Wikidata:Requests for comment/Proposal to create a separate section for "Commonswiki" links

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An editor has requested the community to provide input on "Proposal to create a separate section for "Commonswiki" links" via the Requests for comment (RFC) process. This is the discussion page regarding the issue.

If you have an opinion regarding this issue, feel free to comment below. Thank you!

On Wikimedia Commons there is currently an ongoing process to structure all data in a manner similar to Wikidata (see: “Commons:Commons:Structured data”) and last year Mike Peel added Wikidata-based infoboxes to linked categories on Wikimedia Commons, these are just a few of the recent examples of how Wikidata is becoming much more important for Wikimedia Commons. suggesting to add a specific section for Wikimedia Commons too there (as this would also help structure the website better as Wikimedia Commons wouldn't then just be "hidden away" from novice users), as a part of my suggestion I actually want to propose the option that both "(gallery)" and "Category:" Namespaces could be linked simultaneously. Categories are the de facto main space of Wikimedia Commons. However there exists an overlap with Wikipedia articles and Wikipedia categories/Wikimedia categories, this problem could be solved by adding a “Categories on sister projects” next to the “Sister projects” list on the left-side of the screen on the “Desktop view” mode (if I had access to Microsoft Paint I would illustrate this, but there aren't such applications for Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile). But Christian Ferrer made a good comment which I’ll copy here:

”Something very cool would be two links when you are in Wikipedia : one link for the corresponding category and one link for the corresponding gallery. Furthermore in a Wikipedia page instead of "In other projects" we could have a section "Wikimedia Commons" and then just below the links that are available. Example with en:Goniasteridae:

In other projects
Wikispecies
Wikimedia Commons
Gallery
Category


Instead of currently

In other projects
Wikimedia Commons
Wikispecies

And then exactly the same thing in Wikidata, instead of put the link into the section "Other sites", we should have a section "Wikimedia Commons" and a possibility to add the both links : to the gallery and to the category. Furthermore that would solve all the issues and discussions about the relevance to create "non notable "items just for our categories. And we should also have the possibility to add those two links two times : one time in the category's main topic and one time in the topic main category (or that the both links retransmitted automatically). Christian Ferrer (talk) 18:40, 13 January 2019 (UTC)”[reply]

The suggestion would be that a new “Wikimedia Commons” collection of links would be created for every “Q-item” and that both “(gallery)” and “:Category:” should be able to be linked. Maybe this would also automatically add a short description to the top of every (linked) Wikimedia Commons page that States “For the gallery see…” or “For the category see…” which would make navigating between categories and galleries easier.

A couple of counter arguments presented were one from Mike Peel where he stated that Wikimedia Commons doesn’t have its own section because it is not available in different language versions like for example a Wikipedia is, Nemo_bis also noted that Commons galleries are not that common and suggested deleting the namespace altogether in favour of “a category-only system”. Because of all the well-thought out comments given I would have to quote Herzi Pinki for a great concept:

”For a concept modeled in Wikidata both Commons category and gallery just represent different views on the same object, as do different language WP articles. Furthermore let me mention that galleries are considered language dependent, so you can have one for English, one for German and 200 more. We do not have many such cases, but in principle this is possible. And you can have galleries for various purposes, e.g. Commons:Angela Merkel through the years and Commons:Angela Merkel through the colors. While Commons does not restrict the number of galleries in a category (and vice versa, the number of categories a gallery is in), this constraint is imposed by Wikidata. Both Commons gallery (P935) and Commons category (P373) have the single-value constraint (Q19474404). --Herzi Pinki (talk) 03:03, 14 January 2019 (UTC)” So I propose lifting this constraint on Wikimedia Commons properties and allowing for both galleries and categories and that galleries could be linked to in their language. I will try to make screenshots of existing Wikidata items and try to make concept art with Microsoft Paint after borrowing a friend's laptop. The proposed changes will be shown in the screenshots. -- 徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 15:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Concept made from altered screenshots and explanations[edit]

  • A concept image of how this could be implemented.
    A concept image of how this could be implemented.
  • A concept image of how this could be implemented.
    A concept image of how this could be implemented.
  • A concept image of how this could be implemented.
    A concept image of how this could be implemented.

The concepts are represented in images made with Microsoft Paint above. -- Donald Trung/徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 19:25, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There exist no language versions of Commons project. The Commons project is unique and international. There is no reason to support or suppose separate language-specific gallery pages. An ideal gallery page should be multilingual, language neutral. However, one item can have more gallery pages - gallery page is not supposed to be unique for its item. --ŠJů (talk) 22:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Support[edit]

