Archive:Media Assets Workgroup
This is a proposal for a workgroup and should not be relied upon in any way. It is conjunctive to the proposal for Fair Use Policy, Media.
Overview
The Media Assets Workgroup is Citizendium's "Media and Permissions Department". It will also play certain intermediate roles in the technical aspects of media on Citizendium. Its overarching mission is
- To improve and safeguard Citizendium by serving its editors, authors, readers, media content-providers, and re-users; to serve as a resource to Citizendium contributors in the media-related development of the project's corpus; to be the first point of contact for Citizendium with media content providers..
For the purposes of The Media Assets Workgroup, "media" is defined as all visual, audio, video, and template materials on all Citizendium pages.
Activities
- Content and permissions assistance
While not in any way replacing the function of other contributors in obtaining their own media content, The Media Assets Workgroup shall function as Citizendium's "go to" place for contributors who seek assistance.
The Media Assets Workgroup can be enlisted to obtain:
- Media for articles
- Media released anew under open content licenses
- Media for use by permission
As well, the workgroup will:
- Seek to negotiate block permission on behalf of Citizendium with media content providers.
- Maintain an "image request system"
- Maintain a "permission request system"
An IMAP account or tagging account, media-assets@citizendium.org will facilitate these functions.
- Media policy and help pages
Members of the workgroup will, in a non-exclusionary manner (any CZ contributor can still contribute), work together to author media policy and help pages.
- Resource pages of image sources
- Image request page
- Media help pages
- Template help pages
- Templates
The workgroup will coordinate the creation and use of media licensing tags within Citizendium. This is to ensure all media is tagged in a standardized fashion.
- Group communication
The workgroup shall maintain a mailing list for general announcements.
Organization
- Workgroup Lead (exact title yet-to-be-determined)
Workgroup activities and initiatives will be overseen by the Media Assets Workgroup Lead.
Responsibilities include:
- Maintenance of pages and templates that fall within the purview of the Media Assets Workgroup.
- Image request page
- Media help pages
- Media templates and related help pages
- Act as a point of contact with large-scale content providers
- Take a leading role in negotiations for block permissions
- Oversee the workgroup mailing list and media help requests from Citizendium users
The Workgroup Lead will have access to the media-assets@citizendium.org account.
- Assistants to the Lead (exact titles of both yet-to-be-determined)
The Workgroup Lead will deputize Citizendium members in good standing as assistants to help coordinate the responsibilities of the Lead.
Assistants will have access to the media-assets@citizendium.org account.
- Other workgroup members
Other members of the Media Assets Workgroup will respond to requests from the larger Citizendium community to find appropriate media, to request that media be released anew under open content licenses, to determine authorship of media with questionable provenance, and to seek permissions for copyright restricted media.
Assistants may also be chosen to lead special projects.
Project plans
- Urgent
- 1. Enlist volunteers to ensure that ALL media at Citizendium is properly sourced and tagged.
- Short-term
- 1. Create Media Assets Workgroup "infrastructure"
- a. E-mail account.
- b. Mailing list.
- 2. Write Media Assets Workgroup pages
- a. How-to pages for workgroup "staff"
- b. Assistance request pages for CZ contributors.
- 3. Recruit
- 4. Clarify all media policy pages.
- a. Settle on certain standardizations
- 5. Improve and expand general media help pages.
- 6. Write a synopsis help/policy page
- 7. Broader media template construction.
- 8. Have MediaWiki Player installed.
- Mid-range
- 1. Customize Special:Upload for very high ease-of-use.
- Long-term
- 1. Negotiate Memorandums of Understanding between content-providers and Citizendium.
- 2. Build streaming audio and video capabilities into MediaWiki. (This is for consumer ease-of-use and to bolster fair use claims).
- 3. Improve MediaWiki Player to play multiple formats and streaming media.