Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-09-06/Blog

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Unfortunately, the various generous gifts of tens of thousands of pictures usually just sit in their source categories. Most are not categorized by subject or location or other attribute that could attract an editor seeking to illustrate an article. Jim.henderson (talk) 04:03, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Sounds like a project, though it can be difficult to confirm any of such information... ~Mable (chat) 11:24, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Cataloguing them will prove to be a challenge for anyone but an expert, on the life of Mittelholzer & likely on the subjects photographed.
  I had a brief glance thru the images in the "Mittelholzer-Abyssinia flight 1934" group, which by their name ought to be images mostly about Ethiopia. Since I've had a hand in writing the majority of the articles about that country, I'm probably as qualified as anyone to categorize them. What I found was while many of these could be valuable contributions, almost all need much more background information to be truly useful. For example, one of the first I looked at was labelled "ETH-BIB-Abessinier an einfachem Grab-Abessinienflug 1934-LBS MH02-22-0281.tif", which, as the title says, is a photo of a simple grave in Africa; however, there is nothing about the grave -- which is a simple wooden cross -- or the man sitting next to it with his head covered -- is he crying? Was the person buried there a relative? Or is he simply resting in the shade of the trees & has nothing to do with the grave? And then there is "ETH-BIB-Alte abessinische Wandmalereien in Kirche-Abessinienflug 1934-LBS MH02-22-0299.tif" -- a photo of a wall painting inside of an Ethiopian church. The style is clearly Amharic, & since it was taken before the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, this may be an image of a lost work of art that has been destroyed in the 80 years since. Yet all we know is what the title of the photo tells us. A third -- & stupidly frustrating -- example are several photos described as "Die zwei Töchter des Kaisers im Palastpark" ("Two daughters of the Emperor in the Palace Gardens"): which two daughters of the Emperor are these? Haile Selassie had four.
  Interspersed with these "Abyssinian" photos are photos of adjacent countries: several of Petra in modern Jordan, some of Jerusalem, & some of Sudan. As a result, photos tagged simply "Markt im Abissinien" could actually have been taken anywhere. As I said, there are some potentially invaluable images here, but it will take a very long time to provide more than some simple & possibly unhelpful category tags for them. (I added one, which I suspect is wrong.) -- llywrch (talk) 22:03, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh god yes, inadequate metadata is one of the most aggravating issues for Commons (along with bad provenance). We don't even know if Mittelholzer kept track of those details! DS (talk) 13:42, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am reminded of the episode "Close Up" of UFO (TV series) in which intelligence photos obtained at great expense and risk prove worthless due to the loss of metadata. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:04, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Any ways, they seem to have a good will, I appreciate the step IKHazarika (talk) 04:39, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]