The perennial fight of categories and tags at a new stage? :) «we will
likely want to explore implementation of lightweight tagging systems»
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/08/breaking-through-walls-of-text-richer-wikimedia-experience/>
Nemo
-------- Messaggio originale --------
Oggetto: Breaking through walls of text: How we will create a richer
Wikimedia experience
Data: Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:14:49 +0000
Mittente: <Rob Lanphier>
Breaking through walls of text: How we will create a richer Wikimedia
experience
Wikimedia consists of many projects, Wikipedia most notable among them.
However, the name “Wikimedia” suggests a world beyond text. Indeed,
Wikimedia Commons <https://commons.wikimedia.org/>, our repository of
freely-licensed media files, already contains more than 16 million
images, sound files, and videos.
Well, mostly images. Right now, there are fewer than 30,000 video files,
and fewer than 170,000 audio files. And while Wikipedia articles are
often richly illustrated, they still share the old-school feel of a
print-based experience. Projects like Snow Fall
<http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek> by
the New York Times show what an immersive reader experience can look
like, with video elements prominently featured and blended into the core
of the content. In contrast, Wikipedia articles rarely have videos, and
if they do, those videos are usually very short and included at the
bottom of the article.
Of course, well-written text forms the foundation of most high quality
educational content. Text is versatile, adaptable, accessible,
efficient, and relatively easy to collaborate on. It will form the core
of the Wikimedia experience for a long time to come. Still, we can
greatly improve the educational value of our sites by empowering
everyone to share media, collaborate on improving that media, and using
that media well throughout our sites.
In the last three years, Wikimedia has seen some very significant
multimedia developments:
* The Wikimedia movement has launched successful photo contests and
competitions, notably the “Wiki Loves Monuments
<http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/>” competition, which was
recognized as the world’s largest photo competition
<http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-6000/largest-photography-competition/>
by
the Guinness Book of Records. In the 2012 competition, more than
350,000 photos were taken by volunteers. It was organized
by Wikimedia chapters and volunteers in 33 countries (see jury
report
<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_international_jury_report_2012_low_resolution.pdf>).
* Wikimedia chapters and volunteers have also formed partnerships
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Partnerships> into the
cultural sector (e.g. museums, galleries, archives), resulting in
hundreds of thousands of photographs, reproductions of paintings,
and other media being made available on Wikimedia Commons.
* Wikimedia Foundation has developed a number of enhancements and
features focused on multimedia:
o the Upload Wizard
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Upload_Wizard>, an
easy-to-use tool for uploading media files that’s been used to
upload more than 2.2 million files to Wikimedia Commons;
o upload features
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/28/add-an-image-to-this-article-uploads-now-live-on-mobile-wikipedia/>
for
the mobile web that make it easy to enrich any article requiring
a photograph using a smartphone;
o a new HTML5 video player
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/11/08/introducing-wikipedias-new-html5-video-player/>
with
support for the open WebM video format and encoding of videos in
multiple resolutions;
o dedicated upload apps for iOS and Android
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikimedia.commons> are
in development;
o a feature
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Upload_Wizard/Flickr> to
import photographs from Flickr (started as a Google Summer of
Code <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code> project)
o an experimental feature
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Chunked_uploads> to
upload files up to 500MB in size.
In combination, these efforts have already borne fruit. The number of
contributors to Wikimedia Commons has increased significantly in the
last 3 years. In January 2010, only 13219 users had contributed at
least one upload. That number increased to 20161 users by January 2013.
At the same time, we haven’t invested enough. With the exception of the
work of our mobile team, much of the above work has been done by one or
two developers at a time, often in between other priorities or by
engineers working as volunteers. There has never been a well-resourced
team fully dedicated to multimedia engineering work at the Wikimedia
Foundation. This is about to change.
The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring at least three engineers and
additional product/design support to fully focus on improving the user
experience for contributing, curating and reviewing multimedia. Right
now, you can apply for the following positions:
* Software Engineer – Multimedia Systems
<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=oj40Wfw3&c=qSa9VfwQ>
* Software Engineer – Multimedia User Interfaces
<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=ohqbXfwz&c=qSa9VfwQ>
Here are some of the key challenges for the new team:
* further improvements to the upload experience. Contributing an image
or video to an article while you’re editing should not require
leaving the “edit mode” — it should be integrated with the editing
process.
* solidifying experimental features such as large file uploads;
* improving transcoding features for video files to reduce the
learning curve for video uploaders;
* improving media search and discovery;
* improving display of images, videos and sound files in Wikipedia
articles, including a standard lightbox viewer for media embedded in
an article and related media from Wikimedia Commons (building on
some of the excellent submissions in our October 2011 Coding
Challenge
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/30/october-2011-coding-challenge-winners/>).
As we continue to provide new means for uploading media, we need to
ensure that the Wikimedia community is empowered to curate and
categorize the images. Curation includes removal of content that is out
of scope <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Scope> or
incorrectly licensed
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing>. To more
effectively patrol content, the development of curation tools similar to
the Page Curation
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Page_Curation> feature
developed for Wikipedia may become necessary.
Beyond Wikimedia’s category system
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Categories>, we will likely
want to explore implementation of lightweight tagging systems, possibly
in partnership with the Wikidata <http://wikidata.org/> team.
As if this weren’t enough, the long term frontiers for multimedia
include web-based editing of images, video and sounds, improvement for
subtitle editing, browser-based audio recording features, and more.
In short, breaking through walls of text and creating a richer media
experience for all our projects will keep the Wikimedia Foundation and
the Wikimedia movement busy for many years to come. Please help us
expand our library of freely-licensed educational media, and help us
ensure it gets used effectively on the world’s fifth-most popular
website. Apply today.
/Rob Lanphier, Director of Platform Engineering/
/Erik Möller, Deputy Director; Vice President of Engineering and Product
Development/