Dear Erik,

Thanks for that very clear steer that the WMF is willing to help others build a mass upload tool for commons.

Two small points. Whilst many potential users of a mass upload tool are GLAMs, there are other opportunities out there for mass uploads, and I think it would be helpful if we remembered that and called it a mass upload tool that the GLAM community is the strongest supporter of rather than just a GLAM tool. The ability to upload millions of files while mapping other people's metadata into ours is important because it saves on volunteer time in uploading and categorising images in other ways.  Commons has huge backlogs of uncategorised or poorly categorised files, and other projects especially wikipedia have vast backlogs in adding or upgrading their imagery. There has been recent research that articles with images get more viewers, so the implications of backing this aren't just the usual one that investing in the GLAM program is an investment in quality, there is also a good chance that investing in GLAM could increase readership.

Regards

Jonathan Cardy
GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums) Organiser
Wikimedia UK
 020 7065 0921

(I'm normally in the office Tuesday's, Wednesdays and Fridays - Emails on Mondays and Thursdays wont usually be seen till the next day)

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On 26 February 2015 at 06:57, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Liam --

Thank you for this. I know this wasn't an easy pivot to ask for, and I
really appreciate it. It's only fair that we do something in return,
so ..

- I'll help review the revised version of the proposal (feel free to
poke me directly);
- We'll help to give you and Dan pointers (to the right people if
needed) re: the use of OAuth, existing libraries, etc.
- If we get underway, we'll help think through options for a long term
hosting strategy with you (in Labs or beyond).

I'm overall very supportive of the aims of the project -- I think a
truly specialized tool for GLAMs would go a long way to attract them
to our movement. To start with, here are a few notes & pointers:

1) I checked with our product team if they see any blockers for GWT to
use OAuth. Dan Garry, who PM'd the initial OAuth implementation,
didn't. These especially relevant permissions are already available:

- uploadfile, which supports only uploading new files
- uploadeditmovefile, which supports uploading, editing and moving files
- highvolume, which allows making a large number of requests in a
short timeframe

2) There are a number of existing libraries and implementations of MW
OAuth that may serve as good examples. In Python we have
http://pythonhosted.org/mwoauth/ , and Magnus' tools are also a great
place to look.

3) Please note that the OAuth implementation is designed for _web_
use; it won't work yet for downloadable applications. (In short, a
different security model applies when you're distributing code to the
end user, and that requires a bit more work on our end and a later
version of the protocol.) The overall OAuth experience should be
reasonable; we're working through the set of issues tracked in
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T86869 to make it really solid.

We _will_ help you with this if you encounter issues as you go.

Erik

--
Erik Möller
VP of Product & Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation
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