Yes, this is what I am driving at. I think there should be some greater clarity 
around what “depicted” means and I think it relates to “things”. This is why 
artwork is somewhat problematic as it is a meta-thing, a photo of a sculpture 
of an elephant is not a photo of an elephant, but rather we have a photo 
depicting a sculpture, which in turn depicts an elephant. But even “things” are 
somewhat in the eye of the beholder. The person who takes a photo probably 
knows what they intended to capture in it, say the grave of Jupiter Mossman, 
but someone else looking at the same photo might say “wow, a photo of the 
now-extinct Walla Walla tree” which happens to growing there.

 

As you suggest time and space are probably not “depictions” and we already have 
dates and location fields for images in any case, so that information is 
already captured.

 

Intangible concepts are another issue altogether.

 

Kerry

 

From: Estermann Beat [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Wednesday, 17 April 2019 4:02 PM
To: Wikimedia & GLAM collaboration [Public] <[email protected]>; Kerry 
Raymond <[email protected]>
Cc: Wikimedia & Libraries <[email protected]>; North American 
Cultural Partnerships <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [GLAM] [libraries] Fwd: [Commons-l] Depicts statements coming to 
Commons this week (15 April)

 

Hi,

 

One could argue though that it would make sense to use different properties (to 
be implemented on Wikimedia Commons) to express temporal or spatial coverage of 
the image. The <depicted> property could be reserved to concrete Physical 
Objects, Events/Activities, Places, or Concepts (= subclasses of frbr:Subject). 

 

Cheers, 

Beat

 

From: GLAM <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > On Behalf Of Gnangarra
Sent: Mittwoch, 17. April 2019 07:53
To: Kerry Raymond <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >; 
Wikimedia & GLAM collaboration [Public] <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> >
Cc: Wikimedia & Libraries <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> >; North American Cultural Partnerships 
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >
Subject: Re: [GLAM] [libraries] Fwd: [Commons-l] Depicts statements coming to 
Commons this week (15 April)

 

One is pretty obviously depicting the man Jupiter Mosman. But isn’t it also 
depicting an Aboriginal Australian? Isn’t it also depicting a prospector? Isn’t 
it depicting 1945? All of which are Wikidata items. But what about the photo of 
his grave? What is it depicting in Wikidata? Jupiter Mosman? A grave? A 
headstone? A tree? Charters Towers (the place)?

 

Yes if that is what it depicts then that is what it depicts, the whole of the 
depicts is to enable it to be found via wikidata queries... obviously some 
discretion and commonsense should be used in which aspects are worthy of being 
listed so "a tree" would be pointless  

 

On Wed, 17 Apr 2019 at 08:31, Kerry Raymond <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

FWIW, I think there will be much greater take-up if the tool supports people 
identifying the depicted thing by referring to a Wikipedia article (and then, 
under the hood, connecting this back to the Wikidata item). There are a lot of 
Wikipedians who are either not aware of Wikidata,  not interested in Wikidata, 
don’t understand Wikidata, or actively hostile towards Wikidata. Having a tool 
on Commons that defaults to their preferred Wikipedia (obviously with others 
selectable as desired) and letting them paste in the article title will engage 
a lot more people. And similarly, when viewing a File/Category on Commons, 
displaying the linked Wikipedia article(s) (rather than just displaying the 
Wikidata) will enable people to detect and correct errors more easily. People 
who contribute to Wikipedia and Commons usually do so within their areas of 
interest where they possess some subject knowledge, which we need if we are to 
have quality data in Wikidata.

 

One of my ongoing concerns about Wikidata is that a lot of modelling, 
populating and MixNMatching is done by people who are not “subject matter 
experts” (or even “subject matter aware”). This is leading to lots of errors in 
Wikidata because of that lack of subject knowledge. Once Commons 
file/categories get linked to the wrong Wikidata items, it worries me that most 
contributors with the subject matter knowledge won’t be able to detect this, or 
won’t be able to correct this themselves. (My own experience suggests it’s 
pointless to write on a Wikidata talk page as nobody responds, possibly because 
nobody is watching?). 

 

Also, there are File descriptions that contain links back to Wikipedia 
articles, which are almost always to the depicted thing (if there are several 
links, it’s usually the first one). Similarly many categories have links back 
to Wikipedia articles and generally all the images in such categories are 
depicting that concept. I think having tool support to enable this information 
to be exploited would be beneficial. A human should be in the loop to confirm, 
of course, but at a lot less effort than doing the whole task manually.

