At the Commons meeting in Paris, we considered the growth of Commons. This was in terms of "we will get video", "our GLAM contributions are in the 100.000 images at a time" and "we need to improve our storage capacity planning".What we did not consider is how much it actually grows. The statistics by Erik Zachte give perspective; with 268 M its traffic is in between the number nine and number ten Wikipedia. Unlike most biggest Wikipedias, it grew last month by 35%.
The consequence is that when we aim to have the number five reach in every country, we should concentrate on our multimedia as well. This is apparantly where we grow rapidly.
We discussed growing the use of Commons in Paris. Chad has been working on improving an API called "InstantCommons" that allows other MediaWiki installations to use the Commons media. This API can also be made available to other applications like Drupal, Sakai, Wordpress, Wave... It was indicated that this would be on average a weeks work for a new platform.
I have doubts, I wonder if this growth is an anomaly, there is no indication what the autonomous growth will be. There is no indication how video will change things.. I wonder why we did not discuss this in Paris, are we only watching Wikipedia??
Thanks,
GerardM
2 comments:
No, the problem is that you are usually too busy to bash Commons to see its positive aspects. This is the first time I see you posting about Commons without some snarky remarks - congratulations.
It is likely that I am longer involved with Commons, have more contributions and have more incentive to improve Commons.
Making observations about Commons, indicating what is problematic about Commons shows that I care ...
Thanks,
GerardM
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