Commons:WMF support for Commons

Work in progress

About

In the 2022-23 Annual Plan the Wikimedia Foundation wrote that it would, among other things, "Deepen our Commitment to Knowledge as a Service, starting with Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata".

More specific feedback which was received during some community calls with Commons and Wikidata contributors has furthermore highlighted the following:

• Increasing support for Wikimedia Commons
  • We saw lots of engagement during two dedicated sessions about Wikimedia Commons. Many people highlighted practical issues around upload tools and the need for more consistent technology support.
  • People spoke about the need to create a more welcoming experience for newcomers, with more intuitive tools and tutorials. “We have too much trust in people finding the trust and the support they need to be able to contribute meaningfully.”
  • We learned about the nuances and risks of making it easier to upload images to Wikimedia Commons given some of the recent history.
  • These conversations also highlighted the need for future movement conversations around what Commons should and should not do and its role within the larger Wikimedia ecosystem.

This page (final title TBD) will cover updates related to any work that addresses the priorities highlighted above, no matter who's behind it.

Please feel free to use the talk page to start related conversations.

As of September 2022 the Wikimedia Foundation is recruiting a dedicated Community Relations Specialist for this project.

Updates

• September 2022, Thumbor: It is a smart imaging service that enables on-demand cropping, resizing, applying filters and optimizing of images. The Thumbor software used for Commons is getting upgraded and improved, per community requests. Learn more at mediawiki.org.

• September 2022, Search: The Search team published documentation on using Wikimedia Commons Query Service with OAuth, as requested by the community (T307596). They also resolved persistent WCQS 500 errors reported by the community (T306899). Learn more at Commons.
• September 2022, OpenRefine: It is a free and open-source data wrangling tool that can be used to clean tabular data and connect it with knowledge bases, including Wikidata. The OpenRefine team was funded by the Wikimedia Foundation to provide a batch service for uploading and editing media files on Commons with structured data. These features are now available and almost 100,000 structured data edits have already been made. Learn more at Meta.
• September 2022, View it! launched in beta. It is a community-developed tool that will show Wikipedia users media related to the article they are reading. It was funded by the Wikimedia Foundation's Structured Data Across Wikimedia project. Learn more at Meta.

Communications

• Please use the talk page for questions and comments!
• We will post here the dates for the next meetings with the community. Looking forward to chatting with you.

Involved Staff

• Desiree Abad (Platform Product), Program Lead
• Shari Wakiyama (Structured Data/Content), Program Team
• Fiona Romeo (Culture and Heritage), Program Team
• Mat Nadrofsky (Engineering), Thumbor Upgrade
• Mike Pham (Search), WCQS Improvements
• Maryana Pinchuk (Partnerships), Strategic Engagements
• Community Relations role to be hired

Data

• Monthly overview of Commons' statistics
• Total media requests (last 2 years, monthly)
• Most popular media files (last month)