Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Structured Data: Difference between revisions

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{{KidsIntro|~~WikiDeal organizes its~~ information so computers can read and connect it ~~easily —~~ like ~~labelling~~ every box so ~~anyone~~ can find what is inside.}}

{{KidsIntro|"Structured data" means organising information so computers can read it and connect it, like putting a clear label on every box so the right machine can find what is inside. On WikiDeal, some data is private (your identity, your bank details, photos of a flat you want to rent out) and some data is public on purpose (the content of contracts people choose to publish, whether a contract was signed or completed, and overall usage statistics). One idea guides the whole effort: your habits and your commercial behaviour are not for sale. It is a bit like nobody being allowed to walk into your head or your home: what you buy, how you behave, and your private practices stay yours. To picture it, think of a babysitter who keeps their own qualifications and references and can show them to a family when asked, without any platform storing or reselling them.}}

== Structured Data (Linked Data) ==

''Innovation — WikiDeal R&D''

''Innovation: WikiDeal R&D''

{| class="wikitable"

|-

| ~~Origin~~ || 🌐 Tim Berners-Lee / W3C

| Concept origin || Linked Data / Semantic Web, [https://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/ Tim Berners-Lee, W3C]

|-

| Status || ~~Prototype 1 — In testing~~

| Status || Research, early prototype

|}

~~=== What is it? ===~~

''This page describes a research direction, not a delivered feature. Everything below states what WikiDeal '''aims at''', '''intends to''' explore, or holds as an '''initial hypothesis'''. Nothing here is implemented yet.''

~~Structured Data brings RDF~~, ~~JSON-LD, and Wikidata integration throughout~~ WikiDeal'~~s data layer. This enables semantic interoperability~~, ~~federated search~~, ~~and machine-readable transparency, aligning WikiDeal with the original vision of the Semantic Web in which information~~ is ~~openly linked and reusable across systems~~.

=== ~~How it works~~ on ~~WikiDeal~~ ===

=== Aspects covered on this page ===

Data is published in open, linked formats so it can be queried, connected, and verified by other systems and the wider web. This supports transparency and interoperability across portals and partners. The specific schemas and integration points are documented progressively as the platform evolves.

~~=== Decentralized Web (DWeb) alignment ===~~

Structured Data is explored through several connected aspects, each a section below:

~~WikiDeal's~~ Structured Data ~~layer~~ is ~~designed to be compatible with the broader '''Decentralized Web (DWeb)''' movement — the effort to rebuild the web on open~~, ~~user-controlled, peer-to-peer foundations rather than centralized silos. Three reference initiatives guide this alignment~~:

* ~~'''~~[~~https://solidproject.org Solid~~]~~''' — Tim Berners-Lee's project~~ for ~~personal~~ data ~~stores~~ (~~"Pods"~~), ~~where each user owns their data and grants applications scoped, revocable access. WikiDeal's consent~~-~~based~~, ~~decentralized data sharing follows~~ the ~~same principle: linked data that stays under user control.~~

* [[#Why it matters|Why it matters]] (your habits are not for sale)

* ~~'''~~[~~https://holochain.org Holochain]''' — an agent~~-~~centric, distributed framework where each participant keeps their own validated data~~ and ~~shares it peer~~-~~to-peer~~, ~~without a global ledger~~. ~~This matches WikiDeal's goal of consent-based track records~~ and ~~trust built gradually within communities~~, ~~rather than through a central surveillance database~~.

* [[#What data are we talking about|What data are we talking about]] (private vs published)

* ~~'''DWeb / IPFS-style content addressing''' — open, verifiable, location-independent data that can be queried and connected across systems.~~

* [[#Three intended guarantees|Three intended guarantees]] (private by default, per-transaction control, trust circles)

* [[#Anonymized statistics for the common good|Anonymized statistics for the common good]]

* [[#Data minimisation and local-first|Data minimisation and local-first]]

* [[#Decentralised identity|Decentralised identity]] and the [[#Decentralized Web|Decentralized Web]]

* [[#Selective disclosure|Selective disclosure]]

* [[#Legal compliance: GDPR, eIDAS 2.0 and beyond|Legal compliance (GDPR, eIDAS 2.0)]]

* [[#Data governance: future hypotheses|Data governance: future hypotheses]]

By expressing ~~its data~~ as RDF / JSON-LD / Wikidata-linked resources, WikiDeal ~~keeps~~ the ~~door~~ open to ~~interoperate~~ with Solid Pods, Holochain ~~agents~~, and ~~other DWeb~~ infrastructures as they mature — so the platform's information ~~remains~~ open, portable, and owned by its community rather than locked into a single provider.

=== Why it matters ===

On most platforms today, if a service is free, the user tends to be the product: behaviour is collected, analysed, and resold (a pattern often described as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism surveillance capitalism]). WikiDeal '''is guided by''' the opposite principle. The intention is that there is no resale of users' habits or commercial tendencies, because the data is meant to belong to the users themselves.

