Extension talk:Media Viewer/About

New features based on your feedback
Hi folks, thanks for all your helpful feedback about Media Viewer in recent days. We really appreciate your candid recommendations on this page — and survey comments also confirm many of the issues you’ve raised.

The multimedia team is taking your feedback to heart, and we are sorry for any inconvenience caused by this tool. To respond quickly to the most frequent requests, we have now pushed back other projects to focus on Media Viewer for the next few weeks.

Here are some of the new features we are now developing for you, based on community suggestions.

1. Disable Media Viewer quickly:
 * Instant Opt-in: A more prominent way for registered users to disable Media Viewer, without having to go to preferences. (#703)
 * Opt-out for anons: An easy way for anonymous users to disable Media Viewer, using localstorage. (#704)

2. View images in larger/different sizes:
 * View original file: A prominent button to open the original image in your browser, so you can zoom in to see its details, or download it for re-use. (#630)
 * View different sizes: Prominent links to view images in different sizes from the Download panel, so you can open them in your browser. (#664)

3. Discover image information:
 * Make it easier to find image information: Provide clear visual cues that more information is available, with links to open the metadata panel. (#706)
 * Scroll down to see more info: Use either up or down arrows to open the metadata panel below the image, to make it easier to find. (#697)

4. Edit / Learn more on Commons:
 * Show Commons link to logged out users: Show a prominent link to the Commons file page to all users, so they can learn more about this image. (#429)

5. Learn to use Media Viewer:
 * Add tooltips to Media Viewer: Show more tooltips in Media Viewer, so that users can tell what each button will do. (#546)

You can view more details about these features on this development planning site.

We are working hard to get these changes completed by tomorrow, so we can test them before releasing them to production. If all goes well, we expect to deploy some of them to the English Wikipedia and other Media Viewer sites by Thursday evening. The rest of them will be deployed the following week.

Please let us know what you think. Which of these features seem most useful to you? Are there other critical features that you think we should consider next? We look forward to improving Media Viewer based on your feedback. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:30, 11 June 2014 (UTC)


 * It is clear that Media Viewer received mainly negative feedback. Many people on this site wondered how to switch it off permanently, or asked you to go back and use the old media page. So, obviously the easiest solution would not be transferring some of the old page's functionality to the new viewer, but to stop development on the new viewer. So, if you dont consider to stop the development, please tell us, the users, about the benefits of this new feature that so many of us seem to disapprove. Thanks in advance, --Kernpanik (talk) 07:05, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Given the overwhelmingly negative response to this abomination of a program, why do you persist in development and rollout, and why does your information page quote nothing but praise and "recommended fixes" rather than providing an honest summary of the--frankly devastating--criticism that you seem to be getting from the majority of users? Your product is an intrusion and an attempt to fix something that ain't broken...and worse than that, it's a "fix" that's more broken than the thing it's supposed to replace.
 * What will it take to make this project go away?


 * We shouldn't have to need tool tips to know what each button does. Mystery meat navigation is by definition bad UI design, and completely breaks when you're using a device without a mouse or a a tablet or phone. There are also several critical features that are missing from your list: click-and-drag to pan, scroll wheel to zoom, a method of excluding the image from display using the new image viewer in the article markup, and the inclusion of licensing data for all images despite what template or method for indicating the license is used. Finally, this should not be rolled out until performance on older computers isn't abysmal. Much of my browsing has to be done through a VM due to security policies, and the new Media Viewer is unusably slow. --Ahecht (talk) 14:02, 11 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you all for your prompt responses about these new features and other proposed Media Viewer improvements. The multimedia team just rolled out a couple new features today that may address some of your concerns:
 * View original file (#630)
 * View different sizes (#664)
 * Scroll down to see more info (#697)
 * Show Commons link to logged out users (#429)


 * These features can be tested on Commons today (see sample image]) and should be released on English Wikipedia tomorrow, if they test well.


 * We're also working on many other new features based on community feedback, as outlined above, and just added a couple more:
 * Disable MediaViewer for certain images (#511)
 * Show attribution credits in download tool (#598)


 * Ahecht, I hope that #511 will address your request for 'a method of excluding the image from display using the new image viewer in the article markup'. That one should be completed by next week, if all goes well. And now that the 'View original file' button is implemented, you will have the same browser zoom features as before. We also appreciate your comments about tooltips, but have observed they are commonly used in tools like these, and have been frequently requested by other community members; we think they will help casual users who are not as tech-savvy as you. We will review your other recommendations above and keep you posted on our progress with these requests. Keep in mind that we are triaging a number of requests from other users, so may not get to them all right away; but they are on our radar now.


 * Kernpanik: Thanks for asking about the benefits of this new feature. I previously responded to these 'Unanswered questions' by another community member, which seem related to your own question. I've also offered more clarifications in this post earlier in this section. I hope these will help present other perspectives from users who find this tool valuable, based on our research.


