WMF scales back feature after outcry: Numerous Wikimedia Commons editors have chimed in on the Wikimedia Foundation's deployment of a new feature to its mobile website. Allowing anonymous users to register and upload pictures for use in an article, the feature was placed prominently at the top of Wikipedia articles in multiple languages.
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Wikimedia Foundation scales back feature deployment after community outcry
Editors react
Opinions
"Most of the new uploads are either copyvios, useless personal images or out of scope pictures. Do they know how many images have been uploaded and how many have been already deleted?" writes Ecemaml
Numerous Commons editors have made comments about the Foundation's deployment of mobile uploading, a new facility in its mobile website. Allowing anonymous users to register and upload pictures for use in an article, the feature was placed prominently at the top of Wikipedia articles in multiple languages.
The mobile uploading was deployed near the end of March, and Commons editors patrolling the uploads noticed a steady stream of incorrectly sourced images that violated copyright. Since Commons does not accept fair-use media as some Wikipedias do, editors have promptly tagged and deleted many of these images.
Associate Product Manager Maryana Pinchuk, an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, is responsible for the mobile web product. On April 4, she notified the Commons community that uploads from the mobile web were not tagged with author or source information and that a patch from the WMF would be deployed the next day.
Yet editors continued to object: the feature did not adequately instruct users on Commons policy and led to numerous copyright violations. Commons editors suggested adding an interactive wizard, rather than the existing warning messages. Commons editor Rillke criticized the Foundation's experience with developing upload tutorials, saying that he is skeptical that the WMF could even design an effective wizard.
The Foundation has since disabled this feature for brand new users via mobile. This is not the first reversal of a feature deployment by the community: an English Wikipedia discussion recently led to the partial removal of the article feedback feature.
Step 1: the feature displays this blue button on supported smartphone platforms via Wikipedia's mobile website
Step 2: new user with no Commons uploads taps on Uploads and a brief three-step uploading tutorial is displayed. Replace "Wikipedia" with whatever project the user is on – Wikimedia Commons, Wikivoyage, etc.
Second screen of the tutorial.
Last screen, which will display until the user uploads their first file.
Step 3: the user taps donate image in the Uploads view, or add an image on articles missing images. The user selects an image from their phone gallery or photographs an image with their phone. This is the image preview screen once an image is selected.
Step 4: the new user taps on "what does this mean?" under I, $USERNAME, created this image and further instructions are displayed.
This week's best
A handpicked gallery of our favorite images featured on Commons this week, judged on educational value and visual appeal.
Royal Albert Hall, as viewed from the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens.
Allianz Arena and architectural sculpture Sunken Village, by Timm Ulrichs, a replica of the Holy Cross Church in Munich, Germany.
The Delta II rocket with its NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) spacecraft payload shortly before the service structure was rolled back October 27, 2011, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
The Brambling, a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae, in Tarn, France.
The reason that the "Upload an image of this monument" works in Wiki Loves Monuments lists of monuments is because the attributions that will satisfy community requirements are taken care of by erfgoed bot; these are the location geo coordinates, the monument number and basic description, and for many countries, it even includes a link to the monument item description on the listholder's website. A good example is this one that I took during WLM 2012. Not only is the basic description in the title field of the file, it is also in the filename with a timestamp on upload. I was thrilled to see this, but in order to scale up, specific lists need to be created first with a "monuments database" like WP:WLM, *and* these need to be monitored by an active and existing group of volunteers. There is a large and dedicated group of people working on WLM heritage sites, but this is not the case everywhere, so I think this upload feature, though terrific, is not suitable to be let loose at random on the encyclopedia. I am not saying all of what is uploaded is garbage, please see this one as a comparison which is both a "selfie" and encyclopedic. It would however be great in controlled projects where the volunteers are there to monitor them. Jane (talk) 08:20, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am confused. One would assume that mobile uploads (from smartphones/tablets) would suffer from poor quality, but not so much from copyvio. What kind of copyvio issues were a problem? Freedom of panorama violations? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:49, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Copyvios for photos of modern paintings by painters who are living or who died less than 100 yrs ago, and ditto for photos of sculpture in countries where there is no "Freedom of Panorama", to name just two.Jane (talk) 08:54, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the problematic ones I noticed were screenshots of copyrighted material like TV/movie clips (it's pretty easy to take and save a screenshot of a YouTube video, which includes the Disney watermark, on a smartphone), or images downloaded from Facebook, Getty, or other places on the Internet. They weren't malicious; it looks like in many cases these users were trying to add these images to Commons/Wikipedia in good faith and simply had no mental model of copyrighted vs. original material. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 21:08, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
