Commons talk:Think big - open letter about Wikimedia Commons

Hello,

At the last meeting of the Commons Photographers (27 August, 2022), the group discussed such an initiative to make Wikimedia Commons better. Based on the discussion and with some input from friends, I have composed this text.

For 10 days, we ask people from the Wikimedia movement to discuss and improve it. For this discussion some points are important:

• Intentionally, the text is not very long. It has also to be easy to understand for people who do not have English as their native language, or who are not familiar with Wikimedia jargon.
• The text has to remain on a relatively high level of abstraction. Any one of us may have a clear vision for a better main page, or ideas for a great new feature, or a complete general plan. But this is not the moment to discuss single improvements, rather, we want to gather support from many different people and then start the actual process together with the WMF.

As usual, please make small improvements in the text itself, but propose larger ones on this talk page.

After 10 days, we will ask people to sign the open letter. There will be no deadline for signing.

Kind regards,

Ziko van Dijk (talk) 17:31, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Video?

I welcome this initiative. Though I understand the need for brevity and high level of abstraction, maybe it still would be a good idea to mention the very poor support for contributing video content that Commons currently has, in addition to the lacking mobile-friendliness? Currently, uploading videos to Commons is cumbersome, and there is a lack of an integrated tool for videos comparable to the Upload Wizard. There is the external tool video2commons which, however, seems to be broken more often than not. An integrated tool should do what video2commons does, particularly converting formats that are not supported because of patent issues, such as MP4, to a Commons-supported format such as WebM, and it should do so in a smooth, effortless way; it shouldn't be harder than uploading a video to YouTube! Of course, I know the argument that we shouldn't make uploading of videos too easy, and I may have even shared it in the past, because checking videos for copyright violations is much harder and more time-consuming than the process for images, stretching the capabilities of our community, but I think we can approach that issue, which is certainly relevant, differently - such as restricting the use of the tool to users with a certain number of "good" uploads with no known copyright violations. Gestumblindi (talk) 20:48, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Gestumblindi - I personally totally agree. I suggest we wait for more ideas and reactions, and see whether video should be mentioned specifically or whether it is covered already (maybe there is a very strong support for the video topic). Video concerns: this is also true for other formats (audio, ...?), and partially it is also related to the copyvio issues we meet sometimes on Commons? Ziko van Dijk (talk) 20:59, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

As we have no way to check automatically for copyright infringements, unlike YouTube's algorithms, and everything has to be done manually by the community, videos are much more problematic than other formats because of the wide range of content a single video may contain. For images, you have to check one particular image at a time, maybe slightly complicated if it's a derivative work (depicting another possibly copyrighted work); an audio file typically is also just one piece of music, one speech or the like. In a video, clips and images from many sources may be aggregated, and there may be a soundtrack with music, possibly multiple pieces, of undeclared origin. There are cases like a video of, say, 20 minutes, which is mostly perfectly fine, but in the middle of it you have 3 minutes of a street band playing a copyrighted song - and it gets very hard to deal with. Someone could edit the video to mute these minutes. But maybe the song is crucial for the meaning of the video. And so on... Truly, videos can be a nightmare for volunteers who try to maintain Commons as a repository of genuinely freely licensed content, and so, if we make uploading of videos easier, which I'm very much advocating for, we have at the same time to find a way to prevent being overwhelmed with content of questionable licensing status. But that's certainly something the community could deal with after we have the technical foundation ("Video Upload Wizard") to make this possible. Gestumblindi (talk) 21:22, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree about raising the issue of video uploads. Current methods are "clunky" and very slow and with size limitations without complex user configuration (chunked upload). I can appreciate the copyright checks I habe no solutions to offer beyond those already suggested (or combinations e.g. video duration limits for new contributors).PsamatheM (talk) 20:07, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

imo there should be a threshold (or even restrictions) for new users to upload videos, in order to prevent commons becoming dumpster.

but the WMF can at the very least put some money into hiring some people to maintain com:video2commons! it's a bloody joke to let users on their own figure out codecs and conversion, and convert videos to webm. after v2c went down i had to stop uploading my videos, until it's fixed or i have time to learn everything about ffmpeg. AAHHH!!! RZuo (talk) 07:03, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

• mp4 off patent in 2028 That might be a good target year to plan for introducing a new video system. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:45, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
  • One should be able to upload mp4s and have the software convert to the licenses commons accept. We do have video editing software build in. We at Wiki Project Med funded it along with Google. Commons:VideoCutTool Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:31, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Doc James, Bluerasberry, Brion VIBBER, Brion Vibber (WMF), and Victorgrigas: I'm wondering if it's time to talk AV1 again, as there has been a significant uptick in interest in 2022.

  • Google makes AV1 codec support mandatory for Android 14 - [1] - "The next version of Google’s Android Compatibility Definition document will require hardware makers to support AV1 for both tablets and phones."
  • What Is The AV1 Codec, Which Graphics Cards Support It And Why It Matters [2] - "It is up to content creators and delivery platforms to leverage the technology, while soon anyone with a reasonably modern device will be able to reap the benefits of improved image quality and lower data usage."
  • The AV1 codec is coming, and it's a big deal [3] - "AV1 encoding support on Nvidia’s new RTX 40 series and Intel Arc GPUs(opens in new tab) is a major step towards widespread adoption."

  Here is the Phabricator task tracking it. - Fuzheado (talk) 17:06, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

  I'm personally completely petered out on getting support for video from WMF (even though at the end I managed to get some for videojs). But when it comes to AV1... what's the benefit ? What does it gain us over VP9 (now that Macs finally have hardware support for it)? AV1 (in my opinion) matters if you can do hardware encoding. But we don't do that (though maybe we should build infrastructure for that, but thats another story altogether. Very expensive, with architectures that age much faster than generally compute power does).

  I'd rather see support for HLS and/or MPEG-DASH, that would actually be very useful, a bit smaller files on our servers aren't really much of a benefit to MW and WMF. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:16, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

  Hmm. I guess maybe you meant for ingest... ? Its really important to keep ingest and transcode as two completely different topics of the video story, they are wildly different. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:17, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

  Tracked in Phabricator
  Task T209437
  

Tools

I'd really like to see mention of WMF helping (either financially or otherwise) with the maintenance of tools. - Jmabel ! talk 21:03, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, we often rely on tools developed by volunteers that tend to be very important to certain contributors, but can suddenly stop working and remain broken for months if no volunteer steps in... An example is Commons:Pattypan. A great tool used by several GLAM contributors to upload large amounts of images to Commons (see Category:Uploaded with pattypan), with no easy replacement in some of their workflows, and it was broken from October 2021 to the end of January! Gestumblindi (talk) 21:27, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Tools are a replacement for missing features. WMD should not support tools but put money into developing Commons features, so that there is no need for these tools anymore. Discostu (talk) 09:01, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Replacing external tools with built-in Commons features would be the best approach, I agree, if the functionality is equivalent. Gestumblindi (talk) 09:55, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

@Discostu: Did you mean WMF?   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 10:50, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: Sorry, yes, I did. -- Discostu (talk) 12:29, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Working together with GLAMs I strongly support the importance of the need of reliable massupload possibilities. --Hadi (talk) 16:40, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

• Uploading and data management on Commons is very clunky and must put many people off contributing. The interface is not user friendly and the various BOTs don't work properly. It feels that the design and operation of Commons has not moved forward sicne I started about 15 years ago. The projects I contribute to (QI VI and FPC) are very outdated technically, e.g making a nomination, voting etc. Charlesjsharp (talk) 16:26, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

@Discostu: “Tools are a replacement for missing features [that should be] Commons features” − that may be true of a certain type of tools (like gadgets and some editing tools), but it’s just not true of others. Take uploads: some folks really like being able to upload straight from their image processing software (such as Lightroom or Darktable) − you can make the commons.wikimedia.org uploader as great as possible, these folks will still prefer to use these tools. The same is somewhat true of the Commons Android App (even a great mobile web experience can rarely beat the convenience of native apps). I could give many other examples. Jean-Fred (talk) 13:56, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

@Jean-Fred: : Yes, my statement was a bit over the top. I was mainly thinking about upload tools for large files, bulk categorisation and mass editing. Discostu (talk) 19:53, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Mobile App

There is a Commons Mobile App and it work well I have been a regular user of it, though the iphone version was abandoned there was a request for the tech team to take this up earlier this year. Gnan garra 09:33, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

In my experience, it doesn't work that well and I often get upload errors when I try to use it. Gestumblindi (talk) 09:56, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I used a second account solely for it User:Gnangcomapp yes theres the occassional one that doesnt upload first time generally thats phone connection issue, but I also dont put a lot of detail as I struggle with seeing the screen and big fingers typing, its just enough to get it uploaded with a bot chasing me over a missing detail, then come back and do all the details. While we need better tools saying theres. If we want the WMF to listen we need to be careful in how it worded because if its too easy to say we have done this and theres that it'll get nowhere. Gnan garra 11:38, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I continue to use the Android app despite remaining bugs and inadequacies and yes, we ought to say something about supporting, improving and expanding it and coordinating it with WP mobile app. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:28, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Doesn't work great for me too. Quite drab also. OtuNwachinemere (talk) 19:40, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I have issues too, but after a few I have noticed that it comes down to connection issues or disturbances, features wise video uploading would be good especially if it could do a conversion to webm in the process. Gnan garra 08:59, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Alt-Text

First I wish to thank you for the draft. It's really good. I would wish to add two topics. First, alt-texts. Like: we ask WMF to support, maybe even fund the provision of images in WC with alt-texts. Blind people are surrounded by images as well. They have to know what they show, that's a basic requirement of accessibility. KH32 (talk) 10:16, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

+1. Conny (talk) 19:34, 20 September 2022 (UTC).

just for reference: recent proposal, phabricator task. --El Grafo (talk) 09:35, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Editors

To search for new contributors, to deal with the problem of low quality mass uploads etc, we ask WMF to implement an editorial office , i.e. paid editors. KH32 (talk) 10:20, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

The way in which events like WLM, WLE our WLX are done is part of the problem, in these events the only metric requested by WMF is the number of photos. The quality of the photos and their proper categorization and documentation are not relevant. The result, we have a lot of images to order and users who only come to contribute when there are prizes.--Wilfredor (talk) 11:23, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Paid no, an editorial office no, but more onus of events organisors and event metrics that go beyond number of uploads would help, the risk is on the flip side of creating edits wars on which image should be in an article, a WLM winner or the FP. Its also attracts cabals of editors to things like QI nominating and passing each others images as a popular party trick, there are a couple of affiliates using passing QI as metric creating a lot of nonsense there. Gnan garra 11:42, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree with @Gnangarra! We have to adress the organizers of these events. I know, because I have been one myself in the past. And I always adressed the flaw that we wanted to be the largest photo contest in the world, but also tried to find the 10 best photos in the world which than drew critizism from all sides. The one side saying these artsy, overdeveloped images have no encycopedic value and, as stated here, the rest are just an unmanageble heap of uncategorized rubish. And if you look at new-uploader retention the return is not really that great.

But ist that a matter that the WMF needs to solve? We need to solve this as Commons Users. Wuselig (talk) 17:55, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Uploading a million images without a minimum requirement of good categorization and description and then asking a user who works without salary to fix it is a disproportionate humiliation and lack of respect because its not the Commons scope. --Wilfredor (talk) 01:29, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

+1 KH32 (talk) 05:27, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

• POTY (where has that gone?) and WLE are poorly set up and managed. Few countries participate in WLE; the uploading windows are too short and the judging is very suspect in some countries. WLE is a very poor showcase for Commons. Charlesjsharp (talk) 16:30, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Media Viewer pop-up

When someone click over a image on Wikipedia it show a pop-up with the image in full page, however, out of respect for our work and to encourage participation in commons, when the user clicks on an image in wikipedia it should redirect to a page in commons directly without going through this popup. Formerly it was this way and I remember receiving many messages of gratitude and contact with institutions at that time  Wilfredor (talk) 11:13, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I disagree. This feature was a big improvement in user experience and shouldn't be removed just to give Commons more visibility. Discostu (talk) 12:32, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Please, take a look to the open letter about this situation here and rfc. This is a widely recognized problem in the community. --Wilfredor (talk) 14:53, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

@Discostu How come it's a big improvement in userexp? It puts there an additional step to get to the actual file in Commons. What's the point of that? Darwin ^Ahoy! 18:17, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

I am quite certain that most users reading a Wikipedia article only click on an image to see a bigger version of that image like they are used to from other websites. -- Discostu (talk) 18:58, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

WMF Annual Plan

For anyone who hasn't seen it, Commons is named as a priority in the 2022-23 WMF Annual Plan. See meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2022-2023/Goals#Goal 2: Deepen our Commitment to Knowledge as a Service, starting with Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. The most relevant line is Since the Wikimedia Commons/Multimedia team was morphed into the Structured Data team, there has been no formal accountability for the core multimedia infrastructure of Commons that is in desperate need of repair, a priority we have also set for this year.

I was going to add a line to this letter about the need for WMF's help with technical infrastructure (the base Commons software as well as the various bots/scrips we rely on whose maintainers are inactive/unresponsive). Figured we could remind them of the above :) but I wasn't at the last meeting and don't know the context this arose from. Is this supposed to be in the context of the annual plan, in addition to it, or something else? — Rhododendrites ^talk |  13:58, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the Wikimedia Foundation is generally aware of the fact that Commons would benefit from some love. Therefore, my understanding of the direction of the letter is: (a) in some areas (e.g. upload functionality) the needs are immediate, and (b) we're ready to have a dialogue with you as a community. Personally, I'd rather not have the WMF talk to individual contributors and then decide what to prioritize. In my opinion, an open process where the WMF approaches us as a group and we make decisions together is much more the "wiki way". Best, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 14:14, 20 September 2022 (UTC) P.S. Oh, by the way: would you have a couple of minutes to copyedit the text? Some sentences don't sound very polished and it would be great to have a native English speaker take a look at the sentence structure and grammar.

