Commons talk:WMF support for Commons/Upload Wizard Improvements

Archives Archive (Oct 23-Jan 24) Archive (Feb 24-Jun 24)

The 50 files limitation

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T349368

New users have a 50 files limitation. When they try to upload more than 50 files the upload wizzard simply crashes and no files get uploaded. It is convenient that this happens after the user has completed all the work in naming the file, giving the description and searched for categories and put in a lot of work and effort, which is then gone in a second without a warning or explanation. The program should either block the upload of more than 50 files or inform the user about this limitations. This bug has created a lot of frustrations to new user and they have no clue what went wrong. This is an effective procedure to keep new users frustrated and deter them forever from contributing to Commons ever again. Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 14:25, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Hey @Giftzwerg 88: , thanks for raising this issue. I’ve opened a Phab ticket about it, and the team will take a look at it in one of the next meetings. I’ll keep you posted on this, but you can subscribe to the ticket and be aware of what’s going on there. Also, feel free to edit the ticket if I made some mistakes. Thanks! --Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:48, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

The wrong orientation bug

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T349369

The preview shows uploaded pictures without regards of the orientation. This affects pictures in portrait mode. The preview shows them tilted sideways in 90° angle. New Users that do not know about this bug often delete it and try it a second time or even multiple times before they give up. But they simply keep showing up in the wrong direction each time. They think they have done something wrong, or something is wrong with the camera or the picture. Others report on the user forum and ask about pictures that got uploaded in the wrong orientation. We even had cases where the picture was rotated by another user and then were upside down, all the while the uploaded picture does not even need rotation, it is just that the user got tricked into believing that the picture was uploaded in the wrong orientation. This annoying bug is a good way to introduce new users into a world with half-baked software designed to make beginners life harder and create confusion and make them doubt their choices in life. To contribute to commons for example. Soooo, please admit to the bug and tell the user ahead that in preview some pictures might appear in wrong orientation, ooooor fix it, that the user can see the true orientation of the picture. But long time users are no longer in panic, but annoyed by this bug too. Imagine you made a series of portraits and want to choose the best of the files. It is very hard to determine that you have picked the perfect file when you see it in the wrong orientation in preview. Our brains are not used to see and process portraits rotated at a 90° angle, and you no longer can see if the face shows the desired expression or emotion or the small differences between different versions. So please FIX it. Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 14:48, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree, I fall into this trap myself. Ziko van Dijk (talk) 20:22, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Hey @Giftzwerg 88: , thanks for raising this issue too. I’ve opened another Phab ticket about it, and the team will take a look at it in one of the next meetings. I’ll keep you posted on this, but also in this case you can subscribe to the ticket and be aware of what’s going on there. Also, feel free to edit the ticket if I made some mistakes. Thanks again! --Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:49, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Two extra clicks again

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T353654

I use predefined answers to the Upload Wizard questions (choice of license and whether I upload my own work); however, with the two new questions it is not possible to predefine the answers. This gives two extra clicks per upload, THIS IS A LOT. I mentioned this issue last time, nobody (including the WMF team) seemed to care. May be now people would care. Ymblanter (talk) 20:20, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

It might be wise for them to create something like "Special:UploadWizard (Beta)" separate from "Special:UploadWizard", so they could actually get community feedback before implementing these "improvements" (as is how it was reported on in Tech News 🙄). --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:29, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

It is discussed in detail above on this page, and my comments are also there. Ymblanter (talk) 20:38, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

@Ymblanter Do you mind helping me translating your request into a Phabricator ticket? I guess we can work at making the two extra clicks pre-defined in the users' preferences, or at least I can ask the team if this would be feasible. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:54, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, sure. User preferences would indeed solve the problem. Ymblanter (talk) 14:59, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

