Community Wishlist/Wishes/Suggest media set in Wikidata items for their Wikipedia articles

Suggest media set in Wikidata items for their Wikipedia articles Delivered

Description

Many items on Wikidata have a video, audio, or image set while the corresponding Wikipedia articles don't have any media or include only less representative/useful ones.

There are many reasons why contributors may only add files to Wikidata items – for example it's much easier and quicker to add these there instead of editing Wikipedia articles where the file needs a caption and good placement location or because there are hundreds of language versions of Wikipedia and it would feel excessive and be extremely time-intensive to add the file to them (or many of them). If there's a new useful illustrative file on Commons and it gets added to a Wikidata item assuming it takes ~2 minutes to open an article, select an appropriate place, machine translate the caption, and insert the image into the article, it would take 10 hours to add just one file to the articles of all the Wikipedias if most of them have an article on the subject. This is one of the reasons why I think enabling adding media across language versions would be preferable (see related wish below). However, what is proposed here could be complementary to that (maybe also help enable that) and improve things a lot until something like that is implemented if ever.

This proposal relates to media set in the following WD properties: schematic, spoken text audio (esp. relevant once this is done), film poster, image, audio, video, locator map, detail map. There may be several further ones here to consider. It would only suggest the media if it's not yet included in the article.

Currently, not even high-quality files that have been featured of Wikimedia Commons' frontpage as 'Media of the Day' get added to any of the relevant Wikipedia articles, let alone many or all of them. A few examples: this video would be useful somewhere in Melbourne tram route 96, this in Hakkaisan Ropeway, this in Medical ultrasound, this in Pika etc.

When a media file has language of work or name set as a qualifier in Wikidata (or on the item overall), then it would only be suggested to the language version matching that language (or if the language is widely understood in the Wikipedia's regions like English is in German-language regions and no version matching the language is set on the item as well). Here I think some files, mainly those that have the qualifier 'full video' or those that have subtitles, should still be suggested to be added even if there is a language mismatch – for example Amazing Mr. X (1948) should also be suggested to be added to w:it:The Amazing Mr. X. Note that many smaller language Wikipedias' articles often are very outdated and are barely added to and thus often miss useful media even if such is set in ENWP from where the media could theoretically be synced if it contains the same article section.

I propose that if a Wikidata item has a media file set that is missing in the Wikipedia article, adding that media is suggested to users somehow. One could wait a while until this suggestion is shown (e.g. one month) to prevent problematic/inappropriate files that get removed on Wikidata relatively quickly to be suggested. Which method would be best (maybe several could be used) could be explored as part of this issue. These are some of the options:

Technical ways to implement this

A gadget that fetches the Wikidata item and displays it to the Wikipedia editors who can then select a good place in the article and add the file(s) with one or two clicks and/or a Wikidata-query-based script that shows such articles and feeds into a tool that editors can use to add the media semi-automatically (both not recommended because only very few would enable the gadget and use it on a small random subset of articles)
Suggested Edits in the mobile app and/or Newcomer tasks
Automatic creation of Talk page posts suggesting the media to be added (they would need to get marked as solved once done)
Automatic addition of the media if nobody responded to/declined a Talk page post about a bot adding the media (especially useful for smaller-language Wikipedias and somewhat a hybrid with the 'adding media across languages' wish linked below) [I think this or something like it would probably the best approach]
Some MediaWiki change or default-enabled tool that shows the media on Wikidata and/or allows easily adding such (e.g. a preference to "Show media set on Wikidata item at the top each with a button to 'add into article')

This is already implemented to some extent on some smaller Wikipedias which integrate media set in the Wikidata item in the infobox template (e.g. see ast:Ultrasoníu). However, these:

only integrate one media file even if multiple are set on the property
show the media file directly instead of giving it a little time so Wikidata and/or Wikipedia editors can check whether it's useful and it doesn't seem to consider language qualifiers and is not feasible to be done at scale across the many infobox templates across the many Wikipedias
only integrate the media if an infobox is set but these are not set on most articles
seem to only be used in several smaller Wikipedias and even there only in a few templates

Having more media in articles would make Wikipedia more interesting and engaging as well as more informative. There also is this goal We will innovate in different content formats, develop new software functionalities for Wikimedia projects, […] and to deliver knowledge as a service for all.

Assigned focus area

Better stitching between Commons and other projects

Type of wish

Feature request

Related projects

Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons

Affected users

Wikipedia users

Other details

Created: 18:06, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
Last updated: 16:57, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
Author: Prototyperspective (talk)