Hi folks,

Here's a quick update on the Structured Data project, which proposes to make multimedia data easier to search, view, edit, curate and re-use on Wikimedia Commons.

Today, information about media files on Wikimedia sites is stored in unstructured formats that cause a range of issues: for example, file information is hard to search, some of it is only available in English, and it is difficult to edit or re-use files to comply with their license terms.

Last week, a first bootcamp was held in Berlin to discuss this project and explore possible solutions, based the same technology as the one developed for Wikidata. Participants included community volunteers, as well as the Wikidata and Multimedia teams. This blog post gives an overview of what was discussed and accomplished. (1)

Some good ideas came out from this event, but many questions remain unanswered. We would now like to invite more community members to help plan next steps for this project: everyone is welcome to join the discussion and/or subscribe to the newsletter on the new Structured data hub on Commons. (2)

We also invite you to join tomorrow's live IRC chat about Structured Data: this Thursday, October 16 at 18:00 (UTC), on #wikimedia-office (3). The development teams would love to discuss this project with you.

Going forward, our community liaison Keegan Peterzell will be managing communications for this project. You will be hearing from him about our next discussions and other ways you can get involved in this important initiative.

We look forward to working with you to better support the needs of our users and modernize our multimedia infrastructure together.

Best regards,

Fabrice -- for the Structured Data team

(1) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Berlin_Bootcamp

(2) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data

(3) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours

_______________________________

Fabrice Florin Product Manager, Multimedia Wikimedia Foundation

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)