Put plainly, the goal is that nobody, no other [[Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:User Groups|User Group]], not the Ynternet.org Foundation, not the WikiDeal operator, gets to walk into your head or your home. Your buying patterns and private commercial practices are meant to stay yours.

A concrete illustration: a babysitter could hold their own qualifications, background-check results, and reputation history, present them to a family on request, and have them verified without the platform storing the underlying data. The same logic '''is intended to''' apply across the marketplace.

=== What data are we talking about ===

WikiDeal handles two distinct kinds of data, and the intended rules differ for each.

'''Private data.''' Identities, contact and bank details, personal photographs, the details of a dwelling someone wants to rent out, and the specific variables a user enters into a contract. The design '''is guided by''' a simple principle: private data stays private by default, and the user decides whether to share it, with a specific counterparty in a negotiation or with a chosen [[Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Rings Of Trust|Ring of Trust]].

'''Published data.''' Some data is meant to be public on WikiDeal: the content of contracts the parties choose to publish, the state of a contract (signed, completed, or ended in a dispute), and aggregate usage statistics. This data is published on purpose, not collected and resold.

The structured-data work '''intends to''' cover both kinds (expressing them as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework RDF], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON-LD JSON-LD], and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikidata Wikidata]-linked resources, in the spirit of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_data Linked Data] and the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web Semantic Web]) so each piece of information carries the right status and is machine-readable and interoperable. Governance of all this '''is intended to''' be decided in a '''participative context''', not dictated from above.

=== Three intended guarantees ===

Structured Data '''aims at''' giving users the assurance that they sit inside trust networks ([[Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Rings Of Trust|Rings of Trust]]) where they decide whether or not to share their data. Three guarantees sit at the heart of the design.

# '''Private by default.''' The intention is that your data would not be accessible, not by other [[Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:User Groups|User Groups]], not by the Ynternet.org Foundation, not by the WikiDeal operator. Nobody would see it unless you explicitly grant access. Access would be opt-in, scoped, and revocable.

# '''Per-transaction control.''' For each transaction, you would decide what to reveal and to whom: more for a high-stakes deal, less for a casual one, transaction by transaction.

# '''Choose your trust circles.''' You would affiliate with the [[Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Rings Of Trust|Rings of Trust]] you actually trust for data sharing. For example, a User Group offering a hosting service for tenants and landlords could store a member's structured data (photos of dwellings to rent, plus account and bank details) on a third-party server, because the user chose to trust that Ring. Sharing would follow the trust relationship the user opted into, not a platform-wide default.

=== Anonymized statistics for the common good ===

Separately from personal data, WikiDeal '''intends to''' publish anonymized aggregate statistics. Personal data would stay private; only de-identified trends would be shared. The point is decision support: helping people and communities make informed decisions.

Today, this kind of trend data (which is highly valuable, because it reveals tendencies and reactions) is largely held by a few large private groups. WikiDeal '''aims at''' bringing this insight back under public, community control, so that trends can be understood and their impact studied rather than quietly monetised.

This '''is intended to''' open work with the academic world (for example doctoral research) on concrete questions, such as:

* how far certain usage ergonomics (UX patterns) are linked to compulsive buying;

* what real impact discounts and promotional offers have on users' finances.

The double goal '''is guided by''' two interests at once: supporting providers of goods and services, while protecting consumers from mechanics that push them to lose their commercial good sense, and, more broadly, strengthening trust in the system.

Aggregate figures would reveal broad trends and recurring conflict patterns, which in turn would let the community create alerts and improve contracts and safeguards before problems spread. In no case would specific user information be exposed, only listed aggregates such as: how many contracts of a given type were signed, how many were completed, how many ended in a dispute, what type of dispute, and how many disputes were solved.

=== Data minimisation and local-first ===

WikiDeal '''is designed to be guided by''' minimising the platform's access to user data. Where mainstream platforms treat user data as a primary asset, collecting, analysing, and monetising it, WikiDeal '''intends to''' treat data as belonging to users, held only in trust, for minimum periods, in minimum quantities.

The architecture WikiDeal '''is exploring''' is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-first_software local-first]: wherever possible, data would be stored on users' own devices, and only the minimum necessary information would be transmitted to shared Infrastructure. As an initial hypothesis, a babysitting agreement signed by both parties would live on the devices of the family and the babysitter, while the platform Infrastructure would hold only a cryptographic proof that the agreement was signed, not its content, unless both parties consent to shared storage.

This direction is technically challenging (it requires careful design of conflict resolution, backup, and recovery) but it '''aims at''' changing the data power relationship: a platform cannot sell data it does not have. The intention is that, even when WikiDeal eventually serves many babysitters, tutors, and freelancers, it would not have built a surveillance corpus of intimate human behaviour.

=== Decentralised identity ===

WikiDeal '''is evaluating''' decentralised identity approaches ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier decentralised identifiers, DIDs], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifiable_credentials verifiable credentials], part of the wider [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-sovereign_identity self-sovereign identity] field) that '''aim at''' enabling trust between strangers without a central identity database. As above, a babysitter's qualifications and reputation could be held by the babysitter, presented on demand, and verified without the platform storing the underlying data. This research is ongoing through the WikiDeal [[Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Living-Labs|Living Labs]] programme.

