User talk:Jheald

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• User talk:Jheald/Archive 1 (2012–2015)

Category:Lowestoft_High_Lighthouse

Lowestoft High Lighthouse has been listed at Commons:Categories for discussion so that the community can discuss ways in which it should be changed. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this category, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for discussion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. If the category is up for deletion because it has been superseded, consider the notion that although the category may be deleted, your hard work (which we all greatly appreciate) lives on in the new category. In all cases, please do not take the category discussion personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 19:40, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Mapping Case study

Its been a long time, but I wanted to reach back out to you about your work on the British Libraries Map geocoordinate project at the GLAM-Wiki 2015 conference, described at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:British_Library/Mechanical_Curator_collection/georeferencing_status

When last we talked, I was working for the Wikipedia Library program, so it was out of my scope to work with you to document the project.

However, since April, I have been responsible for supporting GLAM-Wiki more broadly. One of the efforts I am trying to work on: documenting the knowledge we have about working with digitized collections. I would like to feature the Mechanical curator project within the portal as a good example of Data enrichment once collections are digitized (see the first draft of the portal at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Digitization ).

Would you be interested in working with me on a case study? Astinson (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

@Astinson (WMF): Hi. I've been rather away from Wiki for the last couple of months, so I'm aware there's a bit of maintenance needed on the geocoordinate side (as well as starting to get the maps uploaded to Commons, which I've still not got underway). Hope to get a bit back into the saddle sometime in the next few weeks.

Most of the Mech Curator images currently up are due to heroic work by user Metilsteiner, who did a lot of picture cropping, regrading, and description.

Not sure how well the full manual method scales -- it can be quite hard. The other approach is load everything up and they will come, of which Fae has been a particularly successful exponent. He also has a very nice suite of dashboard scripts, to track who has then added enrichment & what.

Haven't read your portal yet, but he is certainly someone you should also be talking to. Jheald (talk) 22:23, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the reference to @Metilsteiner: : I would love to work with the two of you, to describe the process and strategy used for describing the content. I think these kinds of structured campaigns to update metadata on large swaths of content, make a lot of sense (and are very different from the approach of Fae), because the principle focus is on enhancing the media, instead of just integrating the content into Commons. Even if its not replicable, I want to make sure that we document the philosophy and approach, so that other folks can design structures for similar crowdsourcing projects. The case study could look like this Argentine Digitization Project or this Catalan Libraries Project. The focus is on showing folks what the possibilities look like, not necessarily what is repeatable (one of the problems I am noticing at the moment, is that most of our affiliates who do GLAM work, don't have a sense of scale or energy needed to refine the uploaded media or how to organize that).Astinson (WMF) (talk) 14:35, 20 October 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jan Dittrich (WMDE) (talk • contribs) 12:55, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Talking about Structured Data on Commons

Hello James,

to improve functionality for searching, organizing and maintaining media on Commons the Wikidata team wants to enable use of structured data on Commons. For this, we would like to learn from community members like you how you do these tasks on Commons.

If you would like to participate and support us, please let me know (here on the talk page or via mail to jan.dittrich AT wikimedia.de) and we will set up a date together to talk for about 30min. I often use google Hangouts for this, however, I am open for any other possibility (e.g. Skype, WebRTC…)

Kind Regards, --Jan Dittrich (WMDE) (talk) 15:40, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

@Jan Dittrich (WMDE): Hi Jan. Thanks for getting in touch. I've been a bit focussed on other things than wiki for the last few months. If I can have some time to get back up to speed with how things have been developing (and to get back into the issues), then I would be very happy to have a chat, or join a group discussion. But I do need some time to do some homework first! Jheald (talk) 19:13, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi James, Thanks for your kind reply! My main interest lies in your workflows and goals you want to achieve (So right now, I imagine parts of the conversation to be like »I often need to upload this and that images and they should be used … however, it is difficult because …«). If you feel that this is something you want/could do without the homework (which sounded more technical), it should pose no problem in case you skip it. But do whatever you think is best.

PS.: While writing this answer my browser crashed and when posting this afterwards it affected the whole page, not just the section. I restored it. Sorry for the brief mess :-( --Jan Dittrich (WMDE) (talk) 13:00, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Hey James :) I don't think anything has really changed from what you already know so it should be fine without doing any additional homework if you want. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 15:13, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Gallery / Category having standard templates

After reading through your js discussion to d:Wikidata:Project chat; rereading Commons:Wikidata/Commons-Wikidata sitelinks for the first time in a while; doing gallery <-> WD maintenance (noting I am generally not a gallery person and still don't know why we have galleries); I am wondering whether there needs to be a standard template that sits in all galleries and maybe (another?) in all categories. If we did that then we can address some of the issues about linking now that we have the ability to suck related links/interwikis.

Having a bot that cycles through and appends or prepends a template into pages in either of those two namespaces seems to be a particularly easy task. I know that this would not be an issue-free process, however, we have seen header templates work at other sites, we know that infoboxes are now accepted practice, so why aren't we looking at something auto-parameter'd to help us in this task set. Waiting for WD to meet the needs here will be tiresome, and we need to leverage what we do have. Of course it would be even better to have something in common.js that just auto-populated templates per namespace, though that may upset people too much.

@Multichill: as another agent provocateur and all round thinker on the subject matter.

Am I missing something bleeding obvious here?  — billinghurst sDrewth 04:57, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure how happy I should be with the "agent provocateur" designation.....

I see all the steps we're doing as an evolution leading to more structured data on Commons. User:Jheald/wdcat.js is a typical client side approach to get things more connected, adding templates is more a server side approach.

Some day in the future we'll have structured data and we can use that to describe files instead of having categories. We're not there yet so in the meantime we can still work on improving categories towards next generation categories. On Wikidata we already have the properties to relate categories and topics: category's main topic (P301), topic's main category (P910), category combines topics (P971) and Commons category (P373) to fill the gap of not having a category item. You could create a LUA based template that can be added to a gallery/category that displays some useful information in your local language based on Wikidata. Deploy that on a small number of pages, get feedback, improve and expand. Multichill (talk) 14:15, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Time for some bot-driven templating?

Hi @Billinghurst: , thanks for dropping by!

A couple of things I want to respond to. First the idea of bot-driven templating more generally.

One of the things in that Village Pump post advertising the wdcat.js script was certainly to trying to get people to think about was about adding Wikidata-link templates to Commons, and one of the questions that did occur to me was perhaps whether the time may have come to fire up the bots, and template all-out as many Commons cats as we think we can describe with Wikidata.

I do very much think that the best thing we can be doing now as community to be preparing the way for structured data is to be plumbing in as many Commons <-> Wikidata links as we can. Two things we can do towards that are getting more templates in, and making those templates to be more Wikidata-driven. I think it would be good to get to the point that such templates are so widespread and so established, that people then start to ask why their favourite category doesn't have one, and then go ahead and plumb it in themselves. Given that we have something like 1.5 million categories with P373s, there's clearly big potential for a bot drive to add such templates. If that then could mobilise people to identify more Wikidata matches, ie more P373s, that is what I think is then going to be so helpful when we start trying to topic-tag the subjects and attributes of individual images.

But there is a thing that gives me pause, which is this:

Suppose we have a P373 from a Wikidata item for say) a painter "Fred Jones" pointing to a particular Commons Category. We could get a bot to simply slam a {{Creator possible}} on the category. But is that the right thing to do, without a human eyeballing?

What worries me if that {{Creator possible}} makes the categorical statement that "This is a biographical category related to a single person..." But do we know that that is actually true of all the items in the category? Or that it will continue to be?