The last sentence could be replaced with "We believe improving Wikimedia Commons should happen in partnership between the Wikimedia Foundation and the community and we are willing to support your efforts in any way that makes sense and is appropriate." in order to make it more clear what we're actually asking for. How does that sound to everyone? --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 14:20, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Hello Rhodendrities, thanks for bringing this up - and thanks, Frank, I couldn't say it better. It is indeed about the urgency, the wish that the community (as a whole) is involved, and about pointing out thoses issues that the communities are most concerned about. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 15:30, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I've changed the last sentence accordingly. Best, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 19:03, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good to me @Frank Schulenburg. OtuNwachinemere (talk) 21:18, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Uploading

Sorry that i missed the original discussion. I had hoped the letter would also adress the uploading problems. Commons:Forum/Archiv/2022/July#Lasst uns über die Desktop-Verbesserungen sprechen Ailura (talk) 14:23, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I strongly support addressing the problems with the uploading functionality. --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 14:55, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

+1 --Hadi (talk) 16:42, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Por favor, alguem podria traducir esa propuesta o darme un resumen --Wilfredor (talk) 01:27, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Wilfredor, it refers to a discussion on the German language Wikipedia where people stated that fixing Commons' upload functionality was more important than improving the desktop UI. --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 07:41, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

The uploading problem in regards to the format and size of files should be prioritized in the discussion and consideration. This has limited the upload of relevant resources that would have been beneficial to the search results of the project and many contributors are unmotivated by this. Obuezie (talk) 08:19, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Please go on

Hello, here a short note from me. Please keep commenting, that is valuable input, and we see what are your concerns. My general idea is to keep the text abstract and concentrate on the upcoming process - what features we need, or which is the best way to proceed, or whether we need one big leap forward or a number of small steps... I don't know and don't want us to decide (yet). All that is exactly what we want to find out in the nearby future.

The central points of the text now are the urgency, the involvement of the communities (!) and some crucial "entry points" (how newbies can join; how people with a smartphone can join).

But if we see that a lot of us find something very, very important so that it should be in the text, I am very open for that. Therefore, please keep commenting each other. We don't need to argue with each other, but I am very curious about your biggest concerns or most relevant issues. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 15:48, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

No to this letter, ask for US$300,000 instead

My opinion and perspective: the Wikimedia Foundation really does not want to see letters like this. They would much rather get a community request for money.

The right amount to request is probably $100k-300k for the first year, then plan to increase the request to $300k / year within 3-5 years.

If letters like this one come without asking money, then what is really happening is that the letter is a request for the Wikimedia Foundation to hire their own person to speak on behalf of this community. Spare the appointment of a mediator from outside this community; let's request money in the community and for the community. Instead of having a dialogue with the WMF, have the dialogue without them then publish the discussion outcome. Use that discussion outcome to request money.

Talking with the WMF requires them to hire 3 people to cover the conversation. Conversations like the one requested always cost in excess of US$100k, and that money is much better kept in the community for it to speak for itself. Asking the WMF to have a conversation is super expensive and rarely satisfies.

If the WMF does indeed have plans to develop Commons, then ask for money to get ready for that, and avoid asking for the WMF to socially ready themselves to talk to this community.

The money will be spent regardless. The question is whether this community will govern use of that money itself, or whether it wants someone from outside the community to spend it all on the community's behalf.

See meta:grants:start, probably meta:Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund. If a conversation needs to happen with WMF, then start by having a public meeting with a grants officer.

Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:03, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I beg to differ. I don't need money, I need working servers that can receive uploads without crashes. --Stepro (talk) 16:17, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

This is rare to happen and for that this phabricator --Wilfredor (talk) 01:25, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Bluerasberry, You are absolutely right!, Apparently you knows quite a bit about how things work. --Wilfredor (talk) 01:14, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

 Info The Wikimedia Foundation already embarked on hiring someone who will talk to us. --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 07:44, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

if they have hired/are hiring someone then what is the letter going to achieve, it'd be better to start list of issues and put some priority on them like video conversion, updates to the mobile app, other areas around scope and competition issues are things we should be fixing through UG discussions. Perhaps open discussion are the better way to for Commons to go at the moment. Gnan garra 08:57, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

I like the idea of creating a list of potential priority items. In a second step, we could vote on them, and then include the 3–5 highest rated items as bullet points in the letter. How does that sound? —Frank Schulenburg (talk) 10:23, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

@Frank, creating a list of priority items and voting on them for inclusion sounds great. That way, the letter will be more focused and consistent. I also agree with @Blue Rashbery, to get a problem solved in a community like hours, do a feasibility check on the issues, get the ideas on how to fix it and quotations to get it done. By so doing, once the fund is released, you get the work done with your team. Obuezie (talk) 08:04, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

englisch

I think it's already not necessary to speak english as a native language. Ailura (talk) 16:29, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Stimmt. Wobei ich gefühlt der Einzige bin, der bei den Kandidaturen für Exzellente Bilder auch mal auf Deutsch antwortet. Gerade bei diesem Teil von Commons ist es ja am skurrilsten: die größte Einzelgruppe bei den Exzellenzkandidaturen stellen ja die deutschsprachigen Fotografen dar, aber wir kommunizieren alle auf Englisch (obwohl Commons ja ganz dezidiert als mehrsprachiges Projekt ausgelegt ist). Generell finde ich, dass alle hier mal mutiger sein sollten, sich auch mal in ihrer Muttersprache zu beteiligen. Wofür gibt es ansonsten Deepl? Grüße aus Hamburg, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 19:09, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict with Frank Schulenburg). Commons is officially multilingual, this is true, see Commons:Language policy. The proposed letter doesn't say otherwise, currently the question is: "How can we make it easier to use Wikimedia Commons also for the people who do not speak English as their native language?" That's an important question IMHO, as the theoretical multilingualism of Commons in practice often falls back to English as the de facto lingua franca. Just look at our discussion here. As it happens, several of the people participating here so far have German (or Swiss German) as their first language - at least Ziko, Discostu, Hadi, KH32, Wuselig, Frank Schulenburg, Stepro, GPSLeo, as well as you, Ailura, and myself. Still, we're all discussing in English. Participating in this discussion if you're not particularly proficient in English is hard: One could feed it to an external translation tool, then write a reply, translate it through the tool, post it here, repeat the process... certainly too much of a hassle for many. Maybe something like including a machine translation button on discussion pages that allows to switch between the original posting (in any language) and a translation could encourage people to post in their own language, though machine translations can be problematic, of course. - We also see the issue in deletion requests. Deletion requests can be filed in any language, and non-English DRs aren't that rare. But typically, if a deletion request is in, say, Portuguese or Chinese, processing takes much longer than for a request in English, and necessary discussion for complicated cases may be limited. Gestumblindi (talk) 19:26, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I know this might not be the most popular way to go, but the Movement Strategy Forum allows to have a conversation exactly as Gestumblindi mentioned - translate comments by the click of a button. The place is crowded by many volunteers from non-english countries too, so it might be valuable to consider to post the proposal there too, including the platform for even more outreach especially to non-english communities. DBarthel (WMF) (talk) 10:13, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Denis, hier geht es um Übersetzungsfunktionalität auf Commons, etwa bei Quality images, bei Featured pictures, oder bei Löschanträgen. Trotzdem danke, dass Du diese Seite beobachtest und Hilfe anbietest. Liebe Grüße, —Frank Schulenburg (talk) 11:23, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Gestumblindi, i'm late and it has already been changed, but the necessity for "native language" is exaggerated, it is necessary to speak english and this is the problem. Ailura (talk) 18:22, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Taking pictures in introduction and technical issues

I would like to have in the introduction that many of us are not only uploading pictures but also going out and investing a lot of time taking them. And as mentioned above the technical issues with uploading and the UploadWizard should be one of the bullet points. I would also mention the link between getting new contributors and a well working UploadWizard. If we go into detail having the mw:Growth tool adapted for the needs of Commons would be great. GPSLeo (talk) 16:37, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Quick comment

I think it's a good idea to raise issues we are facing in making Wikimedia Commons a better platform.

I think we can improve the paragraph starting with "We are very concerned about the current state of Wikimedia Commons as a platform and about its future". We do not state our concerns, and we have to guess them from the priorities stated later in the letter. If we think it might be too long we can at least make a summary sentance linking to a more detailed page.

Sincerely, PierreSelim (talk) 06:12, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Dear PierreSelim, thank you, that is a point to keep in mind - I heard it also elsewhere. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 10:47, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Machine readable license tags

We are in dire need of machine readable license tags, as they are expected by CC-license texts. Without them, search engines an anyone else can't catalogue our content by license, show content that is reusable under certain conditions or will notice that all content on commons is freely licensed in the first place. --h-stt !? 15:37, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

We already have them and they are working. I can search for Creative Commons images on Google and get results from Commons. Discostu (talk) 19:05, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

No, you can't. Google is guesstimating the licenses. Often, they are right. --h-stt !? 19:49, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

which metadata standards are needed here? Bawolff (talk) 21:33, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

@Bawolff I think it's https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/image-license-metadata Apparently there's two ways to tell Google about the license. One is to modify the metadata of the file itself (as opposed to the file page). This would require a new kind of feature or extension that meddles with the files as opposed to the database. The second way is to output the metadata on every page where each file is displayed, not just the file page. This requirement is probably because if the googlebot encounters the same file on many pages, it may refrain from storing any metadata if it finds it's different on each occasion (that's my guess). At appropedia.org I tried outputting the metadata on the file page only (via Template:Information) and then tell the googlebot that the File namespace has priority (using the sitemap priority feature) but it doesn't seem to work. Sophivorus (talk) 15:24, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

A few thoughts

I can see what Frank is trying to do with the draft letter, but I am not sure it captures the urgent things that need doing.
My belief of that there should be a much closer link between Commons and Wikipedia and other Wikis. Many photos are uploaded and sent to QI and FP but never added to other Wikis. Surely we don't want more? The Commons home page asks about a possible new contribution: Is it likely to be useful to a Wikimedia Foundation project? For example, can you point to a Wikipedia article that would benefit from this file's inclusion? If you don't answer YES to both questions, maybe your file does not belong here. Well, that would eliminate 95% of QI candidates. Perhaps we should dabate/reconfirm the purpose of Commons, before sending the propoased letter to WMF.
Images are often uploaded to one Wikipedia but there is no system to change Wikipedia pages in other languages. Just taking the infobox image as an example. For an animal, there is seldom a reason that a different image should be used in article in different different languages.
On Commons we have categories and then galleries. Galleries are often a self-serving self-select place with no filter. They should be useful, but they are useless. Type in lion, for instance, into Commons and you get a random selection of images. If you click on 'categories and pages' (no mention of galleries) you get a useless collection of images. Why would anyone want to become a contributor with this shambles? If you manage to navigate you way to the Category:Panthera leo, you will find a button to press for 'Good pictures', but it hardly ever works. If Commons was well designed, then a 'Good pictures' button could be placed on Wikipedia, Wikispecies, wiktionary etc. I have tried to interest photographers in Commons, but quite frankly, the editing processes are so dated that I don't bother anymore.
I meet dozens of amateur photographers every year. All have heard of Wikipedia. No one has heard of Wikimedia Commons. They would go to Flickr to look for good free-licence photos and so do I. Navigating Commons is a waste of time, there are so many junk images. Sadly, Commons has no minimum standards and junk cannot be cleared out.
For sure we need to technical issues sorted as a priority, but to broaden participation and attract better and more useful images we need marketing. WLE/WLM should be used in marketing, but the standards are too variable to be taken seriously. I tried to interest WMF in developing [my magazines] as one marketing tool, but they never bothered to reply.
I have made a couple of comments above on tools/uploading/editing and on WLE on othert posts above.
As someone suggested above, we probably need money to sort out the technology problems before we do anything else.
ps I'd never heard of GLAMs and Global South is a ghastly term - do we really want to use a term that classifies Australia as being part of Global North!! Charlesjsharp (talk) 17:32, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

(in between) Dear Charlesjsharp, I feel totally with you. Working with Commons costs so much time because of all those images that hardly meet any minimum standards.Ziko van Dijk (talk) 18:29, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Ich sehe das in weiten Teilen völlig anders:

• Commons ist nicht nur für die Wiki-Projekte da, insofern muss man obigen zwei Fragen nicht mit "yes" beantworten, damit die Fotos hier richtig aufgehoben sind.
• Jeden Tag (!) bekomme ich Google-Alerts, dass Fotos von mir, welche sich auf Commons befinden, außerhalb unserer Projekte benutzt wurden. Das sind fast immer Fotos von Personen (meist Sportler oder Politiker). Das zeigt einerseits, dass der vorherige Punkt richtig ist - die Fotos sind nicht nur für die Wiki-Projekte sinnvoll. Andererseits, dass sie sehr wohl auch gefunden werden, und Commons nicht nur eine Halde ist, wo Fotos ungenutzt verschwinden.
• Auch das Nutzen von Fotos in verschiedenen Wikipedia-Artikeln könnte sehr einfach sein, in einigen ist es das auch. Wenn ich ein Foto in Wikidata einbinde (meist, weil es bisher von dieser Person noch keins gab), landet es automatisch in einigen Sprachversionen in den Infoboxen. Ob die Sprachversionen dies so übernehmen, entscheiden sie selbst - das kann man nicht Commons anlasten.
• Ganz allgemein: Ich habe das Thema, dass sich die WMF endlich um funktionierende Server kümmern muss, weil Uploads regelmäßig abbrechen, erst hier im deutschsprachigen Forum eingebracht, und vorgeschlagen, dass sich die CPUG kümmern soll, dann einen Hilferuf per E-Mail an WMDE geschickt, und als sich noch immer absolut nichts tat, das Thema in der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia vorgebracht. Ich vermute, dieser offene Brief ist eine Reaktion darauf. Leider wird das Thema hier wieder verwässert, und das Hauptproblem (zumindest in meinen Augen) nicht wirklich gesehen. Das besteht für mich in unzureichender grundlegender Infrastruktur, die zum Funktionieren von Commons absolut essentiell ist, und deren Verbesserung einzig und allein die WMF umsetzen kann.

Und damit bin ich hier dann auch wieder raus, denn "Marketing" sollte man meiner Ansicht nach erst in Angriff nehmen, wenn die grundlegende Funktionalität wieder hergestellt ist. --Stepro (talk) 18:03, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Lieber Stepro, ich schaue mir ja seit Jahren an, was du für Bilder machst, und es macht mich sehr traurig, wie frustriert du bist. (Marketing hat sich der Kollege ja nicht gewünscht, sondern sich geärgert, dass es da keine Minimumstandards für Bildqualität gibt.) Anlass dieses offenen Briefes ist eine Diskussion, die wir Ende August in der User Group der Commons Photographers hatten. Ich sehe abermals, dass der Upload ein riesiges Problem ist. Das betrifft Massenuploads, aber auch bestimmte Funktionalitäten beim Uploaden. (Ich habe die deutschsprachige Diskussion aus dem Juli jetzt noch mal gelesen.) Ziko van Dijk (talk) 18:29, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

For reference, I have modified the original comment here, as it was linking the discussion page to Category:Panthera leo, I use the code [[:Category:Panthera leo]] to insert a link to the category. --PierreSelim (talk) 18:39, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

@Charlesjsharp Commons is a Multimedia library, not a warehouse of files for Wikipedia use. And it always has been like that. The purpose of Commons files is being educational, not being used by Wikipedia. If they are used, good, if they are not, who cares. Also, what some may describe as a crappy WLM picture showing some random detail of a monument, may well be in fact a very valuable historical document because that's the only one showing that specific detail. Also, the same scenery taken from the same point in different days allows for building timelapses, studying the effects of passing of time, etc. And much more.

