute any content whatsoever.

Solution: Create an easy to use system that encourages traditional copyright holders to make tax deductible donations of previously commercial movies, music, photos, scientific journals, and books. Once the Wikimedia Foundation legally owns the rights to said media, it can then be legally re-released under a permissive license. Form a grassroots volunteer group with the sole purpose of going down a list of every major media organization (e.g. MGM, CBS, Virgin, etc) in the world -- one-by-one -- to personally make requests for unprofitable media.   — C M B J   00:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

« Transform talk pages » : You might be interested in mw:Extension:LiquidThreads (currently tested on strategy).

« create an annotation platform » : ImageAnnotator has been active here for a while now.

« Automatically convert uploaded videos to Theora » : You might be interested in mw:Extension:Firefogg (currently tested here on Commons, see Commons:Firefogg).

--Jean-Fred (talk) 17:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Based upon the vast number of non-technical users contributing photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube, it can be inferred that there is a very strong correlation between usability and content volume. Such an environment depends upon three two primary conditions: (1) it can be easily utilized by anyone aged eight to eighty, (2) viral activities are facilitated, promoted, and rewarded, and (3) lawful content is accepted without discrimination to quality. Obviously the latter is antithetical to current Commons scope and policy; in order to harbor such a nonchalant community whilst preserving the academic value of the Commons, it would be necessary to create an intuitive rating and tagging system.

Community driven extensions are a great way to improve any open source project; however, it is my opinion that the rigidity of our current interface (or any derivative thereof) is beyond the threshold of reasonably tangible rectification, and as such, will continue to dishearten and intimidate the layperson indefinitely. I hypothesize that it would be a wise and stewardly investment to allocate donor funds in pursuit of the aforementioned objectives.   — C M B J   01:36, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

If we cease discriminating based on quality and value, we risk losing the ability to discriminate based on legality, due to volume. Note how many blatant copyright violations remain on, say, Flickr and especially on YouTube. Powers (talk) 02:32, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

It has been my personal observation that users routinely contributing from the same camera(s) are typically not infringing copyrights, so it is not unreasonable to assume that a server-sided EXIF-analyzing script could approximate the infringement risk of any single file within three or four uploads by the same user. With that said, inclusion criteria is not an issue that I feel strongly about, and I do not want it to serve as a distraction from my other (more valid) points. Can users login (OpenID, ...) without creating an account? No. Are all users encouraged to tag images? No, not many people are willing to spend five seconds tagging a single file. Are visitors encouraged to virally share Commons files like most modern community-driven websites? No, not even close. Can a non-technical Internet Explorer user with a 1.6ghz Atom netbook and a 1080p camcorder from Wal-Mart come to our site and upload Theora video within 30 seconds? Not only no, but hell no. As someone who has actually uploaded Theora video in the past, I would estimate that the current process is beyond practical for all but the most patient, highly motivated, and technically inclined individuals equipped with state-of-the-art processing power. How many major commercial media outfits (ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, Fox, Disney, NYT, TIME, ...) are making tax-deductible media contributions today? Even though many of these companies own rights to unprofitable (but valuable) media that will inevitably enter the public domain during the next ten to twenty years, many of them routinely make multi-million dollar tax deductible contributions annually, and even more of them are dying for new ways to cut costs (taxes) while better promoting themselves, the answer astonishingly zero.

If we want to remain competitive in the world of the future, these issues must be considered a top priority.   — C M B J   19:01, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Archive added

I have just copied this revision of this page that was pipe-linked above as "Archive 1: 21 October - 4 December 2009" to Commons:Usability issues and ideas/Archive 1. I then added a {{Search box}} at the top to hopefully help readers search both this page and its archive. The search index takes time to populate, and is sometimes temperamental and incomplete (another usability issue that could be improved). -84user (talk) 14:48, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Searching is useless

I can't easily find any content that I may wish to re-use. There is no facility for me to say 'Give me a picture of a soccer player scoring a penalty', I can spend three hours and perhaps come up with two or three possibles, but why should I do that when I can go to flickr and enter 'soccer penalty goal' and get a couple of thousand results in less than a second? Commons for some reason seems to rely on descriptions for it's results, and not many are filled in with enough verbosity for the search results to be meaningful (how many great pics are missed in searches purely for that reason?). Today I came to Commons to look for an image of a young boy with dark/asian features wearing a red shirt, that was my brief - guess how many images I could find? It was less than one.. Nanonic (talk) 02:33, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Question: What is the educational use you want it for? Paradoctor (talk) 03:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Educational use? None. I required it for a mailshot for a local company that I'm knocking together and found a CC-BY-SA pic on flickr that I can use. Nanonic (talk) 04:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with using files for non-educational purposes, but why do you expect Commons to facilitate any search not related to educational uses? Paradoctor (talk) 05:05, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Does it matter? The concerns are the same regardless of the use being sought. Powers (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Not quite. The intended educational use should be our primary access path, everything else is merely a bonus. It would be nice if Commons could be used as a stock photo resource, but as Nanonic's experience show, Flickr is already there. As an aside, I'll bet you a dollar we don't have such an image of a boy. Oh, and BTW, there is a Category:Penalty kick, took me all of 20 seconds to find it. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 20:47, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I think Nanonic point would be that, precisely, the search engine does not build on our category system, or at least with difficulty. His experience with searching for non educational purposes would probably be the same than others with educational purposes.

