I think this subject should also be discussed on the Commons mailing list, as this plan is to demolish the navigational structure of Commons.
2015-08-27 15:03 GMT+02:00 Romaine Wiki romaine.wiki@gmail.com:
No we have not a clear policy on only linking sitelinks to categories if the item itself is about a category. So not let's not break that.
You suggest to break down almost the complete navigational structure Commons has in relationship with Wikipedia, and makes it possible to find articles that are about the same subject as the category. Without it becomes almost impossible to identify a category on Commons to be related to an article in Wikipedia. Sorry, but your proposal is insane and making the navigational situation a thousand times worse. And does it make anything better? No, totally not. Only the opposite: worse.
Wikidata is currently heavily used to connect categories on Commons to articles on Wikipedia. This so that interwikilinks are shown on the category on Commons to the related Wikipedia article. This for navigational purposes but also to uniquely identify categories on Commons to articles on Wikipedia and items on Wikidata.
How nice Commons galleries are giving an overview, they are crap in speaking of navigational purposes. For every subject a category on Commons is created and used and the Commons categories form the backbone to media categories.
It has been pointed out for a long time that the linking situation on Commons is problematic and this is a software issue, not a user side issue. This consists out of:
- There can only be added one sitelink to an item.
- If no sitelink added (but only added as property), a Commons category
can't show the interwikilinks.
- If a category and an article on Wikipedia/etc exist for a subject, only
one of them can be shown on the Commons category.
The annoying part is that some large wikis, especially the English Wikipedia, creates too many categories that are not created on other Wikipedias. This causes that categories on Commons are only linked to a category on Wikipedia, which is useless for most other wikis and on Commons we miss an interwikilink to the related article.
A gallery on Commons is a great way as alternative to show images, but is not suitable for navigational purposes, as that requires a much higher coverage and being a backbone everything relies on. On Commons only categories have that function. A counter proposal makes more sense: no Commons galleries as sitelinks any more and having Commons galleries only as property added.
But this only solves a part of the problem: on Commons I would like to see somehow that both the related category as the related article are shown. Example: on the Commons category for a specific country both the country category on Wikipedia is linked as the article on Wikipedia is linked.
Something I have been wondering about for a long time is why there are 2 places on an item where a Commonscat is added. I understand the development and technical behind it, but this should not be needed.
So the developers of Wikidata should try to find a way to show both groups of interwikilinks on categories on Commons.
As long as this is not resolved in software, this problem of 2 items both strongly related to a Commons category keeps an issue.
Romaine
2015-08-27 11:29 GMT+02:00 James Heald j.heald@ucl.ac.uk:
A few days ago I made the following post to Project Chat, looking at how people are linking from Wikidata items to Commons categories and galleries compared to a year ago, that some people on the list may have seen, which has now been archived:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2015/08#Trends_i...
A couple of headlines:
- Category <-> commonscat identifications :
** There was a net increase of 61,784 Commons categories that can now be identified with category-like items, to 323,825 Commons categories in all
** 96.4% of category <-> commonscat identifications (312,266 items) now have sitelinks. This represents a rise in sitelinks (60,463 items) amounting to 97.8% of the increase in identifications
** 80.0% of category <-> commonscat identifications (259,164 items) now have P373 statements. This represents a rise in P373 statements (8,774 items) amounting to 14.2% of the increase in identifications
- Article <-> commonscat identifications :
** There was a net increase of 176,382 Commons categories that can now be identified with article-like items, to 884,439 Commons categories in all
** 23.4% of article <-> commonscat identifications (207,494 items) now have (deprecated) sitelinks. This represents a rise in sitelinks (112,595 items) amounting to 63.8% of the increase in identifications.
** 91.3% of article <-> commonscat identifications (807,776 items) now have P373 statements. This represents a rise in P373 statements (110,727 items) amounting to 62.8% of the increase in identifications
- In addition, a recent RfC showed considerable confusion as to what
actually was the current operational Wikidata policy on sitelinks to Commons:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Requests_for_comment/Category_commons...
In view of the trends above; and the need for predictability and consistency for queries and templates and scripts to depend on; and particularly in view of the apparent confusion as to what the operational policy currently actually is, can I suggest that the time has come for a bot to monitor all new sitelinks to Commons categories,
- adding a corresponding P373 statement if there is not one already, and
- removing the sitelink if it is from an article-like item to a
commonscat.
