Mobile design/Uploads

This document describes plans for a Wikipedia photo uploading feature for mobile.

Rationale
The popularity of the Wiki Loves Monuments photo uploading app for Android suggests that photo uploads via an app or the mobile Wikipedia gateway may potentially be an important engagement feature.

User research
The Wiki Loves Monuments app brought in a significant number of users new to Wikimedia projects. There is also at least one third-party Wikipedia file upload app available on the commercial market: Wiki Edit.

However, the general file uploading workflow on Wikimedia projects is complex, requiring users to understand authorship, copyright, and licensing at a very high level. Uploads that come from camera phones can be divided into two general categories:


 * Original images taken by the uploader (e.g., Wiki Loves Monuments photos) that should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons
 * Photos containing or composed entirely of non-free copyrighted works (e.g., a picture of a book cover) that should be uploaded to the local Wikipedia in which the image is to be used

Given that the latter is not as common of a use-case (see chart) and requires extensive text input (fair use rationale), mobile photo uploading should probably remain restricted to original images to be donated to Commons.

User stories

 * As a mobile user, I want to be able to upload pictures that I take with the camera on my device to Wikipedia.

Project phases
Still in planning.

User experience
TBD