GLAM/Newsletter/August 2026/Contents/Wikimedia Commons report
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Media loading change affects Commons Impact Metrics and GLAM analytics
In a recent report by Tech News 2026, issue 35, the Media Platform Team shared an important update on the work they are accomplishing with images and thumbnails.
“In order to improve page performance, images now load when they are viewed. This means images lower down an article will not load if a reader never scrolls to that part of the page, which may affect some image-related metrics.”
This work could be tracked under Phabricator ticket: “Enable native image lazy loading on desktop” and is connected to the Wikimedia Foundation's annual plan, in the section related to thumbnail infrastructure, under KR PP3.6: Image thumbnailing.
This change allows pages to load lighter and faster, consequently enhancing readability. Since April 2026, this change has been enabled on mobile devices, but now it has also been enabled on desktop.
The update will likely reduce media-level metrics delivered via Commons Impact Metrics, therefore impacting some pageviews data reported by cultural heritage (GLAM) institutions using the API. Other data delivered by CIM, like page-level metrics, should remain the same.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact gfontenelle
wikimedia or leave a comment on the Phabricator ticket or on the Commons Impact Metrics discussion page.
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