I can certain agree that the color of the shirt is indeed not an educational priority (though we do have Category:Red clothing, male ! ). But looking for penalty kicks sure has legitimate educational purposes (or can have), and the fact is that our friend here could not locate the relevant category. Jean-Fred (talk) 21:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

What I see is that Nanonic did not use either of three rather obvious approaches: If a search for three keywords yields no hits, try two, like "penalty soccer", which has the category on the first results page. Number two, ask Wikipedia: w:penalty links to w:Penalty shootout (association football), which has a link to Category:Penalty shootout (association football). Number three, Commons:Help desk. Seriously, I fail to see where Commons has a problem here. Paradoctor (talk) 00:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, obviously, those approaches were not obvious to him. Of course there are ways to find stuff on Commons. The fact is that this user could not find his way around, and that is a problem for Commons.

IMO, the point of this page is to have users tell what problems they encounter with Commons, in order to have ideas to improve it ; not to explain users how they do not think kow they ought to and to defend Commons. Jean-Fred (talk) 00:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

"not obvious to him": Check his contributions, you'll see that Nanonic knows about the help desk. The claim that "There is no facility for me to say 'Give me a picture of a soccer player scoring a penalty'" is plain wrong, that is exactly what the help desk is for.

"the point of this page": Sure, but as I argued, this is not a problem of Commons, it's a problem of Nanonic, especially considering his/her claim of having wasted hours on the search. Paradoctor (talk) 01:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand what Paradoctor means by an educational use being an access path. I also note, for Nanonic's edification, that entering "soccer penalty goal" (the specified search string) into our search engine does indeed come up with a result -- a featured picture, no less: File:Ryan Valentine scores.jpg. Powers (talk) 23:41, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Hah, should've checked that one. ;) About "access path": Had Nanonic specified an educational use, we would have keywords we could talk about, and check where they lead. We would have something we can talk about, and be able to determine whether there is something we can and should do.

Motivated by Nanonic's complaint, I did spot something we can and should do: The main page does offer only the search box and a link to Commons:Picture requests. I think it would be a good idea to put a nice big friendly box at the top which points users to an introduction to finding stuff on Commons. This introduction should be adapted to the requirements of those users for which online existence is not second nature, which is probably the vast majority of our target audience. A specialized help desk might prove useful, too. Paradoctor (talk) 00:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• Even if the search term would be better (or one included in a category description), unless someone describes, categorizes or tags the images, the search isn't going to succeed.
  BTW flickr seems to have less results if one searches the correct set. -- User:Docu at 13:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • You won't find an image on Flickr either, if no one describes or tags it. Powers (talk) 14:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
    • That's for sure. Still, good to know that we already got more (or just as many) results ;) -- User:Docu at 10:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Thumbnail size on panoramics category pages

Larger thumbnail (height is still just 76px)

Random panorama from Category:Panoramics with standard category thumbnail size

Panoramics categories (Category:Panoramics by country, Category:Panoramics, etc.) tend to be full of images that are much wider than tall. For these, standard category thumbnails aren't that useful (e.g. the random sample to the left).

It would be nice if these categories could rendered with wider thumbnails. It wouldn't matter much if there was just one per row.

Similar to __NOGALLERY__ a magic word could be used to switch display. -- User:Docu at 10:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Related Bugzilla:22267 entry -- User:Docu at 19:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

It's closed already! Implemented ! (No, duplicated of Bugzilla:13802) -- User:Docu at 20:16, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Hardly anyone gets what Commons actually is

There are hundreds or thousand people here who have no idea what they're doing. They don't understand copyright at all, don't know anything about the scope and also don't understand that licenses are irrevocable. They upload fair use files (sometimes even with fair use rationales), promote themselves or their company, use Commons as a private image hosting site or upload pictures of themselves or other things they care about and request deletion then, which is usually denied as licenses are irrevocable. This then often leads to frustration; furthermore, it's extremely time-consuming to clean up after them. I believe that something like raising the upload right to autoconfirmed or flagged uploading or such bullshit doesn't fix this problem. The problem is not that they're new, it's the problem that they don't get it. Maybe it would be good if there would be some pages that you have to read, maybe a step by step tutorial about Commons (of course in the localized language of the user), before you're technically possible to upload files. But there might be better solutions, as this might be annoying for people who already know this. --The Evil IP address (talk) 12:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

SUGGESTION (Special Wiki MEDIA DONATION project): A NEW HIGHLY EFFICIENT WAY FOR WORLD PUBLIC TO DONATE IMAGES AND VIDEO TO WIKIPEDIA/WIKIMEDIA/COMMONS etc.