 * Thanks again for sharing your concerns, which we are taking to heart. Be well. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:39, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

How I can globally disable that viewer?
Question: How I can globally disable that viewer? I really hate that. Probably it is the worst thing in the whole Wikipedia. Ahsoous (talk) 01:55, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * There is no "easy" way to disable it globally, but you could just disable it in your preferences on all wikis, or wait until an extension like GlobalCssJs or GlobalPreferences is enabled. An alternative is to user a browser add-on like Greasemonkey for Firefox and create a new userscript with the content: " " (no quotes) or " " (also no quotes). There's probably a more delicate way to do it, but the first one should get rid of it completely. The second one just disables the code for what happens when you click on images, so it will just take you to the file description page. Apparently they are working on some localStorage solution for disabling it; you could use that when it is developed. πr2 (t • c) 03:47, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Please don't do that. The proper way to disable Media Viewer is  --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 04:14, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Disable it in more than 200 wikis? Few months ago I already did that with VisualEditor, which is also almost useless thing. It takes hours and hours. Ahsoous (talk) 13:30, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The alternative is to just use the JS code above in quotes with a browser add-on like Greasemonkey. πr2 (t • c) 20:16, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Using the NoScript plug-in, just disable JS in mediawiki.org. Of, course YMMV depending on whatever JS features are important to you.  :-) Max Hyre (talk) 17:53, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Bias in survey, very poor design
At present the first paragraph of the feedback survey reads:

"We'd like your feedback on the 'Media Viewer' feature you are now using. This feature improves the way images are displayed on Wikipedia, to create a more immersive experience. What do you think about this new multimedia experience?"

My own opinion, which I see on this page is shared by almost all of those who have cared to comment, is that the term I have bolded in that quote is untrue. In all, the survey is poorly designed, the questions being particularly poorly thought out, and that lead paragraph can only be considered biased at best; or, intentionally biased by the researcher and attempting to similarly influence the respondent at worst. It has no place in a serious survey designed to poll actual user opinion. Waerloeg (talk) 03:14, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed. At least political exit polls try to hide their biases.  This was, and is, obviously a pet project.  Better to take the sacred cow approach than risk any real criticism (until it's seemingly too late for any of us to have that criticism effectively heard). Mkubica (talk)

This is an interesting, though flawed, project
I see that fixes to most of my concerns are apparently in the works, but I feel it's important to voice one's opinion. I use Wikipedia virtually every day, and I have for about a decade now. I correct grammar and spelling errors as I see them and reword incoherent sentences here and there, but I wouldn't consider myself a real contributor. The vast majority of my use of the site is done anonymously, as I long ago forgot my user name and password and decided it really didn't make a difference anyway, given the nature of my "edits". I use the site on several different computers with drastically varying resources (no mobile devices, though). Overall, I do not like the new media viewer.

I agree with comments above that find fault with the UI; I feel like it should behave like the picture viewer in Windows 7 or whatever browser I'm using, and am constantly dismayed when the scroll wheel neither scrolls nor zooms. I also agree that there needs to be a better way to get to the file page; I frequently want to see an image in different resolutions, which is several clicks harder now than it used to be. Furthermore, the choice of which resolution is displayed seems rather arbitrary. I agree that the way this project was introduced leaves a lot to be desired; I had no clue this was even in the works until I found myself looking at it, resenting it, having no idea how to get rid of it, and thereby feeling stuck with it. I still can't get rid of it, because I refuse to make and use an account on every computer I regularly use, several of which are company owned machines that automatically delete both cookies and local storage every time they power down. I agree that this whole thing is absurdly resource hungry; on some of my work computers, the time taken to load an image has doubled, tripled, or more in some cases. This problem appears to be exacerbated greatly if you happen to be using TOR browser, though I'm not sure how much of that is due to the media viewer itself.

I believe that this project could some day become something magnificent, but for now I can't wait until I am able to opt out of it. Even if I have to do so every time I open a browser, I would find that preferable to using the current version. Someone mentioned above that web pages should be viewable on even the oldest machinery, and I agree. Someone else suggested that this should not be the default viewer, which seems like a good idea to me. As has been mentioned above, nothing in the old system was really broken, so suddenly forcing it upon everyone is unreasonable. I appreciate all that the WMF does, as I've realized tremendous benefit from their hard work. However, I think in this case, the work needs to be done behind the scenes until it's a little more finished. That said, there is no reason that this project can't be done in a way that improves both Wikipedia and Commons while still being versatile enough to meet everyone's needs. The current implementation makes no real improvements, while unnecessarily complicating things that used to be direct, intuitive, and easy. I think a big obvious "opt out" feature will go a long way towards allowing the project to progress while providing the versatility to keep everything flowing smoothly in the meantime. I am currently unsatisfied with the project, but I am looking forward to seeing how it develops. Thank you for your time! 64.15.81.27 05:43, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Improvements just around the corner, hopefully
After much feed back and flak from myself and others it appears that our voices are finally being heard. We'll have to wait and see, but to get an idea of what they propose to do, go to the Media viewer talk page and take in the last couple of sections. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 03:56, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I DEFENTLY HATE IT AND DESPISE THE FEATURE
Would you guys go back to the way the files in Wikipedia was--184.76.58.134 04:41, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

CoaInformation template not supported
CoaInformation template doesn't work with the Media Viewer.--193.175.119.33 12:15, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the notification (Did not even know we had that template…)
 * Only the description is not working, because it uses some quirks, putting in some infobox template and everything. I can probably try to fix that but you have to help me here: what do we want to display as description in these cases?
 * Thanks, Jean-Fred (talk) 17:02, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

If I am on a category page
Trial and error enabled me to discover that the new media viewer is invoked if I click on an image in the category. To proceed directly to an image's page I have to click on the file name for the image, which brings me to what I think of as the previous version of the media viewer.

