Structured data on Commonsismultilingual information about a media file that can be understood by humans, with enough consistency that it can also be uniformly processed by machines.
A short, beginner-level introduction to Structured Data on Commons (3 minutes 43 seconds)
The basics
Each media file page on Wikimedia Commons has a 'File information' and 'Structured data' tab.
We look at a simple example of a featured image on Wikimedia Commons: Würfelzucker (2018).
Add multilingual captions to files
Under the File information tab, you can add file captions in many languages: short, factual descriptions about the file, without hyperlinks or wikitext. These file captions make the file easier to find in search.
What is depicted (shown) in a file?
Under the Structured data tab, you can indicate what is portrayed ("depicted") in the file. In this case: twelve white sugar cubes. The screenshot below is animated, demonstrating how the descriptive elements are multilingual. You can see structured data in a different language by switching your interface language setting. More information: see Commons:Depicts.
Other statements about a file
Also under the Structured data tab, you can add other descriptive information about the file. This example describes the file's license, creator and quality assessment.
More information: see Commons:Statements.
What Structured Data on Commons does
Structured data on Commons improves access, searchability, exploration and provides new ways to use the content.
Improving accessibility
Multilingual: Provides labels in over 300 languages which are added automatically.
Accessibility: Provides information that makes content more accessible to users with specific needs e.g. blind and partially sighted.
New ways to find content
Searchability: Allows people to easily find content through better descriptions of what they depict.
New ways to explore and use content
Connect knowledge from different sources: Allows content from many sources together to provide new ways to explore and visualise a subject.
Explore collections and topics: Collates content to provide new ways to explore collections and topics.
Usable by other websites and services: SDC data is free and machine readable meaning and ready to be used in apps and other content.
Improving the quality of information
Data with references: Data can reference to its sources, allowing you to see the original creator of the information and corroborated by third parties.
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.
A few easy ways to start
Upload a new, freely licensed file to Wikimedia Commons. You will be prompted to add multilingual file captions (help page) and depicts statements (help page).
ISA is a tool to help beginners to add depicts statements and multilingual captions to files. Read more.
AC/DC ("Add to Commons, Descriptive Claims") is a Wikimedia Commons gadget to help with batch editing. It allows adding statements to a group of files (for example a category). Read more.
SDC is a user script similar to Cat-a-lot that allows adding limited number of structured data statements to files in a category. Read more.
Depictor lets you add depicts statements using a game-like interface. You can customize it using specific categories or SPARQL queries.
Image Annotator is a tool that runs image annotation campaigns on Wikimedia Commons.
OpenRefine is a powerful and flexible tool to add structured data to Wikimedia Commons files in batch (from OpenRefine 3.6).
What kind of structured data should I add? How should I describe a certain file in structured data?
For best practices on Depicts statements, see Commons:Depicts.
For inspiration and examples of other statements, please check the Modeling pages. Feel free to ask questions there and contribute to the documentation yourself. The data model of Structured Data on Commons is a work in progress and is designed by the Wikimedia Commons community.
How can I find files that already have structured data?
You can use the Wikimedia Commons search function to find files with structured data. A few examples:
