User:Inchikutty/OPW

OPW Project:Upload wizard-OSM Map Embedding
This project is about enhancing the image upload process for Wikimedia Commons. Commons is an image hosting site which is used by Wikipedia and a bunch of other sites, as a central location to store free images, which can be resused anywhere without needing to worry about copyright.

Commons has millions of images and Wikipedia editors need to be able to find quickly the right ones for their articles, so it is important to store various metadata with the image which will help navigation - topic of the image, when it was made and so on. Location is one of these metadata: by storing the coordinates at which a photograph was created, editors are able to find images about a given location more easily, and we are also able to do some other cool stuff like suggesting you nearby images when you are browsing the site from a mobile phone.

This metadata is usually stored in a complex template language that is specific to MediaWiki, and the sight of which usually makes people to flee in terror. Since we cannot expect image authors to learn to write something like that, Commons has a tool called UploadWizard which creates all the code for you, after you fill out a bunch of forms. The main goal of the OSM map embedding project would be to integrate a map into these forms, where users can point to the location at which they took the photo. (OSM stands for OpenStreetMap - a free map application which is similar to Google Maps but not encumbered by restrictive copyright.)

The secondary goal is to integrate with some databases of locations and use that in various ways. One way would be checking if there are locations with requested images nearby (that is, someone put out a note that Commons needs good images about a certain place and doesn't currently have any), and warn the uploader about them. Another involves image competitions where people can participate with pictures taken at some predefined locations; UploadWizard could get a list of these locations and use it to help the participant in selecting where he took the photo.

Information Courtesy:Gergő Tisza

Name and contact information
Name: Anu G Enchackal Email:inchikutty13@gmail.com IRC or IM networks/handle(s):inchikutty Location:Kerala,India Time zone:UTC+05:30  Typical working hours: 10PM - 5AM