i would suggest re-introduce using the WLM lists, and reach out for some support; but the quality of camera phone pics is a problem (lack of zoom and learning curve of photographer). you could fork the others to a fair use flickr holding pen for wikipedia use. Slowking4Farmbrough's revenge⇔ †@1₭ 22:11, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We're working on a somewhat similar feature: a list of articles nearby (based on geodata in the articles and the user's location, if on a phone that supports location service), with a call to action to take a picture and upload it if the nearby article is missing images. Currently prototyping in beta to test if this more focused call to action produces higher quality images. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 00:28, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nice initiative to pick up Wikizine. Good luck with it. — billinghurstsDrewth 13:30, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Punctuation
The title of this piece should use a semicolon instead of a colon, because it appears that the second clause is related to the first. "Introducing Wikizine: WMF scales back feature after outcry" made me think that the WMF was scaling back Wikizine due to outcry. —howcheng {chat} 15:45, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the colon is definitely wrong. Please change to a semicolon. The meaning is completely different. Kaldari (talk) 17:59, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I decided to be bold and change it. Kaldari (talk) 18:00, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Slight inaccuracies + need for more early feedback
Numerous Commons editors have made comments about the Foundation's deployment of sidebar, a new facility in its mobile website. Not quite :) By sidebar, I assume you're referring to the mobile web side navigation, which was deployed in October of last year to house links to the main page, random article, and later login, watchlist, and uploads. The situation you're describing here is the Commons community reacting to the April 4th deployment of the full in-article and sidebar uploads features + login/signup calls to action from those features (the upload buttons were displayed to logged out users, who were then prompted to log in or create an account in order to upload).
We've been working on various experimental contributory workflows like uploads and editing for several months on the experimental beta site, which has a limited opt-in audience. I'd urge any users interested in upcoming new mobile features to visit the mobile site for the project of their choice (e.g., en.m.wikipedia.org, it.m.wikivoyage.org) and opt in to the beta via Settings in the sidebar. Unlike some other WMF features teams that build large-scale, complex features (e.g., Visual Editor or Echo notifications), the mobile web team rapidly prototypes multiple features in alpha/beta, releases and iterates on them nearly every week. That helps us deal with situations like this one, allowing us to react to community feedback right away and scale back if necessary, but it also makes it harder to "announce" releases, since features aren't shipped wholesale. Having more experienced users opted into beta giving us feedback earlier in the release process would be extremely helpful – you're all highly encouraged to kick the tires on beta and bring your questions/concerns/outcries :) to our mailing list, mobile-feedback-llists.wikimedia.org, our IRC channel, #wikimedia-mobileconnect, or even my talk page. Up until now, mobile web has mostly been ignored by Wiki[p/m]edians unless someone had some bug to report, so I'd love to use this as an opportunity to get more discerning eyes on our work, allowing us to become proactive, not just reactive, in the future. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the correction & detail. It's great to see all of the mobile feature tests. For better feedback: if you have testing teams now, how about a separate workflow-test group, to help add burst support to the traditional curation/review methods when new features are tested? – SJ + 19:05, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for commenting. This is our first Wikizine and we're still ironing things out; this article underwent copyediting and it seems like the precise meaning got lost somewhere between me and the other wonderful contributors here. I've updated the article in places to match the intended meaning - the controversy was over the new mobile uploading feature. I do believe your comment here still applies to that; however, the Foundation did announce this release. Sorry about the confusion, Mono 20:18, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No worries! It was a complex issue because there were two mobile web upload workflows, one from sidebar and one from articles, and the problem of high-volume/low-quality uploads wasn't coming from the upload functionality itself but the way the uploads buttons were used as a login call to action... not the easiest thing to explain in a sentence or two. Good story nonetheless :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 21:01, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's pretty hard to understand until you try it out on your smart phone - then all of the issues become pretty obvious for Wiki(p/m)edia insiders...Jane (talk) 09:01, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Foundation trying to "free" the project and instead causing a lot of heat and noise (again)? Why am I not surprised. ResMar 14:47, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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lists.wikimedia.org, our IRC channel, #wikimedia-mobile connect, or even my talk page. Up until now, mobile web has mostly been ignored by Wiki[p/m]edians unless someone had some bug to report, so I'd love to use this as an opportunity to get more discerning eyes on our work, allowing us to become proactive, not just reactive, in the future. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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