Thinking about eg User:Fae's outstanding upload from the Wellcome Library collection, one of the things that I think we all know about big uploads is that Commons categorisation is bloody hard. One of the few things it is possible to (reasonably confidently) auto-identify with a view to categorisation are names. I think Fae was quite right to follow that possibility, and so any image metadata that mentioned a Fred Jones in any context would get added to Category:Fred Jones -- regardless of whether it was our painter or not. (@Fae: that may be an over-simplification, please correct if so).

So I wonder if we shouldn't treat all categories that are defined just by Forename/Surname as actually diffusion/disambiguation categories, and insist that when we do indeed have a category which is indeed "a biographical category related to a single person", we should demand that that category should have more than just a Forename/Surname name. This thought in part is inspired by the Art UK project (formerly called Your Paintings), that we track with Wikidata property d:P1367. When they re-booted their site last autumn from Your Paintings to Art UK, they took the opportunity to change the majority of their artist identifiers, to specifically include dates as accurately as they had them, eg martini-simone-c-12841344, rather than simone-martini. I wonder if we shouldn't do the same; so that before doing any big bot run to make categories with {{Creator possible}}, perhaps we should first move the content that we are confident is by that creator from eg "Category:Fred Jones" to eg "Category: Fred Jones (1847-1903)", and make this kind of naming the standard convention for single-person biographical categories on Commons.

Any thoughts (@Fae and Multichill: ) ? Is this suggestion for more detailed category names for identified individuals a proposal worth trying to push though into a Commons standard? Jheald (talk) 23:20, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

One other aspect to think about: User:Multichill is right to draw attention to the distinction between templates and wdcat.js as classic client-side/server-side approaches to achieve the same thing.

The catch is that SPARQL endpoints are some of the most resource-expensive servers you can run. Each wdcat.js SPARQL call is taking about 0.17 seconds of server time to run -- for each Commons category a user is loading. Which is fine, so long as the only users are the intersection of people who are die-hard Commons and die-hard Wikidata volunteers. But it's not something that (I believe) would scale, at least not in its present form, to provide for every casual Wikipedia user who happens to click through to a Commons category. Of course if one did want to go down that server-side route, there are efficiencies that could be made, eg maybe replacing the general-purpose SPARQL call with a dedicated lookup just for this property. And doing things centrally via a central server/client approach means of course that changes can be made without having to update millions of templates.

But I suspect that, for mass use, and certainly for the time being, templates probably are the easiest way to go to bring the joys of Wikidata information to the masses, rather than trying to roll out something like wdcat.js more widely, however useful I think it is. Jheald (talk) 01:21, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

And of course, the more that we can write templates to draw on the central Wikidata store

The category <-> category-item, gallery <-> article item thing

I think this is the other prong of what you were asking about, @Billinghurst: . Some thoughts to follow. Jheald (talk) 23:22, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

First up, it seems a very long time ago since I wrote Commons:Wikidata/Commons-Wikidata sitelinks, and I wouldn't be nearly as strong today with the statement

"if the structure is to remain stable, predictable and traversable, it is essential that the category-to-category and article-to-article rule is observed."

The facts on the ground are that this simply isn't being observed; and probably (I suspect) actually it may not matter very much.

Taking the facts on the ground first, the most recent stats I know of are these from December 2015. (I'm meaning to update the table, but for various reasons I was pretty much away-from-Wiki for about the last 6 months, so there are a few things on my to-do list to bring up to date). The take-away, I think, is that there really hasn't been much consistent following of the category-to-category and article-to-article rule; also, looking at historical trends at that time, the strongest sitelink growth was overwhemlingly in Commonscat<->Article sitelinks, rather than Commonscat<->Category or Gallery<->Article.

The reasons for this are probably straightforward enough to understand, and (IMO) may be something that just need to be accepted.

So, on to the second question, are they actually a problem, these cross-namespace links?

Contra to what I wrote in December 2014, I suspect that actually they probably not really a problem.

Now that we have "arbitrary access", there is no over-riding need for a page to be sitelinked to a Wikidata item in order for a template to work. So long as the Q-number is specified for the relevant data-item, a template can draw from anywhere. In fact this is just as well, because for a {{Creator}} template or {{Authority control}} template sitting on a category, it's the article-like wikidata item rather than the category-like wikidata item that is more likely to hold the information of interest.

(more to follow) Jheald (talk) 23:57, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I have posted some updated numbers at Wikidata Village Pump. Over the last year the trend in new sitelinks between Commons categories and Wikidata has been almost 4 to 1 in favour of links to article-like items over links to category-like items. I've suggested over there that "perhaps the time has come to accept this as mostly harmless". Jheald (talk) 23:49, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Category -> query without the query

Category:Grade I listed buildings in Bedfordshire -> Category:Grade I listed buildings in Bedfordshire (Q8497784) -> list related to category (P1753) -> Grade I listed buildings in Bedfordshire (Q5591762) which has: the following data in is a list of (P360) :

• Instance of (P31) -> building (Q41176)
• located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) -> Bedfordshire (Q23143)
• heritage status (P1435) -> Grade I listed building (Q15700818)

which looks an awful lot like the "wdt:P131+ wd:Q23143 ; wdt:P1435 wd:Q15700818 ; wdt:P31?/wdt:P279* wd:Q41176" you have on the category. With a bit of LUA magic you don't have to put a query on every category. That would be awesome. Multichill (talk) 15:34, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Put it at Commons_talk:Structured_data/Overview#Experimental_.22category_contains.22_template, seems to be a more central venue. Multichill (talk) 15:38, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Science-related coordination

Hello.

We had some intersections in en.wikipedia, namely (surprisingly) in w:Talk:Qere and Ketiv, as well as around w:Spinor and—possibly—articles on physical constants and units. Could you, when time permitted, review this draft, please? I would like to see your comments on the associated talk page. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:27, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Structured Data on Commons Newsletter, July 19, 2017

Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!

Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons?

The millions of files on Wikimedia Commons are described with a lot of information or (meta)data. With the project Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons, this data is structured more, and is made machine-readable. This will make it easier to view, search (also multilingually), edit, organize and re-use the files on Commons.

In early 2017, the Sloan Foundation funded this project (see documentation). Development takes place in 2017–2020. It involves staff from the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) and many volunteers. To achieve this, Wikibase support is added to Wikimedia Commons. Wikibase is the technology that is also used for Wikidata.

Recent developments: groundwork

• A new and crucial technical step (federation) now makes it possible to reference data from one Wikibase website in another. Because of this, it will be possible to use Wikidata's items and properties to describe media files on Commons.
• Another important piece of groundwork is under development: so-called Multi-Content Revisions. This feature allows structured data to be stored alongside wiki text, so that one wiki page can contain several types of content.

Team updates

• Amanda Bittaker was hired as Program Manager for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons. Amanda will take care of the overall management of the project.
• Sandra Fauconnier (known as Spinster in her volunteer capacity) is the new Community Liaison. She will support the collaboration between the communities (Commons, Wikidata, GLAM) and the product development teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland.
• We have open positions for a UX designer and a Product Manager!

