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Wikipedia Gears Up For Explosion In Digital Media
jbrodkin writes "Wikipedia is gearing up for an explosion in digital content with new servers and storage designed to handle larger photo and video uploads.
Until early 2008, the user-generated encyclopedia's primary media file server had just 2TB of total space, which was not enough to hold growing amounts of video, audio and picture files, says CTO Brian Vibber.
'For a long time, we just did not have the capacity [to handle very large media files],' he says.
Wikipedia has raised media storage from 2TB to 48TB and the limit on file uploads from 20MB to 100MB. Ultimately, Wikipedia wants to eliminate any practical size limits on uploads, potentially allowing users to post feature length, high-quality videos.
'The limits will get bigger and bigger to where it will be relatively easy for someone who has a legitimate need to upload a two-hour video of good quality,' Vibber says."
The Wiki project represents the best and worst that's in us. I wonder if people will start trying to archive classic shows on there like they do on youtube. :)
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Why don't they instead just allow linking to youtube videos without the WP nazis removing them? Sure they can upgrade storage size, but if they start storing videos everyone wants to see, then you're looking at youtube-sized bandwidth bills (or lack thereof) ensuing. It makes more sense to me, at least. [citation needed]
Do you have a large video but don't want to consume your desktop hard drive with it? Just write an article about it and post it all to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia, as a nonprofit, is no different from any other dumbass venture-backed company.
"Hey we just collected $6MM, and we're heading into Great Depression II. What should we do?"
"Why don't we spend all of it as quickly as we can, then beg for more in a few months?"
"Genius! Give that man a raise!"
Hey, if I had 6 million million dollars, I wouldn't hesitate to blow a few thousand on hard drives either.
But, seriously: if you become irrelevant, it doesn't matter how financially smart you are, you can say bye-bye.
BitTorrent
I doubt it, due to copyrights. The expiration on copyright is so long that they'd have little to legally archive.
Developers: We can use your help.
I thought there was a deal in the works for google to host wikipedia and solve the storage problem once and for all.
I know the wikinauts hate the idea of google text ads, control freak purists that they be. But wasn't the google offer independent of ads?
Infuriate left and right
Seriously, half the pages I view on a daily basis these days are wikipedia pages. Any time I want to learn about something, it's the first place I go.
MABASPLOOM!
"legitimate need to upload a two-hour video of good quality"
Who gets to define legitimate?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Unlike my name, Vibber's is spelled BriOn.
long... stupid, stupid long...
IMHO, what they really need is a good P2P protocol to handle streaming media. Storage is not nearly as much of a problem as the bandwidth required. A 1 TB hdd can be had for 100$. 5-way replication - 500$. Still peanuts compared to the cost of actually serving it.
The Raven
...video editor
Am I going to the Wikipedia page on France, and watching a video, complete with caption in *My* language, of France - like a mini-documentary or travel brochure or promo? Who produces that? Who edits it? Is there a standard narrator? Can we get that guy with the cool voice that does Frontline to do them all? Will they have any standards in how they are produced? How they are credited?
There is a fundamental and critical difference between Youtube, which is a Bazaar, and Wikipedia, which is a Cathedral - to brazenly steal Eric Raymond's title.
A video on say France is the authoritative video on the subject. Unlike say a picture, which may be used or copied with permission that may show a city or a map, videos require much more work. Will Oliver Stone get to do the video for George W Bush? Will it be like the BMW series with Clive Owen, having a bunch of guest directors? Can we have Marty Scorsese do the video for New York City?
Multimedia is cool, but it opens up alot of problems.
Sounds pretty dumb to me. Media should be at Wikimedia commons, not in Wikipedia proper.
Maybe that's what he means, but I didn't RTFA.
Their main problem is going to be making sure that none of the stuff people upload violates any copyright and conforms to their free/non-free usage guidelines. There are only so many user-generated videos that could find a place in an encyclopedia, so I assume most of what they'll see will be ripped from other places.
They spend enormous amounts of time "patrolling" uploaded images, placing them on special categories for later review and so on. And the processes in place don't help, either. The last time I tried the upload page for an image from the Cassini mission I was pretty much blown away how complicated it is to figure out how to tag a file to avoid having it be deleted on sight, even though the use permissions from the copyright owner were pretty clear.
If the Wikipedia bureaucracy is bad now, just wait for the Video Upload Patrol Group to form up. Oh the humanity.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
We already have archive.org for anything out of copyright, or freely redistributable. There are even full length features available.
My question is how exactly is a 2 hour movie going to fit in with the mission of Wikipedia. They're intended to be an encyclopedia, not a movie download service. It would make sense to link to clips of films in the article on John Williams or Spike Lee or whoever, but all you need is a clip, not the whole film.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
960 TByte / 1500E+6 internet users = 640 kByte
That ought to be enough for anybody.