For experienced users who happen to know how to tweak user preferences. There are some people who have edited here for years and don't know things that seem "basic" to others, like a WikiGraphist that has been here 17 (seventeen) years, but didn't know how they could change their signature in user preferences. While many "power users" could circumvent the 2 (two) extra clicks, this would still be a hassle for the vast majority of users who don't know about this. It might be best to link to user preferences somewhere directly inside of the MediaWiki Upload Wizard then. Especially since the vast majority of people who would become regular volunteer uploaders here might not like to constantly confirm that the image of an archeological museum exhibition isn't a selfie 🤳🏻. Ease of use should be accessible to everyone, not just the more experienced users who happen to know where and how to tweak things. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:06, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: I created a Phabricator ticket for your request, and (I hope) I tagged you as a subscriber. Please, feel free to edit, add context, or correct it. As I already said in other threads, now there is the end-of-the-year freeze on new deployments, so this ticket will likely be analysed in January. I'll keep you posted about it, but feel free to ping me personally if you don't receive news from me. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:31, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Great, thanks a lot. Ymblanter (talk) 17:13, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Another similar issue for which I don't think creating a new section would be due:

• Copy information… default selection: Would it be possible to somehow store the recently used checked boxes under Copy information to all uploads following … or to specify a default?
  • I sometimes upload images from multiple CCBY scientific studies in a row and then always need to change the default selection to Copy caption, date, categories and nothing else. Until there is some kind of Study2Commons tool where you just enter a URL to e.g. a paper on nature.com and it prefills all the title and description etc fields that you then only edit as needed.

Also I'd like to briefly express support for Ease of use should be accessible to everyone, not just the more experienced users who happen to know where and how to tweak things – this often gets overlooked where things are considered 'solved' if somewhere there is an unknown barely used external script/nondefault gadget for it. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:39, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

V2C should integrated into MW

Hi, FYI, I created a feature request: phab:T353659. Yann (talk) 16:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

attribution parameter in license template

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T354181

UW should use the attribution paramter in the license template. Re-users are told by the license template what license applys. In most cases the author has to be attributed. In most cases a re-user has to search for the author in the information template. but the license template has an mostly unused attribution parameter that can and should be automagically filled in by the UW for the benefit of re-users. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 17:56, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

@C.Suthorn Thanks for your comment (and sorry for taking a week to answer, but I was out of office for the holidays). Would you please file a Phabricator ticket for your request, so that I can forward it to the team for evaluation? If you don't know how to do it or can't do it, I can do it for you, but then I'll ask you to double check it, just to be sure that everything is in place. Let me know! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:35, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Sannita (WMF) Phab:T354181 C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 11:56, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@C.Suthorn Thanks a lot! I hope I'll let you know asap, but in case feel free to ping me about it. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Percentage next to progress bar while uploading (e.g. 14.2 %)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T355340

Hi!

I thought about this longer, but I think it is useful to have a number in percent to see how far the upload progress is, similar to the percentage display when uploading a video on YouTube.

In addition, it would be nice to see how much megabytes were uploaded already and how large the total amount of size is that will be uploaded (e.g. 142 MB of 240 MB uploaded). This is particularly useful for estimating whether an upload will be fast enough for large amounts of data (fluctuations in the upload speed can make it difficult to predict the remaining upload time). Greetings --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 16:56, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

•  Support.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 17:16, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I would support assuming it does not take much resources. Ymblanter (talk) 20:11, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Hey @PantheraLeo1359531, thanks for the idea. Would you be so kind to open a Phabricator ticket for this? I don't think we can work on it in the next future, but at least it would get on our dev's radar. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 13:24, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I will add it :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:35, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done Task added --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 15:43, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Fantastic, thanks! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Concerns about overall language

(I'm translating so I will be adding sections as I find problematic language)

"Required to upload it for my job"

Hello, in the section on "Describe the purpose of this work", the following message appears: "This work is for my personal use, e.g. photos of myself, my family or friends, or I am required to upload it for my job".

If you select this option, the upload wizard suggests that you don't upload the media. However, all this messaging is very confusing. You could be uploading a work that provides knowledge AND that you are also required to upload it for your job: a person working for a GLAM institution might be required by his/her employer to upload a work that provides general knowledge and that is not necessarily in the public domain.

Moreover, a personal and a work use are very different in nature, there are tons of examples of this. But the "I'm required to upload this work for my job" opens up several options.

