Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

WikiFlix

WikiFlix would be Wikimedia's free streaming service for freely-licensed films and other video media. It would function similarly to Netflix, Hulu, or other similar popular streaming services, but with the added benefit of all the content being completely free to view and download, and being a site that anyone can edit.

This is a proposal for a new Wikimedia sister project.
WikiFlix
Status of the proposal
Statusrejected
Reasonafter about a month Supertrinko confirmed my suspicion that this is wholly redundant to Commons, and user:QuickQuokka seconded my interpretation as OOS. Not dragging this out unrealistically. Dronebogus (talk) 22:13, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Details of the proposal
Project descriptionfree and collaborative streaming service for freely-licensed audiovisual media.
Is it a multilingual wiki?yes, with translatable elements and closed captions
Potential number of languagesevery language, like Commons
Technical requirements
New features to require(desirable) 1) fully featured video player 2) on-site subtitle editor
A temporary logo used for the purposes of demonstration on some of the wireframes (this will not be the final logo)

The project would be the future of audiovisual content in Wikimedia spaces. The main goal of the project is to increase accessibility to audiovisual content in the Wikimedia sphere, where now the accessibility is very limited. While Wikimedia Commons already hosts video files (of films, etc.), they are only within a plethora of other files that must be sorted through before getting to see those. WikiFlix would increase the accessibility of the films to the general public, and would raise cultural awareness about the importance of these films. It would surely become a major source of traffic and even donation money for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Overview

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It is difficult and time-consuming to find movies through research that are 1. in the public domain, 2. extant, and 3. have a video uploaded on Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons. WikiFlix aims to make life easier for movie lovers, by hosting a directly searchable collection of public-domain movies, with lots of ability to filter results or get recommendations based on past viewership.

Most of WikiFlix's data on films would be automatically sorted and kept based on data from Wikidata, an already existing project which includes entries on films with full videos of them. Some film entries can be added manually, such as if the film is only public domain in the US but not the source country.

Not only will WikiFlix bring good attention to the Wikimedia community, but will also bring some long-needed attention to a plethora of obscure classic movies that are today largely forgotten. WikiFlix has the edge over other streaming service sites because its collection is only limited by one factor: US copyright law. Virtually any film that exists and is out of copyright can be hosted on WikiFlix, without consulting or gaining rights from anyone at all. WikiFlix will be an exhaustive, uncensored, and unapologetic collection of some of the most forgotten movies of the past.

To further the excitement, the potential for WikiFlix's popularity will only rise in coming years. This year (2022) marked the public domain release of the 1926 film Don Juan, which is an otherwise silent film with a synchronized soundtrack, a revolutionary landmark that practically began the sound era in the film industry. More and more sound films will default into the public domain as time goes on, thus increasing the demand for public domain films in general. We will very soon see the release of films such as The Jazz Singer (1927) which is a partial talkie, and Steamboat Willie (1928) which is a sound film and Mickey Mouse's first appearance, Frankenstein and Dracula (1931), some very well-known horror films, among many others that will allow WikiFlix to garner much traffic. In fact, there are a whole lot of sound films that are already in the public domain due to lack of renewal or lack of copyright notice, such as Night of the Living Dead (1968), Gulliver's Travels (1939), The Little Princess (1939), A Star is Born (1937), and others.

Proposed features

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  • WikiFlix would keep films in multiple languages, but would only give films in the languages that the user specifies in their user settings. Defaults to English. Subtitles in any language can be added, and films with subtitles in a particular language are shown to users who speak that language.
  • Films that are part of a series (for example, w:Colonel Bleep), will have entries that collect each episode and allow users to watch it episode-by-episode.
  • Exhaustive copyright information collected for each film (death dates of all known authors, etc.). This can be used to sort results based on the country of origin of the user's IP.
  • Allow users to create personalized playlists such as "Watch later", and add films to that list
  • Android app, iPhone app, and Roku app for WikiFlix (at least)

Ability to sort by

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  • Cast members or crew members (director, actor, producer, etc.)
  • Genre (horror, comedy, drama, romance, etc.)
  • Type (silent, sound, animated, live-action, B&W, color, short, feature)
  • Automatic film recommendations based on previous watch history and other factors

