I pay a bit more than passing attention when you and her talk. This is still one of my favorite conversations of ours . . . Going through Wikimedia, especially on more esoteric items, I'm surprised that a lot of photos can be kind of crummy. They're blurry, poorly lit, don't show off defining details, etc. When I thought to myself that I could actually probably do better with my ancient, near busted, point and shoot, I started entertaining the idea of taking pictures for Wikipedia. Thought while I haven't looked into it just yet, I'm fairly certain it's a bit more difficult than Take Picture -> Upload -> Categorize.
The principle problems Wikimedia faces are: 1) Rights issues. Nobody wants to license them images of things they can sell later, and photographers cannot legally give them rights to photos of rights-controlled objects. 2) Volunteer issues. Wiki has been suffering a die-off of volunteers for a while now and what volunteers it has aren't really "go out and capture the real world' people, they're keyboard commandos. thus, they go with the images they can get.
Which is weird you say that, cause more than a few times have I stumbled upon stuff that's clearly still copywritten on their site, mostly fictional characters. Is there a reason for this? Site politics? Problems with the underlying program?Rights issues. Nobody wants to license them images of things they can sell later, and photographers cannot legally give them rights to photos of rights-controlled objects.
Volunteer issues. Wiki has been suffering a die-off of volunteers for a while now and what volunteers it has aren't really "go out and capture the real world' people, they're keyboard commandos.