As an experienced user, the Commons app is tremendously useful (when it doesn't crash). But as a Commons curator, I see a steady stream of "test uploads" and the like -- things that are utterly and completely unrelated to our educational mission -- that require a great deal of volunteer resources to process. The vast majority are tagged as mobile uploads.
The Commons app gives the user absolutely no idea what Commons is about, or what kind of uploads are desirable. I think that is significant. The UploadWizard on the desktop version of Commons starts off with a cartoon explaining issues like copyright and personality rights, and then guides the user through related questions. Although I have not done a formal analysis, it seems to be overwhelmingly the case that files originating from Mobile uploads are much more often problematic than those originating from the Upload Wizard. I don't think that's a coincidence. It would be really awesome to have the ability for experienced users to use our devices to upload directly -- and even better if it opens doors to new contributors *in a way that meaningfully guides their participation*. But if new contributors are given no guidance, and unknowingly do stuff that puts a high load on our volunteer curators -- is that cost too high? I hope that kind of improvement is part of the discussion. Personally, I'd rather see a revamped app, than that the app just disappears. Pete On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 6:41 PM, John Mark Vandenberg <jay...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Erik Moeller <e...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > > Yann, > > > > The Commons app would need lots of love to continue to be worth > advertising > > as a mainline app. It's not been updated since October, and code rot sets > > in after a while (I can easily reproduce crashes when logging in with an > > account that has pre-existing uploads, which it tries to display for > > convenience but quickly chokes on). With the small app team we have, our > > focus is mainly on the official Wikipedia apps right now, which are > already > > quite solid and receiving very positive reviews, esp. the Android app. > [1] > > The team is discussing whether the Commons app should be sunset (which > > would still leave open the option of community maintainership) based on > the > > numbers, and will be posting an update later this week. > > > > Erik > > > > [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia > > Hi Erik, > > The Wikipedia app description includes "Share: Use your existing > social networking apps to share in the sum of all human knowledge." > > Does it support uploading media to Commons? > Does it fix the problems with the official Commons app? > If so, can they share a library which would allow the Commons app to > be more of a specialised front-end to the same functionality that the > WMF mobile apps team are developing for Wikipedia? > > -- > John Vandenberg > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
