Wikimedia CH/Grant apply/WikiPortraits 2026 Technical Projects

Infodata

• Name of the project: WikiPortraits 2026 Technical Projects
• Amount requested: 25,000
• Type of grantee: Organization
• Name of the contact: Kevin Payravi & Jennifer 8. Lee
• Contact: kevinwikiportraits.org, jennywikiportraits.org

The problem and the context

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

WikiPortraits is an effort that started in early 2024 to improve Wikimedia's coverage of people and cultural events. WikiPortraits has an ever-growing network of over 100 photographers from around the world, who we help get credentialed to events as media. To date, WikiPortraits photographers have contributed nearly 30,000 photos, which have helped illustrate articles on over 150 language versions of Wikipedia. The articles that WikiPortraits photos are used on collectively receive over 100 million views per month, or over one billion views per year.

As WikiPortraits scales, we have experienced a number of challenges, particularly due to gaps in the current Wikimedia Commons infrastructure landscape. This isn't a challenge unique to us, as projects like GLAM CSI and the Community Wishlist have documented some of the gaps in tooling and infrastructure available to Commons contributors.

These are the main challenges we plan to tackle with this grant:

• WikiPortraits photographers are sometimes uploading hundreds of photos at a time from an event. Doing this through the typical upload processes like UploadWizard can be a manual and strenuous process. Bulk-upload tools exist, but they can be technical, require downloading separate software, and often don't fully support structured data. Several are also unmaintained, and have frequently technical issues (like a lack of support for special characters).
  • An additional challenge here is that the majority of WikiPortraits photographers are new to Wikimedia, so every part of the contribution process (uploading photos, creating Wikidata items, adding to Wikipedia articles, etc.) is new to them.
• WikiPortraits needs quick, accurate, and detailed metrics about how its photos are used. We have some tools already, but they don't scale well, and have gaps.
• WikiPortraits needs metrics on the demographics of the people it photographs, as part of our effort to capture people and cultures from around the world, especially underrepresented groups.
• When applying for credentials, WikiPortraits photographers often have to submit a portfolio of their past event coverage. Commons doesn't have a very intuitive, modern interface for creating and maintaining portfolios.

These challenges are not unique to WikiPortraits, but are challenges for the Commons community at-large. By tackling these challenges, we hope we can build tools that are helpful not just for WikiPortraits, but for the rest of the Commons community.

What is your solution to this problem (please explain the context and the solution)?

This grant will support technical infrastructure behind WikiPortraits. This technical focus complements Wikimedia CH's support for innovation and fills a gap, as the Wikimedia Foundation currently does not typically fund large technical development projects of this nature, resulting in underresourced multimedia infrastructure.

Technical work we plan to do include (but not limited to):

• Commons Gallery: Continued development and maintenance of Commons Gallery, our Wikimedia CH-funded tool that allows Wikimedia photographers to build modern, sharable portfolios of their work.
• Usage tracking: Continued development of WikiPortraits CLI, a tool we developed to extract metrics about WikiPortraits photo usage, such as the number of articles and photos our photos are used on, as well as how many photos are first-time additions to articles. We have potential to convert this into a full-fledged web application for easier, broader usage by other campaigns and projects on Wikimedia Commons (e.g. Wiki Loves events).
• Upload portal: Developing a new upload portal for WikiPortraits photographers. Since many of our photographers are new to Wikimedia, it can take a significant amount of resources to properly train everyone on how to properly upload, label, and categorize their photos, let alone creating new categories, templates, and Wikidata items. One of our volunteer photographers has already started working on this portal, with the goal of handling template and category creation per event; consistent file naming and descriptions; and even creating Wikidata items for subjects that do not have one yet. This will greatly minimize the amount of manual effort our photographers go through to upload hundreds of photos from events, and this portal could potentially see broader use outside of WikiPortraits.
• Demographic tagging: A technical solution to make it easier for us to categorize our photos by demographic, and important metric for us.
• Open source contributions: Potential contributions to existing open source tools that we use, such as GLAM Tools

Project goals

• Make it easier for WikiPortraits photographers to contribute by creating an upload portal to simplify and speed up the process of getting hundreds of event photos onto Commons with proper metadata and categories.
• Create prototypes for AI-accelerated categorization, including for demographics of the subjects as well as photo quality. These can help us decide which subjects to prioritize shooting and also help us suggested feature photos.
• Give Commons photographers professional, modern portfolios through Commons Gallery so they can more easily apply for press credentials, show their track record, and share their work.
• Provide WikiPortraits organizers (and Commons at-large) with strong usage metrics, helping us report on the reach and impact of our photos, and giving us better data to support credential applications and partnerships.
• Build systems for demographic tagging at-scale so WikiPortraits can measure how well we are reflecting diversity in the people we cover, and identify gaps in representation.
• Strengthen the long-term sustainability of WikiPortraits by developing open source tools that support not just our photographers, but also the wider Commons community.

Project impact

How will you know if you have met your goals?

• A new upload portal is being actively used by WikiPortraits photographers, with noticeable reductions in training and onboarding time.
• Commons Gallery is maintained and improved, with new features launched and a growing number of photographers using it beyond WikiPortraits.
• Our metrics tooling is delivering reliable usage reports that volunteers and staff can use for impact reporting.
• Feedback from photographers shows higher satisfaction and efficiency with the tools.
• Other Wikimedia campaigns begin testing or adopting the tools.

Do you have any goals or metrics around participation or content?

• Support the upload of at least 5,000 new freely licensed photos in 2026 through WikiPortraits photographers using our new upload portal.
• Our tooling enables at least half of our existing photos to be properly tagged by gender and geography.
• Have at least 3 non-WikiPortraits campaigns or projects adopt one of the developed tools in 2026.
• Ensure photos supported through our tools illustrate Wikipedia articles and continue to reach an audience of 150 million+ views per month.

Project plan

Activities

• Commons Gallery
  • Maintain and extend features per user needs and feedback.
  • Improve accessibility and internationalization.
  • Collect feedback from users to prioritize updates.
• Usage tracking
  • Maintain and extend metrics reporting features.
  • Expand WikiPortraits CLI into a web application, usable by anyone.
  • Automate monthly reporting.
  • Share tool with broader community with goal of other campaigns and projects using it.
• Upload portal
  • Finish development of a batch upload portal that handles structured data, categories, templates, and consistent file naming.
  • Add support for semi-automated Wikidata item creation for new subjects.
• Demographic tagging and photo quality categorization
  • Build simple tagging workflows for contributors to annotate demographic data and photo quality where appropriate.
  • Create process to categorize previously uploaded photos.
  • Additional features as budget allows.
• Open source contributions
  • Contribute patches or improvements to Commons-related tools we use.

Budget

• Software tools and data infrastructure (this is conservative): 17,500 CHF
• AI data usage costs: 1,000 CHF
• Communications, outreach, and social media: 2,500 CHF
• Community management: 1,500 CHF
• Administrative Time Costs (accounting, reimbursement, logistics): 2,500 CHF

Community engagement

We will collaborate with Wikimedia CH and other affiliates to credential and support photographers covering events in Switzerland, building on the federated model we have been building through 2025.

We will share our photos and impact stories regularly through Wikimedia platforms and social media.