Grants talk:IEG/Improve 'Upload to Commons' Android App

Away notice

I will be traveling from the 11th April to 26th April, so I might not be able to respond to questions in a timely manner during that period. Apologies for the inconvenience. Misaochan (talk) 06:59, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

selfie-pocalypse of 2013

I'm concerned by these two lines:

publicity is needed to inform non-Wikimedians about this app
account creation from within the app

The WMF already built a Mobile Media Uploads app aimed at non-editors. It had to be shut down. Editors know about copyright and they upload pictures that are useful for the project. Non-editors didn't. They uploaded massive numbers of selfies and copyvios that had to be researched and deleted. Any images that weren't outright deleted were generally useless. The rate of useful images was so low that it wasn't worth the cost of dredging thought the bad images to find anything worthwhile. Alsee (talk) 13:59, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Alsee, thanks for the feedback! I wonder if it would help to educate new users on the Commons upload policies especially pertaining to selfies and copyvios? We already have a short tutorial that pops up the first time someone installs the app - it should be possible to add a page about this. What do you think? Misaochan (talk) 17:25, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

The reason the Commons app was removed from Google Play is NOT selfies/copyvios. As explained on the mailing list and in the Git commit, "Due to our team being small and our focus being on the Wikipedia app, we don't support this app anymore." was the real reason. By the way, I just checked the 500 latest uploaded pictures, and found only 1 user who had uploaded 6 selfies, and zero obvious copyvio. Sneaky copyvios might have slipped in, but I would argue that sneaky copyvios are probably more common via the website upload: most Android-uploaded pictures have the typical phone camera dimensions and were taken by each user in a particular geographical area showing local festivals/landscapes/objects, so not your usual copyvio. Other than that, 3 pictures that could be described as uninteresting (2 of the sky and 1 of a plant), but the 491 other pictures could realistically be used to illustrate Wikipedia or Wikivoyage articles, in particular a picture of a Member of Parliament, a picture of the newly released Caterpillar truck, and a nice pic of a celebration in Uttar Pradesh. Conclusion: The benefits far outweigh the hassle you describe. Anyway, point taken, educating users would be very useful, and the tutorial explanation suggested by Misaochan sounds great. Cheers! Syced (talk) 09:06, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, the WMF's mobile upload experiments were a failure mostly because they reinvented the wheel and simultaneously encouraged people to do wrong things; see mailarchive:mobile-l/2015-April/009014.html. Nemo 08:34, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for review and scoring. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period (through 2 May 2016).

The committee's formal review begins on 3 May 2016, and grants will be announced 17 June 2016. See the round 1 2016 schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us at iegrantswikimedia · org .

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 05:09, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Improve 'Upload to Commons' Android App