Option 1: "I'm staff at an affiliate or I'm hired by an affiliate to produce a given work (i.e., graphic design)". That's an entirely valid reason to upload a file, and it's expected that affiliates have someone from staff uploading works.

Option 2: Someone is required by his/her employer to upload a work that they have produced in the course of their employment, meaning that for them to be able to upload the file, the employer should have given permission to do so (unless it is otherwise stated in the law, as in the case of works produced by US federal government employees).

In any case, option 1 & 2 would need some sort of clearance for uploading. But they are a radically different use case than "personal photos" and I'd argue that we do want works for hire to be uploaded to Commons, because there are a lot of scenarios where this would be desirable, and the current phrasing introduces a lot of unnecessary confusion. Scann (talk) 13:15, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

"Album covers"

The following message reads:

"I confirm that these works do not include material restricted by copyright, such as logos, posters, album covers, etc."

Instead of "album covers", I propose we use the more generic "art covers" or "illustrated covers", which is a more precise term for the work protected by copyright. There are some covers that are so generic that wouldn't meet the originality threshold and can be safely uploaded.

Media under copyright

"Do not upload these files! Wikimedia Commons does not host media under copyright. Only media with free licenses or in the public domain are permitted on Commons."

It is actually "media protected by copyright" or "with all rights reserved". Media under a Creative Commons license IS under copyright, it's just that the creator has released it under a license.

CC0 license / waiver

Where it reads:

"By clicking "publish", you agree to the terms of use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the Creative Commons CC0 License."

It should read "Creative Commons CC0 waiver". It acts as a fallback license in countries or jurisdictions where waivers are restricted by law, but technically speaking it's a waiver and this should be made super clear to people using the waiver.

Thank you @Scann for these comments. I'll pass them on to the designer and see if we can amend the messages accordingly. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 12:16, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T357481

@Scann Hey, just FYI, the designer is working on the suggestions you made. They will be probably resolved and deployed in a few weeks time. I'll keep you updated about it, but if you wish you can subscribe to the Phabricator ticket. Thanks again! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:57, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

"Yes, the pre-existing work is not protected by any copyright law"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T358354

Maybe it would be a good idea to allow people to (optionally) add license tags if they fill in this field. Currently, there is no difference between clicking on this and saying that a work is entirely your own, but why a photographed work is in the public domain varies from subject to subject. So there could be an OPTIONAL field where people can add license tags to explain why the work is (partially) free. These license tags can then appear at the bottom with a special field below the uploader's own license. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 16:40, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Donald Trung, thanks for the suggestion. Can you please open a Phabricator ticket about it, so that I can put it on the devs radar? Thanks! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 09:23, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Asking for prompt in AI-generated works

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T357806

AI-generated works are still a fairly small subset of Commons uploads, but tracking them, I'm seeing quite a few that are uploaded without making explicit the prompt that was used. That's a loss for us, as it's relevant metadata that is not possible to recover later. It should ideally be recorded using the recently introduced {{Prompt}} template; @Sannita (WMF), would it be possible to incorporate that template into the wizard when someone indicates they are uploading an AI-generated work? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:37, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Sdkb, thanks for the ping. I'll pass it on to the team, and we'll evaluate the request next week. I'll keep you posted on this, but feel free to ping me again if I disappear. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 09:35, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Sdkb, I have some updates on that. For the time being this request has been put on hold, since it is not entirely within scope of this year's work. I will keep an eye on it and see if in the next months this could be fixed. Sorry for the bad news. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 09:23, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

@Sannita (WMF), I appreciate the update, but I'm not quite sure what you mean by not entirely within scope. You are in the middle of the "Upload Wizard Improvements" project currently, yes? And as part of that you introduced the "I generated this work using an AI tool" option within the wizard, yes? And this task is directly related to that option, yes? I would have hoped that, when you budgeted time for the upload wizard improvements, you anticipated that there would be community feedback like this and built in some time to address such feedback. Sdkb ^talk 23:53, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

@Sdkb AI tool was introduced as an option, yes, but we don't have budgeted time this year to improve on this specific item of UW, since we are working also on other aspects of it. It is though on our watchlist, so I hope in some months the decision will be reviewed. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 17:24, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I take your word about your team's resource constraints, and acknowledge that the Prompt template was introduced only more recently. But the ask to document prompts has been stated at Commons:AI-generated_media#Description over a year now, it says (in its current wording):

Whenever you upload an AI-generated image (or other media file), you are expected to document the prompt used to generate the media in the file description, and identify the software that generated the media.

