MobileFrontend/Photo upload/WLM-specific approach

For the Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 contest, running throughout the month of September (coinciding with European Heritage Days), the addition of mobile photo uploads is under consideration. The Photo Upload project may focus on WLM for its initial release in the form of an app for Android initially and iPhone later. WLM is more than a use case for mobile photo uploads; it could be a primary driver of usage.

The reasoning behind this is as follows:

• Mobile uploads are not currently possible and it would broaden participation, especially among southern countries where reliance on mobile for Internet access is more prevalent

• Discovery on mobile is new this year for WLM and has been developed in the form of a WLM layer in the Layar app, which does not connect to the upload process

• Participation in this contest is expected to grow and is already significant - this provides a boost to engaging users in mobile uploads

• Marketing by WLM can promote mobile uploads and gives this feature significant exposure in a number of countries

• The well organized and serious nature of the event provides a structured way to test and refine this feature

The number of participating countries in 2012 is 31 definite and 17 possible (so far). For information about the 2012 contest, see:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012

WLM App workflow

The WLM App is based on PhoneGap and implements the upload process from scratch. We can re-use the Nearby functionality in the Wikipedia apps, and the WLM monuments DB can be integrated via the API.

Development issues

from Brion:

Temporary source repo on github: https://github.com/brion/WLMTest

Right now I have a very basic PhoneGap/Cordova-based app which runs on both iOS and Android, and can take a photo with the camera or from the photo library and upload it as 'Test file.jpg' to test.wikipedia.org:

https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Test_file.jpg

This confirms that we've got the infrastructure we need to do file uploads (does login and token check via AJAX hit to API, then uses Cordova's FileTransfer class to do the upload). At least under Cordova 1.7.0rc1 the session cookies correctly get reused on the file transfer, which was my biggest worry based on googling problems with it.

I don't think we can support Symbian with PhoneGap/Cordova; the Camera and FileTransfer interfaces don't appear to be available under Symbian if the docs are to be believed. :(

How the contest works

Heritage societies in the participating countries contribute their monument lists, which become the focus of the contest. Users see the campaign for a particular country on a page like this:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_monuments_historiques_de_Lille

On this screen, it is apparent that some monuments still lack photos. In 2012, users can also look for monuments out in the field using the Layar app. The monument list is accessible through an API that currently resides on Toolserver:

http://toolserver.org/~erfgoed/api/api.php

Photos are typically taken with cameras, and later uploaded on a computer using the Upload Wizard on Commons. The Upload Wizard is configured for the contest by campaign, which is typically at the country level. Here is an example from Germany that is at the municipality level (Germany may be the only exception to campaigns being at the country level):

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UploadWizard&campaign=wlm-de-nrw

It is now possible for the list of monuments on the desktop to link straight to the Upload Wizard by campaign and transfer monument ID and other information automatically, though some aspects of this functionality are still under development. This makes the submission of photos more seamless and reduces the amount of typing the user must do during the upload process. Here is the project page, which includes the list of arguments that can be appended to a URL.

There is a panel of judges per country who then review and pick the winning photos.

Campaigns are defined on Commons using a Special Page called Special:Upload Campaigns. There are many parameters that can be set by the administrators of the contest. You can see those here (requires special privileges).

The following graphic attempts to explain the overall process:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_secret_flow_of_Wiki_Loves_Monuments_infografic.svg

Note that a virtuous circle is created by the enhancement of Wikipedia and Commons, which then gets fed back to the heritage societies.