Mobile/2013 strategy planning/Archive

This is a mobile team strategy planning space for the third quarter of the 2012-2013 fiscal year (January-March 2013).

Goal

1,000 unique users uploading files per month to Wikimedia projects by end of June 2013.

The numbers

Desktop

All of the following numbers are for November 2012 (after Wiki Loves Monuments) except the stats for the Wiki Loves Monument app. Values are rounded up to the nearest thousand.

Commons

Where users of all Wikimedia projects (all 280+ Wikipedias, plus sister projects) upload original work and freely licensed images – e.g., some Creative Commons licenses, public domain images, images whose copyright has expired.

• 19,000 total Commons uploaders (= user who has uploaded 1 or more files to Commons)

Out of:

• 28,000 users with at least one edit (including uploads) to Commons (68% of Commons users uploaded at least one file)
• 109,096 users who have touched their account (= logged in or reaccessed the site after a saved login) between November and now

→ For our target of 1,000 mobile uploaders, we’d need to get 5% of the desktop Commons uploaders to contribute via mobile

English Wikipedia

Where users of English Wikipedia upload non-free fair use images – e.g., book covers, logos, copyrighted photographs – that can only be used to illustrate certain articles and have to come with a fair use rationale. Note: the main entry point for uploading files on English Wikipedia is in the left nav under Toolbox.

• 1,000 total English Wikipedia uploaders (= user who has uploaded 1 or more files to English Wikipedia)

Out of:

• 503,000 users with at least one edit (including uploads) to Enwiki (less than 1% of English Wikipedia users uploaded at least one file)

→ For our target of 1,000 mobile uploaders, we’d need to get 100% of the desktop Enwiki uploaders to contribute via mobile

Apps

Wikimedia App for Android

• 626,201 net installs (installs - uninstalls) of the Wikimedia app for Android in November 2012

Wiki Loves Monuments App for Android

Used specifically to take photos of monuments and landmarks for the Wiki Loves Monuments initiative. WLM app was marketed through site notices on different language Wikipedias and Commons (to logged in users)

• 500 total uploaders using the Wiki Loves Monuments app for Android during the month-long WLM campaign in October

Out of:

• 30,000 users who downloaded the app (2% of app users uploaded at least one file)

→ For our target of 1,000 mobile uploaders, we’d need to get 300% of the WLM uploaders to contribute via mobile

What users upload

This is a general survey of uploads on Commons and a comparable image repository, Flickr.

What users tend to upload to Commons (based on a sample of 100 unique user uploads in the first week of November), which had desktop-only uploads that month.

Compared to what users tend to upload on Flickr (based on a sample of 100 unique user uploads in the first week of November), which has both desktop and mobile uploads.

The gist

As drives like Wiki Loves Monuments have shown, there’s a lot of room for more high quality original content on Commons. Certain areas of the encyclopedia are underrepresented with images – food/drink, nature, people, and objects out in the real world are not as commonly documented on Commons as compared to sites like Flickr.

For some of these use cases, Wikipedians tend to reupload freely licensed images from Flickr and other sites to Commons, rather than take their own photos. With a mobile image contribution pipeline, we can empower them to change that dynamic and donate their own work directly to Commons.

Apps vs. Mobile web

There is a tradeoff between apps and the mobile gateway: apps can be very successful for giving power users the ability to upload many images, but they come with a steep dropoff of users who make it all the way through the funnel (downloading an app –> installing and opening an app –> taking a photo with an app –> successfully saving).

The industry standard is a 20% dropoff from each step. For a 100% fully-focused app campaign, that means we would have to get over 100,000 users to download an app to get 1,000 uploaders. (That’s WLM times 3).

Currently, WMF Wikipedia apps account for approximately 4% of mobile page views (data needs to be verified).

The mobile web tends to have less support in native javascript for photo uploads and is limited to a much smaller set of browsers.

How we’ll get there

• Commons-specific Android app
• MobileFrontEnd: enable photo uploads via the mobile web

Other potential projects:

• Enabling photo uploads for WMF Wikipedia Android and iPhone apps
• Commons-specific iPhone app
• Mobile-fying commons web

Feature Idea brainstorm

Please use this space to enter any feature ideas for meeting our goal. They may be along the lines of any of the above projects (e.g., Commons-specific Android app, mobile web photo uploads), or something entirely different.

Apps working together with Mobile Web

• For phones that don't support mobile uploads advertise apps as a a way to participate where applicable.

Mobile Web

• Ability to upload photo from an article
• Ability to upload photo, but not associated with an article
• Ability to mark an article as needing images
• Ability to create a photo work queue
• CTA to create account from photo upload link
• CTA update these possibly outdated photos near you
• CTA upload missing photos for locations near you (that lack them)
• Automatic insertion of photo into gallery at the bottom of the article
• Photo uploaded to commons, but association with Wikipedia article happens manually (via commons user)
• Photo refreshing
  • allow users to vote a photo as needing a refresh, allow users to suggest new photos and 'vote them in'.
• Create a stub article from a photo upload
• Ability to upload multiple photos at once
• Suggest an article to associate the photo with after upload, based on GPS coordinates of photo
• Suggest articles without a photo in Donate image
• Provide licensing options, keep associated with user account
• Simplified commons viewing/browsing

• Games
  • Allow users to start 'games' around a certain theme to kill time (e.g. on bus). Choose between geolocated photo treasure hunts, curation games or specific photo requests (e.g. collect 10 photos of faces).
    • Allow volunteers to suggest game types and vote weekly winners
    • A possible curation game might involve a user picking a photo and the other user having to guess what the photo is of - adding categories as they go along. Is it an animal (Yes adds animal category)? Is it a mammal.. (adds mammal category)?

