This roundtable on Structured Data on Commons will provide a quick background on the SDC project, a roundup of best practices, and a showcase of projects and efforts (45 mins). Finally, there will be a discussion of the future direction of SDC (15 mins) and a group discussion (30 mins) to give feedback to the Wikimedia Foundation team and the community of practice around SDC.
Structured Data on Commons is one of the biggest changes to the multimedia repository in its history. By bringing the structured metadata capabilities of Wikidata to Commons, there is the potential to overcome some of the language-dependent weaknesses with categories and templates. The session will provide a basic overview of how SDC works including:
- search functions
- Commons user interfaces for editing SDC
- best tools for working with SDC (AC/DC, Wikidata Positions, sdc_tool.js, Minefield, ISA, et al.), best practices for modeling, and the current SPARQL query service (https://wcqs-beta.wmflabs.org/)
Among the issues with SDC that will be addressed a bigger discussion:
1. Tools - What is the state of the current tools and how might they be developed more? What's missing and what is critically needed? For example, the pywikibot framework that is used extensively in the movement has no support for SDC. What are the prospects for this framework and others to gain SDC capabilities? Are the current interfaces for editing SDC for users adequate?
2. Modeling - SDC/Wikibase provides the mechanism for structured metadata but not prescribe a policy on its use. That's for the community to decide. But where are the best coordinating practices for this? Sometimes conversations are derived from Wikidata, but the Commons community is larger and newer to the idea of concepts of depiction statements, provenance, and class hierarchies.
3. Feature development - What are the most crucial features that are needed in the near and long term? In 2021, issues arose with the lack of reference statements support in SDC, something crucial for GLAM work. (commons:Commons_talk:Structured_data#References_to_Structured_Data_on_Commons)
3. Future work - What is the current timeline for feature development and what are the future plans, from the Wikimedia Foundation team?