Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/CommonsFinder (iOS Wikimedia Commons App) (ID: 23551279)
Applicant details
[edit]- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
Nylki
- Organization
N/A
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
N/A
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
Main proposal
[edit]- 1. State the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
CommonsFinder (iOS Wikimedia Commons App)
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2025-11-01 - 2026-02-28
- 4. What is your tech project about, and how do you plan to build the product?
Include the following points in your answer:
- Project goal and problem you solve
- Product strategy or project roadmap
- Technical approach (infrastructure, tech stack, key tools and services)
- Integrations or dependencies (if any)
I am developing a mobile iOS app to let people explore and upload images to the Wikimedia Commons project. Currently the usual way to interact with Wikimedia Commons as a regular user is either via the official project website or the Android mobile app of the Commons-project. A dedicated mobile experience for people using iOS is currently missing. My goal is to fill this gap and help people upload images from their mobile devices with all the useful metadata. The metadata of an image is an important aspect of the Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata projects in particular, and the current beta version of my app already helps adding and editing those in a comprehensive manner during upload. Another major building block is an interactive map to explore already uploaded files by other users as well as Wikidata Q-items about nearby places. One important goal is to make it easy for users to find nearby locations that would benefit from a new photo in its Wikidata (or Wikipedia) article and make uploading one an easy and accessible task, which currently can be difficult on a mobile device with limited screen size.
Ultimately the plan is to polish and complete features in the coming months, in order to release the app to a wider audience via the AppStore (Apple). (however, the release process itself is not part of this proposal)
As indicated, I do have a working beta version with several core features already implemented for interested users to test. The git repo can be found here with more information about testing and general progress as well as screen recordings: https://github.com/nylki/CommonsFinder
Here are some specific, still outstanding milestones that I definetely want to accomplish during the proposed timeline before publishing the app:
- viewing images fullscreen and downloading to disk/file manager
- more useful map UX, eg. indicate wikidata items (and commons categories) that have no images yet, better live-location experience when walking around an area
- make uploads more robust in some areas (eg. background upload, check if filename already exists, more insightful error messages if errors occur)
- limited editing of uploaded files (eg. changing the caption or adding categories or depict statements)
- improve author and attribution editing and viewing
Regarding the last 2 points (Technical approach (infrastructure, tech stack, key tools and services), - Integrations or dependencies), I'll try to summarize in short:
The app is written natively for the target platform in the programming language Swift and making use of the UI-framework SwiftUI. To store and cache dataSQLite is used (via the ORM library GRDB), image caching is handled via the library Nuke. I am wrapping a geohash library/algorithm (C language) to be able to use it safely with Swift. For more implementation details and a thorough list of dependencies you can take a look at the current state git repository linked early, which should not change much during the timeline of this funding request.
The app communicates via the action API of commons as well as the SPARQL API of wikidata to upload, edit and fetch data as well as to authenticate users.
- 5. What is the expected impact of your project, and how will you measure success?
Include the following points in your answer:
- Milestones and progress tracking
- Project impact and success metrics
I will primarily measure the success in the completion of my milestones mentioned in 4. and re-stated here:
- viewing images fullscreen and downloading to disk/file manager
- more useful map UX, eg. indicate wikidata items (and commons categories) that have no images yet, better live-location experience when walking around an area
- make uploads more robust in some areas (eg. background upload, check if filename already exists, more insightful error messages if errors occur)
- limited editing of uploaded files (eg. changing the caption or adding categories or depict statements)
- improve author and attribution editing and viewing
A secondary, though more subjective, measure of success is also the beta feedback by users via the TestFlight platform and via email/mastodon etc. Ultimately a release or the preparation for release on the AppStore is also a good measure of success, as making a modern, native mobile Wikimedia Commons experience possible is the overarching goal.
- 6. Who is your target audience, and how have you confirmed there is demand for this project? How did you engage with the Wikimedia community?
Include the following points in your answer:
- Project demand and target audience description
- Links to interaction(s) with Wikimedia community
- Evidence from community consultation such as the [Community Wishlist]
The target audience are Wikimedia Commons users with iOS devices (iPhones).