What wasn't clear to me is how I should get to the file page for the image when I am in the new media viewer; trial and error suggests I have to use the browser's back button to get me back to the category page, from which I can then reach the file page for the image by clicking on the file name. 72.244.200.22 12:30, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

You can now use the icon on the bottom right corner to access the file page. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 04:10, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Makes SVG technical diagrams unusable
On a numbered technical diagram, it is essential to be able to see the diagram and the description of the numbered parts at the same time. This is impossible to do when the diagram is scaled to fill the window and the description occludes the diagram.

I was trying to view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drilling_rig#mediaviewer/File:Oil_Rig_NT8.svg, and was stuck scrolling up and down to show/hide the description. To make matters worse, once you scroll to bring up the info overlay, the description is bigger than the text box, so you end up doing this frustrating bouncy scroll dance just to see the numbered diagram and the description of the parts at the same time.

It's really a shame, because most all of the technical diagrams I've seen are intricate SVGs created by contributors specifically for the article in question. Media Viewer breaks a lot of their work.

Not to be a smart ass, but
What exactly is the problem that Media Viewer is supposed to solve? Now that I've encountered it, & had a look, I have no idea what to do with it. (Which means all of the time & money spent on this might have been better spent elsewhere...) -- Llywrch (talk) 18:13, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer Considered Harmful
You are providing a fix, not a solution. Don't. "The naive fix, aimed at altering some visible behavior, typically in one way or another adds constraints to the system, in order to directly inhibit variation or push the system away from its default equilibrium. This is the optimistic approach, in that it focuses (in theory) on the way the system works under ideal conditions, and leads directly to constructive solutions. But it also makes the system more rigid and brittle, so that even if the fix works, the system is now strained and problems are more apt to crop up (here or elsewhere). Furthermore, in practice analysis on this level often simply gets it wrong entirely, because resilient systems generally do not abide by direct manhandling of their variables (resilient systems are self regulating!), so that the obvious fix often gives no improvement at all, yet with many hidden costs. The fixer usually responds to this by doing more of the same--if the nail isn't budging, must be the hammer just isn't big enough... Layer upon layer, the fixer creates a self-fulfilling prophesy: the resulting system, with its rigid connections, no longer obeying the rule of modular resilience, does in fact exhibit behaviors so chaotic and complex as to be beyond scrutiny..."

"The solver, by contrast, starting from a more pessimistic stance, sees complex systems as being inherently fragile, and so treads as lightly as possible. Do No Harm means more than not adding harm, it means recognizing the harm you are already doing and stopping it. It means attending as much to the resilience of every component of the system as to its function--a balance which requires a great deal of finesse. The solver reels at the ham-fistedness of the fixer, knowing in their gut that the fixers' ever increasing latticework of rigid patches will invariably snap and collapse, or at the very best die a slow death of becoming too rigid to serve its intended function at all. The solver sees chaos as a problem of design, and wants to peel back the fixes one by one, to cure the system by reviving its resilience." Tatzelbrumm (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I have been looking for just the right contribution under which to register my agreement that the new media viewer is a negative development, and this is it. There were a number of other reasoned, civil negative responses that I could have seconded, but this one nails the issue at the center of the problem.  The original design was reasonably consistent and balanced with regard for the various aspects of the problems it addressed.  The new media viewer promotes one or a few interests&mdash;I'm not sure what they are, because they are apparently far enough away from mine that they are not intuitive to me&mdash;at the expense of all others.  The old image page format served all of my interests, and judging from the vast majority of opinions registered here, it served the interests of many other users well or, in the worst case, at least adequately, unlike the new media viewer.  Perhaps it could have been improved in a way that would have pleasantly surprised me, but it has not been improved.  It has been heavily degraded.


 * Permit me to vent with some emotionally charged&mdash;but not profane&mdash;langauge for a moment. This thing (the media viewer) destroys a perfectly functional aspect of Wikipedia and replaces it with a neophile's toy having no new useful functionality that I can discern.  If I click on an image in Wikipedia, I want a higher-resolution version of the image, or the original image file, or information about the image's source and legal status, or other metadata, or all of the above.  Why in the world would I want a slideshow, let alone one without captions explaining how the images relate to the encyclopedic content of the article?  If I wanted Flickr, I'd go to Flickr.  Back in the 80's, if I had wanted to see imagery associated with a pop song, I would not have opened the World Book; I would have turned on MTV.  (Aside, I don't recommend doing that&mdash;turning on MTV&mdash;anymore.)  I'm not saying that slideshows and music videos are the same thing; they're not, and in my example they're not supposed to be.  What I'm getting at is that the images in an encylopedia article belong there because they relate to the text content that they appear alongslide, and viewed out of context, e.g. in a slideshow, they have little to no relevance to the purpose of an encyclopedia.  Put yet another way, their reason for being in an encyclopedia is not served adequately when they are viewed in this way.  An exception would be the image galleries in some articles&mdash;to present them in a slideshow format might be better, at least for some people's learning styles.  (I am satisified with image galleries in Wikipedia articles the way they aremdash;or were, the last time I looked, and I am not requesting or promoting a change.)


 * I am aware that the media viewer is now being modified to integrate some functionality of the old image page design. Frankly, on one hand, that makes me almost laugh out loud.  If the old design was better, why do /more/ work on the new thing to make it more like the old one?  Why not just reinstate the old, and then if the new has some merits for certain users (even though I can't really see them), keep working on it and make it accessible to those who want it for those special purposes.  On the other hand . . . well, you can't always get what you want, but you just might find, you get what you need.  I hope these changes restore important functionality that the media viewer had displaced.


