Community Wishlist Survey 2015/Multimedia

Automatic numbering of pictures

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What is the problem you want to solve?

Sometimes pictures (tabulars, equations, etc.) are not described properly in the text. (=cannot directly be refered to, therefore...)
It is sometimes hard to figure out which picture is meant.

Which users would benefit?

Reader of Wikipedia would benefit, because the picture which is described is named unambiguously.
Editors of Wikipedia will have an easy to use tool to address a certain picture in the text.

How is this problem being addressed now?

Sometimes the pictures are numbered by the editors.
This is inconvenient, when there are a lot of pictures in one article, and more pictures are added somewhere in the middle of the article.

What are the proposed solutions?

Each picture, which should get a number, is marked with a label-tag.
One can now address the picture by addressing to the label-tag.
This is similar to the references numbering in wikipedia and the picture numbering in latex.

--Boehm (talk) 23:39, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier discussion and endorsements
  Endorsed See also phab:T7600. Helder 11:30, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  Endorsed --Debenben (talk) 22:27, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This is interesting. phab:T112991 is a 2016 Wikimedia Developer Summit proposal about refreshing our media styling support; this might also fit within that scope. Cscott (talk) 18:52, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

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  1.   Support --MGChecker (talk) 19:26, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2.   Support --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 14:44, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3.   Support -- Singhalawap (talk) 16:51, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4.   Support --Boehm (talk) 21:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5.   Support Helder 23:36, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6.   Support Stevie is the man! TalkWork 23:43, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7.   Oppose I just can't see the point, or recognise the "problems". What happens when they are rearranged, or changed? Johnbod (talk) 04:13, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Remark: That is exactly the problem: "What happens when they are rearranged, or changed?" Now the numbers have to be rearranged manually. In the case in which there are many numbers to fix, a manual rearrangement is prune to errors. An automatic numbering would mitigate the problem. Such a feature is a standard when writing e.g. a book and is technically easy to implement with labels. Without such a helping tool long articles are hard to maintain. --Boehm (talk) 10:08, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    But the vast majority of images aren't numbered, or referred to in the text. Presumably everyone adding an image would now have to number it, which is a vast amount of work for hardly any gain. I maintain plenty of long articles, with large numbers of images, without this being a problem. Even more unconvinced. Johnbod (talk) 20:48, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, I think I get your and Gap9551's point now. Not a single picture will get a single number unless it is desired. Only in the case, when it is needed, then a picture is marked with a label and gets then automatically a number. Therefore the number of the picture only appears, when it is needed. And yes, there are cases where it will definitely help. Think e.g. of wikibook articles. In the scientific part of wikipedia, where I contribute, a picture is always described in the text. And the reference has to be unambiguously. In this cases it will help, and in the other cases nothing will be changed to the status quo. --Boehm (talk) 21:42, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8.   Support @Johnbod: That is exactly the point. Now it can happen that someone changes or moves a picture and references like "see diagram on the right" get confusing or wrong. With the automatic numbering, the wikitext similar to "see fig.~\ref{mylabel}" gets translated to something like "see fig. 5", thus always refers to the diagram or produces an error like "reference broken". The system suggested is basically the same as the system used for references.--Debenben (talk) 23:58, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    See above. Johnbod (talk) 20:48, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  9.   Support But maybe only number (all) pictures in articles where at least one picture is referred to. Gap9551 (talk) 00:36, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  10.   Support - SantiLak (talk) 10:45, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  11.   Support -- Sir Gawain (talk) 14:03, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  12.   Oppose per Johnbod. A great deal of images included in articles aren't actually referred to in the text, and the overwhelming majority of images aren't numbered. I see no reason whatsoever to force numbering universally across all articles. I could potentially see a smaller scale tool to be used for individual articles when necessary, but there is no need to implement this across the whole project. Mz7 (talk) 05:41, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Remark: I have to apologies. My English is perhaps too poor to express what I mean. It was never my intention that all pictures should get numbers. Perhaps I didn't make that clear enough. Only the pictures, which are already numbered will get an automatic numbering, i.e. only pictures with an additionally added label. --Boehm (talk) 19:24, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    @Boehm: My apologies for misunderstanding. Thank you for clarifying. Per my original comment, as long as this is done on a smaller scale and only on articles where numbering would genuinely be helpful, then this has my support. Mz7 (talk) 21:26, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  13.   Support - Certainly not needed in many articles but an essential tool where image referencing is needed. SBaker43 (talk) 04:01, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  14.   Support MediaWiki software is used not only for encyclopedic articles, but for wikibooks, wikiversity, etc. too. In books, courses and so on the requested feature would be useful. -- Juetho (talk) 09:49, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Enhance image uploading process

