Yes, this is what I am driving at. I think there should be some greater clarity around what “depicted” means and I think it relates to “things”. This is why artwork is somewhat problematic as it is a meta-thing, a photo of a sculpture of an elephant is not a photo of an elephant, but rather we have a photo depicting a sculpture, which in turn depicts an elephant. But even “things” are somewhat in the eye of the beholder. The person who takes a photo probably knows what they intended to capture in it, say the grave of Jupiter Mossman, but someone else looking at the same photo might say “wow, a photo of the now-extinct Walla Walla tree” which happens to growing there.
As you suggest time and space are probably not “depictions” and we already have dates and location fields for images in any case, so that information is already captured.
Intangible concepts are another issue altogether.
Kerry
From: Estermann Beat [mailto:beat.estermann@bfh.ch] Sent: Wednesday, 17 April 2019 4:02 PM To: Wikimedia & GLAM collaboration [Public] glam@lists.wikimedia.org; Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com Cc: Wikimedia & Libraries libraries@lists.wikimedia.org; North American Cultural Partnerships glam-us@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: RE: [GLAM] [libraries] Fwd: [Commons-l] Depicts statements coming to Commons this week (15 April)
Hi,
One could argue though that it would make sense to use different properties (to be implemented on Wikimedia Commons) to express temporal or spatial coverage of the image. The <depicted> property could be reserved to concrete Physical Objects, Events/Activities, Places, or Concepts (= subclasses of frbr:Subject).
Cheers,
Beat
From: GLAM <glam-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:glam-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org > On Behalf Of Gnangarra Sent: Mittwoch, 17. April 2019 07:53 To: Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com >; Wikimedia & GLAM collaboration [Public] <glam@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:glam@lists.wikimedia.org > Cc: Wikimedia & Libraries <libraries@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:libraries@lists.wikimedia.org >; North American Cultural Partnerships <glam-us@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:glam-us@lists.wikimedia.org > Subject: Re: [GLAM] [libraries] Fwd: [Commons-l] Depicts statements coming to Commons this week (15 April)
One is pretty obviously depicting the man Jupiter Mosman. But isn’t it also depicting an Aboriginal Australian? Isn’t it also depicting a prospector? Isn’t it depicting 1945? All of which are Wikidata items. But what about the photo of his grave? What is it depicting in Wikidata? Jupiter Mosman? A grave? A headstone? A tree? Charters Towers (the place)?
Yes if that is what it depicts then that is what it depicts, the whole of the depicts is to enable it to be found via wikidata queries... obviously some discretion and commonsense should be used in which aspects are worthy of being listed so "a tree" would be pointless
On Wed, 17 Apr 2019 at 08:31, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com > wrote:
FWIW, I think there will be much greater take-up if the tool supports people identifying the depicted thing by referring to a Wikipedia article (and then, under the hood, connecting this back to the Wikidata item). There are a lot of Wikipedians who are either not aware of Wikidata, not interested in Wikidata, don’t understand Wikidata, or actively hostile towards Wikidata. Having a tool on Commons that defaults to their preferred Wikipedia (obviously with others selectable as desired) and letting them paste in the article title will engage a lot more people. And similarly, when viewing a File/Category on Commons, displaying the linked Wikipedia article(s) (rather than just displaying the Wikidata) will enable people to detect and correct errors more easily. People who contribute to Wikipedia and Commons usually do so within their areas of interest where they possess some subject knowledge, which we need if we are to have quality data in Wikidata.
One of my ongoing concerns about Wikidata is that a lot of modelling, populating and MixNMatching is done by people who are not “subject matter experts” (or even “subject matter aware”). This is leading to lots of errors in Wikidata because of that lack of subject knowledge. Once Commons file/categories get linked to the wrong Wikidata items, it worries me that most contributors with the subject matter knowledge won’t be able to detect this, or won’t be able to correct this themselves. (My own experience suggests it’s pointless to write on a Wikidata talk page as nobody responds, possibly because nobody is watching?).
