Thomas, Wiki Commons has only about 17 million files, and given the
explosive growth of WikiData, this would be doable. I suggest doing it
now rather than later.

David, thanks for that clarification - I get what you mean now and I
support your vision. I disagreed BTW with the first Signpost op-ed
piece of last week and agree more with Jarekt's answers to that
discussion. I didn't even bother responding because my feeling after
reading it was "they have no clue". Copyright issues faced by Commons
admins are incredibly complex and not to be treated lightly. It's
ridiculous to think that admins on the English Wikipedia could just
step in and become admins on Commons (note: I am not an admin on any
project). I also agree however with Johnbod's comment on that same
Signpost page that Google images is better at locating Commons files
in searches because my search experience on Commons is terrible. The
whole porno-image problem discussed in that article will of course not
be addressed by creating WikiData items for each file, but I agree
that it would make that discussion more visible (along with everything
else becoming more visible). Making them visible will help indirectly
of course. Not everyone feels up to contributing to deletion
discussions on Commons (personally I would rather go have a tooth
pulled), but making those discussions available to more readers should
help attract those who do.

Scott, you need to talk to Alex Peek on another thread about his
vision of economic data - it looks like you two could do something
interesting together.

Rereading my last post I see I left off a few Commons links. My point
about interconnecting files on commons is as follows. [1] is an
engraving of Hoogstraten and is a derivative of [2] but shows an
example of Hoogstraten's work, which is [5]. Both [3] and [4] are
later engravings from artist dictionaries which made use of [2].
Showing such relationships helps to build understanding for art
provenance, but also for other art historical subjects, such as the
historiography of art criticism. Getting these relationships outside
of Commons could be done using an "F" namespace in WikiData I think.
That would be a fantastic improvement to the Commons category system
(which is still better than nothing).

[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dirk_van_hoogstraten_by_arnold_houbraken.JPG
[2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schouburg_I_Plate_I_Leonard_Bramer_-_Dirk_van_Hoogstraten_-_Salomon_de_Bray.jpg
[3] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JCWeyerman_-_VI_plate_I_-_Leonard_Bramer_-_Dirk_van_Hoogstraten_-_Salomon_de_Bray.jpg
[4] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Baptiste_Deschamps_-_Dirck_ou_Thierry_van_Hoogstraeten_p_411.gif
[5] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dirk_van_hoogstraten_-_maria_met_kind_en_st_anna.jpg

2013/6/23, Scott MacLeod <worlduniversityandschool@gmail.com>:

> Dear David, Denny and Wikidatans,
>
> Thanks for this email thread.
>
> I'd like to float a proposal for this ecosystem of Wikidatas vis-a-vis
> World University and School, (which is like Wikipedia with MIT OCW), with
> our plans for a wiki school or online, Creative Commons' licensed
> university (with free, online, C.C., MIT-centric, university degrees
> planned) in all 7,105+ languages and 204+ countries. C.C. WUaS hopes to
> engage Wikidata, as well.
>
> I've begun a link on the WUaS, wiki, Subjects' page called "Wikidata
> databases and ecosystem," -

> http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Subjects- which can easily

> become an extensible, wiki, subject page itself (using a
> modified version of Wikidata with the WUaS SUBJECT TEMPLATE -
> http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/SUBJECT_TEMPLATE) in all languages
> and countries, to link all the (small number of) Wikidatas that emerge.
> (Check out this extensible, WUaS, wiki SUBJECT TEMPLATE, since it has many
> of the possible categories mentioned above in this email thread).
>
> Here is the beginning, Languages' wiki page at WUaS -
> http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Languages - eventually to link all
> languages, each as a school or university.
>
>
> And here is the beginning Nation States' wiki page at WUaS -
> http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Nation_States - eventually to link
> all nation states, each as a school or university.
>
> The wiki, extensible, WUaS all-languages' (7,105 per "Ethnologue") and
> all-nation states' (204 per "The Olympics") approach has the merit of
> potentially including all emergent Wikidatas in all languages (for an
> universal translator -
> http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/WUaS_Universal_Translator), and in
> all nation states for legal questions, in a way that fully supports the
> amazing interlingual Wikidata (which is planned for Wikipedia's 285
> languages +), and also, - since many/most of these Wikidatas may be data
> about generative shared knowledge - will therefore fit well with World
> University and School which is for open, free, wiki, people-to-people
> teaching and learning.
>
> Best regards,
> Scott
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 6:42 AM, David Cuenca <dacuetu@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 1:49 AM, Jane Darnell <jane023@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> [...] do you think there is a need for this file to have its own "F"
>>> status in WikiData?
>>
>>
>> Yes. The reason to have file entities is mainly to have a platform that
>> can store semantic descriptions of a file. For text searches in classical
>> terms it doesn't matter much, but to search things like:
>> - "portrait engravings by artists born in Dordrecht"
>> - "depictions of Dutch poets born between 1600 and 1700"
>>
>> For these kind of searches, the only possible way to return relevant
>> results is to store the information a semantic way as Wikidata does.
>> As Thomas pointed out, the task to transition to the new method looks
>> somewhat daunting, luckily here there is not much trouble using bots to
>> automate the task filling out the properties of the 17M files.
>> The case of "image promotion" I think it is a different issue that would
>> require some tagging (maybe "best depiction of") or a simple voting
>> system
>> (like in youtube, reddit, etc).
>>
>> It is also important to note that the old issue of sexual content in
>> Commons [1] has gained *a lot* of traction lately since the last three
>> op-ed's questioning/defending its suistainability [2] [3]. Basically
>> there
>> is a need that the searches show what you are looking for and not some
>> other random content. The urgency to present a solution is very high at
>> the
>> moment, a matter of weeks before starting organizing WikiLoveMonuments
>> with
>> a cleaned reputation, so I hope that Wikidata can present a proposal soon
>> that I am sure will be better than this other proposal [4]
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Micru
>>
>> [1]
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-05-10/Commons_deletions
>> [2]
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-06-12/Op-ed
>> [3]
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-06-19/Op-ed
>> [4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Image_information
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
>
> Scott MacLeod
> Founder & President
>
>
>
> http://scottmacleod.com
>
> --
> World University and School
> (like Wikipedia with MIT OpenCourseWare)
>
>
> http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Subjects
>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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