Grants talk:IEG/Socialize Wikimedia Commons

Catalan pilot?

Hi Jey - thanks for starting to draft this proposal! Once you're ready to submit it for review, please update its status (in your page's Probox markup) from DRAFT to PROPOSED. I also wanted to let you know that we're hosting a few more IEG proposal help sessions in Google Hangouts and IRC next week, so please join if you'd like to get some extra help finishing your proposal.

Meanwhile, I have a first question for you - it seems like this research project will be HUGE if not clearly scoped to a size that you'd be able to accomplish in 6 months. Trying to globally engage with all-language Wikipedias as your target, or looking at global usage patterns on 10 social networks, for example, seems larger than 1 person can accomplish. Do you have a plan for limiting your scope in a first 6-month test of this idea? Some ways I can think of include picking just 1-3 social media sites that you plan to compare, and limiting your project geographically (in terms of who you interview, what Wikipedia you target, etc) to Spain or even Catalonia. If you are already thinking this way, it might just help to make that clearer in your proposal.

Looking forward to seeing your ideas develop further. Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi Siko (WMF) thanks for your feedback. While I also agree that it is quite complex to try to engage a worldwide audience, I don't see a reasonable way to effectively limit the scope of the project to a geographic area in certain steps of the process. If there is discussion involved in the Commons village pump, users from different countries have to be necessarily involved or if I contact a legal expert to research on social media and licensing, his advice and views would arguably reflect a worldwide vision as these platforms follow a single legal criteria no matter where are their users from. I agree that it would be useful to limit it to 1-3 sites and I planned to do it after I find out which ones are more relevant. I also concede that personal interviews will be geographically limited (Spain) and that I would only be able to engage users in the languages I can reasonably speak (Catalan, Spanish and English). I expect then that quite a global view (with certain logic limitations) could arise and that it would be useful to as many people as possible. I will try to modify my proposal to further clarify this points. Regards! --Jey (talk) 11:30, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Background and strategy

Hi User:Jey, I've been on the IEG Committee for a while and was recently hired as a WMF Contractor. I think this is a really forward looking proposal that starts on the right foot by asking questions. I was curious along that path, what is your research background? Do you have experience in this area either through your studies or work (or otherwise). It'd be very helpful it you would fill out the ==Participants== section with some details about your relevants onwiki experience and offwiki skills.

I'm also curious if you had thoughts on strategy to reach out to users on Social Media platforms. Were you considering ads or promoted posts, or more of an organic approach (using your own personal networks to hold interviews?).

I particularly like these two examples you gave:

• Should Commons consider an easy way to share uploaded items across social networks? (If licensing allows such use)
• Should Commons encourage third party adoption of features like a “Post on Commons” button? (If licensing allows such use)

I think they show the richest promise for increasing the addition to and distribution of images on Commons. I'd really encourage you to come to our next IEG Hangout where we could discuss your idea with a group of past grantees and current proposers. It's really helpful to 'workshop' an idea in this phase while it's still in a flexible form. The next hangout is this next Thursday: https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cvk8hivoih04ifc6pp3sl0se6s8. I look forward to hearing more about this neat idea. Cheers, Ocaasi (talk) 19:01, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ocaasi thanks for your feedback. I would try to update my experience to clarify your concerns. I am an engineer and have a reasonable background of statistics and research although my current job has little to do with this fields or with social media. I also have an extensive onwiki experience (>7 years), I belong to Amical Wikimedia and have recently been appointed Wikipedian in Residence at UOC university. To reach users I rely in personal networks but I also believe that some more of the most prolific users that post publicly could be easily reached using this same platforms (Facebook groups, famous intagrammers, official Pinterest pages...). Regards! --Jey (talk) 11:30, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Educational purposes