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	6.9
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	5.7
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	6.7
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	6.7
Additional comments from the Committee: Yes, this project is sorely needed for multiple reasons, and could have a huge impact. Instagram has success in this area; why not follow a similar approach? There is a growing number of people who only interact with the Internet via their mobile phones, and they are being pushed mostly towards a consumption-only experience. Any solutions towards that are most welcome. Good idea, but I have concerns of the impact of the off-wiki app. This proposal is not innovative in that it proposes fixing some of the many concerns with the current app. I still share those concerns and would not vote for this proposal unless it starts with supporting upload campaigns. We need to enable easy uploading through campaigns as we do for Wiki Loves Monuments, and with Wikidata we should be able to improve at it. So if a person is browsing around with the nearby feature, some photo suggestions should pop up, allowing the user to upload a photo either directly taken, or one previously stored on his/her phone. The app takes care of things like categories and descriptions through the upload campaign, which takes its information from Wikidata. This would cause a lot less problems with the admittedly overextended Commons page patrol members, and make their job much easier. If this is successful, then a second part could be achieved by fully opening up the uploader. But we still see too much junk uploaded currently and mobile only contributes to that amount exponentially. We can easily measure success (from % of undeleted uploads coming from this application), and I think the potential impact is definitely greater than the risk. This tool is aimed at users already familiar with Wiki in some form, and does not attempt to bring in brand new editors - which would mitigate the big risk of the selfie-pocalypse that marred the controversial Mobile Upload feature from the Mobile Web team several years back. I have some concerns about the first tasks and their duration in the proposal. Looking at https://github.com/nicolas-raoul/apps-android-commons/graphs/contributors the applicant is the most active recent contributor (Full disclosure: the app was something I started back when I was still working for the Wikimedia Mobile team, and was abandoned many years ago). I also looked through some of the code written by the applicant and it seems pretty good! While I'm skeptical they can get all the proposed features implemented in the provided timeframe, I think there would be enough done to make this an useful IEG. Concrete goal could be executed in shorter time. Yes, lots of people want this (me too)! The best camera is a cell phone with data plan (3G, 4G, etc), because we don't have a computer to upload the photo. The project is well presented and the goals are clear and achievable. Enable this project for upload campaigns only, and then look into the Wikidata aspects of gathering the information through yes-no questions to allow uploading without typing in a lot of text, running spell-checks, etc. Given the prior work on this and the extremely reasonable expected pay, this is pretty much a no-brainer for me. I want to re-iterate that I'm one of the original developers of the app from many years ago (as can be seen in https://github.com/nicolas-raoul/apps-android-commons/graphs/contributors). I did it because I thought it was very important, so I'm clearly biased. I haven't touched it in many years due to various reasons, but if others feel this is a COI feel free to disregard my ratings :) This idea is great and well-documented, but I do not see the evidence of experience on Wikipedia. The applicant has very few edits on Wikimedia projects and limited Github contributions. I would be more than willing to support this on the next round, which by that time the applicant would have demonstrated their familiarity with Wikimedia projects.

-- MJue (WMF) (talk) 00:38, 3 June 2016 (UTC) on behalf of Marti (WMF)

Hi all,

Thank you for taking the time to read and review my proposal, I greatly appreciate it. :) I hope you will not mind me addressing a few of the concerns here:

• Campaigns: We are open to the prospect of implementing campaigns in the app; a campaigns feature was in the app previously and was removed because there appeared to be no interest in it. If there is strong support for implementing campaigns in the app, and if someone familiar with campaigns is willing to talk to us and provide feedback on our old implementation, we could work on that.

• Duration/time frame: There seem to be three different and potentially conflicting concerns here - could be done in shorter time, might not be doable in the provided time, and unspecified. Either way, if a consensus could be reached I am happy to adjust the durations or task list as needed, do let me know.

• Experience: It is true that I am relatively new to Wikimedia - I was introduced to WM via the Outreachy programme last year and most of my non-code-related contribution consists of photos uploaded to Commons. However, I have developed a few other Android apps, and I believe that I have made significant contributions to this app's source code, as evidenced by the contribution graph. I am also doing my best to learn the WM ropes along the way, through reading/talking to fellow Wikimedians and by working closely with my advisor, who has been a Wikimedian since 2005.

Cheers! Misaochan (talk) 13:27, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Round 1 2016 decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, $7,800

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is pleased to support the improvement and promotion of the Upload to Commons Android app. We appreciate the coding work you have already done on this project, and we’re glad to fund you in making further advancements to the tool. We recognize the importance of supporting users who interact solely or primarily via mobile phones. The committee especially looks forward to seeing the improvements aimed at guiding new volunteers toward useful contributions.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Questions? Contact us.

i18n

Let's continue at translatewiki:Thread:Support/Former_WMF_app_now_community-maintained,_where_to_crowdsource_localization?. Nemo 08:34, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Schedule

Misaochan: So, what is the schedule from now? Could you please fill the "Timeline" tab, if decided? Thanks! Syced (talk) 03:17, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

@Syced:: Marti told me that she would be in touch within the next two weeks with further setup info about the project pages. So I think I should probably wait for that before filling in the timeline - will let you know ASAP. :) AFAIK the IEG is quite flexible, there isn't a strict deadline like Outreachy. Cheers! Misaochan (talk) 03:20, 20 June 2016 (UTC)