Tuesday, August 12, 2008

A project proposed for restoring images

A new project has been proposed for the restoration of images at the English Wikipedia. This is a great idea; the restoration of pictures helps to properly illustrate the many articles that deal with subjects that happened in the past. Many of these illustrations, pictures, maps and manuscripts are becoming available digitally. Many of the originals have crumbled or faded or are stained. It is the aim of this project to find the illustrations that will improve the articles and restore them to a modern glory.


I love the proposal, but I would prefer to have such a project on Commons. Commons IS the best place to store restored images. Commons IS the place where people from many communities come together. Commons IS the place where we can best stimulate people from other languages, countries and communities to help restore pictures that they can get access to.

So what would it take to really make a multi lingual, multi cultural project on Commons ? Obviously people actively restoring images but also supporting texts in many languages.. This is why I am so interested in the deveopment of the "Translate" extension. This is an example of a long text on Betawiki.. and this is one part translated  into Dutch..
 
Now consider that this is an instructive text and it shows in your language when we have the translation... that is what "Translate" is supposed to do. The consequence is that as a language community becomes bigger, more of these texts are translated and it becomes in a way more autonomous as well.. 
So yes, let us have a Commons project as well and yes, PLEASE Nikerabbit make this a great little extension :)
Thanks,
     GerardM

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