And I generally agree with @Stepro that basic needs such as a decent upload system should be met before embarking in marketing efforts. For instance, the current Upload Wizard when packed with more than 50-100 files for upload becomes a real drag, which makes the uploading of collections a true PIA. Flickr uploading, which is a nice way of involving people not Commons-wise in the project, don't even allow uploads past the 500 photo mark on Flickr feeds. Categories are absolutely cryptic for newbies, especially those that don't speak English natively. And - again - much more. Darwin ^Ahoy! 18:39, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

"Many photos are uploaded and sent to QI and FP but never added to other Wikis": I don't think that's necessarily an issue. For Wikipedia, the important thing is what information an image can add to an article. It doesn't need to be of particularly good quality, that's just a bonus if it is. Actually, from a Wikipedia perspective, especially contests like "Wiki loves Earth", "Wiki loves Monuments" etc. are often rather pointless, as they tend to result in many high-quality images of subjects that are already covered in "good enough" quality at least. A perfect image of the Matterhorn, for example (if I remember correctly, such an in image won first place in WLE Switzerland a few years ago), is, from an encyclopedic point of view, much less interesting than the first, and even low-quality, image of a lesser known mountain - and even somewhat from the point of view of Commons, I think, as it doesn't broaden the educational content. We really have enough images of the Matterhorn. There is, as an arbitrary example, not a single image of Mont Forel yet on Commons, despite the peak being "located in a popular climbing destination" as per Wikipedia. One single mediocre image of Mont Forel would be worth more educationally than 100 top-quality Matterhorn images. That's what people should keep in mind, and that's what contests should focus on in the future, I think. Stop photographing things that are well covered already. Photograph things we haven't seen before. Gestumblindi (talk) 09:26, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

• I agree. That's what I try and do and VI is a good project in that respect. I only referenced QI as that is where one can easily track images uploaded. Those who submit images to QI are probably more likely to be interested in adding their images to other Wikis. Charlesjsharp (talk) 11:53, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

A little bit more depth

Hello, today I had the occasion to talk briefly to Andrew Lih. He dicussed some topics with me and helped me to broaden my understanding of the problems.

We agreed that:

1. There some urgent problems that should be solved as soon as possible, and we agreed that upload is one of them.
2. But we also need a broad discussion about Wikimedia Commons as a whole: upload, curation, search, reuse (for WP or other end uses), that all belongs together. It is not just a software ("product") problem, it as social, legal and other implications.
3. Actually, and that seems to be the opinion of surprisingly many, MediaWiki is not the best software to work with files. Is it possible, in the long run, to migrate to a different software/platform?

We also talked about other topics such as video, and about tools that should be fixed - or replaced by features build in the software?

I was considering an overhaul of the text anyway, later tonight, or tomorrow. I want to read this talk page again carefully, and hope that the text will win more clarity on the right level. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 18:21, 21 September 2022 (UTC) Note: I had some connectivity problems, so commenting is difficult for me at the moment. --Ziko van Dijk (talk) 12:38, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

The number 3 is out of logic if there is no suggestion of the replacement. I see it as a very very drastic move --Wilfredor (talk) 01:23, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

I also do not see that we are going away from MediaWiki but that we need to shift away from Wikitext and categories for describing the files. With the structured data we already have the basic functionality for this but no clear transition plan and many important features are missing. --GPSLeo (talk) 09:32, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Also, there is no consensus on how structured data should be used. The "suggested tags" tool, for example, suggests very generic tags such as "tree", "house", "building", "sky" and so on for my photograph File:Laupersdorf Höngen Kapelle und Waschhaus.jpg (and I'm not sure why I get these suggestions now, that is, 9 days ago, as I uploaded the image in 2016), which are alle quite useless in my opinion - the image shows the cultural monuments St.-Jakobs-Kapelle (St. James Chapel) and wash house (laundry building, "Waschhaus") in the hamlet of Höngen in the municipality of Laupersdorf, canton of Solothurn, Switzerland, and that's the important data that should be available in some structured form (and actually partly are, as the "old-fashioned" category system is structured, too!) - adding a "sky" tag to millions of images that show some sky is utterly pointless in my opinion. Gestumblindi (talk) 09:58, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree that putting a "brand new software of the future" request so prominently may be too much. It is not addressing immediate needs, so it may make the entire letter easy to dismiss. So it needs to be considered carefully. - Fuzheado (talk) 16:30, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Elaboration from Fuzheado

Hi folks, here's some more elaboration on what I talked about with Ziko.

My advice was predominantly about communications strategy rather than specific asks.

So while in my dreams I would be very interested in a modern DAMS (digital asset management system) versus trying to graft functionality onto MediaWiki, I think honing in on that grand challenge may be a distraction to getting attention to practical and actionable items.

Instead, here's a summary of what I would suggest to this group, having been involved with some other recent proposals to the WMF that had a measure of success (e.g. COLOR letter, SWAN, implementing references for Structured Data on Commons, and upgrading Thumbor).

• Who is your audience? It is probably not just the WMF cognoscenti and decision makers, as you're trying to let the community know of the issues and get their support. Also, the WMF audience you address may be new to the issues you bring up, especially with so many new recent hires. For that reason, provide findings of fact or a description of the landscape. Let the "force of the facts" be part of your communications here.
• Basic outline. A short and effective plan will usually go something like this:
  • The Situation
  • The Problems
  • The Solutions
  • The Ask

The Situation

Elaborate on the size of Commons, the role of Commons in the community and externally, and how Commons exists in the world. Provide the proof; show your work; provide references; bring receipts.

Commons is an unusual project in that it is a "service" project to other projects, but also has its own community that is robust, growing and evolving. It has more than 86 million files, so briefly describe how they are used - the photos, the audio, the videos, etc. Also note that the Wiki Loves Monuments and other contests have been hugely successful, providing more attention. How much? Annually, it engages a large (get a number) sector of the public and brings (get a number) of new users in a short period like no other project. Talk about the community and the types of things it has to tackle – the volume of content, the copyright issues, the challenges of policing appropriate content, the addition and evolution of SDC as a new feature for the community, et al. In the last decade, mobiles and video content dominate the landscape, and Commons has to wonder about how it fits in this world.

References:

• "Young people are turning to TikTok to search for answers. Google has noticed." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/technology/gen-z-tiktok-search-engine.html
• Wikimedia sites have been "mobile majority" since at least 2019 https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-page-views/normal%7Cbar%7C2016-01-01~2022-09-22%7Caccess~desktop*mobile-web%7Cmonthly

The Problems

Now go into what are the pain points, related to the above. Some things might be:

• Uploading content at scale has been very hard with the non-operation of Pattypan
• Tools are in disrepair, like video2commons, et al.
• Video is in poor shape because of the lack of file format support, and lack of software development
• No one from the WMF staff is dedicated to Commons, since the Multimedia team was dissolved (add year?)
• Multilingual coordination isn't supported well - English is required to work with category system
• Mobile experience for Commons falls short of contemporary expectations
• MediaWiki showing its shortcomings as a media asset management system
• Supporting new file formats is hard or impossible (Note: fixing Thumbor, going on now, will address this)
• Add more here

The Solutions

You can list some general solutions, which can range from practical to impractical.

• Identify critical tools/functions in Commons so they can be better resourced
• Dedicate more WMF resources/staff to Commons as a project, and not just a software product
• Increase funding for tool support and development
• Investigate the state of the art for open source DAMS as possible development paths forward
• Collaboratively maintain a product/improvement road map with community
• Add more here

The Ask

For now, it seems a meeting to discuss these issues and to create a strategy for long term interaction and dialogue would be effective.

---

Hopefully that gives an idea of a decent skeleton to build on, as there are a lot of good thoughts already on the talk page and the document. Putting it into a format that "spoon feeds" the compelling issues to a reader of the letter can help make your points more effective. - Fuzheado (talk) 16:15, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Fuzheado! Your remarks are really useful in general for working on a text like this; and these are very relevant issues that many people have seen with WMC.

Sometimes I struggle to translate the suggestions into simple English, in order to make it easier for the non native speakers to read the text. In the new try (that I just saved) I have been more cautious when questioning the software used at the movement, and I added some concrete issues. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 20:21, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Suggest asking for 1 or 2 actionable things

Hello. I saw this via a section that was posted at en:WP:VPWMF. My initial impression is that this letter doesn't ask for anything actionable. My personal suggestion would be to have an internal discussion on Commons and arrive at a consensus of 1 or 2 things that you want that the WMF can provide, then ask for those things specifically. The WMF is basically a tech organization, with 209 of their staff having the title "engineer" (i.e. software engineer), so arguably the main role of WMF is to provide you guys with world class technology to support your efforts. Therefore technical asks are probably the most likely to be actionable. Hope that helps. Best of luck. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:59, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

P.S. If you just want to "discuss" things with the WMF, I have a couple ideas for this. 1) Pick a team and pick the community relations specialist on that team (you can find this kind of info by visiting the team pages on meta or mediawiki, so for example, the community relations specialist for the editing team is Sherry Snyder), and reach out to them. They'll probably chat with you a bit. 2) Attend the Board of Trustees Zoom meeting, where they usually let you submit questions in advance then they answer them during the last half of the meeting. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:36, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

rephrase

Can we change "How can we make it easier to use Wikimedia Commons also for the people who do not speak English as their native language?" to "How can we make Wikimedia Commons easier to use for people who do not speak English as their native language?" WereSpielChequers (talk) 14:56, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Geo locate language versions

Currently as I understand it Commons has an English language default wherever you are in the world. We have the technology deployed on the Chinese Wikipedia to let people toggle between three different versions of the Chinese script. We could have something similar if rather more complicated using geolocation of your IP address and user preferences. It isn't very user friendly to have a drop down menu of 300 language choices on the screen. But Commons knows the IP address you are using, and that tells it what country you are in. Most countries have only a small number of languages that most people speak, so you could have a multilingual Commons that gives the vast majority of people upload screens and much of the basics that you need to upload files using technology that is a realistic if significant step from things already done with mediawiki. Yes there will be talkpages that need translation software, but at least you should be able to choose to upload images in Hindi, Georgian or Swahili if that's your user preference or you are somewhere where those are the main languages. WereSpielChequers (talk) 15:15, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure how fully the categorisation could be auto translated, it might need human intervention to maintain a mapping of the categorisation system from English into hundreds of other languages, I see the problem as big but modular and something the Foundation could achieve if it decided to fund it. WereSpielChequers (talk) 15:34, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Most (all?) Commonscats already have a Wikidata item, right? If category names were Q numbers, rather than prose in English or any other language, then the software could be made so anyone who has chosen a language can work the category in that language, writing and reading all cats in that language, right? I mean, as long as it's one of the languages for which WD has a name for this cat. Has someone already thought of this and I merely don't know enough to see what's wrong with it? Jim.henderson (talk) 23:45, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Oops! No, many Commons categories, perhaps most, lack a Wikidata item, and that's proper since many cats are composites of different elements such as subject, time, place, picture technology and so forth, and thus ought not have a WD item. I still hope I'm onto something, but it needs more sleep and thought. Jim.henderson (talk) 04:45, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers Rather than trying to guess from geolocation, the better approach would be to follow the user's own browser language settings (as provided in the Accept-Language header). This is phab:T5665 which is theoretically just a config change, but there are concerns about its impact on reliability and performance (although I note that it happened by accident for a few hours once, and the world didn't seem to end). the wub "?!" 11:55, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

That sounds interesting, but I'm not sure to what extent that is influenced by keyboard. I'm conscious of my wife's Facebook feed which is an interesting mix of Georgian friends and family writing in Georgian, and others writing in Georgian but using the Latin script. Either way there are fairly easy options for the WMF to pursue if htey take the UCOC seriously and want to cater for Wikimedians who aren't fluent in English. WereSpielChequers (talk) 12:29, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I was under the impression there was already some sort of geofilter. For example when on Wikipedia the suggested languages in the left bar seem to change as I travel. Is this me pulling a random pattern, or is it through cookies or some other mechanism? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 10:34, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

You are not imagining. The suggested languages feature uses geolocation information (if available) as one of the data points. Nikerabbit (talk) 09:16, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Image recognition software for categorisers

We have difficulties categorising millions of images, particularly categorising images that are uncategorised and could be of anything. Software exists that can compare images by the million - we've probably all heard of image recognition software. Imagine how much easier categorisation would be if you could click on an uncategorised image and see if we had an existing image that was very similar and probably of the same thing. This has been on my wish list for years, possibly since the 2009 strategy discussion. It should now be affordable and doable for the WMF techies. WereSpielChequers (talk) 15:25, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes! This is a precise request, unlike just saying we need *some* way to help rough or fine categorization. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:08, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Instead, we have a useless tagging tool suggesting "structured data" tags such as "sky", "trees" etc., see my comment above... Gestumblindi (talk) 11:16, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

+1 --Polarlys (talk) 12:56, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

There was something like this for a short while in (I think) 2019. If you opted in for the tool, it would periodically give you suggestions for the depicts property for your uploaded images. It was however stopped. I don't know why, but it was probably because it was giving giving too many and too imprecise suggestions. I remember getting the suggestion if "sky" for every landscape and architecture image I uploaded.

You have to keep in mind, that images on Commons are very different in subject. So a highly specialized image recognition tool like e.g. in [4] probably wouldn't work. Google lens is also not perfect... There are many examples on when it goes wrong.

