I learned that Getty Images and Flickr have joined in an exclusive partnership. Both organisations represent some of the biggest resources of images of the world. Getty Images sells them to people and organisations that need illustrations. Flickr is a website where you can share your images with the rest of the world. As photographers retain their copyright, this partnership is to allow Getty to sell images of Flickr on behalf of the Flickr participants.
What is most notable, is the reason for this collaboration. Getty's stock has a bias towards what is photographed by typically Western photographers. As a result there is a bias towards Western subjects and more importantly, a lack of material that illustrates far flung places and events.
This same bias both Wikipedia and Commons suffer from. Given that Commons' user interface is in English, many people who are not able to communicate in English find it a hostile environment and consequently many Wikipedias in languages other then en.wikipedia do not contribute to Commons as a result. This in term leads to a bias in Commons as the material that is represented in the languages and cultures of those projects is missing; it is at best uploaded locally.
Thanks,
GerardM
3 comments:
It's definitely a big problem, and it's frustrating to know that it's a problem and not really know what to do to improve the situation. The discussions have to occur in *a* language, and English became the 21st century lingua franca; wherever possible, templates and documentation are translated, but it's an enormous effort, and never up to date. At least, users coming from Wikipedias through image links to Commons get the interface automatically in their language, but the environment is still alienating for people not understanding English well.
Maybe people have to be educated in a sense that they should know they can use whichever language to express themselves on Commons, not just English. There are online translators, there are people willing to summarize discussions in different languages... maybe do some campaigns in local projects to find more people willing to help in internationalization efforts.
I have been recommending to use Commons for image uploads, for various good reasons, I had even been in favour of not making local uploads to or small wikipedia at all. I have since totally turned towards making uploads locally, and if one really wants to make the efford, upload a copy to commons. Why?
Commons is an unreliable ressource. By and by, many images that we are using were deleted from commons without replacement. The "commonsticker", which should warn us before deletions, does not work.
Noone understands the reason for deletions. All deletions of my own (few) submissions were unjustified and were restored. Noone cares to understand the peculiarities of (US-dominated) international and multinational copyright, -left, and similar. Noone likes to have to defend his or her uploads with lengthy arguments. This is only in part about languages not understood, it is a cultural problem, at least, too. When Commons does not get that solved, it will only attract new interest for a time, until contributors realize, that it does not work ever so often.
Greetings, Purodha
One part of the problem isn't the fault of Commons at all: some countries' copyright law happens to be more generous than others. Commons can host images by NASA, for example, but not by the European Space Agency because of United States Government public domain. Also, it is often far simpler tell whether the work of an obscure photographer or artist is public domain under the pre-1923 rule than under a life +(span of years) many other countries use.
One thing that multilingual Wikimedians can do to help correct the shortcoming is to translate more countries' copyright laws into English. Many of us who speak English as our primary language are actually eager to help correct systemic bias, but we hesitate to put our skills to the test in a second or third language by trying to parse the intricacies of copyright laws. I've made attempts in my not-so-good Spanish to parse Cuban and Panamanian copyright law and thought I figured out whether particular images were public domain, but it wouldn't be responsible for me to be the one to try to give Commons a translation on something that important. Half a year later no one whose skills are better than mine has made that attempt for either country, and as long as that continues it's a major barrier.
It's not that English speakers don't care, but in the time it took me me to determine whether two images were public domain I could have uploaded twenty whose licenses are simpler to understand. And although I love to restore international images and get them featured, it doesn't make sense to invest ten hours restoring an image whose licensing status I might have misunderstood and that turns out to be unfree.
What to change that? If you're fluent in several languages, help open the starting gate by translating.
Post a Comment