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).

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.

Usage patterns
The three main usage patterns are:


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

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