I'm not saying it is undoable, but it is probably more difficult and expensive to implement, than you think. Especially if you keep in mind, that ethical questions will arise, when you develop such a tool. There is, for instance, research on how image recognition does reproduce racial biases. FlocciNivis (talk) 10:47, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

We don't use #Hashtags. Many social media sites do, and the beauty of the system is you don't have to understand much to use it. I'm an inveterate cat wrangler, hence know the category tree structures for my hometown and other things of interest, but newbie uploaders don't. Our new Structured Data feature of "Depicts" suffers the same problem of unfamiliarity and requirement for study beforehand. That's one reason new users don't describe their uploads. With hashtags, there are no rules or structures to learn except

• A hashtag is intended for searching.
• It starts with # and the actual words will be in #CamelCase with #NoSpaces.

Already millions of shutterbugs understand this. All by themselves hashtags can help with searching, and with later technical development they can be automatically connected through Wikidata statements such as "Depicts" and through them to multilingual searches and translated descriptions. Maybe they can also autogenerate categories, some day. The way to get started is first, we cat wranglers and other insiders start using them, and second, the Upload Wizard says "including #HashTags" or similar phrase. This is not a matter to concern WMF; it's something we volunteers can start ourselves and if it does fairly well, then we can ask for more support from WD and WMF. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:25, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

The problem is that this doesn't help with the core problem. I love categories (and think they should remain the main content ordering system, at least for people and geographical objects/buildings), but they are not even available on the Commons mobile phone interface (what an utter failure), and they have never been developped to enable them to act more like tags. "17th-century half-length oil paintings of old women with dogs" is just not a viable categorizing system. --Anvilaquarius (talk) 08:17, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Perspective of new contributors is missing

I suggest adding a bullet point that captures the perspective of new contributors or those that are thinking about joining. As it stands, Commons is lacking some key features that the large majority of photographers would be expecting from a site like this. E.g.

• A feature that would allow me to follow what other photographers upload to the site. This is a standard feature of every photo upload site. If I like someone else's photographic style, I can enjoy that person's works whenever they upload new images. If I like to know which photos are being uploaded in a certain area of photography that I'm interested in (e.g. landscape, wildlife, architecture), I just follow photographers that regularly upload images of that genre.
• An easier way of thanking someone for a photo / video. The current way of showing appreciation is complicated and non-intuitive. Other photo upload sites do a much better job at this. Why is this relevant? Because most people like getting feedback on their work. Making it simpler to leave that feedback will make Commons more enjoyable and might motivate people to come back.

There's a reason why so few new content creators stay here after discovering Commons. If it wasn't the only option to get my images onto Wikipedia, I would have left long ago. Let's advocate for making Commons more inviting, more enjoyable, and more fun! --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 07:31, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Dear Frank, thank you for this idea! I guess this could be shortly phrased in a way like "phographer's experience is not satisfying enough"? "difficult to show appreciatian"? "connecting among photographers", "looking at functionalities of other photo sharing websites?" Something like that. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 08:43, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I'd say "Wikimedia Commons lacks features that make interacting with others more enjoyable, like following your friends’ uploads and an easy way of showing appreciation". --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 09:52, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I support this, sounds good. Gestumblindi (talk) 11:15, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

On that style it'd be great to be able to watch categories, or subject matter of interest as well. Two fold it encourages others to fill in gaps, but it also emans tha when photos come in if they are better suited to the subject they get used sooner on Wikipedia. Gnangarra 09:06, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

I have trouble finding relevant meta pages, despite being active here for >15 years. I click searchingly through structures knowing that there are certain help pages, but I can't find them otherwise on the first try. They cannot be easily found via the search function. Many of our help pages are verbose, often outdated especially in translations. Decluttering the interface and meta pages seems relevant especially for new users. --Polarlys (talk) 13:23, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. Our help pages here on Commons are in desperate need of improvement. I wonder whether members of the Commons Photographers User Group would be interested in creating some kind of "Introduction to Wikimedia Commons for photographers"… --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 14:38, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

• I agree with Frank's comments at the start of this section. I store my images on Flickr and, although Flickr has many faults, the seach capability is useful. The functionality on following and being followed are useful as is the 'favourite' button. When I am trying to identify an animal I've photographed, Commons is the last place I go. For me, Commons is where I upload my images to use on Wikipedia - in other words it's an input resource, with no beneficial output. And here's another thing. I just entered "Cuban tree frog Osteopilus septentrionalis" into Google. This is a FP promoted in January so should be fully indexed. No 1. result is Wikipedia with my image in the article infobox. Commons does not appear till page 5. I say yet again, what is the purpose of Commons if not to feed other Wikis? Every week people ask to use my images, but they never say 'I found it on Commons'. Always Wikipedia , Flickr and sometimes my website. Charlesjsharp (talk) 17:22, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

(in between) Dear @Charlesjsharp: , I now read your post again, and actually... what you describe is actually quite striking, isn't it? How can Commons be so unknown to the world. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 15:14, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if the View it! Tool could incorporate some of Frank's ideas? I haven't delved into the details, but to me it looks like a way to incorporate such social media features into Commons. --Wuselig (talk) 21:39, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

@Polarlys Totally agree on this point ! Also, the upload wizard is tricky when it comes to choose the right license. For a new user not to pick it wrong, he has to look for and read many help pages, which sometimes are contradictory... To make the license step more clear and easy would be a great improvement ! Desman31 (talk) 11:49, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Next steps

Hello, the new version of the text is online for some time. What do you suggest, what steps are necessary before closing the discussion and go on? Ziko van Dijk (talk) 22:00, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Host a couple of office hours utc 0:00 and utc 12:00 to gather more thoughts. Gnangarra 09:07, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

FYI: I just added the sentence I had proposed in the last section of this page as no one opposed it. Best, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 19:47, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Open letters

It seems as if open letters are the only way to encourage the WMF (and the Trustees) to be more transparent and become more directly involved at community level. See also the New Page Reviewers action at meta:Open letter from English Wikipedia New Page Reviewers. There is also an article due to appear in the upcoming issue of The Signpost. Kudpung (talk) 05:16, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Blue's idea

I like this... (If the WMF does indeed have plans to develop Commons, then ask for money to get ready for that, and avoid asking for the WMF to socially ready themselves to talk to this community.) CaptJayRuffins (talk) 13:30, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Probably one of the best tactics would be to get the Board of Trustees to exert pressure on the WMF. Try to get included in the board's monthly CAC Zoom meeting. Kudpung (talk) 01:38, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Categories

I believe categories and tag enables high visibility. I have noticed the dearth of relevant categories in wiki Commons and creating more and relevant categories on wiki Commons is something we can do to promote high visibility of our resources, access and use. Obuezie (talk) 08:14, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

New version: footnotes to give background to the concerns

Hello, during the last week, I have talked to several people and found that the direction of the document seems to be okay. Andrew, again, helped me conceptually with the structure. The current text is now supported by footnotes that explain about the background of the concerns, to help understand why we find these points so important. Again, it is not about individual tools, but especially about functionalities / the problems created by a lack of functionalities.

The new document is clearer on our "ask", and it points out to some strategic goals.

I hope you like this version; or do you prefer one of the older, shorter versions? Ziko van Dijk (talk) 17:49, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Good for me. Yann (talk) 18:21, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I am not so keen. I do not think we need the bold sections nor the footnotes. No one is going to read them. We should change the negative bullet points to specific positives

• Commons needs to be restructured so that the best images can be found via a simple search
• Commons needs better upload functionality, especially for bulk uploads
• Commons needs modern methods for community interaction, such as notifications or leaving feedback for users
• etc.
• 
  

Our objective: Commons must become a better user/contributor experience than Flickr. There is no estimate of the man-hours or $$ needed.
Limit the requests to no more than 5 manageable projects and flag up a second priority list of 5. In total, no more than the equivalent of one page of A4 Charlesjsharp (talk) 15:44, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

(Short note: I am going to read everything thoroughly, and alter the text. I suppose on Sunday or after that. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 17:19, 7 October 2022 (UTC) )

Yes, a lot of new footnote text and I'm sorry not to find time for more detailed criticism. One point stands out; Commons is by no means the largest online collection of media files, at less than a hundred million. We may be perhaps the biggest of the fairly well organized, or the best organized of the large, but several collections are larger. Also yes, we've got poor collaborative communication tools, but that's a shortcoming of the Mediawiki software for pretty much every part of the Wikimedia empire. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:31, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

After looking at the new version for a couple of days, I prefer the earlier version. I agree with others that the footnotes don't help – it's just too obvious that Commons needs improvements, and I don't think we need to quote others in order to get our point across. Other than that, I'd like to highlight something I talked about earlier: there's a reason why photographers upload their images during photo contests and never come back afterwards. Commons just lacks features that every other photography site implemented ages ago. It's not just the clunky interface that makes Commons awkward, it's its total ignorance towards features the photography community expects from a site like this. I hope the Wikimedia Foundation will at some point hire someone who understands online photography communities. Best, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 01:29, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Re: "it's just too obvious that Commons needs improvements." Without casting any aspersions on any WMF staff, I'd like to point out how new the upper management of the Foundation is, especially the crucial roles of CEO and Chief Product and Technology Officer, which have been filled within the last year. Therefore, what we might consider "Common(s) Knowledge" is unlikely to be obvious to the upper echelon. Understanding the history and context of where we are is not easy for those in decision making positions. Therefore, the letter, and its associated research, can serve an important role as a one-stop capsule summary of the issues that 1) is hard to ignore and 2) can inform an action plan. Also, isn't citing our sources what we're all about? :) - Fuzheado (talk) 05:48, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

There is a limitted option of free licenses to choose from. Well, basically all options are the same. Why is it that Fair Use, CC-BY-ND or CC-BY-NC is not among the options? --Filipinayzd (talk) 05:04, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I figure the limited range of free licenses has reasons. Fair Use is an oddity of United States law. Commons serves over 300 language Wikipedias and many other websites and we do not want to specify that only one country can use a file. Non-Derivative is rather restrictive; many of our pictures are used in a collage or are excerpted to show one thing that was in frame. Non-Commercial means if someone sells a copy of Wikipedia on a DVD or thumbdrive, they can't include that picture. So to my mind, excluding these various overly restrictive licenses is a good idea. And yes, I have seen my pictures used in several commercial Web sites, and a print magazine, and a book. One of them was used in the movie "Miracle on the Hudson". All okay under the standard Commons licenses, but both Free Use and CC-NC would forbid them, and CC-ND would also come into play for other pictures I snapped and uploaded. Jim.henderson (talk) 23:24, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Even according to US law, fair use means that you can use a non-free image "fairly" only in a specific context where you need it to illustrate a point or discuss that specific image; for that reason, each fair use image in English-language Wikipedia has to be accompanied by a rationale explaining in which article, for what purpose that image is needed (and if it's no longer in use, it will be deleted). So, Commons as a repository of images for general use just isn't the place for "fair use" images, even in the US. Gestumblindi (talk) 15:28, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Hello, this weekend is "WikiCon 2022 in Stralsund", the convention of the German speaking community. There were two meetings about Commons, one of them online. (Notes in German.) From the talk and the discussion: People are frustrated about Commons for years. Reports to the WMF or Phabricator had no result. There was consent that individual complaints have no effect, therefore they were very interested in the open letter. As the new WMF team is being build up right now, we should wait no longer with this message: we need not to improve one or two tools, but to think big.

I have now altered the text according to the comments here. I hope that I have found a good compromise between different points of view: I kept some of the quotes that Andrew found important to back up our cause, but I deleted others. I kept especially the quotes from the WMF strategy because that is a programme that the WMF committed itself to. One quote is from a WMF person and another one "just" a comment but it sums up the frustrating situation quite well. I hope that this is a good balance.

Furthermore, the text does not contain e.g. a demand/ask/wish that Commons should be more like FlickR or a better platform for photography professionals, but FlickR is mentioned as one of the commcercial players dominating the web, and there is a new sentence about Commons as a platform attractive for photographers. I did not mention specific tools, but I understood that the mass upload is a very urgent problem right now that should be fixed with priority.

So, overall, I tried to balance the different ideas about such an open letter, I gave it a catchy (more catchy) title, and I think we should proceed to the next step quickly.

A last question: Should the Open letter be still published here, as a subpage of the Commons Photographers group, or is it better to publish the Open letter simply under "Commons:Think big an open letter"? Ziko van Dijk (talk) 14:13, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

The Commonswiki Community Tech Wishlist

Couldn't a separate Commonswiki Community Tech Wishlist solve a lot of this? As the most urgent things would immediately get addressed. Of course, someone would have to convince Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) or the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) to actually invest some of their resources into it. But I think that after talking about it for years that I will just write a proposal to see how viable it is. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:23, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

A few issues with this

Some of this I very much endorse -- especially the need to make Commons more truly multilingual and to make it easier to perform actions on a large number of files at once -- but I have a couple of issues with this as it currently stands:

• From a contributors point of view, comparison with other websites for photographers is not entirely appropriate. Most photo websites (1) don't worry much about copyright violations (especially with respect to lack of Freedom of Panorama in certain countries), which are a strong concern for us. Similarly, they do not have much concern with whether or not a photo has much metadata (in the broadest sense of that term), whereas frankly one of the last things Commons wants is a slew of photos that lack context. There are sites for that, but it does nothing to advance Commons' goals.
  • Related to that: I'd really like to see efforts to make uploads easier be specifically focused on people uploading their own work and guiding them through the process of gathering the information we need to make that content useful. Conversely, there is an inherently steep learning curve for anyone who is not already pretty expert on copyright to do more good than harm uploading third-party content to Commons, and the only thing that would make it easier without creating a ton of tedious work for our core curators would be something that would better guide them through the maze of rights. (A more robust Upload Wizard could imaginably include an option to walk a user through the relevant country-specific issues.) It is no easier to find legitimately free-licensed or public-domain content amongst a bunch of naively uploaded third-party copyvios than it is to find them on the web at large. And the work involved in getting rid of "bad" uploaded content is tedious for the people doing it and off-putting for the people whose uploads we have to delete.
• File formats: while I'd like to see broader support, Commons is committed to support only "open" file formats. For other formats, "support" would presumably have to consist of conversion at upload.

Jmabel ! talk 02:13, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

@Jmabel: re: "comparison with other websites for photographers is not entirely appropriate" - You are right that Commons is not directly comparable to Instagram or Pinterest, but I think that was not the point of that item in the letter. It's simply to point out that no matter the copyright or scope issues that makes Commons a special beast, Commons is out of step with modern expectations of user interface, interactivity, and discoverability. That means we really have not evolved the platform or user experience for more than a decade, when we know there are better ways. So I would argue that this one point should not hang up more general support for the larger goals. - Fuzheado (talk) 14:11, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Hello Jmabel, thanks for the feedback. I totally agree that Commons is only in some regards comparable to other photography sites, and actually, Commons is much more than a site for photographers. The solutions we need must be tailored for exactly the kind of platform we need for the whole movement (and beyond).