Bawolff has expressed concerns in Commons village pump on whether "socialization" would result in more educational pictures being post and on whether Wikimedia users should be taken into account. This report aims to answer the first question and provide a reasonable approach on how many educational pictures are posted on social media. Also will try to look it from both perspectives and collect opinions from Wikimedia users. To clarify, I don't think that Commons should follow the footsteps of social media giants as it is not a social media platform and could never become one, but I strongly believe that some lessons should be learned regarding user engagement and that some answers could be raised (and maybe answered) on future improvements. Thanks! --Jey (talk) 11:30, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

To clarify my comments, I just want to make sure that a holistic approach is taken. Its easy to fall into the trap of more pictures = better, I'd like a report such as you suggest to take the broader picture into account (E.g. If something generated 10,000 new high quality pictures for commons that would be good on the face of it, but would be bad if it meant that 1000000 bad pictures also had to be uploaded in order to get the good pictures). Bawolff (talk)

Twitter preview cards

A helpful irc chatter added this idea for having commons images show up in Twitter previews: https://dev.twitter.com/cards/getting-started. Cheers, Ocaasi (talk) 16:27, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

most results of this extremely expensive report might be foreseeable

Commons is a *difficult* project to contribute to. There are the (already very difficult to understand) restrictions of copyright, then the project's scope, and many, many other policies. If you spend 4600 € asking people how knowledgable they are in these areas, some will tell you that they have a basic understanding of copyright that may extend to "every work is copyrighted unless released into the public domain", but unlikely cover topics such as FOP. I'm sure none of them will be able to tell you about the details of the project's scope or other essential policies. For this reason, Commons has to educate people who want to contribute about the rules. A lot of help pages already serve that purpose (and they didn't cost 4600 €). Feel free to create another one (maybe Commons:For social media users) and advertise it via the Commons Twitter and Facebook accounts (but not for 4600 €, please). Introductions of new features to the interface are driven by the commitment of the community (which I assume wouldn't like a site-wide "like" button, but has already developed a favourites gadget for those interested) and developers, not external reports.

In my eyes, it would make more sense to spend money on promoting *the possibility* to (free-)CC-license works anywhere around the web and developing nice tools for the Commons community to transfer the high-quality works to Commons (a better UploadWizard with built-in server-side license review, among others).    FDMS  4    15:04, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Imho this didn't cost 4600 €. Money should be pended for important software improvements, Example rewriting CommonsDelinker or DerivativeFX. Sorry, but i see no need to spend money for 4600 € for "Socialize Wikimedia Commons", therefore i oppose this grant request. And Jey has only 230 edits on commons, i cant believe that he is experienced enough. --Steinsplitter (talk) 16:24, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, just a few weeks ago the experiment "mobil uploads" had to be stopped because 99%+ have been either copyvios or anything out of scope not only of the Commons project, so the question has already been answered recently: Social networking services don't care about copyright and scope, Commons does. Please don't encourage people to upload their selfies like they do on facebook. Competence is required. --Krd 16:40, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I strongly oppose this idea. This will likely end up in more work for admins. You don't need to do research to conclude that. Natuur12 (talk) 17:04, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with people above. We need more quality, not quantity. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:57, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

In the same vein of all the above, I find this truely appaling and I firmly oppose it. The base idea is ludicrous and indicates ignorance of what Common’s goals are (and maybe even ignorance of what kind of content is shared in social networks, behind mere head-counting). The requested stipend and the projected expenses justification are an insult for all Commons’ users and contributors who made it what it is on their free time. This is the kind of “project” any sleazy for-profit outfit would endorse for a manager’s dimwitted son-in-law — there’s no place for it in a foundation that runs on donated money and whose core goals have dire funding needs. Tuvalkin (talk) 17:10, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Tuvalkin, this is a fine place to share any constructive feedback you have with participants here. But please don't bring an angry tone like this into this space - we won't hear you if you're shouting at proposers just because you don't agree with an idea they've put forward. In the future, please keep your comments focused on facts rather than insinuation. Thanks, Siko (WMF) (talk) 04:00, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Ludicrous proposals are to be met with angry rejections. There’s no place for heated arguments here? Well, I wish — too bad there is place here for such outlandish proposals in the first place. Tuvalkin (talk) 11:54, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

