14 DAY TRIAL // Videos on Wikipedia have been an option for some time now but so far adoption has been pretty slow and the vast majority of Wikipedia entries don't have any video files associated. This is the reason why the Open Video Alliance and other parties are launching a campaign, called "Let’s Get Video on Wikipedia," to promote the feature and get more people to upload videos to the site.
"Today the Open Video Alliance is launching an important project: a mass campaign to bring video to Wikipedia. Moving images can communicate ideas in ways that text can’t. We think this is the next step in Wikipedia’s evolution. Let’s Get Video on Wikipedia is part of our effort to support both individuals and institutions who wish to contribute to this vision," the Open Video Alliance announced on its very sleek but headache inducing website.
Wikimedia, the foundation behind the popular site, is saying there are just 4,000 videos on Wikipedia at the moment, a very small number considering there are over 3 million articles just on the English version of the site. The number really needs to go up and Wikipedia is saying plenty of article types would benefit from video content from historical clips to how-to guides.
One thing that's been standing in the way of getting more videos on the site has been the upload process itself, which isn't exactly complicated but tricky enough to put off most users, but also the requirements for the videos to use the open Theora format.
The new campaign aims to help with both. There is a brand-new step-by-step tutorial over here, detailing all the things needed to upload videos to Wikipedia and add them to articles. There is also a new video converter in the works, dubbed the Miro Video Converter, which should make it easier to create files in the Theora format. Other partners to the campaign are Mozilla Drumbeat and the Participatory Culture Foundation, makers of the open source video player Miro.