[FM Discuss] intro from a converted Wikimedian

[Brianna Laugher]

Hello FLOSSies,

My name's Brianna, I run by the username "Pfctdayelise" on Wikimedia
projects, specifically Wikmedia Commons (
http://commons.wikimedia.org/ ) which is a free-license media
repository. I was fortunate enough to have some good chats with Adam
at Wikimania and I'm a  bit of a convert. Holding a copy of the
Audacity manual in my hot little hands is a pretty cool thing. :)

Audacity especially piqued my interest because I know it is a tool
commonly used by Wikimedians when recording 'Spoken Wikipedia'
articles. At the moment over 600 articles have been recorded in 13
languages: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikipedia
This is quite a feat, and a little-known one. While Spoken articles
obviously have value for the vision impaired, they are frankly a very
enjoyable thing to just listen to on your ipod or while travelling
etc. In fact I recall the first time I was able to finish the GFDL
from start to end was while listening to the spoken version of it. ;)
You can also use it to practice listening to second languages, and
it's fun to hear the variety of accents.

There is quite possibly 1000 spoken articles already, because I
suspect many speakers upload their files to Wikipedia rather than
Commons [files at Commons can be automatically used in any Wikimedia
project, but unfortunately you still need a separate login to upload].

The English project page for Spoken Wikipedia is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia

I think it would be really cool to develop a couple of chapters in the
FLOSS Manual specifically on human voice recording and editing. I have
listened to some recordings that have been virtually unlistenable due
to fuzz and low volume. Wikipedians write a lot of documentation but
like much FLOSS documentation is tends to assume a lot of prior
knowledge and be very piece-meal. That is why I am so impressed by the
FLOSS Manuals approach.

Wikimedia Commons also does a lot of work with vector graphics and
fair bit of work with plain old image editing as well. So I think work
on GIMP and Inkscape would be very useful. Inkscape in particular
really seems to be the market leader in terms of vector graphic
editing SW (whereas there are many more general image editing software
programs of varying quality and freeness).

So if you FLOSSies think it's a good idea, I would like to help
encourage collaboration between Wikimedians, especally Wikimedia
Commons users, and FLOSS Manuals. As I said we already tend to write a
fair bit of documentation, but it does need polishing up.

We also tend to be a fairly insular community, but I will try and open
up avenues of collaboration where I can.


BTW I saw in the archives someone mentioned 'Wikipedia images'. Only
Wikipedia's text is licensed under the GFDL. Images are licensed under
a variety of licenses including GFDL, PD, CC-BY and CC-BY-SA. Some
images are even "fair use", i.e. copyrighted. Most authors would be
happy to multilicense their works under another free license such as
the GPL, on request. If you ever want any help through the maze of
images on Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons please just drop me a line,
I'd be happy to help.


As a final word I will offer a brief comment about "the license
issue". Since most existing FLOSS doc is probably under the GFDL it
seems a bit of a shame not to be able to draw on it. OTOH most
existing FLOSS doc is pretty crud, so maybe it doesn't matter that
much. If anything I would put my vote forward for Creative Commons'
CC-BY-SA. The wording of it just seems more appropriately generic
rather than making any assumptions about the form or medium of the
work (software program and a book, for GPL and the GFDL respectively).
But I'm not really interested in licensing 'holy wars'... the most
important thing is that the work is, and remains, free.

OK as a really final note I will just state that I am a volunteer
editor for the Wikimedia Foundation and have no official position with
them. Just to make that clear. :)

cheers,
Brianna

-- 
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/