(To clarify: Ludicrous proposals are to be met with angry rejections when they are in risk of being accepted, which seems to be the case. Were I certain this proposal will be rejected, I’d just give Jey a polite «Thanks, but no, thanks. Please come again next year with more experience.) Tuvalkin (talk) 11:58, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

The problem with this proposal is that it seems to ignore existing experience completely. It frankly seems a bit naive to see "share" or even "post to commons" buttons being proposed here. I suggest that the grant applicant first tries to familiarize her/himself with the existing efforts to "socialize" commons.

• Take a look at the MediaViewer and the tremendous difficulties it faced with extracting correct attribution info
• Take a look at the uploads that get speedy deleted every day on commons. Lack of influx is not our problem! Lack of understanding of copyright issues by the average user out there is. We need curation resources. If you can come up with a proposal on how to handle that, I'd be happy to read it.
• Take a look at the existing efforts to add social features to commons. Most of them never caught on (like my "Favorite" button - something you mention as an example).

Sorry, but this proposal is not something that has a significant chance to yield anything productive as it stands. --Dschwen (talk) 22:45, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Dschwen, FDMS4, Natuur12, Tuvalkin, Steinsplitter, Yann, Krd thanks for your feedback. I am not familiar with IEG process but I assume that with that much opposition this request is difficult to succeed. I will try to answer some of your concerns anyway:

• A search can show that the social media interactions is not something particularly discussed in Commons village pumps, so I assume that it is something that needs formal research. I appreciate that the most expert among you could give feedback and that was an important part of the research, but I don't see that a wide consensus is reached on important topics.
• The amount of the grant could be discussed, and I would be happy to revise my dedication if the staff suggest so, but you will see that it is in fact much lower than other proposals in this round.
• I agree that I do not have extensive experience in Commons for different reasons, but you will see I currently have around 20k contributions in my home wiki so I think that I have a good knowledge of Commons.
• Of course I understand that a higher amount of uploads will mean more work for admins. This would be great we manage to get more educational works.
• The mobile uploads is in my opinion a great tool in the right direction (I don't understand which experiment Krd was mentioning) and I agree that software improvements are a great way to spend the money of the grants, but not the only way.
• Finally I would like to emphasize the fact that 23M items is in fact a really low figure and that currently billions of educational pictures are potentially posted elsewhere on the internet without even considering Commons. In my opinion this is something we need to address and if we insist in messages like "it is difficult" or "competence is required" I don't think we are in the right way.

Thanks again! --Jey (talk) 14:55, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Nobody is saying "it is difficult, let's not do it". The problem is you naive idea of more uploads = more good. The real world is a bit more complicated than that. It boils down to the fact that commons is not an image dump. Commons is a place where images are carefully curated. The 23M is not what makes commons attractive and I agree that it is a small number. The dedication to screen the content for correct and free licenses, the categorization, multilingual descriptions, and thorough identification of the subjects is what makes commons unique. I have a strong feeling that you are not yet familiar enough with the commons to tackle this challenge. Yes, I agree, commons must enhance its community aspects to bind and motivate users more. But that does not simply mean motivating drive by uploads. It also means motivating the curators (at least by the same amount!). --Dschwen (talk) 17:33, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi Jey,

Your proposal and your answer above show that you have yet not understood what is Commons for. You need to get much more experience about Commons before starting such a project. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:59, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Regarding User:Steinsplitter's comment "Money should be pended for important software improvements, Example rewriting CommonsDelinker or DerivativeFX", in order to dedicate money for such causes (under the IEG umbrella at least), would first of all require someone to start a proposal to actually do these things. Until that happens, its not really a choice between "Spend money on this" vs "Spend money on CommonsDelinker" Bawolff (talk) 17:34, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