Your suggestion of a decent upload tool that really helps the newbies to decide what content can be uploaded or not, is wonderful and a good example.

Some examples or tools mentioned in the notes did not survive the draft phase, as some people asked the notes to be deleted. (I put away some notes, but not all of them.) But I think that the main statement is still in the text: we face not simply a software problem. Helping the newbies, or making it easier for them to contribute, is a major issue, for sure. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 08:00, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

• I agree with "efforts to make uploads easier be specifically focused on people uploading their own work and guiding them through the process" Charlesjsharp (talk) 10:41, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Opposed

To me, Wikimedia Commons is an image repository for Wikipedia and other related projects after all, not "a photography website". Limit the scope and keep it functional. Don't bloat it with non-free file formats and yet another supposed to be newbie-friendly wizard to upload. It would only cause it to be filled with images that are non-educational and out of scope. What you are asking for is going into the wrong direction. Matt (talk) 09:00, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm confused by this critique. Commons is indeed a significant "photography website" as it supports multiple "Wiki Loves" projects, to the point it where "Wiki Loves Monuments has been certified as the largest photo competition in the world. — Guinness Book of World Records" [5]. It's not the only thing Commons is, but photography is a significant area. The letter does not argue for non-free file formats, so I'm not sure why that is brought up. - Fuzheado (talk) 14:05, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

I still think it is important to be explicit about the difference if we are using them for comparison in the letter. - Jmabel ! talk 14:58, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

• We already have a NC and ND media repository for the movement. It exists at NC Commons, but to manage volumes of uploads requires an invite to edit. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:38, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with "Wikimedia Commons is an image repository for Wikipedia and other related projects" but many people don't. Charlesjsharp (talk) 10:42, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

+1. In some ways we have too many images, not too few, and it's almost impossible to get rid of images that are out of scope. As many as 3K photos of Category:Nude women with shaved genitalia‎ are certainly not needed for educational purposes. We should keep it elitist, and instead of facilitating the masses, offer personal monitoring to serious and good-faith photographers when needed. Mussklprozz (talk) 12:16, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

I beg to differ. There aren't 3K images in this category, and seeing the potential and the diversity, 3K images are not much IMO. Yann (talk) 13:55, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Hello, Commons is - and should be - a platform for many kinds of files. That Commons is not a very attractive website for photographers does not mean that Commons should be only for photographs. Kind regards, Ziko van Dijk (talk) 15:29, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Ziko, that is, I disagree with both parts of "is an image repository for Wikipedia and other related projects" - it's not just a repository for images (but also for sound and video files, at least), and it is meant to be a repository of media files that are of potential use for any educational purpose, inside or outside of the Wikimedia universe. Regarding "Don't bloat it with non-free file formats", I don't think we will ever accept non-free file formats as the format in which files are stored and accessed, but it should be possible to convert non-free formats to free formats easily in the process of uploading, like MP4 to WebM. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:36, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

In the contemporary web, Wikimedia Commons is a key piece. It heavily nourishes the images search results for users seeking free licensed images for all kind of purposes. And I have not doubt about it is being used in research datasets and to train image recognition algorithms, influencing the field in ways we need to be aware of. This is far beyond being a Wikipedia repository, and this is a socio-technical trend that we cannot change, but we need to understand and address in order to keep the project relevant and beneficial for everybody. And with every-body I'm thinking about the importance of public visual knowledge for diversity and representation trough online imagery. As much we can make Commons friendly for the average user, but also for partners, campaign organizers and other actors that can collaborate beneficially for Commons, we are making Commons stronger and better. I can't image how keeping Commons technically (and linguistically) elitist, could protect Commons at all.Señoritaleona (talk) 20:23, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Support objections of user "Matt". Keep strict scope, keep it simple and functional, avoid non-free file formats (MPEG & Co), avoid bloated wizards and jawascripts, keep it usable from ordinary computers including old ones. FaceBook and YouTube is NOT the way to go. Taylor 49 (talk) 18:44, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Sorry

Suórry, but I can not sign this. It's all too soft for me, too nice. The WMF has never taken care of the commons, but it also collects donations on the back of the commons but worldwide. These soenden funds are largely used for self-support, and to educate and hinder the communities. There is a lot of money for nonsense like the UCoC, but never before to make the projects employee-friendly. We should finally stop peadinf, appealing, beseeching, asking and begging the WMF. We finally have to make demands. Demand what is due to us. So that it doesn't all seep away in the apparatus. The time for asking nicely must end, because it has never had an impact on the apparatchiks. Marcus Cyron (talk) 18:28, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Hmm...

I'm sorry I must keep it somewhat vague, because I don't know what to say. I must admit, I didn't have any of the mentioned problems, or at least not to the extent, that I was bothered! I think I see the idea behind the letter. But that's it. I don't want to sign at the moment because

1. I see problems in the process: I don't know, where this is coming from and the ideas are vague at best. Is the discussion here the only one that took place? I'd like this to be discussed more, before I'm comfortable in making a decision to sign or not. I'd like to know the problems "specifically", with examples and all. And I'd like to have proposals and ideas included, what the "exact future use-case" for "thinking big" should be!
2. I have problems with the "concerns", to be specific:
   • Comparison to other websites for photographers -> why does it need to? I think pretty general here, what about music, video, etc...
   • good knowledge of English required -> yes, but what should the wikimedia do about this?
   • difficult mobile use -> yes, but I think this is a general mediawiki-problem
   • struggles with bulk uploads or large sets of files -> isn't this more like an advantage? I'm thinking about new users "flooding" commons with material that isn't "suited" (even with best intentions)?
   • lack of modern community interaction -> I heard this problem for wikibooks as well. The question is: What is wrong with the discussion pages? I mean, to play a little devil's advocate, commons is not an exhibition or a "showroom"?
   • keeping these tools maintained is hard -> Details? I mean, yeah... maintaining code is hard... What's the idea?
   • limited in formats -> Which ar missing and why?
   • lacks collaborative editing and creation -> This is already pretty hard in the "normal" world. I do see the idea, and I like it, but wouldn't this be a new "wikiproject" somehow?

I like the citations, but I would love to have more context here. I said above: "what should the wikimedia do about this?" I think this could be added to all points coming back to my first point: "I'd like to have specific ideas".

Maybe this leads to some kind of productive discussion. I don't know. Hope somebody find this standpoint at least interesting. Best regards HirnSpuk (talk) 20:00, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

I would like to answer some of the questions. First the point where this was discussed. All aspects were discussed many times on the Village pump, the German Forum and the German Wikipedia(I can not talk about similar on other language forums and wikis.) And there were some video conferences and offline meetings of some people too. Now to the topic related questions and how I would answers them:

• Comparison to other websites for photographers: We want to have more good photographers and it seems to be the most obvious way to give them a platform similar to what the already use.
• good knowledge of English required: Yes this a not easy to solve but should we not mention a problem because it might not be hard to solve?
• difficult mobile use: The letter mentions that we have to evaluate if we stay with MedaWiki of not
• struggles with bulk uploads or large sets of files: The problem is that the problem are also affection the power contributors and "professionals"
• lack of modern community interaction: The problem with discussion pages is that they use Wikitext which is not friendly to newcomers
• keeping these tools maintained is hard: My idea would be that the important tools get adopted by the MediaWiki developers and transfers to official Extensions maintained by the WMF.
• limited in formats: For me this no urgent problem, but RAW photos would be great
• lacks collaborative editing and creation: There I agree, I would also put this at the very end of the roadmap.

And yes we should make a list of all Problems and discuss possible solutions. Above the was also the suggestion that we should vote for what we need first like for the technical wishes at WMDE. --GPSLeo (talk) 20:36, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

@GPSLeo, thanks for your explanations. Though I think you are missing my point a little. Sadly you didn't answer my first question: What does "think big" mean? Is the underlying goal: we as a commons-community want more professional photographers? Or: we want swiping left and right for like and dislike? ...

I do "feel" all of your explanations, but 1. I want to see that reflected in the text (e. g. an at least linked paragraph what discussion(s) took place, when and with what outcome), and/or 2. as an user asked to sign without knowing the process until now, I see some points differently and would like them being discussed further until I can make a decision to sign or not.

• Example 1: as someone knowing some good photographers (some of which to some extent making a living out of it), I would think the problem here is not the platform, it's the goal. The idea here is: give us your work (for free, anyone can do, whatever they please; and remember just the "non-artistic stuff"!), so we can make the world a better place. The idea behind platforms photographers use is: give us your work, you can build a portfolio with us, because we are big, you get recognized and can earn money.
• Example 2: There would seem to be no benefit from RAW. It's (to my knowledge) proprietary and cannot even be displayed in Browsers. Let's assume, that's expected to be a good thing: photographers would loose the ability to control how their work is "translated" to printable form. My expectation would be, that no professional would want this.

I could probably add comparable arguments to all the points easily if anyone wants, but for sake of keeping it short I'll stop here for the moment. Regards HirnSpuk (talk) 07:15, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

For me "think big" means that we think about mayor changes like switching away from MediaWiki or defining the project scope in a new way. I think we want both the professional photographers and GLAM institutions and the casual users uploading from their phone. Here is also the comparison to Flickr and YouTube these platforms have both target groups and are well known by many people. I do not think that the licenses are the problem there are so many great free license photos on Flickr. We do not want to import them anymore we want that the photographer uploading them directly on Commons. And we are about "think big" why not also thinking about adding donation buttons under every photo?(Yes this would be a very controversial discussion.) Having RAW files in a free format where every user can add new development settings could be a unique point for Commons. For the technical points there are solutions. You said that photographers do not want to lose their control about the photos. In context of video it is already a standard procedure that filming and color grading is done by different people so I do not find this totally unimaginable doing the same with photos. Having a discussion like this is exactly what we need to define what future we want for Commons. Maybe the letter was a bit early. This was because the big questions got a bit mashed up with very urgent problems. --GPSLeo (talk) 17:39, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Up front, I'd like to say it again: I really feel all of that. And I do see nothing but good intentions!

But: Sure, there are photographers using a free license, but a) not all photographers want that and b) not every image using a free license is "uploadable" here (compare: Commons:Project_scope#Must_be_realistically_useful_for_an_educational_purpose). How shall a free RAW File work? You need Programmers to write converters to convert every existing RAW-File out there (normally defined by the cam-manufacturer) to the free format. The Video-Comparison is not correct: There's no problem in working together on the same media. But the color-grading-girl does not normally put another version of the film to the theaters, nor do editors or camera women or...

So do I understand correctly, that the wish is as follows:

• We think the Mediawiki-Software is not suitable to handle Media-Repositories.
• We'd like to open up to social functions (feeds, likes, follows).
• We'd like to facilitate collaboration in a lot of different ways and would like state-of-the-art media tools to do so. Even if this means abandoning the Mediawiki-Software.
• We'd propose to divert funding heavily to this software-developing-heavy tasks.

Is that somewhat correct? Then the questions to answer in my opinion are a) what are (or at least could be) the reasons for the mentioned points and is there a majority behind them, b) what would be initial ideas to mitigate those points (without missing the scope of wikimedia) -> "aka start thinking big not asking to think big" and c) what are the most urgent precise problems (with examples and a wishlist) -> "try helping to generate a roadmap (find a balance between quick fixes and long-term development)".

I think the biggest issue here is: How to control the upload of things "out of scope"? Take a look at the deletion-backlog, and these are just the works that "have issues". Compare above discussion #Opposed. And to be clear, I don't want do discuss moral, censoring or the like, I'm talking just the "Must_be_realistically_useful_for_an_educational_purpose"-part. Isn't it reasonable, that there is at least a plan to adress this problem before trying to get everybody on board?

Best regards HirnSpuk (talk) 19:06, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Just regarding one point, the handling of raw image formats: It would not be necessary to support all the proprietary raw image formats defined by the various camera manufacturers, it would be sufficient to support the DNG file format. DNG is not a free file format, too, but at least it is documented well; and almost all proprietary raw image file formats can be converted to DNG via Adobe’s DNG Converter. So it would be sufficient to support DNG uplaods. But personally I think this is not one of the highest priority things; many other things are IMHO much more urgent to improve the usability of Commons. (And while I am happy to publish my own photos as JPEGs under a free license, I would probably not publish my original raw image files, sorry – I do not want everybody to mess around with my raw image files.) Just my 2 cents, --Aristeas (talk) 09:14, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Thoughts on identifying priorities rather than putting signatures to things already on the WMF's to do list

Sorry for the new section on an already busy page -- I wasn't sure where to put this, and it's a big ask to catch up on the whole of this page. :) It's been a while since I checked in on the letter, and think what you've come up with makes a lot of sense. It's succinct and well-supported by footnotes. Most of these issues are things I (and others) have mentioned in the past both on Commons and in conversations with the Foundation. As I see it, this is useful as a reminder that "yes, we really want this" with the thrust of a lot of signatures rather than a few of us in a Zoom call. I'm going to sign it, and appreciate the efforts of those who contributed to the planning/writing.

The thing is, I think what we need are concrete requests. Perhaps it's something for subsequent conversations, letters, etc., but most of this is already on the Foundation's to-do list in some fashion. What they need, I suspect, is clear communication of our priorities and organization of requests into (a) tasks that can be accomplished now, without elaborate discussions, (b) things that require communication and coordination now in order to finish before the end of the annual plan, and (c) complex conversations and research which can take place under this annual plan, looking to the future. (Or presenting concrete requests and asking representatives from the WMF to give their opinion on how the requests fit into categories like these).

The boldtext urgent problem identified here is "the upload of content", but the only place "upload" is mentioned in the bulletpoint list is for uploads at scale, and I don't think most people would agree that a larger number of people more easily uploading massive amounts of files is something that should be a priority. File formats could also be seen as part of the uploading request, but as far as I know the barriers to supporting a larger number of formats aren't typically on the Foundation's side except insofar as some don't work with MediaWiki.

Maybe what we need is something like an ongoing, localized version of the Community Wishlist, but drawing on a different budget and different development team. We can use that to identify our priorities for developers to comment on and/or act on.

