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."

Comments

Youtube?

[Anthony_Cargile]

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]

Re:Youtube?

[A nonymous Coward]

And youtube may withdraw them or restrict their audience at any time.

Re:Youtube?

[Eil]

Why don't they instead just allow linking to youtube videos without the WP nazis removing them?

First, presumably the article probably means Wikimedia Commons rather than Wikipedia itself. That said, one of Wikipedia's biggest goals is to have all media content as open and accessible as possible. They accept only free, open, and unencumbered file formats.

YouTube is pretty much the exact opposite of Wikipedia. That is, you cannot download the content for your own use or to redistribute it, there is no open source software that can easily view YouTube content, there is no intelligent discussion of said content (only "omfg americas r soooo dumb"), and nobody except YouTube employees are allowed to express an opinion on whether or not the content is suitable for deletion. And finally, there is no certification that the content being viewed is in the public domain or is being used within the bounds of fair use.

Wikipedia = The Internet

[neoform]

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.

Re:Wikipedia = The Internet

[geobeck]

Any time I want to learn about something, it's the first place I go.

I sincerely hope it's not the last place you go.

That's the key. I agree with the previous poster; Wikipedia is a great place to start your online research. But of course I never quote the Wikipedia article itself (except for minor things like atomic weights and other easily-verifiable data). A well-written Wikipedia article is a speedy link to a collection of journals, newspaper articles, and primary sources.

Conversely, of course, a poorly-written Wikipedia article is a speedy link to a collection of 'authoritative' blogs, home pages and fringe websites.

Wikipedia is a great research tool for anyone who knows how to perform research.

I forsee a new job at Wikipedia...

[GPLDAN]

...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.

Re:I can only imagine how bad the edit wars will b

[MightyMartian]

I eagerly await the update to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_positions

Too much of a burden on Wikipedia

[MobyDisk]

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.

Re:Too much of a burden on Wikipedia

[JPortal]

I don't see why that's outside the scope of Wikipedia. A video of the disaster could fall under "historically accurate [depiction] of what happened."
I agree that lectures would be a bad idea, but some full-length videos are very informative and useful for research purposes.

Re:A chance for .ogg to shine

[LWATCDR]

Except that theora isn't all that good. Yes it is free but the quality isn't as good as many other codecs out there. I wish that Dirac would get more attention as a codec.

Re:I can only imagine how bad the edit wars will b

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Who will pay for this ?

[eulernet]

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 ?

Wikipedia Search = Sucky

[Frosty Piss]

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?