Talking with communities and allies

• Long-term feedback from GLAMs. Besides the Wikimedia community, many external cultural and knowledge institutions (GLAMs - Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) are interested in Structured Data on Commons and are willing to provide feedback on the long-term plans for the project. Alex Stinson, GLAM strategist at the Wikimedia Foundation, is currently in contact with Europeana, DPLA, the Smithsonian and the National Archives of the United States. Alex is also looking for other GLAM institutions who might be able to advise on the long term. If you know of an institution or partner that may be appropriate for consultation, do get in touch with Alex.
• Jonathan Morgan, design researcher, is starting to work on two projects:
  • Researching batch upload workflows by interviewing GLAM institutions
  • Researching the enrichment, organization and improvement tasks on already uploaded media files by engaging with active Commons contributors. This research follows up on existing research by Wikimedia Deutschland on heavy Commons users.

What comes next?

• The Structured Data on Commons team meets in the week after Wikimania to lay the groundwork for the next steps. This includes new backend development and design work, for better and more clear integration of the structured data in pages on Wikimedia Commons.
• The project's information pages on Wikimedia Commons will receive a long overdue update in the upcoming months. The team will also work on more and better communication channels. Feedback, wishes and tips are welcome at the project's general talk page.

Get involved

• Join us at Wikimania! We are present at the hackathon, and there will be a session on Saturday, August 12: Structured Commons: what changes are coming?
• Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
• Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.
• Do you want to help out translating messages about Structured Data on Commons from English to your own language? Sign up on the translators page.
• Stay tuned for requests for input, discussion and participation as soon as the info portal is refreshed (see above). These will also be announced via this newsletter.

Many greetings from SandraF (WMF) (talk), Community Liaison for this project! 13:55, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Structured Commons newsletter, October 25, 2017

Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!

Community updates

• Rama published an article about Structured Commons in Arbido, a Swiss online magazine for archivists, librarians and documentalists: original in French, illustrated and the article translated in English.
• We now have a dedicated IRC channel: wikimedia-commons-sd ^webchat

Things to do / input and feedback requests

• Join the community focus group!
• Translation. Do you want to help out translating messages about Structured Data on Commons from English to your own language? Sign up on the translators page.
• The documentation and info pages about Structured Data on Commons have received a thorough update, in order to get them ready for all the upcoming work. Obsolete pages were archived. There are undoubtedly still a lot of omissions and bits that are unclear. You can help by editing boldly, and by leaving feedback and tips on the talk pages.
• We have started to list tools, gadgets and bots that might be affected by Structured Commons in order to prepare for a smooth transition to the new situation. You can help by adding alerts about/to specific tools and developers on the dedicated tools page. You can also create Phabricator tasks to help keep track of this. Volunteers and developers interested in helping out with this process are extremely welcome - please sign up!
• Help write the next Structured Commons newsletter.

Presentations / Press / Events

Audience at Structured Commons design discussion, Wikimania 2017

• Structured Data on Commons was presented at Wikimania 2017 in Montréal for a packed room. First design sketches for search functionality were discussed during a breakout session. Read the Etherpad reports of the presentation and the breakout session.
• Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, answered questions on Quora. One of her answers, mentioning Structured Data on Commons, was republished on Huffington Post.
• Sandra Fauconnier, Amanda Bittaker and Ramsey Isler from the Structured Commons team will be at WikidataCon. Sandra presents Structured Commons there (with a focus on fruitful collaboration between the Wikidata and Commons communities). If you attend the conference, don't hesitate to say hi and have a chat with us! (phabricator task T176858)

Team updates

The Structured Commons team at Wikimania 2017

Two new people have been hired for the Structured Data on Commons team. We are now complete! :-)

• Ramsey Isler is the new Product Manager of the Multimedia team.
• Pamela Drouin was hired as User Interface Designer. She works at the Multimedia team as well, and her work will focus on the Structured Commons project.

Partners and allies

• We are still welcoming (more) staff from GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) to become part of our long-term focus group (phabricator task T174134). You will be kept in the loop of the project, and receive regular small surveys and requests for feedback. Get in touch with Sandra if you're interested - your input in helping to shape this project is highly valued!

Research

Design research is ongoing.

• Jonathan Morgan and Niharika Ved have held interviews with various GLAM staff about their batch upload workflows and will finish and report on these in this quarter. (phabricator task T159495)
• At this moment, there is also an online survey for GLAM staff, Wikimedians in Residence, and GLAM volunteers who upload media collections to Wikimedia Commons. The results will be used to understand how we can improve this experience. (phabricator task T175188)
• Upcoming: interviews with Wikimedia volunteers who curate media on Commons (including tool developers), talking about activities and workflows. (phabricator task T175185)

Development

In Autumn 2017, the Structured Commons development team works on the following major tasks (see also the quarterly goals for the team):

• Getting Multi-Content Revisions sufficiently ready, so that the Multimedia and Search Platform teams can start using it to test and prototype things.
• Determine metrics and metrics baseline for Commons (phabricator task T174519).
• The multimedia team at WMF is gaining expertise in Wikibase, and unblocking further development for Structured Commons, by completing the MediaInfo extension for Wikibase.

Stay up to date!

• Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
• Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.
• Join the next IRC office hour and ask questions to the team! It takes place on Tuesday 21 November, 18.00 UTC.

Warmly, your community liaison, SandraF (WMF) (talk)

Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery - 14:26, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Re: Categories on Commons

Hello Jheald! Just wanted to give you a heads up that I have seen your response on the Village Pump. I'm actually taking a few days off at the moment, so response will be slower, but it's on the radar. Thanks! SandraF (WMF) (talk) 08:52, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Structured Commons focus group update, December 11, 2017

Hello! You are receiving this message because you signed up for the community focus group for Structured Commons :-)

Later this week, a full newsletter will be distributed, but you are the first to receive an update on new requests for feedback.

Three requests for feedback

1. We received many additions to the spreadsheet that collects important Commons and Wikidata tools. Thank you! Now, you can participate in a survey that helps us understand and prioritize which tools and functionalities are most important for the Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata communities. The survey runs until December 22. Here's some background.
2. Help the team decide on better names for 'captions' and 'descriptions'. You can provide input until January 3, 2018.
3. Help collect interesting Commons files, to prepare for the data modelling challenges ahead! Continuous input is welcome there.

Warmly, your community liaison SandraF (WMF) (talk)

Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) - 16:40, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Structured Commons newsletter, December 13, 2017

Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!

Community updates

• There was a IRC Office Hour about Structured Commons on November 21. You can read the log here.
• Our dedicated IRC channel: wikimedia-commons-sd ^webchat

Things to do / input and feedback requests

A multi-licensed image on Wikimedia Commons, with a custom {{EthnologyItemMHNT}} Information template. Do you also know media files on Commons that will be interesting or challenging to model with structured data? Add them to the Interesting Commons files page.

• NEW: Participate in a survey that helps us prioritize which tools are important for the Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata communities. The survey runs until December 22. Here's some background.
• NEW: Help the team decide on better names for 'captions' and 'descriptions'. You can provide input until January 3, 2018.
• NEW: Help collect interesting Commons files, to prepare for the data modelling challenges ahead! Continuous input is welcome.
• Join the community focus group!
• Do you want to translate messages and information about Structured Data on Commons from English to your own language? Sign up on the translators page.

Presentations / Press / Events

Presentation about Structured Commons and Wikidata, at WikimediaCon in Berlin.

• Sandra presented the plans for Structured Commons during WikidataCon in Berlin, on October 29. The presentation focused on collaboration between the Wikidata and Commons communities. You can see the full video here.

Partners and allies

• We are still welcoming (more) staff from GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) to become part of our long-term focus group (phabricator task T174134). You will be kept in the loop of the project, and receive regular small surveys and requests for feedback. Get in touch with Sandra if you're interested - your input in helping to shape this project is highly valued!

