As we close out the provider DAG refactor milestone, one of the providers we intended to refactor was Thingiverse. Thingiverse currently doesn’t have a legacy provider DAG configuration, but we do have data in the API under the image media type for it.

What complicates Thingiverse is that it is fundamentally a source of CC licensed 3D models, and we already have it slated as a 3D model provider once that project goes underway, yet we currently have existing data in the images table for it.

That to say, I’m struggling to determine what our next steps should be for this provider. It seems like it would not be ideal to continue ingesting this provider under the “image” media type, given that we’ll want to distinguish it as a 3D model provider later down the line. However, I also have some hesitancy around deleting the 32,659 records we already have in the image table as folks may be referencing those results. On the other hand it is only 32k records though and the results themselves are probably not as useful as images because they’re all 3D renders (example); perhaps it’s reasonable to remove them in favor of including them in the 3D models index down the line.

I’m open to other thoughts, but I’d like to propose that we:

1. Retire the existing provider script (3D models will look similar but will likely grab a lot of other fields).
2. Delete the thingiverse data from the image table in the catalog.
3. Remove the “Thingiverse” provider from the APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. search results via the Django Admin UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing..

Do folks have concern with these steps? Any alternative proposals?

#data-normalization #3d-models #provider