the virality of co-authors in urology

Happy birthday Wikidata and, many happy returns.

When you start enriching the data for a Dutch urologist, an academic who published quite a number of scientific papers, obviously there must be many co-authors. Many of them are yet to be identified, at this moment for Jakko A. Nieuwenhuijzen there are some 339 still to be added.

The main consideration is what has the biggest impact. As a colleague of Mr Nieuwenhuijzen is known at Google scholar, adding papers for him brought new publications to Mr Nieuwenhuijzen and many of his co-authors. Enriching data for these co-authors makes the graph more complex.

At some point more precision in the data for a single author is no longer worth the effort. When you then find an other urologist with many papers not yet attributed and many co-authors where Wikidata does not know the gender yet, focus shifts and many more edits make their way into Wikidata.

Many of these co-authors are of the same institute but people from elsewhere find their place in these graphs as well. Many are Dutch but as urology knows many international collaborations this is reflected in the expanding number of co-authors. 

As a topic is developed in this way, it easily results in thousands of edits. As many subject are  researched in this way, the enriched data is there for the world to use. This data is only of value when there is a public. Sharing in the sum of all knowledge has always been what we stand for. Sharing freely and widely generates us a a both public and a future.

Thanks,

      GerardM

The fallibility of notability

When Wikidata will be split up in a "science" part and "all the rest", scientists who have a Wikipedia article will need to be part of the "rest" as well. This is necessary as all Wikipedia articles have a link to Wikidata because of the "interwiki" mechanism.

It follows that there will be an over abundance of USA scientists and there will  hardly be any scientists of Africa or South America. 

Some data about scientists is likely to be considered to be part of "all the rest" awards for instance. Are these scientists who received an award to be known in two data sets? Some scientists had a career as an athlete.. an other reason for duplication. It is hard enough to maintain the interwiki links and existing duplication within Wikidata, it will become exponentially more difficult when another data set is added.

When the creation of Wikimedia Commons was considered, similar good reasons led to hesitation and prevented us to bite the bullet for quite some time. Commons started with the creation of a Wiki, a MediaWiki patch that showed a picture in a Wikipedia and it then took a long time for most of the duplicate pictures to be only in Commons. It was not technically perfect but it was done perfect in the wiki way.

I hope that we will bite the bullet this time as well. With a new unrestricted wikibase, the old batch jobs can be dusted off and make good for the years of academic data we missed. I pray that Scholia will become functional soon after. 

I will still be able to do my Wikidata thing.. projects like African politicians, Muslim countries and their rulers (past and present).. Awards that can do with an update obviously including science awards.. I will not be bored but maybe I will be working .. maybe not.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Old soldiers never die, they march in the remembrance parades

As our movement matures, people who were there at the beginning, age. They get other priorities, they get sick, operated upon and as a consequence have a windfall of time to do more work at Wikidata. 

I did a similar job for a dear fellow Wikimedian.. It is now my turn, my chirurg is in this picture and as I add missing co-authors this picture becomes more complex. It will also become more complex when existing co-authors are enriched with new and linked papers.

With Wikipedia there is the promise that even though the information will evolve, all the work people have put in will be there in future and enable people to read/study the subjects each editor cared for.

The data of Wikidata as it is will be split in parts. For the best of reasons but once its structure is broken, the tools that bring structure to the data will be broken as well. The same tools that enable the enrichment of the data will be broken. Much of my Wikimedia legacy will be lost because there will no longer be a public enabled to learn about scholarly works in a Wiki way.

For a few years now this sword of Damocles has hung over Wikidata. As a consequence the potential of Wikidata is not being realised. The data could be so much richer when automated processes bring free knowledge together. References in Wikipedia  indicating later papers and improve its quality. 

As long as I can I will do my Wikidata thing; hope is eternal.

Thanks,

       GerardM

A Red&Blue approach to Wikipedia references.

Elisabeth Bik is according to her Wikipedia article a "scientific integrity consultant". Her work is often to the detriment of the reputation of scientists and the work they do. Many of the scientists have a Wikipedia article and retracted publications serve as references in Wikipedia articles.

Many more publications are retracted, most if not all are registered at Retraction Watch. It is reasonable to expect that many publications serving as references in a Wikipedia are retracted. Arguments used to achieve a Neutral Point of View based on a retracted publications, are wrong by definition. 

When all references of a Wikipedia are registered in a Red&Blue Wikibase and, when all books with an ISBN and scientific publications with a DOI are ALSO known at Wikidata, it becomes possible to offer a new service. A service providing information about retractions and citations to the publications used as a reference.

Such a service is to be interactive as well.. Just consider: a Wikipedian wants to check the quality of a Wikipedia article. An update button, first checks for retractions and for all citing publications. It then checks for missing data like citations and authors. At the same time new references are added; they are  all processed in the same way.

In the background, all publications will be checked by a batch functionality for updates at Wikidata. Particularly for new retractions, authors who claim a publication.. In this way the information on any topic will be as good as we can make it.

• scientific publications are retracted and these retractions impact our NPOV
• publications may be used as a reference in multiple Wikipedias
• keeping information on sources up to date protects our NPOV
• making the latest references available to all our Wikipedians ensures an optimal result

So what is not to like? 