• There should a link on every wiki family project page saying "DONATE AN IMAGE OR VIDEO". Anyone should be able to click on it and make/upload a media donation easily, SPECIALLY SELF CREATED WORK with the profusion of relatively cheap personal devices available now in the NEW AGE.
• In the donation form there should be all related disclosures and and Licenses that the donater can choose regarding donating a particular work.
• There should be place where Donater has to fill all related information related to media being donated like location, subject, time, basic info about self, etc. and details if from other source.
• People should be able to send copyrighted/unusable images to make suggestion of what we are missing and which we can put out on a list of required media, this list may be easily available to public view and/or ciculated.
• There should be an email address to where images/video/media can be emailed, clearly stating that the donater has read the various disclosures and licenses (on our website or our news release requesting media donations) and he is donating under which license. Once a media donation email is received to a special mail account: 1) once an email media donation is received from the donater and automatic (from wikipedia/media/commons etc.) email should go out to their address from our no-reply email address reminding them to read, in mail, provided disclousers and provide appropriate license and info for use again. Donater should be asked to email back the reply keeping the same address line explaining preference will be given to media donations which have been replied to, hence making them more usable earlier. 2) It should be available in an online archive for mining by users looking for images for articles they are working on and the public at large.
• Replied email donations with disclosures read and licences provided and direct media donations by clicking on link should be at all times available to our users and world public at large and journalists etc. There should be a warning to them to make sure BY THEMSELVES that they check (what could be our mostly unsupervised database) out if the donation has been made properly and if donater has read disclosures and provided consent and chosen the license properly. Users should be provided a basic guideline on how to make sure if the image/media is good.
• Proper donations should ask for keywords that should activate various tags for easy mining of donated database.
• The whole online media donation/uploading process should be VERY SIMPLIFIED with users asked to click/select choices with one click only from various choices after reading all. Short Disclosers should be page wise only, advancable by clicking NEXT so that all get read. Licenses should be chosen by a simple click from a choice. Media Info should be requested by filling blank by blank advancable software, including location, subject, time, DATE, donator info etc.
• This Media donation project should be centralized in commons with centralized email for donations. Project should be accessible from all wiki family projects from all their pages at all times by clicking.
• There should be a special option/Tags setting alerts for media donations regarding HAPPENING EVENTS and that should make news where world journalists/News companies can find Important or Immediate topics to pursue and other agencies like Aid agencies etc. to find places and subjects to assist. A media related to citizen reporting a historical national monument in bad shape should have the potential to trigger positive action to conserve. Potentially database mining should be able to facilitate new discoveries and affirmative action in right direction and build a tremendous world resource to record history/historical period datewise over the decades.
• Anyone mining the database should be able to setup warnings with a simple click about offending/sexually explicit/illegal images and special users with experience and extra powers should be able to either remove the image or make it invisible where in doubt.
• Should an option be provided where users of this donated media like journalists/new companies can provide citation like: Donated media from wikicommons server by ..(name of original donator).
• Donators should be able to choose their nonconflicting wiki User name, and make it a Tag, so that by clicking on name tag all images donated by the users can lineup in a online gallery for public and for donator to promote himself in other/outside professional media fields, if he chooses to provide link to this online portfolio.
• There should be a clear warning that there is no monetary compensation by wikicommons for media donation of any kind, it is a DONATION.
• Wikicommons software should be able to mine technical info of media if possible and provide the same online for researchers, sometimes it may include type of camera used, aperture, date, time of day and in the near future models, the GPS position/coordinates of where the media was made. If needed donator should be asked to give consent to publish this info.
• Public/Users should be requested to make media for donation with no recognizable faces/adertising/brand names as that may trigger having to take permission from people etc. shown in media made or fuzzing their faces/advertising/brand names etc.

Please forward to concerned persons/department for brainstorming and fine tuning.

I got the above idea while creating the article on Karvi shrub which only flowers once in eight years before dying.

Thanks

mrigthrishna (talk) 22:06, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Pasting from wikipedia [2], [3].

Posted on wikimedia commons at [4]

Posted on - Wikipedia talk:Creation and usage of media files - at: [5]

Posted on - Talk:Proposals for new projects; From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki - at: [6]

atulsnischal (talk) 22:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)