The demand for a dedicated Commons app on iOS has been made evident to me by discussions at meta-wiki, eg. in the form of the community wishlist at [1]. Also in the Android Commons App community there has been interest about a iOS commons app in the past ( [2] ). Also personal experience and opinions from fellow commons and wikidata users made it clear to me that would be great to have a better mobile experience for Commons.
I am in contact with Haley Nordeen of WMF ([3]) about the possibility and feasability of publishing the app under the official Wikimedia account in the AppStore, but I am prepared to also self-publish if that should not be possible or deemed useful for either party. But there would certainly be synergies with the Wikipedia iOS app, eg. when opening or editing images/commons links from the Wikipedia App to open them in the native app and vice versa.
- 7. How will your team predict and manage potential user security and privacy risks, and what risks do you currently see?
Include the following points in your answer:
- The level of in-house or consulted security and privacy expertise you will have available to you during delivery of this project
- How your development, testing, and deployment processes mitigate the introduction of unnecessary security or privacy risks
As a professional software developer I have worked with authenticating network APIs in previous jobs, and consider myself to have a good and solid understanding pf network security on the iOS platform.
I don't plan to host any service for the app and all authentication happens on device inside the sandboxed app environment. So I consider the attack vector quite low at this point. When it comes to publishing the app outside of beta testing, I will consult with staff at WMF beforehand to make sure there are no potentially issues.
- 8. Who is on your team, and what is your experience?
Include the following points in your answer:
- Your experience as a developer, relevant past projects
- Wikimedia SUL (developer), Gerrit, Github, Gitlab or other relevant public account handles
- Other team members, their roles and expertise
I am the sole person working on this project at this point.
I have worked as Software Developer for the last ca. 10 years in different areas both public sector (Humboldt University) and a private company. Notable mentions are design-research projects at Humboldt University Berlin (at the "Cluster of Excellence Bild-Wissen-Gestaltung" as a student research assistant [4]) and participation of the Coding DaVinci in 2015 (which is a Wikimedia Deutschland sponsored/supported event), winning in the category "Best Design" with my team back them ([5]). I consider myself to have strong experience in Web development and iOS development from, especially from the last several years working fulltime in the private sector.
Some of my personal and university projects are listed: https://tombrewe.de
Also, here is my github profile: [6]
- 9. How will the project be maintained long-term?
Include the long-term maintenance plan with maintainer(s) in your answer. If you expect the long-term maintenance to incur expenses, please list those and the plan for long-term expense coverage.
Financial long-term maintenance expenses (excluding labor expenses) are:
- yearly ca. 100 euro for Apple developer program fees that are required for publishing apps in the AppStore and TestFlight
- up-to-date hardware for development and test device(s) (iPhone for testing and Mac for building/compiling)
I plan to maintain the project for the foreseeable future. I am prepared to pay the above mentioned expenses myself if necessary. As a secondary maintainer I would like to include the WMF directly, if possible, to allow staff software engineers to step in if necessary.
- 10. Under what license will your code be released, and how will you ensure the product is well documented?
Include the following points in your answer:
- Code license and compatibility with Wikimedia projects
- Documentation plan
AGPL or GPL (is compatible)
Documentation plan: self documenting code where possible, unit tests, markdown documentation in the git repo.
- 11. Will your project depend on or contribute to third-party tools or services?
yes (depend on, if wikimedia projects themselves are counted as third-party?):
- the Commons action API
- the Wikidata SPARQL API
yes (depend on):
- Apple software frameworks (eg. MapKit for map rendering, like the official Wikipedia app does) and deployments to "XCode Cloud" and "TestFlight" for beta testing builds
contribute:
- H3 geohash algorithm (I have written a wrapper and convenience functions, to interface with the C-library, and might polish a bit further in coming months)
- 12. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your project? (optional)
Budget
[edit]- 13. Upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
- 14. and 15. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)
4286.72 EUR
- 16. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.
5000 USD
- We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
Endorsements and Feedback
[edit]Please add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.
Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:
- Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
- Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
- Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
- Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
- Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).
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