MobileFrontend/Photo upload

The ability to upload photos is a form of content contribution that is particularly suitable for nearly all mobile devices. Recently, community-led projects such as Wiki Loves Monuments used contribution of photos as a major form of increasing new participation in Wikimedia projects and bringing high-quality content to Wikimedia Commons that can improve the quality of articles in Wikipedia. The software that met the initial needs of that project is called Upload Wizard, and that has become a standard way to contribute photos to Commons.

Upload of photos from mobile devices will follow existing usage patterns, such as sharing content with friends, storing content online, or viewing/contributing content based on location. High-quality photos tend to be large and moving them from a device to another location can involve batch transfers via WiFi. The typical use cases are described below. Some solutions have already been developed, as noted below.

The main goal of this new project is to develop a comprehensive approach to photo uploads across a wide range of mobile devices, using a browser or app, and in two forms: direct upload to Commons (aka Photo Upload Basic) and upload from a Wikipedia article or other front-end (aka Photo Upload Advanced). In general, there will be a design goal of game-ifying the photo upload experience.

One constraint that must be clarified up front is that iOS devices do not offer file access from a web browser. This means that browser-based upload is not easy to enable on iPhone or iPad. Device detection in that case must exclude usage of browser-based upload and reference an app-based approach.

Game-like design
These days the verb to "game-ify" comes up in nearly any context, but in some cases it is justified and can result in great benefits in terms of enhancing user participation and encouraging deeper levels of engagement. Photo uploads are a form of contribution that broadens the funnel in terms of drawing in new users who can directly enhance the completeness and quality of content on Wikipedia and Commons. Social gaming principles could widen the funnel even further and generate new communities of participants. In some cases, it may be possible that game dynamics can cause viral behavior or reactions.

Rankings and ratings are core to gaming. Participation is not limited to contribution of photos. For example, users can rate several photos competing for the spot of being the most representative photo for an article. Once a photo contributor has won this mini-competition, his profile is updated to show how many times he has won, and a leaderboard shows the users who have the most winning contributions. The nice thing about ratings in this context is that it acts as a form of patrolling. Even casual readers can rate photos and then the best ones will get chosen by the participants.

Incorporating this approach with something like Wiki Loves Monuments makes a lot of sense, but it could also work with other types of content and contributions. And of course, this approach applies just as readily to the main site. But on mobile the approach can be tested and refined before being released more generally.

Usage patterns
Three general patterns of usage relating to photos on mobile devices are:


 * sharing with others
 * storing online or on PC
 * location-based viewing

Of course, there is also the basic behavior of taking photos, which is often related to location or social interaction. And if the goal is archival quality documentation, then often a dedicated camera will be used, and not a mobile phone. Because some of the use cases we care about involve Wikipedia articles, we need to account for photos that are not taken with a mobile device but with a more sophisticated camera.

For our purposes here, sharing refers to sharing directly from a mobile device. Services such as Picassa and Flickr are clearly designed for sharing, but also for storage, so they will be included in both the first and second patterns.

An additional usage pattern that is specific to Wikipedia is:


 * adding a photo to an article

Within this general pattern, we will consider the specific use case of:


 * seeing an article nearby that needs a photo and contributing one

... and a use case specific to Commons and Wiki Loves Monuments:


 * taking and uploading photos for specific monuments, usually based on a list in a web page

Here are more details:

Sharing
Sharing photos or other content such as videos and URLs is typically a contextual behavior. Meaning, when the user is browsing through photos, he or she gets the idea to share one or more of them.

Therefore, functionality to support this behavior mostly falls outside of the browser or app, and a volunteer developer has already created a plugin-style app that adds Commons to the list of sharing destinations via Android Intents. This is not possible to do on iOS (unless someone can get access to the internals of the photo viewing application developed by Apple).

Here is the app, as well as other apps that were developed for the Weekend of Code challenge in October, 2011. The app as it currently works adds a category automatically to all photos.

Sharing to Facebook, Flickr, Picassa and other social websites is a form of sharing that is more broadly social, but also more conditional - something about the situation or photo must be more compelling than normal to share in such a visible way straight from a phone. Storing to such sites, which is also by definition social, will be discussed next.

Nearby article needing a photo
When viewing Wikipedia articles that are nearby, sue of them may be lacking photos or may need better photos. Users may notice this incidentally, by simply navigating to nearby articles, or we can present such articles to the user with a function in the site or apps.

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33428

Wiki Loves Monuments
Or participating in a volunteer program to add photos of notable monuments to Commons.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_monuments_historiques_de_Lille

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33341