Doc Searls Weblog

7 responses to “Shootings up”

1. 

   PXLated

   October 15, 2009 at 11:12 pm

   Couple questions Doc…
   1) Under the CC you specify, shouldn’t they (Wikipedia) be attributing the small image on the main page? It is attributed but only if you click on the image for the larger view.
   2) How did you search to find the images used?

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2. Friends of Dave (friendsofdave) ‘s status on Friday, 16-Oct-09 03:27:43 UTC – Identi.ca

   October 15, 2009 at 11:27 pm

   […] http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2009/10/15/shootings-up/ a few seconds ago from api […]

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3. 

   Doc Searls

   October 16, 2009 at 5:48 am

   I’m not sure about #1, but will check. For #2, I searched for my name in Wikimedia Commons, and then looked to see if various pictures had been used in Wikipedia. There is, far as I know, no way to look in Wikipedia to see if anybody’s name, or other keywords, are used anywhere there. This is a Wikipedia flaw, I believe. Wikipedia should have two search boxes: one for article titles (what they have now) and one for everything (as you would find, say, in a a book index). A Google search for "Doc Searls" + Wikimedia yields results too, but with a lot of noise. Also, and FWIW, I do believe that some of the pictures I’ve taken have been used and then later removed. Doesn’t matter to me, though. I just think it’s cool that the pictures are found and used at all.

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4. 

   Harl Delos

   October 16, 2009 at 6:00 pm

   The ones you post on your blog are often simply magnificent, Doc. It’s no surprise to me that others have availed themselves of your generous licensing terms.

   Thank you.

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5. 

   Kevin McCoy

   October 16, 2009 at 11:22 pm

   Fantastic images. Thank you for licensing them under a free license that allows them to be used on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. About the credit: Giving credit on the image description page, rather than in the articles, is how Wikipedia has done image credits for years now (with some occasional exceptions.) (It’s also that way with the article text itself, which is licensed under the GFDL or CC-by-SA, like the photos, but the credit is given on the history tab.) In general it seems to satisfy the attribution requirement in a way that makes everyone happy.
   About searching: The search function on Wikipedia has gone through ups and downs. Personally, I rarely use it. If I’m looking for an article title, like Bobcat, I type “wp Bobcat” in my location bar, which expands via a keyword to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobcat. If the Bobcat article doesn’t exist, it’ll offer to search titles for me. If I’m looking for text within articles, I use Google’s site search function, so if I want articles with “Bobcat” in the text, I use “g site:wikipedia.org Bobcat”. If I was looking for stuff on Commons, I’d use site:commons.wikimedia.org instead. Some pages aren’t indexed by Google, but I think you’ll find that this search tactic cuts down on the noise.

   Thanks again for a great bunch of photos.

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6. 

   Doc Searls

   October 17, 2009 at 9:30 am

   Thanks, Kevin. I use similar tactics in approaching Wikipedia topics. Still, it would save a lot of work if one could search easily for anything and everything, and not just for articles. That way, for example, I could see which of my pictures in Wikimedia Commons are also used in Wikipedia. Right now the only way to tell is by looking up a subject on Wikipedia and seeing if one of my shots is there.

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7. 

   Kevin McCoy

   October 17, 2009 at 10:01 am

   Well, the image pages on Commons have a link at the top for “check usage”, which links to a tool that checks the image’s usage across all the Wikimedia wikis. Of course, that means you have to find your images on Commons first. But a more integrated, more universal search function would absolutely be nice. 🙂

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