I share Sdkb's surprise that this was apparently not considered when scoping out designing the recently added current message:

Enter the name of the AI engine used, followed by the name of the person who created the prompt:
Example: Author: Midjourney AI; prompted by Jane Doe

In fact, these budget constraints seem to be an argument for better, more informed planning in such matters, as it may be more costly to come back later and fix such omissions.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 22:12, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

@HaeB Thanks for your reply. I'll be sure to report this to the team, and ask them to correct this as soon as possible. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:36, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Current wording causing problems

At en:Wikipedia:Help desk#I uploaded my cat pictures the wrong way:

I assumed that I did it wrong because when you are uploading to the Commons it asks you to upload it only for educational purposes. So I guess its ok if I did it for my userpage only. My cat, that aint for educational purposes. But its alright for my userpage. Am I correct?

This is why the wording on the upload page needs to be corrected. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:06, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

What do you propose? I think adding a "or for you user page" would not be a good idea and would lead people to use Commons as a social media page. GPSLeo (talk) 17:56, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

But we do allow people to upload images for user pages, and we should not lie about it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:27, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I raised this issue several times before, even though "COM:SCOPE" (official policy) says "The uploading of small numbers of images (e.g. of yourself) for use on a personal user page of Commons or another project is allowed as long as that user is or was an active participant on that project." the new "improvements" contradict this. Remember, the aim of these changes is to reduce admin backlog it is not to inform uploaders about the intricacies of copyright ©️ law or how the Wikimedia Commons' policies actually work. I think that we will have to wait for a data report by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) or on a survey of admin feedback if these changes helped or not before they will reverse any of their changes or at least link to the relevant policies (like the project scope, when something is in the public domain and when it isn't, Etc.). The intentions were good, but they should have probably asked for advice in the village pump(s) before implementing them. Hopefully they will announce features and changes before implanting implementing them so people can leave feedback or offer (actual) improvements before they issue such confusing statements. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 02:22, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't see this as a problem. We cannot prevent people from making mistakes by listing every single reason their upload might (not) be allowed in the upload form. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:18, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm very surprised that you can't see this as a problem, given that in my OP in this section, I gave evidence of a case where the specific problem occurred. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:10, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Adaptable release rights steps

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T357755

There is still no response to my feature request for making the release rights step adaptable through upload campaigns. We really need this for the Wiki Loves Contests where most of the questions asked in this step are irrelevant but might confuse the uploader prevent them from uploading anything. GPSLeo (talk) 15:03, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

@GPSLeo Apologies for letting you down. I'll raise this point in tomorrow's meeting, and let you know as soon as possible. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Feedback needed on proposed changes to Describe step

Hi all! We've concluded our evaluation of your previous feedback and we're ready to share with you our current mockups for a proposed change to the "Describe" step in UploadWizard.

We also have several questions for you to answer, as part of our request for feedback. I took the liberty of creating several subtopics for them, so that it will be easier for you to answer.

@Sdkb, Theklan, Kritzolina, Jmabel, Ymblanter, Abzeronow, Samwilson, Pigsonthewing, C.Suthorn, Jeff G., JAn Dudík, Donald Trung, and Prototyperspective: pinging you directly since you took part in the last request for feedback, but feel free to involve other users you know. The more info we get, the better for us.

Thanks in advance for participating! --Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:15, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

What do you think of specific changes proposed in our current mockups?

