Talk:Toolhub/Data model/Feedback

Please provide your feedback using the following question prompts. Use the last question to tell us anything else you think we might need to know or provide extra responses on questions about specific categories
When providing feedback, please consider letting us know if you belong to any of these audiences:

• Admins
• Organizers and program coordinators
• Editors and content contributors
• Readers and content consumers
• Researchers
• Developers
• Other

One of the main problems I found when using Toolhub for the first time is that I needed to know the name of the tool to find it easily. So virtually any taxonomy will make the experience better. I have looked at the proposal and it looks quite complete. I can't find something to add, but I'm sure that future use could make us find some gaps. Thanks for all this work! -Theklan (talk) 08:37, 3 August 2022 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for your comment! I do hope that in the future we can do some user testing with the taxonomy and other elements in the Toolhub UI, to continue to further refine what is there. TBurmeister (WMF) (talk) 15:28, 3 August 2022 (UTC) Reply

As someone who predominantly edits Wikidata, not Wikipedia, the list of content types would not be useful for me. I don't know where most of the things I've made or used would go or be. The list of tasks is slightly better but it still seems like it's designed around Wikipedia's needs. I'm not sure what categories have to do with labels, nor why archiving would go with cleanup. Drafts seems extremely English Wikipedia-specific. Images, audio/sound, video and books overlap with files - it's not clear whether selecting only "files" would include all tools for working on Commons files or if I would need to include the other four categories as well. What's the difference between audio and sound anyway? The list of platforms is really confusing. An on-wiki gadget, for example, could come under desktop, mobile, MediaWiki and web/browser. I would expect to be able to distinguish mobile apps from web tools which work on mobile, web tools which work on mobile from web tools which only work on desktop, web tools which work on desktop from browser extensions, and tools on external websites from on-wiki tools. What about command-line tools that can be used in PAWS? Do they count as web/browser tools too? - Nikki (talk) 17:50, 4 August 2022 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for your comment. It's useful to hear that the list of platforms is confusing -- perhaps it would be best if we just exclude that from the final set of attributes. The primary content type for Wikidata would be "Structured data", but perhaps that doesn't cover everything. What content types would be useful to reflect the tools you've made or used for Wikidata work?

The sources we reviewed when creating this were lists that included Wikidata-specific tools, but it sounds like we should revisit the content types and tasks to make sure Wikidata use cases are covered. Thanks again for the feedback on this! TBurmeister (WMF) (talk) 14:20, 9 August 2022 (UTC) Reply

Really like this. Breaking down by category with colons. Audience: One thought I have here is that there's a ton of subgroups subsumed under "readers and content consumers". One category that seems particularly relevant here is students, who receive specific structural support in a variety of ways across various wikiprojects. Content types: looks like a thorough list; I wonder if this could be made a bit hierarchical in the future so that there's only 2-5 top-level data categories? Tasks: love this list. "Patrolling" is probably too broad, as you say. "Communication and supporting users" seems broad as well; that could include tasks related to education, to building community, etc. Programming languages: my personal thought here is that what's most useful about these attributes as a tool developer is seeing what other people are doing. Basically, I don't want to find myself "accidentally" doing something no one has ever done before, and so it's most useful for looking at solutions to "solved problems" and ensuring I'm adopting a tech stack that others are using. Subject domains: seems like a hard list to pin down. Tool "purpose" (and corresponding values) seems pretty different to me than e.g. article topic. To me this seems related to the intended audience and task, I wonder what "subject domain" hopes to specifically bring to the table? Overall, I like this taxonomy and echo the thought above that this would be great. Suriname0 (talk) 12:06, 3 August 2022 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for your comment! This is all very useful feedback. I'm curious where you saw "tool purpose"? That isn't part of the proposed taxonomy, though it was in some previous lists. I concluded during my research that that concept is too fuzzy. (See "Concrete concepts and definitions" in the Design Principles)

Subject domain was something that appeared in enough other lists that it seemed worth proposing for inclusion, but I agree with you that it is hard to pin down. I think the main benefit of that category is that there may be tools that operate upon different types of content (article text, images, wikidata) but are targeted at use cases specific to domains like art, history, biology. For example, there are a bunch of tools if you search "monuments" in Toolhub. A category just for "monuments" would be too specific, but maybe it would be nice to be able to browse these tools as being related by subject domain? TBurmeister (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 3 August 2022 (UTC) Reply

Ah, thanks for the clarifications. I think I [incorrectly] inferred "purpose" from "Subject Domains", but your definition and intent make sense. Suriname0 (talk) 21:46, 3 August 2022 (UTC) Reply

There are multiple Talk pages for Toolhub; we will monitor them all for feedback about the data model and taxonomy. Some people have left taxonomy feedback on the main Toolhub Talk page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Toolhub. You may want to see what others have said there even if you left your comment here. No need to double-post, though - we'll gather the comments from everywhere! TBurmeister (WMF) (talk) 15:46, 3 August 2022 (UTC) Reply

I would suggest the reshuffling of some elements of the list or may be more- remove JSON from the proposed initial list of values in the "What programming languages does the tool use?" and add it to the initial list of values under "With what type of content or data does the tool interact?". I see JSON more a data formatting tool than a programming language. May be a taxonomy item for data format which includes JSON, Pikle, etc to name just a few as its list of values is required. DessalegnM (talk) 15:07, 11 August 2022 (UTC) Reply