From the perspective of an IEG committee member, there are a few reasons this proposal strikes me as useful. For one, it is proposing questions and exploring them, rather than presuming an approach and then implementing it. Two, the questions it is asking are provocative, novel, complex, and yes, controversial. We don't like to fund research where we already know the answer, but the question: how could Commons be better integrated into social media, is a rich and previously unexplored question. The third reason I think this proposal is useful--and also where its success may hinge--is the degree to which the commons community itself is brought into the consultation. Asking Facebook users if they would share images with Commons is surely one side of the coin; asking Commons users how that could be done in a way that would be non-harmful and productive is equally important. I think the degree to which Jey can survey both audiences is what will determine the research's usefulness. In short, I think this is at least worth submitting as a proposal. I don't take some level of skepticism as a bad sign but rather that this proposal is raising some new and slightly nerve-inducing ideas. Sometimes that's a good sign :) Cheers, Ocaasi (talk) 18:00, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, those might be nicely phrased questions. But – what about the usefulness of their possible answers? And what about their extremely bad cost-value ratio? After all, shouldn't the community have been consulted (for free) before the Wikimedia Foundation spends or even considers spending 4600 €?    FDMS  4    19:26, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi FDMS4 - I can understand your worries. However, let me be clear: this is the part of the IEG process where the community is consulted. You are here - early! before the 20 day community discussion period even begins! - which is a good sign that this process is working :) In each round of these grants, we gather lots of community input before we begin seriously considering any proposal for funding. The Individual Engagement Grants program hasn't yet funded a project that has harmed the community, and we don't intend to begin doing so now. So again, thanks for contributing to this discussion, and for sharing your thoughts in as thoughtful, clear, and kind a manner as possible. We look forward to hearing all sorts of perspectives on all sorts of ideas in the coming weeks. Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:40, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Also, the ideas you raised in the very start of this section are interesting - could be the start of a new IEGrant proposal led by a team of Commons contributors in the next round, if anyone would like to start working on a project like that? Siko (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

While I agree with Bawolff and Steinsplitter above, concerning CommonsDelinker or DerivativeFX or so many other items Commons need fixed or improved, I cannot talk on their behalf. But to answer Siko (WMF)’s challenge about submitting a competing grant to fund those other things we think are more important than the OP, I have this view: WMF’s money should be used to mantain infrastructure — both the hardware and its backend, and Mediawiki development; any additional gadgets can be covered by users’ free labour, as usual, no need to apply for a grant for that. This is a deep difference in ideology and it pains me to encounter the anti-wiki “corporate” approach entrenched so much in WMF. Tuvalkin (talk) 11:54, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Prototype possible?

I am curious about the best-case scenario in this project and might like to see a test case of what happens if people who are highly connected in social media share Wikimedia Commons media. I wonder if there are immediate barriers in the most popular social media platforms which would make it difficult for Wikimedia content to circulate in those platforms. I have hardly looked at this at all.

Before I supported a proposal to help Wikimedia Commons content enter these systems, I would want background confirmation that content should be pushed into these systems. I am not expecting much - just a few sentences of arguments, and perhaps a picture and diagram of what you want to see with an explanation of why. I also would like to get opinions from outside the Wikipedia community and from people who know social media communication about the circumstances under which they would actually share this kind of content. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:11, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Good question, Bluerasberry.

If i understand you correctly, you're talking only about pushing Wikimedia Commons content (pictures, video, media files) to popular social media platforms (facebook, twitter, youtube, pinterest,...), not the other way around. The opposition above was concerning the other direction: circulating ("educational"?) media content from popular social media platforms to Wikimedia Commons (the "selfie-pocalypse"/"mobile crap magnet" has given us a taste of that: no, thanks!).

