SandraF (WMF)

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

IRC office hour today, 21 November, 18.00 UTC

• The IRC office hour about Structured Commons takes place at 18:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office^connect. Amanda, Ramsey and I will give updates about the project, and you can ask us questions. The log will be published afterwards.

Tools update

Many important community tools for Commons and Wikidata will benefit from an update to structured data in the future. You can help indicate which tools will need attention:

• Check this Google spreadsheet and leave your comments (ping me if you'd like full editing access to the spreadsheet)
• More and more tools will also be tracked on Phabricator and on the tools inventory page. Feel free to add and edit.

Warmly, your community liaison SandraF (WMF) (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

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!

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 - 14:07, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you very much for signing up to the community focus group for Structured Commons :-)

How to organize ourselves?

This focus group is new and experimental, and I welcome your tips and thoughts on how we can organize this in the most convenient and productive way. For now, I have posted a few separate topics on the focus group's talk page. Please add your questions there too! If we all add that page to our watchlist, that's probably a good way to stay up to date with current discussions. Steinsplitter has also initiated a brand new IRC channel specifically for Structured Commons: wikimedia-commons-sd ^(webchat) which we invite you to join. Please let me know if you have other ideas on how to work together.

Current updates

• For your agenda: IRC office hour about Structured Commons, Tuesday 21 November at 18:00 UTC in wikimedia-office ^(webchat).
• A newsletter about Structured Commons is sent out later today. Its frequency will probably increase from now on. You are warmly invited to contribute to next issues — don't hesitate to add updates.
• The documentation and info pages about Structured Data on Commons have received a thorough (and much overdue) update this week, 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.
• More things (logo? tools?) to be discussed on the focus group's talk page!

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

Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery - 13:27, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you very much for signing up to the community focus group for Structured Commons :-)

How to organize ourselves?

This focus group is new and experimental, and I welcome your tips and thoughts on how we can organize this in the most convenient and productive way. For now, I have posted a few separate topics on the focus group's talk page. Please add your questions there too! If we all add that page to our watchlist, that's probably a good way to stay up to date with current discussions. Steinsplitter has also initiated a brand new IRC channel specifically for Structured Commons: #wikimedia-commons-sd^connect which we invite you to join. Please let me know if you have other ideas on how to work together.

Current updates

• For your agenda: IRC office hour about Structured Commons, Tuesday 21 November at 18:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office^connect.
• A newsletter about Structured Commons is sent out later today. Its frequency will probably increase from now on. You are warmly invited to contribute to next issues — don't hesitate to add updates.
• The documentation and info pages about Structured Data on Commons have received a thorough (and much overdue) update this week, 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.
• More things (logo? tools?) to be discussed on the focus group's talk page!

Warmly, your community liaison, SandraF (WMF)

Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) - 13:08, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

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! 12:18, 19 July 2017 (UTC)