 

Having said that, I am a little uncertain of the range of things that might be 
depicted. As Sandra suggests, it’s fairly obvious when dealing with individual 
people, individual buildings, although less clear when discussing group photos, 
streetscapes etc, where we normally use language like “3rd from the left in the 
back row”.

 

But a building exists in a town/suburb/district, so doesn’t the photo also 
depict the town/suburb/district as well as the building. Doesn’t it depict the 
time too? 

 

Just to illustrate my point, here’s a couple of recent uploads I did:

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jupiter_Mosman

 

One is pretty obviously depicting the man Jupiter Mosman. But isn’t it also 
depicting an Aboriginal Australian? Isn’t it also depicting a prospector? Isn’t 
it depicting 1945? All of which are Wikidata items. But what about the photo of 
his grave? What is it depicting in Wikidata? Jupiter Mosman? A grave? A 
headstone? A tree? Charters Towers (the place)? Again, all of these things are 
in Wikidata. It seems to me that pretty much any category we have in Commons 
represents a concept and hence could/should be a Wikidata item. If that’s true, 
then we can automate a whole lot of “depicts” pretty easily.

 

Kerry

 

From: Libraries [mailto:[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Sandra Fauconnier
Sent: Wednesday, 17 April 2019 4:38 AM
To: Wikimedia & GLAM collaboration [Public] <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> >; Wikimedia & Libraries 
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >; North 
American Cultural Partnerships <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> >
Subject: [libraries] Fwd: [Commons-l] Depicts statements coming to Commons this 
week (15 April)

 

Hello everyone,

 

One of the major additions of structured data to Wikimedia Commons is arriving 
later this week: Depicts statements! See Keegan's message below for more 
details and links.

 

With regards to visual arts, library and archival documents, and specifically 
faithful representations of two-dimensional works and documents: I would advise 
*not* to use the Depicts statement there, but to wait for other statements to 
become available on Wikimedia Commons in several weeks.

A separate property for that purpose has been created on Wikidata some time 
ago: P6243 (digital representation of) 
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P6243 - and it will only be possible to 
use that in several weeks.

Depicts is probably appropriate for other cases though: in the case of 
photographs of buildings, people, objects...

These are only rough first pointers. Modelling structured data on Commons, and 
establishing best practices in that area, is - just like on Wikidata - up to 
the community.

 

Many greetings! Sandra

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Keegan Peterzell via Commons-l <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> >
Date: Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 11:39 PM
Subject: [Commons-l] Depicts statements coming to Commons this week (15 April)
To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> >, <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> >

 

Greetings,

 

(This message is also posted at the Commons Village Pump, and the SDC talk page)

 

The Structured Data on Commons [0] team plans to release support for depicts 
statements this week, on Thursday, 18 April. The community's testing over the 
past several weeks [1] helped identify and fix issues before launch, and the 
development team spent time setting up extensive internal testing to make sure 
the release goes as well as possible.

This release is very simple, with only the most basic depicts statements 
available. There is a significant amount of technological change happening with 
this project, and this release contains a lot of background change that the 
team needs to make sure works fine live on Commons before adding further 
support. More parts to depicts statements, and other statements, will be 
released within the next few weeks.

A page for depicts has been set up at Commons:Depicts [2] As I can't actually 
write instructive Commons policy or guidelines, I encourage those who have 
tried out simple depicts tagging add a few lines to the page suggesting proper 
use of the tool. I also encourage the use to be conservative at first, as we 
wait for more advanced features within the coming month or two as additional 
statement support goes live.

I'll keep the community updated as the plans progress throughout the week, the 
team will know better within the next day or two if things are definitely okay 
to proceed with release. 



0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data

1. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Get_involved/Feedback_requests/Depicts_testing

2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Depicts


-- 

Keegan Peterzell

Community Relations Specialist

Wikimedia Foundation

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-- 

Sandra Fauconnier (she/her)

Program Officer, GLAM and Structured Data, Wikimedia Foundation

Twitter: @glamwiki

 

How Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums work with Wikimedia communities: 
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM

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GN.
Noongarpedia: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/nys/Main_Page
WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com

Out now: A.Gaynor, P. Newman and P. Jennings (eds.), Never Again: Reflections 
on Environmental Responsibility after Roe 8, UWAP, 2017. Error! Filename not 
specified. 
<https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/never-again-reflections-on-environmental-responsibility-after-roe-8>
  Order here.


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