Research

• Research findings from interviews and surveys of GLAM project participants are being published to the research page. Check back over the next few weeks as additional details (notes, quotes, charts, blog posts, and slide decks) will be added to or linked from that page.

Development

• The Structured Commons team has written and submitted a report about the first nine months of work on the project to its funders, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The 53-page report, published on November 1, is available on Wikimedia Commons.
• The team has started working on designs for changes to the upload wizard (T182019).
• We started preliminary work to prototype changes for file info pages.
• Work on the MediaInfo extension is ongoing (T176012).
• The team is continuing its work on baseline metrics on Commons, in order to be able to measure the effectiveness of structured data on Commons. (T174519)
• Upcoming: in the first half of 2018, the first prototypes and design sketches for file pages, the UploadWizard, and for search will be published for discussion and feedback!

Stay up to date!

• Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
• Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.
• Join the next IRC office hour and ask questions to the team! It takes place on Tuesday, February 13, 18.00 UTC in wikimedia-office ^webchat.

Warmly, your community liaison, SandraF (WMF) (talk)

Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery - 16:32, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Structured Commons - Design feedback request: Multilingual Captions

Hello! You are receiving this message because you signed up for the the community focus group for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons.

The Structured Data on Commons team has a new design feedback request up for Multilingual Captions support in the Upload Wizard. Visit the page for more information about the potential designs. Discussion and feedback is welcome there.

On a personal note, you'll see me posting many of these communications going forward for the Structured Data project, as SandraF transitions into working on the GLAM side of things for Structured Data on Commons full time. For the past six months she's been splitting time between the two roles (GLAM and Community Liaison). I'm looking forward to working with you all again. Thank you, happy editing. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 15:09, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data feedback - What gets stored where (Ontology)

Greetings,

There is a new feedback request for Structured Data on Commons (link for messages posted to Commons: , regarding what metadata from a file gets stored where. Your participation is appreciated.

Happy editing to you. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

First structured licensing conversation on Commons

Greetings,

The first conversation about structured copyright and licensing for Structured Data on Commons has been posted, please come by and participate. The discussion will be open through the end of the month (March). Thank you. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 17:26, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data on Commons Newsletter - Spring 2018

Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter and contribute to the next issue. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!

Community updates

• Our dedicated IRC channel: wikimedia-commons-sd ^webchat
• Several Commons community members are working on ways to integrate Wikidata in Wikimedia Commons. While this is not full-fledged structured data yet, this work helps to prepare for future conversion of data, and helps to understand how Wikidata and Commons can work better together.
  • Thanks to Jarekt and other contributors, some Commons templates can now be filled via Wikidata: {{Creator}} (Phabricator) and {{Institution}} (Phabricator). Work is ongoing on the {{Artwork}} template (Phabricator).
  • Thanks to Mike Peel and others, Wikidata-powered infoboxes can now be added to Commons categories, with the template {{Wikidata Infobox}}. (Example)
  • Multichill is working on an experimental workflow to upload images to Commons via Wikidata (and using metadata from Wikidata). See a part of it here.

Things to do / input and feedback requests

• Join the community focus group!
• Do you want to help out translating messages about Structured Data on Commons from English to your own language? Sign up on the translators page.
• Contribute to the next newsletter.

Discussions held

• Conversation about licensing and copyright modeling.
• High-level discussion on ontology for Commons.
• Review first designs for multilingual captions.
• IRC office hour, 13 February

Events

• Wikimedia Conference, Berlin, 20-22 April (+ Learning Days 18-19 April): several sessions and workshops around Structured Commons
• EuropeanaTech Conference, Rotterdam, 15-16 May: several presentations + a full workshop day on Monday 14 May about Wikidata and Structured Commons
• Wikimedia Hackathon, Barcelona, 18-20 May: Structured Commons as a focus area.

Partners and allies

• We are still welcoming (more) staff from GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) to become part of our long-term focus group (phabricator task T174134). You will be kept in the loop of the project, and receive regular small surveys and requests for feedback. Get in touch with Sandra if you're interested - your input in helping to shape this project is highly valued!

Research

• The research about GLAM contributions to Wikimedia Commons is concluded. A blog post on the Wikimedia blog provides a summary, and you can read the full results on meta.wikimedia.org.

Development

• Prototypes will be available for Multilingual Captions soon.

Stay up to date!

• Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
• Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.
• Join the next IRC office hour and ask questions to the team! The date for next quarter will be announced soon.

-- Keegan (WMF) (talk)

Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery - 19:48, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Category:Set of Maps

I had intended to use this category as a temporary holding ground for future additions to other categories, although there should have been a suitable category in a more permanent sense. Artix Kreiger (talk) 20:43, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

@Artix Kreiger: It would be quite useful to me, if it only contained maps from the BL Mechanical Curator books, that still need some processing. But I'm happy to leave what is there as is, at least for the moment, if you would prefer? Jheald (talk) 20:50, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah ok. I understand and will leave it as is. Will you upload the rest later? Artix Kreiger (talk) 22:10, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps upload the rest of the images? There is over a million and you could use your bot to do that. Artix Kreiger (talk) 15:46, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Multilingual captions testing is available

Greetings,

The early prototype for multilingual caption support is available for testing. More information on how to sign up to test is on Commons. Thanks, happy editing to you. - Keegan (WMF) (talk) 17:06, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data on Commons IRC Office Hour, Tuesday 26 June

Greetings,

There will be an IRC office hour for Structured Data on Tuesday, 26 June from 18:00-19:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office. You can find more details, as well as date and time conversion, at the IRC Office Hours page on Meta.

Thanks, I look forward to seeing you there if you can make it. -- Keegan (talk) 20:54, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

What properties does Commons need?

Greetings,

Structured Commons will need properties to make statements about files. The development team is working on making the software ready to support properties; the question is, what properties does Commons need?

You can find more information and examples to help find properties in a workshop on Commons. Please participate and help fill in the list, and let me know if you have any questions. Thanks! -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 18:53, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data on Commons Newsletter - Summer 2018

Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter and contribute to the next issue. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!

Community updates

• Our dedicated IRC channel: wikimedia-commons-sd ^webchat
• Since our last newsletter, the Structured Data team has moved into designing and building prototypes for various features. The use of multilingual captions in the UploadWizard and on the file page has been researched, designed, discussed, and built out for use. Behind the scenes, back-end work on search is taking place and designs are being drawn up for the front-end. There will soon be specifications published for the use of the first Wikidata property on Commons, "Depicts," and a prototype is to be released to go along with that.

Things to do / input and feedback requests

• A workshop on what Wikidata properties Commons will need. This workshop will be open for the entire month of July 2018 at minimum.

• Join the community focus group!
• Do you want to help out translating messages about Structured Data on Commons from English to your own language? Sign up on the translators page.
• Contribute to the next newsletter.

Discussions held

• In late February there was a discussion around how Commons generally sees data being modeled.

• The first discussion on copyright and licensing with Commons was held in March. This was a "high level" discussion, there will be a consultation later this summer about the deeper mapping of copyright and licensing in a structured way.
• In April there was an exercise for GLAM partners in metadata and ontology mapping.
• A discussion about the design for Multilingual Captions on the file page took place in May. You can still review the designs and leave feedback.
• There was an IRC office hour in June to discuss progress so far and future plans.

