Hi,
I would like to uhhh... start the discussion? ask for opinions? about the
future of UploadWizard.
It is a rather special extension, that was from the start made mostly for
Commons' very specific needs and getting it to work anywhere else presents
some challenges (some of which I attempt to tackle here
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T256616>). Interestingly, it still is
used by many third-party wikis
<https://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Extension:Upload_Wizard> and although some of
them don't need its full set of capabilities related to describing
licenses, authors and sources, there are wikis that do need that. The wiki
I maintain, Nonsensopedia, has a Commons-like file description system based
on Semantic MediaWiki (see example here
<https://nonsa.pl/wiki/Plik:Creative_Commons_evolution.jpg>) and
UploadWizard has been a *blessing* for us, greatly simplifying the task of
file moderation.
Opinion time: Wikis should be *encouraged* to properly describe the
authorship of files that they use, to meet the licensing requirements. IMO
Wikimedia Foundation as the maintainer of MediaWiki and a foundation
dedicated to dissemination of free culture should provide a usable tool for
properly describing free multimedia. UploadWizard could be just that.
At the same time, the extension has been basically unmaintained
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261589#6674315> since the Multimedia
team was dissolved and I've been rather surprised to discover that patches
improving third-party support were met with uhm... very limited enthusiasm?
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T256616#6264584> There are a few obvious
features lacking like mobile support (seriously, try opening
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard on a narrow screen
device, it's been like this since.. always) and configurability (you have
to jump through some serious hoops
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:V2at02b7oxy5pkwl> to just add a
license; customizing the tutorial is similarly hard).
I've been thinking of what to do with the above and I really wouldn't want
to embark on something that will be rendered redundant or obsolete in a
year, so my question is: are there any plans for UploadWizard? What makes
me suspect that things may change is primarily Structured Data on Wikimedia
Commons, which in the future will maybe (?) supersede the description
system around the {{Information}} template. Are there any rough roadmaps or
outlines of anything resembling a plan for that? If Commons was to
implement full, structured file descriptions in the upload tool, that code
would be probably hardly usable outside Commons, given that Wikibase is not
something easy to install or maintain, it is also awfully overkill for the
vast majority of applications. In such a situation, would it make sense to
consider completely separating the "Wikimedia Commons Shiny Upload Tool"
from a more general extension that would be usable for third
parties, stripped of any Commons-specific code? A lot of things could be
much simplified if the extension was to target just the needs of third
parties and not Commons.
I ask about this because I really don't see any sort of interest of the
extension's *de facto* owner (and that is WMF) in developing it, there are
also no public plans for it, as far as I know. Yes, I can make a fork
anytime, but first I'd prefer to know if I'm not missing something. Well,
actually, I already did make a fork of UW
<https://gitlab.com/nonsensopedia/extension-forks/uploadwizard-nonsa> over
a year ago, but this particular version of it is tailored for a wiki I
manage, making it useless for others. At the time that was the only
reasonable way we could get a good upload tool that was capable of properly
describing licensing information. I probably don't have to tell seasoned
open-source developers why this type of approach is not optimal for the
future of the project. :)
Any opinions on the topic are very welcome.
--
Ostrzyciel (he/him)