On each film's entry

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Film entry wireframe
  • The film's title
  • A main poster picture (or if there isn't one that's freely licensed, a picture from the film itself best representative of it)
  • Alternative titles if exist
  • Links to other Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia article, Commons category, quotes from Wikiquote, full transcription from Wikisource, etc.)
  • Cast and crew (directors, producers, screenwriters, cameramen, actors, and all listed, even if uncredited)
  • Cast with the character names that they play. The character names can be searchable, if they appear in multiple films, such as if someone searches for "The Tramp"
  • Editor-generated short plot synopsis of the film without spoilers
  • Download film button
  • The full video of the film, in various qualities, just like on Commons.
  • Editor-generated clips of the film which would give a good preview of what the viewer is about to watch. Hulu has a similar feature.
  • Special features (OFFICIAL trailers, alternative versions of film, outtakes, etc.)
  • A "reception" section (or similar), with snippets of contemporary (also freely licensed) reviews of the film that are hosted on Wikisource. Link to transcluded Wikisource review as well. These are user-addable.
  • List any sequels (for example The Mark of Zorro -> Don Q, Son of Zorro)
  • Age rating? (Although I have no idea how this would be determined especially for very old movies) But certainly 18+ movies like Debbie Does Dallas should be labelled as such.
  • Moral disclaimers, such as with The Birth of a Nation for extreme racism.

Video window

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  • Autoplay
  • Full support for casting to other devices
  • Captions
  • Speed up, slow down video
  • Switch to a different quality while watching
  • Download video button (on player window)
  • Save screenshot at timestamp
  • Mini player
  • Loop video
  • Skip forward or backward in video
  • For silent films, the ability to add a freely-licensed soundtrack in the background of the film
    • Because of the MMA, many song recordings that were before copyrighted or had disputed copyright statuses are now unambiguously in the public domain. Anything from before 1922 (and this will go up one year every year) can be used for this purpose.
    • Maybe known soundtracks or invented soundtracks for certain movies can be rerecorded and uploaded to WikiFlix to supplement user experience with the silents

Other

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  • A namespace, such as the "Improvements" or "Issues" namespace, where technical issues with the current video file, or areas where it could be improved, can be listed. Sort of like a bug tracker, but for videos. Ideally, there will be templates for each one. Examples for problems to track:
    • Video contains watermarks
    • Video contains subtitles (such as translations into another language) that are unoriginal to the film
    • Video is incomplete and a more complete version exists elsewhere
    • Video has repeating clips that need to be fixed
    • Video has unoriginal beginning/ending titles

Proposed by

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Alternative names

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  • WikiOdeon
  • WikiOni
  • WikiStream
  • WikiTheater
  • Wikivideo

Potential trademark issues with the original name

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The name "WikiFlix" is similar in nature to Netflix, one of the most popular streaming services online, and using this name could become a trademark issue for the WMF. Some alternative names have been suggested above.

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In Wikimedia

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Domain names

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Demos

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Wireframes and sketches

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  •  
    A thrown-together design of the film entry layout, by PseudoSkull

People interested

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People opposed

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  Strong oppose tried to procedurally close this as identical to commons and not particularly educational. I am not opposed to the project itself, I just don’t think it’s within Wikimedia scope. Dronebogus (talk) 07:14, 12 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It would directly utilize current Wikimedia projects such as Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. It would also support other Wikimedia projects by being yet another outlet to encourage users to upload film videos and such to Commons, to technically improve the videos further, to integrate film videos and info into Wikidata, etc. It's not identical to Wikimedia Commons because Commons doesn't have the easy accessibility features mentioned on this page. And I don't think the opposition will be quite that cut and dry, given the demand that Wikimedia spaces clearly have for a project like this (see Spinster's demo and how well it was received), and the supporters who already exist, among other factors, which is why I didn't think the procedural closing was warranted. PseudoSkull (talk) 01:33, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
“How well it was received” by one user? Dronebogus (talk) 16:23, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You could make the same argument for Wikisource, since we use books FROM Commons as our base, but WS, and something like WikiFlix, I'm assuming, would have much more than just a video and some raw data and file details behind it, There's many possibilities for a project like this to grow and evolve in scope, using the videos and films we have on Commons, therefore, I support WikiFlix. Reboot01 (talk) 03:48, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wikisource translates photographic information into text, and is also used for free text media from elsewhere that was never visual media. This is just essentially creating a nicer gallery for long-format video media. Dronebogus (talk) 16:21, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  Oppose per nom. --QuickQuokka [⁠talk • contribs] 14:05, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Oppose Wikisource actually allows public domain films to be reproduced over there, there's already a decent number available. Many include full transcriptions of films with timestamps of every line of dialogue. I would support changes and improvements over there to make this process better, but I don't see a need for a new project. Supertrinko (talk) 03:09, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Strong oppose In it's current prototype form it seems to include some links to items that are known to be in copyright (and not under free licenses), but seems to include them anyway. This is unacceptable. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:34, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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