Reading/Multimedia

A new multimedia team is being formed at the Wikimedia Foundation, to build features that will enable easier contributions of multimedia content to Wikimedia projects.

Read more about our first two projects:
 * Beta Features
 * Media Viewer

Both features are now available for testing by logged-in users on all wikis worldwide. (Note that you need to enable Media Viewer in Beta Features to test it).

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.

For more information, visit our planning page for 2013-14.

2014 Goals
Here are the multimedia team's feature goals for the coming year:


 * Improve the viewing experience for multimedia content
 * Enable multimedia contributions in a more seamless way
 * Improve file curation and feedback tools to manage contribution streams
 * Help editors add media files to articles on Wikipedia and other projects
 * Support organizers of multimedia campaigns like Wiki Loves Monuments
 * Better integrate Wikipedia and Commons

And here are our infrastructure goals goals:
 * Improve the upload pipeline to fix key bugs and support more features
 * Implement structured data on Commons and integrate it with Wikidata
 * Support more file formats, especially new audio/video codecs

Current projects
The multimedia team is now focusing on these near-term projects for Q3 (Jan.-March 2014):
 * Beta Features
 * Media Viewer (development through the end of Q3)
 * Upload Pipeline (design, testing and time-boxed development in Q3 and Q4)
 * GLAM Toolset (development and testing in Q2, wider release in Q3)
 * File Notifications (design, development and release in Q3)
 * File Feedback (continue design in Q3, development in Q4)
 * Video RfC (discussions about MPEG-4 support in Q3, possible implementation in Q4)
 * Multimedia Roundtables (discussions about vision and goals throughout Q3 and Q4)

To learn more about projects now in development or under consideration, visit our Mingle project site and/or product backlog.

Team
This year, we are expanding our multimedia team, which now includes:


 * Product Manager: Fabrice Florin
 * Engineering Director: Rob Lanphier
 * Front-end Developer: Mark Holmquist
 * Software Engineer: Gergő Tisza
 * Senior Platform Engineer: Bryan Davis
 * Interaction Designer: Pau Giner
 * Volunteer Engineer: Aaron Arcos (through April)

We are also recruiting for one more position for the multimedia team:
 * a senior software engineer

Please spread the word about this unique opportunity to create a richer multimedia experience for Wikipedia and MediaWiki sites!

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. You can learn more and subscribe to this list on this page.
 * Join our mailing list

We plan to host more roundtables and meetings in the new year, and our next dates will be posted below in coming weeks.
 * Upcoming events

Here are links to some of our recent discussions about multimedia with community members:
 * Past events


 * Multimedia Meetup - Wikimedia Office in San Francisco - December 9, 2013


 * Roundtable 5 on Multimedia - Google Hangouts - December 4, 2013


 * Roundtable 4 on Multimedia - Google Hangouts - November 27, 2013


 * IRC Chat on Multimedia - #wikimedia-office - August 22


 * Roundtable 3 on Multimedia - Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong - August 8, 2013


 * IRC Chat on Multimedia - #wikimedia-office - July 18, 2013


 * Roundtable 2 on Multimedia - 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

 * 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:
 * Multimedia Quarterly Review Slides - December 3, 2013 (meeting minutes)
 * Multimedia Project Slides - WMF July 18, 2013 (see update)
 * Multimedia Goals for 2013-14