Wikimania 2018

• Three sessions about Structured Commons are officially scheduled for Wikimania 2018 - Cape Town, South Africa - July 2018.
  • Wikimedia Commons and GLAM needs around the world (Friday 20 July, 10:30 local time)
  • Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons and knowledge equity (Friday 20 July, 14:00 local time)
  • Design challenge workshop: How can multilingual structured metadata bring knowledge equity to Commons? (Friday 20 July, 14:30 local time)
• Structured Data on Commons is also a focus area during the Wikimania 2018 Hackathon. We will, among other things, do 'live' modelling of Wikidata properties for Commons - an offline spin-off of the community consultation taking place on wiki.

Partners and allies

• We are still welcoming (more) staff from GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) to become part of our long-term focus group (phabricator task T174134). You will be kept in the loop of the project, and receive regular small surveys and requests for feedback. Get in touch with Sandra if you're interested - your input in helping to shape this project is highly valued!
• Structured Data on Commons was presented to GLAM audiences during EuropeanaTech 2018 in Rotterdam (15 May 2018) and at the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek Forum in Berlin (4 June 2018).

Research

Two research projects about Wikimedia Commons are currently ongoing, or in the process of being finished:

1. Research:Curation workflows on Wikimedia Commons—a project that seeks to understand the current workflows of Commons contributors who curate media (categorize it, delete it, link to it from other projects, etc.).
2. Research:Technical needs of external re-users of Commons media—soliciting feedback from individuals and organizations that re-use Commons content outside of Wikimedia projects, in order to understand their current painpoints and unmet needs.

Development

• Prototypes will be available for Depicts soon.

Stay up to date!

• Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
• Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.
• Join the next IRC office hour and ask questions to the team! The date for next quarter will be announced soon.

-- Keegan (WMF) (talk)

Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery - 21:07, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data Newsletter - Research link fix

Greetings,

The newsletter omitted two interwiki prefixes, breaking the links on non-meta wikis as you might see above. Here are the correct links:

1. m:Research:Curation workflows on Wikimedia Commons—a project that seeks to understand the current workflows of Commons contributors who curate media (categorize it, delete it, link to it from other projects, etc.).
2. m:Research:Technical needs of external re-users of Commons media—soliciting feedback from individuals and organizations that re-use Commons content outside of Wikimedia projects, in order to understand their current painpoints and unmet needs.

My apologies, I hope you find the corrected links helpful.

- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Expiry of GWToolset user group memberships

There is a proposal on the Bureaucrat's noticeboard to automatically expire GWT memberships after one year unless the user requests an extension. Please add your views and suggestions to the discussion. The reasonably informal process for getting access to GWT access will remain as is.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of Revi. 15:42, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data feedback - Depicts statements draft requirements

Greetings,

A slide presentation of the draft requirements for depicts statements on file pages is up on Commons. Please visit this page on Commons to review the slides and discuss the draft. Thank you, see you on the talk page. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:20, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data feedback - structured licensing and copyright

Mockups of structured licensing and copyright statements on file pages are posted. Please have a look over the examples and leave your feedback on the talk page. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:32, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

New discussion on Commons talk:Structured data

Hello. I've started a new, important discussion about creating properties for Commons on Wikidata. Please come join in, if the process is something that interests you or if you can help. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:48, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Category:Old maps of Taiwan

I looked at your edits. Why add Category:Maps of Taiwan?--Kai3952 (talk) 14:42, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

@Kai3952: It's normal for a category Old maps of X to be categorised under Maps of X, so that if somebody starts at Maps of X they can see that the Old maps category exists, and may be prompted to explore it also. If you pick X = any random country or city, you are likely to find that this is so. Note that Category:Maps of the history of Taiwan has a different meaning -- this is for maps showing a place at a time previous to when the map was drawn. Old maps of X generally are not categorised under Maps of the history of X. Jheald (talk) 16:53, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

So, how should I use "Maps of the history of X"?--Kai3952 (talk) 17:11, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

@Kai3952: See the templated message at the top of Category:Old maps of Taiwan for the standard guidance on how these categories should be used, and the relations between them. Jheald (talk) 17:15, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

No, what I am asking about, in what case should I use "Category:Maps of the history of Taiwan"?--Kai3952 (talk) 19:26, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

@Kai3952: Like it says, "use Category:Maps of the history of Taiwan or its subcategories" if the map shows "history of Taiwan Island on a recently created map". Jheald (talk) 20:36, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

But I think adding "Category:Maps of Taiwan by type" to Category:Old maps of Taiwan would be appropriate.--Kai3952 (talk) 06:50, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

@Kai3952: Perhaps. Whatever, the standard pattern across the site is that Old maps of X should be categorised under Maps of X -- indeed often as a lead category, lifted above the remaining alphabetical order. People are so used to that, that if they look in Maps of X and don't see Old maps of X explicitly included there, they will assume Old maps of X does not exist, and then will never find the images (and/or their bot won't know where to put images). So that's why I thought it was a good idea for X = Taiwan to conform to this expectation too. Jheald (talk) 08:18, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

No, it is not correct to do this, because it violates "COM:OVERCAT".--Kai3952 (talk) 09:34, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

@Kai3952: Consistency of behaviour across the site is IMO more important than COM:OVERCAT. If you want further opinions on this, I would suggest opening a thread at COM:VP on the question. Jheald (talk) 10:06, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't need to do this!--Kai3952 (talk) 10:11, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

@Kai3952: If two editors disagree in good faith, it's good to get further opinions. If you think the standard behaviour on this all across the site is wrong, then let's go to VP and see if the wider community agree. Jheald (talk) 10:23, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

@Jheald: No, that is not my problem. As you can see, he said: "Consistency of behaviour across the site is IMO more important than COM:OVERCAT". But my point is that "Category:Maps of Taiwan by type" is more suitable than "Category:Maps of Taiwan". So, I am not obligated to go to COM:VP for him.--Kai3952 (talk) 11:51, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

@Kai3952: I really don't think so. Look at Category:Maps_of_Canada and Category:Maps_of_Canada_by_type for comparison. An old map isn't really a 'type' of map. That's why Category:Old_maps_of_Canada is a separate highlighted subcategory of Category:Maps_of_Canada, the old maps tree under it could potentially have an exactly parallel subdivision: Old maps by subdivision, Old maps by theme, Old maps by type, Old maps by decade, etc. This is the established pattern across the whole of the rest of the site. It's how people expect things to work, and where people expect to go to look to be able to find things. Making the pattern for Taiwan different from that for the whole of the rest of the site is not going to be helpful. Jheald (talk) 12:38, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

@Jheald: If so, then it should be put under Category:Maps of Taiwan and not Category:Maps of the history of Taiwan. Why?--Kai3952 (talk) 12:55, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

@Kai3952: Done. Jheald (talk) 12:58, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

@Jheald: Would you please answer my question: Why is Category:Old maps of Taiwan be put under Category:Maps of the history of Taiwan?--Kai3952 (talk) 13:09, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

@Kai3952: Who knows? I didn't put it there, it shouldn't have been put there, it's not there now. Jheald (talk) 13:13, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

@Jheald: But from what I see right now, there are many countries like Russia, Germany, and the U.S. that "Category:Old maps of X" be put under "Category:Maps of the history of X".--Kai3952 (talk) 13:37, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

@Kai3952: Enough of this. The guidance is set out very clearly at Commons:Categories/Maps, which gives advice that has been consistent for the last 12 years; moreover, this is the advice that is linked to by the template in the very first line of Category:Maps of the history of Taiwan, and has been ever since 2007 when that category was created. As the template says, Please see the maps categorization scheme guidelines.