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What is the problem you want to solve?
  • Normal way of uploading files using Special:Upload lacks of machine-readable metadata field. (i.e. Template:Information must be manually added and most of user are unaware of this template)
  • Users are confused on choosing the licenses and hence numerous images are wrongly licensed (e.g. fairuse image tagged as GFDL). This is mostly due to the confusing and text-heavy UI when choosing the licenses.
Which users would benefit? (editors, admins, Commons users, Wikipedia users, etc.)

Those who care about having correct machine-readable metadata in the images.

How is this problem being handled now?
  • Many wikis have their file uploading feature disabled and were redirected to Commons instead.
    But similar to the case on local wikis, by redirecting uploading process to Commons, I observed that the users still upload fair-use image to Commons since they are not aware about file licensing stuffs and their purpose is merely to upload image, i.e. they will choose whatever license options available to enable them upload their image for usage in the article.
  • In en.wiki, "FileUploadWizard" has been created to insert Template:Information to the image and hence there are machine-readable metadata.
    But to the other wikis where JS developers are lacking, nothing can be done since the localization has been hard-coded in the JS codes. Moreover, the UI has not improved since it is heavily text-based (and as a result, looks like a Terms & Conditions page)
  • I'm not aware about other wikis, but in id.wiki, localization effort of "FileUploadWizard" has been started but stalled due to the large effort needed in improving the UI.
What are the proposed solutions? (if there are any ideas)
  • Enable commons:Special:UploadWizard in local wikis, enhancing its features to adapt with local wiki rules, including the fair-use licenses.
    Indonesian Wikipedia community has proposed this, but nothing has been done yet since this Phabricator task was not supported by the developers there.

Kenrick95 (talk) 11:47, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier discussion and endorsements
  EndorsedYes! Make UploadWizard compatible with local copyright tags.  Ę-oиė  >>> 14:49, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to above, there are other issues:

  1. UploadWizard on Commons is broken, and needs to be fixed (most urgent task);
  2. Easy transfer of images between Wikipedias and Commons, and back (right now one needs to be admin locally to moved a file from Commons);
  3. Easier chunked uploads for large files (can be included if #1 above is fixed);

Votes

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  1.   Support anything that can enhance this complicated process and make it easier in the non-en wikis. Stevie is the man! TalkWork 23:47, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2.   Oppose I think it is better to just upload images to Commons, instead of uploading locally and relying on others to move it to Commons. --Jarekt (talk) 03:57, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3.   Comment: If the solution proposed above seems to be to integrate enwiki's FileUploadWizard to other wikis, then I oppose. In my opinion, the wizard is clunky, and is not user friendly to a point where it accommodates for every possible scenario. For example, on enwiki, there are several fair-use rationale templates that can be used for different situations, but usually requires that the uploader fill out several fields of information that they may either not know or not need if a more specific template was used. That, and the current state of the File Upload Wizard causes more work for editors who review file uploads (such as myself): for about 9/10 uploads through the wizard, I have to replace the fair-use template with a more specific template, which causes unnecessary burning of time for volunteers when the wizard should have placed the correct template itself. Steel1943 (talk) 21:40, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Improve SVG rendering

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What is the problem it would solve?
 
de:Kraft: Third pic has bug described by task T7792

SVG is an important file format for graphics on Wikipedia and is used in thousands of science articles. And this also the underlying software libRSVG has many problems with rendering SVG even the article about force in german (de:Kraft) is affected.

