Participating in Wikipedia commons and or Wikipedia.

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In a recent thread one of our esteemed forum members happened to mention my participation in Wikipedia. viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9774&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=60 Since he was kind enough to bring up the subject I thought I would do a small informational on Wikipedia and Wikipedia commons. Wikipedia basically contains articles while Wikipedia commons is an image repository. Anyone can participate in either project, I hear a lot of negative remarks on Wikipedia articles and it is true that many are not well written or referenced, but since Wikipedia is an open project anyone can edit any article by adding valid information or removing invalid information. Of course the edits you make can be reversed by other interested editors and in case of conflicts there is a group of more experienced editors who make the final decision.

 

While I have only created one article myself I have edited many articles which I have found to be seriously lacking accurate information and or references. Image galleries can be added to articles in order to more fully explain the subject. I store images on Wikipedia commons and use these images on relevant Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia has a huge footprint on the internet, if you do a search on many subjects the Wikipedia article will often come up in the first page of searches. Do a search for Katana, jutte, or kanabo for instance and see what comes up.

 

Wikipedia commons is the image repository were ANYONE can upload images they own or have the right to upload. While doing some research on samurai armor and weapons I found some images that were stored on Wikipedia commons, I also saw that there was a serious lack of images on certain subjects that I myself had images of, so in Feb 2010 I registered (required to upload images) and started to upload images of items I owned and found to be hard or even impossible to find online. The images must be either your own work or images you have the right to upload due to obtaining permission (as in an email from the owner) or images that due to their age the copyright has expired.

 

Once uploaded the images are put into the already created categories or you can create new categories what fit your images. I have created many image categories on Wikipedia commons such as "hachi gane" "Japanese kikko armor" "kanabo" "Japanese karuta armor" "manchira" "manju no wa" "wakibiki" etc etc. I also created most of the Japanese sword related categories under the category of "nihonto".

 

Many existing images were just dumped into a category and needed to be put into sub categories. An example of this was the category "katana" which had many images of koshirae or tsuka with no seprate category for either type of image. When I find an image that needs a category I create it and transfer the images into the new category. I created a category for koshirae and a sub category called "parts of the koshirae" which includes "tsuka". I then created a sub category called "parts of the tsuka" and created categories such as "fuchi" and "menuki" etc. I created a category called "parts of the Japanese sword blade" and then created sub categories such as "nakago" which has sub categorys such as "mei" and "mekugi-ana"...well you get the idea. I have transfered existing images into the new categories I created and added images that I have to the appropriate categories.

 

Anyone can register on Wikipedia commons and add images that they own to any category that fits or they can create a new category. Old images such as copies of Edo period prints are copy right free and can be uploaded. This is a great way to keep your images and have them available for people to see and use in the future. In case of theft or fire your images will be available and safe. There is a simple upload form to fill out and you can upload any image directly from your computer.

 

If any forum member is interested in learning how to upload images, or how to edit or even create anything on either Wikipedia or Wikipedia commons I will be happy to assist. I have posted a link to all the images I have created and you can see the categories they are in, by clicking on the category you can see all the images in that particular category. If anyone finds an image or category that is not described correctly free to change it (you can do that!!) or let me know.

 

http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense ... =0&max=250