UploadWizard

UploadWizard is a multi-file, step-by-step JavaScript wizard to upload multimedia files to a MediaWiki website. It is available as a MediaWiki extension.

The Multimedia team is now planning to incrementally upgrade this tool in 2022 and 2015, by fixing some longstanding bugs, as well as improve parts of the user experience and refactoring some of the code.

Rationale
The Upload Wizard aims to make it easier to contribute multimedia works to Wikimedia projects.

This tool is now widely used to upload images on Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository associated with Wikipedia; any media file shared on that site can be used in any Wikipedia page in any language. Wikimedia Commons is curated by a multilingual community and recently reached 21 million files.

More details about the origins of this project can be found in the Upload Wizard archive page; the main feedback page is located at commons:Commons:Upload Wizard feedback.

Goals
Here are some of our goals for Upload Wizard:
 * engage more users to contribute media
 * provide a smoother experience for all
 * add more media content on our sites
 * fix critical bugs, to make things work better

In coming months, we propose to:
 * Plan & discuss improvements
 * Solve bugs & technical debt
 * Improve the user experience
 * Incremental code refactoring
 * Develop new modal tool for other uses

Timeline
This is an estimated timeline based on our current work, as of January 2022.


 * Q3 (Jan-Mar. 2022)
 * Implement and deploy JS error logging to automatically capture errors affecting users
 * Q4 (Apr.-June 2022)
 * Identify the main sources of the current drop-off happening on the file step
 * Significantly reduce the drop-off

Users
Our primary users for Upload Wizard include:
 * new contributors
 * experienced contributors

We will aim to support both user groups evenly, with an initial focus on Commons users -- then contributors on Wikipedia and other sites. Note that you must be registered and logged-in to use Upload Wizard.

We also aim to serve these secondary users:
 * editors
 * campaign organizers
 * developers

Metrics




First metrics
Here are upload metrics for Upload Wizard from February 2022: (1)
 * 18k uploaders / month
 * 292k uploads / month

It's worth noting that Upload Wizard represents:
 * 80% of all uploaders (14k per month, a lot more during Wiki Loves Monuments)
 * 56% of all uploads (141k per month, the rest are handled by bots and other uploads tools)

For more info, click on the metrics graph thumbnails to the right.

(1) Data from Wikimedia Commons in Feb. 2014. Source: Wikimedia Foundation

More metrics
Here are key metrics we're considering to track the upload process:
 * number of uploaders
 * number of uploads
 * upload drop-off rate
 * number of uploaded files used
 * number of uploaded files viewed

We are starting development to collect more metrics data, and are tracking this work in these tickets:
 * Funnel Metrics for Upload Wizard (#541) (in development for this sprint)
 * Upload Wizard funnel metrics - basics (#609) (done, but only 4 data points for now)
 * Upload Wizard Metrics - Data collection 1: Major steps (#305) (to be developed in coming weeks)
 * Upload Wizard Metrics - Data Collection 2: Detailed Steps (#603) (to be developed in coming weeks)
 * Upload Wizard Metrics - Dashboards (#587) (to be developed in coming weeks)

Feedback
We are now reviewing hundreds of feedback posts and help questions about Upload Wizard last year, which have been analyzed in this spreadsheet.

Here are some of the key issues reported:
 * upload hangs
 * upload takes too long
 * issues with multiple files
 * confused by license forms
 * unclear prompts and error messages
 * problems with categories (e.g. can't search them)
 * issues with large files that don't load well
 * would like a progress bar during upload
 * want to add info while image loads
 * would like simple explanations
 * want other info templates

Usability
We have done a number of usability studies for Upload Wizard and plan to do more.

Here are videos of some initial testing sessions:
 * T1
 * T2
 * T3
 * T4

We will consolidate these results when we run more user tests. For now, here are some preliminary observations and analysis of the current design by our designer Pau Giner.

Current Workflow
Here are the main steps of the current workflow for Upload Wizard:
 * Start - click on the Upload link
 * Learn - reading the help infographic, click 'Continue'
 * Upload - select media files to upload, add more files if needed
 * Rights - fill in author, source and license information
 * Describe - fill in title, description, date or other info
 * Use - copy code to add images to articles or share them with others

To see how Upload Wizard currently works, visit this page or view these screenshots.

New Designs
Based on current feedback and usability tests, our designer Pau Giner has prepared some preliminary design ideas to help define our vision for Upload Wizard (see slides below). These are explorations and reflections about a more modern upload experience, but don't necessarily reflect what will be built, as more community consultation would be required.

Mockups
These mockups will be adjusted based on community feedback.

These designs can be viewed together in these vision slides. Individual screenshots will be added to this page soon.

Scenarios
These first designs are based on these user scenarios:
 * Upload images to a page
 * Upload a single image on a topic
 * Upload multiple files on different topics

Issues
They attempt to address these key issues:
 * Adding a picture to a page is disconnected
 * Providing metadata is a big upfront effort
 * Categorization is painful
 * Multiple file upload
 * Lack of aids for input
 * Meaningless untranslatable titles
 * Initial infographic is too verbose
 * Help needed to understand licenses
 * Upload button on Commons homepage is hard to find

To learn more, check out these design notes by our designer Pau Giner.

Bugs
We keep track of Upload Wizard bugs in the bug tracker.

Over the years, many bugs have accumulated for this project, because Wikimedia Foundation did not have a dedicated team to address them. Now that the multimedia team has taken ownership of Upload Wizard, we will work diligently to fix the most important bugs first, then gradually resolve the rest of the relevant issues over time. Thanks for your patience and understanding :)

If you find any technical bugs, please report them.

Compatibility
To be able to run UploadWizard, the user's browser must: Otherwise, the standard MediaWiki file upload form is displayed.
 * Have JavaScript enabled
 * Support ECMAScript 5
 * Support HTML5 File API
 * Support form-data in XMLHttpRequest

Supported browsers include Firefox 13+, Chrome 21+, Internet Explorer 10+, Safari 7+ and Opera 12+.

Tasks
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/mediawiki-extensions-uploadwizard/

Other Tools
Besides Upload Wizard, other upload tools are available to users, which are tracked at commons:Commons:Upload tools.