The issue arises since libRSVG was programmed by the Gnome Project to render scalabe icons for their desktop environment. Graphics that contain text was not a goal and activities around libRSVG are limited to maintenance today. Because of that important features required for usage inside Wikipedia are buggy or missing. Some bug reports and feature requests by our community are undone since nearly ten years. A test of my own showed that fixing an issue often takes only few days (see task T7792).

SVG is important to Wikipedia but without our intervention the underlying software stays error prone.

Another big example...
 
File:GTAW broken.svg: Buggy since ten years!!!

The file on the right is used by en:Gas tungsten arc welding and in many more languages and even translated. It provoked bug described by task T97758. Due to its long endurance on Wikipidia it has been shown to our readers many million times. (A workaround has been applied to render it correctly recently.)

Further...

To get an overview about the importance of a file format some statistic is useful. Based on database dump dewiki-20150302-pages-articles.xml.bz2 of german language Wikipedia the following estimation can be done. (Only short evaluation about systematic errors has been done.)

  • SVG: 56k
  • PNG: 92k (similar scope as SVG)
  • JPG: 1104k (mostly pictures)
  • GIF: 10k (similar scope as SVG)

Results have been gained with Linux tool en:grep. To change to another file format adapt the following command line call. date && grep -o -E "(gif|GIF)\|(thumb|mini)" ./dewiki-latest-pages-articles.xml | wc -w && date (Only counts images that are embedded as thumb preview and not e. g. all the small flags in sport statistics.)

Which users would benefit?

Everybody who is researching scientific or technical information on Wikipedia of any language will benefit. SVG is the preferred file format for high quality science graphics.

It will increase participation because less errors in SVG rendering removes pitfalls for authors without experience in the limitations of libRSVG. As consequence less distraction is created and new authors keep contributing.

This also increases quality because less errors in SVG renderer switches focus from workarounds to content. SVG simplifies re-usage and translation of content and high quality graphics can be share across languages. Thus improving and promoting SVG pushes quality.

How is this problem being handled now?

The SVG renderer libRSVG is part of the Gnome Project. Although it is not in the focus of the Gnome community as it does its job for their purposes. The Maintainer of libRSVG is Federico Mena Quintero. He maintains libRSVG in his spare time.

And some examples...
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Bug task T65703

patch needs update

task T7792

patch needs update

task T65236

patch needs review

task T55899

patch needs review

task T43426
Bad   TODO Empty sheet  
Good  
With workaround

Rendered with Inkscape
TODO  
With workaround
 
With workaround
What are the proposed solutions?

Fix around eight to ten bugs that are especially important for usage of SVG on Wikipedia. Fixing only a few simple bugs would reduce the pain greatly. I expect this to require four weeks of work for fixing bugs, test them and manage software release. (In case fixing libRSVG code is beyond the capabilities of the Tech Team at least managing existing patches would be helpful.)

-- Menner (talk) 20:04, 9 November 2015 (UTC) I'll support selecting bugs, mastering libRSVG code and software release, too.[reply]

