Reading/Multimedia



Our multimedia team at the Wikimedia Foundation was formed to build features that will enable easier contributions and viewing of multimedia content to Wikimedia projects.

Here are our main user-facing projects at this time:
 * Media Viewer
 * Structured Data
 * Upload Wizard

We invite you to join these community discussions:
 * Structured Data Discussion — How can we bring machine-readable data to Commons with Wikidata? Please share your feedback on this talk page.
 * Media Viewer Discussion — How can we improve the viewing experience for our readers? Please share your feedback on this talk page.

Rationale
Multimedia enables users to learn about the world in vastly different ways than text articles. We believe that images, sounds and videos are key to engaging more users and supporting their diverse learning styles, as modern culture shifts towards more audio-visual than textual information delivery.

To better serve our users in this changing information landscape, we can greatly improve the educational value of our sites by empowering everyone to share media, collaborate on improving that media, and using that media well throughout Wikipedia, Commons, and MediaWiki sites.

2015 Goals
See Wikimedia_Engineering/2014-15_Goals.

Current projects
The multimedia team is now focusing on these near-term projects:
 * Upload Wizard
 * Server-side Javascript error logging
 * Critical bugs (e.g. image scalers)

Inactive projects
Projects that are not actively developed at the moment:
 * Media Viewer (development of 0.2 finished; see retrospective and research report)
 * Structured Data (on hold)

Team
Our multimedia team includes:


 * Engineering Director: Rob Lanphier
 * Senior Software Engineer/Team Lead and acting Product Manager: Gilles Dubuc
 * Front-end Software Engineer: Mark Holmquist
 * Back-end Software Engineer: Gergő Tisza
 * Interaction Designer: Pau Giner
 * Community Liaison: Keegan Peterzell

Community
The Wikimedia Foundation invites community members from Wikipedia, Commons and other MediaWiki projects to discuss our plans through a variety of discussions about multimedia issues and new feature ideas. We hope you can join us for one of these events.

To keep up with our work and participate in our conversations, please join our public Multimedia mailing list, where we discuss software tools that support the viewing, contribution, curation, discovery and use of multimedia content on Wikipedia, Commons and other MediaWiki projects. Learn more and subscribe to this list on this page.
 * Join our mailing list


 * Current discussions

We invite your comments on these community discussions:
 * Structured Data Discussion — How can we bring machine-readable data to Commons with Wikidata? Please share your feedback on this talk page.
 * Media Viewer Discussion — How can we improve the viewing experience for our readers? Please share your feedback on this talk page.

We plan to host more discussions this year, and our next dates will be posted below in coming weeks.

Here are links to some of our many discussions with community members, hosted throughout product development:
 * Past discussions
 * Structured Data Q&A - Wikimedia Office IRC Channel - Thursday, November 20 (Chat log)
 * Structured Data Q&A - Wikimedia Office IRC Channel - Wednesday, October 16 (Chat log)
 * Structured Data Q&A - Wikimedia Office IRC Channel - Wednesday, September 3 (Chat log)
 * Multimedia Roundtable 10 – Wikimania 2014 - August 10, 2014  (Slides | Notepad | Photos)
 * Multimedia Overview – Wikimania 2014 - August 8, 2014  (Slides | Notepad | Photos)
 * Multimedia Community Roundtable 9 – Wikimania 2014 - August 8, 2014   (Photos)
 * Media Viewer Roundtable 8 – Wikimania 2014 - August 7, 2014   (Slides | Notepad)
 * Structured Data Roundtable 7 – Wikimania 2014 - August 7, 2014   (Slides | Notepad | Photos)
 * Upload Wizard Roundtable 6 – Wikimania 2014 - August 6, 2014 (Slides | Notepad)
 * Media Viewer Discussion on IRC - Wikimedia Office IRC Channel - April 16, 2014
 * Media Viewer Discussion on IRC - Wikimedia Office IRC Channel - February 21, 2014
 * MP4 Video Request for Comments - Wikimedia Commons - January 15 to February 14, 2014
 * MP4 Video Discussion on IRC - Wikimedia Office IRC Channel - Thursday, January 16, 2014
 * Multimedia Meetup - Wikimedia Office in San Francisco - December 9, 2013
 * Multimedia Roundtable 5 - Google Hangouts - December 4, 2013
 * Multimedia Roundtable 4 - Google Hangouts - November 27, 2013
 * IRC Chat on Multimedia - #wikimedia-office - August 22
 * Multimedia Roundtable 3 - Wikimania 2013 - August 8, 2013
 * IRC Chat on Multimedia - #wikimedia-office - July 18, 2013
 * Multimedia Roundtable 2 - Google Hangouts - July 10, 2013

These discussions were generally found productive by all participants, and many community insights are now being included in the foundation's development plans. Thanks to everyone who participated in these invaluable conversations!

Communications

 * Structured Data Project Launches in Berlin - Blog post, October 2014
 * Help Test Media Viewer - Blog post, February 2014
 * A Multimedia Vision for 2016 - Blog post, January 2014
 * Introducing Beta Features - Blog post, November 2013
 * Scientific multimedia files get a second life on Wikipedia - Blog post, October 2013
 * Breaking through walls of text: How we will create a richer Wikimedia experience - Blog post, April 2013

Related documents

 * See also:
 * January 2015 quarterly review
 * October 2014 quarterly review slides and meeting minutes
 * Multimedia Quarterly Review Slides - December 3, 2013 (meeting minutes)
 * Multimedia Project Slides - WMF July 18, 2013 (see update)
 * Multimedia Goals for 2013-14