#Wikidata & #Commons - It is all about the #presentation

Commons is to be Wikidatified. There was an hour long chat about it. It is quite unstructured and it is all about details. At the start a reference is made to the initial document. The motivation for the whole exercise as stated is utterly disappointing:

"The Structured Data project is a proposal to store and retrieve information for media files in machine-readable format on Wikimedia Commons and other sites, so they are easier to view, search, edit, curate and use."

I could not care less that machines can read the format.. Important is that people, not machines are able to find media files in their own language, When people upload a media file, that media file should be available to the whole of our community so that the file will be actually used.

When the Wikidatification of media files is done to help PEOPLE, not machines, objectives can be formulated that are "must have" to all of us. We can have objectives where 50% achievement is a big thing. Consider an eight year old in Whatever country. They speak Whatever. This eight year old enters "phifflesticks"; this is Whatever for "horse". He or she can choose from 50% of all the media files we have about horses.. now THAT is a big achievement. It is 100% better than we are able to do today.

Presented like this, when it takes Wikidatification to make this happen, there is a clear objective, It is obvious why we should do this.

When Wikidata and the Wikidatification of Commons is to be well presented. It needs appealing objectives. Objectives that provide sufficient reasons to allow for the stress and upheaval that is needed to make this happen. Obvious objectives enable clear goals for instance

•  all the subjects that children learn about in the first two years of primary school have labels in the language of the child
• the number of downloaded images is measured and the downloads are to increase by 100% in a year
• new files are given tags that enable finding and using these files
• tags are added both manually and automatically
• tags are gaining more labels in the languages we support

What we do is for humans. This needs to be obvious. When it is, a chat is not about retaining categories and templates. In the end they are not relevant at all. Finding pictures of a kitty, a doggie or a horsie is.

Thanks,

      GerardM