Turning to those guidelines we see, quite explicitly at point 3:

Every "Maps..." category may have an "Old maps..." category as its first subcategory.

with the footnote

i.e. an "Old maps of..." category should include the categorization [[Category:Maps of... | ]]. This should make the "Old maps of..." category the first subcategory in the "Maps of..." category, within sight of both registered and unregistered users.

Those instructions are absolutely clear. If you have an issue with them, take it up at COM:VP. Otherwise, this conversation is done. Jheald (talk) 14:13, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data - upcoming changes to viewing old file page revisions

How old revisions of file pages work are likely going to have to change for structured data. There is information about the change on the SDC hub talk page, please read it over and leave feedback if you have any. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data - IRC office hours today, 4 October

There will be an IRC office hour for Structured Data on Commons today, 4 October 2018, from 17:00-18:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office. You can find date/time conversion, as well as a link to join the chat in your browser if needed, on the IRC Office hours page on Meta. I look forward to seeing you there. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:49, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data - search prototype

There is a search prototype for structured data on Commons available. Please visit the search prototype page on the structured data hub for information on testing and feedback. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data - IRC office hour today, 1 November

There will be an IRC office hour for Structured Data on Commons today, 1 October 2018, from 17:00-18:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office. You can find date/time conversion, as well as a link to join the chat in your browser if needed, on the IRC Office hours page on Meta. I realize this may be short notice for some people; I am experimenting with advanced notice times to see what works best for the most people, I'll be giving more warning before the next office hour. I look forward to seeing you there. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:02, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data - IRC office hour today, 1 November

The above message says 1 October in the body when it should say 1 November, as the subject line says. Apologies for making a new section by mass message, it's the only way to get this out quickly. See you in twenty minutes! -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:37, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data - copyright and licensing statements

I've posted a second round of designs for modeling copyright and licensing in structured data. These redesigns are based off the feedback received in the first round of designs, and the development team is looking for more discussion. These designs are extremely important for the Commons community to review, as they deal with how copyright and licensing is translated from templates into structured form. I look forward to seeing you over there. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:25, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Template:Reasonator

Template:Reasonator has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this template, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

Mike Peel (talk) 17:27, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data on Commons Newsletter - Fall 2018 edition

Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!

Community updates

• Multilingual Captions, the first feature release for Structured Data, is coming in January of 2019
  • Be on the lookout for the beta testing announcement
  • Help using captions has been set up, if you'd like to go ahead and see the workflow
• Two IRC office hours were held since the last newsletter
  • Log for 4 October
  • Log for 1 November
• Our dedicated IRC channel: wikimedia-commons-sd ^webchat

Things to do / input and feedback requests

Current:

• Help determine and propose properties on Wikidata for Commons
• Review designs for structured licensing and copyright
• Join the community focus group!

Since the last newsletter:

• Review a prototype for searching structured Commons (October 2018)
• "Good coverage" for depicts tagging (Sept. 2018)
• Review and discuss mockups for displaying the new metadata section of the file page (18 September - 9 October 2018)
• Depicts statements draft requirements (14 August - 31 August 2018)
• Identify Wikidata properties that Commons will need (26 June - 14 August 2018)

Presentations / Press / Events

• Presentation by Keegan on the first features to be released for Structured Data, presented at Wikiconference North America, Columbus, Ohio, October 2018.
• Sandra presented a project update at the GLAM-Wiki conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, November 2018, as part of an update and panel discussion.
• Structured Data on Commons was the subject of a keynote presentation by Sandra (see slides) at the Baltic Audiovisual Archives Council conference in Tallinn, Estonia, November 2018.

Partners and allies

• The info portal on Structured Commons now includes a section on GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums).
• We are currently planning the first GLAM pilot projects that will use structured data on Wikimedia Commons. One project has already started: the Swedish Heritage Board researches and develops a prototype tool to provide improved metadata (translations, data additions...) from Wikimedia Commons back to the source institution. Read the project brief.
• The documentation for batch uploads of files to Wikimedia Commons will be improved in 2019, as part of preparing for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons. To prepare, the GLAM team at the Wikimedia Foundation wants to understand better which types of documentation you already use, and how you like to learn new GLAM-Wiki skills and knowledge. Fill in a short survey to provide input!

Stay up to date!

• Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
• Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.

-- Keegan (WMF) (talk)

Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery - 17:58, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Multilingual captions beta testing

The Structured Data on Commons team has begun beta testing of the first feature, multilingual file captions, and all community members are invited to test it out. Captions is based on designs discussed with the community[1][2] and the team is looking forward to hearing about testing. If all goes well during testing, captions will be turned on for Commons around the second week of January, 2019.

Multilingual captions are plain text fields that provide brief, easily translatable details of a file in a way that is easy to create, edit, and curate. Captions are added during the upload process using the UploadWizard, or they can be added directly on any file page on Commons. Adding captions in multiple languages is a simple process that requires only a few steps.

The details:

• There is a help page available on how to use multilingual file captions.
• Testing will take place on Beta Commons. If you don’t yet have an account set up there, you’ll need one.
• Beta Commons is a testbed, and not configured exactly like the real Commons site, so expect to see some discrepancies with user interface (UI) elements like search.
• Structured Data introduces the potential for many important page changes to happen at once, which could flood the recent changes list. Because of this, Enhanced Recent Changes is enabled as it currently is at Commons, but with some UI changes.
• Feedback and commentary on the file caption functionality are welcome and encouraged on the discussion page for this post.
• Some testing has already taken place and the team are aware of some issues. A list of known issues can be seen below.
• If you discover a bug/issue that is not covered in the known issues, please file a ticket on Phabricator and tag it with the “Multimedia” tag. Use this link to file a new task already tagged with "Multimedia."

Known issues:

• Search is not currently working on Beta Commons. Search is not needed for testing captions, but service should be restored soon.
• Language name display inconsistencies in multilingual file captions
• Language names for multilingual File captions can run into the caption value in the mobile view
• Deleting a caption field that has text that exceeds the limit does not re-enable the "publish" button
• "Edit" tab for past revisions should be "restore"
• When using the back button, recently added captions sometimes don't display in Chrome
• File Captions can't be edited on mobile browsers
• Wrong font weight for some language labels on SDC captions box

Thanks!

-- Keegan (WMF) (talk), for the Structured Data on Commons Team 20:42, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Structured Data - file captions coming this week (January 2019)

Hi all, following up on last month's announcement...

Multilingual file captions will be released this week, on either Wednesday, 9 November or Thursday, 10 November 2019. Captions are a feature to add short, translatable descriptions to files. Here's some links you might want to look follow before the release, if you haven't already:

1. Read over the help page for using captions - I wrote the page on mediawiki.org because captions are available for any MediaWiki user, feel free to host/modify a copy of the page here on Commons.
2. Test out using captions on Beta Commons.
3. Leave feedback about the test on the captions test talk page, if you have anything you'd like to say prior to release.

Additionally, there will be an IRC office hour on Thursday, 10 January with the Structured Data team to talk about file captions, as well as anything else the community may be interested in. Date/time conversion, as well as a link to join, are on Meta.

Thanks for your time, I look forward to seeing those who can make it to the IRC office hour on Thursday. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Captions in January

The previous message from today says captions will be released in November in the text. January is the correct month. My apologies for the potential confusion. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - file captions coming this week (January 2019)

My apologies if this is a duplicate message for you, it is being sent to multiple lists which you may be signed up for.

Hi all, following up on last month's announcement...

