Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Multimedia and Commons/Easier drag-and-drop uploading with licensing options

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Easier drag-and-drop uploading with licensing options

  • Problem: It's hard to upload images and provide the correct licensing information. A prime example is screenshots. They could be more frequently shared at technical support venues like the English Wikipedia's Village Pump (technical), but many users don't because they either don't know how to upload images or are confused by the licensing.
  • Proposed solution: Expand the VisualEditor drag-and-drop upload tool to have a dropdown that lets you select the license.

    A similar solution could also be explored for the 2010 wikitext editor.

  • Who would benefit: Users helping others with technical issues on the wiki, and users who simply want to upload and use images more easily.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Qwerfjkl (talk) 18:30, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • FWIW, this would be amazing, although I'm not entirely certain how much utility it would have outside of one's first few uploads. That being said, anything that makes it easier to contribute good content to the project is a win in my book. Foxtrot620 (talk) 02:27, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Qwerfjkl: To help me get a better understanding of the problem, what is it specifically about uploading screenshots that makes it harder than uploading other images? Thanks, DWalden (WMF) (talk) 08:25, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Nothing; images are hard to upload in general (I haven't tried, actually, apart from screenshots), although screenshots are frequently store in the clipboard which makes saving them as a file and then uploading them a hassl.. I just picked screenshots because it's something I frequently have to do. This could, I suppose, be extended to images in general. Qwerfjkl (talk) 16:53, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Qwerfjkl Are you primarily referring to screenshots of Wikipedia or MediaWiki software? I ask because I see value in specific functionality for that, for example to report bugs at technical forums like w:WP:VPT. On phab: we can just click and drag and don't have to bother with licensing. Commons isn't built for that, so I think a "screenshot uploader" would be nifty as it'd prefill all the licensing info and categorization. A more generalized upload tool would have to be as complicated as our default upload forms to accommodate other use cases. Of course, the screenshot uploader could be abused/misused as well, but that could be curtailed if it was limited to only certain pages like technical forums. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 16:24, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @MusikAnimal, yes, I'm referring to screenshots of WIkipedia. Qwerfjkl (talk) 16:28, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question Question: Isn't this already mostly integrated with the Visual Editor? If you edit a page in VE, you can PASTE from your clipboard which starts the upload screen. — xaosflux Talk 15:05, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Interesting. This is pretty much what I'd like, but outside of VE. (You can try this by adding ?veaction=edit to the URL.) Qwerfjkl (talk) 16:56, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Qwerfjkl: I took inspiration from this and wrote a script. (It's pretty hacky.) Nardog (talk) 18:19, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Comment: Just thinking out-loud, this sounds like a request for a pastebin-like tool for images, maybe one which you sign in to via OAuth which uploads the image for you and sets the licence/category templates? ~TheresNoTime-WMF (talk) 17:54, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is a secondary issue here in that we lack social discussion for how to manage screenshots. The only template we have for copyright tagging is {{Wikimedia screenshot}}, which by default makes assumptions that screenshots contain copyrightable content. Often screenshots should have CC0 licenses, particularly when someone is screenshoting to create instructions or tutorials rather than to showcase Wikipedia article content. A consequence of the use of that license is the inappropriate propagation of Creative Commons licenses where they do not apply. Since so many minority and underserved groups are the beneficiaries of new and specialized tutorials, getting some upload support for Commons could be a helpful part of the tool. Bluerasberry (talk) 20:16, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Visual Editor -> insert -> images and media -> upload -> drag n drop works really well for quickly uploading images, including screenshots. There's a major downside though: it's very hard to pick the correct license. Perhaps a solution to this (and perhaps what this wish should be converted to) is adding a combo box to this workflow that lets you choose common image licenses, including Wikipedia screenshots. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:36, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That and possibly a drag and drop solution for the 2010 editor. @Qwerfjkl What do you think? With your permission, I'm happy to reword your proposal to what we think will do better in voting and be in scope. Then we can run it by you before accepting the wish for voting. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 21:16, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @MusikAnimal, go ahead, no need to run it by me. Qwerfjkl (talk) 23:24, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The same upload tool is available in the 2010 wikitext editor, but you have to find it in the menus first: mw:Upload dialog#In wikitext editor (unlike in VE, you can't drag-and-drop onto the page editor itself, but you can drag-and-drop onto the dialog once it's open). Matma Rex (talk) 20:41, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Uploading to Commons comes with expectations that you label the image, set a license etc, which doesn't make sense for "throwaway" use cases like debugging. Just upload to Phabricator or to some popular image sharing site like imgur. For many such sites there are even browser plugins which let you take and share screenshots with a single click. --Tgr (talk) 05:36, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah, and this is what I've previously argued for over at en:WP:VPT (as a volunteer, to be clear). However many still feel the screenshots belong on Commons or the local file repo. Some say it's because they don't want to have to visit external sites, and others say they want to see images embedded in the wiki and not just via a link. So I think there's something in this proposal to work with. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 16:56, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Comment Thinking about how to automate the licensing checks. It would be nice if there was a screenshot tool that scraped the website and image licensing. The other option would be look up the licensing using reverse image search OR If the Google APi for reverse image search (now deprecated I think) worked for us, or that google classified our images using their [|google image metadata] system? Wakelamp (talk) 03:00, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • phab:T249591 seems related. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:02, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

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