Commons:WMF support for Commons/Commons community calls/Discussion 6 - Impact and funding model

Wikimedia Foundation discussions with the Wikimedia Commons community

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Images are important

Everyone agreed that media plays an important role on Wikimedia projects, appealing to different types of readers and conveying additional information. For example, WikiProject Medicine uses a range of visual materials, such as CT scans and graphs, to convey life-saving information on Wikipedia. Recognizing the importance of illustration, English Wikipedia requires at least one photo for featured article status.

Wikimedia Commons is unique

Participants on the early call talked about the uniqueness of Wikimedia Commons, saying that there is no other platform that connects media and metadata to create a media-rich knowledge experience. Others noted that Commons is much more inclusive than Wikipedia, covering people, places, and cultural practices that may not meet Wikipedia’s notability standards. They said that Commons is probably the world’s best media repository for underrepresented natural and cultural heritage. Commons can also have more breadth than Wikipedia (‘five photos of a mountain could go on Wikipedia, but it’s also educational to have hundreds of photos of that mountain’).

Improving Commons improves Wikipedia

Some participants argued that Commons needs to be improved before it can be productively integrated in other projects like Wikipedia. “If we develop Commons independently, it will be able to organically serve all other wikis.” Some also thought that an improved and more usable Commons had the potential to bring in new users.

Do both

While recognizing that it is difficult in the short term to prioritize media workflows and experiences on both Commons and Wikipedia, participants on the early call argued that we need to at least hold a vision for both, and that the wider scope of Commons is clearly established.

They also questioned whether there needed to be such a binary choice between improving the Commons platform or improving the visibility of Commons content on Wikipedia. Instead, they argued that the Foundation should select the most impactful measures, regardless of the platform. Further to this, they talked about the symbiotic relationship between the platforms. If Commons was an offering in its own right, using open standards and a well-built API, it would be easier to reuse its content on Wikipedia. But, if readers and contributors declined on Wikipedia, the impact of this content would be reduced. They concluded that it would be better to share resources between the projects and accept that progress will be slower.

Participants online and on the later call challenged the framing of the conversation, arguing that it was a false dichotomy and that it was harmful to pit projects against each other. However, there were more responses to the question when Selena asked what the Foundation should focus on in the next one to three years.

The value of Commons is realized on Wikipedia

Most participants acknowledged that images are more likely to be discovered when they are on Wikipedia and that Wikipedia drives views and usage of Wikimedia Commons. Participants discussed the annual Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos campaign, which increased the visibility of Commons media by illustrating more than 500,000 Wikipedia articles in more than 270 languages. They also discussed features on Wikipedia to promote the addition of images, such as Add an image, and the View It! Tool, which uses structured data to surface additional media from Wikimedia Commons within Wikipedia articles. Some also talked about the importance of improving the link between Commons, Wikidata, and Wikipedia, noting that infoboxes very efficiently pull images into Wikipedia articles in multiple languages.

One participant stated that Wikimedia Commons is primarily a service provider to Wikipedia and other projects. They noted that there are other media repositories with better ways of viewing and describing media and the value proposition for Wikimedia Commons is the extent to which it enriches Wikipedia. Another participant wondered if contributors should be creating ‘parallel’ descriptive content on Commons, or if they should add and describe images on Wikipedia instead.

Commons could be stewarded by another affiliate or group

One participant asked whether an affiliate could take on Wikimedia Commons. Selena noted that the Wikimedia Foundation is not opposed to an organization taking on Commons but that platform-level support is really difficult to outsource, no organization has stepped forward to try, and the financial commitment is large.

WikiProject Medicine shared that they are supporting technical developments on Commons, such as improvements to CropTool, and that other groups could do the same. Other participants shared that anyone is welcome to take MediaWiki and create their own media server, sharing the examples of WikiVet (a closed wiki for veterinary practitioners that uses a combination of Commons and its own media) and OpenStreetMap Wiki.

Commons priorities

Many participants on these calls said that they would prioritize Commons as a project in its own right, and they talked about needing a more open Wikimedia Commons Query Service, improved media search (overcoming the limits of textual search on a multilingual project), and better integration of categories and structured content.

In the early call, there was a discussion about limited awareness of Wikimedia Commons outside of the Wikimedia movement. Its visibility was compared to both Wikipedia and other repositories, such as Getty Images. Participants recommend an awareness campaign and features like portfolios that would encourage contributors to share Commons on other platforms.

Abuse of open services like Commons

Finally, there was a discussion about how it would be difficult to offer unauthenticated access to the WCQS due to an unsustainable increase in scraping of Wikimedia platforms. There was a brief discussion about mitigating this through technical measures, terms of use, and Enterprise relationships.