Multilingual file captions will be released this week, on either Wednesday, 9 January or Thursday, 10 January 2019. Captions are a feature to add short, translatable descriptions to files. Here's some links you might want to look follow before the release, if you haven't already:

1. Read over the help page for using captions - I wrote the page on mediawiki.org because captions are available for any MediaWiki user, feel free to host/modify a copy of the page here on Commons.
2. Test out using captions on Beta Commons.
3. Leave feedback about the test on the captions test talk page, if you have anything you'd like to say prior to release.

Additionally, there will be an IRC office hour on Thursday, 10 January with the Structured Data team to talk about file captions, as well as anything else the community may be interested in. Date/time conversion, as well as a link to join, are on Meta.

Thanks for your time, I look forward to seeing those who can make it to the IRC office hour on Thursday. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:09, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - development update, March 2019

This text is also posted on the Structured Data hub talk page. You can reply there with questions, comments, or concerns.

A development update for the current work by the Structured Data on Commons team:

After the release of multilingual file captions, work began on getting depicts and other statements ready for release. These were originally scheduled for release in February and into March, however there are currently two major blockers to finishing this work (T215642, T217157). We will know more next week about when depicts and statements can likely be ready for testing and then release; until then I've tentatively updated the release schedule.

Once the depicts feature is ready for testing, it will take place in two stages on TestCommons. The first is checking the very basics; is the design comfortable, how does the simple workflow of adding/editing/removing statements work, and building up help and process pages from there. The second part is a more detailed test of depicts and other statements, checking the edge-case examples of using the features, bugs that did not come up during simple testing, etc. Additionally we'll be looking with the community for bugs in interaction with bots, gadgets, and other scripts once the features are live on Commons. Please let me know if you're interesting in helping test and fix these bugs if they show up upon release, it is really hard to find them in a test environment or, in some cases, bugs won't show up in a testing environment at all.

One new thing is definitely coming within the next few weeks, pending testing: the ability to search for captions. This is done using the inlabel keyword in search strings, and will be the first step in helping users find content that is specifically structured data. I'll post a notice when that feature is live and ready for use.

Thanks, let me know if you have questions about these plans. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:34, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - early depicts testing

The Structured Data on Commons development team has the very basic version of depicts statements available for early testing on Test-Commons. You can add very basic depicts statements to the file page by going into the new “Structured Data” tab located below the "Open in Media Viewer button." You can use the Latest Files link in the left side nav bar to select existing images, or use the UploadWizard to upload new ones to test with (although those images won’t actually show up on the site). The test site is not a fully functional replica of Commons, so there may be some overall problems in using the site, but you should be able to get a general idea of what using the feature is like.

Early next week I will call for broad, community-wide testing of the feature similar to what we did for Captions, with instructions for testing, known bugs, and a dedicated space to discuss the feature as well as a simple help page for using statements. Until then, you're welcome to post on the SDC talk page with what you might find while testing depicts.

Thanks in advance for trying it out, you'll be hearing more from me next week. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:59, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - testing qualifiers for depicts

As you might have seen, testing is underway for adding qualifiers to depicts statements. If you have not left feedback already, the Structured Data on Commons development team is very interested in hearing about your experience using qualifiers on the file page and in the UploadWizard. To get started you can visit Test-Commons and chose a random file to test out, or upload your own file to try out the UploadWizard. Questions, comments, and concerns can be left on the Structured data talk page and the team will address them as best as they can. Thank you for your time. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data on Commons - IRC office hours this week, 18 July

The Structured Data team is hosting an IRC office hour this week on Thursday, 18 July, from 17:00-18:00 UTC. Joining information as well as date and time conversion is available on Meta. Potential topics for discussion are the testing of "other statements", properties that may need to be created for Commons on Wikidata soon, plans for the rest of SDC development, or whatever you might want to discuss. The development team looks forward to seeing you there. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - testing other statements

You can now test using other statements for structured data on the file page on Test-Commons. Some datatypes are not yet available, such a coordinates, but further support will be extended soon. You can find more information about testing on the SDC talk page. The team looks forward to your feedback. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:41, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Jheald,

The Wikimedia Foundation is asking for your feedback in a survey about your experience with Wikimedia Commons and Wikimedia. The purpose of this survey is to learn how well the Foundation is supporting your work on wiki and how we can change or improve things in the future. The opinions you share will directly affect the current and future work of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 01:15, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - computer-aided tagging

The development team is starting work on one of the last planned features for SDC v1.0, a lightweight tool to suggest depicts tags for images. I've published a project page for it, please have a look. I plan to share this page with everyone on Commons much more broadly in the coming days. The tool has been carefully designed to try to not increase any workload on Commons volunteers; for starters, it will be opt-in for auto-confirmed users only and will not generate any sort of backlog here on Commons. Additionally, the tool is highly privacy-minded for the contributors and publicly-minded for the third party being used, in this case Google. The implementation and usage notes contain more information about these and other potential concerns as a starting place. It's really important that the tool is implemented properly from the start, so feedback is welcome. Questions, comments, concerns are welcome on the talk page and I will get answers as quickly as possible as things come up. On the talk page you can also sign up to make sure you're a part of the feedback for designs and prototype testing. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 17:57, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Jheald,

A couple of weeks ago, we invited you to take the Community Insights Survey. It is the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual survey of our global communities. We want to learn how well we support your work on wiki. We are 10% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! Your voice matters to us.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 15:24, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - blogs posted in Wikimedia Space

There are two separate blog entries for Structured Data on Commons posted to Wikimedia Space that are of interest:

• Working with Structured Data on Commons: A Status Report, by Lucas Werkmeister, discusses some ways that editors can work with structured data. Topics include tools that have been written or modified for structured data, in addition to future plans for tools and querying services.
• Structured Data on Commons - A Blog Series, written by me, is a five-part posting that covers the basics of the software and features that were built to make structured data happen. The series is meant to be friendly to those who may have some knowledge of Commons, but may not know much about the structured data project.

I hope these are informative and useful, comments and questions are welcome. All the blogs offer a comment feature, and you can log in with your Wikimedia account using oAuth. I look forward to seeing some posts over there. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - modeling data

As you may have seen, there are community discussions underway on how to best model structured data on Commons.

Direct links to pages created so far:

• Date (talk)
• Source (talk)
• Author (talk)
• Copyright (talk)
• Licensing (talk)
• Location (talk)
• Quality (talk)

Please visit and participate in topics you might be interested in when you get some time. Thanks. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Jheald,

There are only a few weeks left to take the Community Insights Survey! We are 30% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! With this poll, the Wikimedia Foundation gathers feedback on how well we support your work on wiki. It only takes 15-25 minutes to complete, and it has a direct impact on the support we provide.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 20:04, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - computer-aided tagging designs

I've published a design consultation for the computer-aided tagging tool. Please look over the page and participate on the talk page. If you haven't read over the project page, it might be helpful to do so first. The tool will hopefully be ready by the end of this month (October 2019), so timely feedback is important. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Important message for file movers

A community discussion has been closed where the consensus was to grant all file movers the suppressredirect user right. This will allow file movers to not leave behind a redirect when moving files and instead automatically have the original file name deleted. Policy never requires you to suppress the redirect, suppression of redirects is entirely optional.

Possible acceptable uses of this ability:

• To move recently uploaded files with an obvious error in the file name where that error would not be a reasonable redirect. For example: moving "Sheep in a tree.jpg" to "Squirrel in a tree.jpg" when the image does in fact depict a squirrel.
• To perform file name swaps.
• When the original file name contains vandalism. (File renaming criterion #5)

Please note, this ability should be used only in certain circumstances and only if you are absolutely sure that it is not going to break the display of the file on any project. Redirects should never be suppressed if the file is in use on any project. When in doubt, leave a redirect. If you forget to suppress the redirect in case of file name vandalism or you are not fully certain if the original file name is actually vandalism, leave a redirect and tag the redirect for speedy deletion per G2.

