User:John Cummings/Main page

To do:

• Giovanna say what is not true any more
• Make subsection for each of the section headings
• Do list of other pages section somewhere
• Chose title image

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Commons: Structured data ?????

Structured data is multilingual information about a media file that can be understood by humans, with enough consistency that it can also be uniformly processed by machines. Files on Wikimedia Commons can be described with multilingual concepts from Wikidata, Wikimedia's knowledge base. Structured data complements text, templates and categories on Commons to help users contribute, describe, find, curate and use content across languages.

Structured data allows software to understand metadata fields and connect them to other databases on the internet, putting the content in a broader context. Structured data on Commons is useful many kinds of users including; Wikimedia contributors, institutions and individuals who publish their collections on Wikimedia Commons, researchers working with large metadata datasets, people and organisations who want to reuse content from Wikimedia Commons and developer communities.

A short, beginner-level introduction to Structured Data on Commons (3 minutes 43 seconds)

The value of structured data on Commons

Structured data on Commons is useful to both content creators and content users and improves access, searchability, exploration and provides new ways to use the content. Over half of all content on Commons has some form of structured data.

Improve accessibility Multilingual: Allows people to easily translate content and provides labels which are available in over 300 languages. Structured data is also easier to translate since users only need to translate terms and not entire phrases and contexts. Accessibility: Provides alt text, text descriptions and other information that makes content more accessible to users with specific needs e.g. blind and partially sighted.

New ways to find content Search-ability: Allows people to more easily find content through better descriptions of the content and what they depict, structured data is part of the Commons search system, MediaSearch. Easier to use on Wikimedia projects: Makes content easier to find and understand across all of Wikimedia’s 300 languages, this leading to more content being used on Wikipedia articles and other Wikimedia projects, providing richer media from more sources to readers. Also allow software to understand and suggest relationships to other content e.g through image recommendations for Wikipedia articles. (coming soon) Machine-readable: Like Wikidata, structured data on Commons is machine readable and can hold digital cataloging standards, e.g MARC (machine-readable cataloging) standards, making it useful for digital extraction, researches, queries etc. It is part of the Structured data Across Wikimedia project.

New ways to explore content Connect knowledge from different sources: Allows content from many sources together from different creators, countries, movements, and times to provide new ways for people to explore and visualise a subject. (coming soon) Explore collections and topics: Collates content to provide new ways to explore collections and topics, unlocking new ways to understand the world. (coming soon) Connect to the sources of information: Links to the original sources of content and data allowing people to easily access more information. (coming soon)

New ways to use content Inside Wikimedia: Allows users to query the data to build powerful educational resources including timelines on Wikipedia. It also creates a framework and checklist to help topics to be well covered and up to date in all Wikimedia projects. (coming soon) Usable by other websites and services: SDC data is free and machine readable meaning people can make fuller use of the content on websites, in apps and other. (coming soon)

Improve the quality of information Data with references: Data has references to its sources, allowing you to see the original creator of the information and corroborated by third parties. (coming soon) Structure: Adding data to Wikimedia Commons upgrades it to the maximum 5-stars in Tim Berners-Lee's 5-star Open Data plan, allowing it to benefit from network effects. Queryable: Allows queries to check data quality across 1,000s of files at once, allowing people to more easily identify and correct missing, out of date or incorrect information.

List of other pages and what they're for

These pages provide ???

• Add a short description of each, maybe add a logo?

• Get Involved/Community
• Finding data
• Adding data
• Glossary
• Development and archive

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