Beyond that, we can elaborate on the last bit of boldtext in the letter: requesting a dedicated team. The Foundation has signaled that improvements to Commons are a priority. Let's see that backed up by a team/task force/whatnot (if there isn't one already). — Rhododendrites ^talk |  22:22, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

For me, the priority is to have a dedicated development team for Commons. Serious bugs take months or years to get fixed, and essential tools lack features (VFC, video2commons, upload-from-IA, etc.), are unstable and buggy. Yann (talk) 11:16, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Hello @Rhododendrites: , I think that your points are excellent nexts steps! And yes, the problems don't stand just next to each other, they are intertwined. And finding out how to best proceed (now and in future, maybe indeed with an ongoing wishlist), that seems to me be a huge task by itself. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 20:58, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Indexing

Apart from all the major problems that are indicated in the letter (that are all very relevant), I believe that Commons has a big issue towards indexing images. I understand that the use of Wikidata as a way of structuring the description of the image content is a huge and positive step, but I still find it hard for a beginner user, for example, to understand exactly what they need to do in order to "index" the picture. And I don´t know if it is relevant (or even possible), but it would be so useful if the search bar of the Commons allowed us to do our searches using the Wikidata rotules as well - for example: if I would like to only see images that pictures a person, or a tree, or a bird and so on.Julianamonteiro33389 (talk) 13:52, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

This would be possible, if someone (rotfl) would create a useful search mask. 5 years ago I mentioned this at German WikiCon, see File:WikiCon2017 - Session zu Commons (Stepro).pdf (German only), page 7+8. In my opinion Wikidata and SDC were leaving by the developer in a semi-finished state. Stepro (talk) 17:52, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Dear Stepro, I only saw your presentation at WikiCon 2022 online; I think there is a kind of sad tradition that we have our conventions often with a session about Wikimedia Commons grievances. (I had a little rant at WikiCon in Nurenberg, then in the days.) Thanks for the useful link to those 2017 slides! Ziko van Dijk (talk) 08:03, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Hello, this is indeed a huge problem. And it has two sides. What information should we ask from the person who uploads a picture, and: what information does a person need who later is searching for pictures. You know, I would find it normal that there as an "Advanced search" and that I can enter the year or years, the location, the type of image (photograph, color/bw, chart, etc.) and so on. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 07:54, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I would like to highlight that in Fall 2019, the Art+Feminism Anti-Harassment Working Group dealt with a case that stemmed from an Indexing Issue, in which sexually exploitative images were being used to illustrate terms for computer programming. See: example of one of the original images https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Female_nudes_portrail_of_Full_Stack_development_by_Exey_Panteleev.jpg ; and Discussion https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Full_Stack_(Exey_Panteleev).jpg These image indexing issues highlight how on Commons, as on Wikipedia "source authority is facilitated by social and technical processes which elevate the decisions of a small number of self-selected editors." (see: https://artandfeminism.org/resources/research/unreliable-guidelines/) --13ab37 (talk) 14:25, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Wow... that example there leaves me speechless. Thank you for the link, I am going to put the interesting report on my to-read-list for the weekend! Ziko van Dijk (talk) 08:05, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Priority list

Because of the discussions that we should have a priority list I created a page where we can collect the problems and later create a list to vote on. Commons:Think big - open letter about Wikimedia Commons/Priority list GPSLeo (talk) 18:42, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Update

Hello, just to give you a short update! On Thursday, there was an open meeting with the board of the WMF, and also Selena Deckelmann was there. She is Chief Product and Technology Officer, and relatively new in this position. It is a huge department within the WMF. She said that she and her team are positive about the letter (improvements and also larger vision), but she also said later that she is "accountable" and reports to others. She couldn't be very concrete at this early moment, of course.

Her response is good news in general, and I think we all are curious what will happen the following months. Plans, first improvements, community part, investment/allocations, scope, vision, priorities, talks... It remains important to point out and underline how big the challenge is.

Therefore, please go on asking your friends and colleagues to sign the letter. There will be no deadline. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 19:53, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

See the recording at [6]. Ailura (talk) 20:08, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Selena starts talking about the open letter at 42 minutes in. - Fuzheado (talk) 15:23, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Easier wikidata integration

Besides all the other obvious stuff (like the torturous file upload) I think that Commons needs a better and more user-oriented integration of Wikidata/Structured Data. Commons categories are not really good for indexing files and are very tedious to work with. Instead there should be an easy way to query for images using Wikidata. I mean, I'm able to write a SPARQL query, but I have a Master's degree in a STEM field with practical experience with databases. I would guess the average user would first need to learn SPARQL... And even for me it's tedious to write those queries, as I always have to look up Wikidata properties. I don't have concrete suggestion for this yet, but I had a lecture on Information Retrieval and Data Mining a few years ago and we learned about methods there that might be helpful.

Of course for all of this to work, images would need more structured data than they have now. I think a first step here would be to migrate data from commonscats to structured data. Commonscats of course still need to remain functional, because a lot of people are now used working with them and Wiki shouldn't make a Google-like move and take functionality away from people. But information from new commonscats could this way continuously migrated to structured data, while showing new users the value of structured data from the beginning.

I think something like this could make the treasure that Commons is even more valuable for Wikimedians and everyone else who is searching for images. FlocciNivis (talk) 22:54, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Better upload form for "from somewhere else"

I made it my task to upload old pictures, which my late father took, that I inherited. And There I run into the problem, that the usual upload form is only suited for pictures by myself. I found that the least bad solution to upload them is the ComeOn! tool. But that only works soso. One reason is probably that the code doesn't seem to be maintained anymore. If the upload assistant in Commons is to be improved, it also needs option for like in this example uploading inherited pictures and images from other sources, which are PD or CC. It would also be hood, if the upload assistant would support some sort of templates for descriptions. That could save a lot of time. FlocciNivis (talk) 23:53, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

e-mail regarding this letter

I received an e-mail some moments ago that I'm doing far not enough for Wikimedia Commons, and should sign this letter. To be honest, I find the whole approach disrespectful, and would like to know how to best way to point out my dislike. Suggestions welcome. --Krd 16:05, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Hello, if you would like to talk to me, that is of course possible. If you understand the call for signing as a reproach that you are not doing enough for WMC, that is a misunderstanding. Maybe we can talk that out? Ziko van Dijk (talk) 18:13, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the offer, but I don't think this is neccessary. --Krd 15:10, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

• • Also it would be more polite to have a special section under this letter for those who, like me, disagree with its message. Andrei Romanenko (talk) 01:04, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

    +1 --Krd 15:10, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

@Ziko, Krd, and Андрей Романенко: There are many things that could be improved in Commons, and we all want the next development to be fast, smart and flawless. Unfortunately, I did not find many concrete and constructive suggestions in this open letter. A significant difference between Commons and the other platforms mentioned is that the Commons is a community-maintained collection that has some sort of transparent system and structure. The other mentioned platforms are only one-time storage places, where other users cannot edit, describe or organize the inserted content in any fundamental way, and the missing management is then replaced by random or non-transparent display algorithms. If Wikimedia Commons is to retain this fundamental advantage, it is necessary to work to ensure that as many of our contributors as possible are able and willing to understand the system by which the content here is organized and structured, and to participate in this management. Unfortunately, some of the new tools meant to make it easier for newcomers to contribute have the opposite effect - cutting off their access to the background. It is essential for the continued functioning of the Commons that the number of passive contributors, who only upload something and are not interested in it, does not greatly exceed the number of people able and willing to organize and care for the content. These are problems that YouTube or Flickr don't solve. What really bothers me is, for example, that some specific bugs or proposals remain unsolved for many months or years. Development seems to have turned into a cumbersome inefficient bureaucratic machine, unable to flexibly respond to stimuli. However, I don't think this "big open letter" will help speed it up. I don't even agree with his priorities, and I don't understand why this form was chosen. The proposal is somewhat scattered and seems unnecessarily confrontational. --ŠJů (talk) 17:56, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello @ŠJů, thank you for sharing your thoughts, and if you think differently about priorities - in general, the purpose of the open letter is to stress out the urgency to improve WMC as a whole, not concentrating on single issues. I am curious, by the way, what part of the letter is "unnessecarily confrontational", because that was not the intention. Kind regards, Ziko van Dijk (talk) 13:20, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

WMF response to the Wikimedia Commons open letter

Hello everyone! I’m Selena Deckelmann, Chief Product and Technology Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation. I started in August (here's more about me), and I am currently in my onboarding phase, on a listening tour across the Product and Technology organizations in the Foundations, and also across our broad Movement. Thank you for working hard on Wikimedia Commons, and thanks for bringing this letter and these topics to the Foundation’s attention.

In my first couple months, I have spent time with the folks who are supporting Commons at WMF, and I’ve heard from volunteers who primarily contribute to Commons. I’ve seen how essential Commons is for the rest of our projects and the broader world as one of the largest online media collections in the world, and it’s focus on offering freely licensed media. It’s clear to me that we need to think big about the future of Commons and I agree with the sentiments expressed in this letter.

Because the Foundation recognized that Commons has been underserved, improvements to Commons were part of the 2022-2023 Annual Plan. Many of you were part of conversations with Foundation staff where you helped us better understand the high priority needs and issues. As a result of your direct feedback in those conversations, we formed a working group for Commons-related work that aims to incrementally improve Commons, and build-up the knowledge to better serve larger Commons needs. We have taken what we learned from community discussions and additional user research, to identify two key areas that we have started to improve:

1. Address user top pain points for adding images; for example: supporting work on the bulk upload issues.
2. Close the gaps with image data; for example: fix bugs for structured data.

These areas of focus help us start to address the following concerns stated in the open letter

• Commons requires a good knowledge of English, even though it strives to be a multilingual platform.
• Commons has problems with scale, as it struggles to handle bulk uploads or large sets of files.
• Commons is limited in its support for file formats.

What We Are Doing Right Now

To begin, we are starting with software improvements that are clear and well-scoped. This is an incremental approach, giving the team an opportunity to build expertise in the software, while at the same time building up knowledge about the scope of work we need to plan for in the future. I’ll share: a few relevant quotes from annual planning process (APP) calls that helped influence which priority work areas were chosen, the work itself, and the planned impact once the work is completed. I’ve also divided the work between engineering work that is underway, and opportunities we are exploring through research and information gathering.

Engineering work that is underway

Continued support for Structured Data

Quotes from APP calls:

"Adding structured data is difficult", "Removing structured data is even worse than adding it", "The development of structured data should continue and deepen", "search doesn't bring back what I expect", "We need a better interface to get both traditional search and SDC search to work together"

The work:

For several years we have been working on improving our ability to add and contribute more structured data for Commons content. 91% (80M) of files on Commons now have some structured data. We continue to support this area by fixing critical bugs.

The planned impact:

Improving structured data input and management allows new features and tools to be built that improve search, re-use, and maintenance of media. For example, "View It!" enables contributors to discover related images for Wikipedia articles, and is only possible if images have associated structured data.

Improvements to Thumbor

Quotes from APP calls:

"Lots of bugs in SVG rendering -- unreliable very old end-of-life software", "The Thumbor software that creates thumbnails on pages is mission-critical & reported to have serious maintenance issues"

The work:

Thumbor has gone without routine maintenance for several years, making it difficult to use and difficult to make contributions to by the developer community. To improve Thumbor, we first needed to upgrade the software, which is a significant undertaking. This work will provide a solid foundation for exploring ways to better handle different types of files.

The planned impact:

Resolve a number of bugs and add modern features to Thumbor. The upgrade provides a stable foundation to build on. We hope this enables and invites more technical contributors to become involved.

Improvements to OpenRefine for Commons

Quotes from APP calls:

“Need good batch upload tools”, “Upload Wizard fails at volume”, “Connect with semantic web vocabs already working in other information systems”, “Waiting for the OpenRefine upgrade to be launched. I’m not interested in learning Pattypan with the OpenRefine upgrade only a few months away. I can’t wait!!”, “Some external uploaders no longer work.”, “No official mass upload tool.”

The work:

The development of OpenRefine for Commons was funded, which enables the addition of more structured data on Commons, and starts to address the bulk uploading issues.

The planned impact:

It provides a low-code/no-code tool that enables the bulk editing of structured data on Commons as well as the ability to bulk upload images with structured data. By describing Wikimedia Commons files with structured data from Wikidata, the descriptions become multilingual and machine-readable.

Opportunities we are exploring

Improving Discovery & Maintenance of Community-Maintained Tools & Gadgets

The work:

Over time the number of tools and gadgets built by the community has grown significantly, making it difficult to find and maintain them all. During the Commons APP calls, we heard from the community the need to “clean up, sort, prioritize, and better describe gadgets.” This work involves exploring how we can leverage Toolhub to improve discovery & maintenance.

The planned impact:

Make tools and gadgets much easier to find and also flag tools that may be out of date, generating a call to action to maintain.

Open Questions to the Community:

Another concern we heard was that there is insufficient support and maintenance for community-built tools, bots, scripts, etc. As an open-sourced movement, how do we invite and mobilize more people to support and maintain critical community tools?

WCQS Improvements

The work:

In discussions with the community, many raised concerns related to Commons SparQL requiring authentication and thus only being usable by logged-in users. To address these concerns we are conducting experiments to improve user experiences and methods for authentication for WCQS as well as across other APIs and services. We are also resolving small break-fix requests.

The planned impact:

Improvement to the overall WCQS user experience, which we are measuring through improvements to “edit lag”. Development of a Wikimedia Commons query service experience that better aligns with our values.

Partner Engagements

The work:

During the Commons community calls, we heard a lot about the struggle to leverage tools and APIs to bulk upload content, reuse content, and facilitate interoperability between other existing platforms.To better understand specific pain points related to uploading, curating, searching, and re-using Commons content, we have been collaborating closely with various GLAMs and technology partners to dig into specific use cases.

The planned impact:

A more refined list of problems with specific tools, APIs, content, etc. that will inform requirements for enhancements or fixes.

Next steps

Video has been an important and recurring point of discussion, and is not yet adequately addressed in our current plans. Especially with regard to mobile and video, we need to dig deeper to understand the limitations of our current technology stack, strong points, and opportunities. While we get our feet on the ground as a team by working on the targeted improvements and explorations described above, we are also looking at how we can scale up and tackle large issues like video more effectively. As we make progress in our research, we will share updates at the Product and Technical support for Commons page.

I want to close by acknowledging that while Foundation teams are working to address many of the issues raised in the open letter, we have been internally focused on moving those initiatives forward since the publication of the Annual Plan in July. Going forward, we need to change our approach to also have external focus. As you stated in your letter:

“Commons is not just a software problem: we should have a broad discussion to find out what kind of sustainable platform we need in the future, for a better overall user experience, for a better coordination on the platform and for the needs of everyone who works for free knowledge.”

