#Wikdiata - #rabbit breeds

My father used to breed rabbits. His favourite breed is the "Fauve de Bourgogne".  He bred them to the Dutch standard and showed them off regularly at local and national competitions.

When you search using Reasonator for rabbit breed, you will find many breeds that are known in several Wikipedias. At this time three images are found in "Related media". When pictures are added to the 109 different breeds, more pictures will show up.

When labels are added to the "rabbit breeds", more children will find pictures to illustrate their projects.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikivoyage pictures; the fun of being there

The coin dropped for me. Once Wikivoyage is a running Wikimedia project, it is about travelling, going on a holiday, seeing the sites. All these articles need their illustrations. I think that this is to be expected. It is obvious to me what kind of pictures they can be.

Many of them will be holiday pictures and, there is nothing wrong with that. These pictures will have a use, they illustrate Wikivoyage.

What I like about it is that they broaden the horizon of Commons and hopefully inject Commons with many more fun images.

The Commons challenge will only become more relevant; what will it take to make it the wiki where everyone can easily find a great and appropriate media file.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Do they eat cashew sprouts in #India ?

Hidden among the many pictures of Malayalam loves Wikipedia, there is a picture of a bucket full of cashew sprouts.

Bucket full of cashew sprouts

Because it is a picture of a bucket full of cashew sprouts, these sprouts themselves do not get the detailed attention they deserve.

cashew sprouts

When you google for "cashew sprouts" there is not much to find. There are no pictures of cashew sprouts either so I wonder, why do they have these sprouts in a bucket? Are they going to eat them, are they going to plant them?

There is no one Indian cuisine and if there is, I love it. However, I have never had cashew sprouts in a dish. Probably there is much in the Indian kitchen that you can only taste in India.
Thanks,
      GerardM

How to make a point in a #Wikipedia

The best way to make a point is not by battling over ever more sophisticated formulations that leave our readers lost in attempting to achieve a "neutral point of view". The best way is achieved by providing one thousand words at a time.

When you are against nuclear power for instance, pictures like these pain a thousand words at a time. These pictures help define horrible, they cannot be argued away. The recent events in Japan prove that nuclear accidents do happen everywhere and the half life of nuclear isotopes ensure that the after affects will stay with us for many generations to come.

Freely licensed cartoons can find a happy home at Wikimedia Commons as well. They exist to make a point.

People will choose from the best illustrations available and when pictures are well presented on Commons they will be used. When you are passionate about something, anything and you have media files that pack a punch, Commons is where your material will get attention.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Alternate view of my #Blogger blog

#Illustrations are not only attention grabbers, they also help get the stories read. What many bloggers do not realise is that when stories are too long, chances are that people will not finish reading them. Illustrations break the text and invite people back to a next paragraph.



Blogger has a novel way of looking at a blog. It shows for instance a mosaic of the illustrations used. The fun part starts when you guess what a story is about. There are more views that are nice to play with:

• flipcard
• sidebar
• snapshot
• timeslide

Thanks,
       GerardM

ver·bi·age (vûr b - j, -b j). n. 1. An excess of words for the purpose

When a text is written, it is either written with an audience in mind or the audience is assumed to be similar in tastes as the writer. Typically people have limited patience with texts that are too wordy. Newspapers are preferably full of pictures that are big and colourful when articles are to attract attention.

With all the attention on high brow, must have features like citations, and references Wikipedia is becoming more and more intellectual and harder to read. Check out the English main page; words and more words with pictures so small that details are lost. The size of footnotes and references in a featured article is bigger then the size of the illustrations ...

It was a pleasure to leaf through paper encyclopaedias; when a picture caught the attention you read a bit only to move on. Sadly much of the art of illustrating seems lost for now. Is it a victim of our braininess?
Thanks,
      GerardM

Stimulating the #Commons stock photo functionality

A company that sells pictures, makes sure that they have visually stunning images that can illustrate the most weird and wonderful subjects. Take a subject like dyslexia; how to illustrate this? A friend send me this wonderful example of a photoshopped picture that does this really well.

When you read the Wikipedia article, there is no illustration. This is where visually stunning pictures that express the issue are needed because this article is factually correct, it is hard reading with the key facts hidden behind all kinds of classification.

Stock photography is about illustrations. When there are many pictures that illustrate a subject, it is indeed the most visually attractive picture that will be sold. When you seek an illustration, you will find that historic pictures are an important part of a collection. They are because they provide a view that is no longer there.

With the arrival of sharing options at Commons, we have the opportunity to strengthen its stock functionality. With over 270 Wikipedias our own need for multiple pictures for one subject is intrinsically high.

