[Clipart] [Open Clip Art Library] Completely unusable site

[Jon Phillips]

On Mon, 2007-09-24 at 02:50 +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 9/17/07, farmer.rod at gmail.com <farmer.rod at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I just wanted to voice my frustration at this site. It is completely unusable. In the
> > past, it was relatively easy to find a category of icons, and see the thumbnails,
> > determine what formats were available ... and download. Simple.
> >
> > The current design would have to be the most frustrating interface I have used
> > in a long long time.
> 
> It might be worth considering merging openclipart.org with Wikimedia
> Commons, which is the media repository used by Wikipedia and its
> sister projects.
> 
> The MediaWiki software already has
> - SVG thumbnail rendering
> - versioned and editable metadata, including categories
> - file versioning
> 
> It lacks a few other features, but one could attempt to spec these
> out, and then Wikimedia Foundation and CC could pursue a joint
> initiative to fund development work on them in some way. The current
> OCL would then be accessible through a dedicated portal in Commons.

Ok, I don't work on this through my affiliation to Creative Commons as
community/business manager :) But, never know if I can find some way to
connect them up.

> Let me know if this is something you want to discuss. As Board member
> of the Foundation I don't have the authority to execute it myself, but
> I can try to instigate it.

This is an interesting proposition. We should talk this over on the list
ya'll and see if it is something we would want to do...while it is great
to have our own project, are we at a point where joining this into the
larger community of wikimedia commons is something that will benefit the
overall clip art community?

Are there more people well versed in mediawiki's code and systems than
in ccHost? I would say without a doubt, yes.

What then are the features that Wikimedia Commons has that ccHost/Open
Clip Art Library has? 

Also, are there benefits to having such a direct connection between
Inkscape in the coming release to Open Clip Art Library? Will that
effect things?

I've often pondered what a larger commons project in storing content
would look like if it came from Open Clip Art Library's
direction...well, the Wikimedia Commons and Archive.org have this
covered for the most part...so I start to wonder as well, how to get all
the features and bugs we want finished complete so that our community
can grow, etc?

In another thread, I have been working on a major development of
integration between Creative Commons and the Open Library
(http://demo.openlibrary.org) for CC licensing integration, along with
some type of bridge to use Open Library as a simplified
citation/reference system for Wikimedia sites, including Wikimedia
Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org I presented this at Wikimania this
year when the service was called Wikibiblio. That code base is now in
progress to be integrated into openlibrary...soooo...one could look at
this as a great opportunity for this community as well for using this
solid infrastructure for great content, and us adding our expertise to
an openclipart.org themed portal that would interconnect to Wikimedia
projects, Open Library and use CC copyright/registry services...

Also, from looking at the http://openclipart.org stats, the project is
at a point right now where it needs to make some changes and grow, or
stay steady:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?site0=openclipart.org&y=r&z=3&h=300&w=610&range=3y&size=Medium&url=mtv.com

So, we could interpret this as needing to scale up, or needing to merge
efforts IMO.

So, it seems to me we have a couple of options with the project right
now:

Picture #1) We keep on as we keep on with the idea that I (and some
hopeful new developers) will somehow magically have the hacker strength
to kick some butt and knock out all the feature changes we have on the
site to get it up to spec, and along the way we can persuade others to
join in the efforts (the current approach ;)


Picture #2) We take the content, and figure out a strategy for merging
this site and necessary features into wikimedia commons, and turn
openclipart.org into a portal to clip art for the Wikimedia commons, and
try to honor all paths to the old clip art...and then push our efforts
more into mediawiki development, and wikimedia commons community
development


Picture #3) We just keep things as they are, which means, somewhat
static development, but the clip art and registrations increase over
time...


Soooo...in thinking about these, I think Picture #3 is not good long
term strategy...we must face it that without renewed blood and
resources, the community of developers is shrinking. However, the
community of artists in increasing (so that is good). On the other hand,
Picture #1 is more like what we are doing now. Is that working? My time
is becoming more and more scarce, and the key features we need for this
community to grow are way behind (because these features kinda all go
onto me right now). 

So, then considering picture #2, this seems like a great way to know the
content will be live, there already is svg gallery, versioned metadata
and versioned files. However, there are some key things that wikimedia
commons doesn't have like structured system for rating, comments, tags,
and several other cool features of a true content management system.
There is a way to associate contributions with licensing, but there
would be much work necessary to merge over this project into wikimedia
commons. Erik, would there be assistance for this type of merge in a
timely manner, how could resources be allocated? Could all the
developers who have accounts, get accounts on Wikimedia Commons to help
develop? Anyway, there are a lot of issues, but there is some super
strong support for this in that there is already a huge pool of
developers behind Wikimedia Commons and they actively clean up the
content...is this something we want? Is Wikimedia Commons too ugly for
artists to use? Is it way too hard to contribute to that site? Could we
customize it more with an openclipart.org front-end?

Anyway, I've rambled enough, and I still haven't made my mind up about
this, but am curious about what others think? Lets talk about this issue
and come to some kind of conclusion...

Cheers Erik for throwing out this option...regardless, good to strike up
a discussion about...

Jon

-- 
Jon Phillips

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