notablog

...on Wikimedia Commons. The vote for the Picture of the Year 2008 has begun and like every year, I am flabbergasted with the amount of amazing pictures that Commons reveals.

I thought I would list here my criteria for choosing the pictures I supported this year. This is how I proceed:

• Look at the gallery
• Click on the pictures that catch my eye
• Enlarge them to see them at full resolution
• Go back to the credits page to see where the picture comes from.
• Vote

And these are the criteria I keep in mind when choosing to support a picture or not.

1. The picture needs to catch my eye. This starts with a thumbnail, so any picture that does not have enough contrast or does not present something "different" does not go past the first page.
2. The picture needs to be of "good quality". This means a high resolution to start with, but also a picture with as little grain as possible and with details as sharp as possible. In the case of diagrams and animations, the smoothness of the animation or the fact that the diagram is in svg will prevail.
3. The picture should be of "encyclopedic nature". There are lots of debates about what is an encyclopedic picture, but I guess that for me it means that the picture should find its place as an illustration in one of the Wikimedia projects.
4. The picture should be clear in its subject. This means that I pay attention to how the picture is cropped, what frame was chosen and whether it illustrates well the subject it is about.
5. The technical skills that the picture entails. This goes especially for panoramas or macros.
6. Who took the picture. I must say that I give plus points for pictures taken by "normal contributors" as opposed to pictures imported from Public Domain repositories (such as US governmental organisations). This is my little way of promoting the individual contributor. Mind you, I have supported some "imported" pictures when they were particularly to the point, or when they represent historical views or art pieces.
7. My subjective opinion or emotion also plays a role, there are pictures I simply love, others I just like. This is the personal factor to my vote. However, there are a few pictures I love but which are in my opinion too far from all of the other criteria to catch my vote as "picture of the year".

You'll find on Commons the list of pics I voted for in the first round.

Crédits Images :

• Vendeuse d'arachides - © Roman Bonnefoy, licence CC-BY-SA 3.0 - Source: Wikimedia Commons
• Ammonite lamp post at dusk, Lyme Regis - © MichaelMaggs - License CC-BY-SA 3.0 - Source: Wikimedia Commons (I didn't vote for that picture because although it is probably one of my favorite, I find it does not answer the "encyclopedic" criteria that I set myself).

Résumé en français : Pourquoi je choisis pas toujours le libre. J'ai peu de photos sur Flickr, comparé aux nombres impressionnants de quelques-uns. La plupart de mes photos sont sous licence Creative Commons, cc-by-sa (paternité-partage à l'identique), mais pas toutes. Je garde la totalité de mes droits par défaut sur toutes les photos où l'on voit et peut reconnaître quelqu'un (que je connais ou pas), pour une raison qui vient d'être illustrée par l'utilisation par l'agence de pub de Virgin Mobile en Australie, qui a utilisé des photos de Flickr sous licence CC-BY (paternité) et en a fait... ce qu'elle a voulu, sans plus se soucier de demander quoi que ce soit, à qui que ce soit. Bien sûr, c'est "libre". Mais dans ces cas-là, je suis pour l'adage qui dit "la liberté des uns s'arrête où commence celle des autres.'"

So I am back from Copenhagen, where I was at the 9th edition of Reboot.

Where I am reassured that there are still people with imagination in the Wikimedia projects

I am one of those tedious defenders of the integrity of the Wikimedia logo. It is not, in itself, the best logo ever, but well, the Wikimedia Foundation has enough problems as is trying to differentiate itself from Wikipedia, it deserves at least its own visual identity.

Où l'AFP oublie de citer Wikipédia

Il y a de cela deux jours, Mathias Schindler invitait qui le voulait à une petite comparaison de texte.

First, good news, Florence is back on the blog scene. Yay! Second, she writes a very interesting post about the meaning of "free" as stressed in the Wikimedia Foundation's mission statement.

Patrice Létourneau, dont le blog est un havre de paix, a fait part sur la liste de discussion de la Wikipédia francophone de la sortie d'un article sur L'encyclopédie Agora intitulé Wikipedia : perspectives

You just have to find out who knows what

Well, the Nobody knows everything, but everybody knows something has been a long standing slogan for the construction of Wikipedia. However, I am not going to linger on the Wikipedia aspect of it, but rather on the applications I see in other areas, and especially on the organisational area of Wikimedia.

Or how Wikipedia addresses its "customers" and how the form reflects the content

N.B. I started this post more than a year ago and never put it on line, so some of the information is somewhat obsolete, but I decided today to take it up again and leave the first part as I had written it then.

Où comment se prendre la tête avec un truc qui devrait être évident

Voilà une question que l'on m'a posée trois fois au cours de mon séjour à Paris. Et trois fois dans des circonstances légitimes. Trois fois, je n'ai pas su vraiment répondre. Ou plutôt, la première fois, j'ai fait la sourde oreille, la deuxième, j'ai posé la question à l'envers "Que pensez-vous que soit notre mission ?" et la troisième, j'ai dû convenir du fait que je ne savais pas. Ou plutôt, si. Moi, je sais ce que je fais dans cette organisation, je sais pourquoi je suis là.