The biggest issue is probably the licences. See for example

• Facebook is really probelmatic Legal and Community Advocacy/CC-BY-SA on Facebook and commons:Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Wikimedia Commons & Facebook and commons:Commons_talk:Licensing/Archive_33#my_images_on_someones_facebook..
• Pinterest allows CC licence info? See commons:User_talk:AngMoKio#Shared_Taipei_street_art_photo_on_Pinterest, commons:User_talk:Eusebius/Archives/2012#Thanks_for_the_gift_of_your_vision
• Instagram? (BTW, commons:Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2014/03#Instagram_may_just_kill_Flickr and make pic quality worse)
• Dotspin: commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Valeria_Baroni.jpg [1]
• Google+ ?
• Blogs: Is the new MediaViewer making CC attribution in blogs more difficult/worse or easier/better? (german, sorry)
• Twitter?
• very interesting tool could be wikitweets by user:edsu, [2][3], it should be possible to collect tweets including "commons.wikimedia.org" vs. "wikipedia.org" vs. "upload.wikimedia.org" and analyse page views?
• Any stats about commons:Template:Published? (Template transclusion count: 11.247)

And i really like this one: http://commonscat.tumblr.com/ --Atlasowa (talk) 11:52, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Atlasowa Okay, I am convinced some thought has gone into this and like that you have considered this direction of thought. I have no other comment now, but ping me if there comes a next step in the project when you need more community comment. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:43, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bluerasberry, i'm not sure if you are confusing me with Jey, it is his proposal/project, not mine! I've commented because i think this is a really interesting topic, but it is going into quite difficualt legal territory of social-platform-ToS, CC-attribution etc. I wonder what Jey thinks. --Atlasowa (talk) 11:34, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Ready to submit this proposal?

Hi, Jey. It looks like you've pretty much finished drafting your proposal, so I'm just reminding you to update the status (in the Probox markup near the top of your page) from DRAFT to PROPOSED. Let me know if you've got any questions - today is the submissions deadline, so you'll need to mark it PROPOSED to move forward. But you'll still be able to continue editing your proposal and updating your plan further in response to community feedback over the next few weeks (October 1-20 is an ongoing community comments period), before the committee formally reviews your proposal. It is nice to see you've already got some pretty robust discussion here! Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 17:47, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

@Siko (WMF): Please read the section above "most results of this extremely expensive report might be foreseeable". I strongly oppose this proposal (see above for reasons). Plese don't ignore the commons community. --Steinsplitter (talk) 18:23, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi Siko (WMF),

I second Steinsplitter. This project is not welcomed by the Commons community, which is the FIRST requirement needed to be accepted. Regards, Yann (talk) 18:28, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

@Steinsplitter and Yann - I've read your comments and I'm not ignoring you - the Commons community members voices are being heard, and I even share some of your concerns. But, I think you might be a bit confused about how these grants actually work :) We're not at the point of passing judgement yet. At this point, we're just trying to ensure all project ideas are put on the table for further community discussion. We haven't decided anything yet, because the community discussion period and review period hasn't even begun. From October 1-20, discussion on proposed projects continues, adjustments to project ideas can be made in response to people's feedback, etc. I'd expect that during this time even more Commons folks and other community members with various perspectives should continue to weigh in. Perhaps you'll have some better suggestions for types of research that could be useful in a project like this. Perhaps you'll decide to continue to simply say "no, thanks, this is bad for Commons." Either way, discussion is not a bad thing. THEN we start reviewing and taking all comments into account before a final decision is made. I don't see much benefit to trying to shut down discussion early on here - as I said, it has been a robust discussion so far, which seems like a good thing for this movement. Thanks for participating! Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi Siko (WMF) and Ocaasi thank you for your support and guidance. Since this is a project that pretended to involve the Commons community and relied on them to provide some insights I find it really difficult to proceed at this point. I would submit the draft in case the discussion evolves but I find it really difficult. Frankly I would have expected more feedback from the community on how the proposal could be improved as I still think that it focuses on important issues that need to be addressed. Maybe I will try to address it otherwise in the future or will support other users with similar projects. Thanks again! --Jey (talk) 00:44, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Jey, I admire the way you handled yourself here - it isn't easy to put forth an idea, and it isn't easy to respond to negative comments on an idea, and I appreciate that you've done both whole-heartedly. You've also done a great job of community notification, recognizing its importance, and I too would have liked to see you have more time to get constructive feedback to help improve this proposal over the coming weeks. So regardless of where this idea ends up, I hope you will keep thinking of ways to improve Wikimedia projects, and look forward to seeing you back here again in future. Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 04:14, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

