With almost 100 million images, audio and video files, Wikimedia Commons is a rich source of open content. But finding the right file can be challenging without proper metadata. This is where Wikidata comes in, a database containing data on everything in the world. Structured Data on Commons (SDoC) links media files on Wikimedia Commons with their corresponding items on Wikidata.

The process of linking these two can still be time-consuming, but that’s where Depictor comes in. This mobile-friendly website presents a Wikidata item and an image from Wikimedia Commons and asks if the image depicts the same subject. If you answer ‘yes’, the edit is made automatically on Wikimedia Commons. Providing a game-like element ensures people can quickly make many edits.

And that has been the case: since its launch in August 2021, Depictor has been used by over 500 users who made over 800,000 edits. It was recognized with the Coolest Tool Award from Wikimedia volunteers in the quality category in January 2022.

• Read a longer blogpost (in Dutch) about Depictor here.
• A technical description of the project can be found here.
• Photos in the screenshots by Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia (1,2) (CC-BY-SA 4.0).