I believe we have clear policy on only sitelinking commons categories to category-like items, and commons galleries to article-like items; but there is currently confusion and unpredictability being caused because these relationships are not being enforced -- breaking scripts and queries.
It's time to fix this.
All best,
James.
Wikidata mailing list Wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
This is one reason I create the pahbricator request for Commons to have its own Site box rather than fall under "Other wiki's". That would allow us to link an item to its corresponding Gallery, Category, Creator or whatever. Right now we can only like to Commons category via the Other Wiki's and although we can link Galleries, Creator and the like as data items, they are not "linked" as site links.
Reguyla
On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 11:28 AM, Romaine Wiki romaine.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
I think this subject should also be discussed on the Commons mailing list, as this plan is to demolish the navigational structure of Commons.
2015-08-27 15:03 GMT+02:00 Romaine Wiki romaine.wiki@gmail.com:
No we have not a clear policy on only linking sitelinks to categories if the item itself is about a category. So not let's not break that.
You suggest to break down almost the complete navigational structure Commons has in relationship with Wikipedia, and makes it possible to find articles that are about the same subject as the category. Without it becomes almost impossible to identify a category on Commons to be related to an article in Wikipedia. Sorry, but your proposal is insane and making the navigational situation a thousand times worse. And does it make anything better? No, totally not. Only the opposite: worse.
Wikidata is currently heavily used to connect categories on Commons to articles on Wikipedia. This so that interwikilinks are shown on the category on Commons to the related Wikipedia article. This for navigational purposes but also to uniquely identify categories on Commons to articles on Wikipedia and items on Wikidata.
How nice Commons galleries are giving an overview, they are crap in speaking of navigational purposes. For every subject a category on Commons is created and used and the Commons categories form the backbone to media categories.
It has been pointed out for a long time that the linking situation on Commons is problematic and this is a software issue, not a user side issue. This consists out of:
- There can only be added one sitelink to an item.
- If no sitelink added (but only added as property), a Commons category
can't show the interwikilinks.
- If a category and an article on Wikipedia/etc exist for a subject, only
one of them can be shown on the Commons category.
The annoying part is that some large wikis, especially the English Wikipedia, creates too many categories that are not created on other Wikipedias. This causes that categories on Commons are only linked to a category on Wikipedia, which is useless for most other wikis and on Commons we miss an interwikilink to the related article.
A gallery on Commons is a great way as alternative to show images, but is not suitable for navigational purposes, as that requires a much higher coverage and being a backbone everything relies on. On Commons only categories have that function. A counter proposal makes more sense: no Commons galleries as sitelinks any more and having Commons galleries only as property added.
But this only solves a part of the problem: on Commons I would like to see somehow that both the related category as the related article are shown. Example: on the Commons category for a specific country both the country category on Wikipedia is linked as the article on Wikipedia is linked.
Something I have been wondering about for a long time is why there are 2 places on an item where a Commonscat is added. I understand the development and technical behind it, but this should not be needed.
So the developers of Wikidata should try to find a way to show both groups of interwikilinks on categories on Commons.
As long as this is not resolved in software, this problem of 2 items both strongly related to a Commons category keeps an issue.
Romaine
2015-08-27 11:29 GMT+02:00 James Heald j.heald@ucl.ac.uk:
A few days ago I made the following post to Project Chat, looking at how people are linking from Wikidata items to Commons categories and galleries compared to a year ago, that some people on the list may have seen, which has now been archived:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2015/08#Trends_i...
A couple of headlines:
- Category <-> commonscat identifications :
** There was a net increase of 61,784 Commons categories that can now be identified with category-like items, to 323,825 Commons categories in all
** 96.4% of category <-> commonscat identifications (312,266 items) now have sitelinks. This represents a rise in sitelinks (60,463 items) amounting to 97.8% of the increase in identifications
** 80.0% of category <-> commonscat identifications (259,164 items) now have P373 statements. This represents a rise in P373 statements (8,774 items) amounting to 14.2% of the increase in identifications
- Article <-> commonscat identifications :
** There was a net increase of 176,382 Commons categories that can now be identified with article-like items, to 884,439 Commons categories in all
** 23.4% of article <-> commonscat identifications (207,494 items) now have (deprecated) sitelinks. This represents a rise in sitelinks (112,595 items) amounting to 63.8% of the increase in identifications.