  1. -- 徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 15:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC), as the original proposer.[reply]
  2.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:30, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  3. I support everything that goes in the to allow the two links at the same time. It's been a long time since I think both links should be allowed in a category's main topic and in the topic main category, and everywhere else. That would solve all the disagreements between those who are partisans of the categories and those who wants to highlight the galleries. That would solve all the potential disagreements here between those who want to create items for Commons categories in addition of when the Commons sitelink is already used by the gallery, and those who defends the lacks of notability for those items. When you are in an article in Wikipedia, the fact to have two links, as shown in the statement at top, would be a very very big step forward. If there is no tecknic problem I do not see an argument for why we should do without. Christian Ferrer (talk) 16:51, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Good proposal. Yann (talk) 18:18, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  5.  The world's most strongly support, again, per phab:T54971. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:45, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  6.  Support though it is better to make it a featured sidebar in WMF MW configuration. --Znotch190711 (talk) 19:31, 28 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  7.  Support - This idea has been proposed many times, but we need to actually get WMDE to implement it. Kaldari (talk) 15:40, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  8.  Support I (a Commons volunteer) prefer a link to the category, but for end users, looking for images for a Wikipedia page or for their own presentations and papers, it might be better to link to the gallery page. So this would be a solution for this dilemma. But then the gallery pages should be good, with a lot of well selected images of (at least) the most important subcategories (and their links). So please, let it not be an automatical process to add them, because a lot of gallery pages contain only two or at best a few images and not a wide variety to choose from; end users will be very disappointed to see only them. --JopkeB (talk) 10:28, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose[edit]

  1. unsystematic solution. Commons gallery page is not and should be not a unique representation of its item. It should be linked via a property parameter, similarly as Commons image. What wee need is to have one Wikdata item page for one item: categories as well as articles of the item. --ŠJů (talk) 21:28, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
ŠJů, the proposal is not less systematic that the current situation : the current situation is : the gallery, when it exist, is used as sitelink. That will not change. This proposal is : 1/ if there is only a gallery, so then use it for the link (this is already the case), 2/ if there only a category, so then use it for the link (this is already the case) 3/ if there is a gallery and a category, so then give us the possibility to use the both (the proposal is there).
And you said "Commons gallery and should be not a unique representation " : that's exactly this proposal, we want to extend the current situation for that the gallery stay not the unique representation of its item....because currently this is exactly what happens, when there is a gallery this is the link that you have in Wikipedia, we want to add the link to the category... and that is quite a systematic solution, as 95% (or more) of the galleries have a corresponding category. I'm not sure to understand why you oppose, as well as I'm not sure to understand your sentence : "one Wikdata item page for one item"... Christian Ferrer (talk) 22:04, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Gallery links should never occupy the interproject link because a Commons gallery page is not an equivalent of Wikipedia article and is not a unique representation of its item. Gallery pages are similar to files (file pages) by their nature. All links to Commons gallery pages should be converted to P935 property. --ŠJů (talk) 22:27, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ah ok understood! you are more radical than us! It is not really in opposition to what we offer. This proposal is exactly the intermediate solution : the existing links to the galleries will not disappear, but links to the categories will be also given. This is a clear step towards your wish, and I still not really understand why you are able to live with the current situation (links to the galleries) and why you would suffer that we add the links to the categories. In summary if the proposition is accepted you will have the links to the categories, and this is exactly a part of what you claim for, and if the propsosition is not accepted the links to the galleries will stay the default links, exactly the opposite of what you claim. You have all to win to support.... you are voting an oppose just because the proposal is not enough radical! Christian Ferrer (talk) 05:52, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@ŠJů: Just to add to CFerrer's comment, a property is not just about Commons. Wikidata is about data, multilingualism, and collection of various WMF wikis pages itself. So it does include Commons --Znotch190711 (talk) 19:33, 28 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  1.  Oppose. Isn't Commons "another project"? I see valid reason to handle it differentially. Nomen ad hoc (talk) 17:53, 14 August 2019 (UTC).[reply]

Discussion[edit]

