As someone who has uploaded lots of photos to Wikimedia Commons [1], I think one main challenge is coming up with an encyclopedic description and the right categories.
Searching for categories is remarkably difficult, manual, and unintuitive. For example, I recently uploaded a photo of a Caltrain at San Jose Diridon station [2]. So I put "Category:San Jose Diridon station" as a category. But this was in fact incorrect, since there's a more specific category called "Category:Trains at San José Diridon station". On Wikimedia Commons, the UI to add a category only tells you if a category exists or not, but doesn't let you search nicely.
There are also location/time categories like "Category:December 2023 in California". Probably less than 1% of photos taken during December 2023 in California get added to such categories, even when GPS and EXIF data contain information about the location and date of capture.
As for writing a description, it should be comprehensive, descriptive, yet succinct, in an encyclopedic tone, and with links to relevant categories on Wikimedia Commons or to relevant pages on Wikipedia as necessary. Again, making the relevant links is mildly tedious.
As a result, when uploading any single photo, I would need to open dozens of tabs to verify the right pages and categories.
I therefore really admire some tireless contributors on Wikimedia Commons who are constantly patrolling new uploads and adding the right categories. To be honest I have no idea how they manage to do that.
> Probably less than 1% of photos taken during December 2023 in California get added to such categories, even when GPS and EXIF data contain information about the location and date of capture.
Searching for categories is remarkably difficult, manual, and unintuitive. For example, I recently uploaded a photo of a Caltrain at San Jose Diridon station [2]. So I put "Category:San Jose Diridon station" as a category. But this was in fact incorrect, since there's a more specific category called "Category:Trains at San José Diridon station". On Wikimedia Commons, the UI to add a category only tells you if a category exists or not, but doesn't let you search nicely.
There are also location/time categories like "Category:December 2023 in California". Probably less than 1% of photos taken during December 2023 in California get added to such categories, even when GPS and EXIF data contain information about the location and date of capture.
As for writing a description, it should be comprehensive, descriptive, yet succinct, in an encyclopedic tone, and with links to relevant categories on Wikimedia Commons or to relevant pages on Wikipedia as necessary. Again, making the relevant links is mildly tedious.
As a result, when uploading any single photo, I would need to open dozens of tabs to verify the right pages and categories.
I therefore really admire some tireless contributors on Wikimedia Commons who are constantly patrolling new uploads and adding the right categories. To be honest I have no idea how they manage to do that.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dllu
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caltrain_Stadler_KIS...