Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-11-23/Uploading tool

A new system to simplify uploading images for participants of Wikipedia Takes The City and similar contests has come online this week. Wikipedia Takes The City is a free content photography scavenger hunt contest regularly planned in cities all around the world, where teams compete to take photographs of particular goals for illustrating Wikipedia articles, where they are needed.

According to Pharos, the system has a generalized interface with a number of useful features and will eventually be available in multiple languages. (The interface is currently in English.) The primary goal of this system is to provide an easy mechanism for uploading and sorting large numbers of images, especially for non-Wiki users, who often have great difficulty using either Wikimedia Commons or Wikipedia for uploading.

Kaldari explains that the uploading interface is similar to that of popular photo-sharing service Flickr, which allows multiple files to be uploaded at once. It also provides an easy to use interface for contest organizers to set-up new scavenger hunts and to review the photos from each team before they are published to Commons. The system is not limited to city-based scavenger hunts; contests could be organized across entire countries or limited to something as small as an art museum.

Kaldari and Pharos are the primary developers of the system. An early prototype was demoed at the Multimedia Usability Project Meeting in France.

Any Wikimedians interested in setting up new photo scavenger hunts using the tool should read through the instructions on the site and contact Kaldari or Pharos for further assistance.