 * I also have one additional criticism of the new media viewer. It does not look encyclopedic.  That is to say, it doesn't look serious.  It looks like "Ok, I'm done reading serious information, now I'm going to browse some pretty pictures and look cool with my hip friends."  Frankly, it looks the product of a commercial mobile device company, trying to attract customers by its cool factor.  I sure hope this isn't the "look and feel" that someone has in mind for all of Wikipedia in the future.  I for one will use WP a lot less if that happens.  Web pages, and certainly pages of an encyclopedia, are supposed to resemble physical pages&mdash;one continuous body that scrolls together, with text that can be selected, enlarged, line-wrapped, etc. by the browser using its normal facilities, without mediation through Javascript programs.  The pages should be technically transparent, using standards like HTML, CSS, and HTTP to represent, format, and deliver the content, so that even decades-old software can read the text out of them and present them in an intelligible format, without the use of any nonstandard software including script.  The day that Wikipedia becomes a web application instead of a serving normal HTTP pages will be the day I begin reading it very rarely and stop editing it altogether.  That is, just in case anyone has any ideas.


 * Please, let reason prevail in this matter. As someone pointed out above, WP is the 6th most visited web site in the world.  Standards, simplicitly, the kind of uncomplicated functionality that characterized the original design intent of the WikiMedia software, and maximal compatibility for users from all economic classes and schools of thought, should remain the foundation of Wikipedia.  That foundation is cracking.  To the administrators, please restore it.
 * &mdash;Stephen 173.75.247.232 14:16, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Not a fan
I am a frequent browser and only casual editor of Wikipedia, but my vote for this "improvement" is that it needs a lot of work. It completely disrupts the user experience by taking up the entire screen, something that happens nowhere else on the site, and hiding the vital image metadata. Usually one gets used to things like this but every time I'm surprised and confused when this happens. I get it that sometimes it's fun to look at slideshows of pretty birds or whatever but right now this thing is just obnoxious. The worst part is the image "pre-loading" where some blurry colored spot shows up on my screen with a "helpful" loading bar that feels like it takes longer than it would otherwise.

72.20.142.162 21:38, 11 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I am also a browser who has only edited when I have noticed a spelling error or vandalism. I have read this page for the past few days without speaking up, but after reading so many defenses of Media Viewer claiming that "casual readers" enjoy it, I feel that as a "casual reader" myself, this is simply not true.  The above user expressed most of my problems with Media Viewer, but one more problem is that when I click on an image in an article (maps or something similar) I'm not looking for a fancy UI to slightly zoom in on the image, I'm looking for full size so I can see the detail.  It took me quite a while of looking around to find out how to get the original file page back, which I found by going through talk pages.  This also hides the copyright of images, which is extremely extremely important information to protect images on the wiki.  For now I'm just control-clicking on every photo because Media Viewer is 100 times worse than the original, which was intuitive and made sense. 98.208.227.210 17:07, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

This change makes it more difficult for me to use Wikipedia
I understand and appreciate the time that has gone into this feature, and I mean no disrespect to those who are working hard to bring us the best source of knowledge ever created. What would we do without you?

However, I can't understand the benefits of this change to simple readers like me, and I think the old system was more intuitive and gave us more information in fewer clicks and an easier-to-understand format than this new system does. I would ask that those in charge please consider returning to the old system which was easier. I suspect that other users like me have simply given up (as I did the first few times I was tripped up by this feature), and have not made it far enough to post on this page; the voices here probably represent a fraction of those who are inconvenienced.

Once again, thank you for your time and hard work. We appreciate it. --152.228.89.148 22:03, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * +1 --Milseburg (talk) 22:10, 11 June 2014 (UTC)


 * It's a nuisance, since now it takes *click* *wait* *look for button* *click* *click* to get to an enlarged or original version of an image, instead of the old *click* - *wait* - *click*. Well, sometimes I _do_ need to see the details and not basically the same resized version of the pic in full-screen-mode...

Problems viewing maps
(Using Win 7 and IE 11)

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_city#mediaviewer/File:Vatican_City_map_EN.png, the map is too small for me to read the text. Also, the aspect ratio of is wrong (stretched horizontally). Browser zoom does not work: it zooms the text panel only and perversely actually makes the picture smaller. Even if it did work, there probably is not the physical resolution in the displayed file to read the small text. I cannot find any way to view a proper resolution image or an undistorted image as I could previously. Same at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_delta#mediaviewer/File:Mississippi_Delta_SVG_Map.svg. No way to view a legible map. How could this gross design deficiency possibly have gone unnoticed? This needs to be fixed urgently. Why doesn't clicking on the image do anything? For me that is the most obvious thing to try first. 109.147.185.209 01:21, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
 * 109.147.185.209: One-click access to full resolution will be on Wikipedia tomorrow (or today, in UTC, depending on where one is in the world). I considered this an urgent fix as well, the Multimedia team agreed. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 02:44, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Escape not working as expected
(Win 7, IE 11)

Click on the "full screen" icon, then click Escape to go back, but it does not take me back to the media viewer as expected, instead it dumps me right back out to the article. However, clicking the "shrink" icon on the full screen view does work as expected. 109.147.185.209 01:43, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
 * This is a design decision; see (or discuss at) . --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 04:16, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I use safari on an ipad. Could see images in all resolutions before, now screwed up, when you zoom in to see larger, the white attribution section below zooms up proportionally over the image, blocking off the bottom half, so you can never see that part enlarged. Makes viewing a periodic table useless! Please give me a way to go back the was it was before, it's useless now.