** 91.3% of article <-> commonscat identifications (807,776 items) now have P373 statements. This represents a rise in P373 statements (110,727 items) amounting to 62.8% of the increase in identifications
- In addition, a recent RfC showed considerable confusion as to what
actually was the current operational Wikidata policy on sitelinks to Commons:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Requests_for_comment/Category_commons...
In view of the trends above; and the need for predictability and consistency for queries and templates and scripts to depend on; and particularly in view of the apparent confusion as to what the operational policy currently actually is, can I suggest that the time has come for a bot to monitor all new sitelinks to Commons categories,
- adding a corresponding P373 statement if there is not one already, and
- removing the sitelink if it is from an article-like item to a
commonscat.
I believe we have clear policy on only sitelinking commons categories to category-like items, and commons galleries to article-like items; but there is currently confusion and unpredictability being caused because these relationships are not being enforced -- breaking scripts and queries.
It's time to fix this.
All best,
James.
Wikidata mailing list Wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
On 28 Aug 2015, at 18:40, Reguyla reguyla@gmail.com wrote:
This is one reason I create the pahbricator request for Commons to have its own Site box rather than fall under "Other wiki's". That would allow us to link an item to its corresponding Gallery, Category, Creator or whatever. Right now we can only like to Commons category via the Other Wiki's and although we can link Galleries, Creator and the like as data items, they are not "linked" as site links.
This would be very useful - I think this would be a good way forward that would avoid the whole 'page vs. category' debate. The Phabricator ticket is at: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T102417
Thanks, Mike
Hi all, before we write off the category system (as living-in-the-future-Gerard seems to do ;-) we should probably rather think about killing galleries. All of them. Completely. Galleries require a considerable maintenance overhead, and I would argue that that work is better spent on categorizing our content. We could replace galleries by allowing select images to retain high level categories (for example through a template so the don't accidentally get diffused down the tree). The captions in galleries are just an i18n nightmare and a data duplication of the description texts. This does not entirely solve the problem of still having the Creator namespace, but if were up to me, we'd _not_ interwikilink there, but rather to the "Works by .." category, because that is what I think people expect to find on commons: Images Cheers, Daniel
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
On 28 Aug 2015, at 18:40, Reguyla reguyla@gmail.com wrote:
This is one reason I create the pahbricator request for Commons to have its own Site box rather than fall under "Other wiki's". That would allow us to link an item to its corresponding Gallery, Category, Creator or whatever. Right now we can only like to Commons category via the Other Wiki's and although we can link Galleries, Creator and the like as data items, they are not "linked" as site links.
This would be very useful - I think this would be a good way forward that would avoid the whole 'page vs. category' debate. The Phabricator ticket is at: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T102417
Thanks, Mike _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Hoi, Killing categories on Commons is a bit premature. Until the time we start working in earnest on Commons, it is probably not the categories we will do first. Easiest and more obvious are data that is of relevance and is kept in templates like the "Creator" or the "Institution" template. As it is, a majority of them are already linked to Wikidata. Making a complete change for having this data in Wikidata means that such information is available in all languages. Another aspect is in data like licenses and similar info. That could be done easy as well because it is already largely structured.
Categories on Commons are "peculiar". It will be interesting what the discussions will be once it will be discussed in earnest. Thanks, GerardM
On 13 September 2015 at 20:39, Daniel Schwen lists@schwen.de wrote:
Hi all, before we write off the category system (as living-in-the-future-Gerard seems to do ;-) we should probably rather think about killing galleries. All of them. Completely. Galleries require a considerable maintenance overhead, and I would argue that that work is better spent on categorizing our content. We could replace galleries by allowing select images to retain high level categories (for example through a template so the don't accidentally get diffused down the tree). The captions in galleries are just an i18n nightmare and a data duplication of the description texts. This does not entirely solve the problem of still having the Creator namespace, but if were up to me, we'd _not_ interwikilink there, but rather to the "Works by .." category, because that is what I think people expect to find on commons: Images Cheers, Daniel
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
On 28 Aug 2015, at 18:40, Reguyla reguyla@gmail.com wrote:
This is one reason I create the pahbricator request for Commons to have
its own Site box rather than fall under "Other wiki's". That would allow us to link an item to its corresponding Gallery, Category, Creator or whatever. Right now we can only like to Commons category via the Other Wiki's and although we can link Galleries, Creator and the like as data items, they are not "linked" as site links.