Earlier discussion and endorsements

Opinions

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Discussion

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@MER-C:I haven't completed with my wishlist yet. Here is a list of bugs. Half of them is not a libRSVG problem some are corner cases. Most of the bug reports contain a link to a Gnome Bugs.
Yes it shouldn't take long to update patches. Creating patches also doesn't take long. I've made five easy patches in five days but thoroughly releasing also takes time... and on the long term it is WMFs responsability to maintain libRSVG.
In task T112421 it says libRSVG 2.40.2 is in use. libRSVG 2.40.11 is released currently but I don't know if its still compatibly with Ubuntu 12.10 LTE used by WMF.
--Menner (talk) 21:03, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a bunch of tickets that will be closed when updating to the latest version. Community Tech can't help with system operations, unfortunately, and I don't think the WMF should be the maintainers of this software. See if you can ask for commit access -- I fear patches submitted by Community Tech will be swallowed by Bugzilla. MER-C (talk) 21:31, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Federico is quite open to our interests although he's short on time. I haven't talked to him recently and he is difficult to grasp. He accepted two of my patches but then omitted the next three without comment. I don't have enough time to push them currently and I see WMF in the responsebility to go on. -- Menner (talk) 22:00, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The table with examples is going off the side of the page (at least on my screen). This makes scrolling up and down the page awkward. Is it possible to move that to another page, and link to it? DannyH (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Menner: These are probably not bugs that the Community Tech team could address directly. However, if it is identified as a high priority by the community, we could help investigate the problems and flag them to other teams (or outside developers). As MER-C mentioned, the Ops team is responsible for our SVG rendering on the production wikis, but maybe there are some solutions that haven't been considered yet. For example, perhaps the WMF could hire a contractor from the GNOME community to work on librsvg for Ops. (Also, I'm afraid you can't endorse your own proposal. Sorry if that's confusing.) Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 22:36, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Ryan Kaldari (WMF): Sorry, I have little time this week. I won't reply until saturday. Just for short I'm aware of your annotations and I'll explain later. -- Menner (talk) 07:33, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@MER-C: GNOME does not accept pull requests via GitHub, as far as I know patches go into GNOME Bugzilla. --Malyacko (talk) 16:07, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Ryan Kaldari (WMF): How exactly the Tech Team will address this problem will be arbitrated after the vote. I'm a developer and already created some patches for libRSVG. The most important thing by the Tech Team would be to manage the existing patches being applied. I've already tried to fix some issues. This had limited success since two busy spare time developers living each on the other side of the earth won't team well.
Further I expect the vote to be a signal for WMF to keep an eye on libRSVG and feedback and reason for me to keep on.
-- Menner (talk) 18:59, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Menner: Sure, we would be happy to help however we can. Pushing on existing patches is certainly doable, and perhaps something we could help with regardless of the vote. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 05:49, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

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  1.   Support --Tobias1984 (talk) 11:32, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2.   Support Goldzahn (talk) 12:40, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3.   Support Not sure how much Community Tech can do here - this is pretty specialised code we're talking about here, and Community Tech is a generalist team - but anything, even just nagging Operations to update librsvg, will be a help. This, that and the other (talk) 13:20, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4.   SupportUser: Perhelion 15:44, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5.   Support BethNaught (talk) 17:41, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6.   Support Patrick87 (talk) 18:08, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7.   Support --MGChecker (talk) 19:27, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8.   Support along with text-editing of SVG, as if it was an article! --YodinT 02:53, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  9.   Support We should contribute back to FOSS projects we heavily rely on. --Ricordisamoa 06:43, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  10.   Support --Arnd (talk) 14:54, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  11.   Support tufor (talk) 15:54, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  12.   Support Goombiis (talk) 16:30, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  13.   Support Benedictus Levita (talk) 16:31, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  14.   Support Ckoerner (talk) 17:10, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  15.   Support Marlus Gancher (talk) 22:04, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  16.   Support  Trizek from FR 22:12, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  17.   Support Stevie is the man! TalkWork 23:50, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  18.   Support --Oriciu (talk) 00:45, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  19.   Support RoodyAlien (talk) 02:59, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  20.   Support Mule hollandaise (talk) 10:13, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  21.   Support --β16 - (talk) 14:09, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  22.   SupportNickK (talk) 15:25, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  23.   Support--Manlleus (talk) 15:33, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  24.   Support Pbm (talk) 12:16, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  25.   SupportBilorv (talk) 20:01, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  26.   Support Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:28, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  27.   Support SantiLak (talk) 10:45, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  28.   Support --Moroboshi (talk) 13:45, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  29.   Support --OSeveno (talk) 16:05, 4 December 2015 (UTC) SVG is also very important for maps (thousands of files) and heraldry (tens of thousands of files)[reply]
  30.   Support Halibutt (talk) 22:45, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  31.   Support -- Sir Gawain (talk) 14:04, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  32.   Support \\ Martin Kraft (talk) 17:11, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  33.   Support \\ ÅñŧóñŜûŝî (Ð) 04:31, 8 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  34.   Support --Waldir (talk) 15:30, 8 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  35.   SupportValtlait (talk) 14:16, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  36.   Support«« Man77 »» [de] 18:06, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  37.   Support --Pokéfan95 (talk) 04:51, 12 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  38.   Support --Stranger195 (talkcontribs) 07:18, 12 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  39.   Support --NaBUru38 (talk) 03:47, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  40.   Support --‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏Th‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 12:38, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  41.   Support --ESM (talk) 16:28, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  42.   Support --Harald321 (talk) 17:10, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  43.   Support Alkamid (talk) 22:30, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  44.   Support --Tgr (talk) 22:52, 13 December 2015 (UTC) (also thanks Menner for all your work on fixing libRSVG bugs!) --Tgr (talk) 22:52, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  45.   Support I could not understand which problem is present in the example pictures, but in the past I created vetorial images using Inkspace and they got really messed on Wikimedia Commons.--MisterSanderson (talk) 01:18, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  46.   Support -- Juetho (talk) 09:49, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested multimedia for article