To view the discussion in the Wikimedia Commons English-language Village pump please see "Commonswiki"_links_in_Wikidata this link (Mobile 📱) as it was when this request for comment was launched. I’ll request people to continue their arguments here or I could copy their responses if they can’t comment here. -- 徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 15:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Also perhaps it's possible to add more options than just support and oppose as this discussion clearly isn't a binary, also I would like to discuss other possible methods of deeper integrating Wikidata with Wikimedia Commons to make the introduction of structured data on Wikimedia Commons more smooth. -- 徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 15:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As many people have noted this discussion and many similar discussions have occurred lots of times on Wikidata before, if someone would be so kind as to find all of those other discussions in the archives and link them below so the arguments from those previous discussions could be discussed and addressed here as well. -- 徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 15:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would also like to propose that if this proposal is/these proposals are adopted that a bot would automatically tag items with only a link to Wikimedia Commons and no other Wikimedia website to be nominated for deletion, of course a reasonable amount of time should have passed first in case a vandal removed links to the other projects. -- 徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 15:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • i'm just using the wikidata incorporation at commons by user:Yann. wikidata creator template; artwork template, and linking commons category and creators at wikidata. wikisource could do more with author template. don't know if commons links need to be more wikipedia-like. Slowking4 (talk) 20:21, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The mockup File:Set a Commonswiki sitelink - RfC Concept draft 04.png implies to have several language-based Galleries on a given topic. I was not aware of such practice − like the rest of Commons, galleries are made multilingual when required (this is also consistent with commons:Commons:Galleries. Do you have any examples of such practice? If yes, do you have evidence/number on whether this is widespread or anecdotal ? Jean-Fred (talk) 18:48, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Jean-Frédéric Good point, I actually almost never go to gallery spaces so I misread Herzi Pinki's statement, I will remove the "multilingual galleries" and place them below with an explanation why I removed them. So I will reduce this back to "a category + a gallery", I read the entire policy page and see that "multilingual galleries" aren't a thing and Commonswiki automatically displays the preferred language when available. -- Donald Trung/徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 19:23, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Looking through the concept pages again I noticed how I added the "language" part to every screenshot, this is mostly due to me misreading several comments such as the one concerning Angela Merkel by subject which includes multiple galleries related to the same subject rather than language. I mostly support the implantation Christian Ferrer proposed with a gallery and a category link, maybe the "language" button in the concept art could be substituted with "Name space" buttons that give the option for "Category:" or "(Gallery)" or another namespace, see also the comment by Aymatth2 above related to the "Creator:" namespace, in this case different namespaces naming the same subject could be linked simultaneously. -- Donald Trung/徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 19:33, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another benefit for linking to both categories and galleries would be for potential re-users, galleries usually only contain the best and high quality images on Wikimedia Commons while categories contain all images related to a subject, a re-user could then more easily discover either all images or the best images, with the current system you can link to a gallery or a category, so modifying the site links to highlight both categories and galleries could make it easier for find the image a (potential) re-user is looking for. -- Donald Trung/徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 19:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

 Question Would it be a solution using the existing properties Commons category (P373) and Commons gallery (P935) for interwiki linking? This confuses me for a long time that I have to add the info twice. BTW ping @LydiaPintscher. — Speravir (talk) – 23:50, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BTW noticed that c:Template:Wikidata Infobox ceased to support P373 some weeks ago. I don’t like the stuff and hence didn’t look for sources of the disturbance (although am qualified). Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:44, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Some numbers[edit]

I went ahead and updated the statistics at commons:Commons:Galleries#Statistics − copied here for convenience:

As of January 2019, there were:

  • 115,798 galleries[1] (without redirects, compare to 7,345,227 categories[2])
    • 495 of these galleries had zero images[3]
    • 20,960 of these had just one or two images[4]
    • 49,127 of these had 5 images or less[5]
    • Only 23,102 of these were edited since January 2018[6]

Happy to try pulling more numbers if you can think of anything useful. Jean-Fred (talk) 18:44, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Structured data on Wikimedia Commons[edit]

Maybe we can immediately discuss other ways in order to introduce more structured data to Wikimedia Commons through Wikidata here. -- 徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 15:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Multichill: I just read through Commons:User:Multichill/Commons Wikidata roadmap and Commons:User:Multichill/Next generation categories and see that you're quite the visionary, could you help comment on this request to see if it could be used to bring more structured data to both projects? -- Donald Trung/徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 15:49, 26 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Other concept screenshots[edit]

In case anyone has better screenshots concept art on how we could best implement this feature then feel free to place them here and if consensus wills it we could replace the ones above with a better one. -- 徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 15:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • A concept image of how this could be implemented.
    A concept image of how this could be implemented.

When adding a new link the interface for Wikimedia Commons could also request a language which one could fill in like “Zh”, “Hu”, “En”, “Es”, Etc. While the “commonswiki” is automatically filled in, the linked galleries then will then only display on a Wikimedia website in that language or English if it's not available, for example if you’re on the Hungarian-language Wikipedia it would link to a Hungarian language gallery but if none exist it will link to an English one. Alternatively links could be placed like “engallery”, “frgallery”, “rugallery”, Etc. If it's technically too difficult for such a system. -- 徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 15:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC) The above was originally a part of the proposal but after noted by Jean-Fred galleries don't appear in multiple languages, as a category usually only has one gallery which usually has a title in the language of the region the topic is predominantly found this part of the proposal has been dropped as unfeasible. -- Donald Trung/徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 19:27, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, there is no reason to presume gallery pages as language-specific unique representatives of their items. Ideally, a gallery page should be multilingual (language neutral). However, there can exist more galleries of the same item paralelly, with different ordering, different sample of files etc. There is no principle that one item should have just one gallery. The proposed concept doesn't reflect a real nature and role of Commons gallery pages. Gallery pages ar more similar to file pages than to article pages. --ŠJů (talk) 22:37, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@ŠJů: But then, a short question is that can you please provide a way to resolve phab:T54971??? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:43, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Notes[edit]

  1. ↑ https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/32724
  2. ↑ https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/32725
  3. ↑ https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/32726
  4. ↑ https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/32723
  5. ↑ https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/32728
  6. ↑ https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/32729
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