Junkers 188A-3, a photo from the #Bundesarchiv

The Junkers Ju 188 was a German Luftwaffe high-performance medium bomber built during World War II. A picture was part of the continuing cooperation with the German Federal Archives.

Once images become part of Commons, it is not the end of the cooperation. When the descriptions of the pictures are thought to be problematic, people report this and these reports often result in changes both in the descriptions on Commons and at the General Federal Archives.

The problem with this picture is that at the indicated time this type of air plane was not flying with the unit it is attributed to.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The unhelpful #Wikimedia #OpenStreetMap discussion

The ongoing discussion on the Foundation-l mailing list is totally unhelpful. It starts with the observation that maps are not attributed in the same way as texts. It then asserts that all geo data in Wikipedia is unusable in OpenStreetMap. The discussion is unlikely to lead to a result as many fixed positions have not been opened for discussion.

There are several nits to pick:

• these are amateurs lawyers killing cooperation between two major open content projects
• no credible sources have been provided to support such broad statements
• no lawyers support any of the positions taken by either side
• my impression that FUD is the basis of much of this copyright / licensing paranoia

For a long time there have been moves towards integrating OpenStreetMap in our Wikipedias. Several developers have spend a lot of time making this happen, servers to host maps were bought by the German chapter. We are at a stage where we should talk about what we can do, not a stage where we find that we cannot work together after all.

What we need is to learn the real situation. We need to learn what we can do. When maps cannot be used because they should not be available under a free license in Wikipedia, we have a process of dealing with this.

It is not acceptable for this sorry situation to continue. It is not only in the interest of the Wikimedia Foundation and the OpenStreetMap Foundation but in the interest of the open content world that this storm in a tea cup ends. Both projects provide their data under the CC-by-sa license and we are stronger when we are seen to work together.

In previous blog posts (1, 2, 3) I called for a project manager to make the integration of WMF projects with OpenStreetMap happen. This whole sorry saga provides additional arguments why we should give this project more visibility.

NB I am really happy that this issue surfaced now and not later.
Thanks,
     GerardM

More #mobile #Wikipedia news (continued IX)

• at #translatewiki.net new localisations are being added all the time
• the latest complete localisation was entered today for Lombard
• several people from India confirmed that they share my wish for an input method for Latin script keyboards
• it would be nice to learn that the existing code can be implemented on the software that supports mobile Wikipedia
• it would be nice to have at least the same features as our commercial competition ... Hampton / Erik pretty please?

• ao-komoriuta was so gracious to work on an initial version of a mobile main page for the Japanese Wikipedia
• two columns do not work well on a mobile phone. that is one thing that should change
• it would be really cool if the usability experts of the Wikimedia Foundation helped formulate what makes for a functional good looking main page on a mobile phone.
• it would be good if our mobile offering is at least as full featured as our commercial competitor .. Erik, Hampton pretty please ??

Thanks,
     GerardM

Usability - The Wikia tools

Angela mentioned the work Wikia is doing on usability in a thread on Foundation-l. I had a look and, I am impressed. They have a working solution for the problem with templates.


The problem is that many people get frightened off by templates. Compare the screen shot above, a screen shot with a maximum of information on the template used, with the Wikipedia article "Netherlands".

Wikia has at the bottom of each page functionality that allows you to create a new page. This leads to a Special:Createpage. This is a big improvement from the standard MediaWiki method.

The great thing is Angela's invitation to the Wikimedia Foundation to explore the Wikia code to learn if it is useful. I applaud this. But why wait for the WMF usability project to kick in, would it not make sense for all the people and organisations to start collaborating anyway?

There are many aspects of MediaWiki that need work. There are many people and organisations that will benefit from cooperating.
Thanks,
     GerardM