The malicious or reckless breaking of file links via the suppressredirect user right is considered an abuse of the file mover right and is grounds for immediate revocation of that right. This message serves as both a notice that you have this right and as an official warning. Questions regarding this right should be directed to administrators. --Majora (talk) 21:35, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at Wikimedia Commons.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 22:04, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Commons - Media Search

Greetings,

The Structured Data team is working on an alternative, image-focused prototype for media search on Commons. The prototype uses categories, structured data as well as wikitext from Commons, and Wikidata to find its results. The development team would like your feedback on the prototype, as they are looking to work to further enhance the search experience on Commons. If you have a moment, please look over the project page set up on Commons to find a link to the prototype and leave your feedback on the talk page. Thanks for your time, I'll be posting message similar to this one to other pages on Commons. The team is looking forward to reading what you think. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Commons - Media Sarch, new feedback round

Greetings,

I'm following up on a message from earlier in the year about the prototype development for Special:MediaSearch. Based on community feedback, the Structured Data team has developed some new features for Special:MediaSearch and are seeking another round of comments and discussions about the tool. Commons:Structured_data/Media_search is updated with details about the new features plus some other development information, and feedback is welcome on Commons talk:Structured_data/Media_search. Media Search works in any language, so the team would especially appreciate input around support for languages other than English. I look forward to reading about what you think. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:05, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Blanking Wikitext

Please avoid blanking valid information from image pages as you did with diff. Removing valid information about copyright, or the description of an image, damages Commons both for damaging the chances of others validating copyright and for users to find images using the standard search engine. If you want to establish a consensus that people need to search Wikidata in order to find images on Commons, then do so, before blanking wikitext from Commons. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 15:25, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Map template: Infobox template tag

See User_talk:Zhuyifei1999/Archive_57#Maybe_wrong_maintenance_category

Notification about possible deletion

Some contents have been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether they should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at their entry. If you created these pages, please note that the fact that they have been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with them, such as a copyright issue. Please see Commons:But it's my own work! for a guide on how to address these issues. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

Affected:

• File:Cavada-wikipedia1-1024x462.jpg

Yours sincerely, JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 05:32, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Category:Over-the-lap_BDSM_spanking

Over-the-lap BDSM spanking has been listed at Commons:Categories for discussion so that the community can discuss ways in which it should be changed. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this category, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for discussion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. If the category is up for deletion because it has been superseded, consider the notion that although the category may be deleted, your hard work (which we all greatly appreciate) lives on in the new category. In all cases, please do not take the category discussion personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

2601:199:4180:A370:4C81:C07D:952C:77BD 20:09, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

We need your feedback!

Hello. Apologies if this message is not in your native language: please feel free to respond in the language of your choice. Thank you!

I am writing to you because we are looking for feedback for a new Wikimedia Foundation project, Structured Data Across Wikimedia (SDAW). SDAW is a grant-funded programme that will explore ways to structure content on wikitext pages in a way that will be machine-recognizable and -relatable, in order to make reading, editing, and searching easier and more accessible across projects and on the Internet. We are now focusing on designing and building image suggestion features for experienced users.

We have some questions to ask you about your experience with uploading images here on Wikimedia Commons and then adding them to Wikipedia. You can answer these questions on a specific feedback page on Mediawiki, where we will gather feedback. As I said, these questions are in English, but your answers do not need to be in English! You can also answer in your own language, if you feel more comfortable.

Once the collecting of feedback will be over, we will sum it up and share with you a summary, along with updated mocks that will incorporate your inputs.

Also, if you want to keep in touch with us or you want to know more about the project, you can subscribe to our newsletter.

Hope to hear from you soon! -- Sannita (WMF) (talk to me!) 09:57, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

OpenRefine starts SDC development! 💎

Hello James! I hope all is well :-) As you may be aware, OpenRefine has started development of features for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons. Would you like to be informed about ongoing work? You can sign up here to receive occasional updates on a Wikimedia talk page of your choice. Also, feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions! SFauconnier (talk) 16:52, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Medea-chart database on old nautical charts

Hi, I’m sending this message to all participants of Commons Wikimaps listed here, so that I can be pretty sure it will get to some of you. I am the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded project Medea-Chart ([3]), hosted by the University of Lisbon, whose scientific objective is the study of the genesis, evolution and use of nautical charts from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. One of the visible outcomes of our project is the Medea-Chart database, aimed at storing and making available information and images of all extant manuscript nautical charts: [4]. Since the images of old maps and charts are now in the public domain and our database is open to all, I’m sure your project could benefit from it. The most obvious way would be to download from there all the images you are interested in, but I imagine you could use the tool for more sophisticated purposes. For now, I invite all of you to go there, browse the database, do geographical searches, read our “Chart of the Week” mini-articles, etc. You don’t even need to register for that. Registration is only required for those interested in downloading high resolution images or producing reports. Best wishes and have fun, Alvesgaspar (talk) 21:25, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Category:Old_maps_of_Hereford

Old maps of Hereford has been listed at Commons:Categories for discussion so that the community can discuss ways in which it should be changed. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this category, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for discussion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. If the category is up for deletion because it has been superseded, consider the notion that although the category may be deleted, your hard work (which we all greatly appreciate) lives on in the new category. In all cases, please do not take the category discussion personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

JopkeB (talk) 13:19, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Category:Old_maps_of_Montreal

Old maps of Montreal has been listed at Commons:Categories for discussion so that the community can discuss ways in which it should be changed. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this category, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for discussion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. If the category is up for deletion because it has been superseded, consider the notion that although the category may be deleted, your hard work (which we all greatly appreciate) lives on in the new category. In all cases, please do not take the category discussion personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

Enyavar (talk) 17:25, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Structured statements query

Do you have query that allows me to see the 100 most used entries for P17 and P180? Trade (talk) 15:59, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

@Trade: . Sure, the queries only need a couple of small changes from the ones I posted to your thread on the COM:SDC talk page (section "AI generated images").

country (P17) total uses: 32,192 https://w.wiki/6K3T Top countries: France, Spain, USA, Gambia https://w.wiki/6K3V

depicts (P180) total uses: 19,426,017 https://w.wiki/6K3X Top values: road (2.7%), path (1.3%), agriculture (1.2%), house (1.2%), village (1.1%), suburb (1.0%), commercial building (0.8%), historic site (0.8%) ...

Also relevant may be the most common classes of depicts values https://w.wiki/6K3a : Top values: human (9.6%), civil parish (6.3%), village (4.3%), taxon (2.9%), church building (2.8%), road transport infrastructure (2.7%), Scottish civil parish (1.7%), town (1.6%), painting (1.5%) ...

Note that I made the sample size smaller in the last query, to limit the amount of data sent into the federated sub-query for the class look-up. Hope this helps, Jheald (talk) 17:20, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Also, a slightly tweaked version of the last query https://w.wiki/6K4A which samples 3x as many (takes 3x as long), and skips over classes of classes (so ignores 'road' -> 'road transport infrastructure'). Jheald (talk) 17:34, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Category:The Gorge, Shropshire

Thanks for these, these Geograph dumps into a civil parish are huge things to sort out. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:40, 27 February 2023 (UTC)