The two prototypes test two different ways of discovering and adding FileAnnotations. These two ways seemed to be the most promising amongst the alternatives explored in T151327: Explore designs for FileAnnotations.

What are FileAnnotations?

FileAnnotations are like tagging your friends in your Facebook photographs, but for Commons. It encourages editors to add more information to media in a structured way, by linking parts of the image to Wikidata items or Wikipedia articles. Its possible to add unstructured information by selecting the Wikitext option. Ideally this would only be used by power users who know what they are doing. Text transcriptions, pointing out interesting parts of the image etc are good uses of unstructured information.

The feature currently exists on Commons in the form of a gadget. The ways its used currently can be seen here - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FileAnnotations/Design#Current_state.

The prototypes

View on Wikipedia, single tab annotation search

A sample of what an image with annotations might look like when used on a Wikipedia article. The add annotation interface has a search widget that shows results from across projects (Wikidata, Wikipeda, Commons). We want to encourage editors to pick the Wikidata option where possible as it makes linking to other things (like Wikipedia articles or Commons categories) easier.

What we want to know

Are active readers/Michelle...

1. able to...
   1. discover and read annotations on the Wikipedia article
   2. find out how to add an annotation
   3. successfully add an annotation
2. and understand...
   1. that there are different types of annotation

Tasks

1. Go to the prototype
2. Look for annotations on the page
3. Try to add an annotation

Questions

1. Did the search work as you expected?
2. How did you decide which of the four search results you should choose for the annotation?

View from Category:Needs annotation, multiple tab annotation search

This prototype explores a different add annotation interface, one with a different tab for each project. We still want to encourage wikidata links. The search results are a bit contrived here, the chances of Venus (the planet) showing up are higher than Venus (the Roman goddess).

It also introduces a possible workflow of having a Category:Needs annotation where the editors come to find images they can help with. There are a couple of ways in which we can populate this category. Some options (in order of technical ease) -

1. Encourage editors to add this category to images that need annotations (doh!).
2. FileAnnotations should allow adding of empty annotations. Doing this would keep the rectangle and add the category.
3. Assume that images in certain categories (like People, Map) without annotations must need them. This could go wrong pretty easily.
4. Run face and object recognition on all images and categorize.

What we want to know

Are new editors(Henry) and active editors(Adriana)...

1. able to...
   1. find an image that needs annotations
   2. add information to the annotated rectangle
2. and understand...
   1. that they can find more results in different tabs of the search dialog
   2. the Category: Needs annotation workflow

Tasks

1. Go to the prototype
2. Find an image to annotate
3. Add relevant information to the annotation rectangle
4. Go back to Category: Needs annotation

Questions

1. Have you ever used the annotations gadget?
2. Would you have chosen a different search result to add as the annotation? Why?

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See also

1. T151327: Explore designs for FileAnnotations
2. Initial design documentation
3. User stories