Reading/Multimedia/Roundtable 2013-07-10

The Roundtable 2 on Multimedia was held on 2013-07-10 at 16:45 UTC.

For more information, be sure to check out the full report on this Roundtable, which includes feature ideas, comments, slides and videos.

Attendees

• Joe Mabel
• Petr Brož
• Dominic McDavis-Parks
• Jean-Frédéric Berthelot
• Peter Ekman
• Rob Lanphier (director, Platform Engineering, WMF)
• Mark Holmquist (frontend engineer, Multimedia, WMF)
• Brian Wolff (contractor, Multimedia, WMF)
• Fabrice Florin (product manager, Multimedia, WMF)
• Jared Zimmerman (director, User Experience, WMF)
• Sage Ross (contractor, Education Program, WMF)
• Chip Deubner (magician, Office IT, WMF)
• Asaf Bartov

Notes

Multimedia Workflows and Issues

Viewing

There are 500 million people who are doing this, all the time. Big impact area.

Creation

About 21,000 uploaders per month on Commons - fewer people, but still very important.

Issues:

• Upload a Flickr photoset, then want to bring it to Commons...moderated images (like of naked body painted people) don't show up in Flickr migrator on labs (Joe)
• Batch copy in UploadWizard - copy to *some* of the uploads, not all. (Peter)

Curation

Around 300 patrollers and admins on Commons - not as important, unless we hear it could be.

Joe thinks curation is done by more people who have no special privileges - bigger number than we think!

Issues:

• Adding categories en masse...could be much easier! (Petr)

• Joe thinks there's a batch action tool, but it needs to be prettier.

• Curation is getting touted by a small but vocal group on Commons, but we don't want to intimidate people from contributing...make sure images are welcome. (Joe)
• Watch a category? Watch images that have been mass-transferred? (Joe)

Publishing

Around 82,000 active editors per month on all WMF wikis.

Issues:

• Map of geo data. (Jean-Fred)
• Contents of subcats? (Jean-Fred)

Engaging

There are only about 34 campaign organizers.

• WLM has a great format and organization, it would be cool to see more of that in different arenas. (Peter)

• Photo contest for Halloween! That would be awesome!
• Need to make it easier to start and manage campaigns, since the permissions are limited...

New Feature Ideas

Media viewer

See the full image on the WP page, no following links. Richer multimedia experience for millions of users.

• Joe: How does this jive with ENWP not putting Galleries on a page?

• Bawolff: This is just a modal box, not a gallery.

• Joe: Oh, so it's not a slideshow. OK.

Category finder

Address the problem of uncategorized files, causing unused files, by making it easier to add categories.

• Joe: Uploaders are informed about lack of category...

• Bawolff: Yeah, but how often do they follow that advice? Maybe we need to make it easier to add the correct category!

• Joe: Also, people think it's like a tag, which is bad...

• Petr: Easier to just *add* a category rather than come up with it. Have a project to make this easier.

File notifications

Echo notifications! Maybe value in providing notifications about files...list of possible notifications.

• Joe: Would be useful!
• Bawolff: "Used in article" is much better than the usual "You did something horrible and wrong"

Curation

Help curate new files to identify useful media. Existing tools not where you would expect.

• Joe: Do normal users have any clue about what causes deletion?

• Fabrice: The idea would be to make it easier to know.

Feedback

"Which is better?", star rating, thumbs up/down...surface useful files rated by quality.

• Peter: Related to WLM - maybe they could use this! Maybe they have something *we* can use!
• Joe: Potentially useful...
• Bawolff: Also could sort by number of times linked on projects...
• Joe: Maybe rating could be weighted by other factors (like contributions, etc.)
• Bawolff: Maybe ignore the constructive feedback business and just look for pure goodness.

Media finder

Like the VisualEditor one! Maybe expand it.

• Joe: Awesome, as long as it comes up with good pictures.

• Jared: Quality of image sort would make this _way_ easier.

• Bawolff: Seconded.

• Petr: Using the coordinates would be good too.

• Jared: Yeah, we're doing that somewhat to find nearby articles...

Slideshow player

They're currently made as videos....which is not easy. Maybe make it easier.

• Jean-Fred: Sounds like Sequencer all over again...
• Bawolff: Outside the use case of illustrating Wikipedia...

• Joe: Wat?

• Bawolff: Well, Commons is a store of images. This is sort of centered on creating things for the purpose of creating things.

• Ragesoss: Having just a lightbox for flipping through images would be great.

Campaign tools

Better tools, bigger interfaces, management tools, etc., would be useful, and making it accessible to more than just campaign admins.

Multimedia Priorities

What should our priority be this summer?

• Jean-Fred: Media viewer has most impact, so that sounds best.

• Eff Vector, make a proper skin for Commons...

• Petr: Feedback!
• Joe: None were particularly exciting...comparison is *maybe* the best.
• Peter: Slideshow!

• Contests!

• Dominic: Media viewer

• Category finder

• Sage: Rating!

• File notifications!

• Dominic: Tracking uploads or categories...would be great.

• Media viewer!

How did the roundtable work?

• Peter: Hangouts were hard....also, rectangular table, not roundtable! But would do again.
• Bawolff: Would IRC meetings be more better? Other forms?
• Joe: Lots of agenda items to go through in one meeting with so many people...

• Fabrice: That was my bad, sorry.

• Jean-Fred: Nice to know what you're working on, but I'm not sure how helpful I was!
• Dominic: Videoconferencing is painful...but there's not a great alternative!
• Sage: Worked pretty well...a little shorter and maybe fewer people would be even more better. Optimizing for the team who's implementing would make most sense.
• Joe: IRC doesn't have a "chair" (could we solve with MeetBot?)

For more information, be sure to check out the full report on this Roundtable, which includes feature ideas, comments, slides and videos.