Technology Committee/Project requests/FTP site to support projects

Overview

Media related projects can involve a lot of temporary space for storing video and images that may be processed in cooperation with other members of project teams. This would be particularly handy for quickly uploading files at events that may later be uploaded to Commons after either file processing (especially for video and audio which have to be converted to open standards), cooperative discussion on how best to add good quality metadata to the files before release or where there were potential copyright issues that needed confirmation/review before uploading to Commons.

Recent examples include:

• Sharing WLM files - photos from Chester were 2GB to share for review, which involved a 3 hour upload via a slow free website
• XenoCanto audio files - this was a Commons project that required reprocessing MP3 file to ogg standard before upload to commons, just under 1GB was shared in that cooperation. Sharing was achieved via Dropbox but it was complex to negotiate
• Noaabot - this was an upload of 10 years worth of weather maps to Commons, being 22,000 image files. Converting archived gifs to png formats initially relied on creating a page on the toolserver, a facility which is being phased out, and was only useful for sharing one-way via web-page access.

In terms of security, it would make sense for the facility to be passworded (and the password periodically changed) and for this to remain a temporary space rather than a library, this could be achieved by automatically deleting files over 90 days old.

Budget

Potentially none or a low maintenance cost, if a secure and reliable hosting of FTP could be arranged on current office equipment or another chapter has a facility they could share. If I were to procure this, I would look for a cheap solution providing 250GB or more for a budget of less than £10/month and I would have a chat with WMCH to check for inter-chapter options.

Timeline

Indefinite. Success would be measured by reports back from projects that needed file-sharing space and benefited from this facility.

Expected outcomes

A range of projects where temporary file-sharing does not have to depend on closed systems such as Dropbox or Google drive where volunteers waste significant time juggling options when reaching file size limits, and bending the rules on how these free services are supposed to be used.

This might be made available and promoted for relevant use for all members known to be active on projects, and therefore be seen as a benefit of membership.

Who I am

I'm Fæ, one of the top ten unpaid content contributors to Wikimedia Commons and with many successful projects.

Discussion