How does someone find what images have been uploaded and are available for use?

[Milton Beychok]

Stephen, I believe these questions would best be addressed by you.

(1) How does someone (newcomer or registered user) find what images have been uploaded into CZ and are available for use in articles? In the past 3 months or so, I have uploaded 57 images (diagrams and photos). If I had not created my own image gallery (see http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Milton_Beychok/Image_Gallery), I would have one heck of a time trying to find them.

(2) Is there a categorized set of image galleries? By that I mean, is there a category where one could find all the images relevant to physics? to chemistry? to biology? to engineering? and so forth?

(3) Are there any sub-categorised image galleries? For example, a gallery of all map images as a sub-category of all the images relevant to geography? As another example, a gallery of all power plant images as a sub-gallery of all the images relevant to engineering?

(4) In many aspects, what I am asking is do we have any navigation system for finding groups of images related to a specific subject? Much like the system that Wikimedia Commons has.

(5) Is there a help page somewhere in CZ that explains how to find images? If there is such a page, would it not be helpful to include it in the panel on the left-hand side of each page?

Milton Beychok

[Derek Harkness]

I worked backwards form an image, clicking on its categories then the main category. So far all the categorisation seems to be based on the licence type. You can see a list of the categories and the sub-categories and their contents at http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Media_Assets_Workgroup

All the images are in the Image: namespace too. So you can use the site's search function to search in that namespace. This of course depends entirely on the image being properly described on its page. If you don't give proper names and descriptions then you'll never find anything. Here's an example search looking for pictures of China: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:Search?ns6=1&search=china&searchx=Search

[Milton Beychok]

Derek:

Thanks for your response. I had already looked in the Media Assets Workgroup and seen that the images were seemingly categorized by license type. That is not at all helpful, is it?

As for searching in the image namespace, that means that you then have to click on each search result to see one image at a time. That is not as useful as being able to go to a category named China and browsing through a gallery of all the pictures about China.

I really think that we need to have categorized image galleries, don't you? And for newcomers, I think we need to have an image-finding help page listed in the left-hand panel on each page.

Milton Beychok

[Robert_W_King]

This is a horrible, horrible problem and Steve Ewen and I have tried to make approaches with several solutions; turns out we really need a forms extension badly for any of our ideas.

I have approached this idea to the technical team but it either appears that:

1. there's not enough manpower to integrate such a feature and ensure it is set up correctly
2. there's not enough resources available
3. there's no one technically astute enough to make it happen

It frustrates me to no end that we keep getting the cold shoulder on this.

[Milton Beychok]

Thanks, Robert. At least now I know that it is being looked into and I can certainly understand what a difficult job it must be. But as time goes by and more images get uploaded, it will just get more difficult. I wish I could help you and Stephen, but I am simply not that computer literate.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

But as time goes by and more images get uploaded, it will just get more difficult.

Exactly.

So. if we can't get the technical support for the best possible system, can we instead work out the best we can with what we've got available, and go with that (the way we did with subpages/clusters)?

I would imagine something with nested categories, no? (In an admittedly rather lame attempt to start the ball rolling - all I can say in my defense is that it's not an issue I've thought much about...)

Also, how does Wikipedia deal with this issue? (They have, after all, the exact same tools available...)

Noel

[Milton Beychok]

Noel, Wikipedia itself does not deal with it at all. Almost every image uploaded into Wikipedia has been first uploaded into Wikimedia Commons. The others are eventually transferred to Commons.

Wikimedia Commons does indeed use nested categories (or what I called sub-categories in my first posting above).

[J. Noel Chiappa]

Wikimedia Commons does indeed use nested categories (or what I called sub-categories in my first posting above).

OK, so let's do the same here. Unless there's a better idea?

Noel

[Aleta Curry]

Milt, I'm so glad you raised this.

I went to use some photos I just *knew* I had uploaded.  Finding them was a royal you know what.

Robert (Bobby Bill), you're right, it is a horrible, horrible problem.

I can't say anymore because I've no idea how this is best fixed, but it needs attention paid to it because it *can* 'only get worse'!

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

For Wikipedia, I drew a number of graphics that I have stored, on my computer, as .png.  They have reasonably descriptive file names, but usually were drawn for a very specific purpose in an article.

Is there any way that I can upload groups of graphics without having to fill out all the template information for each image? For example, I hate to have to retype my name as author, the license agreement, etc., 30 or more times.

Howard

[George Swan]

Is there any way that I can upload groups of graphics without having to fill out all the template information for each image? For example, I hate to have to retype my name as author, the license agreement, etc., 30 or more times.

If you use the firefox browser make sure you download the "clippings" add-on[/url[.  (More on this below...)

• step [1] Upload the first image.
  
  
• step [2] Fill in the invariant portion of the upload form for your series of images.  Leave the varying portion for a few seconds.
  
  
• step [3] Save the invariant portion of the upload form as a "clipping".  This requires just a couple of mouse clicks.
  
  
• step [4] Finish filling out upload form, and upload your first image.
  
  
• step [5] Select your next image to upload.
  
  
• step [6] Paste the invariant portion from your clippings file, this requires just a couple of mouse clicks.
  
  
• step [7] Repeat steps 4 through 6.
  
  The clippings add-on is one of those things that is very easy to use -- once you know how -- but has one counter-intuitive bump that makes it seem useless, until you actually have used it a couple of times.
  
  In fact it is incredibly useful, and I would tear my hair out without it. 
  
  But it doesn't start being useful until you start to populate your clippings file with useful clippings.
  
  The steps to put your first clipping in the file are:
  
  
• step [1] Highlight a block of text you think it would useful to have available to paste.
  
  
• step [2] Press your right-mouse-button to get your context menu.
  
  
• step [3] Select "clippings"
  
  
• step [4] Select "New from selection..."
  
  
• step [5] Click "OK"
  
  Great, now you have started to populate your clippings file.  I save my most frequently used references in my clippings file.  I save several blank or partially filed templates. 
  
  Once you have a dozen or so clippings saved, you may wonder why it doesn't support subfolders.  I did.  I didn't notice it does support subfolders.  I have about a dozen subfolders, containing close to a hundred clippings.  You can right click to bring up your context menu, select clippings, and select "organize clippings" to rearrange your clippings into useful subfolders.
  
  Pasting a previously saved clipping requires:
  
  
• step [1] Left click where-ever you want to place the clipping
  
  
• step [2] Press your right-mouse-button to get your context menu.
  
  
• step [3] Select "clippings"
  
  
• step [4] Underneath "New from selection..." and  "organize clippings" you should see your personal selection of clippings.  Just pick the one you want.
  
  One caveat.  Pasting a clipping will over-write your regular windows clip-board.  This can be handy, because if you paste a clipping once, and then want to paste it multiple times, you can paste it from the clipboard, not from the clippings file, saving you a couple of mouse-clicks.