Wikipedia To Add Video

viyh writes "Wikipedia will be adding a video option within two or three months, according to the MIT Technology Review. '... a person editing a Wikipedia article will find a new button labeled "Add Media." Clicking it will bring up an interface allowing her to search for video — initially from three repositories containing copyright-free material — and drag chosen portions into the article, without having to install any video-editing software or do any conversions herself. The results will appear as a clickable video clip embedded within the article.' They will be requiring all video to use open-source formats. This is in hopes of getting content providers to open up their material to gain wider exposure on the Wikipedia website. There is also an in-browser editor that removes a lot of the headache often associated with any kind of video editing. With the new Wikipedia system, 'people will be able to easily inject media into pages, in a way that wasn't possible before,' says Michael Dale, a software engineer from Kaltura, the company assisting with development of the tools."

Comments

No Male

[Anonymous Coward]

"Clicking it will bring up an interface allowing her to search for video"

So they only allow females to add videos!?!

Re:No Male

[larry bagina]

Yeah. Too many dudes posting dick pics. You can imagine what they'll do with video.

Re:No Male

[Xeth]

It's far worse than images. At least with an image, you can tell immediately that something's wrong. One wonders how long a video modified in the style of Tyler Durden might persist.

Re:No Male

[Raul654]

If only that was a joke...

Re:No Male

[Anonymous Coward]

If only that was a joke...

Why does the "No Penis" template page contain an image of a penis?

Re:No Male

[mdwh2]

Note that this problem already exists with sound samples that are allowed on Wikipedia. And I'm not aware of it being a problem.

Rather not.

[Nylathotep]

I like wiki because it's such a clean, fast, text layout with nothing special. I don't see how this is going to improve things.

Re:Rather not.

[XPeter]

Agreed. This will also make Wikipedia's bandwidth cost skyrocket, and if I remember correctly they're on a lean budget.

Re:Rather not.

[geniice]

Google has never provided servers or bandwidth to wikipedia. Yahoo provided some servers at one point. Since wikipedia doesn't carry ads google has little incentive to suppot it

In practice bandwidth demands will likely be limited by how hard it is to produce encyclopedic videos and harder still to produce ones people want to watch.

Re:Rather not.

[Omestes]

They're all inherently evil, except that google is smart enough to know that a good image counts.

I'm pretty far to the left here, and really dislike most corporations, greed, and economic sociopathy, but I'd say you are wrong there.

There is nothing in the idea or structure of a corporation that makes them innately evil. I doubt your incorporation papers have a hidden sub-clause demanding you be "evil", and I really doubt that many existent corporations set out to do evil. Corporations are morally gray.

It how they choose to act which would color them as good or evil, not their very existence. Just like pretty much all human constructs, it exists as a neutral tool, its ultimate ethical/moral value comes from the use of it.

I can see a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Porn" entry bring down the whole Wikipedia site in the first hour.

Re:I can see a problem

[merreborn]

The "Porn" entry bring down the whole Wikipedia site in the first hour.

It's already begun... (sauce [nsfw])

Hipocrisy or something near that.

[bogaboga]

It amazes me that the company that "promotes" open source uses a proprietary or not fully open method (read Flash), to deliver video. What's going on?

Re:Hipocrisy or something near that.

[BikeHelmet]

Don't go FOSS because it's FOSS. Go FOSS because it's superior.

Not all FOSS is superior. I trust they'll use the best video streaming for the job, with priority placed on being open source.

Flash has the best video streaming available at the moment, and the best compatibility. Hard to beat that for a website trying to reel in customers.

Re:Hipocrisy or something near that.

[icebike]

Its also proprietary, requiring a license to use their tools.

Its an abusive technology, allowing no view controls other than blocking or de-installing flash all together.

With the advent of HTML5, flash is NOT the way to go.

Re:Hipocrisy or something near that.

[demachina]

I'm all for driving Flash out of existence, since Macromedia/Adobe should have never been allowed to acquire the near monopoly on web video they have. Adobe has also been a horrible steward of their responsibility especially when its come to Flash player support for devices like smart phones.

But the flip side is you might recall back to what video was like before Flash. Every freaking web site you went to had a different video standard, video player, and you were usually forced to launch a video player which either wasn't integrated in the browser or was integrated badly. Flash only succeeded because it fixed a completely broken thing on the web where Apple, Real and Microsoft in particular were trying to acquire their own monopolies on web video.

For this to succeed Wikipedia needs to compel a new video player standard other than Flash and proprietary codecs like H.264, and insure near universal availability of the solution they create as an integrated browser component, either built in to the browser or as a plugin.

I'm kind of curious if HTML/5 is going to be able to achieve that lofty goal across all the warring browser factions in the world, especially IE and Microsoft. Not sure JavaFX counts as open. What other standard is their other than HTML/5.

You also have the little problem that all existing video is going to have to be transcoded if you reject H.264, VP6, MPEG, WMV, AVI and Flash H.263 as acceptable formats. It sure isn't going to be easy to add video to Wikipedia if Joe and Jane user have to transcode the video to add it, or is Wikipedia going to automatically transcode video as they get it to their open standard.

Wikipedia will use "open-source formats"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know/care about kaltura, but from TFA:

Key to Wikipedia's video effort--[...]--is Wikipedia's insistence that any video passing into its pages be based on open-source formats.

Less is more.