Despite all this this "storage", you are still not "notable". "CSD A7" is your usual fate, so they don't even have to "AFD" or "PROD" you anymore. [here is your citation needed]
For example of the notabillity double standards (known WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS in "wikispeak"): Wikipedia has over 100,000 articles in volapuk which is a dead conlang which was generated by a bot, but won't let have us an article about the pokemon called "Mudkip". (using the so i herd you like mudkips "meme" as "proof" that it is not "notable".
Also Wikipedia is vandalmania for "featuring" "4chan" today Seethe "Random" board, aka "/b/" to see what I mean if you are a "newfag" in 4chanspeak.
These developments offer a chance for the open source .ogg/theora format to shine.
While folks at Illiminable have done a good job of providing a codec to play .ogg files within Windows Media Player, I hope this can be available by default.
That is, you attempt to play an .ogg/theora file and the system provides a opportunity to download and install/setup the plugin by default on systems without the ability to play .ogg/theora files.
I eagerly await the update to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_positions
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This is out of scope for Wikipedia. It sounds like this should be an entirely separate project. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias should not have video:
I don't mean that because traditional encyclopedias did not have video, but because it doesn't fit with the type of content that an encyclopedia presents. It is similar to how newspapers should not have video. Wikipedia is not a teaching tool. It is not meant to provide functional examples. It is a starting point: a dictionary-style explanatory description.
An entry on the Hindenburg does not need a video of the Hindenburg disaster. It needs technical specifications, historically accurate statements of what happened, and a link to a museum who DOES house the video.
An entry on Calculus needs a historic description and a mathematical overview. Not a 2-hour lecture.
Now --- that doesn't mean that a video repository is not a good project. I think that would be awesome. Youtube kinda has that, but it has garbage thrown in. But maybe Wikipedia is not the place for it.
A 2 hour movie would probably not be used in Wikipedia itself but some other Wikimedia foundation project.
The children of Africa will be able to appreciate such artistically rich works as Andres Serrano's photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine, Barbara Kruger's accusatory slogans (useful in politics class across Zimbabwe?) and Robert Mapplethorpe's self-portrait featuring a whip protruding from his anus.
Wikipedia is only 2TB total??? I mean I could run a mirror from my home server. After I delete my TiVoed stuff that is. I am amazed how much information 2TB actually is then. Wikipedia is an endless supply of (hersay) information.
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
Instead of just wading through a billion "OMG Kid FAILS at Suzuki ghost-ride in front of hott!!!" videos mismarked as news, people can actually get to the most representative and informative feeds on emerging issues. Like a public newsroom.
this list is irrelevant; I didn't find the Alabama hot pocket nor the angry dragon.
That doesn't prevent there from being a rather significant pool of classic media. Take the old Superman cartoons as an example. They all fell into public domain long before they could be grandfathered back into existence. Thus just about anyone who wants to host them, edit them, use them in a new work, or otherwise make use of those old films is able to do so. Also, some of those films are likely to be new works that are gifted into the Creative Commons in the same way the Wikipedia article text is. Think of a shark in its natural environment, a tour of a famous building, or even a re-enactment of a historical battle.
There's even work that's been done to show how Wikipedia might use the HTML5 tag if and when it becomes widely deployed. (See this page for a dev version of Opera and 2 example Wikipedia pages that support & fallback content.) Despite the seeming incongruity of allowing videos inside Wikipedia pages, the demos shown is actually quite natural.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The self-appointed content fascists on Wikipedia should result in a great reduction in the amount of storage needed. I like Wikipedia, find it to be extremely useful, and use it a lot -- but I have nearly given up on adding images to it, as there are too many idiots who delete legitimate images, citing an interpretation of some regulation or other, but being completely wrong about it. It takes too much effort to argue back and forth with them. I imagine that it will be even worse for video. You'll need 20 pages of justification and a mathematical proof of its correctness and suitability, or some ass will eventually delete it.
If they increase the storage, it means that the traffic will explode.
Who will pay for the bandwidth ?
This year, it was 6 millions of dollars, but with videos, at least 10 times this amount will be needed.
Does this mean that ads will appear ?
Wow that made my day.
We already have archive.org for anything out of copyright, or freely redistributable.
Not for long - The Internet Watch Foundation have just blocked archive.org to all UK population.
Any time I want to learn about something, it's the first place I go.
It's the second place I go, because the Wikipedia Search "feature" sucks unless you know exactly what you're looking for. If only Wikipedia would either fix their broken "search" or simply integrate Google search into it?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I eagerly await the update to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_positions
WTF...? this list is not exhaustive - I think you would be
Here I am, going around all these years thinking that all content on the internet was digital. Looks like the jokes on me.
Well Im off to Wikipedia to find some analog media. Maybe tomorrow I can find some media that is biological. That would be sweet.
How will video make the problem any worse than it already is with images or text?
It's been 18 months since Wikipedia provided bulk downloads of image data. That may not be a priority for most people, but offering everything for download is essential for an open project in my opinion. Add all new images of a month to YYYYMM.tar and offer that as a torrent.
