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Option to strip some metadata on upload (GPS/geolocation privacy)
Open, LowPublicFeature

Description

Geotagging photos is great, but we should make it easy to strip it out in some cases.

There's no reason to have GPS metadata in pictures of e.g. common household items that some unsuspecting Wikipedian has taken in their living room, and then found that their house's full GPS co-ordinates are now on the internets.


Version: 1.16.x
Severity: enhancement

Details

Reference
bz20326

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Low.Nov 21 2014, 10:55 PM
bzimport set Reference to bz20326.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

Ideal interface is probably something like:

  • pick your file
  • hit 'upload'

*chug chug chug it uploads*

  • Confirmation screen shows thumbnail of your file, its name, description, and

metadata

  • If GPS location data is included, display a notice with the coordinates *and

a map*

  • Give option to complete the upload, complete the upload but strip the

location data, or cancel the upload.

Listing bug 16437 (interstitial upload preview) as a dependency.

  • Bug 35514 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Check out my dupe bug for a description of why more than just GPS EXIF data needs to possible to remove. (The keywords "EXIF" and "EXIF data" are now in this bug report, so it'll turn up for people searching for dupes.)

For me it would be nice if if it actually get the GPS data and use it in the location template, right now I need to add GPS to images from my phone (I take pictures with DSLR without GSP) and then use in upload, extract the GPS coordinate and put it as {{location}} string in more info, since putting just numbers in input field, give error that number need to be between 180 and -180 event that I put proper GPS floating point number.

So basically I need to manually add location even that the upload can use data from EXIF which should be trivial to add, it can have option and warning about privacy but require an action to strip off GPS data, or force to select an option. For Wikimedia Commons I take pictures mostly of architecture and I want GPS data to be inside the file and inside the page with the file, so there should be an option to include them.

I can help with development of this feature, but I'm new to phabricator and media wiki and don't know where to start. I'm not sure where to search for upload wizard. Is it in MediaWiki repo or is this extension?

Aklapper added a subscriber: Bawolff.

@Jcubic: Hi and thanks for your interest! In general, I'd point to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker , probably in the /includes/upload/ folder of MediaWiki Core.

Also see T37514 for some more background.

Aklapper changed the subtype of this task from "Task" to "Feature Request".Feb 4 2022, 11:01 AM
Aklapper removed a subscriber: wikibugs-l-list.