Opt-In or Opt-Out
Apparently to make it more convenient to new user, Media Viewer was enabled by default for every wiki. I hate this Opt-Out. At least make it opt-in for existing users.

Can't find the talk page for the image
The information about the image is confusing to me. I can't find the talk page for the image, the description, or information about who uploaded it. Since this is the reason I click on images, I was disappointed.

I am looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Time#mediaviewer/File:UTC_hue4map_X_region_Africa.png and all I see is:


 * UTC hue4map X region AfricaCC BY-SA 3.0
 * Africa-timezones.png: SteveRwanda derivative work: TZ master (talk) - Africa-timezones.png

But "Africa-timezones.png" is a link to a different image, and "TZ master" is yet a different image. "(talk)" links to the talk page for TZ master, not for this image. I find this all very confusing.
 * Hi there. The file information is "below the fold," you can pull up the grey panel that you see to find it. I agree that currently it's confusing/not easy to find this but the good news is that the Multimedia team is working on clarity and ease of access to find this information. Clearer indicators that more information is below are being deployed today and tomorrow and you should see a marked change in ease of use. As for accessing the file talk page, that's a wonderful point. Thanks for bringing it up, I'll pass it along and see what we can do on that end. Thanks for taking your time. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:40, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Good example image to perhaps test features like this before rolling out ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distributions#mediaviewer/File:Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

For some reason the "view original image" link isn't working for me and I found no way on Win7 with Firefox 29 to actually get at that image at a usable size via the new viewer. Finally "Copy Link" on the actual thumbnail on the main wiki page and using that link directly got me the old approach where I can use my browser to zoom to my heart's content.

I agree with others this isn't necessarily a bad feature ... when you want it. But when you don't? Aiieeee.


 * Can you explain in more detail how "view original image" does not work for you? --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 03:55, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

New features are live!
Hi everyone: To follow up on our earlier update on Media Viewer, I’m happy to report that we just deployed a range of new features today, based on community feedback.

1. New features These features are now live on English Wikipedia, German Wikipedia and other Media Viewer sites:
 * View original file: A prominent button to open the original image in your browser (#630)
 * Show Commons link to logged out users: now all users can quickly access the file description page (#429)
 * Scroll down for more info: Use either up or down arrows to open the metadata panel below the image (#697)

Try them out with and let us know what you think using the built-in feedback tool in Media Viewer — or in this discussion page. You can find these new buttons at the lower right corner of the Media Viewer tool. All three features address frequent community requests — especially the ‘View original file’ button, which lets you use your browser to zoom in, or download images for re-use.

2. Next features We're now working on these next features, to address other community requests:
 * Instant Opt-out (#703) (*)
 * Opt-out for anons (#704) (*)
 * View different image sizes (#664)
 * Add tooltips to Media Viewer (#546)
 * Make it easier to find image information (#706)
 * Disable MediaViewer for certain images (#511)
 * Show attribution credits in download tool (#598)

The first two opt-out features asterisked above (*) can now be tested here on MediaWiki.org, on this demo page — open the metadata panel and scroll down to the bottom, then click ‘Disable Media Viewer’. To learn more about these features, click on the relevant cards on the current sprint wall of our planning site.

We aim to deploy these next features on MediaWiki.org by next Thursday, then to all other sites the following week. To accelerate deployment, we may back-port the most important improvements to all Media Viewer sites next week, if they test well on production.

3. Next releases We are preparing to deploy Media Viewer on all wikis next Thursday, June 19, if all goes well with the testing of these new features. We’ll keep you posted as the release date approaches.

4. Metrics We are now logging about 24 million global image views per day for Media Viewer, doubling overall traffic since last week. The most active sites are the English Wikipedia (10M views/day), the German Wikipedia (3M views/day) and the Spanish Wikipedia (2M views/day), as shown on this global image view dashboard. Global network performance has remained stable, at about 2.5 seconds per image served for 90% of our users (~4 seconds for the 95th percentile).

5. Surveys We continue to see favorable global feedback across all surveys:
 * about 60% of 13,891 global respondents find the tool useful, on average.
 * approval breakdown by language: French 71%, Spanish 78%, Dutch 60%, Portuguese 81%, Hungarian 63%, English 29%, German 26%.
 * approval rates have stabilized for all languages that have used the tool for over a month (excluding English and German).
 * English and German approval rates are lower than other languages, partly because Media Viewer was only launched one week ago on their sites.
 * English daily approval rates have increased from 23% a day after launch — up to 35% a week after launch.

We expect approval rates on Enwiki and Dewiki to keep increasing over time, as new features get rolled out based on community feedback. For comparison purposes, approvals on the Hungarian Wikipedia started at 42% and grew to 63% in just a few weeks, once we addressed the most important community issues. To learn more, visit the survey results page.

Please let us know if you have any questions. We’ll keep you posted on the next major developments.

