@WikiCommons - meanwhile in a different universe

And again there was a discussion that it should not be this hard to find pictures in Commons. The big difference this time is that there is now a wealth of images that have been tagged for what they "depict". They are linked to Wikidata items and they have a wealth of labels in many, many languages. In essence it has always been an objective of Wikidata to share its content in any and all of the 300+ languages supported by a Wikipedia.

The ideas that floated around soon made it into a "proof of concept" and as so often it actually worked after a fashion. The first iteration was in true Wikimedia tradition English only. The proof of concept got its second language in Dutch, Hay Kranen the developer is Dutch. Now there are nine languages and we are waiting for French to be the tenth.

So what does it do. You can look for pictures in Commons, it has 61 million media files, and when you are looking for available pictures in your language, you will find it as long as Wikidata has a label in your language.  This is for instance a result in Japanese and this is the result in German.

What can you do to make it better? Add labels in your language for the things you want to find and find media files that depicts what you are looking for. When nobody translated the software in your language, you can even do that.

Why is this so relevant? Have you ever wondered how many pictures you find in one of the smaller languages using Google or Bing? Let me tell you, it is disappointing to be polite. Commons is the repository of the mediafiles that illustrate all the Wikipedias so yes, it covers "almost anything".

The Wikimedia Foundation has this big strategy for its movement to be inclusive. This is a wonderful opportunity to show how agile it is, that it understands and supports a need that has been expressed for many many years. The beauty is the the way forward has been expressed in something that already works.

ABSOLUTELY, there will be challenges in integrating this functionality where it fulfills a need.

Luckily it is not necessary for it all to be done in one go. The first step can be as little as to take the "proof of concept" an rewrite it in the preferred language of the WMF, internationalise and localise it and keep it stand alone for now. The people who know about it will use it and they will be the first to point out what more they want to be done. A priority will be to retain its KISSable nature.

The objective is to open up Commons. Open it up in any and all languages. For me it is obvious. I will gladly give it my attention in the expectation that both Wikidata and Commons actually find a public, have a purpose that is more than what we do for ourselves.
Thanks,
      GerardM