Thanks, 

        GerardM

Another Red&Blue application; the epidemiologist who wrote the book on "Smoking Kills"

Professor Richard Doll of Oxford is considered one of the best epidemiologists of the 20th century. There are 20 Wikipedias who consider him notable enough for an article yet Wikidata had until now no scientific paper associated with him. That was easily solved by disambiguating "author strings" for Mr Doll. 

With currently 54 publications to his name, none of his books are included. At the Open Library, Mr Doll is known five times and several books were known by these different Mr Dolls. All books have now been attributed to the Mr Doll with id OL1150080A. This identifier is now linked on Wikidata and reading the available books can be read by an international public.

All publications known at Wikidata for Mr Doll are represented in his Scholia. Given that there is much more to explore, this representation will evolve over time. People may add books or publications and additional co-authors may be disambiguated (currently a potential of 159 authors). 

The English Wikipedia has a Scholia template and it is implemented on the Richard Doll article. Functionality like this makes all the effort worth it bringing information to a next level of exposure. It works both ways. Suppose that all references of all Wikipedia articles in any Wikipedia are to be found in Wikidata. All of these references will be known in the Red&Blue Wikibase. All references with an identifier like a DOI or an ISBN can easily be integrated in Wikidata for re-use in other Wiki projects. 

With some additional work, it is even possible to associate references to individual statements and have them known in Wikidata as well. Again this promotes exposure of all the work we do and it promotes re-use in other Wiki projects.

• Scholia is/could be available as a template on any and all Wikipedias
• You can read books when available at OpenLibrary
• Anyone can contribute to the tapestry of information for any scholar
• References can easily be added in Red&Blue Wikibase
• These references can be linked to Wikidata making for one stop shopping for updates

So what is not to like? 

Thanks, 

       GerardM

A Red&Blue Wikibase disambiguation on the English Wikipedia

Mark Edward Hay is an American marine ecologist. There is a Wikipedia article about him in two languages and there is an article in Wikispecies. Consequently there is an item in Wikidata.

In a template it says: "[[Lowell Thomas Award]] (2015)". The link it a redirect to [[Lowell Thomas]] the man the award is named after. This is accepted practice in Wikipedia and it is not a problem. The redirect page has 23 links to articles mostly of people who received the same award.

With a Red&Blue Wikibase for the English Wikipedia, it will be possible to associate a relation with the award. This could fit in a template and additional red links can be added based on the source. 

When a Wikipedia adds new links, it is done by typing in the name of an potential article. Given that people who received an award are notable, consequently new blue links are highly likely to occur. New red links are entered in a template so there is this implied relation. 

At Wikidata an item for the Lowell Thomas award was recently added because of Mr Hay. It currently only refers to one recipient; Mr Hay. The 23 relations known at the en:red&blue are more than welcome to be added to Wikidata. Red links are more tricky as Wikidata is a superset of data of all the Wikipedias  articles of all Wikipedia and then some. 

So when Wikidata already knows about a recipient, it can make a red Wikibase link blue. When any Wikipedia adds the Lowell Thomas Award as a link, all the information can be populated from Wikidata making it much easier to have sanity checks indicating where data may be right or wrong..

• Hidden data in redirection articles are given an additional use
• Data available in multiple Wikipedias is actually shared making knowledge more complete
• Data only available in one Wikipedia becomes more generally available

So what is not to like?

Thanks,

      GerardM

A Red&Blue Wikibase for the red, blue and black wikilinks of each @Wikipedia

Wikipedia uses blue links to maneuver between its articles. When there is no article it is called a "red link". This text based functionality works reasonably well but it has important limitations.

• article names are constructs that makes them unique
• disambiguation pages need to be maintained
• there are false positives linking to the wrong articles

When you know your Wikipedia history well, one of the most effective innovations was to remove the interwiki links from the Wikipedias and replace them with links to Wikidata. Wikidata makes use of identifiers and as a consequence the change of an article name has no effect, this ensures that articles on the same subject remain properly linked.

The Wikidata project uses the Wikibase software and this enables the "federation" of multiple databases. This means that data may exist in multiple databases but it all work together. 

Suppose that you replace both the blue links and the red links in a Wikipedia with identifiers of a separate Wikibase. Almost all blue links will implicitly be linked to a Wikidata item and Wikidata already knows about the relations between blue links it has items for. Consequently a Wikipedia Red&Blue Wikibase will be richly populated from the start.

Every Wikipedia remains autonomous and we keep it that way. But we DO know more at Wikidata because it is a superset of all Wikipedias. So when a Wikipedia knows about an award, so does Wikidata. When Wikidata knows about more recipients, it is suggested to include them as red links. It must be a suggestion because a Wikipedia may have another script, another naming convention for names and this has to be correct before it becomes available as text in the Wikipedia proper. 

When a label is correct for a Wikipedia, it is obvious that there is to be a link to the item AND that the label can be used for that language as well. With 200+ Wikipedias enriching Wikidata in this way, both the multilingual and the multicultural quality & quantity of Wikidata will sky rocket.

• Wikipedias remain autonomous in their content
• Wikidata will progress from a technically multi lingual project to a functional multi lingual project
• Disambiguation will be technically available for all accepted Red&Blue labels
• Known relations with a reference will be available with a reference to every Wikipedia.

So what is not to like?

Thanks,  GerardM