Thanks to everyone who gave us constructive feedback in recent days: we really appreciate your guidance and look further to improving Media Viewer further in coming days, with your help. :) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:12, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I still believe that clicking the image should do something -- either show the original file or go to the traditional image page. 86.160.87.249 13:18, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Fabrice, this improves the tool and improves the experience. The anon issues are high priority and that is appreciated. Is there a mechanism to note this in a retrospective other teams can access? The dismissal of the anon user community's needs was (guessing from the flames erupting on this page and others) a major blow to the project and likely to the WikiWorld as a whole. I'd love to see this avoided for future projects. There are still a lot of critical objections (especially around copyright as discussed on this page and the archives), but this set of features certainly made great strides. One other note: the images selected on your demo page brilliantly showcase the power of this tool. Good job on that! 159.53.174.144 15:55, 13 June 2014 (UTC) (same Kevin)

This new viewer is obtrusive and poorly designed.
I use Wikipedia for personal and professional reasons more or less every day and I had no idea this feature was even in development until it suddenly popped up one day. The fact that this huge of a change appeared without any notice was already suspicious. After spending just a short time researching actual written feedback here and on other discussion sites, it's very clear that pretty much no one wants or enjoys this feature, and that its implementation is mostly annoying and disruptive. However, it is defended staunchly by a few dedicated people who are apparently involved with the project. I have seen incidental discussion about money and funding being wasted. It seems pretty obvious that someone needed a place to spend money, ended up with this terrible feature, and now needs to justify it with a couple poorly worded public surveys and by just pushing it into full implementation without any discussion about the possibility of scrapping the project. Hope I'm wrong and this disappears soon.

How do I disable Media Viewer on Commons?
There is no option to disable Media Viewer in the preferences on Wikimedia Commons. How can I do it? --Jonund (talk) 16:39, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
 * You should be able to find it here, untick the box in the "Files" section that says "Enable Media Viewer." Hope that helps. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Description
I have some issues concerning the description. Normally, the description in Media Viewer consists of two lines whereas the first line is the caption from the article in wikipedia and the second line is the description from the description page on wikimedia commons. is an example of an image used in the article de:Zervreilahorn, where everything works fine. But in the following cases, Media Viewer behaves different: --Capricorn4049 (talk) 18:04, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
 * if the image is used in the infobox, the caption from wikipedia is not shown (example)
 * if the image is not from wikimedia commons, even the caption from the description site is not shown (example)
 * if the image is used in a template, the caption from wikipedia is not shown (example)

This is being fixed, see (multimedia/#513) Caption not shown for images which do not have |thumb| in their wikitext. For the issue in your second bullet point, see commons:Commons:MRD about how to mark up description templates so that they are understood by Media Viewer. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 03:41, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Problem with Lage Images
Well, the only purpose why we have files like is because people would want to view parts of it by zooming in. Either I'm stupid, or it doenst work. Klicking on "View original file" ("Originaldatei anzeigen" in german) changes nothing. So good I understand URLs and can edit it to but that certainly can do only 1% of wikipedia readers. --Dan-yell (talk) 18:08, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

For me, "View original file" links to the same URL you have given. If that works differently for you, can you describe in more detail? --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 02:17, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, this file is running into a bug, that is causing this behavior. I have filed it in bugzilla and it is linked to the top right of this topic. TheDJ (talk) 09:25, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

"Derivative versions not eligible"
Elsewhere on this talk page, someone linked to. There it says "Derivative versions, GFDL, License migration not eligible". This sounds as if the image is ineligible for three things: licence migration, GFDL and derivative versions. In other words, it sounds as if I can't make derivative works and that I can't use the image under the GNU Free Document Licence, implying (because of the derivative works issue) that the image is unfree. Please improve the wording.

Also, users who are not logged in are usually not shown hidden categories, but for some reason, the media viewer shows all hidden categories. How does the category choice work? The file appears in five categories: four hidden and one visible. The media viewer shows three of the four hidden categories but not the last hidden category and not the visible category. --Stefan2 (talk) 18:17, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

These are categories, taken from the image page. Not sure what wording we could improve.

Categories are currently chosen in a rather dumb way, we just pick the first three returned by MediaWiki (I think these correspond to their order in the wikitext source, but I am not sure). Hidden/non-hidden is not taken into account since that information is not easy to access at the place where Media Viewer processes categories. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 04:15, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Tsunami of criticism
I can see tsunami of criticism of the whole idea of Media Viewer, but I can't see any reaction of authors of this idea. --Matrek (talk) 01:51, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

I think it's horrible
This new way of forcing users to view images in a media player seriously detracts from the usabilitu of Wikipedia. I click on an image for more information ABOUT THAT IMAGE, is a larger view and some meta info, NOT so that I can be taken away from my current page into an all-consuming app.

Please, please, please, can we have a GLOBAL opt-out of this new imposition FORNON REGISTERED USERS. Despite being a subject matter expert I stopped logging in and editing Wikipedia some time ago when various policies changed and made Wikipedia a less useful place to support. I know I'm not just a voice in the wilderness - a LOT of people seem to find this new 'feature' a disaster.

Please, let us have the simple old image viewer system back. Doing whizzy stuff 'because you can' is NOT a justification.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to have global settings, not even for registered users, much less for anonymous visitors. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 03:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * What do you mean by "no easy way"? With the Unified login, once users logs in one of the wikis, all other wikis also automatically recognize him/her. Is the addition of one more bit to that shared information exceptionally difficult? — 128.32.220.21 20:34, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes. You can track the progress of global preferences at if you are interested. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:29, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I hate it
This "feature" adds nothing, but it does make Wikipedia harder to use, and MUCH more annoying.