• Now it seems everything is more compact and better organized. I think that the ideas will be more clear, and the overlap of information reduced. I would suggest to make the selection of license pre-filled with cc-by-sa-4.0, as it is the most commons one. This could be changed by default in the preferences for a user, if they prefer another one. From my experience, people don't understand the nuances of all the licenses, so giving one as default would make it easier. -Theklan (talk) 11:31, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• Having a "description" and a "Legend" field is redundanct, so I like the "caption" and "sames as caption" solution.--TaronjaSatsuma (talk) 11:32, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• I think the caption should only be copied to the description (by default) if no description is provided with the default being showing the description field. The caption only allows for a short text. There's currently a big issue with images that are clicked on in the WMC search results only showing the description but not the caption where it should show both if they aren't the same (is there a phab issue for that?).
  As for the depicts statements – I think a large fraction of users enters at least partially problematic/inaccurate things there which are hard to find and correct while at the same time that metadata could mostly be inferred from the categories. Both the time spent on these (mostly redundant) by uploaders and the editors correcting their problematic data as well as the amount of misleading/poisonous/inaccurate data will likely increase with making these fields even more visible. Not necessarily a big problem, just not an improvement I think and something that probably will need to be dealt with at some point. Likewise, the same applies to encouraging users to enter more languages – what are people expecting them to do ideally…manually entering 300 translations? These should also be populated via modern tools that show dynamic correctable machine translations such as via the DeepL translator. --Prototyperspective (talk) 13:00, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• Every input field should come with a help text or even illustrations and not only a title line. the help text can be hidden with css or behind a (i) button, but there should be an explanation what the input field is about --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 14:45, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oh, lots of thoughts!
  • Moving describe to the last step seems good.
  • Regarding Most users (especially new users) may find entering captions significantly easier than providing detailed descriptions — Well, yeah, people always find it easier to do less work rather than more work. But we want people to provide as much description as possible, since the purpose of Commons as a repository of knowledge means that images with detailed associated info are significantly more valuable to us. The "100" in the bottom right seems to indicate to me that you plan to impose a character limit on the caption, and while that makes sense for the caption, I worry that it'll push users who might otherwise be inclined to provide more detailed info away from doing so. Having to actively uncheck the "same as caption" box to access the description means that few users are going to do so. An alternative approach might be to make the description the field users fill out, and then have an autochecked "same as first sentence of description" prefill the caption.
  • Regarding Captions offer a more structured multilingual field, can you provide some additional info on this? I wasn't aware of structural differences between the fields, and if there are deficiencies in the description field, that seems like something we'd want to upgrade as part of this work. As myself and other editors have mentioned before, we consider the description field more important than the caption, so I am concerned to see it being deemphasized in these changes.
  • For the "Additional information" fields, I would suggest replacing (optional) with (recommended) in all cases.
  • The changes to the confirmation page look good. I might suggest adding some smallish text under the green bar that helps emphasize that contributing to Commons is a public service in a way that uploading to most other sites is not. Something like Your contribution adds to the sum of freely available media providing knowledge for the world.
  • I notice that the "Other information" generic field has been removed. Some users or tools may use it, so I'd check to see if anything is being impeded/lost there.

Happy to elaborate on any of the above! Sdkb ^talk 18:20, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

• A few thoughts:
  • Having to uncheck "Same as caption" to enter a description every time will mean an extra click for me, every time. My preference should be remembered (or be a user setting). How will this work with multi-image uploads?
  • Users should be strongly encouraged to enter a description, if not mandatory. (Remember also that description is wiki-text; caption is plain text.)
  • At least one category should be mandatory. Users should be invited to enter multiple (plural) categories, not just one.
  • We need to tighten the wording on "depicts", to ask people to be precise as possible, and not duplicate. If the user has provided "depicts=Mississippi", we don't also need "depicts=river".
  • Upload date is not necessarily the date taken, even for own works.
    • [I'd go a step farther than that: upload date is almost never the date taken, even for own works. Some people who use camera phones upload almost immediately. Almost no one else does. - Jmabel ! talk 08:14, 13 March 2024 (UTC)]
      • People who upload from phone will likely use the commons smartphone app, not the wizard, making it even more likely that uploads on the wizard were not created on upload day. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 13:19, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
  • We need "other information"; I use it often.
  • The current "use this image" options should be retained; but note phab:T299064 which should be resolved at the same time as this change (if not sooner)
  • The final screens should have a "go to image page" option.
  • The more I look at this, and other recent changes, the more I think we need "basic" and "expert" (or "advanced") modes. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:38, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• On the final upload confirmation page, "xxxxx.asdgg" (the resulting text caption) could be replaced by the SDC caption entered previously.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:38, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• My thoughts:
  • I like the idea of having describe as last step.
  • I also like Sdkb's suggestion above to use language like "recommended" instead of "optional". —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:10, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Do any of these proposed changes make your contribution flow more difficult? If yes, how?

