Commons:Mobile app
Official website, including user documentation
The Commons app is maintained as open source on GitHub, we are always looking for developers and testers.
 | Commons Mobile app 2019 Coolest Tool Award Winner |
Results
- Files uploaded via the Commons Android app are in use at more than 35,000 places on Wikipedia (real-time count, most-used pictures)
- Histogram showing the number of uploads per week
Examples of pictures uploaded via the Commons mobile app for Android:
Protest in Kerala, India
Explorer Fedor Konukhov
Civil rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila
Damage due to Cyclone Aila
Uganda wins ICC World Cricket
Malayali film director Anjali Menon
Protest at oil refinery
Cyclist Ellen van Dijk
Daily life in Bangladesh
Tunisian journalist Fawzia Zouari
Rapper Boosie Badazz
Women's March on Portland
Writer Hasan Azizul Huq
.jpg/240px-Makha_(shooting_game).jpg)
Traditional Pashtun archery in Pakistan, file used on 32 wikis
FC Valence team captain Fernando Gómez Colomer
Hindustani musician Neela Bhagwat
Basketball player Silvia Domínguez
Spanish politician Alejandra Soler in 2017
Swiss band Koenix
San Francisco pride
British computer scientist Sue Black
Korean singer Lee Sungmin
American rabbi David Ellenson
Mozzarella picture used in 102 articles
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History
This app started as an official Wikimedia app in 2012, before being abandoned in 2014 to focus on the Wikipedia app. Seeing its potential, Nicolas Raoul salvaged the app in 2015 and uploaded it to Google Play, maintaining it with the help of other volunteers.
In May 2016, after following the Developing an official app procedure, Nicolas signed a contract with WMF allowing the app to use the official Wikimedia Commons name and logo.
Since September 2016, Josephine Lim is the maintainer of the app. It is now developed by IEG grantees, Outreachy/GSoC students and volunteers.
The app is currently used across the world to upload about 80 new pictures per day (List of pictures uploaded in the last 24 hours). Some of them have been recognized as "Valued Images" and "Quality Images".
iOS
In May 2015, an iOS port called Commons Reloaded was uploaded to GitHub and the App Store. It disappeared from the App Store in early 2016 because the volunteer maintainer Thomas Skowron was not interested in renewing his Apple Developer Program account (which costs 99 USD per year).
We need your help: please monitor uploads
Wikimedia Commons allows only freely licensed content and the files must be in the project scope. Files not meeting those criteria may be nominated for deletion.
Recently uploaded files can be seen:
- As a live RSS feed of pictures
- As a live textual list
- As a gallery updated once per day
- Directly from within the app: Tap "Explore", search for "Uploaded with Mobile/Android", tap "Categories", tap "Uploaded with Mobile/Android"
- As a query for developers
See also:
- Wikidata edits by the app (when uploading from the map of Wikidata items without a picture, the app sets the item's P18 property. For more than 30 days before please use this query)
- All files uploaded from the Android app
- Current deletion requests
- Users whose first upload was via the mobile app (then you can check contributions by entering a username in this tool)
- All files uploaded from the iOS app (iOS app is now discontinued)
- Becoming an official patroller
If you have more than 1000 contributions on Commons (check), please ask for the patroller permission (just follow the simple instructions in the "How to make a request" box). That will allow your patrolling to overlap less with other patrollers, as explained at Commons:Patrol.
- This app has never been responsible for any copyvio/selfie-pocalypse
Please note that the selfie-pocalypse frequently mentioned in association with mobile uploads was solely caused by the mobile web interface (now deprecated). The current active mobile app available is a native Android app. The two are inherently very different and have different workflows. Mobile websites are just accessed via browser whereas native apps need to be downloaded by the user, and native apps allow development of features that would not be possible with mobile websites.
All pictures uploaded via the app get patrolled by the app's team, all copyright violations and undesirable images get deleted quickly. These are the stats for the current Android app's uploads vs deletes, as you can see about 95% of uploaded files are good.