"Think of a shark in its natural environment, a tour of a famous building, or even a re-enactment of a historical battle."
You just described "Sharks with lasers" ... I think
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Imagine how many more poor 3rd world nation kids we could attract to Wikipedia once people start uploading some adult videos...you know, to demonstrate and safe and proper mating practices. This will make a huge impact on the AIDS problem in Africa. I just hope those classmatePCs and OLPC notebooks will be able to display the videos in accurate 32bit color and original resolution. I just hated those old educational videos that are blurry and fuzzy!
Why the focus on 'movies'? There are many situations in which an article about a particular subject could be improved through the use of a high-quality, feature-length educational video. Wouldn't the article for the Amen Break be more interesting if this video appeared on the page, right there in the sidebar? To borrow your example, you wouldn't have a Spike Lee film, but a documentary about him, fleshing out the details in the article and offering insight that text alone can't provide. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a moving picture must be worth millions.
Of course, you open up a whole can of worms in the editing battle side of things. Tug-of-wars over text has proved bad enough, let alone people arguing over weasel words and unsupported claims in a thirty minute documentary.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Awesome, now they'll have more content than ever to mark as "not notable" and delete!
I don't understand how it makes sense to arbitrarily place limits on the form of wikipedia content. Maybe I don't understand how a particular type of content could be used, but that's my problem. I wouldn't want to deprive the entire world of potentially valuable information because I'm ignorant about something. (And who knows, maybe I can remedy that ignorance by checking out the relevant wikipedia movie on it.)
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Remember, you are free to edit that page and add any omissions that you feel are necessary for completeness.
I hate printers.
Long bought and paid for bribed long...
It used to be really bad I agree, and so would everyone else. But it has recently gotten much better. It was just never seen as a high enough priority given the shoestring budgets and other fires that needed to be put out.
Now however it gives reasonable suggestions for misspellings and has better accuracy.
http://www.archive.org/
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
BitTorrent doesn't work well with unpopular information.
Many BT clients support web seeding. It's available if it's unpopular, but if it gets popular in a hurry, the clients/peers will spread the load around.
The Wiki project represents the best and worst that's in us.
I agree. Websites that publish content submitted and moderated by users really suck.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Wasn't Wikipedia having issues for getting enough donations this last year? Somehow, expanding to video content seems a bit foolish at this point in time if money is already tight and is likely to get tighter for the next fiscal year.
Posting with out proof reading since 2001.
Maybe a better question is this: how much user-contributed content (original productions) will later be considered "classic?"
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Obviously what people are referring to when they say YouTube videos aren't "downloadable" is that YouTube offers no user interface for easily downloading the video. I'm sure plenty of /. readers know of programs that will ferret out and then download an FLV file given a YouTube URL. Most users don't use those programs. They use only the features the site offers to them (even down to using the site's ability to recommend some video to a friend instead of copying and pasting the URL into a new email message).
The lack of download UI, like so many other things, was most likely a conscious choice made by YouTube's initial developers (and now continued by Google) to encourage referrals back to the site rather than allow users to pass around copies of videos independently the site. This helps the site become an intermediary between site users (again, for most users who are not as technically skilled as /. readers) in order to gather interesting and saleable information.
Digital Citizen
Flickr burns up to 10TB in uploads in a single *day*...
you had me at #!
That article clearly lacks references.
I don't see a role for Wikipedia in this. Archive.org already accepts video uploads of useful archival material, so that's covered. Wikipedia has enough trouble finding redistributable still images for articles. Who's going to create useful video for Wikipedia that isn't original research or a copyright violation?
See? There is already the problem. The permission from the copyright owner to upload the files is not enough, because Wikipedia only accepts free content (except for some Wikipedias which allow fair-use-images to be uploaded). So, the copyright owner must put his work under a specific License (GFDL 1.2, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or something alike) and then Wikipedia can use that. Don't blame us (I am a Wikipedian myself), blame copyright law that makes it so complicated to reuse works of others and make them available for everyone.
These were images that met the requirements for non-free use on the English Wikipedia.
I am not blaming you for anything other than accepting non-free images and then making it extremely difficult to tag the image correctly so it won't get deleted five minutes after being uploaded.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
In other news, The Pirate Bay filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Wikimedia for illegally duplicating its method of illegally duplicating copyright content.
Take the old Superman cartoons as an example. They all fell into public domain long before they could be grandfathered back into existence. Thus just about anyone who wants to host them, edit them, use them in a new work, or otherwise make use of those old films is able to do so.
And possibly run afoul of DC Comics' trademark on SUPERMAN. Copyrights survive patents, and trademarks survive copyrights. The Dastar v. Fox precedent (one cannot use a trademark as an ersatz copyright) has been rejected in other countries, such as Canada which recognizes a trademark on ANNE OF GREEN GABLES jointly owned by Prince Edward Island and the author's estate.
Also, some of those films are likely to be new works that are gifted into the Creative Commons in the same way the Wikipedia article text is.
But which studio big enough to produce notable works releases them under a free license?