This sounds great to us – I definitely agree that we need open conversation and collaboration about needs and product direction for Commons, in addition to communicating more frequently and openly about progress on work the Foundation is actively moving forward. I shared some thoughts and feelings along these lines in a recent WMF Board CAC meeting.

Moving forward, we will hold periodic open conversations and publish more timely updates on our work on wiki. You will be able to find those updates, as well as information about quarterly workshops and co-working sessions at the Product and Technical support for Commons page. I invite you to watch that page and I look forward to continuing this important work together.

Please chime in with your thoughts and reactions, and we’ll continue the conversations. SDeckelmann-WMF (talk) 22:31, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Wonderful to see this. For ongoing feedback: here or on the support page linked above?

For video, one path to making it easy on mobile —

1. Make mobile image uploads work. (and review why making it too smooth led to workflow challenges w/ copyvios at one point. Is some staging queue needed for uploads matching certain ORES patterns before they go live? a personal staging area that has to be cleaned up by the author later? different complexities of UploadWizard checklists for different user profiles? )
2. Make video uploads work smoothly from mobile + for people who otherwise have video in encumbered formats. I'd strongly prefer to see a first pass that uses IA for transcoding, as this could be tried quickly (and has been offered in the past) and avoids social, practical, and pipeline-robustness challenges with trying to do this in house.
   • send the incoming files to the Internet Archive for transcoding, while gathering metadata + license from the uploader T45150 T133487
   • receive from IA a .webm (ideally high res, but I'd take whatever they have over today's ∅) that references the IA original upload as intermediate source T77278, T115814
   • negotiate between the sites so the uploader doesn't need to see this is happening in the background.

--SJ+ 18:03, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Hey SJ :) Just an answer to your first question - I'd say let's keep the conversation about the letter and/or Selena's reply here. Thanks, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Elitre. (goes looking for phab links for the above) (oh, we simply haven't turned WP app uploads back on?) (loses mind) (goes outside to play). --SJ+ 20:28, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your words! We will definitely watch the ongoing developments! Ziko van Dijk (talk) 17:30, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

About the Commons app

Thanks for the app-related questions. To start, we should clarify a bit of the history and involvement of Foundation's staff for the Android Commons app. Although the Foundation initially developed a limited version of the Commons app, 8 years ago ownership of the app was transferred to a group of committed volunteers. For the last 6 years, this group published regular updates, integrated WikiLovesMonuments, and made many other improvements led by volunteer Josephine Lim, User:Misaochan. Although staff continued to provide technical support, occasional code review, and design consultation (including in person at hack-a-thons, etc.), we acted in a support/consultation mode only. A grant was given annually to support this core volunteer work on the app. We continue publishing the app under the Foundation's official Play Store account to make it easy to find and ensure it remains easily downloadable to Android users. Sadly Josephine announced on the mobile-l mailing list in August that she was no longer able to act as the grant recipient and community leader, and it is our understanding that her collaborators were working to find folks in the community who are able to take on her role in order to continue supporting the app as a community-owned, grant-supported project. From the technical staff perspective, we would love to find a replacement for Josephine who we could support and partner with, but at this time, we are not aware of any groups or grant applications to do so. I also just want to reiterate that the Commons app only has existed and improved by the commitment of a small number of volunteers, and on behalf of my team, I would like to thank Josephine in particular for her leadership and above-and-beyond efforts in this area over 6+ years. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 18:27, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your kind words, ARamadan-WMF! We greatly appreciate the support given to us by WMF in the past, especially by the Wikipedia Android team.

The Commons app now has a new project maintainer, Kaartic. He, alongside Syced and a few other members of our community, are currently looking after the project in a volunteer capacity.

Unfortunately, as far as I am aware, there are no pending grant applications or people interested in leading the project in a grant capacity at this time. As you say, our app team was very small - on my last count we had 3 part-time devs/grantees (including myself) and around 5 core volunteers. To be honest, the unstable nature and inherent limitations of grants does make it very difficult to maintain a complex app long-term solely through grant funding, and by necessity most of our team has worked day jobs in addition to our work on the app.

When I was leaving, we had a discussion among the app's developer community, to see if anyone was interested in taking up the grant lead role. However, even though everyone expressed a desire to help keep the app alive, nobody currently has the bandwidth to take on the role, mostly due to the commitments of their day job.

Many of us still believe, as we always have, that mobile is the future, and I hope that we will be able to keep the app around for as long as we possibly can.

Best regards, Misaochan (talk) 11:09, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Misaochan, I Totally agree with your talk.

We would like to continue supporting Commons; we wish to schedule a meeting with you, @Kaartic, and definitely any other interested members to discuss what can be done next.

Please email me at this: aramadan@wikimedia.org, so we can set a time that can fit you all. Thanks. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 12:21, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

About Image Upload

• About SJ's questions, although it is technically easier and generally more normal for apps to provide media upload features on mobile, in our case there are a number of tradeoffs which have meant investing in such a feature for Wikis can be challenging. Chief among these, as folks who have been around long enough know, is quality control of the images uploaded. 9 years ago the Foundation added mobile image upload support, and the result became known as the Selfie Apocalypse, because a large number of the uploaded images were selfies, but also to reflect this issue with quality and policy compliance, in general, when inviting the whole world to use their phones to upload photos to Wikimedia. The feature was quickly removed based on these concerns.
• Over the subsequent years the Apps and Growth teams have held various consultations and made proposals around how to broaden the ability of users to upload media (especially images) from their smartphones. Ideas to mitigate quality issues include more “peer approval” before images are uploaded, better/stricter user education and onboarding, and targeting the feature to a more limited audience.
• In our community consultations regarding potential micro contributions we received clear feedback that image suggestions (adding images from Commons to the Wikipedias) was a safer and more valuable activity and one that mobile users could also easily participate in. This led to the creation of “add an image” as a pilot on Android and the expansion of image suggestions as part of the Structured Tasks work to improve mentoring and growth.
• Ultimately this feature is not a simple “just add it to the apps” but becomes part of larger conversations about moderator capacity, the type of images Commons and Wikimedia need and will accept, and the balance of growth and quality. Not questions a single team or feature can answer.
• Many staff believe adding image uploads could be an excellent way to bring in new content and new types of participation from mobile users, and that there are ways to balance these concerns, but we would need to work deeply with the Commons community to ensure policy and quality concerns are accounted for.
• For feedback about our ongoing work re: Commons, we’d love to invite you to share your thoughts and ideas on our portal's talk page . On behalf of Wikimedia Foundation staff, ARamadan-WMF (talk) 18:29, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

About quality: We implemented Peer Review in the Commons app, allowing users to nominate images for deletion (after selecting a reason and writing a text comment). Unfortunately several veteran reviewers were unhappy with the quality of the nominations, and I agree that our Peer Review feature does not offer the same inspection tools as a desktop computer could offer. If a developer with good knowledge of Commons deletion nominations could work on this, that would be wonderful, as it could help improve contribution quality. Thanks! :-) Syced (talk) 08:55, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Think outdated and without base

These requests are so outdated, that videos are not the main point.

More important: it is empty; what are the metrics? What do you want with it, when, how much... more importantly, why.

What is the plan? Who will manage it; the "Commons Photographers"? Looking at the reports, it seems that you don't have the necessary to be a User Group; just meetings. And this is problematic.

At the last meeting of the Commons Photographers (27 August, 2022), the group discussed such an initiative to make Wikimedia Commons better. Based on the discussion and with some input from friends, I have composed this text."

Where is the log of this conservation? Why didn't you open it to the Commons community as a whole before the letter? Where is the necessary transparency? If this is the Commons Photographer gang, why are you spamming for all Commons volunteers to sign it? You didn't send an email to discuss the content of the letter.

You can do a small letter with a whole plan and study behind it.

---

The letter shows that you don't understand the WMF paper:

"Commons requires a good knowledge of English, even though it strives to be a multilingual platform"

We, as a community, decided this, WMF does not have any power over it.

Plus, we are walking to structured data that will solve categories and many linguistic issues; categories will be outdated quickly.

"Commons is limited in its support for file formats"

Of course, some formats are closed... WMF nothing have to do about it.

---

The problem of being so vague, that I can agree, or disagree:

"Commons can be an uncomfortable environment to new users who have a lot to learn in order to contribute in a significant way. Compared to other websites for photographers, it is not a very attractive site."

"uncomfortable environment" is about the ux, is about the necessary steps to upload a photo, it is the main page, it is the lack of tutors or tutorials, ... ???

And what are these other sites? I do not know any of those who are oriented to education.

The ux of the website is terrible, and this is a thing that WMF is responsible for. But is not exclusive of Wikimedia Commons, the whole Wikimedia Environment have the same issue.

It is the learning curve? If is nothing about WMF.

Look the difference between: Página principal and Main page, the community can improve the new comers entry. If you had used the effort to do this latter, to think about possible solutions to this problem, probably you could have a bigger impact.

Media-wiki have different skins, if this is the main concern, the community could change the skin, produce a new one also.

This point is more a ???

It is too vague to be supported.

---

Pleas, stop spamming. Who approve this massive emails?

---

I cannot sign it. -- Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 16:24, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Feedback from an online meeting

Hello, German Wikipedia has a series of online meetings to talk about single topics (Digitaler Themenstammtisch). On January 5th, 2023, the topic was Wikimedia Commons (WMC). We had three guests from the WMF to explain about the current work of the WMF with regard to WMC. We are grateful that they took the time to keep us up to date.

Alas, the results were not well received by the audience members. According to the chat and to discussions afterward, the WMF does not seem to "think big" but rather stick to some software development. Social and cultural issues are no concern at the moment.

Our admin Gestumblindi watched the meeting in the local Wikipedia office in Berlin. He reported that the Wikipedians' reaction was "shrugging shoulders" and "consternation". His summary:

• The WMF team for Commons is very small.

• There seems to be not much concrete planned at the moment.

• The WMF itself says that it lacks technical knowledge.

• The attendees were sceptical about the upcoming mass upload tool: The WMF relies on OpenRefine as a technical basis, which is perceived as complicated.

• Better video support can only be expected in the distant future.

Kind regards, Ziko van Dijk (talk) 15:51, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Ziko, I think you summarized my summary well ;-) Gestumblindi (talk) 18:13, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks both for sharing your thoughts. Here's a link to the presentation we shared; we're in the process of reviewing our notes to find unanswered questions from the meeting, and we'll ping you when we publish the answers. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:28, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Are these slides available on Commons? If not, can you make a PDF and upload them and link them here? Thanks. - Fuzheado (talk) 19:30, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

WMF Follow-Up

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts/feedback and for your patience. As promised, we have reviewed our notes and found some questions we have yet to respond to during the call. Before addressing that, we want to provide some clarifications from this feedback.

• As shared in the call, we have historically had minimal support for Commons, and we do not have a dedicated team for Commons at the Foundation at this time. To understand what we need to do and who we need to do it, we are focused on iteratively and incrementally learning more about Commons through projects designed to help us fill these knowledge gaps. In doing so, we can take a more informed view of what and who is needed to support Commons efforts long-term.
• But more importantly, if we intend to achieve significant progress, we must address one media type at a time. Having gone through the different requests, including those highlighted in this Think Big open letter, our focus is on images first.
• It appears that there was an expectation that during the call, we would deliver big announcements or something along those lines: we should probably note that the annual planning phase has just begun, so it's unlikely that we can have something substantial to share before it ends.

The response to the unanswered questions can be found below. Please note that there was an additional, Legal-related question - its answer will be published separately below. We hope this will help in providing more clarity as to where we are at regarding Commons. We plan to organize workshops with community members interested in Commons over the coming months.

Questions from the call

1. When will the video upload be reliable again?
   • We are not actively working on video at the moment. To reiterate, our focus remains on adding images and structured data on images.
2. Do you have the long list of bug reports and feature requests for the UploadWizard on your to do list?
   • We do track issues related to the Commons Upload Wizard. We have yet to prioritize work on UploadWizard for this fiscal year as we work on the other priorities highlighted in Selena's response to the open letter above.
3. Just wondering what people like about competing services like Flickr? [...] What can [Commons] learn from them [...] in order to become more attractive for WMcommons Users (up- and downloaders)?
   • Examining similar platforms is definitely an area to explore. We welcome thoughts and opinions that could benefit Commons users.
4. Is there work happening on an easy to use and convenient program like the Commonist? / What is being done to make it easier for new users to upload photos to commons?
   • This year, we focused on batch contribution following the outage of Pattypan and the sunsetting of the GLAMwiki Toolset. We supported the development of a Commons extension for OpenRefine, a batch contribution tool for uploading or editing images with structured data. This tool allows you to upload thousands of images at a time. We'd like to encourage you to learn more about it at Commons: OpenRefine.A follow-on grant will support the OpenRefine team in improving documentation and training in multiple languages.
   • Re: tools, we are also working on the discoverability of all Commons tools.

@Ziko: Please share our answer where you see fit to ensure that the participants of the call are aware of it, thanks in advance! Cc: User:Sicherlich User:GPSLeo User:AnBuKu User:Suyash.dwivedi - Udehb-WMF (talk) 18:12, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I will create a link from the Wikipedia:Kurier, the main bulletin of German language Wikipedia. Kind regards, Ziko van Dijk (talk) 18:11, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Ziko Udehb-WMF (talk) 12:56, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Current stable version of OpenRefine doesn't allow uploading images to Commons. This is only available in the development version. And it is IMHO very complex to use for this purpose. Yann (talk) 09:36, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Uploading files to Commons can be done with OpenRefine 3.7 which will soon be officially released (it's currently in beta, which you can already download from https://openrefine.org/download). OpenRefine indeed has a learning curve and still misses some handy features; I will create better documentation as soon as I find the time to do that. That said, interestingly, many cultural institutions prefer using OpenRefine to e.g. Pattypan because it integrates much better with importing from their databases. See also the outcomes of this recent survey. Spinster (talk) 13:50, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Shaun Spalding from WMF Legal’s response about addressing legal questions

1. Question from GPSLeo: Are non technical topics like the question how Commons users can request professional legal input on complex copyright questions on your list?

Understanding legal issues represents a significant burden for new contributors and admins attempting to help answer those contributors' questions. As a result, the Legal department wants to renew its commitment to helping address these issues.

• What WMF Legal can and can't do when addressing legal questions
  

  WMF Legal can provide objective research to help the community generate policies.The way we usually do this is by creating Wikilegal articles. Those articles can then be used to inform community policy decisions.

