As someone who has uploaded lots of photos to Wikimedia Commons [1], I think one main challenge is coming up with an encyclopedic description and the right categories.
Searching for categories is remarkably difficult, manual, and unintuitive. For example, I recently uploaded a photo of a Caltrain at San Jose Diridon station [2]. So I put "Category:San Jose Diridon station" as a category. But this was in fact incorrect, since there's a more specific category called "Category:Trains at San José Diridon station". On Wikimedia Commons, the UI to add a category only tells you if a category exists or not, but doesn't let you search nicely.
There are also location/time categories like "Category:December 2023 in California". Probably less than 1% of photos taken during December 2023 in California get added to such categories, even when GPS and EXIF data contain information about the location and date of capture.
As for writing a description, it should be comprehensive, descriptive, yet succinct, in an encyclopedic tone, and with links to relevant categories on Wikimedia Commons or to relevant pages on Wikipedia as necessary. Again, making the relevant links is mildly tedious.
As a result, when uploading any single photo, I would need to open dozens of tabs to verify the right pages and categories.
I therefore really admire some tireless contributors on Wikimedia Commons who are constantly patrolling new uploads and adding the right categories. To be honest I have no idea how they manage to do that.
> Probably less than 1% of photos taken during December 2023 in California get added to such categories, even when GPS and EXIF data contain information about the location and date of capture.
I've been developping a map web app for a few weeks. It's amazing how wikimedia commons's geotagged photos can help build a nice experience.
Of course it's far from Google Maps in terms of numbers. Like an order or magnitude lower. And almost nothing about commercial POIs. But still ! It's free.
Bringing beautiful, up to date and tagged photos to Wikimedia commons could power dozens of cool applications.
For me, the hardest part was that people's photos are hard to get into Wikipedia/WikimediaCommons. You have to go through OTRS and it was a solid pain in the ass. In the end, I didn't do very many as a result. Things, on the other hand, you can do much more easily.
Amazing work on this knowledge graph engine component edward (and whomever else was involved). Flickr Foundation is already paying dividends. Is there some way to push signal from Wikicommons as to photos needed that could be added to Flickr with the appropriate license for Wikicommons consumption?
The tool posts the pictures to Wikimedia Commons, logging in there is required for file upload (hello I'm Jessamyn the Community Manager at the Flickr Foundation - please try this tool out and let us know what you think). It was created in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation.
The images could be uploaded using a bot account, but if the user corrects any of the metadata during the upload, you don't want those contributions attributed to the bot.
Searching for categories is remarkably difficult, manual, and unintuitive. For example, I recently uploaded a photo of a Caltrain at San Jose Diridon station [2]. So I put "Category:San Jose Diridon station" as a category. But this was in fact incorrect, since there's a more specific category called "Category:Trains at San José Diridon station". On Wikimedia Commons, the UI to add a category only tells you if a category exists or not, but doesn't let you search nicely.
There are also location/time categories like "Category:December 2023 in California". Probably less than 1% of photos taken during December 2023 in California get added to such categories, even when GPS and EXIF data contain information about the location and date of capture.
As for writing a description, it should be comprehensive, descriptive, yet succinct, in an encyclopedic tone, and with links to relevant categories on Wikimedia Commons or to relevant pages on Wikipedia as necessary. Again, making the relevant links is mildly tedious.
As a result, when uploading any single photo, I would need to open dozens of tabs to verify the right pages and categories.
I therefore really admire some tireless contributors on Wikimedia Commons who are constantly patrolling new uploads and adding the right categories. To be honest I have no idea how they manage to do that.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dllu
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caltrain_Stadler_KIS...