Let's have a look at the mission of Wikimedia : "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." (1)
Is there any room in this mission for an artistic contest ? Is there any room in this mission for promoting little known young or older artists seeking recognition ? And should the recognition of the artistic skills of some contributors be done at the expense of the contributors who contribute with other skills, while their artistic skills are those of a beginner ? Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Day (2) is an artistic contest. Why on earth is it allowed on a Wikimeda website and given a prominent space on the main page of one of the main websites ? Should it not be abolished ? If that artistic contest remained doing its business on its dedicated pages without interfering with the rest of the project, there would not be too much need to think too much about it. But I am afraid that the artistic virus is slowly contaminating other parts of the project. I discovered this morning "poor composition" as an argument for deleting a picture (from someone else, not me). It means that the "picture of the day" people are slowly highjacking Wikimedia Commons to turn it into a beauty contest. None of the pictures I take with my small 29.95€ made in China camera can compete with pictures that could be taken with a professional camera. If the destiny of my pictures on Wikimedia Commons is deletion because of their poor artistic qualities, I ought to be told right now so that I don't waste my time taking them and uploading them. But if Wikimedia is about education rather than about art, does it matter if the school's architecture or the textbook is ugly, while the teacher teaches valuable skills and information to the pupils ? I think there is some space for beauty and art within Wikimedia projects, but that space is very thin. Beauty fits the mission statement only as a pedagogic tool, as a part of the "effectively" adverb of the mission statement, thinking that it is easier to have the pupils feel comfortable at school if their school's building and their textbooks are somewhat attractive. But I don't see how beauty or art could be a top level priority. Why don't we ever read on Wikimedia Commons' main page "look at this picture: it is quite awkward, poorly lit, but it is the first picture we've ever had to illustrate Wikipedia article "<name of page>". We are grateful to the contributor who sent it. AND we will never delete it even if no longer used in any Wikipedia article when better pictures are sent by professional photographers later. (1) http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement (2) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Picture_of_the_day _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