This would be very useful - I think this would be a good way forward
that would avoid the whole 'page vs. category' debate. The Phabricator ticket is at:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T102417
Thanks, Mike _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
No new wikidata feature on commons whiteout community consensus please. This stuff seems to be very controversial. (#shellpolicy, #community-consensus-needed)
From: gerard.meijssen@gmail.com Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2015 21:38:35 +0200 To: commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Wikidata] Trends in links from Wikidata items to Commons
Hoi, Killing categories on Commons is a bit premature. Until the time we start working in earnest on Commons, it is probably not the categories we will do first. Easiest and more obvious are data that is of relevance and is kept in templates like the "Creator" or the "Institution" template. As it is, a majority of them are already linked to Wikidata. Making a complete change for having this data in Wikidata means that such information is available in all languages. Another aspect is in data like licenses and similar info. That could be done easy as well because it is already largely structured.
Categories on Commons are "peculiar". It will be interesting what the discussions will be once it will be discussed in earnest. Thanks, GerardM
On 13 September 2015 at 20:39, Daniel Schwen lists@schwen.de wrote: Hi all,
before we write off the category system (as
living-in-the-future-Gerard seems to do ;-) we should probably rather
think about killing galleries. All of them. Completely. Galleries
require a considerable maintenance overhead, and I would argue that
that work is better spent on categorizing our content. We could
replace galleries by allowing select images to retain high level
categories (for example through a template so the don't accidentally
get diffused down the tree). The captions in galleries are just an
i18n nightmare and a data duplication of the description texts.
This does not entirely solve the problem of still having the Creator
namespace, but if were up to me, we'd _not_ interwikilink there, but
rather to the "Works by .." category, because that is what I think
people expect to find on commons: Images
Cheers,
Daniel
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
On 28 Aug 2015, at 18:40, Reguyla reguyla@gmail.com wrote:
This is one reason I create the pahbricator request for Commons to have its own Site box rather than fall under "Other wiki's". That would allow us to link an item to its corresponding Gallery, Category, Creator or whatever. Right now we can only like to Commons category via the Other Wiki's and although we can link Galleries, Creator and the like as data items, they are not "linked" as site links.
This would be very useful - I think this would be a good way forward that would avoid the whole 'page vs. category' debate. The Phabricator ticket is at:
Thanks,
Mike
Commons-l mailing list
Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org
_______________________________________________
Commons-l mailing list
Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
_______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
I agree that most of the galleries on Commons are semi useless and out of date, and I can not think of a situation when I would prefer to land at a Gallery page rather than Category page when following a interwiki link. But what do you suggest when proposing to completely kill all the galleries? Delete them all?
Jarek T. User:Jarekt
-----Original Message----- From: commons-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:commons-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Schwen Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2015 2:40 PM To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Wikidata] Trends in links from Wikidata items to Commons
Hi all, before we write off the category system (as living-in-the-future-Gerard seems to do ;-) we should probably rather think about killing galleries. All of them. Completely. Galleries require a considerable maintenance overhead, and I would argue that that work is better spent on categorizing our content. We could replace galleries by allowing select images to retain high level categories (for example through a template so the don't accidentally get diffused down the tree). The captions in galleries are just an i18n nightmare and a data duplication of the description texts. This does not entirely solve the problem of still having the Creator namespace, but if were up to me, we'd _not_ interwikilink there, but rather to the "Works by .." category, because that is what I think people expect to find on commons: Images Cheers, Daniel
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
On 28 Aug 2015, at 18:40, Reguyla reguyla@gmail.com wrote:
This is one reason I create the pahbricator request for Commons to have its own Site box rather than fall under "Other wiki's". That would allow us to link an item to its corresponding Gallery, Category, Creator or whatever. Right now we can only like to Commons category via the Other Wiki's and although we can link Galleries, Creator and the like as data items, they are not "linked" as site links.
This would be very useful - I think this would be a good way forward that would avoid the whole 'page vs. category' debate. The Phabricator ticket is at: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T102417
Thanks, Mike _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
_______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
On 14 September 2015 at 15:30, Tuszynski, Jarek W. JAROSLAW.W.TUSZYNSKI@leidos.com wrote:
I agree that most of the galleries on Commons are semi useless and out of date, and I can not think of a situation when I would prefer to land at a Gallery page rather than Category page when following a interwiki link. But what do you suggest when proposing to completely kill all the galleries? Delete them all?