Commons Android app

In general for Android, we should be building 'apps' - small tools that do one thing well themselves, and integrate amazingly well into the rest of the system. A grand 'everything, and the kitchen sink' app won't be the best of ideas. Android offers easy ways of integrating functionality from one app into another, and we should take full advantage of that.

• Ability to upload directly from mobile device
• Ability to upload multiple files at once from a mobile device
• Save for later upload/desktop upload
• Banner on commons directing users to download app
• Ability to select default licensing (via settings)
• Discovery/Browsing of commons
• Simple curation interface (But what incentives?)
  • Simple backlog clearing jobs - individualized apps for things picked out of commons:Category:Images_for_cleanup
  • Simple categorization jobs - clear out backlogs by adding categories for pages (also do deletion and renames)
• Audio uploads
• Video uploads
• Targeted micro-apps
  • Small apps that let you upload / view only one thing (Street Signs, Graffiti, Shots of Cloud Formation, Sounds of Animals, Different types of Vehicle Horns, whatever)
  • Easy for people who have no idea what commons is to get started, and simple enough to write
  • Will be eventually rolled into the 'Campaigns' part of the app. Micro-apps will let us experiment with them much earlier
• Campaigns support
  • Use UploadCampaigns to have anyone setup easy campaigns - city specific PhotoWalks, a Safari shot, whatever
  • Campaigns are also a 'discovery' tool - using one shows all the photos that've been uploaded as part of that campaign, and allows you to add new
  • See How Times used Instagram during Sandy for a potentially awesome (in terms of tech, that is) use case
• Simple 'articles near you needing photos' app
• ... your ideas here!

General

• All photos must be tagged as mobile uploads
• Make 'picture requests' from Commons easily accessible, use as a CTA: commons:Commons:Picture_requests

Planning meeting etherpad

http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/MobileQ3Planning

User stories generated from planning

Mobile web

Captured in Mingle

Apps

Upload

Must have

• Login
  • As a Commons uploader, I want to be able to log into commons when i start the app (and keep your credentials) M
    • Share login between the apps [requires native enwp app]
  • [for now at least, require login to use the app -- make it nice and simple]
  • provide a logout as well

• Ability to upload directly from mobile device
  • As a Commons app user, while browsing a gallery of commons photos i would like to upload a new photo to it M [later]
    • Requires gallery browsing

• Ability to upload multiple files at once from a mobile device
  • As a Commons app user, I would like be able to upload multiple photos directly from my image library using the share functionality, so that i can upoad something really quick M [8]

(not app specific) I would like to e-mail photos to my commons account

• • • Upload queue - what about adding descriptions/captions to the images?

• Campaigns support
  • Use UploadCampaigns to have anyone setup easy campaigns - city specific PhotoWalks, a Safari shot, whateverM [13, maybe a spike]
  • Campaigns are also a 'discovery' tool - using one shows all the photos that've been uploaded as part of that campaign, and allows you to add new
  • See How Times used Instagram during Sandy for a potentially awesome (in terms of tech, that is) use case

Should have

• Ability to upload directly from mobile device
  • As a Commons app user, I would like be able to upload a photo directly from my gallery using the share functionalityS [done]

• As a Wikipedian/Commons App user I want to request photos of a certain nature so that I can crowdsource lots of nice pretty photosS

• Browse
  • As Commons app user, i would like to be able to browse various galleries led by searchingS - discovery, a search mechanism for commons [8]

• Recommended
  • As a Commons app user, I would like to see a customized start page, so that i see images that are similar to what i've recently uploadedS
    • Using categories as the recommending engine (n+ scariness) [8 for basic, 13+/spike for making it sweet]

Could have

• Take a photo
  • As a Commons app user, I would like to take photos directly from the app so that my contributions can show up on CommonsC

• Save for WIFI["upload more like this" on any file page?]
  • As a Commons app user, I would like to be able to save photos i've taken though the app to upload when i have a hi speed connection, so that i don't have to deal with my slow 3g connectionC

• Ability to select default licensing (via settings)
  • As a commons app user I want to be able to change my default license because I am not happy with it C (could gain political capital!) ... and apply it to all my existing photos <-- CC-BY-SA and most other licenses aren't revokable, so a big mehW

• My contributions
  • As Commons app user, I would like to be able to view a gallery of all of my contributions
  • As a commons app user I would like to organise my gallery contributions (e.g. categories / description )C

Unprioritized

• I would like to freely license photos to commons I have uploaded on on external websites such as flickr, picasa

• Simple 'articles near you needing photos' app
  • As a Commons app user, I would like to be suggested possible subjects for photos near me, so that i know what to photographS [requires nearby, dependent on Solr work by Max] [13]

CTA stuff

• Banner on commons directing users to download app

Curation stuff

• Simple curation interface (But what incentives?)
  • Simple backlog clearing jobs - individualized apps for things picked out of commons:Category:Images_for_cleanup
  • Simple categorization jobs - clear out backlogs by adding categories for pages (also do deletion and renames)

Viewing stuff

• View of global dashboard of activity/photo uploads/etctc
• Discovery/Browsing of commons