• ...

Do any of these proposed changes help make your contributions easier?

• Having caption and description together makes sense most of the time, as they are normally the same or very similar. Also, it makes way easier for new contributors to use, as the difference between both is only relevant for a small niche of files. Also, it would be really great if we could have a map with a pin to mark where the images were taken. This can be done now with external tools, but incorporating it would make way easier to find images of buildings that are uploaded but not geo-referenced. -Theklan (talk) 11:34, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Is there anything else you would like to see improved / added / removed in UploadWizard? If so, why?

• Choosing the right category is the most difficult part of the uploading process, as it is difficult to know if a category exists. New users normally add there tags, like "building", "person", "landscape" that are not relevant for a category, but they are for the structured data. I don't have a solution for that, but using the structured data and coordinates could be a good way for suggesting categories, like in the Commons App, which suggests nearby objects and loads the category from the Wikidata item. Also, loading a small category tree (similar to cat-a-lot) could be a good way to choose the relevant category: imagine you have a photo of the interior of a church in a Smalltown. You type the name of the village, there you get "Category:Buildings in Smalltown", you click and you have: "Category:Church of the Sacred Encyclopedist in Smalltown", and there you have "Category:Interior of the Church of the Sacred Encyclopedist in Smalltown". That's the right category, but it would be hard to find if you don't know beforehand that it exists. Also, it would reduce the burden to re-categorize for experienced users that don't know if this is the Interior of the Church of the Sacred Encyclopedist in Smalltown or, instead, the Interior of the Parish of Saint John in Smalltown". -Theklan (talk) 11:41, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• When uploading a Timed Media, could we have an option to add TimedText included? -Theklan (talk) 11:42, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• Regarding location information: just a reminder that we do distinguish between camera location and subject location. These can differ significantly. Also, camera heading becomes more and more important the longer the "zoom" on the camera. Both the georeferencing templates and SDC allow for the heading to be stored, but as far as I remember Upload Wizard ignores that information if stored in EXIF and does not offer a possibility to enter it manually. --El Grafo (talk) 13:08, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

  Indeed, both could be asked: subject coordinates, and camera coordinates. And if the later is available via EXIF, still it could be a good option to add the option to add the coordinates of the object, which could be infered otherwise from the Wikidata item. Anyway, having the option to add the coordinates there could be make things way easier. Theklan (talk) 13:12, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

