Commons:WMF support for Commons/P&T Initiatives FY25-26
Over FY25–26, Wikimedia Commons was the focus of several Product & Technology efforts addressing infrastructure scalability, contributor workflows, event organization, multimedia performance, and tool sustainability. These initiatives fall into four broad categories:
A) Infrastructure & Platform Stability: Work such as moving Commons’ links tables to a dedicated database cluster, CDN filtering modernization, and mobile domain sunsetting improved Commons’ long-term scalability, security, and search visibility. These changes strengthen reliability for both Commons contributors and the downstream projects that rely on Commons files.
B) Contributor Experience & Community Workflows: The deployment of the CampaignEvents extension and early development of Collaborative Contributions introduced the first structured on-wiki event and contribution-tracking workflows for Commons. This supports global campaigns like Wiki Loves Earth/Monuments and improves multilingual engagement and organizer coordination.
C) Multimedia & Data Modernization: Commons regained modern visualization capabilities through Lua integration for datasets, replacing the deprecated Graph extension. Technical work also addressed tools like Video2Commons (through the Unsupported Tools Working Group), advancing upload and media-handling workflows across the platform.
D) Safety, Governance & Responsible Use of Infrastructure: Initiatives such as deploying temporary accounts on Commons strengthened privacy and platform safety, while proposed work on API user cohort validation aims to improve governance of high-cost media traffic and abuse patterns tied to Commons.
Together, these initiatives reflect a combination of foundational engineering, contributor-facing product improvements, and long-term sustainability work that reinforce Commons’ role as the movement’s central media repository.
The following section summarizes the major Product & Technology initiatives completed or underway in FY25–26 that directly affected Wikimedia Commons.
Initiatives
[edit]Unsupported Tools Working Group — 
In progress
[edit]
(August 2025 – present)
The Wikimedia Foundation established the Unsupported Tools Working Group to prioritize and review requests for support of community-maintained extensions, gadgets, bots, and tools. Listening tours with the Commons community surfaced strong demand for assistance with unsupported tools, influencing the group’s initial focus.
For its pilot cycle, the Working Group selected Video2Commons (V2C) as the first tool to prioritize, given its widespread use and need for performance stabilization and feature improvements. The expected impact is improved reliability and usability for thousands of contributors uploading video or audio recordings from URLs or local devices to Wikimedia Commons.
Relevant Links: Unsupported Tools Working Group Project Page
(July 2025 – present)
As Commons’ database grew to approximately 2TB, WMF began migrating the largest and fastest-growing metadata tables (including pagelinks, categorylinks, imagelinks, linktarget, and globalimagelinks) to a dedicated database cluster using MediaWiki’s virtual domain architecture.
This work improves long-term scalability, reduces replication lag, and strengthens performance and reliability for core Commons operations such as file usage lookups and global image usage across Wikimedia projects. It also increases infrastructure resilience for the broader movement, as all Wikimedia wikis depend on Commons files.
Relevant Links: T398709; WE 6.4
CDN Filtering Rationalization (WE5.4.3) — In progress
[edit](August 2025 – present)
WMF reorganized how Wikimedia’s CDN filters and classifies traffic, with particular focus on external MediaWiki sites using Commons via InstantCommons. The work includes rebuilding the CDN filtering system using an allowlist/denylist model, implementing browser and bot fingerprinting, enforcing user-agent policies, and developing the QuickInstantCommons extension.
Early enforcement has already blocked approximately 5% of Wikimedia traffic that was non-compliant or harmful, with full deployment expected to block over 100 million daily requests from unidentified bots and scrapers. This significantly reduces load from misidentified traffic, protects Commons’ expensive multimedia infrastructure, and improves performance for downstream wikis.
Relevant Links: T398161; WE5.4
Mobile Domain Sunsetting (WE6.4.4) — 
Done
[edit](October 2025)
This initiative was undertaken in response to two Community Wishlist items (1,2). By unifying page views under canonical domains, WMF reduced platform complexity and risk while improving user experience. Following this change, Wikimedia Commons saw major SEO gains, including approximately doubling Google referrals (+100% pageview referrals and +80% SERP clickthrough), after years of relatively flat traffic.
Relevant Links: T400022; Community Wishlist/W303; Community Wishlist/W167
Temporary Accounts (WE4.4) — Done
[edit](October 2025)
Temporary accounts were deployed across Wikimedia projects, including Commons, to improve privacy and safety for logged-out contributors by shielding IP addresses from public view while preserving access for patrollers who need it.
On Commons, this change enhances contributor privacy, improves abuse management signals for patrollers, and supports regulatory compliance. Some actions, such as uploading files, remain restricted to registered users.
Relevant Links: T409691; WE4.4; Project Page
CampaignEvents Extension on Commons (WE1.2) — Done
[edit](September 2025)
The CampaignEvents extension was deployed to Wikimedia Commons, enabling structured on-wiki event organization for the first time. The extension introduced native event registration, a global directory of Commons events, and invitation lists to help organizers identify potential participants based on edit history.
Since launch, Commons has hosted multiple events using CampaignEvents, with users receiving Event Organizer rights. This marks a significant shift in how communities coordinate campaigns such as Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments, reducing manual tracking, improving multilingual accessibility, and strengthening Commons’ role as a hub for global media campaigns.
Relevant Links: Extension Page; WE1.2
Graph & Data Namespace Modernization (Lua Integration for Datasets) — Done
[edit](July 2025)
Lua-based data transformation functions were added to replace the deprecated Graph extension, restoring safe and reusable data visualization capabilities on Commons. This work strengthens Commons as the central hub for Wikimedia datasets, improves data governance, and enables cross-wiki reuse of Commons-hosted Lua modules.
Relevant Links: Project Page
Appendix: Notable Fixes, Research and Proposed Work
[edit]The appendix captures additional fixes, research efforts, and proposed work that touched Commons during the fiscal year. While these items are smaller in scope or still in progress, they provide important context for understanding the broader ecosystem of changes influencing Commons’ stability, metadata quality, contributor safety, and tool reliability.
UploadWizard – Fix for “Upload on behalf of someone else” — In progress
[edit](November 2025)
This work revises the UploadWizard permission flow to require explicit license selection when uploading on behalf of another creator and adds clearer instructions related to VRT permissions. The change responds to community concerns about missing or unclear license metadata and improper permission handling. The expected impact is improved copyright compliance on Commons and reduced workload for volunteer moderators reviewing uploads.
Relevant Links: T391600
Validate API User Cohorts (WE5.1.4b) — (Proposed)
[edit](November 2025)
This proposed work addresses gaps in API traffic fidelity, particularly around Commons media usage. Many high-volume API requesters currently provide insufficient or generic identifying information (for example, generic library names or placeholder contact details), limiting the Foundation’s ability to investigate usage spikes or respond to potential abuse. Improving API cohort validation would provide clearer visibility into who is accessing Commons media and how, helping detect unusual spikes in high-cost multimedia usage, reduce unintentional infrastructure strain, and support more effective responses to misconfigured bots or abuse patterns.
Relevant Links: WE5.1
Vital Knowledge (WE2): Commons Metadata Analysis — Done
[edit](August 2025)
This research initiative analyzed Commons captions and file descriptions to identify multilingual and regional content gaps. The work highlighted significant variation in metadata quality across languages and regions, surfacing systemic underrepresentation that can limit access to “vital knowledge” from underrepresented communities. While not involving engineering changes, the findings provide important context for future decisions related to Structured Data on Commons, caption tools, and multilingual metadata workflows.