Wikimedia Israel free image collection project/Practical issues

The following page is meant to bring forward some practival issues regarding the free image collection project (a.k.a PicWik or Wiki-Picky). The project is a collaboration between Wiki-Commons and a joint ad-hoc forum of Wikimedia-Israel (WM-IL), the Israel Internet Society (ISOC-IL), and the Center for Educational Technology (CET). The contact person between Wiki-Commons and the forum is User:Drork.

Background

edit
  • We intend to open a local website in Hebrew (and possibly other languages spoken in Israel), which will serve both as a convinient localized interface for people to upload images, and as a tool to browse those images and download them.
  • The local website will include only an interface and the images' catalog in Hebrew. The pictures themselves will be stored on the Commons. The local website will draw the images from the Commons for display or for download.
  • The licensing terms for uploading an image will conform with Wiki-Commons policy and the Israeli law, i.e. people will be asked to waive all copyrights except attribution and some irrevocable moral rights.
  • We intend to ask each contributor to register at the local website and accept the legal terms according to a Hebrew version translated from the Commons' legal terms and adapted to the Israeli law.

Questions

edit
  1. Is there any advantage in using a Wiki system for the local website interface? Should a Wiki system facilitate the communication with the Commons in comparison to other systems?
    I don't think so. I think a wiki is overkill for what you want to do. pfctdayelise 09:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Is the local registration policy accepted on Wiki-Commons? This means that the local website administors will be regarded as one user. Copyright or technical issues will be addressed to the local website's administrators rather than the specific contributors of the images.
    That should be fine as long as the account has a name like 'PikWik Project Administration' - something that indicates what it is. And it would be helpful to write an explanation on the user page too. pfctdayelise 09:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  3. The newly uploaded images are to be stored temporarily on a local server and sent to the Commons in one batch every two days. Can the Commons be adjusted to such a procedure?
    We have several custom tools for bulk uploading. See commons:Commons:Tools#Upload_media. The Perl script is quite easy to use. But please test them using Hebrew characters first, I am not sure how they will cope. pfctdayelise 09:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  4. What kind of details must be attached to each image sent to the Commons?
    Two main things. commons:Template:Information, specifically 'description','source','date','author' and a chosen license. The second thing is categories. I suggest creating a category like commons:Category:PikWik Project (or whatever), and require that all images go into this category. In addition to this they will need at least one content-describing category. If nothing else, then use commons:Category:Israel as a default, but something more specific would be better. One idea might be: create some tags that correspond to Commons categories, and when people upload, ask them to choose at least one relevant tag. Then convert the tags to the categories. (This would also help as all Commons cats are in English) pfctdayelise 09:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Is there a system of thumbnail search that can be incorporated in the local website interface, should we decide to use a Wiki-based interface?
    Not built in to MediaWiki, no. Since you are going to store the images in the first place I don't see why you don't just keep thumbnails for searching/browsing anyway? pfctdayelise 09:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Technical issues

edit
  1. We plan show images located in WikiCommons using their URL. For example, the image [1] is currently located at [2]. We plan to use the code of the unique file name link: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:[image name] and get the current URL from the HTTP respond. Is there a better way to do it?
    Yes, use commons:Special:Filepath. Another way if you have a list of images is to make a list of media: links, like this: Media:אבישי טייכר 075.jpg. That links directly to the original file. pfctdayelise