Also, there are File descriptions that contain links back to Wikipedia articles, which are almost always to the depicted thing (if there are several links, it’s usually the first one). Similarly many categories have links back to Wikipedia articles and generally all the images in such categories are depicting that concept. I think having tool support to enable this information to be exploited would be beneficial. A human should be in the loop to confirm, of course, but at a lot less effort than doing the whole task manually.
Having said that, I am a little uncertain of the range of things that might be depicted. As Sandra suggests, it’s fairly obvious when dealing with individual people, individual buildings, although less clear when discussing group photos, streetscapes etc, where we normally use language like “3rd from the left in the back row”.
But a building exists in a town/suburb/district, so doesn’t the photo also depict the town/suburb/district as well as the building. Doesn’t it depict the time too?
Just to illustrate my point, here’s a couple of recent uploads I did:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jupiter_Mosman
One is pretty obviously depicting the man Jupiter Mosman. But isn’t it also depicting an Aboriginal Australian? Isn’t it also depicting a prospector? Isn’t it depicting 1945? All of which are Wikidata items. But what about the photo of his grave? What is it depicting in Wikidata? Jupiter Mosman? A grave? A headstone? A tree? Charters Towers (the place)? Again, all of these things are in Wikidata. It seems to me that pretty much any category we have in Commons represents a concept and hence could/should be a Wikidata item. If that’s true, then we can automate a whole lot of “depicts” pretty easily.
Kerry
From: Libraries [mailto:libraries-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:libraries-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org ] On Behalf Of Sandra Fauconnier Sent: Wednesday, 17 April 2019 4:38 AM To: Wikimedia & GLAM collaboration [Public] <glam@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:glam@lists.wikimedia.org >; Wikimedia & Libraries <libraries@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:libraries@lists.wikimedia.org >; North American Cultural Partnerships <glam-us@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:glam-us@lists.wikimedia.org > Subject: [libraries] Fwd: [Commons-l] Depicts statements coming to Commons this week (15 April)
Hello everyone,
One of the major additions of structured data to Wikimedia Commons is arriving later this week: Depicts statements! See Keegan's message below for more details and links.
With regards to visual arts, library and archival documents, and specifically faithful representations of two-dimensional works and documents: I would advise *not* to use the Depicts statement there, but to wait for other statements to become available on Wikimedia Commons in several weeks.
A separate property for that purpose has been created on Wikidata some time ago: P6243 (digital representation of) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P6243 - and it will only be possible to use that in several weeks.
Depicts is probably appropriate for other cases though: in the case of photographs of buildings, people, objects...
These are only rough first pointers. Modelling structured data on Commons, and establishing best practices in that area, is - just like on Wikidata - up to the community.
Many greetings! Sandra
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Keegan Peterzell via Commons-l <commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Date: Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 11:39 PM Subject: [Commons-l] Depicts statements coming to Commons this week (15 April) To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org >, <wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org >
Greetings,
(This message is also posted at the Commons Village Pump, and the SDC talk page)
The Structured Data on Commons [0] team plans to release support for depicts statements this week, on Thursday, 18 April. The community's testing over the past several weeks [1] helped identify and fix issues before launch, and the development team spent time setting up extensive internal testing to make sure the release goes as well as possible.
This release is very simple, with only the most basic depicts statements available. There is a significant amount of technological change happening with this project, and this release contains a lot of background change that the team needs to make sure works fine live on Commons before adding further support. More parts to depicts statements, and other statements, will be released within the next few weeks.
A page for depicts has been set up at Commons:Depicts [2] As I can't actually write instructive Commons policy or guidelines, I encourage those who have tried out simple depicts tagging add a few lines to the page suggesting proper use of the tool. I also encourage the use to be conservative at first, as we wait for more advanced features within the coming month or two as additional statement support goes live.
I'll keep the community updated as the plans progress throughout the week, the team will know better within the next day or two if things are definitely okay to proceed with release.
0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data
1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Get_involved/Feed...
2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Depicts