Who asked for this garbage anyway? Certainly not I.

Useless when looking at magnified webpages
I always view webpages with a degree of magnification to avoid eyestrain (i.e. I use "Ctrl+"). With the old system, I would click on a picture and go to a page which showed a larger picture, plus other available resolutions, plus associated info. The new viewer takes me to a picture which is the SAME size or even SMALLER (because the page I left was already enlarged), and with associated info obscured. Because of the magnification, if I scroll down to try and find metadata, it is all in unreadably giant letters. Pic in the new new viewer cannot be enlarged by Ctrl+. The whole experience is a HORRIBLE step backwards for Wikipedia, which I had assumed was run too intelligently to fall for the modern fad of making websites less usable for reasons of being "trendy". Please disable the disaster as soon as possible and return to the old system, which was far more informative, professional, and befitting an encyclopaedia!

Media Viewer Sucks
How do I turn it off? Wee Curry Monster (talk) 21:34, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
 * You can disable it in your preferences. Unfortunately MediaWiki does not currently support global preferences, so it depends on which wiki you would like to turn it off. Click on the "Preferences" link you see at the top of the site, go to Appearance, and untick "Enable Media Viewer"  in the "Files" section. This is a quick link for the English Wikipedia, for example. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:57, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Pointless Change and a Distraction
This is a case of a change of feature for the sake of changing a feature. The supposed benefits of this "media viewer" are "it looks different."

I specified in the survey the points why I feel the media viewer fails in doing anything useful, and I won't go into all of them here, but I feel so strongly about this that I actually made an account so I could add my objection to this discussion. I apologize in advance if I am not doing this right since I haven't done this before.

Just like so many websites have in the past 4 years, some person in charge of web design says "Hey nobody has changed anything with how this part of the website is done in ages... people will get bored!" So they come up with a completely superficial idea to change things around, make it look "new" and "exciting." The only problem is that it almost always reduces functionality and adds no real benefit, because it's all about how it 'looks' not what it does. This is exactly the same problem, now afflicting Wikipedia.

To the web designer whose smartypants idea this is: I don't want an "immersive" experience with the images, I am looking at an image in context with the article it's attached to. All I want is perhaps a slightly larger image, or to view the details such as copyright. An "Immersive" image is a distraction and a complication in my trying to absorb the information in the article. I'm not viewing a gallery of images like on Flickr, I am looking at an image that's connected to an article.

So no, I want nothing to do with this. I want to disable this "Media Viewer" nonsense permanently and return to the simple but efficient layout that I enjoyed before.

I would welcome any new layout that adds means of accessing more information about something. I welcome change that adds more to the content without removing features, or needlessly complicating the experience. This adds nothing except superficial scripting, removes features, and makes it more complicated to use.

Since it's clear that there is a bias towards accepting this new "Media Viewer" by the administration of Wikipedia, and as such this entire thread of objections is likely to be ignored, and this foolish idea adopted anyway... I will now proceed to find a way to disable this feature on my end of things. Ikaruseijin 23:12, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

It's a big shit
Sorry, but it's a big shit ! Rgds user:Tonton Bernardo

Author not clear
I like to use images from wikimedia resorces. But in this new viewer I often do not find the author of an image. Therefore this new viewer it's a step back. I do not like it. Please take it away and let it as it was before. Thank you.

Bogus survey
The people who are pushing this unusable new "feature" onto wikipedia users are hiding behind the results of a worthless survey. The survey results would only be meaningful if they could be compared to a survey conducted before rollout of the new viewer, asking people if they were satisfied with the results of clicking on a picture. I strongly suspect that most users were satisfied with the old system, or more tellingly, likely very few users were dissatisfied. After all, clicking on a picture under the old system did everything any user would require, whether a casual user or advanced. I very much doubt that there was any dissatisfaction amongst the user base, and so there was no problem which needed to be addressed. Reducing functionality for the sake of being "cool" is pretty lame for a encyclopaedia, and hiding behind the survey is reprehensible. Listen to the frequent and advanced users and permanently remove the new picture viewer.
 * I still dont know who was asked to participate in that survey. Maybe mobile users, whos preferences and taste were formed by Instagram or something, feel more comfortable with that new lack of usefulness. Alexpl (talk) 12:11, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

One more person who hates Media Viewer
I only found out about Media Viewer when I clicked on an image and was surprised by this obtrusive and annoying full-screen popup that appeared. I use wikipedia all the time, and I only do edits on rare occasions. This "improved" feature is just a piece of garbage. The regular File: page was perfect and simple, and it provided everything that any user, casual or what ever, would need. Blacking out the rest of the screen and article is just dumb. If the Media Viewer is just going to cover up the entire page and take over everything, I'd rather just go to the File: page. And I'd rather go to the File: page even if the Media Viewer gets a change to its black background and full screen popup, because it's not necessary and just ruins the flow of the wiki. It also just looks horrible, so if you were trying to make something that looks cool and new, you failed. And besides, why are you trying to do that? This is a wiki encyclopedia, plain and simple functionality should be it's main goal. Get rid of this horrible downgrade and fire the moron(s) who implemented it.

-- Someone Who Hates Media Viewer

I speak only a few English, so I'll make it as short as possible: BULLSHIT!
Country roads, take me home!

