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Install GettingStarted on Commons
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Description

Author: usermono

Description:
Why should ENWP get all the fun? Commons should also have Extension:GettingStarted


Version: wmf-deployment
Severity: enhancement

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Reference
bz52973

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bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 22 2014, 1:53 AM
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Sure. Please first discuss the matter on Wikimedia Commons. Such requests should be made by the community.

The proposals section of the village pump seems a good place to start:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Proposals

usermono wrote:

The idea would be to replace the old landing page that died recently. (See bug 52373)

Steven, what's your opinion on doing this? Is it feasible/sensible/whatever?

GettingStarted currently works using category-based tasks. The three used on English Wikipedia are copy-editing, clarification, and adding wikilinks.

If we looked at enabling it on Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Backlog would be a starting point in selecting one or more tasks.

swalling wrote:

(In reply to comment #4)

GettingStarted currently works using category-based tasks. The three used on
English Wikipedia are copy-editing, clarification, and adding wikilinks.

Yes, we'd need to pick categories.

If we looked at enabling it on Commons,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Backlog would be a starting point
in
selecting one or more tasks.

That might be one place, but to be honest, we picked the three categories to be sub-types of one overarching goal: give first time Wikipedia editors a very easy article to edit, which we know needs help.

If we're going to create a new user onboarding process for Commons, we should ask ourselves: what is the easiest, most rewarding, and most helpful thing to do is for a new Commons user?

I'd say that rather than encourage people to pick a backlog task as their first Commons action, we should encourage them to learn how to upload files. Fixing issues in the Commons backlog is really kind of an advanced activity, and everyone who participates in Commons should know how to upload things.

Also, asking users to do one thing is less intimidating than three choices. We're actually testing a new version of GettingStarted,[1] based on this principle.

I'd suggest that we try to start by creating a simple guided tour explaining uploads. Then we can create a Commons-specific landing page post-registration, that starts off this tour.

What do folks think? I'm adding Fabrice, since he's starting up the new Multimedia team which has related priorities.

  1. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Onboarding_new_Wikipedians#Proposed

swalling wrote:

Just checking on this again...

Jean-Fred asked about this again on the Wikitech Ambassadors list, and I answered him with http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2014-February/000580.html

TL;DR: the extension, which has done away with the Special page approach, is probably even less appropriate for Commons now, because it focuses almost exclusively on editing pages. We may want to resolve this as unfixable, and instead open up a new bug in GuidedTour to create a custom onboarding process for Commons, to teach people how to upload, about copyright/free licenses, etc.

Based on @swalling answer I suppose we should close this as “Declined”.

Overall, though, I confess I am disappointed to read that this « was designed only with Wikipedia in mind ». I understand that priority may be given to Wikipedia, but I wonder how much more effort could be done to make such extensions/projects easily adaptable to non-Wikipedia projects.

TL;DR: the extension, which has done away with the Special page approach, is probably even less appropriate for Commons now, because it focuses almost exclusively on editing pages.

I frankly question the assertion that the first thing to do on Wikimedia Commons is to upload files, and given the result of MobileUploads, I do not think I am completely wrong. There is lots of fun stuff to do on Wikimedia Commons besides uploading, in particular given the multilingual nature of Wikimedia Commons. We have specific tasks like [[Category:Translation possible - inscriptions]] ; or general translation of file descriptions which can be quite quick to do using @MarkTraceur editDescriptions.js.

(Just rambling out loud :-)

Based on @swalling answer I suppose we should close this as “Declined”.

Unfortunately, the Growth team has since been retired, which means the WMF (including myself) probably won't work on this in the near future.

Overall, though, I confess I am disappointed to read that this « was designed only with Wikipedia in mind ». I understand that priority may be given to Wikipedia, but I wonder how much more effort could be done to make such extensions/projects easily adaptable to non-Wikipedia projects.

I agree. However, this is sometimes complex, when you take into account the projects' very different workflows, all of which often require different transitions, i18n, etc. for features like this.

I frankly question the assertion that the first thing to do on Wikimedia Commons is to upload files, and given the result of MobileUploads, I do not think I am completely wrong. There is lots of fun stuff to do on Wikimedia Commons besides uploading, in particular given the multilingual nature of Wikimedia Commons. We have specific tasks like [[Category:Translation possible - inscriptions]] ; or general translation of file descriptions which can be quite quick to do using @MarkTraceur editDescriptions.js.

And I encourage people to work on this. There are some tools that may be helpful, including GuidedTour. However, uploading media is also important for Commons, clearly.

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