  The Foundation can't give direct legal advice, per information in the box at the top of the Wikilegal page.
  

  I'd like to encourage you to surface questions you think are important to you to get researched for a Wikilegal article. You can populate this page with suggestions if there are currently ripe questions. I'd like to take direct responsibility for this project, so should someone have a highly specific and timely request in the future, feel free to reach out to sspalding@wikimedia.org. I check my email more often than I am on-wiki. I can't guarantee that every request will be addressed, but I can promise they'll all be reviewed by me and prioritized based on how timely the topic is and the impact the answer may have on ongoing discussions. To manage expectations, there may be times where questions may simply be outside of anyone's area of expertise (we are a relatively small department) - and we'll say when that's the case.

• How to know when a question is worth surfacing to WMF?

  Here are some rules of thumb about what might make a good question...

  1. Has a question that isn't a routine question of copyright or licensing been asked multiple times? Maybe it relates to new technology (e.g. "deepfakes" or the AI example above).
  2. Does the question involves emerging cultural or legal trends: (e.g., the rise in authoritarianism worldwide, the rise of pervasive government surveillance, changes in attitudes towards online privacy as it relates to images of people)
  3. Would getting a definitive answer on a topic could allow the community to create a new policy? Could it decide the fate of hundreds or thousands of images?
  4. Do you believe an existing policy needs to be rethought because of a new context? For example, there are existing, well-established policies about non-sexual nudity and sexual content. But there are often questions and debates about these policies. Much of that debate is philosophical, but some of it could come from "legal" reasons (e.g. new laws related to intermediary liability, tightening restrictions in certain countries about displaying images of nudity more generally). If there seems to be a large amount of disagreement, then we could put out a memo on the topic to help move the debate along by adding current, objective legal research into the debate.
     

  Conversely, it may not be appropriate if something only relates to a specific image or a handful of images and whether or not they should be deleted. This shouldn't be a substitute for the Helpdesk for example.
  
  

  Hopefully, WMF Legal can do its part to continue to support the dedication of all the volunteers here. I'm open to questions and other feedback, and look forward to seeing your topic suggestions.

  It’s best to surface topics of more general importance.

  • Here is an example of a topic of general importance:
    

    AI generated images: There are currently both philosophical and legal debates going on Commons about when AI-generated images belong on Commons and when they do not. The philosophical debates about what Commons should and shouldn't be are for the community. But the legal policies around whether or not certain images must be removed from Commons, for example, because of copyright or other underlying rights, is an open legal question. Currently, these images are "generally" not protectable in the U.S. by copyright law (which underlies the Commons community's current position), but an investigation into what other jurisdictions are doing now or in the future on the topic could be informative. Moreover, other rights (e.g. moral rights) may exist outside of the U.S. and may limit certain users' interest in uploading certain images in their jurisdictions.

  I chose this example because more information empowers editors/admins to make better decisions about whether or not they should delete certain images and also alerts contributors who may want to inform themselves before uploading media that could be problematic. It feels important because AI systems will probably become even more prevalent over time. Creating an informed policy now could affect thousands if not hundreds of thousands of contributions in the future. SSpalding (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Opposing the open letter, instead: think realistic

First I would like to say I am in favour of improvements. However, reading this open letter I have a series of problems with it and the perspective described is also problematic.

• "Our platform is fighting to remain relevant in a world that is dominated by visual platforms" -> no it is not, comparing with Instagram/YouTube is a false comparison. Sure they host images/videos too, and that is the only similarity. Those other platforms are founded to get you addicted and stay as long as possible so you will get as many advertisements as possible to make money.
• "[platforms] that are constantly evolving" -> Sure, they develop sneaky algorithms to get you even more addicted. Commons is also evolving, but those other platforms have a lot more money and commercial interest/gain to work for.
• "Commons, in contrast, fails modern standards of usability and struggles with numerous foundational issues." -> This is too vague. Which modern standards? List them carefully, otherwise this is just weasel talk.
• "It is difficult for new contributors to join while being frustrating for existing contributors to upload" -> The upload wizard contains only basic number of things that are needed to be able to use the file. One of the key features of Commons is the usability of files. Is that the part you want to remove from the upload wizard? Another key thing is that the files are uploaded under an open license and that it is save to use those files. Is that the part you want to remove from the upload wizard?
• "frustrating for existing contributors to (...) search" -> Ask yourself why this is. Reason 1: lacking of proper descriptions on files. Reason 2: descriptions not available in all used languages. You want WMF to solve this. How??? To develop magically perhaps a tool to add proper descriptions, fiction! Or a tool/etc to get descriptions translated in 100+ languages, fiction! Even Google Translate can't give the needed quality.
• Many of the concerns are tricky.
  • "Commons can be an uncomfortable environment to new users who have a lot to learn in order to contribute in a significant way." -> Sure, improvements are possible. A large part of the comfortability are other users who act hostile to new contributors. Another part is the complexity of copyright laws (which those other platforms often ignore with all the money they earn to pay for lawyers).
  • "Compared to other websites for photographers, it is not a very attractive site." -> Again enough room for improvement, but in comparison with other platforms: you mean addictive! Instagram/YouTube have a large set of addictive algorithms in place to make you stay as long as possible to show as much as advertisements to make money.
  • "Commons requires a good knowledge of English, even though it strives to be a multilingual platform." -> almost everything can be translated, except file names, category names AND communication of other users.
  • "Commons is difficult to use for mobile users." -> Everything is difficult to use on mobile as every mobile has limited possibilities on what you can do on it, and Wikipedia is also difficult to edit on mobile. But yes, improvements are welcome too here.
  • "Commons lacks modern methods for community interaction, such as notifications or leaving feedback for users." -> No clue what this "modern" is. Users get currently various notifications. Basically you want more notifications or presented in a different format? Please also note that from the community many times large resistance came against software improvements developed by WMF, and not just for poor quality, but also resistance against change.
  • "Tools written by volunteers have helped new innovations and functionality, but keeping these tools maintained is hard." -> Who do you want to be in control: the community or WMF? The community claims control, resulting in that WMF can't take sufficient action. This was already a problem in 2007. If the community wishes to keep tools/features alive, they community must redesign the workflow and way of thinking around these tools. Second, WMF has showed in the past to have insufficient management and capacity to maintain all such.
  • "Commons is limited in its support for file formats." -> If it are not legal/copyright reasons with certain file types: request support for those particular files and file a Phabricator ticket.
  • "Commons lacks video content support beyond basic playback, such as collaborative editing and creation." -> Please think about what this collaborative editing would imply. You are asking for software in what multiple users can easily edit at the same time. It is still not possible to edit the same section in Wikipedia without an edit conflict and I also get edit conflicts in Wikidata.

All together I think this letter is not realistic, making false comparisons, has not been thought through, largely impossible to fulfil and can only end up in disappointments and disillusions.

If anyone really wishes changes: work together on making a practical list (wishlist) of needed improvements (without vague ideas), submit them to WMF, have WMF work on them, and have WMF work together with the community on those improvements. Romaine (talk) 21:49, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I fully agree. This letter is a joke. —VulpesVulpes42 (talk) 19:36, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

The WMF has responded by wanting to talk the community to understand the issues better, so I'm glad that in the end, it was not seen as a joke. - Fuzheado (talk) 19:26, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@Romaine - Thanks for the time spent on the detailed reading, but I cannot help but think maybe the bigger point of the letter was missed. With the relatively new CEO and chief product and technology officer, and the lack of any Commons-dedicated leadership at WMF, and the recent problems with bulk upload tools such as Pattypan, the letter serves as "one stop shopping" to try to understand the issues being brought up by the community (and WMF itself). In short, the goal was to "engage". All too often, the community expects WMF staff (new or old) to magically know what's "in the wind" with the projects, which is always a bad assumption. So these letters, while imperfect, help to document the sets of issues in one place to not be the last word, or the most authoritative word, but to start the conversations towards advancing the platform. I, myself, learned quite a bit more about Commons and its issues while helping out the original writers with the letter. As for the specific issues, some of those are subjective, but many are supported by the references if you scroll down, even where WMF found "a crappy experience for the end-user." Thanks. - Fuzheado (talk) 19:25, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

WMF response

FYI - apparently WMF has responded but it seems targeted to admins only at this time. Commons:Administrators' noticeboard#Invitation to Exploratory Call to Highlight Commons Content & Community. Fuzheado (talk) 11:11, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

The focus on admins seems to have simply been a mistake. The invitation there was to discuss "how we can highlight the best media on Commons and create a stronger sense of community, using the Commons homepage, social media, and other channels" — there's overlap with issues raised in the open letter, but also other ideas around uplifting the work done here. --SJ+ 13:40, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Fuzheado, as @Sj points out, this is not the response from the Foundation, but an attempt from a group of staff interested in Commons who are keen to learn from the community and work together on something achievable within the scope of a community-led process. It's a starting point for collaboration with community members, and some Commons folks we asked recommended that we start with the admins. We intended to ask at every chance who else we should convene in discussions and workshops focused on the homepage. We have received some great suggestions already. I hope this clears up any confusion. Udehb-WMF (talk) 21:52, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@Udehb-WMF Just an idea: While the content is made by users and the Foundation does not interfere with content creation. - The Admins you will or will not speak to are all not only Admins, but also members of the community of authors. An admin at commons does admin duties. But the very same admin is also a user without special rights, takes photos, uploads photos, imports photos from flickr, corrects categorizations, creates new categories. The same is true for employies of the foundation. As a member of the WMF you cannot add content to WMF projects. But you are also a person, a private user of Commons. You can take fotos (of the landscape, at festivals, at protests, of household items - but not of WMF events) and upload these to commons. Not in your function as a member of the WMF, but as the human you are. I think this way you and your colleages will learn more and faster what problems really exist here. C.Suthorn (talk) 09:20, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

It's actually more confused now. The original message requesting admins said, "We’re a small team of people at the Foundation." But now you say, "this is not the response from the Foundation." I'm trying to reconcile that difference between "at the Foundation" and "from the Foundation." Aside from that, you said, "some Commons folks we asked recommended that we start with the admins." What plans or ideas do you have that would sample other parts of the Commons or Wikimedia community to add to the mix? Thanks. - Fuzheado (talk) 14:23, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Urgent issues

Hi, There are at least 2 urgent issues to fix: phab:T328872 is blocked upload of big files, and COM:VP#@ Server-kitties - again groundhog-day-problem is blocking deletion of files. Yann (talk) 13:55, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

And there are more large-scale issues, for example phab:T330942 (broken thumbnails after reuploads) and phab:T331820 (thumbnails simply not working). To be clear: Almost all image usages in Wikis are through thumbnails, most images are simply too big to be used in the original size.

The only piece of improving images infrastructure, the new thumbor, is still not deployed yet (blocked on phab:T328033) after I think two years now?

I have said it many times public and private, I'm saying it again, the infrastructure for multimedia is falling apart and we really should slow down on building new things on top of it and focus on making it work instead. What use an AI-based image recommendation system is going to have when you can't serve any images? Amir (talk) 14:33, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

A Few Thoughts

Let me begin by stating I am not very familiar with the Wikimedia Commons community, so there is probably much going on behind the scenes I am not aware of. However, there were a few points that seemed concerning:

Our platform is fighting to remain relevant in a world that is dominated by visual platforms (such as YouTube, Instagram, flickr etc.) that are constantly evolving.

Commons should not be compared to platforms such as these. Their goal is constant engagement and this leads to ephemerality. Commons needs to be a place where media can remain long term.

"In addition to technical challenges such as image uploads, contributors to Commons must also navigate intricate policies concerning copyright and permissions, reoccurring vandalism, problems with other users, and photography critiques. Similar to Wikipedia, these factors create a sociotechnical environment that can be intimidating for new users [...]."

Wikimedia projects can definitely be byzantine in their organization. However, the upload tool is pretty straightforward and, unless the law itself changes, there doesn't appear to be a way the approach to copyright can be made any simpler.

Commons lacks modern methods for community interaction, such as notifications or leaving feedback for users.

Commons should not be a social media platform. Generally speaking, the only discussions going on should be technical or academic in nature, not opinions about whether or not one likes a certain piece of content.

Commons is limited in its support for file formats.

There is a good reason that the number of file formats is limited. Commons should try to stay away from proprietary formats as much as possible.

Again, strictly speaking, I am not opposed to any of these proposals or necessarily think they are bad ideas. It is just that they suggest certain changes that lead in the wrong direction. –Noha307 (talk) 23:05, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

@Noha307 The Upload Tool is not straight forward. Possibly it is straight forward WRT copyright. But if it was straight forward, it should be really easy for you to explain captions (SDC) or explain, how a user will find the approbiate category "category:Men cooking coffee while looking to the left with black shoes" while uploading a foto of a "shoe wearing left looking coffee cooking human male", or what depict statements should be added to that upload. The upload tool also does not offer adding a FoP or personality rights template. But really worse: The wizard cannot upload files larger than 1.2GB and Commons does not allow for files larger than 4GiB.

Commons "should not try to stay away from proprietory formats" - it does and it must. It is one of the founding principles of Wikipedia and all its sister projects: only free content. Proprietory formats are not free, and cannot be used at commons. But: Nearly all videos are proprietory. Either MP4 (Android) or MOV (iOS). Users therefore have to transcode them to webm. Either on their own, or with video2commons - a user toot. The maintainer of v2c was driven away from the project by the hostile environmant and noone has taken over (v2c even was in the last tech wishlist survey). Meanwhile v2c is falling apart. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 11:04, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

An easy tool for uploading video with on-the-fly converting from non-free formats such as MP4 is essential, and it should be integrated into Commons like the Upload Wizard, not rely on external tools that work only as long as their maintainer is active (if at all). But well, my previous thread regarding this matter is even at the top of this page ;-). - Though it is tangential, I always thought that creating categories in the style of "Men cooking coffee while looking to the left with black shoes" was going in the wrong direction, as there should be rather categories such as "Men", "Coffee cooking", "People looking to the left", "Black shoes", which then can be combined freely for search. Structured data promises this, but hasn't fulfilled its promise yet. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:23, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Please participate in community technical needs survey

In the discussion on this letter many technical problems where discussed. Now there is the voting phase of a small community run survey on the most important problems.

The voting is open until 15 February 2024 on: Commons:Requests for comment/Technical needs survey

There is also a poll on the most important upload tools: Commons:Requests for comment/Technical needs survey/Upload tool poll GPSLeo (talk) 10:17, 3 February 2024 (UTC)