This overlooks some quite beautiful results from the hard work of some Commonists on galleries. As a counter example you should consider how our long term specialist contributor Orchi, lovingly creates categories such as https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Collection_d'orchid%C3%A9es which does the useful job of mapping out early illustrations and names of orchids to their modern names and identifies interesting early plant names where probably nobody knows of a modern name... these galleries certainly add to the sum of human knowledge and happen to be more useful than the source categories.
Fae
Galleries still make it much easier to navigate and sort images to a newbie, and the categorization system may be too complex for them.
On Sep 14, 2015, "Tuszynski, Jarek W." JAROSLAW.W.TUSZYNSKI@leidos.com wrote:
I agree that most of the galleries on Commons are semi useless and out of date, and I can not think of a situation when I would prefer to land at a Gallery page rather than Category page when following a interwiki link. But what do you suggest when proposing to completely kill all the galleries? Delete them all?
Jarek T. User:Jarekt
-----Original Message----- From: commons-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:commons-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Schwen Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2015 2:40 PM To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Wikidata] Trends in links from Wikidata items to Commons
Hi all, before we write off the category system (as living-in-the-future-Gerard seems to do ;-) we should probably rather think about killing galleries. All of them. Completely. Galleries require a considerable maintenance overhead, and I would argue that that work is better spent on categorizing our content. We could replace galleries by allowing select images to retain high level categories (for example through a template so the don't accidentally get diffused down the tree). The captions in galleries are just an i18n nightmare and a data duplication of the description texts. This does not entirely solve the problem of still having the Creator namespace, but if were up to me, we'd _not_ interwikilink there, but rather to the "Works by .." category, because that is what I think people expect to find on commons: Images Cheers, Daniel
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
On 28 Aug 2015, at 18:40, Reguyla reguyla@gmail.com wrote:
This is one reason I create the pahbricator request for Commons to have its own Site box rather than fall under "Other wiki's". That would allow us to link an item to its corresponding Gallery, Category, Creator or whatever. Right now we can only like to Commons category via the Other Wiki's and although we can link Galleries, Creator and the like as data items, they are not "linked" as site links.
This would be very useful - I think this would be a good way forward that would avoid the whole 'page vs. category' debate. The Phabricator ticket is at: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T102417
Thanks, Mike _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
On 13 Sep 2015, at 19:39, Daniel Schwen lists@schwen.de wrote:
Hi all, before we write off the category system (as living-in-the-future-Gerard seems to do ;-) we should probably rather think about killing galleries. All of them. Completely. Galleries require a considerable maintenance overhead, and I would argue that that work is better spent on categorizing our content. We could replace galleries by allowing select images to retain high level categories (for example through a template so the don't accidentally get diffused down the tree). The captions in galleries are just an i18n nightmare and a data duplication of the description texts. This does not entirely solve the problem of still having the Creator namespace, but if were up to me, we'd _not_ interwikilink there, but rather to the "Works by .." category, because that is what I think people expect to find on commons: Images Cheers, Daniel
+1, I completely agree with this.
On 14 Sep 2015, at 15:30, Tuszynski, Jarek W. JAROSLAW.W.TUSZYNSKI@leidos.com wrote:
I agree that most of the galleries on Commons are semi useless and out of date, and I can not think of a situation when I would prefer to land at a Gallery page rather than Category page when following a interwiki link. But what do you suggest when proposing to completely kill all the galleries? Delete them all?
Jarek T. User:Jarekt
I also agree with this. In most of the cases where I've ended up on a gallery page, it hasn't been updated since 2009, and it's not really worth maintaining - in most cases I tend to merge these into the category page on sight. Simply merging all gallery pages into the corresponding category descriptions (where they can then be trimmed down as appropriate) would be a good way forward.
There are some cases where this isn't the case, e.g. on high-profile topics where the galleries are relatively up-to-date and provide useful image links, but these seem to be fairly rare, and they often link to sub-par images rather than the best ones we have available on Commons.
On 14 Sep 2015, at 16:41, YiFei zhuyifei1999@gmail.com wrote:
Galleries still make it much easier to navigate and sort images to a newbie, and the categorization system may be too complex for them.
I can't say I've seen that happen - in most cases that I've seen, the category system makes more sense to the new editors.
Thanks, Mike