• if the browser or the tab crashed during the upload process all text entered should be saved and offered to the user again. Broken running uploads should restart at the position already uploaded so far.
• if the resolution of the image is smaller than 4MP or the file size is smaller than 2MB a popup should ask if the user has a higher resolution of the image available and warn, that the license is valid not only for the uploaded file but for all higher resolitions also. It should also warn that small resolutions are often stolen from the web and are likely to get deleted as COPYVIO.
• if there is no EXIF or the EXIF contain Facebook or Twitter IDs the user should be warned, that the image appears to be from social media and might be deleted, if the user has no prove of own work or free license.
• category selection should not be with autocomplete but as a tree browser of the commons category tree.
• categories are one language only. The category selection should not be by the actual category name, but the language localized wikidata name of the category should be used for selecting categories.
• addition of SDC tags should be a GUI tree selection from the SDC tree. --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 14:45, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• There could be fields for description/caption in several languages by default set in preferences. --Antti T. Leppänen (talk) 16:18, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• When uploading, you can choose that the file includes previously free files. It could be interesting to add there which ones, so they can be automatically cited if those are in Commons. -Theklan (talk) 22:27, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• My thoughts:
  • I know lots of people think that adding categories should be required, but I think it's a terrible ask of users. My idea would be to make a list of 'follow-up tasks', dump them in a db table and ask (with reminders) people to complete them at a later point in time. This could be done for categories, location, depicts, adding timed text etc. Auto-delete the tasks after 2 months, and use things like {{uncat|uploadwizard}} between upload time and follow-up tasks. I think that is much more scalable and you can provide dedicated UX that will help people through the tasks and educate them at the same time.
  • For creation date I also like the suggestion to make it possible to grab this from EXIF. "This file might have been created at xxxx. Use this value for this field?" something like that.
  • Same for location
  • There are several things that are only possible with advanced permissions. Uploading webp and mp3 are some of these. I think this should be handled in UW and explained to the user, because right now it can be very confusing when you encounter this.
  • One thing that I miss in the learn and the describe step (and something that the release step DOES explain), is WHY we are asking this of people. Maybe at the top of Describe we could have something like: "In order for media files to be re-usable, next to being allowed, they have to be discoverable. Please provide accurate descriptions and additional information to facilitate discovery by other users." Maybe someone has a better text, but the main point being that we should be explaining why this form works different from other upload forms that people might be used to. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:27, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
    • "This file might have been created at xxxx" is a bad wording. We don't care when the file was created, we care when the content was created. At least for any image format (JPG, PNG, GIF at the very least) we should say "this image [emphasis mine] might have been created at xxxx." If it is a scanned old photo, a logo, a photo of a 2-dimensional work of art, that wording is better, and in no case that I can think of is it worse. - Jmabel ! talk 18:00, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
• UploadWizard should pre-fill more structured data, like inception date, license, etc. Nosferattus (talk) 00:49, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
• If the file includes location metadata, UploadWizard should give the user the option to strip out the location metadata before the file is published. Nosferattus (talk) 00:49, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
• The UploadWizard is the most important tool for the Wiki Loves contests. For this purpose we need more flexibility for adding or removing fields and more URL prefilling functionality (see for example phab:T289250 phab:T357755 phab:T327009). --GPSLeo (talk) 06:43, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

What are your thoughts on the information we are collecting here?

As a moderator, what are your thoughts on the information we are collecting here? Is there anything else you would like to see in the way information is collected that could improve your moderating workflows?

• ...

Specific question about creation/publish date

What is the current way in which you use the "date published/created" field? Is this information required for both "own work" and "not own work"? Should this remain a mandatory field?

• I think this is mandatory, but it could be more flexible, for example giving the possitibility to add only Year or even Decade for old works. -Theklan (talk) 11:44, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
  • Agree with Theklan, it should be possible to just enter a rough date such as a year; not allowing this probably has caused a lot of faulty data and a note could be displayed if one doesn't specify the day that is asking the user to enter a more precise date if possible. --Prototyperspective (talk) 13:00, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• date needs to be mandatory. However inputs like "between 1976 and 1981" or "15th century" should be possible.
• an explantion is needed that the date of creation of the work is meant is needed
• date from exif can be imported, but then a popup should ask "is this the date of creation or of changes by photoshop?"
• the upload date should never be a default and if the user enters the upload date as date a popup should ask "are you sure?" --C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 14:45, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• You could ask for a level of precision for the date. There is a big difference between the year 1900, the 20th century, the decade 1900-1909, and ca. 1900. I have seen sources presume that just the year means 1 January of that year; please let us not make that mistake.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:50, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Do not do field tests on Wiki Loves contests

If you are planning to do some kind of field tests or A/B tests please do not do this during the period of the Wiki Loves contests with WLE from May to July and WLM in September. If you are doing field tests during this time please exempt upload campaigns from the changes. The organizers can not give support if they do not know what version the uploader sees and some tutorials might become outdated. In case of a bug there is the danger that many contest contributions get lost or at least lose some important information. GPSLeo (talk) 07:05, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

@GPSLeo Thanks for the heads up. We're not planning to do tests during this period at the moment, but it could be possible that we will do some changes to the UI depending on how the current feedback period goes. Let's keep in contact on this. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:42, 15 March 2024 (UTC)