And another...
Yes, I've turned it off - for myself anyway. I don't have the power to turn it off generally. As I commented at en-wiki, utter crap. A solution without a problem to justify it. Presumably a similarity to something found in social media, where I find the image viewing to be usually appalling anyway.Interesting that the 'survey' was so much in favour, but the proportion of happy little bunnies on this page seems vastly different. When I click on an image, I want to see the image and possibly magnify it, and sometimes to read the data. With this, magnifying becomes complicated and not obvious, and the data on its silly little sliding thing has become almost unreadable - except perhaps for those who sit nine inches from the screen and are short-sighted anyway. You asked for feedback. You're getting feedback. Will notice be taken of it? Doubtful. Peridon (talk) 13:50, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Major flaws still exist
After all that's been said and done about improvements to media viewer, it still has its major flaws:
 * MV doesn't allow the user to readily see an image in its max resolution by simply clicking a second time. Instead, users have to click on an icon in the lower right, and you have to hover over it to see what its for, where the little pop-up message says "More details on a Wikimedia Commons", which doesn't even hint that there is access to an image's max resolution. This will be ignored by most viewers, so I think it's safe to assume that the quality of all the hi-res images (e.g.'Today's featured picture', 'Picture of the Day', etc) will be denied to the casual users we were told are the first priority by the few individuals who have pushed MV into its default existence.
 * There is no readily available way to disable the viewer, still, and in fact there is not even a hint of how to do so for the average reader and users with limited experience. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 16:12, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Contrary to the approval rating we were told about MV, that it's "a useful tool" (a "tool"?), it's rather clear that it is not wanted here at English Wikipedia. Had there been a list of features (and lack thereof) presented in the original approval survey compared to those of the standard viewing system, I think we can assume most rational adults would have said, 'don't bother'. Instead they were presented a gallery of images and told to view them with MV where the naive user was mesmerized by the slide show feature as they skipped along from one image to the next. No doubt the "approval" is based on this feature alone, simply because it was (and still is) its only feature. Disappointed. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 16:12, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * You can one-click the mountain icon in the bottom left right sips morning coffee corner to go straight to the full resolution of the image; you don't need to go to Commons. I'm not sure it's 100% how you would have it implemented but I hope it'll work for you. As for one-click disable, that is now live right here on MediaWiki and is going out to Wikimedia Commons tomorrow, then it will be backported to all the other wikis.  This fix took an extra bit of testing to make sure it worked properly. Hope that helps :/ Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * . Ahhgg!! ... yes, you're right. Please accept my apologies on that note. However, it might be helpful to give the viewers something more than an ambiguous icon (whatever happened to labels? e.g.'Max-Res') After all, I missed it, no doubt others will, esp if they don't know about max resolutions in the first place. I would recommend 'something' that indicates that there's a provision for viewing an image's max resolution besides the cryptic icon in the lower right. Why not use the magnifier icon with the plus sign for a pointer (after the first click) that most were accustomed to in the first place? Also, an indication of the image's resolution would be nice. (e.g. 1024 x 2036) -- One last bit of feed back: When I first encountered media viewer it was almost like running into a wall. A very abrupt visual change. It looked as if I had left Wikipedia altogether. Can you make the viewer look like we're still in the world of Wikipedia? I would recommend a Wiki' view first before going to 'the dark zone' with the black background and the completely different look. Hopefully the instant disable feature you say is coming along will not be equally as fuzzy to discern. -- 107.215.12.158 19:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Please show the image annotations
Hi!

I have to say that, contrary to most commenters, I actually like this media viewer. Browsing through an article's images is now really fast and enjoyable.

However, for annotated images, it would be really nice if the viewer displayed the annotations. Right now, the annotations are two clicks away from the page (open the viewer, then click on "More details on Wikimedia Commons"). Not really worse than before on English Wikipedia, however, in the French Wikipedia it is worse, as the commons page used to be at only one click distance from the Wikipedia page.

Example: in an "encyclopedic" context, the image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_FE#mediaviewer/File:Nikon_FE_top_view.jpg would really be more useful with the annotations seen in

Regards,

Edit: a bonus suggestion: If an annotation is available in several languages, and the current Wikipedia language is among them, then only display the annotation in that language. E.g., when I click on the example image above from en.wikipedia.org, I would like to see the annotations in English. When I click on the same image from fr.wikipedia.org, I would like to see them in French.

— Edgar.bonet (talk) 16:31, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback, Edgar.bonet. Annotations have been pointed out by others as well, and Media Viewer should be able to support them in the future. There's interface interaction complexities in making annotations work across platforms. I too look forward to the support. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:40, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Please, please don't force this "feature" on us!
All the other criticisms people have mentioned on this page are valid. Additionally, the media viewer is highly buggy and literally unusable on mobile devices running the desktop version of Wikipedia. Please restore the older, highly functional image pages as the default way to view images because not everybody has a Wikipedia account and access to a preferences menu! 2601:8:9100:7B1:4CF8:961F:C99C:5099 17:59, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Candid question: who is in charge on this?
I have a candid (albeit not malicious) question: who is in charge on this? Who decides if, yes, or no, the new Media Viewer becomes the new standard? I'm used at Commons and English Wikipedia to reaching decisions by consensus. Doesn't seem to be the case on this matter, as this particular decison is being taken against a strong opposition of the users! -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 19:34, 16 June 2014 (UTC)