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US National Archives Will Upload All Its Holdings To Wikipedia

Posted by timothy on from the promise-or-threat dept.

An anonymous reader writes The U.S. National Archives has revealed to Wikipedia newspaper The Signpost that it will be uploading all of its holdings to the Wikimedia Commons. Dominic McDevitt-Parks told the Signpost that "The records we have uploaded so far contain some of the most high-value holdings ... However, we are not limiting ourselves ... Our approach has always been simply to upload as much as possible ... to make them as widely accessible to the public as possible."

7 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Deleted by wisnoskij · · Score: 5, Funny

    If Wikimedia Commons works anything like Wikipedia, it will probably all be deleted in a week as "not important enough".

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    1. Re:Deleted by wiredlogic · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hey but you can learn about all the Pokemon and Transformers trivia you could ever want to know.

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      I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
    2. Re:Deleted by BrookHarty · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Speaking of that, my favorite "contrary to public opinion" was the term MGTOW. Men going their own way
      This MGTOW motto is the main motto picked up by most mens rights groups. The MGTOW page was deleted multiple times by feminists who said it wasnt notable, even though it was referenced in main stream press and published books and then the numerous websites and groups. But still deleted, over and over and over.
      So what did the feminists do? They created page called MGTOW for maximum gross take off weight that is just a REDIRECT to mgtow. The actual term is MTOW in aviation, so why the redirect and fight in the talk page? Politics.

      This was almost 10 years ago since this happened, and still happens today.

      History only goes back to 2009, but this MGTOW war is good example of the feminists of wikipedia fighting mens rights. Lucky now that enough mens rights groups and non profits using the term, almost 600,000 websites returned with a simple google search.

      http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:MGTOW
      Limited history due to many deletions. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maximum_takeoff_weight&offset=&limit=500&action=history

      There are more wikipedia censoring going on than this one topic, but I'd say this is the perfect example of editors censoring. Also why I think they dont deserve government money with these oppressive and biased editors that seem to be backed by the foundation.

      I think my favorite comment by an editor on wikipedia was "we dont have the room for a mens rights page, we cant have a page for everything". Amusing when every episode of very popular shows does.

      The more you know!

    3. Re:Deleted by DG · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Where Wikipedia fails HARD though is the article deletion process.

      There are people out there who get a weird thrill from deleting articles.

      An article that has been in place for *10 years* can be snuffed out just because a motivated moderator decides it isn't "notable" and sets up a "speedy delete".

      Notice 6 months after the fact, try and put it back, and the whole friggin' WORLD descends on you.

      Wikipedia is ruled by a group of petty, self-nominated bureaucrats. And the system - as horribly broken as it is - cannot be reformed, because there are too many vested interests who want to see it STAY broken.

       

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  2. Re:Are they safe there? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    So far the comments have been nothing but ignorant.
    Wikimedia Commons is a repository of free (as in freedom) media. Mostly photos, but lots of other stuff too.
    The National Archives and Records Administration, according to Wikipedia, "is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents".

    These are federal government records and documents, so automatically in the public domain. Wikimedia Commons is the perfect place to mirror them.

  3. Re:why? by tepples · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To use a US Government-created, pre-1923, or otherwise free image in a Wikipedia article, you need to upload it to Commons first. The National Archives doing this on its own will save people a step.

  4. Re:why? by rgmoore · · Score: 4, Informative

    They do already host this on their own, but putting it on Wikimedia Commons makes it easily accessible to people who want to use it for articles in any of the Wikimedia sites (e.g. Wikipedia, Wikiquote, etc.). Also, by doing an official upload, they reduce the chance of somebody claiming the files are illegitimate. This is basically a courtesy to Wikimedia.

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