Community Wishlist/Focus areas/Improved discovery of media files
Description
Volunteers believe that Commons files are not easily discoverable in popular third-party search tools, as well as on-wiki experiences.
Volunteers are concerned that Commons media is not indexed by third-party search engines, such as Google and DuckDuckGo, and suggest that discovery could be improved through machine-assisted translation of categories and OEmbed on social media and other websites.
There are also ideas to improve our own media search, such as adding a date range filter and making it possible to search visually using an image.
Other details
Last updated: 23:39, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
Created: 21:20, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
Wishes in this focus area
Below is a list of wishes that have informed this focus area. More wishes may be added to this table over time. Voting for the focus area is not a guarantee that each wish will be explicitly delivered; rather, the wishes are suggestive of the problem at large. Once a focus area is adopted, the respective team will work alongside communities to prioritize and deliver on the most impactful solutions.
| Wish | Phabricator tasks | Type | Projects | Date (UTC) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oEmbed for Commons | T364479 | Feature request | Wikimedia Commons | December 16, 2024 | Open |
| Do something about Google & DuckDuckGo search not indexing media files and categories on Commons | System change | Wikimedia Commons | December 13, 2024 | Submitted | |
| Add machine translated category titles on WMC | Feature request | Wikimedia Commons | December 12, 2024 | Open | |
| Add a date range filter to Special:MediaSearch | T329961 | Feature request | Wikimedia Commons | December 12, 2024 | Open |
| Search Wikipedia with image or sketch search | Feature request | Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Wikisource | December 12, 2024 | Open | |
| (Commons) file description pages should be indexable by (Google) search | T54647 | Bug report | Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, Wikisource | December 12, 2024 | Open |
Voting
This area currently has 4 supporters. Voting for this area is open until it is completed. Show your support using the button below.
Supporters of this area
Support Prototyperspective (talk) 23:37, 11 December 2024 (UTC) there's lots of useful media on Commons but it's not found by people searching the Web or reading Wikipedia (WP). They are also not found by Wikipedians – many WP articles are without illustrations even when there are high-quality images & videos on Commons. Media can make WP more interesting and help explain/visualize the subject. Its not just there for hosting WP files – it has >111 million files. Most categories only get a handful of views per month. Why should one contribute to the site if its well-organized media is largely excluded from Web search results? Commons is the 2nd largest Wikimedia project and is very far from its potential. Sorting and filtering by date would also be useful, currently one can only sort by date uploaded. Support Nosferattus (talk) 18:56, 17 December 2024 (UTC) I think a lot of improvements could be made to both Commons' Special:MediaSearch and how we are advertising our media to search engines.