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A tool similar to FIST, but a one that works well, and integrated. Matanya (talk) 22:45, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier discussion and endorsements
  Endorsed Relatedly, I wrote a tool to suggest images based on other wikis; much less ambitious than FIST, but it seems stable: GLAMify. Ijon (talk) 17:11, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

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  1.   Oppose I'm comfortable with keeping this as an external tool, like other tools that make suggestions. I'm not sure what integration buys us. Stevie is the man! TalkWork 23:55, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Use of pictures in wikipedia

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Sorry, my english is very poor, so I write in german:

Jeder Uploader von Bildern kann über die Dateiliste seine hochgeladenen Bilder ansehen. Bei jedem einzelnen Bild ist die Verwendung in den einzelnen Sprachversionen angegeben.

Im Laufe der Jahre habe ich viel über Bildbearbeitung gelernt und kann meine Bilder entsprechend verbessern. Es ist sehr zeitaufwändig, deshalb wünsche ich mir eine Erweiterung der Dateiliste um eingebunden (nur einen Hinweis, nicht wo das Foto eingebunden ist).

Gruss --Nightflyer (talk) 22:50, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Translation: Uploaders of pictures can examine their uploads using Special:Listfiles. On each of the file description pages, its inclusion is recorded for each of the individual projects. During many years, I've learned a lot about image editing, allowing me to improve my pictures. This is quite time consuming, hence I would like to have an extension of Special:Listfiles that marks included images (just a hint, not the complete list where the photograph is used). --AFBorchert (talk) 07:29, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier discussion and endorsements

Votes

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  1.   Support Yes, it would be useful to quickly find which of your own image uploads are most used across Wikimedia projects so that you could focus on improving their processing and captions. —Pengo (talk) 14:17, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2.   Support--Manlleus (talk) 15:33, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3.   SupportBeleg Tâl (talk) 17:06, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4.   Support per Pengo. Stevie is the man! TalkWork 18:46, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5.   Support per Pengo - SantiLak (talk) 10:45, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6.   Support Halibutt (talk) 22:46, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7.   Support // Martin Kraft (talk) 17:13, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8.   Support --Edgars2007 (talk) 09:10, 12 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  9.   Support This "ListFiles" page can be far more impoved, but this proposal is good too. --MisterSanderson (talk) 01:20, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  10.   Support -- Juetho (talk) 09:49, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]