[owlnation]

Well, presumably it will only be notable video that's allowed.

And presumably also, every band on Earth will have a sample of their video on every page they can get away with, as well as every company that now successfully uses Wikipedia to astroturf their products will get a nice demo video up too.

It seems that as each month passes wikipedia becomes less and less relevant, and less reputable. Wholly because of bad administrative decisions.

Re:Less is more.

[mdwh2]

And presumably also, every band on Earth will have a sample of their video on every page they can get away with

In the same way that they advertise their band on every page? Except they don't. Same for the companies. (Yet the sad thing is that other people whine about Wikipedia precisely because too much stuff is deleted...)

It seems that as each month passes wikipedia becomes less and less relevant, and less reputable.

You are mistaking your preference, and your opinion, with actual general fact. Like it or not, it's still a Top 10 website, and if you as a random person posting of a forum are going to make claims about it becoming less reputable, I do hope you have a reference?

Title is misleading

[geniice]

Title is somewhat misleading. Wikipedia has had video for years. For example scroll down at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_C8 or for direct to video http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Morris_C8_towing.ogv

Another Tool

[travisb828]

It's always nice to see new tools in the toolbox. I just wonder what kind of edit wars we can look forward to seeing. Could they be like this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Human_anus

Re:Another Tool

[EdIII]

I'm sorry, but not everybody is going to actually look at that link, and it is far too fucking priceless to be just referenced. So let's post the juicy parts:

WRT that female image - how would the contributors here feel if I was to crop it down to the anus alone and use it to replace the current pic? Porn-sourced or not, it is a good, clear picture of the human anus, moreso than the existing image IMO. --Kurt Shaped Box 22:28, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

That would bring it around full circle to where it's been a couple of years. We had a cropped, shaved, bleached porn-anus in this article for a while, it was determined unsuitable (and a copyvio) and replaced with the current hairy man-hole. All we need is a neutral-looking and not-overly-hairy, suitable for an anatomy text. The Crow 22:43, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I have actually considered taking a photo of my own anus for the article (as far as I am aware, mine is pretty typical) just to put an end to this. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to hold the camera at the right angle to get a decent shot. :( If you take a close look at the 'porn' anus in hi-res, it doesn't actually appear to have been shaved or bleached. --Kurt Shaped Box 22:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the old female anus was unsuitable; it was removed because it was unsourced. I'm not a fan of females, but cropped, that anus looks more useful than the male one we have now. I'd support adding it if you're willing to crop it. The only real problem is that it looks like a copyright violation too. --Kinst 21:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd certainly be willing to do it - but I'll leave it until the image's status is sorted out. As a matter of interest, why was it tagged as a copyvio (there doesn't appear to be any explanation)? --Kurt Shaped Box 01:24, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think my anus is any less hairy than Ano.jpg and I wouldn't say that my anus is an atypical human anus. In any case, who would you be to state that my anus, or the anus on the picture is atypical. In fact most male anuses that I have come across have a similar amount of hair, although the color of the hair on the picture makes it quite prominent. If we were discussing the anus of any other species than human, hair would surely not be a concern. Furthermore if was the Italian gentleman, who was so generous and kind to contribute the picture, I would be downright offended, if the picture was replaced only because the amount of hair was considered, by other wikipedians, to be unnatural and/or objectionable. BrunOperator 13:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

As for my part, I don't find the present anus photo objectional or abnormal. My issues are (1) it's so hairy that the actual anus isn't very visible, (2) It's a decidedly male-looking anus, so people are going to be tempted to put a shaved anus on there and call it "female" because this is what porn has conditioned them to think. The anus is neither male nor female... the anatomy is exactly the same, and some females have even hairier anuses than men. So I think if we had a slightly hairy anus, it would be both medically illustrative and gender-neutral. The Crow 14:17, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Re:Weird story gender...

[afabbro]

...a person editing a Wikipedia .... allowing her to search for video...

Strange, apparently a "person" can only be female.

I know, I know, if it said "he" no one would notice, but obviously this person was going out of their way to say "her", so why not just go with "they"? I know it's not grammatically correct (according to an English teacher I had) but at least it works, and it should be correct.

Anyway, it just annoys me when someone goes out of their way to try to end the male gender bias only to throw in female gender bias instead of making it gender neutral. -Taylor

Usually, they're college males hoping to get laid by progressive chicks.

It never works that way, btw.

Donations?

[Itninja]

I have donated to Wikipedia a few times over the years. But I think I will stop if this video 'enhancement' takes off. I can think of no article I have ever read that would have been served better by video on the same page. Just reference a video from a source site. I thought Wikipedia was a non-profit organization running an lean crew of committed semi-volunteers, not a business looking to 'drive traffic' to their site.

Re:Weird story gender...

[mdwh2]

So you acknowledge that all three possibilities offered by the English language are flawed, but you still criticise the author for picking one you evidently have a problem with?

For heaven's sake - get over it.

Re:There's just one problem...

[Jurily]

Apparently the feminists won and we're so fucking PC now that there are no males on the internet.

Let's face it: in English, if you talk about someone, you either have to specify his/her gender, or pretend they're more than one person.

Re:There's just one problem...

[gigabites2]

Technically, that's grammatically incorrect. A singular object referred to as a plural object, as was mentioned above. The correct way to do so would be to say he or she or his or her. I suppose we could be like the French and assume the male gender. Then again, why assume? This is Slashdot!