Project overview

Wikimedia Commons is one of the world’s largest free-licensed media repositories. It contains more than 40 million image, audio, and video files, which are curated by volunteers. Like Wikipedia, anyone can contribute to Wikimedia Commons. Both projects are built on Mediawiki, a software platform which was originally designed to host text, not rich media. As the variety and amount of multimedia formats has increased over time, the architecture of Wikimedia Commons has created challenges for everyone who uses it.

The Wikimedia Foundation has launched a multi-year program to build a structured data layer into Wikimedia Commons based on the WikiBase platform. This will make it easier to capture metadata for multimedia content, upload rich media, and search for specific files. The research component of this project seeks to understand the impact of structured data integration on important Wikimedia Commons stakeholders, such as media contributors, curators, and consumers.

The focus of this research project is to understand the current issues and unmet needs of Wikimedia Commons users. We want to explore the ways new structured data–driven functionality can address these needs. We also want to comprehensively understand the current workflows of core contributors and curators to minimize disruption to their work as we implement the new structured data–driven functionality.