It looks like Wikipedia, is going to start to allow users to add video clips to Wikipedia pages in addition to text. The new video option will allow users to find video of things they might be looking for an edit and embed clips on the site for others to view later on.
Starting later on this summer each Wikipedia page will be outfitted with anew “Add Media” button. the button will launch a new interface that allows users to search through three different databases of copyright-free material and then select appropriate clips to be added to the Wikipedia page in an embeddable player directly on the page.
Originally the new tool is expected to use videos found in the Internet Archive, an archive that currently has close to 200,000 different copyright-free videos including interviews, documentaries, and educational videos that are currently in the public domain. Wikipedia will also use video clips from Wikimedia Commons which is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation and by Metavid a site that primarily houses congressional videos.
In an interview with Technology Review Peter Kaufman, executive producer ay Intelligent Television, a documentary production company said “To have people be able to go in and annotate your video, edit your video, and improve upon it–in the same way people have been doing to your text posts–is pretty outstanding, and will create an audio-visual representation of our world that will rapidly become as definitive and collaborative as Wikipedia is in the textual world,” says that works with cultural and educational institutions, helping them bring their works online…That may just be the holy grail.”
I’m personally prettty excited about the idea of bringing videos to Wikipedia. As the world becomes more and more web centered I think having videos on the site will greatly enhance its functionality to people worldwide. What do you think?
