I appreciate all of the comments; still unsure where to more persistently host the conversation, but for now I posted this still-arbitrary list on Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sj/multimedia. (adding other items mentioned in this thread) SJ
~~~~ - *File formats*: Support high-demand formats – e.g. CSV, CML https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T18491, + hundreds of other https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297514 open tickets - *Uploads*: Improve bulk, large, and video uploads. + *Bulk conversion* for video uploads (videoconverter / video2commons are broken) + *Upload Wizard* upgrades (timeouts https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T267492, batch renaming, batch imports https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T281599) - *Downloads*: Fix multi-download (Imker https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Imker_(batch_download) is broken) + Make public dumps https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T298394 (stale since 2013) - *Video playback*: Debug + roll out the videojs https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T248418 player - *Search*: Bring CQS back up https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297454. Implement a noauth option https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297995 for tools - *General*: Move to a blazegraph alternative (for wqcs) + *Images*: Update thumbor https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T216815 and librsvg https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193352 || redesign https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T28741 the image table *- Curation*: Simpler content assessment workflow, like en:wp's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_assessment (QI/VP doesn't scale)