+1 to that Jey. Putting an idea out for public comment is brave and while I would understand walking away now I might also consider this the beginning of an important dialogue that could inform any research you would do. It's up to you what you do next but in any case your efforts here are appreciated! Cheers, Jake Ocaasi (talk) 04:21, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

+1. I think the fierce opposition above shows that you do plan to tackle some rather controversial topics. And I do think that it is a good idea to spend some time to research just such issues and to try and come up with some thoughts about it. Such research does not need to present ready-made solutions. Maybe it could therefore help to shift your proposed "measures for success" somewhat. Instead of "improvements suggested by the report are taken into consideration" you could possibly focus more on having kindled an informed debate based on your findings within the relevant communities.--Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 14:30, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Sometimes opposition does not show that somebody is tackling controversial topics, but it just shows that the proposal is not well thought through, or shows a lack of knowledge of prior work and experiences. While I appreciate the positive attitude towards the grand requester I think it is neither productive nor courteous towards the people who invested time reviewing the proposal and making fairly detailed criticisms. --Dschwen (talk) 15:10, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Dschwen: As far as I can see, the criticism is mostly addressing concerns about what might happen, if commons was indeed "socialized". I did not see so much criticism which is actually referring to the proposal as such. Let us keep im mind that this is a 'research' proposal. Someone is willing to put thought into an issue and to highlight some points as a result. This is not a proposal, at least the way I read it, that will necessarily change anything. If it will be a success, we all will have more information at out hands to discuss. Maybe you have further comments on how to improve the research setting of the proposal?--Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 21:05, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

The comments have been made, no need to request them again. And I'm afraid you are missing the point when you say that the criticism is mostly addressing concerns about what might happen. The criticisim is about what already did happen after making uploading easier. The core of the criticism is that the grant requester shows no signs of acknowledging prior experience, and that looks like a waste of time and resources. I'm not blaming you for not knowing these things. It requires quite a bit of familiarity with commons, which not everyone has if they are mainly involved in other projects. Which is totally fine. It is also fine to propose new ideas. Sometimes an outside view can lead to new and better approaches. But this particular outside approach is just steering into the same wall that we already ran into. Sorry :-( --Dschwen (talk) 14:38, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Dschwen, you are critical about something that has happened, and you would have liked the applicant to consider this experience in his draft. This is a fair recommendation and totally accepted. My personal concern is rather, that some of the criticism came about like one would not even want someone to spend a single thought on these questions. I totally agree on your remark above when you say "Sometimes an outside view can lead to new and better approaches." This is actually something I do believe in and why I would have welcomed this proposal (not saying it was a perfect proposal and took everything into account it maybe should have). Now we have the rather sad result, however, that the applicant has withdrawn altogether. What I did want to stress is, that in my view, we (including myself obviously) should keep open minded for thoughts and not confuse thought with action. No need to feel sorry :) --Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 20:13, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Actually, my main concern *was* that this report would lead to no change (or useful new insight) at all, but nevertheless cost 4.600€ …    FDMS  4    22:33, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Status update

Hi Jey. Thank you for starting to draft this proposal last year.

I just wanted to give you a heads up that I'm going to mark your proposal as 'withdrawn' because we've launched a new open call for IEG proposals for 2015 and I want to make sure that community reviewers don't mistake this idea as a current submission.

Of course, you are welcome to submit it as a new idea in the current round! If you need help developing your idea, we have Hangouts scheduled for the next few weeks (more information here).

Warm regards, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 8 September 2015 (UTC)