The ISA Tool
Easily Add Information to Images on Wikimedia Commons
ISA Tool is a multilingual ‘game’ that makes it fun and easy for anyone to add structured data to images on Wikimedia Commons to improve images’ description and increase their accessibility and searchability.
The ISA Tool enables users to make micro-contributions (descriptions, captions and tags) to images donated to Wikimedia Commons by the vibrant and diverse Wikimedia Community. The ISA Tool facilitates deeper engagement with the content on Wikimedia Commons and also plays a crucial role in making the repository more accessible and informative for people worldwide.
ISA was built to provide multilingual and structured descriptions for the Wiki Loves X images. It is now used for all image files on Wikimedia Commons, and is especially useful for GLAM and local communities.
ISA was developed as a collaboration between Wiki In Africa, Histropedia and the Structured Data on Commons project. It is a GLAM pilot for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons.
ISA received the coolest tool WikidataCon 2019 Award in the Multimedia category October 2019 and the Coolest Tool Award at Wikimania 2024, category Eggbeater!
What does the name mean?
‘Isa’ is the chiShona language word for ‘put’ or ‘place’, but it can also serve as an acronym for Information Structured Acceleration, Information Structure Additions and more.
Impact in 2025
In January 2025, the recorded impact of ISA since its launch in 2019 is:
- 2,038,753 images reviewed
- with 735,054 contributions
- by 1,958 users in
- 285 campaigns