=== Decentralized Web ===

WikiDeal '''is following''' the general development of the Decentralized Web closely, with or without blockchain. WikiDeal '''starts from''' a deliberately technology-neutral position: this is a starting point, not a settled stance. Positions on specific technologies '''are intended to''' be taken later, on the basis of exchanges, discussions, and position papers, some of which already exist and others still to be written. These '''are among the elements to be studied''', rather than decisions already made.

The goal being explored (user-owned, consent-based, portable data) could be approached through several paths, kept here as research references rather than adopted building blocks:

* '''[https://solidproject.org Solid]''' ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_(web_decentralization_project) Wikipedia]), Tim Berners-Lee's model of personal data stores ("Pods"), where each user owns their data and grants applications scoped, revocable access.

* '''[https://holochain.org Holochain]''' ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holochain Wikipedia]), an '''agent-centric''' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer peer-to-peer] framework where each participant keeps their own validated data, with no global ledger. Note: Holochain is '''not [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain blockchain]-based'''; instead of one shared ledger maintained by global consensus, each agent holds its own hash chain and data is shared over a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table distributed hash table].

* '''[https://ipfs.io IPFS]''' ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System Wikipedia]), content addressing, and, where genuinely useful, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_ledger distributed ledgers].

* '''Third-party / federated hosting''', where structured data could live on a trusted third-party server chosen by the user.

For an overview of this wider field, two external observatories are useful references:

* '''[https://github.com/gdamdam/awesome-decentralized-web Awesome Decentralized Web]''' (a curated list of decentralised protocols and tools, notably excluding crypto/blockchain/NFT projects).

* '''[https://www.decentralizedweb.net Decentralized Web Summit]''' (the Internet Archive gathering that has tracked this field since its early days).

This connects to WikiDeal's broader stance: see [[Gov/en/Portal:Data/Blockchains|Blockchains & Smart Contracts]] for where blockchain and smart contracts are (and are not) considered appropriate, and [[Gov/en/Portal:Data/Decentralized-Data|Decentralized Data]] for the data-minimisation principles that underpin the approach. By expressing data as open linked resources, WikiDeal '''aims at''' keeping the door open to interoperate with these infrastructures as they mature, so the platform's information could stay open, portable, and owned by its community rather than locked into a single provider.

=== Selective disclosure ===

For marketplace Transactions, WikiDeal '''is exploring''' a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_disclosure selective disclosure] model: the intention is that parties would share only the data necessary to complete a Transaction, and that dispute resolution could proceed without exposing private communications to the operators unless legally required. How reputation could be presented while keeping the underlying ratings private is one of the open questions to be studied; no specific protocol is settled at this stage.

Funders' individual contribution data '''is intended to''' stay strictly confidential. Aggregate figures (total number of funders, total CHF raised, distribution of Community vs [[Gov/en/Portal:Economy/Cash-Rewards|Cash Rewards]] allocations) would be published transparently; individual allocations would never be disclosed without explicit consent.

=== Legal compliance: GDPR, eIDAS 2.0 and beyond ===

This research direction '''is intended to''' be developed in line with applicable data-protection and digital-identity law, not against it.

* '''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation GDPR]''' (EU General Data Protection Regulation). The principles described above (data minimisation, private-by-default, user consent, purpose limitation, the right to access and erase one's data) are meant to align with GDPR rather than merely tolerate it. Anonymized statistics '''are intended to''' rely on genuinely de-identified data so that they fall outside the scope of personal data.

* '''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIDAS eIDAS 2.0]''' (the EU regulation framing digital identity, including the European Digital Identity Wallet). The decentralised-identity work '''aims at''' staying compatible with this emerging framework, so that verifiable credentials and self-presented qualifications could interoperate with officially recognised digital identity where relevant.

These are stated as '''design intentions and starting hypotheses''', to be confirmed with legal counsel as the project matures. Compatibility with other national and sector-specific legislation '''is intended to''' be assessed case by case.

=== Data governance: future hypotheses ===

The following is an '''initial hypothesis''', not a roadmap.

The guiding idea is simple: '''protection is complete by default''', and users could then choose, transaction by transaction, to share more in exchange for specific advantages, always under citizen supervision. The point is user choice, with no single data regime imposed on everyone. How this choice would be organised in practice is left open, to be defined later in a participative way as the project matures.

----

'''See also:''' [[Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Main|All innovations]] · [[Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Main|R&D Portal]]

'''See also:''' [[Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Main|All innovations]] · [[Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Main|R&D Portal]] · [[Gov/en/Portal:Data/Decentralized-Data|Decentralized Data]] · [[Gov/en/Portal:Data/Blockchains|Blockchains & Smart Contracts]] · [[Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Rings Of Trust|Rings of Trust]]

[[Category:Migration June 2026]]