Research talk:Technical needs of external re-users of Commons media

Guide created for UNESCO staff to use images from Commons

Hi @Jmorgan (WMF):, I created a guide for UNESCO staff wanting to reuse images from Commons, I did some user testing as part of it to understand what the issues are and to revise the guide over time, the main issues I found were:

1. People knowing Commons existed
2. People knowing you could use images from Commons (phrased as 'can I use photos from Wikipedia')
3. People finding suitable images in Commons (lots of issues with searching for a topic and being sent to a page rather than a category)
4. People knowing how to credit the image correctly.
5. The automated tool on Commons to credit an image both for print and online gave a raw URL as part of the credit, this was not acceptable (looked unprofessional and far too long for the space that was available).
6. It was not made clear where the credit should be placed, either by the image or could it be placed on another page.
7. Find a place for the guide, there is some existing guidance on Commons for reusing images but it is not suitable, its more of a Wikipedia article than a guide. Also when I tried to make it more usable all my changes were reverted.
8. Technical issues with making Wikimedia pages look professional (the page still breaks on mobile)

John Cummings (talk) 08:14, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

This is all excellent, actionable guidance. Thank you for sharing these findings, John Cummings! Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

@Jmorgan (WMF):, no problem, let me know if I can be of further help or if I can do any work on this. I'm doing some work with other UN agencies on contributing to Wikimedia and reusing Commons photos easily would be an excellent resource for them. John Cummings (talk) 09:00, 5 June 2018 (UTC)