Mobile design/Uploads

This document describes plans for a Wikipedia photo uploading feature for mobile.

Rationale
The popularity of the Wiki Loves Monuments photo uploading app for Android suggests that photo uploads via an app or the mobile Wikipedia gateway may potentially be an important engagement feature.

User research
The Wiki Loves Monuments app brought in a significant number of users new to Wikimedia projects. There is also at least one third-party Wikipedia file upload app available on the commercial market: Wiki Edit.

However, the general file uploading workflow on Wikimedia projects is complex, requiring users to understand authorship, copyright, and licensing at a very high level. Uploads that come from camera phones can be divided into two general categories:


 * Original images taken by the uploader (e.g., Wiki Loves Monuments photos) that should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons
 * Photos containing or composed entirely of non-free copyrighted works (e.g., a picture of a book cover) that should be uploaded to the local Wikipedia in which the image is to be used

Given that the latter is not as common of a use-case (see chart) and requires extensive text input (fair use rationale), mobile photo uploading should probably remain restricted to original images to be donated to Commons.

User stories

 * As a mobile user, I want to be able to upload pictures that I take with my mobile device camera to Wikipedia and insert them into relevant articles.

Project phases
Still in planning.

User experience
These are the rough steps in a mobile uploading workflow, assuming that all uploads will go to Commons with a single default CC-BY-SA license:

Donate to Commons (WLM model)

 * Flow


 * 1) User is logged in and reading Wikipedia.
 * 2) User is prompted by a call to action to donate an image to Wikipedia.
 * 3) User can choose to take a photo or use an existing photo saved on their mobile device.
 * 4) User must fill out a short description of the image and confirm license info (preselected).
 * 5) Image is successfully saved and appears on Commons as a user upload.

Insert into article

 * Flow


 * 1) User is logged in and reading Wikipedia.
 * 2) User is prompted by a call to action to donate a specific image that is missing from the article that they are reading.
 * 3) User can choose to take a photo or use an existing photo saved on their mobile device.
 * 4) User must fill out a short description of the image and confirm license info (preselected).
 * 5) User must fill out the fields that will appear in the caption when the image is placed into the article.
 * 6) When user saves, the image appears on Commons as a user upload, and the image code is inserted at the top of the article and saved as a Wikipedia edit.