Commons is slowly becoming a stable source of freely licensed pictures. We have the opportunity to make it the "goto" place for quality illustrations. With 7,626,589 freely usable media files, the basis for such a function exists. What is left is profiling and marketing us as a source for great illustrations.
Thanks,
        GerardM

Beautiful artwork

illustration by Rahul Das

Some derivatives of the #Wikipedia globe are more equal then others. The Time Out Mumbai had a nice article on the Wikimedia Foundation setting up an office in India.

They interviewed Bishanka, Barry, Arun and Achal for this. They even have a picture of Achal and Bishanka but the illustration of India fitted into the Wikimedia world is really great.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Support for #TIFF in #Commons

With no fanfare support for TIFF files has been enabled on Commons. This is great news as it allows us to see the many many original images as we started with them before a digital restoration. In this way the provenance of all these images is strengthened.

The above screen shot shows a tiff on commons. When you want to see a picture in all its glory, the picture is downloaded to your computer and it is presented by a program that knows how to deal with tiffs.

As you may know, the development of the software was funded by the German chapter, the software has been brought silently in production. This may be because many of the tiff pictures are not showing properly yet.

It is however great that things are coming together. I am happy with the first tiff support. Better now then waiting for perfection, this gives more people a challenge :)
Thanks,
        GerardM

#Commons as a source for "stock photography"

#Commons is not only #Wikipedia 's repository of illustrations, it is also a rich resource of freely licensed images that can be used for all kinds of other purposes. Commons does a great job for Wikipedia, but how do you measure its success for other purposes and how do you make it more successful.

I blog for instance and while I was in the Ardennes, I saw horses grazing above me, there is no picture that gives the same sense of nearby horses grazing above. In a previous blog I asked for pictures of the yak a running yak, a yak being milked, yaks in a caravan.

The question is, how do we compile the kind of pictures that are particularly illustrative, the kind of pictures that would make Commons a source for what you can also find in the collections of companies that sell pictures.

The difference with featured pictures is very much in the subject matter. There is only so much use for just another bug, bird or mammal. How do you illustrate back pain, love, madness, hard work, a person of a particular caste?
Thanks,
      GerardM

Queen Victoria, young and old

The image that we have of historic people is often one of men and women in the latter days of their life. Particularly when people had a big impact, the idea that they were once young, even beautiful is difficult to perceive. The Queen Victoria we know is likely similar to this postcard of her at the time of her golden jubilee.

When she was young, she was devoted to her husband and she commissioned Franz Xaver Winterhalter to paint a picture of her, a picture that became known as "The Secret Picture" for her husbands 24th birthday, a picture that was only intended for his eyes.

This picture will be shown in Buckingham palace as part of the "Victoria and Albert: Art and Love" exhibition from the 19th of March.

Such big differences between the young and old Victoria can also be found in movie stars, politicians, television presenters.. People with a long career. When we illustrate our Wikipedia articles, it is best to have pictures that show a progressively ageing person. In this way we have multiple illustrations showing the many facets of the life of the illustrious people that merit a big article.
Thanks,
GerardM

Quality pictures

Historical subjects need illustrations just like any other subjects. I was looking at the word "front" and I learned that for the Russian military it has a specific meaning. I looked up the corresponding article and found this picture.

It shows soldiers marching, a bridge and a tower in the background. It is probably the best picture that we have and it will be replaced once we have a better version of this photo or when we have an alternative.

The question is where do we get a better alternative. Who has access to the original picture and can create a quality scan. There are likely enough alternatives to this picture.Who can help us improve our illustrations of this article ?
Thanks,
      GerardM

What is on the menu

Today I read an article about the "mouse man", a scientist who had a big influence on the research of cancer and genetics. His Wikipedia article does not have a picture.. It looks boring and this is probably because there are no appropriately licensed pictures around. There are not even pictures of laboratory mice...

Pictures illustrate, and having great illustrations make great articles a lot more accessible. When we are lucky, we can find material that is in the public domain. Museums and archives are the custodians of such material and when we are really lucky, they make quality scans available.

Many of these images are damaged and need restoration. Many of these images are restored by one of a growing group of Wikipedians. Durova is probably the most prolific restorer. It is hard to keep track of all the images she has done.

In order to reach out to other people interested in restoration work, Durova has started to upload her pictures to Flickr as well. The question is if the upload limit will allow her to upload all her work. Flickr has a slideshow so have a look..

To answer pfctdayelise, yes it would be great to have a slide show in MediaWiki as well..
Thanks,
      GerardM